Politics Archives

Wednesday

10 Dec 2014

PMQs: Nick Clegg delivers a perfect Cameroon performance

Nick Clegg’s performance at PMQs reminded me of Field Marshall Bosquet’s verdict on the charge of the Light Brigade, ‘c’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre’. After a week in which the Lib Dems have been busy trying to differentiate themselves from the Tories, Clegg turned up at PMQs and delivered an aggressive defence of everything that the government has done. Indeed, I’m struggling to think of anything that Clegg said from the despatch box today that Cameron would have disagreed with. The session was also a reminder of the personal animosity between Clegg and the shadow Cabinet. Harriet Harman went for him over his party’s attitude to women,

Ed West

Wow, just wow – liberalism is dead

I tend to avoid Camden these days as it makes me feel even more like Mark Corrigan than usual, so it’s been a few years since I visited the Proud Gallery. I seem to remember it was for some industry event and there was lots of free beer; it was a nice venue with a view overlooking the area, but I can’t recall whether the place was gay, super-gay or not-very-gay. Someone else was obviously unaware of the bar’s sexual orientation, as they wrote an email to its owner, Alex Proud, enquiring because some of their staff might have religious objections. Mr Proud’s response was to tell them their booking

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg’s PMQs challenge

Nick Clegg is taking Prime Minister’s Questions today, which will at least force the Lib Dem leader to turn up to a major Commons session, rather than bunking off to Cornwall. It’s not just good timing in terms of sorting out Clegg’s truancy rate, but also because Coalition ministers have been taking public pot shots at one another for the past week. Labour will want to exploit those divisions, but Clegg is unlikely to find many Tory backbenchers rallying to his cause, either. The behaviour of the Lib Dems has reminded a lot of Conservatives of their desire to sack the Lib Dems from the Coalition – a desire they

Tuesday

9 Dec 2014

Steerpike

Revealed: the cringeworthy horror of Ukip chat-up lines

The Roger Bird-Natasha Bolter saga continues. Text messages between the Ukip romantics have revealed by the Telegraph which paint Bolter in a less favourable than Bird. While the Ukip investigation is ongoing, Bird has told Guido that they demonstrate a ‘gradual development of the relationship and make it clear that there was no impropriety involved’. That’s as maybe, but is there anything proper about text flirting of this appalling calibre? Here are some more text messages from Botler to Bird: Nov 9, 17.26: “I am really missing u bird…” Nov 6, 19.05: “I have sang you praises to Nigel for 12 minutes” Nov 6, 00.24: “U r not coming back and accordingly my life

Isabel Hardman

The tricks being played over a VAT rise

Today’s Treasury Questions was a bit odd, not least because neither George Osborne nor Ed Balls were there, so everyone seemed to be quite keen to get the thing over with. Labour’s latest line of attack is to force Treasury ministers into ruling out or obfuscating over whether or not a Tory government would put up VAT after the General Election. Here is the first exchange, between Shabana Mahmood and David Gauke: Shabana Mahmood: ‘The Minister has failed to rule out another tax cut for the richest 1% of earners in our country. As he signalled in his answer, the Prime Minister has made £7 billion-worth of unfunded tax promises

Steerpike

Handbags for Commons couples: Sarah Vine vs Ed Balls

It was a battle of the Westminster couples last night as Yvette Cooper took to the airwaves on Tom Bradby’s ITV Agenda show. Snarkily commenting from the couch at home, Sarah Vine, aka Mrs Michael Gove, publicly questioned ‘How did Ed Balls ever bag Yvette?’ The darling couple of the Brown treasury married in 1998, when Balls was working for Gordon and Yvette was a new Labour MP. But Yvette’s hubby wasn’t having any of it, hitting back ‘Errr.. Hang on.. Pots? Kettles?’ Whatever could he mean? Mr S could never imagine such rumbustious highly personal politics from Nigel Lawson, Norman Lamont, Gordon Bro…oh wait. Over to you chief whip.

