Politics

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

Hunting the home counties for Conservatives’ ‘swivel-eyed loons’

Oxfordshire The Westminster pundits have all been obsessing over Andrew Feldman’s alleged ‘swivel-eyed loons’ comment about the Tory party’s grass roots. But what about the ‘loons’ themselves? Few in SW1 bothered to ask, so I spent a day in David Cameron’s back yard, hunting them down to find out what they really think of the Prime Minister and Ukip and whether they believe their party chairman’s denials. First up was Keith Mitchell, a Conservative councillor of 24 years. Despite his long history of public service, Keith has never felt greatly appreciated by his party. We chatted about his career over a midday pint at Marco Pierre White’s trendy pub in

Melanie McDonagh

Dan Brown’s latest conspiracy theory – and the powerful people who believe it

You know Inferno, the new Dan Brown novel, the one that’s had such fabulously bad reviews? Well, it’s not really about Dante’s Inferno at all. What it’s really about — spoiler alert — is that old bogey: global population explosion. For the baddie, a genetic scientist called Bertrand Zobrist, the big threat to humanity is the inexorable increase in the world population to nine billion by 2050. ‘By any biological gauge’, he tells the head of the World Health Organisation, Dr Elizabeth Sinskey, whom he has lured into a darkened lecture room, ‘our species has exceeded our sustainable numbers… Under the stress of overpopulation, those who have never considered stealing will kill

James Delingpole

Here’s why Tories shouldn’t do smear campaigns

‘Pick the target, freeze it, personalise it and polarise it.’ This is the best-known of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals, and even if you haven’t heard of the man or the book, you’ll be familiar enough with the technique. We saw a classic example a couple of weeks ago: the way that off-the-cuff remark on Keynes by Niall Ferguson was seized by his enemies on the left to ‘expose’ him as a wicked homophobe. We saw it again in the recent black-ops campaign conducted by Conservative Central HQ against Ukip. What CCHQ did, you’ll recall, is get all its spotty interns to go through the social media pages of every

What’s keeping the banks buoyant?

‘The central bankers have won,’ a senior City stockbroker said to me this week with an air of resignation. ‘There’s no point fighting them. Investors are doing as they’re told.’ And, wow, how they’re doing as they’re told. Thanks to central bank money-printing, cash is sloshing around the global financial system in desperate search of a decent return. There may still be little sign of a real economic recovery: China has slowed, to add to the misery in the eurozone. Yet the Standard & Poor’s 500 index of US stocks is at an all-time high and the FTSE 100 is within a whisker of breaking above its 14-year peak. Even

James Forsyth

The chancellor survived the IMF report, but there’s another challenge ahead

George Osborne has got through the IMF’s report on the UK economy. It is far from a ringing endorsement of his approach but, as Isabel notes, its criticisms are couched in such opaque language that I doubt they’ll have much political impact. I also suspect that the Treasury is not unhappy about being told that it needs to get on with returning RBS and Lloyds to the private sector. Selling even a tranche of these bank shares before 2015 would be politically powerful, aiding the Tories in their attempt to argue that they’ve been clearing up the mess that Labour left behind. The next challenge for the Treasury is the

Isabel Hardman

Cameron leaves the goal open for Clegg and Miliband on tax avoidance

It’s fashionable to say Downing Street isn’t very good at strategy. So fashionable, in fact, that sometimes journalists worry they’re being unfair to the Tory leadership. But today we saw yet another example of the Prime Minister leaving an open goal for not just the opposition party but also his own Coalition partners to score. On Monday, Google’s Eric Schmidt visited Downing Street for the regular Business Advisory Group meeting. He was allowed to leave by the back door, and the Prime Minister’s aides were adamant that David Cameron wouldn’t ‘confront’ the Google boss on his company’s tax arrangements. All he planned to do was to take the group through

