Politics Archives

Friday

13 Jun 2014

Cameron: I speak for disillusioned European voters

David Cameron is today pleading with European leaders to drop their support for Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission. In an article published in a series of newspapers across Europe, the Prime Minister argues that the EU needs ‘bold leadership – people ready to heed voters’ concerns and to confront the challenges Europe faces’. While claiming that his critique of the way spitzenkandidaten are chosen is ‘not an attack on Mr Juncker, an experienced European politician’, his article is quite clear that Juncker does not meet the job description as Cameron sees it. Cameron wants to set himself up as one of the few European leaders who is

Thursday

12 Jun 2014

Steerpike

Coffee Shot: Ed Miliband on the risk of Ed Miliband

Ed Miliband’s change of mind over The Sun took Mr Steerpike by surprise, brandishing the newspaper that so many of his colleagues have spent today condemning. This has, of course, inspired various spoofs on Twitter. But Mr S can assure readers that the image below is 120 per cent genuine – and bears a message that deserves the widest circulation:

Sebastian Payne

Labour MPs disagree with Ed Miliband over The Sun

Ed Miliband appears to have had a sudden change of heart about The Sun. After calling for Rupert Murdoch’s empire to be dismantled, the Labour leader has endorsed The Sun’s World Cup special today. Not all of his colleagues feel the same way — many of them have been tweeting critical remarks about the paper. Here’s a selection: The shadow environment secretary Maria Eagle: Bill Esterson, the Labour MP for Blundellsands: Chi Onwurah, the Labour MP for Newcastle Central: Madeleine Moon, the Labour MP for Bridgend: Tom Watson, the Labour MP for West Bromwich East and ardent anti-Murdoch campaigner: Watson at least had a sense of humour about the situation: And

Isabel Hardman

Labour #won’tletbritaindecide: but are they bothered?

Westminster has felt pretty dull recently, what with very little legislation and that. But now that, thanks to the bravery of Tory MP Bob Neill, could change. #LetBritainDecide fever could be back after Neill was the top Tory (not the top MP) in the Private Member’s Bill ballot. And funnily enough, Neill chose to take up the baton from James Wharton and introduce an EU referendum bill, which could lead to the Prime Minister invoking the Parliament Act to get it into law – if it passes the Commons in the same way as the previous bill. This appears to be useful for the Conservatives on many levels. If Labour

Steerpike

Coffee Shot: Ed Miliband endorses The Sun… and looks incredibly weird

In celebration of their special ’This Is Our England’ World Cup paper (which has 22 million free copies being distributed for free), The Sun has managed to persuade senior politicians to pose with today’s edition. Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Nick Clegg all managed to look normal. But Ed Miliband on the other hand… This Is Our England: Labour leader @Ed_Miliband backs today’s special edition. #DoUsProud pic.twitter.com/hk4ROIyLOH — The Sun (@TheSunNewspaper) June 12, 2014 Folks on Twitter have remarked how similar Ed’s pose is to a hostage photo. Unsurprisingly, parodies are beginning to circulate… Miliband hostage crisis worsens as photos of captive discovered. pic.twitter.com/HMiWiPETQz — James O’Malley (@Psythor) June 12,

James Forsyth

The UK will have constitutional change – and it must address the English question

If Scotland votes No on September 18th, it won’t be the end of the matter. The Unionist campaign and all three Westminster parties have all promised that more powers will pass to Holyrood if Scotland rejects independence. Cameron himself has endorsed a radical extension of the tax varying powers of the Scottish parliament. This will exacerbate the West Lothian Question, the unfairness by which Scots MPs can still vote on devolved matters at Westminster. Traditionally, the view has been that the answer to the West Lothian question is to stop asking it. But, as I say in the column this week, this position isn’t tenable with Ukip on the march.

Alex Massie

The shocking, secret truth about Scotland’s independence debate: it is civilised.

