Politics

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

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

George Osborne’s combination of austerity and social libertarianism is repellent

George Osborne’s spirited bid in The Times (£) earlier this week  to appropriate the Obama victory for the Tories is a curious mirror image of the Labour Party’s arguments to the same effect. Both ignore the reality that the US is the US, not us, and Obama is Obama; formulas for election success aren’t a peel-off/stick-on tattoo, to be transferred between one body politic and another. But the article was interesting for what it told us about the Chancellor himself, quite apart from a slightly nerdy obsession with American elections. The fifth and decisive point in his piece was all about how social liberalism plus fiscal conservatism was the key

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Eurozone enters double dip recession

The Eurozone is now in recession – this, at least, is what is implied by today’s avalanche of dire economic data. Eurostat has not (yet) made this calculation; but Capital Economics has. Take into account the relative size of the Eurozone economies who have declared figures and it suggests a fall of 0.1 per cent for Q3 which, which, coming after the contraction of 0.2 per cent in Q2, would meet the test for recession (two consecutive quarters of negative growth). So, like Britain, a double-dip recession. Greece and Portugal are still in meltdown. The Germans are doing okay, with growth of 0.2 per cent for Q3. This is mainly

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — Britain vs. Germany, kicking the Lib Dems and the BBC 28

Are Britain and Germany heading for an almightily clash over the future of the EU? In this week’s Spectator, Christopher Caldwell argues that Angela Merkel has had enough of Britain’s position and is out to give David Cameron a kicking over Britain’s lack of solidarity with her nation. On the latest View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson explains the significance of about is about to happen: ‘The [problem is the] extent to which Europeans don’t understand us, they can not get that for Britain, it is an issue of sovereignty. They keep thinking well the Brits don’t want to agree the next budget, let’s give them a few sweeteners —

James Forsyth James Forsyth

To win the next election, the Tories must crush the Liberal Democrats

On the wall in Conservative Campaign Headquarters is a clock counting down the days, hours and minutes to the next election. It is so large that anyone who enters for the next 901 days won’t miss it. The party is now on an election footing, as the clock is intended to demonstrate. Grant Shapps, the new chairman, had it installed as soon as he was appointed to inject a sense of urgency into CCHQ’s work. Talk to people there and in Downing Street and you would think the election is only months away. They regard David Cameron’s conference speech as having kicked off a long campaign. They speak of ‘election

Christopher Caldwell

Merkel’s sovereign remedy

‘Europe is speaking German now,’ said Volker Kauder, parliamentary chairman of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party, about a year ago. He was urging Britain to back Merkel’s plans for saving Europe’s rickety banks and state budgets. Last week, the Chancellor herself arrived in London to dine with David Cameron and deliver the message in person. Cameron is in a tricky spot. The summit to determine the EU budget for the next seven years will be held on 22 November. A coalition of opportunistic Labour MPs and dug-in Tory rebels has just passed a non-binding amendment in parliament urging that the government accept nothing less than a cut in

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Welby’s impossible task is to lead the opposition to gay marriage

The new Archbishop of Canterbury has the cleanest-shaven chin I think I have ever seen on an adult male human. It is as if, in an attempt to rid himself of even the vestigial suspicion of facial growth, he has shaved twice with a Gillette Mach 3 Turbo™ razor, and then applied those molten wax strips that women use these days on their front bottoms — for reasons of hygiene and personal comfort, we are assured. I am not saying that Justin Welby actually does this, or has it done to him by some attendant vicar, merely that it looks that way. Exfoliating wax strips are certainly not something one

Wednesday

Nick Herbert

Who are the BBC to question the legitimacy of Police & Crime Commissioners?

