Politics

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

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the Tories will write their manifesto

This week, David Cameron will announce the creation of a series of policy commissions charged with drawing up policies for the next Tory manifesto. Strikingly, every commission will include on it the chosen representative of the Tory backbenches. The groups will, as I say in the Mail on Sunday, be made up of the relevant Cabinet Minister, a member of the Prime Minister’s policy board and the MP in charge of the 1922’s policy work in this area. The Downing Street Policy Unit will provide the secretariat. Number 10’s hope is that by bringing MPs into this process, they’ll feel more loyal to the manifesto once it is produced. As

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why do the Tories lead on the economy and leadership but trail overall?

One of the odd things about the polls at the moment is that the Tories lead on economic competence and leadership, traditionally the two most important issues, yet trail overall. There are, I argue in the column this week, three possible explanations for this polling paradox. The first possibility is that Ed Miliband is right, that the link between GDP growth and voters’ living standards is broken. A consequence of this is that voters put less emphasis on economic management in the round. Instead, they want to know which party will do most to help them with their cost of living. Then, there’s the possibility that the traditional political rules

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Police drop investigation into Grant Shapps’ former business

One of the stranger rows since the Coalition formed has been over Tory chairman Grant Shapps/Michael Green, and whether or not businesses he ran before entering politics were engaged in unlawful activity. How To Corp, which Shapps founded before passing his share to his wife in 2008, sold a software called TrafficPaymaster, which copied content from other websites so that clients could make more money from Google advertising. Labour MP Steve McCabe complained about the firm to Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer and the Metropolitan Police, and today the Met have responded. The letter, which you can read in full here, says that while legal advice to the Met’s

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Northern voters turn against HS2

When George Osborne first announced his plans for high speed rail, I was all for it. I’ve spent too much of my life on broken-down trains between Inverkeithing and London – and, like many Scots, resented the way that most transport money seemed to be spent in the imperial capital. As I say in my Telegraph column today, the key to staying happy about HS2 is not to think about it much further: don’t contemplate the costs, don’t ask if transport can be helped in other ways. This is what Westminster is doing: all its parties have signed up to the project. They won’t have a proper debate about it.

Sebastian Payne

Nigel Farage wins The Spectator’s HS2 debate — but will the green belt be destroyed? (with audio)

HS2 was given an emphatic vote of no confidence at The Specator’s debate last night, where Matthew Parris and Nigel Farage led their respective teams into battle. This was the debate that Westminster will not have (all parties are officially agreed on the project) which is all the better for us. Farage claimed he loves infrastructure projects in general but hates HS2 as it’s a Westminster vanity project. Farage attempted to marry Ukip’s (inconsistent) support for high speed rail with his ardent opposition to HS2: ‘There are so many things we could do. And yes, let’s look at the Great Central railway project…we are not luddites, we are not backwards. I want

Thursday

The Spectator

High-speed fail

A year ago the electoral strategies of the two main parties seemed set. The Conservatives would stand as the party of prudence, claiming to have saved Britain from a Greek-style meltdown through austerity measures which, though painful at the time, had eventually borne fruit in the shape of a private sector-led recovery. Labour, meanwhile, would stand as the party for public investment, promising to repair what it saw as the damage wrought by cuts. Since then, things have got better for the Tories than they could have imagined. Not only did a threatened triple-dip recession fail to materialise, but revisions to economic data concluded that Britain did not even suffer a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Whips declare victory in HS2 vote

As expected, the government’s high-speed rail preparation bill cleared the Commons this evening, with 350 votes in favour and just 34 against. Only 18 of those were Conservative MPs, which deputy chief whip Greg Hands seems very keen indeed to highlight (see here and here), perhaps to suggest that he’s already working his magic in his new job. But we reported earlier that one of the whips’ strategies was to let any possible rebel have the day off to spend with their children over half term. How family-friendly. What was of more interest was Labour’s position before, during and after the debate. Summing up, Mary Creagh argued that ‘it is we on this side of the House who

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories give Tristram Hunt grief over ‘car crash’ interview

It was quite strange yesterday that Michael Gove’s allies were quite so happy to concede ahead of his first proper scrap with Tristram Hunt that it was going to be a tough fight. They’d never given Stephen Twigg quite so much credit, although the complications of the Al-Madinah free school row and Nick Clegg’s wibbling and wobbling over qualified teachers have made life a little more difficult for team Gove. But the strategy was partly to add to the expectations on the new Shadow Education Secretary, and then to bring them crashing down when he actually appeared. This was of course rather high-risk given Hunt is a pretty impressive performer,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ed Miliband supports the Boston Red Sox. This is all anyone need know about him.

It is, of course, beyond dismal that the Boston Red Sox won the World Series last night. The only upside to this is that it ensured the St Louis Cardinals, the National League’s most pompous franchise, lost. It is a very meagre upside. The Boston Red Sox: insufferable in defeat, even worse in victory. It comes as no surprise, frankly, that Ed Miliband is a devoted member of what is teeth-grindingly referred to as the Red Sox Nation. Dan Hodges and James Kirkup each salute Ed’s willingness to embrace a cause as unfashionable as baseball. Why, it’s charmingly authentic! Better a proper baseball nerd than a fake soccer fan. There is,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour announces its ‘message’ on HS2 is clear… but is it?