Rod Liddle

As political scandals go, Ukip’s latest offering is hardly a knee-trembler

The Natasha Bolter story is a little peculiar, no? Ms Bolter, formerly of the Labour Party and more latterly a rising star in Ukip, has been telling the press how she was ‘sexually harassed’ by the party’s general secretary, Roger Bird. This seems to have amounted to Mr Bird asking her out a couple of times. Unwise and over-bearing behaviour, I suppose, but hardly the greatest political scandal of the age. All this happened a couple of months ago – so why has it only surfaced now? Was Ms Bolter about to be shafted, so to speak, in the seat she expected to get? Either way, Bird has been suspended

Sebastian Payne

Ukip’s Roger Bird suspended over sexual misconduct allegations

The reason behind Roger Bird’s mysterious suspension as Ukip general secretary has been revealed. The splash of today’s Times makes several allegations (£) about Bird and Natasha Bolter, a Labour defector to Ukip and potential PPC in South Basildon: ‘Natasha Bolter, a headline speaker at Ukip’s party conference, has pulled out of hustings today in South Basildon, where she was widely expected to be elected as parliamentary candidate in the winnable seat. ‘Ms Bolter, 35, claims that Roger Bird, Ukip’s general secretary and the man in charge of vetting parliamentary candidates, propositioned her over dinner at his London club on the day that he interviewed her as a prospective candidate. ‘”He asked

Isabel Hardman

The Tory voters who are still vulnerable to Ukip

Today’s conclusion from the British Election Study that Ukip will hurt the Tories far more than it will damage Labour at the General Election is unsurprising, but still important as its warning that the Conservative party could lose nearly two million voters to Nigel Farage’s party underlines the need for the Tories to find a decent solution to Ukip. Thus far the Tories have tended to capitulate to Ukip on policies, with Nigel Farage becoming a think tank for policy development by applying pressure on nervous MPs who eventually secure concessions from David Cameron in the form of policies he didn’t really want to announce. But last month David Cameron

Monday

8 Dec 2014

Sebastian Payne

Ukip general secretary Roger Bird suspended over ‘impropriety’ allegations

To the delight of its enemies, Ukip has just announced its general secretary has been suspended over ‘impropriety allegations’. According to a statement released by the party, claims have come to light ‘about the conduct of Mr [Roger] Bird with regard to candidate selection’. A Ukip spokesman said on Monday evening: ‘Unfortunately, Ukip has had to suspend Mr Bird pending a full investigation into allegations made against him. The party has acted swiftly and decisively and will not tolerate impropriety of any kind amongst its staff.’ Of course, the news will be grist to the mill for those who claim that Ukip is nothing more than a bunch of charlatans, and that it cannot

Nick Cohen

The last days of the Cameron administration: Part 1 The Gove Delusion

Faintly stunned Liberal Democrats report that Michael Gove is an absentee chief whip. He is simultaneously there at the coalition whips’ meetings but not there: a ghostly presence; a bored, miserable figure who has not forgiven or forgotten David Cameron’s decision to demote him from his beloved Education Department. It’s dangerous to humiliate a man and then give him the power to humiliate you. Even in the fag end of a fixed-term parliament, which long ago ran out of useful business to conduct, a government needs a good whips office if it is to stay out of trouble. The Cameron government does not have one and is always tripping over

Isabel Hardman

Rachel Reeves goes for tribal politics over hard questioning on food banks

Most people went into Work and Pensions Questions expecting Iain Duncan Smith to be in a tetchy fame of mind following this morning’s report on food banks. As a matter of fact, the Work and Pensions Secretary was very, very keen to tell us as often as he possibly could how ‘seriously’ he was taking that report. And the Opposition, which claims to care a lot more about these matters, completely failed to make productive use of its time grilling him. Some Tory ministers were worried that an impending Labour reshuffle at some point this term might see Rachel Reeves moved on to their patch, as she’s deemed very good

James Forsyth

We have a choice between competence and chaos, according to the Tories

Competence versus chaos—that’s what the Tory leadership want to frame the next election as a choice between. Hence George Osborne’s repetition of this phrase five times in one brief interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson. The Tories want to make the voters think that they offer competence and everyone else chaos. As George Osborne puts it, ‘And it’s not just Liberal Democrats, it’s Labour, UKIP, you can put them all into the same mix. What they’re offering is a chaotic alternative of higher taxes, higher borrowing, a return to economic chaos.’ One of the reasons why the Tories are so keen to polarise the contest in this way is, one

