Politics Archives

Thursday

6 Jun 2013

This poster is why Number 10 is so confident Clegg will stay solid on union curbs

Given all the coalition tensions over Clegg supposedly reneging on his promise to back childcare reform, it is surprising how confident Number 10 is that he’ll stay the course on the curbs on the trade unions in the lobbying bill. When I asked one senior figure there why they were so sure that the Lib Dem leader wouldn’t change his mind, I was told to remember that every time Clegg went back to Sheffield and his constituency he was met by a Unison-backed poster branding him as ‘Cleggzilla’. This source continued, ‘If you’re on the receiving end of that you’re all too aware of union power. That pain is very

Fraser Nelson

Billy Bragg may not like it, but the Conservatives are the new workers’ party

Ed Miliband argued this morning that the Labour party ought to be more focused on people working. ‘The clue’s in the name,’ he said. The irony is that Labour gave up on working people some time ago, and used the boom to keep five million Brits on out-of-work benefit while foreign-born workers accounted for 99.9% of the rise in employment. The Conservatives, with their revolutionary Universal Credit, want to make work pay – and save lives rather than save money. I tweeted earlier on today that the Conservatives can be seen as the new workers’ party. This drew a response from the two of the left-wingers I most admire: Polly

Alex Massie

Syria: What has changed to make western intervention a necessary or realistic policy?

Peter Oborne is back in his David-Cameron-is-not-Disraeli-he’s-mad mode this week. He accuses the Prime Minister of losing the plot over Syria. As always, the ghosts of Iraq stalk this debate even though the two problems are scarcely comparable. For that matter, I’m not sure it is fair on Cameron to suggest that, after Libya, the Prime Minister has become war-crazy. Yet I was also struck by something the estimable Tim Shipman reports today: Mr Hammond was recently present when backbenchers suggested that the Tory leadership could do with ‘a small war’ to distract attention from party discontent over Europe and gay marriage. ‘It had better be a very small war,’

Isabel Hardman

Childcare row becomes more about Coalition and less about the policy itself

It is not an enormous surprise that Nick Clegg has confirmed that he will block the government’s plans to relax ratios for childcare providers. The Tories working on the plans seemed entirely resigned to losing them a month ago. But what is interesting is that this row is becoming the new boundary reforms for the Coalition. It might not have long-reaching political effects like the demise of those changes to constituencies, but this is now an argument about process, who-did-what-when, and who-definitely-didn’t-say-that-at-all. The Tories are annoyed, once again, that the Lib Dems are briefing the demise of these proposals before the whole package to reduce the cost of childcare has

Sebastian Payne

‘Sometimes a single event will soar out of its immediate context’ — 50 years since the Profumo affair

Fifty years ago, John Profumo resigned as Secretary of State for War following revelations of an affair with Christine Keeler — who was allegedly also involved with a Soviet spy. At the time, the affair was seen to represent the pinnacle of sleaze and contempt for the British establishment, and turned out to be hugely damaging to the Conservative government led by Harold Macmillan. Digging through the archives in the basement of Old Queen Street, The Spectator’s leader from the 13 June 1963 issue, entitled ‘What are we?’, perfectly portrays the shock of the Profumo affair. It also speaks of the malaise hanging over Britain at the time and the immediate impact for

Christopher Howse

Notes on…London’s secondhand bookshops

After seeing the Dalai Lama receive an award at St Paul’s Cathedral, I thought I’d look in at some secondhand bookshops around the British Museum on my walk home. They had all gone. Gone the neat shop in Museum Street where I bought David Knowles’s Great Historical Enterprises; gone the untidy shop in Coptic Street where I first bought a Cresset Press edition of Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Gone the smart end of the market, Frew Mackenzie (next to Cornelissen the artists’ colourmen) where two big folios of the beastly Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time, 1723, 1734, chipped at spine ends, was the

