Politics Archives

Wednesday

6 Nov 2013

PMQs sketch: John Bercow’s bid for stardom continues

Nope. Nothing doing. Ed Miliband spent all morning racking his brains but he couldn’t think of a single disaster to pin on David Cameron at PMQs. So he made one up. A crisis, he declared sonorously, is about engulf the NHS this winter. Our A&E departments will soon be overwhelmed by flu-victims expiring on trolleys and frost-bitten pensioners spilling out of broom cupboards. He dared the prime minister to deny it. Forget this winter, said Cameron, there’s an NHS crisis already. And it’s happening in Wales where Labour is in control of the health service. This spiked Miliband’s guns. He was about to claim that the crisis had already begun

James Forsyth

PMQs: Relations between Cameron and Bercow break down

PMQs today was a typically bad tempered affair. The Tories have responded to David Cameron’s mauling two weeks ago, by upping the aggression in Cameron’s answers and the noise levels. Today, the Tories wanted to talk about Unite. At every opportunity, Cameron sought to bring Unite the union, who donate millions to Labour, into his answers. He floated the prospect of new laws to combat the aggressive and unpleasant ‘leverage’ tactics that Unite had used at Grangemouth. He likened Ed Miliband to the mayor of a Sicilian town who had been put in by the mafia and was afraid they would take him out if he took them on. Miliband

Isabel Hardman

Pritchard row refreshes second jobs debate

Mark Pritchard is vigorously denying the Telegraph splash this morning, which alleges that he boasted of being able to use his political contacts to set up meetings. He says he is consulting his lawyers. But aside from the eventual outcome of this row, it has allowed Labour to reignite the debate about whether MPs should have second jobs anyway, with a Labour party spokesman saying last night that ‘every passing scandal and further investigation only goes to reinforce why Ed Miliband was right earlier this year to call for new rules and new limits on MPs’ outside earnings’. Miliband made that call in the middle of the Falkirk row as

Alex Massie

Russell Brand is right about one thing: he is a twerp.

Oh for the love of God, he’s back. Russell Brand, Britain’s sophomoric revolutionary-in-chief, has written another call-to-something. At least this one is shorter than his previous manifesto. Alas it makes no more sense. What is interesting about Brand is not novel and what is novel is not interesting. Tom Chivers is right to note that: But those of you who are bothered, the Russell Brands and Occupy Wherevers of the world, don’t pretend that the political system doesn’t offer anything for you. It does. It offers lots and lots of things. The trouble is, most people don’t want it. Almost every time someone says “mainstream politics isn’t giving the people what they

Alex Massie

I see no ships (on the Clyde)

The sorry truth of the matter is that Glasgow has been in decline for a century. 1913 was the city’s greatest year. Then it produced a third of the railway locomotives and a fifth of the steel manufactured anywhere in Britain. Most of all, it built ships. Big ships and many of them. A ship was launched, on average, every day that year. In 1913, 23% of the entire world’s production of ships (by tonnage) was built and launched on the river Clyde. It was an astonishing achievement and the high-water mark of Scottish industrial prowess. Ship-building, more than any other industry, became part of Glasgow’s essence. The locomotives and

Tuesday

5 Nov 2013

Steve Barclay

Are Parliament’s select committees working? – I say no

Our parliamentary select committees need to be taken seriously. Yet, for them to be so, we need to clarify their legal powers, use wider expertise and practice what we preach. Select committees have recently been in the spotlight, and Parliament’s liaison committee — made up of the chairs of all the select committees — has announced a detailed review as doubts over effectiveness have grown. Last week the Energy and Climate Change Committee examined the spiralling cost of energy; but, despite the fact that price hikes for millions of homes is a top political priority, only one of the big six energy companies thought the occasion worthy of sending their

Charles Moore

The Grangemouth scandal shows it’s time to keep an eye on the Reds. Again

The most extraordinary thing about the scandal of Unite at Grangemouth and in Falkirk is how long it took the outside world to notice. Partly, this is an effect of devolution: almost nothing Scottish is now considered news in London, even if it is of kingdom-wide importance. Partly, it results from the loss of media and political attention to trade union affairs. So successful was Mrs Thatcher in taming union political power that newspapers laid off the labour correspondents who, in the 1970s and early 1980s, had been the aristocrats of the news room. As for the Tories, they have forgotten the Cold War arts of keeping dossiers on subversion. But