Steerpike

Listen: Roger Helmer reveals Ukip’s approach to candidate selection

Ralph Atkinson ranted this weekend that Ukip have ‘standards of democracy lower than the unelected European Commission’ after he was allegedly ousted as the Ukip candidate for Hastings and Rye in favour of the wealthy Gogglebox ‘celebrity’ Andrew Michael. Now Mr S learns of a leaked recording which appears to show Roger Helmer, MEP for Ukip, letting slip the party’s selection stance when it comes to high profile names. In it he claims that Ukip is prepared to sweep away loyal local candidates for more high profile ones, as was done in the case of Douglas Carswell. Speaking in November at #RepealClimateAct: A Practical UK Energy Policy Event, Helmer said: ‘The problem

Steerpike

Nigel Mills goes cold turkey on crushing candy

When the Sun found Nigel Mills had spent most of a select committee session playing Candy Crush on his iPad, the MP’s first response was to say he’d ‘try not to do it in the future’. This sounded rather as though he couldn’t promise that he couldn’t resist the urge to line up jelly beans and lemon drops, feverishly inviting furious Facebook friends to join in all the while. Since then, the Tory MP has clearly faced up to his addiction and decided to go cold turkey, releasing a statement saying ‘I guarantee it will not happen again’. Perhaps he’s discovered that Bejeweled is even better…

Sebastian Payne

Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage are pursuing the same electoral strategy

What is the reasoning behind Nigel Farage’s recent spate of apparent gaffes? Following his breastfeeding comments last week, the Ukip leader blamed his lateness to an event in Wales on open-door immigration, as well as problems navigating the motorway: ‘It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here – it should have taken three-and-a-half to four. That is nothing to do with professionalism, what it does have to do with is a country in which the population that is going through the roof chiefly because of open-door immigration and the fact that the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be.’ listen to ‘Farage blames the

Steerpike

Top Tory rails against Osborne’s Stamp Duty reform

Tory MP Mark Field is not a happy bunny about Osborne’s Autumn Statement. Writing to members of his association, the MP for the Cities of London and Westminster has blasted the Chancellor’s ‘unfortunate’ move over stamp duty — despite claiming to be sympathetic to the ‘politics’ of ‘soaking the remaining rich’. Mr S thought the full rant was worth reproducing here: ‘Those buying a £2 million home will now have to find £153,750 in cold hard cash to hand over to the Treasury, up from £100,000. Meanwhile, those purchasing a property valued at £5 million will have to pay £513,750 in duty, coincidentally precisely the same amount as the cost

Sunday

7 Dec 2014

Rod Liddle

Another UN official who makes me more likely to vote Ukip

The latest half-witted United Nations official to stick the boot into the United Kingdom is one Francois Crepeau, UN ‘Special Rapperteur’ (nope, sorry, don’t recognise the term), on the Rights of Human Migrants. Crepeau, who comes from the useless part of Canada, said that British fears about immigration were ‘utter bullshit’. He added that if the British people voted for Ukip it would ‘not be cool’. Mr Crepeau’s intervention made me 30 per cent more likely to vote Ukip next May – and if Farage suggested we leave the UN as well as the EU, make that fifty per cent. Crepeau is the third UN official to have decided recently that of

Hamish Macdonell

Nicola Sturgeon shows how she means to go on by picking a fight with the Queen

Downing Street, we are told, wants to ‘re-set’ the relationship between Westminster and Holyrood after the referendum. UK ministers apparently want an atmosphere of ‘co-operation; to exist between the two governments. Well, that’s great but it only seems to be going one way. Just take a look at what Nicola Sturgeon has decided to do over the funding over the Royal Family. Under the Smith Commission proposals, Scotland is going to get control over all Crown Estate assets north of the border. At the moment, the Crown Estates profits are used to fund the Royal Family. So, if the Crown Estate loses a chunk of its assets, it will lose a chunk of

James Forsyth

The Tories aren’t planning to run a £23 billion surplus in 2019/20

All the talk about the ‘colossal’ cuts to come if the Tories win re-election has been predicated on the assumption that the Tories are committed to running a £23 billion surplus in 2019/20. But this assumption is wrong. As David Gauke told Andrew Neil just now, ‘At the moment the OBR predicts that we will have a surplus of £23 billion, but we’re not making a commitment to the British people, that’s what the number will be in 2019.’ Instead, I understand — after extensive conversations with members of the Chancellor’s circle — that the Tories intend to start increasing spending in line with inflation once the Budget is back