Politics

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

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Barker’s Benn boob

Confusion has arisen in the wake of the death of Tony Benn. Benn was the first peer ever to renounce his title after the Peerage Act of 1963. DECC minister Greg Barker saw an opportunity to attack his shadow number Hilary Benn, Tony’s son: Terrific tributes to Tony Benn but interestingly I believe his peerage now springs back to life & Hilary becomes the new Viscount Stansgate! — Greg Barker (@GregBarkerMP) March 14, 2014   Not quite. Primogeniture dictates that Hilary’s brother Stephen becomes 3rd Viscount Stansgate, while Stephen’s son Daniel becomes heir apparent as Hon. Daniel John Wedgwood Benn. Hilary remains a mere blue blooded commoner. So that wasn’t the classiest

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What does Ed Balls have against marriage?

Ed Balls has announced today that he’d scrap even the tiny tax break that George Osborne is planning to offer next year, thus drawing another dividing line with the Tories. Cameron’s proposed tax relief is not about promoting marriage, or favouring any lifestyle over another. He wants to make the government more marriage-neutral. That means eroding the bias against marriage, which is one of the most pernicious poverty traps in the British today. When I was writing for the News of the World, I was contacted by a reader who said that he loved his family, but had concluded they’d be (financially) a lot better off without him. He sent the

The Spectator

Former Labour minister Tony Benn dies – reaction

Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour party: ‘The death of Tony Benn represents the loss of an iconic figure of our age. ‘He will be remembered as a champion of the powerless, a great parliamentarian and a conviction politician. ‘Tony Benn spoke his mind and spoke up for his values. Whether you agreed with him or disagreed with him, everyone knew where he stood and what he stood for. ‘For someone of such strong views, often at odds with his Party, he won respect from across the political spectrum. ‘This was because of his unshakeable beliefs and his abiding determination that power and the powerful should be held to account.

David Blackburn

George Osborne’s last chance: 40p…or childcare?

Next week’s Budget is the last chance for George Osborne to make a ‘game-changing reform’. Backbench Tories have been clamouring for Osborne to reduce the number of people paying the 40p rate – in the hope that this will secure middle class votes. Lords Lawson and Lamont have added their august voices to that camp. And UKIP joined the fray this afternoon by pledging, according to the Telegraph, to raise the 40p threshold to £45,000. Without denying that the 40p rate has become a serious issue (our own Melanie McDonagh takes a dim view of the government for having lowered the threshold), The Spectator proposes a simpler and politically more inclusive reform

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Tony Benn 1925 – 2014: a politician who actually believed in people

The former Labour Cabinet Minister, author and long-serving MP Tony Benn has passed away today, aged 88. In 2009, our deputy editor Mary Wakefield interviewed Benn about the financial crisis and the basic decency at the heart of all human beings. Here is the article in full. I’m standing in Tony Benn’s front garden, on my way out but dawdling, reluctant to leave. Once I’m back on my bike I’ll be in Broken Britain again, snarling at the buses. But right now I’m still in Benn-land, where all people are kindly and the future is bright with mutual concern. Even the outside of Benn’s house reflects the decency within. There’s

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

It’s time for the Tories to rally to the aspiration agenda

School reform is economically essential for Britain’s future success, morally necessary for a fairer, more socially mobile society and politically essential for a centre-right party that wants to show that it is about spreading privilege not defending it. This is why Michael Gove’s agenda is so important to the Tories and their future success. Gove was always going to face opposition. Members of the National Union of Teachers hustled David Blunkett and his guide dog into a room and then screamed at him for merely condemning school strikes from opposition in 1995. They were, obviously, going to do far worse to a radical Tory Education Secretary. Then, there was the

David Blackburn

Ed Miliband’s non-policy EU policy

‘You only offer a referendum if you want to ratify your existing policy,’ a Tory veteran told me this morning while discussing Ed Miliband’s recent referendum announcement. The Tory illustrated his point with reference to the Major government’s row over a proposed referendum on the single currency. He said that the pro-European side of the argument ran from a referendum, fearing that the public would say ‘no’ to EMU. His logic was: there isn’t time to change minds during a referendum campaign, so the public backs the status quo. Leaving aside the matter of whether or not this old Tory’s interpretation of those historical events is correct, his logic suggests that Miliband

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Melanie McDonagh: What I’d like to see in the Budget

Every year, I sit through the Budget, and every year there are great chunks of it that pass right over my and everyone’s head because they’re arcane and fiddly. Fabulous for accountants, obviously, because it justifies their existence. What I’d like to see in the Budget but won’t, is radical simplification of the system. Not perhaps a flat system, but much, much simpler. It used to be something George Osborne talked about, but it never happened. Anthony Hilton, the Evening Standard columnist, put the case in a piece in January last year: ‘Britain’s tax regime is as much a part of the economic infrastructure as our roads, ports and airports, but

Sebastian Payne

Is Ed Balls scared of Question Time?

