Politics

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

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Polls Back David Cameron

Brother Korski is, as always, the voice of urbane reason on all matters european. I have little idea whther David Cameron done brilliant in Brussels lately or whether he’s blundered badly. Neither verdict seems satisfactory or sufficiently nuanced. There is this, however: in one respect he has done the rest of europe a favour: had he agreed to a new treaty he would have been forced to hold a referendum in Britain and it is hard to see how any treaty, be it ever so favourable to Britain, could have passed. Cue more diplomatic shenanigans and assorted other awkwardness in Brussels. By standing aside Cameron may have “isolated” Britain but

Peter Hoskin

Labour reach out to the Lib Dems (again)

Others have already been there, but it’s still worth noting Douglas Alexander’s article for the lastest issue of the New Statesman. Much of it, it’s true, is a predictable attack on David Cameron’s recent activity in Brussels. But slightly more surprising is the fact that, rather than criticising the coalition in toto, Alexander saves his ire for the Tories and reaches out to the Lib Dems. Here’s the relevant passage: ‘The roots of what happened on the night of Thursday 8 December lie deep in Cameron’s failure to modernise the Tory party. Just because he puts party interest before the national interest, there is no reason others should do the

Daniel Korski

Was the PM reasonable?

As the effects of last week’s European Council become clear, debate about the rights and wrongs of David Cameron’s diplomacy hinge on one question: were his demands ‘reasonable and modestly expressed’, as a source in No 10 put it to me? Everyone knows that there were chronic failures in the run-up to the meeting itself. I laid a few of them out in an earlier post, but, basically, they amount to a failure of prioritisation: the UK eroded the goodwill it needed by fighting tooth-and-nail on every issue beforehand, thereby blocking things that other EU states care about but which are not important, except symbolically, to the British. International —

Martin Bright

Nazis, Aidan Burley and memories of the bad old days

News of the antics of Aiden Burley and his friends at a Nazi-themed stag party in France made me think about the strange ways some Tories like to have fun. When I was at university in the mid-1980s the Tories were in their pomp. My time at Cambridge was sandwiched between the two Thatcher-era landslides of 1983 and 1987 and those of us on the left felt pretty embattled. Through a mixture of ignorance and accident I ended up at a particularly ‘traditional’ college, Magdalene, which was then all-male and proud of its public school rugger-and-rowing reputation. I was seen as something of a pinko because I went on few

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Programming Note | 13 December 2011

Ahoy Londoners! This Thursday, the good people at the Adam Smith Institute are holding a pre-Christmas cheer-fest at which your blogger will be speaking. It’s titled 2012: The End of the World As We Know It?* and the panel comprises Douglas Carswell, Brendan O’Neill, Jamie Whyte and, er, me. It all kicks off at 6.30pm in the Bishop Partridge Hall at the Church House Conference Centre in Westminster. Full details here. Do come along and say hello. It’s free and there will be drinks too. *A Question To Which The Answer is Probably No, Not Quite

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Interview with a Danish journalist

He came to talk to me about British Euroscepticism, and I did my best to explain. I said it was far stronger in England than Scotland for nationalist reasons, and that although Labour MPs were, in general, mildly Eurosceptic — Brown would not take us into the Euro, for instance — Euroscepticism was a passion on the Conservative side. ‘I know some of the young MPs who supported Cameron,’ I said. ‘They’re incredibly liberal about gay rights and all the rest of it but on the EU…’ ‘They’re not liberal at all…’    I had to explain to him that supporting a Eurozone that is imposing an austerity on Ireland,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Where we are now

Reading through the paper’s this morning, it’s even clearer that we didn’t learn much from that marathon Europe debate yesterday. But here are my thoughts, anyway, on where it leaves us: 1) Ed Miliband lacked credibility from the outset. As Malcolm Rifkind put it, he’s had three days to work out whether he’d have signed that Treaty or not — and he still can’t make his mind up. God knows Cameron is vulnerable on this, but he won’t be hurt being attacked for indecision by a man who still cant make any decisions. 2) Clegg’s misjudgment, cont? First, Clegg backed Cameron after the veto. Now, he says he disagrees with

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Is Scotland a Nordic Country?

