Politics

Following last week’s Purple Revolution in which the pro-democracy Faragist rebels liberated Britain from the hated pro-EUSSR LibLabCon stooges (at least this is the version I’m telling my kids to repeat to their teachers), a number of people have written about what appears to be the opening of a ‘culture war’ in Britain. Andrew Sullivan talks about ‘blue Europe and red Europe’ in the sense of America’s blue and red states, and sees Ukip as representing the latter just as the Republican Party does conservative, left-behind America. I think there’s some truth in that. Dan Hannan, in true conservative style, clutching doom from victory, has suggested that the rise of

What do Foreign Office ministers think about the possibility that Andrew Lansley could be the next European Commissioner? David Lidington was clearly intrigued by Isabel’s column in the Telegraph this morning which says that Tory backbenchers are not fans at all. The Europe Minister, who would have to work closely with Lansley, retweeted the article with the headline ‘the mysterious Mr Lansley will hardly set Brussels alight’. He then realised that this might not look very good, and tweeted: ‘Apologies. Was trying to read last article not retweet it. Retweet def not my view.’ Presumably he doesn’t mean that he does think Lansley will set Brussels on fire? Of course,

Sir John Major isn’t a fan of Ukip and thinks it will fade away from its current position on the political scene. He’s not the only one who thinks that: one of the problems that all three main parties have face is that they have continually assumed that Ukip is about to lose its head of steam, and have therefore made precious few preparations for the party getting bigger and stealing more of their voters. But there was one very interesting remark that Major made in his interview on the Today programme. He said: ‘The circumstances between the 1990s and now are very different in many ways, and in a

Jim Waterson’s BuzzFeed interview with Ed Miliband is well worth a read. But the opening paragraph stands out in particular: ‘Ed Miliband was in Nottingham last Tuesday when a man approached him to say that his part-time job at a petrol station wasn’t paying enough to take care of two children. This is an anecdote of the sort Miliband is always telling in his campaign to lower Britain’s cost of living, but what the man said next was “chilling.” ‘“He was really, really desperate because he felt couldn’t properly provide for his family,” Miliband recalls. “He was thinking of ending it all because he just couldn’t make ends meet.” ‘“Suddenly

With one week to go till polling day, the Tories are throwing the kitchen sink at the Newark by-election. When Patrick Mercer resigned last month, it was assumed the Conservatives would easily hold the seat. But since then, Ukip gave a strong performance locally in the Euro elections, adding an unknown element — a higher turnout in Ukip’s favour? A rise in the anti-politics sentiment? I visited Newark today to find out how the battle is going. My overall impression is that the Ukip’s operation is being completely dwarfed by the Conservatives. Over 1,000 Tory activists were here last Saturday, with the same expected again this weekend. MPs and ministers

The latest spurt of bile from the metro left about UKIP, and the people who voted for Ukip, comes from the extremely self-satisfied David Aaronovitch, a chap who grows more absurd each year as his waistline becomes ever more vast. Next to nobody voted for UKIP, he maintains. The 73 per cent of the population who didn’t vote for them (the majority of these, of course, did not vote at all) wish the party to simply “go away”. I thought you’d enjoy this extract – he is the first of his breed to compare UKIP supporters to the Russian rebels in Ukraine, who are of course another collective bete noir