Politics

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

Wednesday

21 May 2014

Exclusive: Nigel Farage doesn’t want to lead the Out campaign

Nigel Farage has told The Spectator that he doesn’t want to lead the Out campaign come an EU referendum. In an interview, he said, ‘It needs a figurehead and I’m a warrior not a figurehead.’ Farage believes that if Ukip win the European Elections then a referendum will be inevitable. He says that come the referendum, he will play his part ‘I’m a fixed bayonet man, albeit that I don’t see myself as a private. But I see myself leading a division into battle, that’s where I fit in.’ The Ukip leader wants someone who ‘someone who has been very big in British politics’ to take charge of the No

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband’s weak shadow cabinet batting order

Most of the reshuffle-related excitement in Westminster is focused on a pending Tory one. But does Ed Miliband’s top team need a bit of freshening up too? I blogged last week that Labour backbenchers, including a number with serious experience of government, were unhappy with the way many of the Labour top dogs are failing to go out to bat for their leader. Miliband has certainly trodden on his stumps in the past few days with some broadcast gaffes, but he does have a problem with the batting order below him. Yvette Cooper has worked hard to turn around the Labour position on immigration from the Gillian Duffy days to

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Boris and Dave’s double act

Boris and Dave have been enjoying each other’s company on the campaign trail in Newark today. Just look how cosy they are at the station: But is that Boris sneaking a longing glance at the red box that the Prime Minister carries with him as a trapping of office? Anyway, the two men got along very well on the train: For a little while at least: Neither seem particularly excited about the sandwiches on offer in Costa, though. Perhaps like Ed Miliband, they’d rather eat a bacon butty…

Steerpike

Naughty Tories quaff champagne rather than campaign

Tory whips have been haranguing backbenchers and ministers to campaign ahead of the European Elections and the Newark by-election. They have been keeping extensive lists of who is pulling their weight. Ever helpful, Mr S thought he would draw up a little list of his own. These Tory MPs were sipping champagne with Thatcher’s PR man Lord Bell at Bell Pottinger’s plush summer bash at Spencer House last night instead of canvassing for votes: Davis, D Duncan, A Duncan Smith, I Field, M Green, D Hancock, M Lidington, D Lilley, P Luff, P McLoughlin, P Menzies, M Mitchell, A Wharton, J Black marks all round.

Rod Liddle

Why Nigel Farage was right about those Romanians

Here is a preview of Rod Liddle’s column from this week’s Spectator magazine Should we be worried about the vast numbers of German-born people living covertly in the United Kingdom? The Office for National Statistics estimates that in 2011 some 297,000 Germans were resident here, the fifth largest non-British-born contingent (after Indians, Poles, Pakistanis and the Irish respectively). What the hell are they all up to? Sitting in smartly furnished homes, biding their time, and waiting, waiting. That’s what I suspect. A report in the Guardian a while back suggested that our German community tended to ‘stay under the radar’, an ability which mercifully eluded them 70 years ago. The

Alex Massie

Scotching a myth: Scotland is not as left-wing as you think it is

Alex Salmond and David Cameron have more in common than a shared appreciation for Andy Murray’s tennis. Not, of course, that you would ever persuade either of them to admit that. At the very least, their supporters are more alike than either man would like you to believe. A new survey commissioned by Dundee University’s Five Million Questions project confirms as much. On a range of issues SNP supporters are as close, or closer, to Tory voters as they are to Labour voters: [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/M9xAk/index.html”] This will not surprise diehard leftists, of course. If the First Minister was ever a socialist he ceased to be a comrade long ago and

Steerpike

The Axelrod Effect

Are we finally seeing the effect of Ed Miliband’s expensive investment in David Axelrod? As the New Republic pointed out in 2010: ‘Food mishaps are central to the Axelrod mystique. He was famous during the campaign for having disabled a BlackBerry with a stray piece of donut glaze. He once convened a meeting with a gravity-defying clump of oatmeal clinging to the frame of his glasses.’ The magic touch of Obama’s famous strategist, hired at for inordinate sum by the Labour Party, seems to be rubbing off on Ed as he visited Covent Garden Flower Market this morning for a bacon sarnie.

