Politics

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

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

A question of motivation

Flitting through the opinion pages this morning, there’s one headline that stands out far more than any other. It’s on Charles Moore’s column for the Telegraph, and it reads, ‘Even I’m starting to wonder: what do this lot know about anything?’ What follows underneath is effectively a catalogue of the ‘small things’ that may accumulate and cause voters to question both the coalition’s motives and its ability. I’d recommend that you read the article in full, but here is one passage from it that deserves highlighting. It concerns Francis Maude’s jerry can line: ‘But now that I have heard the Conservatives’ private explanation, which is being handed down to constituency

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Politics: The cost of giving

David Cameron was in a foul mood on Monday night. ‘Cash for Cameron’, the scandal about a Tory treasurer trying to lure donors with the prospect of dinner in the Camerons’ Downing Street flat if they coughed up £250,000, is precisely the kind of story that gets under his skin. He knows that it matters, but hates the fact that it does. Part of him thinks that it is all beneath his prime-ministerial dignity. It also irritates him that he is receiving little credit for being more transparent than any of his predecessors. He tetchily said to colleagues that evening that ‘if I am anymore transparent, I’ll be telling the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Theresa May’s new drink tax is theft dressed up as concern

Was the Home Secretary Theresa May half-cut when she started ranting about alcohol in the House of Commons last week? The haste and suddenness of her intervention had the whiff of addled self-disgust about it, the self-pitying fervour of the alcoholic who is determined to get clean. As if she had been bingeing all morning on 36p tins of White Lightning, or something, and then felt overcome with regret and decided that henceforth no one should be able to afford the stuff, because it is an abomination, a poison despatched from the devil. The obvious answer, I suppose, is no — she was perfectly sober. There were no immediate signs

Friday

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

14th January 2006: What makes George Galloway strut and fret his stuff?

In light of George Galloway returning to Parliament as the member for Bradford West, we’ve dug out Matthew Parris’s account of his infamous appearance on Celebrity Big Brother. And if you can’t remember his feline hijinks, the video’s above for your pleasure. We each of us remember where we were when news reached us that George Galloway MP was to enter the Celebrity Big Brother house. I was on BBC Radio 5 Live. The time was 10.25 on the evening of Thursday 5 January 2006 and I was part of a panel discussing the shipwreck of Charles Kennedy, when all at once the interviewer astonished us with the Galloway bombshell. There was

The Spectator

The week that was | 30 March 2012

Here is a selection of articles and discussions from this week on Spectator.co.uk… Most discussed: Peter Hoskin on fuel for the political bonfire. Most read and shared: Nick Cohen on the tweet police. And the best of the rest… Fraser Nelson unveils the grey recovery and looks at what politics has become. James Forsyth says Cameron needs a proper party chairman and believes David Davis took the opportunity to strike. Peter Hoskin asks what the Prime Minister will do after his u-turn on donor secrecy and provides a guide to Osborne’s fiscal rules. Jonathan Jones looks at a plan that could change the face of future Budgets and thinks the government is

Douglas Murray

Behind Galloway’s grin

George Galloway has tragically demonstrated that sectarian politics are now alive and well in Britain.  The other week Ken Livingstone appeared at a London mosque and promised to make London a ‘beacon of Islam’ and last week went on to dismiss Jews as unlikely to vote Labour because they are ‘rich’. Now we see Galloway flying in to one of the country’s most divided areas to sweep the Labour party aside in what he has termed ‘a Bradford spring.’ Much can — and should — be said about this depressing, and predictable, turn of events.  But for now I’d just like to make two quick observations. The first regards the

Catherine Lillycrop

Lansley’s biscuit bill

If Andrew Lansley thought he could rest easy after passage of the Health Bill, then he’s in for a rude awakening. Yesterday, the shadow Cabinet Minister Jon Trickett busted Lansley’s department for spending £109,017 since January this year to supply its employees and visitors with free refreshments — aka, tea and biscuits. Naturally, Labour aren’t telling the whole story here. The amount being spent has declined under the coalition, from £194,000 for the equivalent period in 2010, to £137,000 in 2011, to that £109,017 figure now. But, still, it’s another classic example of waste during a time of austerity. Perhaps it’s no surprise that obesity is thought to cost the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

This is what politics has become

George Galloway’s victory last night is a reminder of a wider problem in British politics: the low regard in which all main political parties are held. By-elections can throw up quirky victories, usually ironed out in the general election. There won’t be an army of Galloway’s marching on parliament at the next election. It’s like Glasgow East: a classic Labour safe seat-cum-‘rotten borough’ taken for granted (and ignored) for so long that the ruling party’s apparatus had atrophied. Like John Mason in Glasgow East, Galloway won’t last long.    But the same phenomenon which took Galloway to victory last night, and humbled the main parties, is also at work in

Peter Hoskin

The Tories shouldn’t gloat about Galloway’s victory

An unedifying week in politics keeps on getting worse. The Tories have this morning sent out a press release headlined ‘Warsi: If Labour can’t win in Bradford, how can they win a general election?’ The full quotation follows further on: ‘If Labour can’t win one of their safe seats in these tough economic times and in a tough week for the Government, how can they win anywhere? Not in half a century has an opposition come back from such an appalling result to win a majority at the next general election.   This tells you everything you need to know about Ed Miliband’s weak leadership.’ It’s characteristic of much of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The pressure is now back on Ed

