Politics Archives

Saturday

25 Jan 2014

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

Sebastian Payne

Watch and read: Nigel Farage launches Ukip’s 2010 election manifesto

Does Nigel Farage really have no idea what was in Ukip’s 2010 election manifesto? Yesterday, he claimed on the Daily Politics he had never seen or heard of many of the policies the party stood for. But if you take a look at the video above, Farage was one the main speakers when the manifesto was launched in April 2010. The low-grade staging is again a sign of how far Ukip have come in the last three years, but their message hasn’t changed much. Farage claims: ‘The choice the public has is not about a change of government but a change of management’ Always the outsider, and who offers the

Steerpike

Douglas Carswell, crime fighter

Mr S has long admired Essex Tory MP Douglas Carswell. Not only does the rebel with a cause bring a fascinating aspect to the political debate, it also turns that out the lawmaker fights lawbreakers: Just chased and caught a shop lifter in Clacton…, waiting for police — Douglas Carswell MP (@DouglasCarswell) January 24, 2014 This will do wonders with his local paper. One less vote, though. PS: General Boles – or Bright Blue Boles, as he styles himself now – has produced the marvellous picture above.

Fraser Nelson

Explaining the IDS vs Osborne split on welfare

‘Do you know what they used to call us?’ asked Theresa May ten years ago. ‘The nasty party.’ No one used that phrase, but ‘they’ had a point. The Conservatives seemed to be a group of efficient mercenaries, useful for fighting the economic war that broke out in the 1970s. But in the good times they seemed robotic, Spock-like and heartless. The message was: if you work, we’re with you. If you shirk, you’re the enemy. This was summed up by Peter Lilley’s infamous ‘Little List’ skit, above. ANd again in George Osborne’s 2012 Tory conference speech, where he invited his audience to imagine the anger of a worker passing

Isabel Hardman

The Tories’ economic tightrope

When things were going pretty badly for the Conservatives, ministers reassured one another that soon they’d be able to start hitting back at Labour with statistics. They’re doing that now – and are hitting as often as possible, even when it’s Labour’s turn to say something. Today the party has released figures to back up David Cameron’s claim at PMQs this week that people are better off, and they show that most people’s earnings are increasing by more than inflation. Now, Labour is quibbling the stats themselves, pointing out that they don’t involve benefit cuts and tax rises. But while Labour is overall losing in the battle of stats, there

Thursday

23 Jan 2014

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes: George Osborne’s personal recovery

Now that the economic statistics are looking better, people are beginning to rediscover the once-fashionable thought that George Osborne is a great strategist. Things are coming together before the 2015 election in a way which makes life uncomfortable for Labour. I am not sure that ‘strategist’ is the right word, but I do think Mr Osborne deserves praise for something else. If you compare this government with the last, you will see that it is not dysfunctional in its internal relations. The coalition has constant frictions, but these are, as it were, built into the system. After nearly four years, there is no serious split or even known personal hatred

James Forsyth

What the NHS owes the Tories

[audioplayer src=’http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_23_January_2014_v4.mp3′ title=’James Forsyth discuss the NHS with Charlotte Leslie MP’ startat=1430] Listen [/audioplayer]Pinned to the wall of Jeremy Hunt’s office in the Department of Health is an A1 piece of paper detailing that week’s ‘Never Events’. It catalogues the mistakes that have been made in NHS hospitals that should never have happened: people having the wrong leg amputated, swabs being left inside patients after surgery and the like. This grim list is a rebuke to the glib, Danny Boyle-style rhetoric which dominates all political debate about the NHS and treats any attempt to examine the failings of British health care as heresy. One can’t imagine Andy Burnham, the last

Henry Jeffreys

Agitprop for toddlers: the oddly strident politics of CBeebies

I think I might be a bad parent; whenever my wife is out, I plonk our two-year-old daughter in front of the television. The other day we watched a rainbow nation of children marching around the British countryside singing ‘Let’s make sure we recycle every day’, and I realised that something has changed in children’s programming since I was little. These young recyclers are from a show called Green Balloon Club, which is ostensibly a wildlife programme, but the song had more in common with one of those Dear Leader dirges you see in North Korea. It wasn’t education, it was propaganda. The purpose of children’s stories has always been

Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith was defending welfare reform from his own colleagues as well as the Left

Compassionate Conservatism has taken a bit of a kicking in the past few months: from leftwing critics who want to claim it is dead (but who always disagreed with its central premise anyway) and from certain Conservatives such as George Osborne who prefer a nice political dividing line. But today, as previewed in the Spectator last week, Iain Duncan Smith restated the need for this key strand of Tory thinking, and he set it firmly within the Conservative reforming tradition, saying: ‘As Conservatives, that is part of our Party’s historic mission – just look at Wilberforce and Shaftesbury – to put hope back where it has gone, to give people

