Politics

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

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Whips keep it casual

The Tory whips come in for plenty of criticism when things are going wrong in the party. But you can’t accuse them of taking their fingers off the sartorial pulse. Mr Steerpike has seen an email sent out to all Conservative MPs explaining the meaning of that terrifying term ‘smart casual’: Following Keith Simpson’s recent missive about smart casual dress, some considerable confusion has arisen about the sartorial requirements of being so attired. For the avoidance of all confusion, the attachment is the definitive statement of what is “smart casual”. Greg Knight Vice Chamberlain Attached:

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Andrew Mitchell is still waiting for justice

A week ago next Thursday marks the first anniversary of the Curious Incident of the Chief Whip in the Night-time. The chief whip, Andrew Mitchell, did nothing — or very little — in the night-time. That was the curious incident. There is not the slightest evidence that he called the policemen on the gates of Downing Street ‘plebs’; and this has now been admitted. It is clear, with plenty of evidence on Channel 4 News, that some police, with some accomplices, spread a story against Mr Mitchell, possibly to protect themselves against an expected complaint from him after they refused to let him through the gates on his bicycle. As

Ross Clark Ross Clark

End of the party – how British political leaders ran out of followers

If Cyril Northcote Parkinson was still around he would devise a law for party political conferences: that the significance of what is discussed in the conference centre is inversely proportional to the difficulty of getting in. Time was, when politicians stayed in shabby hotels in Blackpool and wandered along the seafront to the Winter Gardens to debate with constituency members, that conferences meant something. Over the next three weeks anyone visiting Glasgow, Manchester or Brighton, even if not involved in a party conference, will be inconvenienced by a security buffer which resembles the former green zone in Baghdad. But will anyone care what goes on inside? Party conferences have become

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Nick Clegg’s secret reasons to be cheerful

His party may be struggling to reach double digits in the polls, but Nick Clegg is entitled to feel smug as he heads to Glasgow for this year’s Lib Dem conference. This gathering, the penultimate one before the general election, has long been circled in Westminster diaries as the moment when a challenge to his leadership would emerge. But Clegg will arrive free from any threats to his position. Not even the coalition’s defeat over Syria has destabilised Clegg. If, in May 2010, you had told a Liberal Democrat that their leader would back the coalition going to war in the Middle East without a UN mandate and then lose

Nigel Farndale

The importance of not being called Nigel

You know what the real problem with Nigel Farage is? It’s not his politics, for they are a matter of personal taste. No, it’s something more objective. His name. And not that improbable surname, either, the one that makes him sound like a Bond villain. It’s the Nigel. There’s a passage in Julian Barnes’s novel Talking It Over which summarises the problem nicely. One of the characters, Oliver, used to be called Nigel until he changed his name by deed poll. ‘You can’t go through the whole of your life being called Nigel, can you?’ he explains. ‘You can’t even go through a whole book being called Nigel. Some names

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The EU and UN have made fools of themselves

Today has not been a good day for multinational organisations. Both the European Union and the United Nations have made fools of themselves. José Manuel Barroso’s claim that a European renegotiation would lead to another war on the continent revealed the warped mindset of the Eurocrat class. Indeed, if we’re talking about what’s likely to cause extremism to rise in Europe, austerity imposed on countries from the outside seems a more likely bet than powers flowing back to democratically elected national governments. The United Nations’ embarrassment came from the absurd claim of its official Raquel Rolnik that the so-called bedroom tax, which isn’t actually a tax, infringed ‘human rights’. Now,

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: All Miliband has left is food banks and class war

Tough times for Ed Miliband. He looked pretty glum at the start of PMQs. Was he wishing that Syria had developed in a different direction? A few weeks of statesmanlike ‘unity and consensus’ – while Assad got his wrists slapped by a volley of Tomahawks – might have suited him better. Instead he was forced onto the domestic agenda. And it’s turning into quicksand. All his best accusations have been sucked into the mire. He can no longer mention the following: flat-lining, Plan B, the double dip, the bedroom tax, the benefit cap, cutting too fast and too deep. As for his trustiest platitude – ‘a recession made in Downing

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Cameron lands the blows with cheesy jokes

David Cameron managed to win Prime Minister’s Questions today by shoehorning in a series of smart one-liners about Ed Miliband’s leadership. It says a lot about how the Prime Minister has managed to recover quite impressively from his defeat over Syria that he has been able to continue his ‘weak’ attack line. On that Thursday night in the Commons when the government lost its vote, it seemed that Cameron was dangerously weakened. Today he threw out jokes about Miliband having ‘folded faster than a Bournemouth deck chair’, that the Labour leader ‘went to Bournemouth and he completely bottled it’ and that ‘he told us it was going to be Raging

John O'Neill

PMQs audioblog

Ed Miliband opened with unemployment, then followed up on living standards, attacking Cameron and Osborne for their ‘hubris and total complacency’. listen to ‘Cameron invites ‘constructive suggestions’ from Ed Miliband at PMQs’ on Audioboo Gloria de Piero found herself on the order paper this morning, and wondered – what would twitter ask the PM? But it was David Cameron who crowd-sourced his answer: listen to ‘Is Gloria happy with Ed?’ on Audioboo Later on, Cameron, who seemed to have the best lines, replied to a rather dry planted question about trading standards with another jab at Ed’s union links, saying that he had ‘folded faster than a Bournemouth deck chair’.

