Politics

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

Thursday

4 Sep 2014

Peter Jones

Would Alex Salmond give up his job to a heckler? It happened in Athens

Alex Salmond claims to be thrilled that so many people in Scotland are suddenly gripped by politics. The importance of the question before the Scots — the future of their 8.5 per cent of the United Kingdom — is only part of the reason. What really animates them is that the decision is in their hands, not Alex Salmond’s. To see what happens when such genuine power-to-the-people is on display, consider the events of 425 BC. In their war against Sparta, the Athenians, masters of the sea, had trapped 420 Spartans on the island of Sphacteria. But it was proving difficult to get them off, and time was running out. In

The Spectator

Letters: Andrew Roberts on Cameron, and a defence of Kate Bush

Advice for Cameron Sir: David Cameron once saved my life from a school of Portuguese man o’ war jellyfish, so now’s the time for me to save his political life with this advice: to do nothing. The British people are a fair-minded lot; they will give him another term in office because he and George Osborne have delivered the best growth rates in Europe despite the monstrous overspending and boom-bust of the Blair-Brown years. Every newly incoming ministry since the war has been re-elected — except Ted Heath’s, which broke all the rules anyhow — and this one will be too. Douglas Carswell is an intelligent man who has made

The Spectator

An undiplomatic history of British diplomatic dinners

In poor taste US Ambassador Matthew Barzun attracted the ire of chefs for complaining that he had been served lamb and potatoes too often since arriving in Britain. Some others who have landed in the oxtail soup after complaining about British food: — At a summit in 2005 former French President Jacques Chirac was said to have joked with world leaders that his country’s problems with Nato originated from being persuaded to try haggis by its former secretary-general George Robertson. He went on to say of the British: ‘one cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad’. — A lawyer acting for former Liberian president Charles Taylor, now serving a

James Forsyth

Can the Tory party locate its secret weapon?

It used to be said that loyalty was the Tory party’s secret weapon. But this supposed strength hasn’t been very apparent in recent years. Indeed, at times, it seems that the Tory party hasn’t quite recovered from the demons unleashed by Margaret Thatcher’s ouster twenty-odd years ago. Douglas Carswell’s defection means that Westminster, when it is not panicking about the Scottish referendum, is chuntering about whether his move to Ukip is the harbinger of a bigger Tory split to come, one that The Spectator explores this week. Worryingly for the Tory loyalists, there are people on all sides of the party are preparing for this fight. As one Tory

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Ukip offers to pay for polls for would-be defectors

Ukip have been approaching potential defectors and offering to pay for a poll in their constituency that shows how well they’d do as a Ukip candidate, Coffee House has learned. Since boasting last week that they had a few more MPs who might defect to the party, Ukip have been trying again with some Conservatives they believe to be vulnerable. They approached one with what the MP describes as a ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach. ‘The pitch was you’re a great guy and we’ll pay for a poll with you as hypothetical Ukip candidate if you defect,’ said the MP, who didn’t want to be named. ‘The stick was we’ll soon select a

Digby Warde-Aldam

Paul McCartney telling me to vote No makes me want to vote Yes

‘Scotland, stay with us!’ David Bowie declared back in February. And what Bowie says (or doesn’t, quite – attentive readers will remember that he got Kate Moss to say it for him) others parrot. A few days ago, Sir Paul ‘Macca’ McCartney added his name to an open letter urging the people of Scotland to join the Bowie bandwagon. He was late to the party – the other signatories make up a bizarre (and almost entirely English) cross-section of the British entertainment establishment, from Simon Cowell to David Starkey to Cliff Richard. An impressive love-in, then. But it begs the question: will it actually swing any votes? As a young-ish

Isabel Hardman

Michael Fabricant sharpens his attack on John Bercow

MPs are continuing to chip away at John Bercow as best they can. At questions following the Business Statement in the Commons this morning, Simon Burns repeated his question about that ‘floating’ letter that he mentioned after Prime Minister’s Questions and which the Prime Minister has been joking about to Tory MPs. Hague pointed out that ‘things do not float around in Number 10. That is not the way Number 10 operates, I’m very pleased to say. The Prime Minister has received a letter this week from you, Mr Speaker, I’m sure you don’t mind me saying, in which you ask that the appointment of Carol Mills is delayed further