This is a question that meets the classic definition of John Rentoul’s famous-to-them-that-ken series of Questions To Which The Answer Is No. That is, the people asking the question think the answer is Yes when in fact it is No. This question, like many of the SNP’s other witticisms, is the brainchild of Angus Robertson, the MP for Moray who might be thought Alex Salmond’s answer to Karl Rove. Like Rove, Angus sometimes gets carried away and this suggestion that Scotland is some long-lost Nordic appendage is one of those occasions. Not that he’s alone in wishing Scotland could be redefined in this fashion. Lesley Riddoch had a piece in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg ducks Cameron’s conciliatory speech

The text of David Cameron’s statement on the European Summit was clearly designed as balm for the coalition’s wounds. He devoted a large chunk of it to defending Britain’s membership of the European Union in a clear effort to reassure the Lib Dems about the future direction of European policy. But this effort was rather undermined by the absence of the deputy Prime Minister. This was, predictably,  the story of the session. In response to repeated Labour questions about where Clegg was, Cameron replied ‘I’m not responsible for his whereabouts. I’m sure he is working very hard.’ Nick Clegg has now given a TV interview in which he has escalated

Martin Bright

Cameron proves he is a politician of the eurosceptic right, but he still seems like a reasonable guy

I have just been at the Conservative Friends of Israel Business Lunch, which can best be described as a triumphalist ‘smugfest’ in the wake of David Cameron’s bulldog moment in Europe last week. The Tory leadership should be very wary of this moment. We have just entered a period of unprecedented political division in this country. For a party that wishes to be on the centre ground of British politics, this is not a good place to be. The headlines in the Guardian (‘Cameron cuts UK adrift’) and the Daily Mail (‘The day he put Britain first’) expressed this in two sentences the chasm that now exists in the political

Jonathan Jones

Good news from Brussels

While the debate over Europe rumbles on, it’s worth highlighting one bright spot in the OBR’s recent document of doom which has largely slipped past Westminster’s radar: by their forecasts, we will pay the EU £2 billion less this year than we were expecting to in March. Instead of the £9 billion ‘net contribution to the EU budget’ forecast for 2011-12 nine months ago, the OBR now estimates it’ll be £6.9 billion. That represents a 17 per cent real terms cut on the £8.1 billion we paid last year, instead of an 8 per cent increase: Why the reduction? The OBR gives a few reasons:  By themselves, each of these

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Expect today’s eurosceptic celebrations to be muted

The real Tory celebration of David Cameron’s veto will be on Wednesday. Then, behind closed doors, Cameron will address the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. With no Lib Dems present, the Tories will be able to thump the desks and be rude about the EU without worrying about what their coalition partners might think. But in the chamber today, Tory MPs are being urged to be calm and forensic. The whips keep pointing out to ambitious MPs that a question on what Labour’s position is would be most helpful. Eurosceptics, though, should be in good cheer today even if Cameron’s statement is more downbeat than they would like. The veto

Peter Hoskin

The new premium on Lib Dem policies

Could it be an accident of timing that the government, in the shape of Sarah Teather, is announcing an expansion of the pupil premium today? Or is it part of a careful response to David Cameron’s adventures in Euroland? In any case, the Lib Dem-devised scheme to help the poorest pupils will be extended in 2012-13, so that both the amount given to each pupil and the number of pupils eligible are increased. What’s not clear yet is whether this was planned all along, or whether it’s because of some previously unforeseen slack in the existing £1.25 billion budget for next year. The pupil premium has, for instance, already been

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 12 December 2011

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson says Cameron’s veto will not leave Britain isolated. James Forsyth thinks the UK’s ‘influence’ in the EU is overrated and reports on Nick Clegg’s attack on Tory eurosceptics. Peter Hoskin examines the Lib Dem response to Cameron’s move, and picks ten modern Christmas classics for the Arts Blog. Daniel Korski looks at where Cameron can go from here, and says Sarkozy could cause trouble for the government. And Kwasi Kwarteng MP tells the Book Blog what he’s reading and what he’d recommend.