Steerpike

Summer party season begins

Lord Bell opened the summer party season last night, with martinis on the back lawn of Lancaster House. It was a reception for the marriage of money and power. Norman Lamont and Peter Lilley were happy to chin-wag with old friends and campaigners. But the government’s big hitters are obviously wary of rubbing shoulders with lobbyists at present; Michael Fallon was the most senior minister I saw. I did, however, notice James Wharton, Tory-boy of the moment. Wharton topped the Private Members’ Bill ballot last week, and he may yet turn the Tory EU referendum promise into law. The man’s going places, apparently. I asked him if he was enjoying

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg: I’m the grown-up in this Coalition

Ever the helpful friend in times of strife, Nick Clegg is giving a speech today in which he will soar above the troubles the Tories currently find themselves in to tell everyone that the two parties will remain manacled together until the 2015 general election. There has been plenty of speculation that this won’t be the case, with Benedict Brogan reporting yesterday that Downing Street has been mulling contingency plans for an early split prompted by Clegg being ousted in a Lib Dem coup. So the Deputy Prime Minister is attempting to put those rumours to bed, while positioning the Lib Dems as the mature party of government. He will

James Forsyth

Gay marriage easily passes third reading vote in the Commons

After all the parliamentary back and forth yesterday, gay marriage passed third reading by the comfortable margin of 366 to 161. Tory sources are briefing that fewer of their MPs voted against at third reading than second reading, though we’ll have to wait for the division lists to confirm that. We probably now have only a couple more Commons votes left on this; there’ll be on any amendments made to the bill by the House of Lords. The atmosphere in the House as the result was read out did not seem particularly historic. There was some clapping from the Labour front bench, but the Treasury bench didn’t join in and

Isabel Hardman

Labour claims credit for gay marriage bill

Some might say it was rather audacious of Yvette Cooper to send an email to Labour activists this evening urging them to tweet something along these lines: I’m proud to be part of @uklabour today and proud that we’re one step closer to #equalmarriage in Britain. — Sheila Gilmore (@SheilaGilmoreMP) May 21, 2013 I feel privileged to be a @uklabour MP today helping to bring #equalmarriage in Britain one step closer — Chris Williamson (@ChriswMP) May 21, 2013   I’m proud to have played a small part in helping #equalmarriage come a little closer with @kategreensu — Chris Bryant (@ChrisBryantMP) May 21, 2013   But then why not, if the

Cameron has reached the tipping point

The combination of complacency and incompetence that seems to have afflicted the Conservative Party is a wonder to behold. Janet Daley wrote at the weekend of her frustration at David Cameron saying he is ‘relaxed’ about the situation. She is right that welfare, education and the criminal justice system are in need of reform, although I am not convinced this government is going about it in the right way or with the right personnel. The competence factor is becoming a huge issue for this government, across individual departments, in the management of the parliamentary party and the wider membership (swivel-eyed or staring straight into the headlights). The Labour Party managers

Isabel Hardman

The Tory grassroots were feeling neglected long before ‘swivel-eyed loons’ claims

Whether or not Lord Feldman made his ‘mad, swivel-eyed loons’ comments, the story has given the Conservative grassroots the perfect opportunity to tell David Cameron, via the media, how unhappy they are with the way they’re treated. On the World at One, Conservative Grassroots chair Robert Woollard complained about ‘some very derogatory comments from some of [Cameron’s] Praetorian Guard’. He said: ‘I’m not going to repeat them here. You’ve heard about the ‘mad, swivel-eyed loonies’ – it doesn’t surprise me at all because some of us, not just us in Conservative Grassroots but some in constituencies that we talk to are quite used to this treatment and, frankly, there is

Rod Liddle

Swivel-eyed loons are a feature of British democracy

I’d just like to point out, having been a journalist for many years and having met these people, and also having been a member of the Labour Party for more than thirty years, that the constituency activists of every party are, in the main, swivel-eyed loons. They are endlessly busy, busy, busy, little monkeys, obsessive and shrill. This is the problem with democracy; the people who involve themselves in it most actively are the very people you would never wish to see near the levers of power. I’m an irregular attender at meetings these days, but back in the 1980s I went every week or so to my local ward

Isabel Hardman

Inflation falls: but will voters notice?