BREAKING: The night is dark and full of nutters. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been writing on the internet for nearly a decade now that this neither astonishes nor appals me. After enough time has passed you begin to appreciate that it doesn’t matter. Not really. You learn to ignore the howling. Sure, it makes for good copy and there’s hardly a hack or a blogger who hasn’t peered beneath the line and despaired of humanity. It’s a swamp, right enough. Sometimes, too, you wonder where all these bampots and zoomers live. Nowhere near you, you hope. But the chances are that some of them do. It sometimes takes an effort

Douglas Murray

Save our children from the Islamists

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_12_June_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Matthew Parris vs Douglas Murray on the Birmingham Trojan Horse plot” startat=55] Listen [/audioplayer]Who’s up, who’s down? Who’s in, who’s out? While Westminster spent last week gossiping about which minister’s special adviser said what, in another city, not far away, a very different Britain was unveiled. On Monday, the Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, published his damning investigation into the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair. Ever since allegations about an organised Islamist plot to take over Birmingham state schools emerged this year, they have been the subject of furious claims and counter-claims. The original document (a ‘widely accepted forgery’ as the BBC keeps calling it) seems most likely

James Forsyth

Once Scotland votes, it’s England’s turn for a constitutional crisis

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_12_June_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the English question and the next election” startat=1129] Listen [/audioplayer]Before David Cameron heads off for his summer holiday, he’ll be presented with a first draft of the Tory manifesto by Jo Johnson, Boris’s younger brother and a cautious, well-organised thinker. He dislikes publicity almost as much as the Mayor of London relishes it. Radical ministers lament that Johnson doesn’t like pushing their recalcitrant colleagues too far, but despite this, the early hints are that the manifesto will be a surprisingly bold document. There will, though, be one thing missing from this draft: what to do about the English question. A member of

Wednesday

11 Jun 2014

James Forsyth

David Cameron acknowledges that some Tory MPs want to leave the EU

David Cameron addressed the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers earlier this evening. The meeting was upbeat because of the introduction of the winner of Newark by-election Robert Jenrick and brief because Cameron had to go off and see the Queen. Cameron only took a handful of questions but all touched on Europe. Cameron defended opting back into the European Arrest Warrant, saying it was part of being touch on terrorism. He also said that he knew that there were those ‘in this room’ who wanted to leave the EU altogether but the only way you’ll get an In Out vote is with a Tory government. Unsurprisingly, Cameron aimed plenty of

Isabel Hardman

Will David Cameron delay the reshuffle to prolong MPs’ good behaviour?

After addressing the 1922 Committee this evening, David Cameron will be holding a reception at Number 10 for the good MPs who obeyed the whips and made the requisite number of visits to the Newark by-election. One of the carrots that was dangled in front of MPs as they trundled up to Patrick Mercer’s old constituency was the prospect of a reshuffle. Comments such as ‘senior party figures will be observing how many times each of you visits’ were dropped into conversations and emails. Some MPs showed me the sarky replies they drafted which involved imaginative suggestions for the whips about what they could do with their league table of

Hamish Macdonell

Salmond, cybernats and a row that could be one of the key moments of the independence referendum campaign

All through this referendum campaign, there have been two battles: one has been in the open. This has generally been courteous and respectful. But the other battle has been hidden under the cloak of internet anonymity – and it has been vile, nasty and bigoted. Occasionally, these campaigns have collided and when this has happened, it has all got very messy indeed. That is exactly what happened today. Today’s tale of spin doctors, Labour activists and cyberbullying appears to be a bit of a beltway story but bear with me, it is really very important and tells us a lot about where the whole campaign is going. First, we have

Isabel Hardman

Don’t mention the war: Iraq absent from PMQs

If PMQs today was anything to go by, everything is so hunky-dory in Iraq that MPs needn’t discuss it at all. No-one raised it. Afterwards, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman was repeatedly asked whether the UK would provide assistance. He said the government’s message focuses on the ‘Iraqi government working with partners in the region, for example the Kurdistan regional government’. Asked to rule out providing military assistance to the country, the spokesman said ‘that’s not on the table’. At the same time, the Prime Minister was finally being asked about Iraq in the Commons as he addressed MPs on the G7 talks. He said:- ‘What we have to deal