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s winning the popularity contest over Europe

It’s no surprise that David Cameron’s actions in Brussels last week appear to be popular with the voting public, but it is significant nonetheless. The Times is carrying a Populus poll today (£) which suggests just how difficult Labour and the Lib Dems will find it to recapture ground over the Continent. 57 per cent of respondents say that ‘David Cameron was right to exercise Britain’s veto’, against only 14 per cent who believe he was wrong to do so. And it turns out that 49 per cent of the folk who voted Lib Dem at the last election support the PM too. With one particular exception (which we shall

Sunday

Daniel Korski

The government’s Sarkozy problem (and other euro dilemmas)

This week’s European Council meeting has been analysed by diplomats and commentators alike, but a number of issues have not been brought out as clearly as they need to be. The first is that Britain will now achieve political advantage, at the cost of economic setback, if the euro collapses. Although the government insists both that it is still wedded to the success of the euro and that it will not be isolated in Europe now or in the future, the simple fact is that eurofailure will ensure that efforts to organise among the 26, rather than the full 27, will finish. The economic costs would be considerable — possibly

Peter Hoskin

The coalition’s latest anxiety attack

It is starting to feel like the build-up to the AV referendum again, if not worse. No longer the casual bonhomie of the coalition’s early days, but a great show of mutual distrust and loathing between the Lib Dems and Tories. There was Nick Clegg’s interview on the Marr Show earlier, of course, which James has already blogged about. There are rumours that Vince Cable is set to quit. And there is also Paddy Ashdown’s caustic article in the Observer, which he has followed by attacking, Major style, the Tory ‘bastards’ on Sky this morning. For their part, many of those ‘bastards’ are looking on at the Lib Dems’ pain

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg blames the Tory Eurosceptics

Nick Clegg has just given a quite astonishing interview to Andrew Marr in which he accused David Cameron of being incapable of getting a good deal for Britain because of pressures from within the Conservative parliamentary party. When Marr asked him if things would have been different if Lib Dems had been in Brussels, Clegg said they would have been because he is ‘not under the same constraints from my parliamentary party.’ Clegg described Cameron as being trapped between the ‘intransigence’ of the French and Eurosceptics in the Conservative party. Intriguingly, the deputy Prime Minister blamed the French for there being no negotiation about the British asks. This suggests that

Saturday

The Spectator

Leadership, please

Is a time of economic crisis an opportunity for fundamental reform, or a time to muddle through while waiting for calmer waters in which to effect lasting political and economic change? When he came to power last year, David Cameron argued for reform. He laid out plans so radical that Vince Cable complained they were ‘Maoist’. There would never be a better time to shake things up, he reasoned; if it were left until crises had passed, the momentum for change would be lost. Now, Cameron’s zeal has vanished. A crisis, it transpires, is no time to be radical. It would be rude, almost selfish to use the summit negotiations

Mats Persson

Ten myths about Cameron’s EU veto

The EU veto that Cameron pulled in the early hours of Thursday morning has been widely misunderstood on all sides. Here are the 10 most common myths: 1. Because of Cameron’s veto, Britain lost a seat at the negotiating table. Not true. The UK was never itself going to take part in the Merkozy pact (and potentially be subject to EU sanctions), and therefore not in the monthly, parallel EU meetings that will begin in January, either. Even if he had approved the Treaty changes, Cameron still would not have had a seat at the table. Wider political challenges aside, the veto didn’t change anything structurally in terms of UK