Sebastian Payne

Nigel Farage disowns all of Ukip’s 2010 manifesto policies

‘We need to have a domestic policy agenda that adds up’ — Nigel Farage said on the Daily Politics today. The Ukip leader aptly summed up, and proved, one of the main challenges for his party as they attempt to become a mature force. Farage did his best to disown anything the party stood for at the last general election. Andrew Neil quizzed him on a variety of official policy positions, many of which are inconsistent and unfortunately remain on their website or available in official documents. On replacing Trident, Farage claimed his position was at odds with what is stated on the party’s website: ‘Andrew Neil: Is Ukip now

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Mike Hancock’s son in alleged assault on journalist

More unwanted drama for the Lib Dems. Portsmouth South MP Mike Hancock’s son has been filmed allegedly assaulting a photographer outside his father’s home, with Hampshire police saying that ‘a reporter received an injury to his nose’. The alleged assault by Hancock’s 37-year-old son comes just as the MP is suspended from the Lib Dems following a leaked report into claims of sexual misconduct towards a female constituent. Mr Steerpike can only begin to imagine how delighted the Lib Dems will be to hear about this latest episode.

Alex Massie

What is Europe good for? Rather a lot, actually…

Europe, eh? Good for nothing, innit? That’s the prevailing narrative you hear these days. But, as so often, this is a matter of perspective. The chart above, plundered courtesy of Anne Applebaum’s twitter feed, shows the respective growths of GDP per capita in Poland and the Ukraine since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact. One of these countries, as you can see, has done rather better than the other. It’s the country that has made a better fist of democracy. And it’s the country that is a member of the European Union. Which is one reason why Britain should still be in favour

Isabel Hardman

Tory rebels table more troublemaking changes to Immigration Bill

Andrew Lansley will shortly announce the return of the Immigration Bill to the Commons. I hear from impeccable sources that its report stage will be next Thursday. As I wrote yesterday, the whips have failed to persuade Nigel Mills to withdraw his amendment on reintroducing transitional controls for Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. He has already re-tabled it, simply with some tweaks to keep it up to date. But another crop of amendments from Tory backbenchers has just gone down as well. Tabled by Stephen Phillips, one of the signatories to the Mills amendment, the new clauses call for the Home Secretary to take action to limit EU migration if the

Charles Moore

The top level of government isn’t riddled with personal hatred – thanks to Osborne

Now that the economic statistics are looking better, people are beginning to rediscover the once-fashionable thought that George Osborne is a great strategist. Things are coming together before the 2015 election in a way which makes life uncomfortable for Labour. I am not sure that ‘strategist’ is the right word, but I do think Mr Osborne deserves praise for something else. If you compare this government with the last, you will see that it is not dysfunctional in its internal relations. The coalition has constant frictions, but these are, as it were, built into the system. After nearly four years, there is no serious split or even known personal hatred

Alex Wickham

MPs grope men too

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_23_January_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Alex Wickham discuss Westminster’s wandering hands with Miranda Green” startat=790] Listen [/audioplayer]As I walked out of the bar, I noticed a Conservative MP following me. It had been an evening for young political activists, mostly teenage boys, and it was drawing to an end. I pretended to be engrossed in my phone, but the MP — well-liked, universally respected — lurched towards me, placing his arm around my waist and leaning in close. I could smell the whisky and cigars on his breath. ‘I’m just going to the toilet,’ he slurred, winking and gesturing at the gents. I had only worked in and around Parliament for a year, but

Wednesday

22 Jan 2014

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Miliband begins to run out of arguments

Syria overshadowed PMQs today. The chamber was quiet and sombre. And both leaders were clearly about to do their world-statesman bit. Ed Miliband rose to his feet with an air of ineffable goodness. He looked like St Peter on his way to donate the dead Judas’s sandals to a charity shop. He asked about Britain’s readiness to accept Syrian refugees in accordance with a UN directive. Britain, said Cameron, is already the second largest donor to Syria. And the crisis can’t be solved by few hundred refugee placements. Miliband used two more questions to press the case for ‘orphans who had lost both parents.’ Cameron said he was prepared to

Isabel Hardman

Mike Hancock suspended from Lib Dems

Mike Hancock has been suspended this afternoon as a Liberal Democrat councillor following the leak of the report into his conduct. The report, which was published in a redacted form, does not make comfortable reading at all, with some very unpleasant allegations from the constituent about his behaviour towards her, including that he forcibly kissed her, ‘asked for a wank or a quick suck’ and that he asked to be ‘the first one to road test drive’ her after a hysterectomy operation. You can read the report, sections of which have been redacted, here. Its author, Nigel Pascoe QC, has already expressed his concern about the redaction: ‘I have now

Sebastian Payne

Michael Gove announces a computing curriculum worthy of the 21st century

Finally, Britain’s children will be equipped for the Internet age. In a speech to the BETT education conference today, Michael Gove announced the details of the new computing curriculum, which will take effect from this September. As well a new Computer Science GCSE and a beefed-up A-Level (hopefully more schools will offer it), the new computing curriculum will begin for five year olds, and will consist of three strands. These are information technology (how to use computers in the real world), ‘digital literacy’ (confidently and safely using computers) and ‘computer science’ strands. The Computer Science strand is by far the most important. Since computers became significantly easier to use in