Politics Archives

Saturday

28 Sep 2013

We haven’t heard the last of the mansion tax

In Manchester this week, there’ll be much talk from the Tories about how they are gunning for a majority. But in private, many senior Tories will admit that being the largest party in another hung parliament is a more realistic aim. As Matthew d’Ancona reveals in the Telegraph this morning, there has been talk—albeit brief– between the principals about a second coalition. Matt also reminds us how, if it had not been for Cameron’s intervention, a mansion tax would have been imposed by the coalition. I suspect that if there is to be another coalition, the Liberal Democrats would insist on some kind of mansion tax. It has come for

Friday

27 Sep 2013

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron unveils £1,000 marriage tax allowance

That the Conservatives were going to announce a marriage tax allowance at their party conference had to be one of the worst kept secrets in Westminster since the date of the last general election. So they’ve managed to go one better than the £750 allowance proposed by their 2010 manifesto with David Cameron announcing in the Daily Mail tomorrow that people will be able to transfer £1,000 of their personal tax allowance to their spouse or civil partner. Cameron has written in the Mail about his personal belief in marriage, adding: ‘When I ran for the leadership of my party back in 2005, I said that I wanted to do

Sebastian Payne

The Boris Johnson guide to making headlines

Boris Johnson sure knows how to make the front pages. His interview in the latest FT Weekend Magazine — with the cover quote ‘for the first time in years, I wished I was in Westminster’ — is a prime example of his strategy. He wants to remain in the public consciousness without revealing anything new. He’s done it several times before, often in similar ways: 1. After a period of inactivity, give an interview which appears revelatory Boris flits in and out of the spotlight, particularly when he’s busy trying to run London. Then suddenly, he appears front and centre with ‘news’. In the FT’s interview, he says ‘during the

Jeremy Browne

Ed Miliband needs to get out more

They say travel broadens the mind, and Ed Miliband needs to travel more. To China, India and Brazil, but also to South Korea, Mexico, Turkey and Indonesia. If he did he would see the evidence before his eyes of a global revolution taking place. This revolution, and how Britain can best be a contender in the global race, is the biggest fact of life in politics today. To dismiss this phenomenon as a ‘race to the bottom’ is so breathtakingly arrogant, parochial and ignorant that it demonstrates Ed Miliband’s lack of seriousness and suitability as a national leader. The whole world order, that has existed since at least the Industrial

Anthony Wells

Why a Tory/Ukip alliance would benefit Labour

In YouGov’s poll this morning for the Sun the Conservatives had 33 percent support, Labour 40 percent, the Liberal Democrats 9 percent and Ukip 11 percent. While it would be a gross exaggeration to say all of Ukip’s support comes from the Conservative party, they do gain a disproportionate amount of support from ex-Tories and it’s natural for people to add together that Conservative 33 percent and that Ukip 11 percent and think what might be. The reality though may not be as simple as adding the two together. In yesterday’s poll we also asked people to imagine that Ukip and the Conservatives agreed a pact at the next general

Alex Massie

David Cameron ducks a debate with Alex Salmond. This makes sense but is still depressing.

A novice poker player quickly learns – or had better quickly learn – that strength often connotes weakness and weakness is a reliable indicator of strength. But as the stakes increase and the level of play becomes more sophisticated such elementary tells can be misleading. They are false friends in the land of the double and triple bluff. So a novice poker player might conclude that David Cameron’s refusal to debate against Alex Salmond is a sign of weakness. A slightly more experienced player would think this weakness too obvious to be true and conclude that Cameron is holding better cards than he is indicating. And it is true: with

Ed West

Ed Miliband ducks the question. If squaddies are victims, who or what is threatening them?

