Politics

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

James Forsyth

Labour conference: Harman rows back from her Spectator interview

On BBC1 Sunday Politics just now, Harriet Harman rowed back from what she told me for this week’s magazine: that Labour would not match Tory spending plans at the next election. The change in position is significant as it shows how Labour—and Ed Balls, in particular—want to keep this option open ahead of 2015. In 1997, Gordon Brown’s commitment to keep to Tory spending plans for two years largely succeeded in reassuring people that Labour could be trusted with the economy. Balls, who was one of the architects of this policy, is said to be interested in doing the same in 2015. The thinking is that it would take the

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband: ‘I’m my own person and I’m going to do it my own way’

Ed Miliband’s main aim for this year’s Labour conference is to show people what makes him ‘tick’, bringing across his personality to voters. He was rather wooden when he appeared on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, and made it clear that this getting-to-know-you conference won’t be about a personality change, but emphasising his own true character traits. He was keen to suggest that he possesses nerves of steel in standing up to the trade unions, who the Sunday Times reports are trying to flush out remaining bastions of support for Tony Blair within Labour. He said: ‘You can’t say at one and the same time that Len McCluskey is

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband hints at realism on NHS reforms

There’s a great temptation for an opposition leader to give answers praising motherhood and apple pie when taking part in a Q&A with members of the public. Especially when that session marks the start of your party’s conference season and your party has set out very few formal policies so far. But Ed Miliband today, as well as announcing crowd pleasers on energy and pensions, caused a bit of a stir by accepting that a Labour government would not ‘spend another’ £3 billion dismantling the frameworks created by the Government’s Health and Social Care Act. He said: ‘There’s no more important institution that expresses, I think, the real soul of

James Forsyth

The next election campaign starts here

This conference season marks the half way point to the next election and we can see the political battle lines becoming clearer. The Tories, as their new poster campaign shows, intends to hammer Labour as the party that has learnt nothing from its mistakes. The argument of the coalition parties, which Nick Clegg previewed in Brighton, will be that the world has changed but Labour is stuck in the pre-crash era with its borrow and spend economics. Ed Miliband for his part wants to run as the man who is ‘on your side’. Today’s policy announcement taking aim at pension charges and the energy companies are designed to resonate with

James Forsyth

Michael Gove accepts his private emails can be searched

Michael Gove is withdrawing his appeal against the Information Commissioner’s ruling that his private emails were searchable under the Freedom of Information Act, I understand. The Education Secretary has decided to do this because the Cabinet Office has concluded that anything that constitutes ‘information’ falls within the scope of the act which removes Gove’s ground for appeal. In other words, if two ministers, or a minister and a special adviser, email or text each other from their personal accounts or phones and that conversation involves any discussion of government business—however, fleeting or peripheral—then those texts are FOI able. I’m informed that new Cabinet Office guidance to this effect will be

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron replies to MPs’ EU demands: exclusive extracts

Three months after it was sent, the Prime Minister has replied to a letter signed by over 100 backbench Conservative MPs calling for legislation in this parliament for an EU referendum in the next. John Baron, who co-ordinated the letter, is not releasing David Cameron’s response as the original message was private, too. But I’ve managed to get my hands on a copy from elsewhere, and here are some of the key points Cameron makes: ‘As we discussed, I do believe it would be wrong to rule out any type of referendum for the future. However, I am concerned that making a legal commitment now to hold a referendum in

Alex Massie

A One Nation Conservative Party Cannot Afford to be the Nasty Party – Spectator Blogs

Jon Cruddas reviews Britannia Unchained in the Guardian today. As you might expect he is not overly impressed by the manifesto penned by a fistful of the Tory party’s “rising stars”. But Cruddas is always worth paying attention to. Anyway, his article reminded me that I’d been meaning to write something about Isabel Hardman’s revealing interview with Chris Skidmore (one of the Famous Five responsible for Britannia Unchained) that Coffee House published last week. Skidmore told Isabel that: ‘The Conservative party has always had this fear of being seen as the so-called Nasty Party. I totally discount that. The fact is you have [in different parts of the world] governments

Rod Liddle

Nigel Farage should sit tight

Should UKIP do some sort of electoral deal with the Conservative Party? This is being talked about at the moment: Cameron pledges himself to a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, Nigel Farage agrees not to field candidates against a bunch of Tory MPs somehow characterised as Eurosceptic. I can see how this would appeal to the Prime Minister, languishing fifteen points behind Labour in the opinion polls. But what good will it do Farage? UKIP has spent a considerable amount of time and energy attempting to convince people that it is not a single issue party, but rather a sort of revamped Monday Club led by nicer people.