James Forsyth

PMQs: An easy ride for Cameron

David Cameron strolled through today’s session of PMQs. Ed Miliband chose not to raise the question of what the Cabinet Secretary’s investigation into the May/Gove spat had found but to ask several, serious questions on the Birmingham schools row. listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron and Miliband’ on Audioboo Miliband’s argument was that it was unclear who concerned parents should tell if they feared their school was being taken over by extremist elements. But Cameron was able to point out that local government accountability was not the answer as ‘Birmingham City Council failed in its duties’. The Labour leader then moved on to passports. He didn’t score any hits on this in

Steerpike

Team Osborne party with John Maynard Keynes

The Chancellor’s economic brain, Rupert Harrison, looked distinctly restless last night, sipping champagne in John Maynard Keynes’s drawing room. Osborne’s chief-of-staff, the architect the evil Tory austerity, did not seem entirely comfortable as he stood beneath an imposing mounted copy of The General Theory. This awkward tableau came about thanks to the launch of a book about the Bretton Woods summit by Sky News’s Economics Editor Ed Conway. The party was gathered in the very house from which Keynes departed on his way to the famous conference in July 1944. Conway said: ‘It’s quite rare to have a book launch these days. You either do it if you’re expecting a global best seller,

Isabel Hardman

May sends more staff to Passport Office

She might not be worried enough to do anything more than a pooled clip to broadcasters, but Theresa May is clearly sufficiently concerned by the backlog in processing passports to announce the Passport Office will put more staff in place to deal with the backlog. Speaking to reporters this morning, the Home Secretary said: ‘The Passport Office has been putting plans in place since the beginning of this year when they started to see this increase in numbers. They have been increasing the numbers of staff, they’re now open, the Passport Office is working, from 7am to midnight. We’re seeing them working longer hours, more days of the week. But

David Blackburn

The government needs to attack the enemies of energy consumers, including Ed Miliband

‘I don’t know why energy companies invest in Britain,’ said a former energy minister to me a couple of weeks ago. He was referring to the lack of progress on shale exploration (more of which later), but he might easily have been talking about the politicisation of energy prices. In case you haven’t heard, Ofgem, the energy regulator, has written to the Big Six energy firms to ask them to explain why the fall in wholesale prices over the past 12 months has not been passed on to the consumer. Another political row has broken out, with politicians on all sides claiming that the energy market is dysfunctional. They have cause to

Isabel Hardman

Is Theresa May worried by passport backlog?

Theresa May hardly needs another row this week after losing one of her special advisers as a result of last week’s bust-up. But the occupational hazard of running the Home Office is that one of its agencies can suddenly spin out of control, and you’re the one left trying to end the chaos. The Passport Office is always a prime candidate for this sort of trouble, not least because its operations are the kind of things that, when they go wrong, can really upset voters. Not much point in pontificating from the dispatch box about budgets for hardworking families when they find they can’t take the holidays they’ve been working

Tuesday

10 Jun 2014

Isabel Hardman

Tories hit back at Clegg call for academy changes

The way the Lib Dems have responded to the Trojan Horse revelations must be causing the Conservatives to thank their lucky stars they took Tony Blair’s advice on shaking up the public sector and prioritised school reforms at the start of the Coalition, rather than leaving the reforms until later. Nick Clegg’s comments about academy oversight and curriculum requirements this morning did rather suggest that if they’d had their time again, his party would only have backed legislation with a rather different character. Naturally, the Conservatives in the Education department aren’t particularly impressed that this morning the Deputy Prime Minister suggested that ‘you need to get the balance right’ on

Isabel Hardman

Gove wins spat with Wilshaw over no-notice inspections

After a rather strange interview with Newsnight in which the Ofsted chief argued that Michael Gove had blocked no-notice inspections in 2012, Sir Michael Wilshaw has this afternoon backed down. The Education department has issued this statement: ‘The Secretary of State and the Chief Inspector have today discussed the issue of no-notice inspections. The Chief Inspector confirmed that the Education Secretary did not ask Ofsted to halt its plans for no-notice inspections in 2012. Ofsted took the decision after considering the response to their consultation. ‘The Secretary of State yesterday commissioned the Chief Inspector to examine the practicalities of extending the use of no-notice inspections, so that any school can