Politics Archives

Tuesday

28 Jan 2014

Guess who’s back?

You just knew Lembit would make an appearance sooner or later, didn’t you? I only noticed this morning, reading back through some of the weekend papers I’d missed. Anyway, as the Rennard scandal spreads ever wider within the Liberal Democrats, step forward minxy Hannah Thompson, a former ’schoolgirl activist’. According to Hannah, when she was seventeen Lembit Opik somehow acquired one of her shoes and, referring to her as ‘Cinderella’, wouldn’t give it back until she kissed him. Who’d a thunk it. On another occasion he also invited the young lady to share a mudbath with him. Who could resist that? A mudbath with Lembit? And also – of course

Steerpike

Sarah Brown’s unpatriotic office

‘[T]he old tax havens have no place in this new world. We now call on all countries to apply international standards,’ said Gordon Brown back in 2009 when he was prime minister. Mr Steerpike only mentions this because Brown’s philanthropist wife Sarah has made an odd choice of home for her charity. Sarah Brown is the founder and Executive Chair of the Global Business Coalition for Education – a charitable organisation whose members include heavyweights such as Accenture, Chevron and Tata. The organisation admirably aims to bring ‘the business community together to accelerate progress in delivering quality education for all of the world’s children and youth.’ But the GBCfE is based

Isabel Hardman

Tories demand immigration investigation into Labour campaign guru

Gurus are dangerous beasts in politics mainly because they tend to say awkward things (something Ed Miliband, who has Lord Glasman as his on-off guru, can attest to more than others). But the row over Arnie Graf’s immigration status, sparked by the Sun’s front page today, shows that gurus are dangerous in many, many ways. Like the Church of England discovering it was investing in Wonga while also crusading against it, it’s surprising that the Labour party didn’t think to make sure all was tickety-boo on the immigration status front before launching a tougher strategy in this area. Still, it has given the Conservative attack machine something to do, with

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne: Labour is ‘anti-the British people’

Quite naturally, there were rather more Conservative than Labour MPs in the House of Commons for Treasury Questions this morning. And quite naturally, George Osborne and colleagues on the Treasury front bench spent most of the session goading their Labour opponents about this morning’s growth figures. Deputy Chief Whip Greg Hands and Ed Balls had a wonderful extended session of heckling one another across the Chamber as the exchanges went on, with Hands mocking Balls’ flatlining gesture. Other MPs, though, were kept waiting rather longer to do what they’d turned up to do: jeer the Shadow Chancellor when he eventually stood up. But when he eventually stood up, 50 minutes

Isabel Hardman

Strong sympathy for Tory rebel deportation call

How will the row over the Immigration Bill pan out? Number 10 was trying to be as emollient as possible yesterday, saying it would look at all amendments, while I understand that Dominic Raab’s deportation amendment has strong private support at Cabinet level. Ministers do, though, understand that Theresa May is starting to worry that she won’t get her Bill through the House of Commons and House of Lords in time for it to become an Act, and so are leaving her be on the deportation side of things, but there could still be a scenario where PPSs demand to be able to support it, as they did last time.

Monday

27 Jan 2014

Hamish Macdonell

Poll shows Yes camp are within striking distance of victory

‘It has given us a good, old-fashioned kick up the backside,’ said one member of the ‘No’ camp yesterday. He was being charitable. It could end up being an awful lot worse than that. The ‘it’ in question was the new ICM poll which, suddenly and unexpectedly, has put the Yes campaign right back in the hunt for Scottish independence. At a stroke, all those complacent certainties about the No camp wiping the floor with the Nationalists have been discarded and, this morning at Holyrood, the talk is of little else. ‘It is game on,’ said one Nationalist with a smile. Just to emphasise how important this new poll for The Scotsman