Fraser Nelson

The dangerous attraction of wealth taxes

I’ve written about the deceptive attraction of wealth tax in my Telegraph column today, and I wish I was wasting my time. Once, you could say it was an idea so flawed that it stood no chance of getting into government. In the coalition era, there is no such thing.  Tory ministers will wave through an idea they regard as nuts because the Lib Dems want it, and that coalition is about compromise. Political horsetrading has supplanted rational economic debate, and if the Lib Dems want a wealth tax there is a horribly high chance that Osborne may give way — as he almost did over Mansion Tax. Not because

Melanie McDonagh

Labour’s three-line whip on gay marriage is illiberal

Ed Miliband tells the Evening Standard today that Labour will give ‘wholehearted’ backing to gay marriage and says that churches and religious bodies should be allowed to conduct these ceremonies. At the same Labour has let it be known to the Standard that the party is ‘highly likely’ to impose a three-line whip on the gay marriage bill, though it can’t say so for certain until it knows the wording. Same as the Lib Dems, then, but unlike the Tories, who are allowing a free vote. As Mr Miliband says, ‘I think whether you’re gay or straight, you should be able to signify your commitment, your love, with the term

David Cameron’s post-Letterman history and culture primer

Last night David Cameron became the first British Prime Minister to appear on the David Letterman chat show whilst in office. Unfortunately for the PM, the most noteworthy thing to come out of the interview was Cameron’s inability to answer two questions on basic British history. You can listen to the interview below: listen to ‘Cameron’s Letterman quiz, 26 Sep 12’ on Audioboo

Andrew Mitchell and me

In the summer of 2011 I was fortunate enough to land a one-week work experience placement with a government minister. It was Andrew Mitchell. It is no surprise, then, that I have been keeping a keen eye on the newspapers this past week as ‘Gategate’ continues to make the headlines. It only took a few conversations with the then International Development Secretary for me to realise that his compassionate approach towards aid was genuine. There were no cameras or microphones present as Mitchell told me of the desperate situation he had encountered the previous month in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa. Upon hearing that I am of Bangladeshi origin, Mitchell

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband’s big policy problem

Ed Miliband’s speech in Manchester next week is going to be one of the toughest gigs of the party conference season. As James writes in his column this week, the Labour leader needs to give the country a glimpse of what he would be like as Prime Minister. Alan Johnson agrees: in a piece for the Guardian today, the former shadow chancellor says Miliband has ‘to do more to demonstrate that he is a leader’. Johnson writes: ‘But he knows better than anyone that an opinion poll lead is not enough. In any case, the same polls still show David Cameron being preferred as prime minister. While I don’t believe

Steerpike

Barclays severs ties with Bob Diamond

Barclays bank has opened a charm offensive, hosting an autumn drinks party for assorted hacks at its Mayfair offices. Insiders claim that it’s ‘a very British affair’ at the bank these days, with a new regime at the top following Bob Diamond’s departure. Indeed, even the more subtle traces of Diamond have been eradicated. It was a no tie affair in Mayfair, which meant that there was not a lime green silk number – Diamond’s trademark – in sight. It was not always so. I hear that, when the former chief executive was in town, ambitious tyros would whip their own lime green neckwear out of the desk drawer in an attempt to impress

Isabel Hardman

PM mulls speech on EU to calm backbenchers

David Cameron looks set to address backbench concerns about Britain’s relationship with the European Union over the next few weeks. Nick Robinson reports today that though the Prime Minister will not use his party conference speech to talk about Europe, he is considering making a ‘major speech about Britain’s future relationship with Europe’ before EU leaders meet in December. As Robinson points out, Cameron will come under pressure from backbenchers this autumn with votes in the Commons on the European Banking Union. There is also the first meeting of the all-party parliamentary group for an EU referendum in mid-October, and its leader John Baron is still waiting for an answer

Isabel Hardman

Cameron ramps up the rhetoric on Syria

William Hague has a rather awkward meeting in his diary today with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. The pair were due to discuss Syria, and now they can also discuss David Cameron’s provocative comments at the United Nations last night. The Prime Minister told the UN General Assembly that the ongoing atrocities in the country were a ‘terrible stain’ on the hands of the UN. He said: ‘The blood of these young children is a terrible stain on the reputation of this United Nations. And in particular, a stain on those who have failed to stand up to these atrocities and in some cases aided and abetted Assad’s reign of

James Forsyth

Miliband must define himself – before the Tories do it for him

After the tribulations of last year’s conference, few in Ed Miliband’s camp would have dared hope that he would turn up this year as the only major party leader totally secure in his position. For the first time, his main challenge will not be to cut through the chatter about whether he is up to the job or not. As one aide puts it, ‘It’ll feel like his first conference.’ It is certainly his best chance yet to give the country a sense of what he would do as prime minister. I understand that Miliband has two main aims for the next week. The first is to give people a

Hugo Rifkind

If trainers were sold like newspapers, Nike would be giving them away for free

Writing on the Guardian’s website, and perhaps in the paper too, although I’m not wholly sure they still print one (subs, please check), their investigations editor David Leigh has made a bold suggestion for the future of the press. He’s been around, Leigh, and is as dogged a hack as you could hope to find on a newspaper, or whatever, which only prints tits on the arts pages. He’s a bit wobbly on the online side of things, granted (he accidentally gave the entire world access to the full set of unredacted Wikileaks cables by blithely sticking the password in a book), but that’s probably just a function of age.