Isabel Hardman

Support grows for British air strikes against Isis

If there is a strategy buried under the ‘no strategy’ response by the US and the UK to Isis, it seems to be that David Cameron and Barack Obama have preferred to make the case for greater military involvement by waiting for everyone else to get frustrated that nothing is happening. Where a few weeks ago, there was plenty of muttering about the polls and the public being weary of intervention, we see today that voters are starting to push for greater UK involvement. They are not, of course, in favour of boots on the ground (one of those phrases that is as worn out now as a very old

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Decline and rise again

Verb says to noun, ‘Would you like to conjugate?’ Noun replies, ‘No, I decline.’ A nice witticism for Latin-lovers brought up on L.A. Wilding’s Latin Course for Schools; but do today’s prep-school Latin pupils have any idea what a conjugation or a declension is? Some do and some don’t, is the answer, and it all depends on which textbook your teacher uses and how much he or she believes in the importance of grammar over the importance of enjoying a story. The story of Latin teaching in this country over the last 130 years has been one of reaction and counter-reaction; and there are signs of a counter-counter-reaction on the

Isabel Hardman

How Eurosceptics will squeeze Cameron

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the Tory civil war” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]Tory backbenchers, who have been happy for months, are once more sunk in gloom, sitting in dejected huddles in the Commons tearoom. William Hague went to gauge the morale of the troops there this week and was told by one MP that the atmosphere was akin to the tail end of 1996; a party waiting for what feels like inevitable defeat. In public and on the news Tories put on a brave face, but in private, it’s grim. But while the Tory leadership has lost the momentum it built up over the past few

James Forsyth

The Tories are in civil war. If that doesn’t change, they’ll lose

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the Tory civil war” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]The general election is now Ed Miliband’s to lose. This is not a controversial statement: the polls say it, the bookmakers say it and in the last week several of David Cameron’s own ministers have come to believe it. The confidence that seemed to envelop the Conservative party before the summer recess has been replaced by a sense of doom. On its own, Douglas Carswell’s defection to Ukip would not be seen as a body blow — but it hammers home the fact that the right is fractured and many Tory voters made the

Damian Thompson

Is Britain hardening its heart against Muslims?

British public opinion has never really turned against Muslims. According to Pew’s 2014 Global Attitudes survey, 26 per cent of us have ‘unfavourable’ attitudes towards Muslims in this country; compare that to 46 per cent in Spain, 53 per cent in Greece and 63 per cent in Italy. Our national tolerance has, so far, proved robust. Even after the 7/7 London bombings, favourable attitudes towards Muslims in Britain dipped by only a couple of points. But is it strong enough to survive the horrors of Isis and Rotherham coming to light simultaneously? It feels as if we are on the verge of an anti-Muslim backlash that could spread beyond the

Hugo Rifkind

Is clicking on Jennifer Lawrence’s naked pictures really as bad as hacking and distributing them?

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Emma Barnett and Jamie Bartlett discuss the leaked photos” startat=1312] Listen [/audioplayer]‘If you click on Jennifer Lawrence’s naked pictures,’ said the headline on the Guardian’s website, ‘you’re perpetuating her abuse.’ That gave me pause. Even though I haven’t. In all honesty, I haven’t even had the opportunity, and I thought I actually followed quite a lot of invasive perverts on Twitter. But if I had, and I had… well, just clicking? Really? The creepy mouth-breather who hacked them, sure. Definite abuse there. Might as well be hiding behind her curtains. And the people who circulate them. ‘Stand on this hillside,’ they could be saying, ‘and point

Alex Massie

The surprise winners from the referendum? Scotland. Politics. Big ideas are back at last

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and Hamish Macdonell discuss the referendum” startat=700] Listen [/audioplayer]Let us take a trip to America in 1976. The unelected incumbent president, Gerald Ford, is being challenged for the Republican party’s nomination by Ronald Reagan — and does not take it seriously. Sure, Reagan may have served as governor of California but, still, come on, is this Grand Old Party really going to choose a two-bit B-movie actor as its standard-bearer? And isn’t he the candidate of fruitcakes and loonies? Say what you will about Gerry Ford but you know where you stand with him. But not everyone sees it that way. Reagan is winning

Martin Vander Weyer

Rona Fairhead will be good for the BBC – but who was so keen to nobble her rival?