Alex Massie

The Bearable Lightness of Being A British Scottish Nationalist

Backstory: I wrote a post suggesting that Scottish Nationalists’ rhetoric might these days usefully be compared to Doublethink. I suppose there were many who could have been chosen to serve as examples but I decided to pick on Pete Wishart, MP for Perth and North Perthshire. Unfairly I quoted him extensively, something I now concede was “point scoring” (though not, I protest, of the “pointless” kind). Anyway, Mr Wishart has now responded but not, I am afraid, with anything terribly persuasive. Let me, then, in a spirit of ecumenical pity, offer the response one of the many Pete Wisharts could have written… Patriot. Nationalist. Socialist. Whateverist. Multitudes lie within each

Isabel Hardman

Joint Ukip candidates is Farage’s second best option

Nigel Farage has stirred up talk again this morning of joint Conservative/Ukip or Labour/Ukip candidates. This has been doing the rounds ever since the Ukip leader mooted it in an interview with James in the Spectator, but neither main party is keen. The reason is that this would effectively outsource candidate selection to someone outside the Conservative or Labour party: only candidates Ukip considered sufficiently ‘sound’ according to its own standards would get the Farage kitemark, and therefore local parties with Ukip breathing down their necks might be tempted to choose a more Ukippish type to stand for them than otherwise. But there’s another point worth making about the joint

Tuesday

20 May 2014

James Forsyth

Andrew Mitchell demands the police publish transcripts of ‘plebgate’ hearings

The plebgate scandal has flared back to life tonight with a letter from Andrew Mitchell to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Bernard Hogan-Howe. Mitchell alleges that one of the police officers on duty on the night of the incident boasted to a friend ‘I can topple the Tory government’. According to Michael Crick, Mitchell gathered this evidence at the recent Met disciplinary hearings that he was allowed to attend. Mitchell now wants the transcripts of these hearings published along with the evidence presented to them. The Met’s response tonight suggests that they won’t agree to this. Those close to Mitchell are getting increasingly frustrated at how long this whole

Jonny Rose

Nigel Farage’s failed fightback in Croydon

Ukip held a carnival in my hometown, and I found myself caught up in it. They’d enticed us to the Whitgift Centre with talk of a steel band, their large number of local BME candidates and a chance to see Nigel Farage. After more accusations of racism, picking Croydon did make sense for the party. It is London’s most populous borough and the largest town in Europe. It can confidently describe itself as one of the ‘melting pots’ politicians love: 2011 Census data shows White British people make up less than 50 per cent of the population, with 18 different ethnic groups living in the borough. Ukip’s local candidates include

Shiraz Maher

The Abu Hamza case shows that Britain has outsourced terrorism trials

It must seem awfully peculiar to Americans that it should take their courts to convict Abu Hamza on terrorism charges, including a kidnapping he orchestrated in Yemen which resulted in the deaths of three British citizens. Both the Home Secretary and Prime Minister have welcomed yesterday’s verdict. Yet, to listen to them is to forget that it has taken more than 15 years and a foreign court to hold Abu Hamza to account for these crimes, circumstances which should be the cause of outrage – not celebration. This merriment is indicative of a discrete policy now being pursued by the Coalition which effectively outsources terrorism trials. In some cases there

Isabel Hardman

Carnival of the Ukippers

Ukip’s we’re-not-racist ethnic minority carnival in Croydon always looked as though it was going to provide plenty of material for sketchwriters and critics. It was another attempt by the party to showcase its non-white members and candidates, with local candidate Winston McKenzie on hand too. But the event aimed at spinning a line about the party’s open-mindedness spun out of control. The steel band told journalists they didn’t know they’d been booked by Ukip, and were pretty unhappy about it too. Then a group of protesters accused the party of being Nazis. Then McKenzie, explaining why Nigel Farage had pulled out of attending the event, described the town he is

