Politics

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

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron continues with his ‘tantric’ European strategy

David Cameron told journalists before Christmas that he had a ‘tantric’ approach to his European policy speech: that it would be all the better when it eventually came. So today he decided to continue tantalising his party and the media by popping up on the Today programme a whole week before he’s due to give the speech, and refusing to give details of what that speech will contain. It’s an interesting strategy, as speaking so far before the speech won’t help the Conservative party remain calm. The next week was always going to be a little frenzied in the run-up to the speech. But here’s what we did learn from

Sunday

Douglas Murray

Harriet Harman confirms Labour are in outright denial over their economic record

An interesting if depressing edition of Any Questions on Friday. Interesting because of Sir Malcolm Rifkind and occasionally because of Simon Hughes. Depressing because of one person: Harriet Harman. There is a theory that the Republicans lost the recent US election in part because the wind they thought they had behind them — the economy — blew against them. This happened because the electorate remembered who was in charge when the catastrophe started and thought the inheritors of the situation deserved more time. The Labour party could stand a chance of getting back into power in 2015. But to deserve this they have to be honest enough to admit that

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Pickles refuses to disclose government number of Romanians and Bulgarians set to come to UK

The Europe debate is raging in the Sunday papers ahead of Cameron’s speech on the matter. There’s mounting concern among Tory Cabinet Ministers that the speech will not go far enough and will simply inflame the situation. One told me, ‘It would be better to make no speech than to disappoint.’ But I suspect that Tory spin doctors will be concerned about a second Europe story this Sunday, Eric Pickles’ confirmation under questioning from Andrew Neil that the government has a number for how many Romanians and Bulgarians are expected to move here from December 2013 when EU transition controls come to an end: listen to ‘Eric Pickles on housing

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband’s economic lacuna

Refusing to publish your 2015 manifesto at the start of 2013 is, obviously, a sensible one. However uncomfortable Labour frontbenchers have felt over the past two and a half years about not being able to respond to the jeers of ‘well, what would you do then?’ from ministers at departmental questions, writing another one of the longest suicide notes in history would have left them in still greater discomfort at the polls. But how do voters know whether to trust you or not when they’ve only recently booted you out of government? Ed Miliband was trying to explain this tension to James Landale on Marr this morning. Miliband: But, James,

Saturday

The Spectator

Mali: a Coffee House briefing

David Cameron has today confirmed that UK troops will offer logistical “assistance” to those of France now fighting Islamic insurgents in northern Mali.  The below briefing outlines developments there so far. 1) The Basics ·       Mali is a landlocked West African former colony of France, with a population of 14.5 million, half of whom live below the poverty line. Some 6,000 French citizens live there. The capital is Bamako. ·       In March last year, a military coup toppled the democratically-elected leader, President Touré. The already weak central government lost control of the North of the country, which fell under the control of Ansar Dine, a radical Islamist group who have imposed Shari’ah

Sebastian Payne

Ed Miliband buries New Labour. Again.

If you didn’t like New Labour much, then you have something in common with Ed Miliband — who appears to have loathed it. He’s just given his first speech of the year to the Fabian Society, the torch-bearers of an older type of socialism, and his audience was left in no doubt that if elected, he would offer a very different type of left-wing politics to that he helped served up when working for the Blair/Brown governments. Miliband has hammered nails into the coffin of New Labour before, notably in a speech in September 2010 just days after he was elected Labour leader. Today, he wanted to make sure the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Britain in Europe crowd were wrong then, so why should they be right now?

Ed Miliband’s speech to the Fabians is being rather over-shadowed today by Lord Heseltine’s attack on David Cameron’s EU policy; the political media like nothing more than a ‘Tories split on Europe’ story. I suspect, though, that Labour won’t mind this too much. Heseltine’s criticisms make the Tories look divided and allow Labour to claim that even Cameron’s own growth adviser thinks his Europe policy is wrong. Of course, there is nothing surprising about Heseltine’s criticisms: he is an ideological pro-European. He wanted Britain to join the euro, something that would have been a total disaster for this country, and even now believes that we will join the euro one-day.

Friday

Sebastian Payne

How David Cameron can save money and boost interest in politics

David Cameron started his times as Prime Minister by saying that ‘the days of big government are over’. But he is still missing a major trick with the internet. The Times has highlighted(£) some of the ludicrous policy consultations undertaken by the coalition, many of which have received no responses at all: ‘Another consultation into Cornish wine received no responses at all. The owners of the Camel Valley Vineyard at Nanstallon, near Bodmin asked for protected status for their award-winning ‘Darnibole wine’. After consultation on the issue failed to stir the public or even rival growers, the wine is now being considered for submission to the EU Commission for protected status. Although

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Leveson Royal Charter plan remains uncharted territory

Strong words in the Lords today about the media and the government’s stance on Leveson, but what are the discussions like between the three parties behind the scenes? Though they started off with some similarly stern words, the cross-party talks on the response to the Leveson report have, all sides agree, been progressing well. Far from the communication breakdown that some envisaged, there has been a relatively pleasant atmosphere. The Lib Dems and Labour, though they disagree with the Conservative line, are both keen to praise Oliver Letwin in particular for the way he is conducting the discussions, and for going away and working on the details discussed in each

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Politics vs. experience

Only in politics could you get someone appointed to a top job with zero experience. Quite often, you hear laments about how the UK has a defence secretary who has never fought, a Chancellor who has never run anything bigger than a raffle, a health secretary who has only ever been a user of the NHS. In America, by contrast, the president gets to pick who he likes — so you can have genuine experts. But there are exceptions to this rule. One is John Nash, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist who runs a charity which has set up a very successful school. He has just been appointed schools minister:

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lessons from the Lords on Leveson