The Spectator

Ed Miliband’s speech on ‘dealing with the cost of living crisis’: full text

It is great to be here in Battersea with you today. Last Friday, I was in my constituency, at the local Citizens Advice Bureau. And I talked to some people who had been preyed upon by payday lenders. There was a woman there in floods of tears. She was in work. But she took out a payday loan for her deposit so she could rent somewhere to live. And then disaster followed. A payday loan of a few hundred pounds became a debt of thousands of pounds. She still faces bullying, harassment and threats from multiple payday lenders. Like the young mum I met who described sitting at home with

Fraser Nelson

Sorry, Ed. But it looks like Britain is now booming

Things are lining up nicely for George Osborne’s Autumn Statement next month (and fairly badly for Ed Miliband, who’s making his economic speech today). For the first time since he became Chancellor, he will be able to report forecasts better, not worse, than his previous suggestions. The European Commission has just upped its UK growth forecast for next year to 2.2 per cent, up from 1.7 per cent – the largest upgrade of any European country. The Eurocrats are, of course, just catching up with the changing independent consensus. The graph pictured above (from the Treasury) shows how the consensus for 2014 growth has been revised upwards month after month.

Isabel Hardman

Tea at 22: An exclusive glimpse inside the Number 10 policy board with Margot James

I am delighted to reveal the first of our ‘Tea at 22’ films: a series of short video interviews with Westminster personalities in the Spectator’s 22 Old Queen Street offices. This week I spoke to Margot James, member of the Number 10 policy board and one of the stars of the gay marriage debate, about how the party is developing its manifesto. Here are some key points: James denied Westminster rumours (revealed in the Spectator’s politics column) that the policy board members weren’t getting along, and explained how the board develops manifesto and government policy. She revealed that she is currently working on ideas to improve ailing town centres. The

Isabel Hardman

Labour stays stubborn over Falkirk

Labour is standing firm over Falkirk, even though senior figures such as Johann Lamont and Alistair Darling are sufficiently worried by the allegations still emerging to call for a new investigation. This morning Caroline Flint was sent out in a stern mood to bat for the party, with the Shadow Energy Secretary telling Radio 4’s Today programme that the party wouldn’t publish its internal reports, but that it had already taken ‘firm action’. She said: ‘The current position is this: when reports were made to the party about concerns about the Falkirk selection, the party was suspended and put in special measures. Ms Murphy, who was one of the candidates

Monday

4 Nov 2013

Isabel Hardman

Why Boris Johnson’s ‘slow and feeble’ attack on aviation policy isn’t so bothersome

‘Let’s have it every 90 seconds!’ shouted Boris to the CBI this afternoon as he played a series of clips of loud and quiet plane engines. He wanted to illustrate that ‘quiet’ planes would not make another runway at Heathrow palatable, and he used his customary strong language in attacking the government’s position on aviation policy. ‘End the dither, cut the cackle,’ the Mayor of London told the conference, urging the government to rule out a ‘toxic’ third runway by Christmas. While he’s trying to be loyal, the Mayor seems to have a special licence to attack the government on aviation. Today he said that ‘you can’t blame British business

Steerpike

Cameron and Osborne supping with Murdoch – again

It was PR guru Matthew Freud’s 50th birthday on Saturday: he and his wife, Elisabeth Murdoch, hosted a fairly lavish party. But would Westminster’s finest attend? Guests were struck to see the Prime Minister and the Chancellor both in attendance, evidently quite happy to rejoin the social set that they have both kept clear of in recent years. Tony and Cherie Blair were also tripping the light fantastic. It was, after all, a Noah’s Ark theme and they came in twos: PM and Osborne, Blairs, Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss. Perhaps the Chancellor is so confident that his pre-Budget report will be a festival of good news that he feels he