A country’s laws say much about its people’s character, though not in the way its lawmakers intend. Perhaps the oldest written law in English history, dating back to King Ethelbert of Kent, decreed strict punishments for anyone who attacked Church property, which suggested that either they were very pious folk or, more likely, quite a few people were stealing from churches. The idea of sacrilege predates Christianity; in ancient Rome violence against some officials was punished more severely because their positions were sacred. The modern advent of hate crimes has reinvented this idea, with certain people granted protection because of group victim status, victimhood being the closest thing we now

Carola Binney

Take it from a teenager: 16-year olds shouldn’t be able to vote

Like Charles Moore in this week’s Spectator, I am inclined to wonder whether there is ‘any conceivable good reason’ why 16-year-olds should have the vote. As a teenager interested in politics, I found not being eligible to cast a ballot until this year frustrating but reasonable. The idea that, at 18, I would become an adult, and as an adult I would be able to vote, made perfect sense. Departing from this principle by picking an arbitrary voting age is, as Moore points out, a slippery slope: what about all those politically oppressed 8 year olds? It is never argued that 16-year-olds should have the vote as part of a

Fraser Nelson

To see off Ed Miliband, the Tories need to do better than an Alan B’stard stimulus

A banker of my acquaintance went to Switzerland skiing this winter. A luxury he normally could not afford, but he’d just remortgaged thanks to George Osborne’s Funding For Lending scheme and saved a packet. To his amazement, he was being bailed out by the Chancellor – he didn’t need the money but thought he’d take it if it was going. The cash certainly tricked down – to the après-ski champagne bars of Verbier. The Chancellor’s stimulus makes the cheapest loans only available to the rich (ie, those with at least 40 per cent equity in their house) and like all of the Treasury’s cheap debt wheezes it was just another

Isabel Hardman

‘North-south railway’: the new Tory brand for HS2

When Lord Howell described parts of the North East of England as ‘desolate’ (or did he mean the North West?), he was talking about shale gas exploitation, but he could have more accurately applied the term to the map of Tory support in the region. The urban north hasn’t supported the party since the late 1980s. Seats like Manchester Withington, Newcastle Central and Nottingham North (that last is not in the North, of course, but another example of the urban problem) were once Conservative, but now it’s hard to imagine them ever being safe blue seats again. The Tories can win without the urban North, but as their electoral map

Thursday

26 Sep 2013

Peter Jones

No wonder Damian McBride has attracted the contempt even of Alistair Campbell

Damian McBride’s revelations about back-stabbing in Gordon’s imperial court raise a serious question: what was in it for him? The Roman delator (‘informer’) was not some little squirt from central casting, but a man on the up with an eye on power. The model delator, as the historian Tacitus describes him, was one Hispo, who, ‘poor, obscure, impatient, creeping to the emperor’s cruel nature by his secret accusations, spelled danger to anyone of eminence, and won power from the emperor, but hatred from everyone else. He was the model which allowed imitators to exchange poverty for wealth, to inspire dread in place of contempt, and destroy fellow citizens — and

Charles Moore

Sixteen-year-olds don’t pay tax. Why should they vote?

No doubt it will happen, because the Tories will not dare oppose it, but is there any conceivable good reason why 16-year-olds should have the vote, as first Alex Salmond, then the Liberals, and this week Ed Miliband have promised? The argument is that giving people the vote makes them feel empowered. But the sad fact about human nature is that once you have won a right, you quickly take it for granted. I am part of the first generation to have had the vote at 18 rather than 21. We were quite pleased by this, but less interested than our parents’ generation. Our children’s generation is astonishingly uninterested. If

James Forsyth

Why the Tories need to reunite the Right

One of the most important things about British politics right now is that the left is united and the right is divided. The combination of the Liberal Democrats going into coalition with the Tories and Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour party has seen left-wingers who moved from Labour to the Liberal Democrats during the Blair years go back to Labour. At the same time, Ukip has started eating into the Tory core vote. Combine this with constituency boundaries that hugely favour Labour and it becomes evident that Labour can win with nowhere near 40 percent of the vote. If the Tories are to stop this happening, they need to