Peers are spending today debating the Leveson report. They’ve been at it for an hour and a half, and will continue debating until 5pm, but the first few speeches have yielded some interesting points to chew on. Labour’s Baroness Jones of Whitchurch devoted a great deal of her speech to the damage that the ‘dark arts’ of the media had done both to private individuals and to celebrities. She described the distress of the victims going through the inquiry, and contrasted it with the response of the government in rejecting calls for statutory underpinning. The terrible treatment of those experiencing terrible bereavement was the reason the Inquiry was set up,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How the mid-term review didn’t quite hit the spot

Bearing in mind that the mid-term review was originally conceived as means of boosting Coalition morale after the collapse of Lords reform, it hasn’t done enormously well. With two more very awkward stories stemming from the review hitting the papers today, the exercise has left Downing Street in reactive mode, rather than functioning as the proactive promoter of proalition politics. These are the main problems with the review: 1. In trying to manage headlines about the review, Downing Street inadvertently created a slew of negative coverage by withholding the ‘audit’ of coalition achievements. The audit turned out to be a very boring and badly applied gloss (Ronseal quality control would

Thursday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 10 January 2013

Poor Nick Clegg keeps trying to change the constitution and keeps being balked (the Alternative Vote, Lords reform). At last, he believes, he will be able to fulfil his ambition to force the first-born child, of either sex, to ascend to the throne, and to be able to marry a Roman Catholic (though not, oddly, to be a Roman Catholic if she/he does actually become queen/king). Perhaps he is carried away by being married to the lovely, fascinating, Catholic Miriam, and is horrified that members of the royal family are deprived of such joys. This speaks well for his ardour. But surely the best constitutional changes of the past 350

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Merkel ally’s referendum warning underlines Cameron’s precarious position

The major gamble that David Cameron is taking with his strategy on Europe is, as James explains in this week’s magazine, that he’s relying on signals from Angela Merkel that she is keen to help him with a renegotiation. She has certainly given a few of those in recent months. But today one of her colleagues in the Christian Democrat party undermined some of the confidence that has been building about Merkel’s position. Gunther Krichbaum is the chair of the Bundestag’s European Affairs Committee, and is leading a two-day cross-party delegation to Britain. He believes a renegotiation would open a ‘Pandora’s Box’, and that Britain should tread carefully: ‘There is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Exclusive: John Nash is the new schools minister

The new schools minister is John Nash. He succeeds Lord Hill who has gone off to replace Tom Strathclyde as leader of the House of Lords. Nash, a venture capitalist, is the sponsor of Pimlico Academy, one of the original Adonis academies, and has been a non-executive member of the Department for Education’s board for the past two years. This means that he already knows both the academy and departmental ropes. Given that he is close to Michael Gove and the other key figures in the department and part of what they are trying to do, there shouldn’t be much lost in transition. I suspect that there’ll be a media squall over the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Three problems with Sir Jeremy Heywood’s ‘plebgate’ evidence

Sir Jeremy Heywood’s evidence to MPs on the Andrew Mitchell row didn’t go down very well at all this morning. Though a powerful man, the Cabinet Secretary is not well-liked by MPs, and before he appeared some had already named him as a central figure in the fiasco that led to the chief whip resigning. The Public Administration Select Committee hearing did little to improve this perception. Here are the main problems with his evidence: 1. Heywood’s investigation was limited. The Cabinet Secretary said he was asked to conduct a ‘very specific review’ of emails about Mitchell’s behaviour from a man claiming to be a constituent of the deputy chief

Steerpike Steerpike

The Fox pulls in a crowd

An impressive turnout in the Churchill Room of the Carlton Club last night for Liam Fox’s New Year drinks. My eyes in the room reports that a smiling Liam claimed he had ‘invited 180 people’ and 162 had turned up. Interestingly, the big beasts came out for the former Defence Secretary, who is said to be eyeing a political comeback. Chancellor George Osborne stopped by, as did Party Chairman Grant Shapps, and Chris Grayling joined the party together with ‘a smattering of Whips’. Though he was left high and dry by colleagues during the scandal that ended his frontbench career in October 2011, his friends were back for the free

Douglas Murray

Nick ‘the fibber’ Clegg faces the fibbed-to

Trying out new career options on LBC this morning, Nick Clegg inadvertently illustrated several serious political truths. A caller claimed to have been a member of the ‘Liberal Democrat’ party – indeed an ex county-councillor in Surrey.  But he said that he had recently ripped up his party membership card.  Happily, however, he proceeded to read from it. Before this morning I had never heard anyone recite this hilarious document.  But if the caller was telling the truth the card says: ‘The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community in

Alex Massie Alex Massie

EU Shocker: The United States agrees with the British Government! – Spectator Blogs

Good grief. Are we supposed to be surprised that senior officials at the US State Department take the view that Britain should, all things considered, remain a member of the European Union? Of course not. Are, however, we supposed to be shocked by Foggy Bottom’s impertinence in saying so? Apparently so. Of course, if the Obama administration were to say that it’s in America’s interests for Britain to leave the EU then I hazard many of those pretending – for surely it must only be a pretence? – to be outraged by this damned interference in our own affairs would instead welcome the Americans’ intervention in the debate and use

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — Britain’s accidental EU exit?

We’re delighted to be back with a bang for the first Spectator podcast of 2013. This week, our political editor James Forsyth discusses David Cameron’s long-delayed speech on Europe with Mats Peerson, director of the Open Europe think tank. Will the Prime Minister manage to keep his party together over a renegotiation? Will Angela Merkel come to Cameron’s rescue and what will the City make of his stance? The Spectator’s editor Fraser Nelson looks at why the coalition mid-term review is a waste of time, while our panel agree that David Milliband’s influence in the Labour Party is completely overrated. And what will happen to Rupert Murdoch’s reforming plans for