Politics Archives

Friday

21 Sep 2012

Can UKIP become a serious political party?

UKIP members are gathering for their annual conference in Birmingham today and frustratingly for the party, it remains a niche political event. Unlike the media explosion for the other three political gatherings, UKIP’s two day rally will have no wall-to-wall TV coverage and little in-depth analysis of the speeches. But since Nigel Farage gathered his flock last year, Britain’s other party has seen its profile raised substantially. Martin Kettle admitted in the Guardian this week that UKIP are now a ‘force to be reckoned with’ who could become kingmakers that will ‘shape the 2015 election and the politics of Britain and Europe for a generation’. Polling suggests they are indeed a significant political

Thursday

20 Sep 2012

Jonathan Jones

What are the key states for Obama vs Romney?

It’s becoming clear which will be the battleground states of the 2012 US Presidential election. With less than seven weeks to go, just nine states look competitive: Colorado and Nevada in the Southwest; Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin in the Midwest; Florida, North Carolina and Virginia in the South; and New Hampshire in the Northeast. Of the safe states, Barack Obama can count on 18 (plus DC), against Mitt Romney’s 23. Romney’s path to victory looks very tough for two main reasons. First, as the below map (which I produced at 270towin.com) shows, the safe states give Obama 237 electoral votes to Romney’s 191. That means Obama needs just 33 of

Isabel Hardman

The pupil premium and profit-making schools could be a winning combination

Ask any Liberal Democrat what their party has achieved in government, and the answer will involve the words ‘pupil premium’. It was a key manifesto pledge in 2010, and is one of the policies that the party is proudest of from its time in government so far. It’ll be sure to come up time and time again in speeches in Brighton, too. Which is why it’s rather awkward that with two days to go to the Liberal Democrat autumn conference, Ofsted has revealed ‘disturbing findings’ about the way schools are actually administering the premium. Chief Sir Michael Wilshaw said the extra £600 per pupil from a disadvantaged background was largely

Fraser Nelson

Nick Clegg’s viral apology video

The free publicity which comes with party political broadcasts is more powerful than the broadcast itself: nowadays, our MPs hope their messages will go viral. Nick Clegg’s apology has: and how. The below video has his voice being digitally altered (like Cher’s in Believe) but the result is far catchier. It demands to be watched: The video-maker has done Clegg a favour. Only the most cold-hearted cynic would feel a tinge of sympathy for him here, which may be been the idea behind the video. What Tony Blair called the ‘masochism strategy’ where you apologise and get visibly beaten up, ideally by a pensioner, until voters start to pity you.

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — Nick Clegg’s martyrdom, the personal statement scam and being sacked by David Cameron

Will Nick Clegg’s political career come to a crashing end in tandem with the end of the coalition? In this week’s magazine, James Forsyth examines how the Lib Dem leader has put the coalition cause ahead of both his party and own political career. On the latest View from 22 podcast, James examines the Lib Dem’s strategy shift back to making the coalition work: ‘I think this will be the last Lib Dem conference in which Nick Clegg receives a relatively warm reception. I think even the critics in his party know it’s far too early to change leader. Nick Clegg has decided to double down on coalition. Just this Monday, he

Wednesday

19 Sep 2012

The Spectator

Whitehall’s billions

Two weeks ago Justine Greening was demoted for the offence of sticking to the Conservative manifesto on which she was elected and refusing to back down over the proposal for a third runway at Heathrow. This week she has shown that she is far from being demoralised by the experience; in fact, it might turn out to be the making of her. She has grasped in a fortnight what seemed to evade Andrew Mitchell, her predecessor at the Department for International Development (DfID), for two-and-a-half years. She has taken the trouble to examine her department’s swollen budget and ask herself: is all this money really being wisely spent? The revelation that