It’s a bad sign when a party has to insist that its position on a big policy is clear, but that’s what Labour has done this morning, with a statement from Shadow Transport Secretary Mary Creagh marking the start of the HS2 preparation bill report stage and third reading: ‘Labour supports HS2 because we must address the capacity problems that mean thousands of commuters face cramped, miserable journeys into Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and London. However, Government mismanagement has pushed up costs. Our message to David Cameron is clear. Get a grip on this project, get control of the budget and get it back on track.’ Perhaps Labour’s message to Cameron

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs: here’s how you can get half-term off with your kids

Don’t expect this afternoon’s vote on HS2 to be the biggest insurrection of all time: it is the preparation bill and there are a number of reasons why MPs who could yet oppose the project won’t cause trouble this afternoon. One is the rather technical reason that some want to support this legislation in order to secure adequate compensation for constituents whose property will be blighted until an alternative route is chosen or all three parties agree to invest in existing lines. Another is that some remain to be convinced of the case for the line: the whips have been working rather hard on this, I hear. But the third

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why Labour is getting cold feet about HS2

People express surprise that Labour, having invented HS2, is now getting cold feet about it. But, as with rising energy prices, it is precisely because it invented the policy that it knows how expensive it is. Labour is like a big bank which went bust in the 2008 crisis but has somehow managed to continue trading without being either rescued or wound up. It knows how badly it did, and what a terrible state it is still in, and keeps hoping (with surprising success so far) that people won’t notice. Psychologically and politically, it is important for it to transfer blame for its own actions on to the coalition. Then it

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 podcast: Cameron’s countryside revolt, assisted dying, Terry’s Chocolate Oranges and HS2

Has David Cameron lost the countryside? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Spectator columnist Melissa Kite debates Renewal’s David Skelton on whether the Tory grassroots supporters have been abandoned by the urban elite who run the party. Have the previously hardcore Tories in the Countryside Alliance flocked to Ukip? Will this be a deciding factor in who wins the next election? And how import have house building, HS2 and hunting been? Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth also examine at why the next general election will be the most ideological battle in decades, as well as the problems Labour faces due to its soft polling lead. What has happened with High

Melissa Kite

David Cameron has lost the countryside

When hunt supporters visit the office of a Tory cabinet minister these days, they like to turn up armed and dangerous. And so it was when a delegation from the Countryside Alliance arrived for a private meeting with the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson a few weeks ago, wielding an alarming new poll of their membership. Setting the dossier down in front of Mr Paterson (one of their few allies in government), they spelt out the bottom line: 13 per cent of Countryside Alliance members now intend to vote Ukip in the next general election. Let’s be clear: given that the CA is basically the voice of the shires, that is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The next election will break all the rules

Ed Miliband’s aides used to scurry around the parliamentary estate, their shoulders hunched. A look in their eyes suggested that they feared their boss’s harshest critics were right. But times have changed. Now Team Ed marches with heads high. The success of his pledge to freeze energy prices has given them a warm glow. Five weeks on from the Labour leader’s conference speech, his commitment still dominates political debate. It has boosted his personal ratings, helped his party increase its support in the polls and convinced his supporters that he might be Prime Minister after the next election. In these circumstances, one might expect the Tories to be panicking. But

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer: Arise, Sir Jim, the hero of the Grangemouth affair

You know my theory that Unite leader ‘Red Len’ McCluskey is a Conservative secret agent? Well, having watched events at Grangemouth last week, I’m convinced his Scottish comrades Pat Rafferty, Unite’s Scottish secretary, and Stevie Deans, chair of Falkirk Labour as well as Unite’s Grangemouth convenor, are part of the same subversive cell. Having called an overtime ban over alleged ‘victimisation’ of Deans, they escalated the dispute until Grangemouth’s owner — the Swiss-based conglomerate Ineos — threatened to close the plant. Last Wednesday, having finally understood Ineos was serious, and with Alex Salmond panicking over the potential loss of Scotland’s biggest industrial asset, the Unite men capitulated, committing the workforce

Wednesday

Jill Forsdick

Jam set for frightening, muddy future

Today’s Westminster Hall debate on the sugar content of preserves was positively jammed with puns. ‘The minister seems to have found himself in a sticky situation, or in a bit of a jam,’ said Tessa Munt, who was quite set on raising this subject with fellow MPs. ‘Jam today, please, but I would like to see jam tomorrow as well.’ Does anyone give a damn about the sugar content of jam? Well, according to Munt, the government’s plans to allow manufacturers to reduce the concentration below 60% risks ruining jam forever. It will mean jams that apparently are darker, duller, and muddier. According to Munt, consumer confidence in jam could

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The new press Royal Charter must be ignored

The foxes have voted, and after careful deliberation concluded that they should be in charge of the chicken coop. No one should be surprised by the outcome of tonight’s Privy Council meeting: a group of politicians, masquerading as the voice of crown, has just approved a Royal Charter which gives them power to set the terms under which the press operates in Britain. The decision was taken in secrecy and the newspapers are suing. It’s a royal mess, but one with a very clear solution. This new Royal Charter does not force newspapers to join. It’s a bizarre new club, looking for members. It must now be ignored. What it proposes is

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Ed Miliband’s fuel bill and Labour’s trappist vow on public finances

It was a doddle for Ed Miliband at PMQs this afternoon. The nation watched agog yesterday as the energy companies deployed a handful of silk-lined suits to justify their price hikes to a parliamentary committee. Miliband arrived at the house knowing that victory was simple. He just had to fuse the Tories and Big Energy in the public mind and then sit back and enjoy the results. But he got ambushed by David Cameron who had a surprise document up his sleeve. Miliband’s fuel bill. First Cameron reminded us of his advice to consumers last week. ‘Switch your energy company and save £200.’ This idea had been instantly derided by

Steerpike Steerpike

Mr and Mrs Treasury

Congratulations to Mr and Mrs Treasury. HMT has today announced the appointment of Sharon White, the current Director General over at Horseguards, as Second Permanent Secretary. Who she? Well, she’s none other than the wife of Robert Chote, the chief of the Office of Budget Responsibility. The OBR was set up in 2010 by George Osborne to provide independent analysis and advice on Treasury policy. It is meant to be completely independent, so no pillow talk please.