Isabel Hardman

May promises response on Syrian refugees in next couple of days

Yvette Cooper chose to focus her attack at Home Office questions on the government’s position on Syrian refugees. She continually pushed Theresa May on whether the the Home office would change its position and sign up to the UN’s refugee programme. May replied that the United Kingdom has a ‘fine record’ when it comes to the amount of money it is providing in aid, and has accepted several thousand asylum seekers from Syria. But added that ‘I am indeed working with the Foreign Secretary to look at what further support can be provided by this government and further announcements will be made on that in due course.’ Cooper pressed further,

James Forsyth

As Ed Miliband knows, the 50p tax rate will not fix a broken market

Labour’s confirmation that it would restore the top tax rate to 50p was not that much of a surprise, Ed Miliband has always been clear that was what he wanted. But it does raise an interesting question about Miliband’s attitude to the market. Those close to the Labour leader passionately argue that his agenda is actually pro-competition and pro-market, that it not a throwback to the 1970s. As Stewart Wood wrote in these pages recently, they see him as the heir to Teddy Roosevelt. But the 50p rate will hit any successful business person regardless of how open and competitive the market they operate in is. This isn’t action to

Isabel Hardman

Former ministers, 1922 chair and Labour grandees back rebel deportation call

The list of MPs supporting Dominic Raab’s amendment on deportation to the Immigration Bill has now been published, and as predicted, it contains some very big names indeed. Andrew Mitchell has signed, along with 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady, former policing minister Nick Herbert, former justice minister Crispin Blunt, and Labour grandees such as David Blunkett and Hazel Blears. There are currently 104 MPs signed up to support the amendment: the majority of them Conservative. It calls for foreign criminals to only avoid deportation if they risk being killed or tortured on their return. The last time this amendment was due to be debated as part of the Crime and

Steerpike

Time for Labour to pay their bill?

Restauranteur Richard Caring is leading the charge against Labour for their pledge to reintroduce the 50p tax rate. The billionaire owner of Caprice Holdings, which includes Le Caprice, The Ivy and Scott’s, said over the weekend: ‘I am deflated to see this negative political attack on those trying to support the fragile recovery in these tough economic times.’ Awkwardly for Labour, Caring is one of the many rich backers the party were revealed to have tapped up for loans under Blair, and they are still yet to repay him his £2 million. If he’s that upset with Balls, maybe it’s time to send him his bill?

Alex Massie

Labour and the Conservatives are both wrong about income tax

Never interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake. On the other hand, when your opponent has made a mistake try not to match him by making an equal blunder of your own. That’s not how Westminster politics works, of course. For reasons that presumably make sense to the respective parties, Labour and the Conservatives have each managed to cock-up their tax policies. Specifically, they are both wrong on the politics of the 50% rate of income tax. That is, the Tories should never have cut the rate of tax paid by those few Britons earning over £150,000 and Labour should not be promising to restore the 50% rate.

Isabel Hardman

PM optimistic about Immigration Bill as rebels stay stubborn

David Cameron was very upbeat for a Monday morning when he popped up on the Today programme a few minutes ago. Perhaps it was partly down to a not-particularly aggressive interview, or perhaps it was because the Prime Minister wants to continue the theme of his New Year’s message and be upbeat about the prospects for the economy and living standards where Labour continues to be pessimistic (that optimism, of course, is easier to find when you decide to release figures showing take home pay improving that do not take into account the effect of benefit cuts or tax rises, but there we go). He repeatedly said he was an

Nick De Bois

How the Conservatives should respond to Ed Balls’ 50p tax pledge

This weekend Ed Balls made it clear he wants to tax Britain more.It won’t stop at 50%, and it wont be confined to the highest earners over 150,000. In that sense low tax Comservatives have much to thank Ed Balls for as he really has set out clear blue water between Labour and the Conservatives for the next election. Nevertheless, let’s not celebrate too quickly. Labour will know, and as Ed Balls all but acknowledged on the Marr show this weekend, that this tax commitment is little to do with economic policy and more to do with their own electoral strategy. A 50% top rate of income tax will raise