Ed West

Why people will be voting for Ukip this Thursday

Despite levels of media scrutiny and hostility unseen in recent political history, this Thursday up to 30 per cent of British voters will opt for Ukip. The odd thing is that the more outrageous the slurs made against them, and the wackier the members unveiled in the press, the more their popularity surges, perhaps out of bloody-mindedness; if a Ukip candidate was caught committing autoerotic asphyxiation dressed in a Gestapo uniform tomorrow the party would probably be on 50 per cent by the end of the week. One of the reasons is that Ukip is a product of lowered trust; the party’s supporters have noticeably less trust in politicians than

Sebastian Payne

Listen: Ed Miliband’s two car crash interviews in one day

Ed Miliband seems to have clambered out of the wrong side of bed this morning. The Labour leader has been touring the TV and radio studios, where his answers have become progressively worse as the day went on. First up, Miliband spoke to Good Morning Britain about the ‘cost-of-living crisis’. When asked whether he knew how much the average weekly household grocery bill was, he said ‘it depends on how much you are spending and how big your family is’. Then when questioned on how much the Miliband household spends, he said: ‘We probably spend £70-80 on groceries at least, probably more than that. Different families will have different costs

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Leading Tory eurosceptic calls for Cameron to ditch net migration target

The next set of net migration figures are, conveniently, released on the day of the European and local elections. Some wonder whether this will add grist to the mill of those on the Tory Right who want to cause trouble for Cameron as they can demand that he crack down further on immigration. But I’ve discovered that if there is one demand eurosceptics will make, it will be for the Prime Minister to scrap the target, rather than try harder to meet it. The reasoning behind this is that the Prime Minister could argue that freedom of movement in the European Union makes it impossible for the Conservatives to have

Pete Wishart

It’s not Doublethink to support Scottish independence and Britishness

I remember it well: It was in a 2008 debate on whether we should establish a ‘Britishness day’, when many of us were crammed into Westminster Hall to consider this question of great national importance. It was about the same time as Gordon Brown’s much mocked ‘British jobs for British workers’ and there were, therefore, many ongoing debates about what Britishness was supposed to mean and how it could be celebrated. During that debate I said that, (as we move towards independence) ‘all vestiges of Britishness may go and I don’t know what Britishness is’. Pretty unremarkable, but these comments are now starring in any number of unionist productions, publications

Isabel Hardman

Inflation rises – should the coalition be worried?

Inflation has risen for the first time in ten months, with the consumer prices index growing by 1.8 per cent in the year to April 2014, up from 1.6 per cent in March. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/09O5L/index.html”] On the surface, this looks like bad news for the Coalition, which has boasted that falling inflation shows that Ed Miliband’s cost-of-living crisis is coming to an end. And certainly Labour has tried to capitalise on the rise already, with Shadow Treasury Minister Catherine McKinnell saying: ‘These figures underline why this Tory-led government is wrong to be so complacent about the cost-of-living crisis. Wages after inflation have fallen by an average of £1,600 a year

Douglas Murray

Is Labour a racist party?

Is Labour a racist party? The answer, I believe, is ‘no’. Apart from anything else, some of my best friends are in the party and I cannot think they hate themselves or anybody else simply because of their skin colour. Yet the question must be asked. For just this weekend I was rummaging through recent editions of the Gazette Live (the latest news, sport and business from the North East, Middlesbrough and Teesside) when I happened upon this story: ‘Five Middlesbrough councillors resign from Labour Party and will stand as independents.’ You can read about the whole sorry episode here. But the crux of the article is this: ‘Cllr Junier

Steerpike

Why can’t Tory MPs keep their clothes on?

The 2010 Tory intake is defined by ruthless ambition, a penchant for pamphlets and rampant Euroscepticism. But Mr S has spotted another unifying characteristic: posing in their swimwear. First we had Penny Mordaunt, the Portsmouth MP, in a variety of cossies for her appearence of flop TV show Splash! Then there was Bristol’s Charlotte Leslie, who has recreated the Baywatch pose she first struck fifteen years ago (above). While it’s all for charity, perhaps it’s also a show of party loyalty, for Young Dave never seems to be out of his trunks. Look at those legs! UPDATE: Mr Steerpike has remembered who started this craze in the first place…