What’s the test of success of the Police & Crime Commissioners policy? It is, surely, whether the 41 individuals who will be elected tomorrow succeed in cutting crime and antisocial behaviour, and rebuilding public confidence in policing. This is not, however, the test which the BBC – and others – intend to apply. Their correspondent Danny Shaw told the Today Programme this morning that ‘the initial verdict on the success of the PCC experiment will hinge to a large degree on the turnout ….’ Setting aside the throwaway line that giving people a vote is an ‘experiment’, this is surely a deeply contentious comment. Who, you might say, are the

Steerpike Steerpike

Exclusive: David Cameron accused of misleading over gay marriage polling

One of Britain’s leading pollsters has written to the Prime Minister to rebuke him for misleading his supporters over whether the Conservative Party would suffer in the polls if they legislated on gay marriage. The Spectator has seen an incredible exchange of letters between the Prime Minister, the former Welsh Secretary, Cheryl Gillan, and Andrew Hawkins, the CEO of the polling company ComRes. Since being sacked in September, Gillan has become one of the Prime Minister’s more vocal critics and recently slammed the government’s gay marriage proposals. Responding to Gillan in a letter that was then leaked to the Pink News, David Cameron relied heavily on polling data from ComRes

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Spectator exclusive: Tories ‘top 40’ hit list includes 20 Liberal Democrats

The Tories have a 40:40 strategy for the next election. The aim is to defend their 40 most vulnerable seats and try and win 40 others to give the party a majority. So which 40 are in their sights? Normally, it’s an easy one to answer: you just look at the last election and count which seats have the most narrow Tory defeat. If you’d done this, there would only be 9 Liberal Democrat MPs on the Tory hit list. But the Liberal Democrat vote has changed radically since the last election. So Stephen Gilbert, the PM’s political secretary,  has drawn up a new list, added in demographic factors, current polling

Steerpike Steerpike

The ‘disappointment’ of Andrew Mitchell

Former Chief Whip Andrew ‘Thrasher’ Mitchell has been reflecting on his salad days. In an interview with Cambridge University’s alumni magazine, which one presumes was given some time before the row with a Downing Street police officer which ended his career, Mitchell recalls his arrival at Jesus College in 1975: ‘I came here straight out of the army – literally direct from Brize Norton. I drove up with my four boxes of worldly possessions, unpacked and then lay on the bed.’ That army career (an eight-month short service commission after leaving Rugby School), gets multiple mentions: ‘having arrived straight from the army’ he ‘had very short hair [and] stood up straight.’

Sebastian Payne

They’re nearly here but still, no one cares about elected police commissioners

This time tomorrow, the country will be flocking to the polls to select their first ever police commissioners. Or at least some of them will. Turnout has long predicted to be low, but the latest analysis by Sky’s psephologist Michael Trasher suggests it will come in between 15 and 20 per cent. Such a figure would be the lowest of any election in modern times (outside of London). As the Electoral Reform society notes, the current record stands from 1998 at 25 per cent. Much of the apathy towards these elections can be blamed on poor public understanding of PCCs. Although a marketing push has been underway in the last few

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Another headache for the Tory whips

Today brings yet another set of reminders for Numbers 9, 10 and 11 Downing Street about how difficult maintaining party discipline is going to be. First, there’s The Guardian story about Chris Heaton-Harris trying to use James Delingpole and the threat of him running as an anti-wind farm candidate in Corby as leverage to toughen up the party’s position on the issue. Then, there’s the letter signed by 15 Tory MPs calling on Cameron to make a transferable tax allowance for married couples part of the 2013 Budget. In a sign of where a lot of the trouble will come from in the coming months, the lead signatory to the

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Abu Qatada and the who governs Britain question

No government ever wants to look like it is in office but not in power. This is why this country’s inability to deport Abu Qatada is causing such concern in Conservative circles. David Cameron will be well aware of the symbolism of the issue. In his conference speech this year, he boasted that “For years people asked why we couldn’t get rid of those radical preachers who spout hatred about Britain while living off the taxpayer……well, Theresa May – a great Home Secretary – has done it – and she’s got Abu Hamza on that plane and out of our country to face justice.” Today, Cameron declared himself ‘completely fed