Hats off to Rona Fairhead, the former Financial Times executive who will succeed Lord Patten as chairman of the BBC Trust. It requires a brave spirit to take on this poisonously politicised role — and Fairhead starts with the disadvantage that everyone thinks they know the roll call of candidates who might have been preferred but declined to apply, including her own former boss Dame Marjorie Scardino, for whose job as head of Pearson, the FT’s parent, Fairhead was passed over last year. But a mole tells me she’s ‘as steely as she’ll need to be’; and leading ladies of the non-executive circuit (she’s on the boards of HSBC and

Wednesday

3 Sep 2014

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Tory MP accuses Speaker of misleading House over Clerk row

This story ran first in tonight’s Evening Blend. Get more scoops, analysis and insight into the day’s political news by signing up for free here. Speaker Bercow has been accused of misleading the House of Commons over his plan to appoint Carol Mills as Clerk of the House. In a letter to the Speaker, seen first by Coffee House, Conservative MP Michael Fabricant suggests that Bercow may have ‘inadvertently misled the House’ on whether the recruitment firm advising on the appointment of the Clerk was prevented from giving evidence about the suitability of Mills for the job. Today in the Commons, Bercow told Fabricant that he was ‘unfortunately, but fairly

Fraser Nelson

Justine Greening: Cameron’s government needs more people who have worked at Morrisons

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the Tory civil war” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]David Cameron is in need of advice right now and there’s plenty of it in the new Spectator – not least from Justine Greening, his International Development Secretary. Her interview with Melissa Kite makes clear that the party needs to focus more on social mobility – and tell the story which is not exactly hardly embodied by its Etonian and Pauline leadership. “I know what it is like growing knowing you are not starting in the best place, and that people are having a better start than you are,” The party needs “understanding what

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Was Carswell right all along?

Calamities crowd in every side. Nuclear-armed Russia is already waging war with Europe, according to our NATO ally, Lithuania. At home, Douglas Carswell’s defection threatens to rob the Tories of power. Yet these crises were barely mentioned at PMQs. One source of international conflict has been resolved, at last. Is the name Islamic State? Or is it ISIS? Or is it IS? Or is it Isil? Isil it is. Both leaders used that term today as they condemned the latest savageries. Cameron made a vague attempt at karaoke Churchill. And no one particularly minded that it wasn’t up to much. ‘A country like ours will not be cowed by these

Steerpike

Exclusive: David Cameron mocks Bercow to Tory MPs

It was widely noted that the Prime Minister remained grinning in his seat after PMQs to hear a Point of Order directed to the Speaker from Tory MP Simon Burns. Burns wanted to know whether the Speaker would withdraw his letter of recommendation for Carol Mills as Clerk of the House. The letter is currently languishing in Number 10. What’s more, Mr Steerpike hears that a guffawing David Cameron fired up his backbenchers for today’s skirmish at last night’s meeting of Conservative MPs in the Boothroyd Room. ‘What does he want me to do with this letter?’ quipped the PM, adding: ‘Shall I just stuff it down the side of

James Forsyth

PMQs: Fighting suspended as leaders respond to Iraq terror

A few days ago, one would have expected the first PMQs of term to be a rowdy affair as Labour went for Cameron over the Carswell defection. But the recent, hideous events in Iraq have changed all that and today’s PMQs was instead a sober, statesmanlike affair which reflected well on both Cameron and Miliband. listen to ‘PMQs: ‘Universal sense of revulsion’ at the murder of Steven Sotloff’ on Audioboo