Today’s drop in inflation is good news for the government. The Consumer Prices Index grew by 2.4 per cent in the year to April 2013, down from March’s 2.8 per cent, with the biggest falls in transport costs, particularly petrol and air fares. Prices for food, alcoholic drinks and tobacco saw the biggest rises, with a 0.7 per cent rise for food, and a 2.3 per cent hike for booze and fags. A continuing rise in the cost of the former is less reassuring. But this marks the first time growth in inflation has slowed since the autumn of 2012. While ministers will hope that this continues, they also know

Alex Massie

Will Nigel Farage and UKIP help ditch Alex Salmond?

Yesterday’s Survation poll reported that UKIP (22%) are, for the moment, just two points behind the Tories (24%) and therefore and given the margin of error in these things possibly tied or even ahead of the senior governing party. Blimey!  It is understandable, therefore, that the idea we are on the brink of a Great Realignment in British (or rather English) politics is popular today. See Iain Martin’s Telegraph column for an excellent example of this. He says it feels as though the right has split irrevocably. He may be right! British politics has been extraordinarily stable since the Labour party supplanted the Liberals. Nothing, really, has changed. At least,

Isabel Hardman

Cameron’s tax tightrope

David Cameron didn’t spend yesterday wringing his hands in Downing Street about the progress of his gay marriage bill: he was meeting his business advisory group. He allowed Google CEO Eric Schmidt to sneak out via the No 10 back door, a rather awkward metaphor for the company’s tax arrangements. The Prime Minister is well aware of rising public anger about tax avoidance, and the rise of Margaret Hodge, who has a Calvinist preacher tendency in her role as chair of the Public Accounts Committee. His spokesman yesterday explained that ‘we don’t talk about individual companies’ tax affairs’ (forgetting perhaps that Cameron managed to irritate Starbucks when he told multinationals

Isabel Hardman

MPs defeat ‘wrecking amendment’ as Cameron tries to patch things up with grassroots

MPs have just defeated Tim Loughton’s ‘wrecking amendment’ to the Same Sex Marriage Bill by 375 votes to 70, after approving the Government and Labour amendment (more on how that works here) which will introduce a consultation on heterosexual civil partnerships. Those in favour of gay marriage will, if this Bill does make it out of Parliament and into law (and we still have all the stages in the Lords to go through) give David Cameron credit for continuing to push when many faces were set against him. But Labour has played a very impressive game today, appearing to save the legislation by making a tweak to an existing government

James Forsyth

David Cameron should be out there making the case for gay marriage

David Cameron’s approach to the gay marriage debate inside his own party has been to take a low profile. The passion and eloquence he displayed on the subject in his first conference speech as leader, has been replaced by a strategy of keeping his contributions on the matter to a minimum. This is, I think, a pity. There is no better Conservative advocate of the case for it than the Prime Minister. The crucial point about Cameron’s position, and why he might have been able to carry some more socially conservative minded people with him, is that he starts from the position that marriage is one of the most important,

Isabel Hardman

Labour tries to defuse civil partnerships row – by backing government amendment

This morning, Labour was facing a rather awkward choice on the Same Sex Marriage Bill. This afternoon, the opposition party has turned the situation around so that it appears to be on the front foot. Initially the party needed to decide whether it would back Tim Loughton’s ‘wrecking amendment’ to introduce heterosexual civil partnerships, or whether to take heed of Maria Miller’s pleas and reject it. The first would have demonstrated that Labour does want equality in civil partnerships as well as in marriage. The second would have demonstrated that the party doesn’t want to delay the first gay wedding any longer. But Yvette Cooper announced on the World at