Sunday

26 Jan 2014

Isabel Hardman

Taking offence and freedom of speech

The row about Lib Dem candidate Maajid Nawaz continues, with some confusion over whether or not one of his critics has a meeting with the party leadership to discuss the matter. While that unravels a little more, it’s worth thinking very briefly about the implications of this row. The protagonists want Nawaz removed as a candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn because he has done something that offends other members of his religion. In doing so, they are arguing that freedom of speech comes with responsibility. Yet oddly, those who make these arguments for curbs on freedom of speech so that no-one gets upset never do so when it comes to

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls: Labour’s public spending was not a problem before the crisis

Ed Balls and Ed Miliband have a funny old approach to convincing voters that they should be handed back the keys to the car. They pen pieces about how tough Labour is on welfare spending and make careful (and carefully-worded) references at every opportunity to their promise not to borrow more for day-to-day spending. The Shadow Chancellor prevaricates over HS2 to give the impression that he’s fiscally responsible. He did that again today when he appeared on the Andrew Marr Show, but he also said this: ‘But do I think the level of public spending going into the crisis was a problem for Britain? No, I don’t, nor our deficit,

Saturday

25 Jan 2014

Isabel Hardman

Immigration Bill set for two serious rows

The row over the past few weeks over the Immigration Bill has been rather ironic given it was introduced in part to calm Tory backbench nerves. Those nerves were over two issues: Bulgarian and Romanian migrants, and deportation, and while the Mills amendment which addresses the former remains on the order paper, albeit with some rival amendments aimed at siphoning off support, there is another big revolt on the way on the latter. Dominic Raab has tabled another amendment which has the support of more than 100 MPs on deportation. It is essentially a repeat of the amendment he tabled to the Crime and Courts Bill, and means that foreign

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls commits to return of 50p rate

The overnight briefing of Ed Balls’ speech to the Fabian Society’s annual conference was that the Shadow Chancellor would make a binding fiscal commitment to balance the books, deliver a surplus on the current budget and get the national debt falling in the next Parliament. Which sounded like a mighty eleventh-hour repentance until you looked at the detail. Ed Miliband has spent the past few months trying to sound like a dry old bean counter by saying Labour wouldn’t borrow more for day-to-day spending, which really means Labour won’t borrow any more for revenue spending but can splurge all it likes on capital expenditure. And so Ed Balls has done

Douglas Murray

My night with Godfrey Bloom

On Thursday night I spoke at the Oxford Union on the motion ‘This House believes post-war immigration into Britain has been too high.’ In many ways this is an easy debate to explain and win, notwithstanding the fact that Lord Singh, Nadhim Zahawi MP and Monica Ali were lined up in opposition. The Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has said immigration has been too high and that he wants to bring it down. The Labour Leader Ed Miliband has said the same. As have all major, mainstream British politicians. And no wonder. A British Social Attitudes survey from last year showed 77 per cent of the British public want immigration

Friday

24 Jan 2014

Fraser Nelson

Why Larry Summers is wrong about the British economy – and why George Osborne is right

There was a spat at Davos this morning between George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Larry Summers, ex-US Treasury Secretary (and very occasional Ed Balls adviser). The gist of it was that Summers is not a fan of Osborne’s austerity, and implied America’s stimulus had allowed it to get back to peak GDP more quickly that austerity-struck Britain. Osborne was too polite to tell him what nonsense this is, but I’d like to show Coffee Housers two graphs that make the case. First, the stimulus. It was an abject failure, as readers of Nate Silver’s book, The Signal and the Noise, will know. US unemployment was running at 7.3 per cent

Isabel Hardman

Parliament itself shouldn’t drag MPs down

The conventional image of Parliament is of a grand, imposing building packed with ancient traditions. The reality for those who work in it isn’t quite so glamorous: mouse-infested offices, administrative chaos, and weeks of camping in committee rooms when you first arrive as an MP. Even though Parliament has been around for much longer than modern companies, it still has the internal feel of a start-up that just accidentally spiralled into something much bigger, with MPs fending for themselves when it comes to employing and managing their staff, for instance. I write about the way that this chaos makes the job of an MP just that bit less attractive to