James Forsyth

Want to know what the next election will be like? We saw this week…

Tory MPs were in buoyant mood as they dashed off to the 7 p.m. vote on Monday night. They shouted out hearty greetings to each other, slapped backs and had a spring in their step. They were buzzing in the way a fielding team does just after the fast bowler has hit a star batsman a painful blow on the body. The cause of this excitement: No. 10’s display of brute political force over the lobbying bill. When news first broke of Patrick Mercer’s troubles, the Cameroons could barely conceal their schadenfreude. They were not going to mourn the political demise of Cameron’s most vituperative backbench critic. But the headlines were

Norman Stone

What’s eating Turkey

Ankara ‘Islam, politics, economics — choose two’ is a great line, said by one of my Turkish students, and it would make a good exam question. Tayyip (the name means ‘very clean’ in Arabic — cf. ritual washing) Erdogan (meaning ‘strong hawk’, a Turkish nationalist reference) came to power in 2002 with a very good press. This was to be what the world wanted — a Muslim version of German or Italian Christian Democracy — and for years he gave it that. The rival parties destroyed themselves in silly bickering and corruption, and Erdogan’s party was very successful, with reforms in health and housing that improved the lives of

Rod Liddle

Why did my old friend Patrick Mercer fall for a sleaze sting? I’m pretty sure I know

It’s sleaze time again in Westminster. A few good stings by the broadcasters and the press and we see his lordship ‘Nuclear’ Jack Cunningham coining it by asking for £12,000 per month to make use of his extensive contacts and also his ability to get a table on the terrace of the Lords. £12,000 a month! His dad, Alderman Andrew Cunningham, did three years in chokey for his role in the Poulson affair, back in the 1970s. Two other members of the Upper House were filmed similarly grasping at the loot on offer from the Sunday Times. And then there’s Patrick Mercer MP, who has resigned the government whip and

Wednesday

5 Jun 2013

Harry Cole

Ukip officially excluded from Scottish referendum campaign

Tonight, the ‘cross-party’ Better Together referendum campaign will have their London launch. At an event in the heart of Westminster the begging bowl will go round, and a rallying call to protect the union will go up. But who will be missing? Their heart might be set on a very different referendum, but emails seen by Coffee House show that Ukip are being officially excluded from campaigning to preserve the United Kingdom in 2014. Correspondence between the Better Together campaign and Ukip Scotland reveals that, despite protestations from the latter, the ‘board of directors’ at Better Together are only officially interested in working with the ‘Scottish Labour Party, Scottish Liberal

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: moaning and groaning from Ed Miliband

Thwack! That was the sound of Ed Miliband being knocked for six at PMQs. He didn’t stand a chance. Even before he could get to his feet, David Cameron had put a question to him. Against the rules. But so what? Cameron wanted to know if the Labour leader would withdraw his constant attacks on Tory plans to remove child benefit from high earners? Miliband stood up midst a barrage of Tory jeers, (and a few supplementary squawks from LibDems too). The humiliation of Labour’s U-turn showed on his face. He looked like an elevator-boy with his conk caught in the closing doors. The chamber was in full cry and

James Forsyth

The political centre just moved, to the right

Today must count as one of the most encouraging days for the centre right in British politics in recent times. Labour’s apparent abandonment of universal child benefit is a massive blow to the 1945 settlement. It is akin in significance to when Labour began to accept the privatisations of the Thatcher era. Now, there’s no intellectual difference between declaring that better off pensioners won’t receive winter fuel payments and that better off mothers won’t receive child benefit. But in symbolic terms, the difference is huge. The winter fuel payment is a recent addition to the welfare state, introduced by the last Labour government. It is not fundamental to it. By