Like it or not, Question Time is Britain’s most popular forum for political debate. Two million viewers regularly tune in, and Thursday evenings on BBC1 is when and where ordinary people are most likely to encounter a secretary of state or shadow cabinet minister. For politicians, it’s a golden opportunity — a huge audience to which they can sell both themselves and their party’s policies. The choice of guests usually causes an uproar on Twitter — mostly along the lines of ‘why is X appearing again? ‘ and ‘ I’m sick of seeing Y party getting so much airtime’ — but who actually appears most frequently? Digging into to the IMDB’s

Allie Renison

Eurosceptics have lost a valuable general – Bob Crow

When Nigel Farage had the temerity to nod at Bob Crow’s euroscepticism while paying his respects to the late RMT leader, some were quick to accuse him of cheap political point-scoring. I suspect that many of them hardly knew Crow because he never missed an opportunity to slam the EU for being ‘a regional engine of corporate globalisation’. And eurosceptics of all political persuasions have reason to be disheartened by the loss of a voice like his to their cause. Bob Crow wasn’t a eurosceptic by convenience nor did he do it simply to pander to rising populist anti-EU sentiment. For years he regularly led union members in protests against

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Gove’s last stand, the march of the dog police and the future of conservatism in America

Why is Michael Gove under attack from his coalition partners, his own party and numerous enemies? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Toby Young, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson ask whether the Education Secretary’s attitude and policies are his own undoing. Is he, as Anthony Horowitz describes in this week’s magazine, an unsettling character who is too abrasive in his approach to reforming education? Which of Gove’s friends are out to get him? Should he be worried about the threat from Boris Johnson? Are we witnessing a return of the Tory wars? And is Rupert Murdoch involved? James Delingpole and Freddy Gray ask if conservatism is in a better

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: what Tony Blair knew about being a toff, and what Nick Clegg doesn’t

Hattie Harman tried to crack Clegg today. The deputy prime minister, standing in for David Cameron, explained carefully that his boss was visiting, ‘Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories.’ Not a title the Israeli Tourist board has got round to using. Hattie wasn’t on her best form. She tried to draw Clegg as a hypocritical house-slave attempting to duck responsibility for his master’s actions. But she plodded through her jibes. Over-rehearsal had killed her hunger to perform. And Clegg met all her accusations with a simple ploy. Blame Labour. It worked every time. On the bedroom tax Clegg had the support of the figures. A million and a half are

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will there really be a ‘furious backlash’ to Ed Miliband’s EU referendum stance?

The Tories have been hoping that their pledge for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU would split Labour – it was the rationale behind John Baron’s regular pushes for legislation in this parliament for a referendum in the next, which David Cameron eventually satisfied as far as he could with the Wharton Bill. But so far the only dissenting voices on Ed Miliband’s pledge today for an ‘unlikely’ referendum have been the usual suspects on the backbenches such as Graham Stringer and John Mann. That’s hardly a ‘furious backlash’ and more expected and manageable rage – at present, anyway. It will be interesting to see whether there are

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Britain’s failure to intervene in Syria is ‘shameful’ says Labour MP John Woodcock

One of the more remarkable exchanges of today’s PMQs was the intervention by John Woodcock towards the end of the session. He surprised colleagues by calling the failure to intervene in Syria ‘shameful’: ‘This week marks three years since the bloodshed began in Syria. More than two and a half million people have fled the country and the dead can no longer even be counted. We must all bear responsibility for our shameful failure to intervene. But they are supposed to be the ones – they are supposed to be the ones running the country. So what renewed effort will his government make to end the slaughter before all hope

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ed Miliband adopts a rope-a-dope strategy on Europe

Hopi Sen is not alone. There are many people in this country supremely indifferent to the whole and vexatious question of whether or not there should be a referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the European Union. Yes, yes, they will tell pollsters that if they must they suppose they might fancy having a referendum some day. But they don’t really care. They mumble about a referendum because that seems the done thing to do and because when a pollster asks you if you’d like to have a say on something it sounds better to say Yes than No thanks, I really can’t be bothered. And sure, if pressed, they

The Spectator

Ed Miliband’s speech on Europe: full text

In a speech today at the London Business School, Ed Miliband set out Labour’s policy on an EU referendum: unless there are further transfers of powers, there won’t be one. Here’s what he said: listen to ‘Ed Miliband on an EU referendum’ on Audioboo It is great to be here at the London Business School. For fifty years, in the teaching you provide you have made a major contribution to helping businesses succeed across the world. And today I want to talk about an issue that I know is close to your heart: Britain’s place in the European Union. I want to set out why I believe our country’s future lies in the EU. Why

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Douglas Alexander’s weasel words on Labour’s EU pledge

Unsurprisingly, Douglas Alexander’s Today interview about Ed Miliband’s pledge to not give the British people a referendum without saying he’s not giving you a referendum wasn’t the most edifying performance. Alexander admitted that what Miliband is promising is an ‘unlikely’ referendum, saying: ‘He will say that our priority in government would be tackling the cost-of-living crisis and getting the economy back on track, not getting Britain out of Europe. He’ll set out some very practical and I think needed changes to make Europe work better for the United Kingdom. And he’ll also be open that we are not, as a prospective Labour government, proposing a further transfer of powers to

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband rules out EU referendum

Why is Ed Miliband going to rule out a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in a speech tomorrow? The Labour leader has written in the FT that he would legislate for a new referendum lock which would force an In/Out referendum if there was another transfer of British power to Brussels, which essentially means he supports the current situation under the Coalition. And he says in the piece that the transfer is unlikely in the next Parliament. Which means no referendum. He writes that Labour’s position on Europe… “… is clear and principled: we strongly believe Britain’s future is in the EU. And my priorities for government after

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Revealed: how Nick Clegg cooked up his ‘free school meals’ pledge

For those who missed Dominic Cummings, recently departed Michael Gove adviser, on BBC Radio 4’s World At One, here’s the extraordinary transcript which confirms what Coffee Housers will have feared. He didn’t give an interview, but responded to the BBC’s questions (below) about Nick Clegg’s plan to give free school meals to all school pupils – even the offspring of millionaires. And to me, this sums up why coalitions are a bad idea. The junior partner gets desperate for a jazzy-sounding idea to call their own, so ambush their senior partner. An announcement is made, for reasons of spin and nothing else. No policy work is done. The expectations of