Isabel Hardman

Even if Miliband really has shifted left, the Tories are staying in the centre

Is Ed Miliband a lefty, or isn’t he? That’s the big question occupying anyone who isn’t trying to sleep off Labour conference before the next political brouhaha begins in Manchester on Sunday. But since the Labour leader appeared to abandon the centre ground and back his own instincts, little has been written about the effect this will have on the Tories’ electoral positioning. James argued yesterday that Ed Miliband had done politics a favour by making the 2015 election about competing philosophies. Does this mean the Tories can move to the right too? The answer to that question, is, I’m told by Number 10 sources, very much no. The Conservatives

Steerpike

Gordon Brown’s gossip girls

Brown’s boot boys had a reputation for political assassination, karaoke, and curry and lager. But if Damian McBride is to be believed, they’re really just a gaggle of gossiping girls. ‘How much of an appetite for gossip does Ed Miliband have then?’ Fraser Nelson asked of McBride for this week’s Spectator podcast. ‘He’s a bit like Gordon Brown,’ replied the repentant sinner/spinner: ‘He wouldn’t declare that he was interested in that kind of thing. But if you started saying to him ‘well I think so and so is going out with so and so’ amongst his officials he would go ‘really’ and want to hear about it. …the worst of

Fraser Nelson

Damian McBride tells The Spectator: I spoke to Ed Balls every week

When the Damian McBride scandal blew up, Ed Balls was quick to distance himself from his former colleague saying he spoke to ‘Mr McBride’ once or twice and had dealings with him when they worked in Treasury but had not had much contact since. I remember Ben Brogan (then at the Mail) blogging: ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire’ (they have taken his blog down since). It summed up the reaction of most at Westminster. The widespread assumption was that Damian McBride and Ed Balls were key members of a close-knit group of people (eight of them, I later found out) around Gordon Brown. McBride is a guest in this week’s

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22: Fraser Nelson interviews Damian McBride + Labour conference review

How well did Damian McBride know Ed Balls ? Is he surprised at the scale of interest and hostility towards his book? How strong was his relationship with Ed Miliband? Did journalists ever suspect he was feeding them untruths? Fraser Nelson puts all these questions to the former Labour spin doctor on this week’s View from 22 podcast (21:00), in light of his memoirs Power Trip, published this week. Labour conference is now over and three of Westminster’s top political commentators give us their opinion on how it went. Mehdi Hasan of the Huffington Post thinks it was ‘flat, flat, flatter than a pancake’, Dan Hodges of the Telegraph thinks Miliband’s speech

Charles Moore

Why should 16 year olds get the vote? They don’t pay tax.

No doubt it will happen, because the Tories will not dare oppose it, but is there any conceivable good reason why 16-year-olds should have the vote, as first Alex Salmond, then the Liberals, and this week Ed Miliband have promised? The argument is that giving people the vote makes them feel empowered. But the sad fact about human nature is that once you have won a right, you quickly take it for granted. I am part of the first generation to have had the vote at 18 rather than 21. We were quite pleased by this, but less interested than our parents’ generation. Our children’s generation is astonishingly uninterested. If

James Forsyth

Ukip, the gateway drug — how Cameron can exploit Nigel Farage

David Cameron heads to the Tory conference in Manchester in a far better position than he would have dared hope a year ago. Labour’s opinion poll lead is shrinking, the economy is finally recovering and Ed Miliband is running out of time to persuade the country that he’s a potential Prime Minister. Ordinarily, the Tory tribe would be in high spirits — but there is a spectre haunting this conference, which almost no one dares name: Ukip. Nigel Farage’s insurgent party is fast becoming an existential threat to the Tory party. The right in Britain is fractured — and fractured movements don’t win elections. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher romped

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle: Under New Labour, it really was the loony left

There is a little vignette in the first volume of Alastair Campbell’s diaries that makes it abundantly clear that, at the time, we were being governed by people who were mentally ill. It is yet another furious, bitter, gut-churning row involving Campbell, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson and concludes with Mandelson stamping his little feet and screaming: ‘I am sick of being rubbished and undermined! I hate it! And I want out.’ The cause of this dispute was not whether or not Labour should nationalise the top 200 companies and secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry. Don’t be silly. It was