Peter Jones

European funding

To prop up the euro, a German court has agreed to allow Germany to fund the European Central Bank (ECB) so that it can bail out failing states. But it has imposed a cap on Germany’s contribution which only the Bundestag and Bundesrat together can overrule. Will the two parliaments ever do it? Certainly Themistocles would. By 483 bc, the lead mines at Laurium on the southern tip of Attica (Athens’s hinterland) had produced an over-abundance of silver to the tune of 100 talents. The people’s Assembly (male Athenians over 18) debated a motion to copy the citizens of the fabulously gold-rich island of Siphnos and divide it up among

James Forsyth

Clegg’s attempt to repair tuition fee damage

Going into the last election, many of Nick Clegg’s closest allies and, I suspect, the Lib Dem leader himself found the tuition fees pledge embarrassing. It was precisely the kind of opportunistic policy that they had tried to wean the party off. But when it came to the election and it was still, despite their best efforts, party policy they decided to run with it. As soon as the election results came in, it was clear that Clegg’s exploitation of the subject was going to cause him problems seeing as both Tories and Labour were committed to the Browne review which was almost certain to come out for higher fees.

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg apologises for tuition fees pledge

In a video message released this evening, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg apologised for his party’s pre-election pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees. Clegg said: ‘We made a promise before the election that we would vote against any rise in fees under any circumstances. But that was a mistake. It was a pledge made with the best of intentions – but we shouldn’t have made a promise we weren’t absolutely sure we could deliver. ‘I shouldn’t have committed to a policy that was so expensive when there was no money around. Not least when the most likely way we’d end up in Government was in coalition with

James Forsyth

Lib Dems committing to radical future for the coalition

Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander, David Laws and a couple of Lib Dem advisers spent Monday at Chequers. They were there to discuss the final details of the coalition’s mid-term review with David Cameron and George Osborne. I understand that this document will now contain new coalition commitments on the economy, education, welfare, childcare and social mobility. As I say in tomorrow’s Spectator, I suspect that this meeting tells us more about the state of the government than what Clegg will say in Brighton or Cameron in Birmingham. It is further evidence that after a period of coalition paralysis, the two leaderships have decided that their best hope is to go

Jonathan Jones

Polls show big leads for Labour, but bad ratings for Ed Miliband

Over the past two days, we’ve had polls from four different pollsters, and all of them show big leads for Labour. Yesterday, Populus gave Ed Miliband’s party a 15-point lead — the largest lead the pollster has ever shown for Labour. Today, Ipsos MORI shows Labour ahead by 11 points and TNS BMRB have them up by 12. The latest YouGov tracker gives Labour a nine-point lead, although averaging their polls over the last week makes it more like ten points. The precise margins may be different, but all of these results would — if replicated in a general election — result in a large Labour majority and hand Ed

Douglas Murray

Mitt Romney’s ‘gaffe’ is nothing of the sort

The papers today are full of the latest alleged ‘gaffe’ by Mitt Romney. It has become a staple of US election coverage that any Democrat’s foreign policy fumble is a ‘mis-speak’ while any Republican saying something even mildly contentious – as opposed to wrong – is a world-class clanger which shows them to be unfit for office. Today’s Romney ‘gaffe’ relates to his reported comments on the Middle East. This is not exactly a region in which the Obama administration has covered itself in glory. But even as Obama’s policy failings are being felt, it is Romney who is being lambasted for, among other things, his claim that ‘the Palestinians

The Spectator

Sacked minister spills the reshuffle beans

In tomorrow’s Spectator, an anonymous former minister recounts their experiences of David Cameron’s reshuffle. They describe the walk in to see the Prime Minister – through the back entrance where the cameras cannot see ministers arrive – and the way the Prime Minister tries to placate them by explaining that there are ‘303 someone elses’ that he needs to keep happy. You can read the full copy below, or in the magazine from tomorrow: Divorce is something I have yet to experience personally but Dave’s reshuffle has set me up nicely for any future threat to my own nuptial bliss. Out of the blue comes the call. It’s Dave’s office.

