Politics

‘UKIP is not a party but a state of mind’ wrote the usually excellent Matthew d’Ancona in a remarkably sniffy column a couple of days back. Now, given that UKIP became the second party in the Middlesborough and Rotherham by-elections, perhaps some people will have to consider that the UKIP state of mind is rather closer to that of many British people than that of certain mainstream political parties? After all, yesterday the Liberal Democrats managed to record what is now being anointed the worst ever by-election result by a major political party. The Liberal Democrats managed to poll behind the Respect party, the British National Party and the English

Neil O’Brien’s appointment as a new special adviser for George Osborne has gone down very well in the Westminster bubble, partly because of the Policy Exchange director’s ability to look beyond that bubble. He has written a number of times for the Spectator, and as an insight into the man who will be advising the Chancellor, here are some of his key pieces: In this week’s magazine, O’Brien points to the North’s growing detachment from Westminster, with ‘an almighty 83 per cent of northern voters’ believing that politicians do not understand the real world. He writes: ‘Westminster politicians have repeatedly promised to close the North-South gap, but failed because they

In the end, the threat from smaller parties came to nothing, and Labour easily retained all of the three safe seats it was defending yesterday. In fact, they extended their vote share in all three as well. Respect could only manage a distant fourth in Rotherham and sixth in Croydon North, where former Ken Livingstone adviser Lee Jasper lost his deposit. Instead it was Ukip who came second in Rotherham and Middlesbrough, and third in Croydon North. Both coalition parties saw their vote collapse in all three seats. The Conservatives ended up fourth in Middlesbrough and fifth in Rotherham (their worst results of this parliament), though they did manage to

It shouldn’t come as a shock that Lord Justice Leveson thinks the relationship between politicians and the press is ‘too close’. And he doesn’t think it’s a good thing, stating simply: ‘I do not believe this has been in the public interest.’ (Though he does say: ‘I am, of course, conscious of the limited extent to which the Liberal Democrat party (and its predecessors) have, in practice, fitted within that description.’) Leveson puts three specific allegations at the door of politicians: They ‘have spent a surprisingly large amount of time, attention and resource on this relationship in comparison to, and at the expense of, other legitimate claims in relation to

As trailed on Coffee House over the past few days, Nick Clegg used his own separate Commons statement to declare his support for the statutory underpinning of the new independent press regulator. He said that nothing in the debate that he had heard so far suggested to him that there was a better system of regulation than the one before MPs today. ‘The long grass is the last place that this problem should end up in,’ he said, adding: ‘I am convinced that he has made a case for legislation.’ The Deputy Prime Minister said he acknowledged that ‘we now need to show how that can be done in a

The conference platform was surrounded by screens tinted a deep and easeful blue. At just after 1.30 pm, Lord Leveson ambled forth, sporting a white shirt, a grey suit and a slight stoop. He peered out at the assembled pack of journalists from beneath his curmudgeonly black eyebrows. Then he sat at his desk. Microphones at either end bowed towards him like praying mantises. He began to speak. His quiet voice and his dense, circuitous prose suggest that he’s used to being listened to in awed silence. So he was. Occasionally he slowed the pace and upped the volume suddenly. A court-room device, perhaps, to jog a dozy juror awake. ‘The