David Skelton

Margaret Thatcher: friend of the unions?

When Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 election, she was helped into Downing Street by what many of today’s politicians would regard as an unlikely group of Tory voters. The votes of trade unionists were crucial to Margaret Thatcher beating Jim Callaghan in 1979. And this didn’t happen by accident – Mrs Thatcher, the one-time President of the Dartford branch of Conservative Trade Unionists had made active efforts to appeal to those moderate trade unionists who felt let down by their leaders. After becoming leader in 1975, she set out to revive Conservative Trade Unionists. By the 1979 election, the organisation had 250 branches and was able to hold a pre-election

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Eeyore Cable undermines George Osborne by echoing his comments on the economy

Poor Vince Cable. He just can’t help but brim with joy about the economy. He’s often spotted skipping across Parliament square to the Business department, humming ‘Oh, Happy Day!’ under his breath at the latest set of GDP figures. George Osborne and Cable’s Tory colleagues are always having to tell Vince to calm down a bit: he doesn’t want to seem too complacent about the clouds lifting from the economy. But even such a joyful Lib Dem as Dr Cable must have been a little dispirited to read that everyone has written his speech this morning up as an attempt to undermine George Osborne. ‘I think George Osborne’s comments the

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans resigns following sex charges

The Conservative MP for Ribble Valley Nigel Evans has resigned as Deputy Speaker following an announcement he will be charged with offences including sexual assault, indecent assault and rape. The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement this evening: ‘Following an investigation by Lancashire police, the Crown Prosecution Service has received a file of evidence in the case of Mr Nigel Evans MP which concerns allegations of a sexual nature. ‘After careful consideration, we have concluded that there is sufficient evidence and that it is in the public interest to prosecute Mr Evans. Lancashire Constabulary has therefore been authorised to charge two counts of indecent assault, five counts of sexual assault

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Well said Ian Katz. It’s Labour who should be ashamed, not you

I see the new Newsnight editor, Ian Katz, is in trouble for having ‘tweeted’ about the performance of one of the programme’s guests in an ungallant manner. He described the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rachel Reeves, as being ‘boring snoring’ during her interview with Paxo. The Labour Party has demanded an apology and suggests that Katz’s comments ‘undermine the neutrality of the programme’. As a party member, could I just be allowed to say ‘piss off Labour?’  Katz’s tweet – and why he feels the need to utilise this medium Christ alone knows – revealed no such thing. In fact, I suspect Katz is a Labour supporter. He

Sebastian Payne

Who donates what to the Labour party?

Who donates to Labour? It’s a question asked countless times since Ed Miliband began to reconsider his party’s links with the trade unions but there has been much confusion over the numbers, in particular the importance to Labour of union funding. Here’s a quick guide to who donates how much to the Labour party. 1. How much do Labour receive in donations? In 2012, Labour received £19 million in donations, which is roughly the same as the year before and in 2008, a similar point in the electoral cycle. It’s still down from £25 million at the last general election: For comparison, the Conservative party received £14 million in 2012

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband avoids a showy showdown with the unions

When Ed Miliband peaks, he really knows how to do it. His speech at last autumn’s Labour conference was magnificent. Given the pressure on him to convince the unions to back his reforms to their links to the Labour party, you’d expect he’d have picked today’s address to the Trades Union Congress conference to deliver another blinder. Sadly today was not a peak in the range of Miliband speeches. Sure, he produced a vaguely funny joke about a chap called ‘Red Ed’ who was in fact the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Stanley. Miliband told the conference that Stanley was ‘the man who first legislated to allow trade unions in this

Tristram Hunt

Labour must make itself a movement again

‘As you enter the dock the sight of the forest of masts in the distance, and the tall chimneys vomiting clouds of black some, and the many coloured flags flying in the air, has a most peculiar effect … Nearly everywhere you meet stacks of cork, or else yellow bins of sulphur, or lead-coloured copper-ore. As you enter this warehouse, the flooring is sticky, as if it had been newly tarred, with the sugar that has leaked through the casks.’ This was how Henry Mayhew described the 90 acres of London docks – stretching across St George, Shadwell and Wapping – in the 1850s. It was where the riches of

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ed Miliband vs the Trade Unions (and why Tories should hope the Unions win)

There is something distasteful about the latest Tory assault on the Trade Union movement. I hold neither candle nor torch for Len McCluskey and am, generally speaking, opposed to the kinds of policies much-favoured by Union bosses (sorry “Barons”). But the Tory attack on organised labour still jars. It may well be that the unions do a poor job of representing the interests of their members. It may also be that they have an outsized influence on the Labour party. These seem matters for union members and the Labour party to decide for themselves. It’s not really anyone else’s business. And, to be frank, the distinction between attacking Union bosses

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Treasury questions: George Osborne takes aim at Labour’s record in opposition

Listen to Osborne and Balls’ exchange at Treasury questions here:- listen to ‘Osborne at Treasury Questions: ‘We’re enjoying this’’ on Audioboo ‘I hope this is not our last encounter across this despatch box,’ George Osborne said rather slyly to Ed Balls this morning at Treasury questions. ‘Because we are enjoying it.’ The Tories were in a good mood, because they’ve decided that they can now start to talk about the economic clouds lifting, and this means that they can say that everything Labour has ever said is wrong, wrong, wrong. ‘Cheer up Ed!’ Sajid Javid shouted cheerily at the shadow Chancellor as another Tory MP used their question to say