Isabel Hardman

PMQs: David Cameron’s attack on Miliband’s U-turns

listen to ‘PMQs: David Cameron’s attack on Miliband’s U-turns’ on Audioboo

Alex Massie

Prime Time for Nationalists: STV screens a 60 minute advert for the SNP

Until now, television coverage of Scotland’s independence referendum has largely been confined to news bulletins and specialist, late night, political programmes unwatched by most of the general public. In that sense, then, the campaign has hardly actually begun. It has not yet found a mass audience. But it will and moving the campaign to prime-time will change it too. That process began last night as STV broadcast the first episode of a three part documentary titled Road to Referendum (viewers in England can watch it here). It offered a potted political and social history of Scotland from 1945 to 1974. (The next episode will focus on the Thatcher Dragon and

Isabel Hardman

How Labour’s change of heart on welfare will help the Tories

That Labour wouldn’t scrap the Coalition’s cuts to child benefit for higher earners isn’t a surprise. It is just one of the many admissions that the party will need to make in the next few years about policies it has bitterly opposed. This week’s admissions that the party couldn’t safeguard winter fuel payment and that it will also introduce a cap on AME welfare spending don’t just represent an attempt to face up to reality, and to show voters that it is prepared to do so. They are also an attempt to see how far the rest of the Labour party can be pushed before the open revolt that everyone

Tuesday

4 Jun 2013

Isabel Hardman

Peers reject gay marriage ‘fatal’ motion

So peers have backed the second reading of the marriage (same sex couples) bill, and against an amendment from Lord Dear calling for the legislation to be dropped. Dear’s attempt to kill the bill was defeated 390 votes to 148, and the second reading passed without a vote. I’ve blogged before that the House of Lords may yet prove to be a more liberal place than it seems on this issue, but those in favour of gay marriage shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet. The defeat for Dear’s amendment is a blow for opponents of equal marriage, but committee stage and report stage will offer plenty of opportunity

Camilla Swift

100 years on from Emily Davison’s death, her battle is not yet won

In April’s local elections, only one in three of those eligible to vote actually did so. What proportion of those voters were women? It’s difficult to get an exact percentage, but in most UK elections, women account for just under half of the turnout. In general elections, female turnout is just over 60 percent. Bearing that in mind, it might seem incredible that 100 years ago today, one woman died so that the rest of us could vote. On the day of the Epsom Derby – 4th June 1913 – Emily Wilding Davison ran out in front of the King’s Horse, a three-year-old gelding named Anmer, and died four days later

The Spectator

The Mike Hancock imbroglio

Mike Hancock last night resigned the Lib Dem whip to fight a court case that includes serious allegations about his conduct. He resigned after a meeting with the chief whip and the party’s deputy leader Simon Hughes about the claims, which he strenuously denies. A party spokesman said last night: ‘Mike Hancock strenuously denies the allegations made in the civil case and intends to clear his name in court.’ But as The Spectator reported, the party has been aware of allegations about Hancock’s behaviour for a number of years. In March, Julie Bindel outlined the leadership’s reaction to a complaint from a constituent: ‘Nick Clegg received a written complaint about the

Sebastian Payne

Michael Gove gets his way with GCSEs…in the end

You just can’t keep Michael Gove down. After beating a very public retreat by u-turning on plans to replace GCSEs earlier this year, he’s announced today the all-new I-level qualifications. I-Levels will be graded 1-8 — with a current A* roughly equal to a 7 — and will take on much of his English Baccalaureate plans, including a greatly reduced significance on coursework and limited resits. The Baccalaureate was a rare defeat for the most fervent of cabinet ministers. Back then, he told the Daily Mail his exam reforms were a ‘step too far’, but it now appears Gove was still determined to get his own way. Following the GCSE

Isabel Hardman

The political battle over A&E will get nastier before the problem is solved

Today’s row about Accident and Emergency has little to do with the issue itself, and far more about one party trying to prove a point about the other. Those rows are the most vitriolic, the most hard-fought, and to the outside world, the most pointless. The King’s Fund today finds waiting times are at their worst level for nine years. What’s going wrong? Each side has its own theories. But what’s significant is that each side is trying to use this row to steal that coveted ‘party of the NHS’ title. This was abundantly clear from Andy Burnham’s response to the report, written in what appears to be a spitting