Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

We are all numbers in Labour’s computer now

In 1975 Margaret Thatcher said in her ‘Free Society’ speech to the Conservative Party Conference: ‘Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a state computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.’ Mr S could not help but recall these fine words after an email arrived from the Labour Party asking him to enter chunks of personal data into its website, such as his postcode and date of birth,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ed Miliband needs to mix things up to avoid Cameron’s PMQs attacks

Ed Miliband’s first few questions to David Cameron today were about the various inquiries into child abuse. Miliband wasn’t interested in creating controversy: he didn’t ask about whether Lady Butler-Sloss was the right person to run the inquiry given that her late brother was Attorney General when Geoffrey Dickens handed his file to the Home Secretary. But then Miliband turned to the NHS and the atmosphere in the House flipped. listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron and Miliband’ on Audioboo Cameron defiantly defended his use of statistics from last week. But it was once Miliband had asked his last question that Cameron went into full attack mode. He started denouncing Labour and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Inside the whips’ ‘dirt books’

So all three parties are to trawl their ‘dirt books’ held by the whips and disclose any evidence that they find of child abuse. The role of the whips was raised by Lisa Nandy in the Commons on Monday, when she quoted former Tory chief whip Tim Fortescue, who told Michael Cockerell’s documentary on the whips: ‘Anyone with any sense, who was in trouble, would come to the whips and tell them the truth, and say now, ‘I’m in a jam, can you help?’. It might be debt, it might be… a scandal involving small boys, or any kind of scandal in which… a member seemed likely to be mixed

Tuesday

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

A pundit for a PM

A new Coffee House competition: who can identify the most pointless comment on events made by our PM? You’ll be spoilt for choice. Cameron has become, these days, Britain’s uber-pundit. No celebrity death goes unlamented by the PM; no news story is too trivial, or too serious for him to spit out a soundbite, grandstanding, passing judgment, or passing the buck. ‘I am determined that lessons will be learnt,’ ‘This must never happen again’ etc etc. Here’s a recent one that’s irritated me. After an announcement that airports are to tighten security, DC announced with great gravitas: ‘The safety of passengers must come first.’ Well, yes, thanks PM. First before

Steerpike Steerpike

Nick Clegg’s self-pitying guide to parenting

‘I’m like any parent,’ says Nick Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister, privy councillor and universally derided leader of the Liberal Democrats). Speaking to the Radio Times, as any old parent might do, Average Dad Nick pleaded with his offspring: ‘The first, most visceral instinct you have as a parent is you want to protect your children, and politics is a very rough business you know. It’s absolutely not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned, so I wouldn’t likely recommend to my children to go into politics.’ Pity. Mr S was getting rather misty eyed at the prospect of young Miguel or Antonio seeking high office in order to restore the family name. Who will

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘Hopeless’ Warsi ‘resisting’ David Cameron’s fight against extremism

The government has failed to produce an adequate strategy to tackle non-violent extremism because the minister in charge of it is said to disagree with the Prime Minister’s approach, sources have told Coffee House. Baroness Warsi is alleged by multiple sources in and out of government to have consistently resisted calls to develop a proper strategy on integration and tackling extremism at its roots, even though this is the Prime Minister’s policy and part of her job at the Communities and Local Government department. One source says: ‘Sayeeda made clear when she got the job at CLG that she didn’t agree with the Prime Minister and that she simply wasn’t

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Harriet Harman’s push for gender equality – and her own career

Harriet Harman’s scathing attack on the top men in politics for their failure to advance gender equality has certainly annoyed Damian McBride, who argues that Labour’s deputy leader is talking ‘utter bilge’. It’s utter bilge from Harriet, done to make her attack on Dave look non-partisan. And shameful timing given the work GB is doing in Nigeria. — Damian McBride (@DPMcBride) July 8, 2014 The Standard reports that Harman will say at an event tonight: ‘And imagine the consternation in my office when we discovered that my involvement in the London G20 summit was inclusion at the No10 dinner for the G20 leaders’ wives.’ Presumably she is talking about this

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Home Office acts busy, hoping to avoid a ‘tide of public anger’

Theresa May updated the Cabinet this morning on the inquiry she has launched into how public bodies have dealt with allegations of child abuse. The name of the inquiry panel chair and the terms of reference haven’t yet been announced, but when the Prime Minister’s official spokesman was asked when they might emerge, he said ‘I would expect an announcement on the chair of the panel soon’. Asked to define ‘soon’, the spokesman said ‘pretty soon’, which suggests that we will get more answers either before the Home Office Permanent Secretary Mark Sedwill sits down at 3.15pm to give evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, or that these announcements

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Labour’s true believers ask Ed Miliband to repeat past Tory mistakes.

The first, and perhaps most important, thing to say about the 2015 general election is that it is Labour’s to lose. The second thing to say is that Ed Miliband might be just the man to do it. Nevertheless and despite Miliband’s awkwardness Tory optimists should ask themselves a very simple question: Which seats will we win in 2015 that we failed to win in 2010? Perhaps a handful will be taken from the Lib Dems and perhaps another handful can be snatched elsewhere but, overall, the battlefield picture is pretty damn bleak. But perhaps Labour will help. Miliband’s problem is that his position is not secure to hunker down, do bugger

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Universal Credit ‘hasn’t been signed off’ – what does that mean?