Jonathon Porritt

James Brokenshire’s assurances on the snooping bill only raise further concerns

What do you do if a regulator has failed? Leave them unreformed and instead give them greater powers? That is the line Home Office Minister James Brokenshire is arguing. The regulator in question is the Interception of Communications Commissioner and the powers relate to online monitoring. For the Draft Communications Data Bill would not only give the government far more scope to monitor what we do online, but Brokenshire also argues we should be reassured that a large part of these new powers would be monitored by that Commissioner. However, take a look at the record and what you see is a failed regulator. Most damningly, in 2011 the New

Isabel Hardman

Re-arranging the desk chairs on the Titanic

New Tory Chairman Grant Shapps has taken the dramatic step of reinstalling the general election countdown clock in CCHQ to remind staffers that there are only 959 days until voters deliver their verdict on the Conservatives’ time in government. Shapps has also got something else planned, which is to rearrange the desks. I understand that he told the 1922 committee last week that he wants to make Tory party press officers sit next to the researchers who cover each specific policy area so that they can feed one another information effectively. Currently they sit on different banks of desks. One CCHQ veteran points out to me that Shapps’ exciting desk

Isabel Hardman

Boris continues to push Heathrow campaign

As much as conference planners would wish it otherwise, one of the biggest stories from the Tory conference will be Boris Johnson’s speech and fringe appearance. It would be a surprise if he didn’t take at least one opportunity while in Birmingham to flag up his ongoing campaign against a government U-turn on Heathrow expansion, even if it were an apparently spontaneous answer to a question from a member of the fringe audience. As I reported last week, he has been looking for a Conservative MP to lead that campaign, and the Standard’s Peter Dominiczak then revealed that the Mayor has also approached MPs from other parties. Today the Mayor

James Forsyth

The coalition’s tax trade-off

James Kirkup has an intriguing story today about how the Liberal Democrats are prepared to see inheritance tax scrapped, or the threshold raised, in exchange for the introduction of higher council tax bands. This suggests a way in which the Liberal Democrats could claim to have got a ‘mansion tax’ while the Tories could say they had made progress on their commitment to raise the inheritance tax threshold to a million pounds. In the run up to the Budget, the Chancellor was prepared to accept higher council tax bands in exchange for scrapping the 50p rate. However, the Prime Minister and the local government secretary Eric Pickles were both opposed

Chris Skidmore

Richard III: a ceremony fit for a king?

Chris Skidmore, Conservative MP and historian, explains the plans already in place for the burial of Richard III. I, here, whom the earth encloses under ostentatious marble, Was justly called Richard the Third. I was Protector of my country, an uncle ruling on behalf of his nephew. I held the British kingdoms in trust, although they were disunited. Then for just sixty days less two, And two summers, I held my sceptres. Fighting bravely in war, deserted by the English, I succumbed to you, King Henry VII. But you yourself, piteously, at your expense, thus honoured my bones And caused a former king to be revered with the honour of

Isabel Hardman

Gove develops interim GCSE plan

One of the biggest gripes about Michael Gove’s GCSE reforms from those on board with the changes is that they won’t come into effect until after the 2015 election. Supporters wonder why there is such a lag between ministers reaching agreement about scrapping an exam that they currently believe is not fit for purpose, and pupils sitting down to take the new qualification. The answer is that it was part of the deal that was reached with Nick Clegg, who was initially upset about the direction of the changes. The Independent reports today that Gove does have an interim plan, though. To underline the fact that he has little faith

James Forsyth

The passion of Nick Clegg

In the days before conference, a party leader is usually up to his ears in drafts of his speech, worrying how best to please the crowd. But last Monday, Nick Clegg wasn’t slaving away at his speech. He was at Chequers with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, discussing, according to one participant, a new set of coalition commitments on the economy, education, welfare, childcare and social mobility. It will not please Clegg’s people to hear this. Lib Dems don’t like Tories or mansions, and that their leader was making policy with Dave and George on the brink of conference will cause anxiety. But that Clegg, Danny Alexander and David