Zac Goldsmith

No ifs, no buts, we need a decision on Heathrow now

The Prime Minister presumably believes we face a critical shortage of airport capacity in London. Why else would he signal a possible U-turn on what was a headline pre-election promise? He knows that one reason west London voters backed the Conservatives in the last general and local elections was his decision to rule out any prospect of building Labour’s 3rd runway at Heathrow. But if that is how he feels, why on earth would he commit to doing absolutely nothing for three years? I am yet to meet anyone who believes an airport review should take anything like so long; indeed the majority of options have been studied to death.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Race, gay marriage and modern Conservatism. Lessons for David Cameron from America. – Spectator Blogs

So, we’ve had nearly a week to digest the results of the American election and contemplate what, if anything, it might all mean for politics there and, naturally, in this country too. Let’s begin with a necessary caveat: the “read-across” from American elections to the British political scene is something that must be handled deftly. If considered with a sensible measure of proportion, however, it can be instructive since some of the challenges facing political leaders in Britain are comparable in kind (though not always in degree) to those faced by their cousins in the United States. Demographics aren’t destiny and policy matters more than journalists sometimes liked to pretend.

David Blackburn

George Osborne, the insubstantial chancellor?

George Osborne’s public interventions on issues other than the economy are few and far between, which is why his article in today’s Times merits attention. In it, Osborne analyses some of the causes of Barack Obama’s victory and then applies his findings to the 2015 election in Britain. On the basis of this article, we can conclude that the Tories’ leading strategist expects to fight the next election in a challenging economic climate against two men, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband (in that order), who he intends to blame for causing Britain’s ills. He will present Ed Balls and Ed Miliband (in that order) as reactionaries who exist beyond the

David Blackburn

Government responds well to energy price fixing claims

It is a busy day on the economic front, with new inflation figures (which are expected to show an increase) to be released at 9.30am and Ed Davey, the energy secretary, to address the House about further allegations (published in the Guardian this time) that the wholesale price of gas has been fixed by traders. The claims were made by a whistleblower, Seth Freedman, who used to work at ICIS Heren, an agency that reports on gas prices. The Financial Services Authority and the energy regulator, Ofgem, have both swung into action to investigate Freedman’s allegations. It is only natural that the government would state its response to the House and

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Order returns to the Tory party on fuel duty vote

Tonight was a good one for the Tory whips. What looked last week like it could have been a tricky vote on a Labour motion to delay the fuel duty rise, turned into a relatively easy government win. There were only nine Tory MPs absent from the vote and every other Tory MP backed the government. Now, the reason there was no rebellion was, at least partly, because Treasury ministers dropped a fair few hints that there would be action on fuel duty in the autumn statement. Robert Halfon, who has led a sustained campaign on this issue, said after the vote that it was ‘Right to wait until’ the

Jonathan Jones

Briefing: Another fuel duty freeze?

It looks like George Osborne will put the planned fuel duty rise on hold again, in order to avoid another Tory rebellion and potential government defeat in the Commons. This battle has its origins in a Labour Budget: that of 2009, in which Alistair Darling introduced a fuel duty escalator whereby fuel duty would increase by inflation-plus-a-penny every April from 2010 to 2013. In his 2011 Budget, Osborne announced that he was abolishing the escalator and instead cutting fuel duty by 1p per litre. From January 2012 onwards, the escalator was to be replaced by a ‘fair fuel stabiliser’, under which the duty rises by inflation-plus-a-penny when oil prices are

Steerpike Steerpike

No playing fields of Eton for Arthur Cameron

The Prime Minister chose his words carefully earlier today when asked if he would be sending his children to private school. Sky News’ eagle-eyed Sophy Ridge reports that Cameron was cross-examined by a pesky school kid at a ‘Cameron Direct’ meeting this morning at the John Cabot Academy in Bristol. Cameron told his inquisitor that he ‘would like’ his children ‘to go to state school’, which is nearly the same thing as saying that they will do. The Prime Minister pointed out that his two children of school age – Nancy, 8, and Arthur, 6, attend state primary schools, which implies that they will continue to do so at secondary level. Only