Isabel Hardman

May sails through TPIMs statement with disapproving attack on Yvette Cooper

Aside from having to explain her government’s policy on clothing that might be used as a disguise, Theresa May did pull it out of the bag, again, in that statement on Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed’s TPIM. Her short speech at the start wasn’t anything to write home about, simply setting out the bare bones of what was being done to find the terror suspect. But it was in her response to Yvette Cooper that the Home Secretary really got her eye in. She took a rather disapproving tone to answer Cooper’s questions, telling her that she was wrong to suggest that TPIMs were in some way a watering down of Labour’s

Isabel Hardman

Sir Gerald Howarth asks Theresa May to ban the burka so it can’t be used as a disguise

When the Prime Minister’s spokesman said this morning that ‘we will look at whether there are lessons that we can learn from’ the disappearance of Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed, what he probably didn’t mean was that the Home Office should consider banning all things that can be worn as disguises. Sir Gerald Howarth clearly did, telling the Commons this afternoon that the Home Secretary should ban the burka partly because it had enabled this suspect to disappear. He said: ‘Can I commend my right honourable friend’s approach and can I urge her to go further in her robustness, to scrap the Labour-introduced Human Rights Act and while she’s at it, can

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May has taken the heat out of Home Office rows

Theresa May will give a statement to the House of Commons this afternoon on the disappearance of terror suspect Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed. The Home Secretary has earned a formidable reputation over the past few years for emerging unscathed from a variety of Home Office rows, and Labour has struggled to lay a finger on her. But this afternoon May will face a grilling from Yvette Cooper over the TPIM arrangements for Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed, and Labour wants to use this incident as a way of claiming that the Home Secretary’s own policy is flawed. Cooper said this morning that ‘given the long-standing concerns about the replacement of control orders, the

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls’ credibility mission

The never-ending slew of messages from Labour figures about the party’s ‘clear’ position on high-speed rail was part of an attempt by the party to show that it is a credible opposition that scrutinises policies rather than blindly supports them. But this got rather confusing last week as each ‘clear position’ was a little different to the last. So today Ed Balls tried to set out Labour’s clear position more clearly when he spoke to the CBI conference. And it turns out that this position is the same as it was at the party’s conference. Here is the section on the new line in the Shadow Chancellor’s speech: ‘Labour supports

Isabel Hardman

Cameron aims to set agenda again on HS2

Even though a significant number of Conservative MPs oppose the new high speed rail line, the focus for the past few weeks has been on what Labour plans to do about it, with a new ‘clear’ position coming from the party almost every day. Labour support now looks a little more likely given the language used by Mary Creagh at the report stage and third reading of the preparation bill last week. And while the fuss about Labour has died down a little, David Cameron is wisely seeking to wrestle back the agenda on this project from the Opposition. In a speech today to the CBI, Cameron will use one

Melanie McDonagh

Visar Arifaj is Kosovo’s answer to Borat and Beppe Grillo – only funny

Kosovo held regional elections over the weekend…and it rather looks as if the Serbs in the north of the country, in Mitrovica, stayed away in droves, notwithstanding the instructions from Belgrade that they should participate in the elections. The Serbian government stance is in turn dictated by Coffee Housers’ favourite EU politician, Britain’s own Cathy Ashton. She has intimated that Serbia’s bid to join the EU will depend on its support for the elections, which in turn is linked to the implementation of her EU plan for a Serbia-Kosovo deal. While I was in Pristina I met someone who was involved in the talks that led to the plan, and his assessment was that

Sunday

3 Nov 2013

Isabel Hardman

The big question with Ed Miliband’s living wage pledge isn’t whether it will work

Will Ed Miliband’s pledge on the Living Wage, made in today’s Independent on Sunday, work? Actually, that’s not really the most important question: the experience of the weeks following the autumn conference season is that you don’t actually need a workable pledge to be able to set the terms of debate. The Labour leader’s plan is for private and public sector employers to receive a tax rebate – on average £445, but up to £1,000 – for 12 months for every employee whose pay is lifted to living wage level of £7.45 an hour. He says this will be paid directly through increased tax and national insurance receipts. The big