Is Universal Credit progressing as well as it should? Yesterday Sir Bob Kerslake, who is not consistently helpful to political colleagues, dropped a bit of a bombshell during a Public Accounts Committee hearing. Discussing the Treasury and the business case for Universal Credit: ‘We shouldn’t beat about the bush: it hasn’t been signed off.’ Labour got very excited about this, with Chris Bryant pointing out that last week Esther McVey told Rachel Reeves in a parliamentary answer that ‘the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has approved the UC Strategic Outline Business Case plans for the remainder of this Parliament’. The DWP argues that this is wrong, and that the Treasury

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband is a wonk. Why doesn’t he check his facts?

A few weeks ago, I was reading the newly-published Modernisers’ Manifesto (pdf) published by Bright Blue and a fact jumped out: ‘London is a tearaway success, responsible for 79 per cent of all private sector jobs growth since 2010’. Startling fact, I though – I’d missed that. But about ten minutes of Googling showed that it wasn’t quite true. The fact was from a report by an IPPR offshoot, the Centre for Cities. It used survey data that went up to 2012, before the jobs boom started. You can find the real figures on the ONS website, and here’s what they show. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/oRem6/index.html”] But here’s the thing. This wrong

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May announces independent inquiry into child abuse allegations

Theresa May has just given as comprehensive a response as possible to the allegations of child abuse in the Commons. Insisting the government will leave no stone unturned in pursuit of the allegations, the Home Secretary told MPs that there will an independent inquiry panel, along the lines of the Hillsborough inquiry, which will examine not just how the Home Office dealt with allegations, but also how the police and prosecutors dealt with information handed to them. As a non-statutory inquiry, it will be able to begin its work sooner and will be at a lower risk of prejudicing criminal investigations because it will begin with a review of documentary

Ian Warren

Could Farage win if he stands in Thanet South?

Will he or won’t he stand in Thanet South? Nigel Farage’s name has been circulating in connection with this constituency for months, after the sitting Tory MP Laura Sandys announced she was standing down. But it’s all grown a whole lot more complicated in the past few days because a former Ukip member, Craig Mackinlay, has been selected to stand for the Conservatives. Now, the Ukip leader must decide whether standing against a former comrade will weaken his appeal in the seat. But how strong is that appeal anyway? The following data allows the households within Thanet South constituency to be segmented into 69 distinct demographic groups, and the chart

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour is falling in love with localism – but is it ignoring the individual?

Today’s New Deal for England announcement by Labour doesn’t just underline how much of the political action is in the regions at the moment, but how the party is coming to terms with some of the mistakes that it made when it was last in government. The significant devolution of power and spending to local government announced today by the Local Government Innovation Taskforce is a clever way for Ed Balls to save money, but it’s also a recognition across the party that a centralised state did not delve the sort of results it should have done in the party’s 13 years of power, and so something must change. It

Steerpike Steerpike

Chuka’s struggle

Chuka Umunna was on the receiving end of an internet storm after he suggested that people who vote UKIP are either too old or too stupid to do things like ‘sending and receiving an email, browsing the internet, filling in an online form.’ Angry E-Kippers flooded the Shadow Business Secretary’s inbox with proof to the contrary. Now it seems it is Chuka who is struggling online: ‘Parliament’s computers are being upgraded,’ moans the self-styled smooth operator. ‘It is absolutely awful – would love to go back to the previous version!’ So it is not just Ukip that harks back to a bygone age.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May to give ‘significant’ statement on child abuse row

What can we expect from the government response to the growing child abuse dossier row? Government sources are stressing this morning that Theresa May’s Commons statement will be ‘significant’ and that its content will be broader than simply naming the QC looking at the Home Office dossier. Based on David Cameron’s handling of previous historic cases such as Bloody Sunday and Hillsborough, the Prime Minister will want to give every impression that this government is doing everything it can to go where previous governments may have failed to or refused. It’s clear from the briefings and readiness of ministers including George Osborne and Nick Clegg to go on the airwaves

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tristram Hunt won’t condemn the NUT’s strike, but is he ready for a confrontation?

Tristram Hunt is getting a fair bit of stick from the Conservatives for refusing to condemn the strike action planned by the National Union of Teachers on this morning’s Andrew Marr Show. The Shadow Education Secretary merely said ‘it’s not up to me to tell trade unionists what to do – what I want is teachers in classrooms in a conversation with the Secretary of State so we get over these kind of hurdles’. He said the current stand-off was ‘as a result, partly, of some of the incendiary language from the Secretary of State’. Certainly when you read some of the NUT’s literature around its industrial action, it’s difficult

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Spectator Readers’ Tea Party, in pictures

Last night’s summer party was only the warm-up. Today, we invited some of our subscribers over for a cup of tea in the garden here at 22 Old Queen St. It’s a chance for us to meet the people we work for – the best-read, best-humoured cohort of people in Britain (and beyond). Andrew Neil, Taki, Jeremy Clarke, Hugo Rifkind, ‘Dear’ Mary Killen, Peter ‘Ancient & Modern’ Jones and Rory ‘Wiki Man’ Sutherland were all there – with about 120 of our closest (yet un-met) friends. Spectator subscribers aren’t buyers of a product, they’re members of a club. To join them (and us) for just £1 a week, click here. Anyway,

Steerpike Steerpike

Baldwin’s blunder

Labour’s ‘media grid’ for this week had Miliband’s millionaire spinner Tom Baldwin pencilled in to brief Times journalist Rachel Sylvester and give her an exclusive story for Tuesday’s paper. When the paper landed it was actually lots of Labour figures slagging off the leader, and saying how Ed had lots of policies but not the character to be PM. That’s some class A spinning for you.