This morning’s front pages are simply awful for the government: every single one is critical of Downing Street. But this morning everyone in Westminster is again talking about Labour and the pressure on Ed Miliband. The Bradford West by-election has, at least for the moment, changed the subject away from pasties and petrol. Bradford West was a sensational result. Galloway, the former Labour MP, increased the Respect vote by more than 17,000 votes. For Labour to lose a by-election now is a major blow. They seemed to have had no answer to Galloway’s demagogic, sectional campaign. It will be little consolation to them that the Tory vote also collapsed, their

Peter Hoskin

George Galloway is an MP again

‘This represents the Bradford Spring!’ said George Galloway after triumphing in the Bradford West by-election last night. So, let’s get this straight: comparing his victory in one of the many fair elections held in this country each year to the dangerous and fragile struggle for democracy across the Arab world? Yep, that’s right — and it leaves a nasty, bitter tang in the air. But we shouldn’t be one bit surprised. Bluster, exaggeration and provocation are, after all, what Galloway does best. And now he will be able to do these things in Parliament for the first time since May 2010, when he was deposed from the Bethnal Green seat.

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Byrne for Birmingham?

Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet could soon lack a Liam Byrne. The shadow work and pensions secretary is expected to announce his intention to run for the position of Mayor of Birmingham — and he’d quit his frontbench job to do so. There is, of course, one significant ‘if’ hanging over his candidacy: it would depend on Birmingham voting in favour of having an elected mayor in their referendum on 3 May. But given the polls so far, it’s all looking quite likely. If Byrne does go, it would leave more than just a single role for Miliband to fill. He is not just the shadow work and pensions secretary, but

Toby Young Toby Young

The new generation of Tory rebels

There’s a new member of The Spectator family, and she’s called Spectator Life. This is our new quarterly magazine focusing all the more civilised aspects of life — the arts, culture, travel, etc — and it comes bundled in, for free, with the main magazine. The first issue is available on newsstands this week, but, so you can try before you buy, here is one of its more political articles: an overview of the new generation of Tory rebels, by Toby Young. The Unwhippables, Toby Young, Spectator Life, Spring 2012 On the night of the great Tory rebellion over Europe, David Cameron had good reason to think that Zac Goldsmith

Peter Hoskin

Fuel for the political bonfire

Pasties and jerry cans — who’d have thought that yesterday’s politics would descend into a roaring debate about two such innocuous items? And still the hullabaloo goes on. Most of today’s front pages lead with one or both of the stories, although I’d say it’s the jerry cans that win out overall. Thanks to Francis Maude’s suggestion that ‘a bit of extra fuel in a jerry can in the garage is a sensible precaution to take,’ we’re seeing headlines such as ‘Pumps go dry as ministers provoke panic’. As with the pasty row, which James discussed yesterday evening, the political dangers of this stretch far beyond the actual matter at

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The politics of pasties

The row over the so-called pasty tax is a proxy. It is really a row about whether David Cameron and George Osborne get what it is like to worry about the family budget each week.   In truth, I suspect that they don’t. But I think the same probably goes for Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and the vast majority of journalists. Most of the politics of class in Westminster, as opposed to the country, is the narcissism of small difference.   The best thing the coalition could do now is hold its nerve. The Budget did reveal that support for it is shallow. But, as one leading pollster said to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Revealed: the grey recovery

Are pensioners doing their bit for the recovery? The agenda of ‘intergenerational fairness’ has arisen in response to the idea that they are not, and ought to be taxed more. Daniel Knowles has made the case, in our cover story this week. Carol Sarler responds to him. In the leader, we reveal some data hitherto undisclosed: the way the oldies are responding to the recession. They’re working as never before — the below graph shows (stripping out foreign-born workers) the change over the past decade: Between 2001 and 2011, all the employment increase for UK-born people was from pension-aged workers, while working-age employment dropped. This challenges the idea of the

Peter Hoskin

Your guide to Osborne’s fiscal rules

George Osborne’s two fiscal rules have been around since his very first Budget, delivered almost two years ago, so they’re hardly news. But they do underpin much of what he’s done since, including last week’s statement, so they’re also worth knowing about. Fraser touched on ome of the detail in a post last weekend, but here’s a supplementary guide for CoffeeHousers: 1) The deficit rule. This is the one that seems to cause the most confusion, perhaps because it has often been simplified — wrongly — as something like ‘eliminate the deficit by the end of this Parliament’. Fact is, the ‘end of this Parliament’ doesn’t come into it. And as for ‘eliminating

Matt Cavanagh

Riots report undermines the Tory diagnosis, but spreads itself too thin

After last August’s riots the debate became quickly polarised. Were socio-economic factors like unemployment to blame, or was it all down to the individual choices of the rioters? David Cameron and other Conservative ministers knew which side of this debate they wanted to be on. They had been taken by surprise by the riots, initially failing to realise how serious things were, but when they got back from their holidays they set out a clear and confident line, brushing off most questions about links to the state of the economy or youth attitudes, and condemning the riots as ‘criminality pure and simple’. The soundbite was deliberately simplistic; Conservative ministers’ actual

Peter Hoskin

Another five-point ‘pledge card’ from Labour

There is no PMQs today, so Ed Miliband is filling the time as gainfully as he can with a speech bashing the Tories. Unsurprisingly, he’s making rather a lot of last week’s Budget — particularly the 50p tax cut and the frozen personal allowance for pensioners — as well as of Peter Cruddas’s recent indiscretions. And so David Cameron will be described as ‘out of touch’ and all that. But there is something else with today’s speech: a prop, in the form of a five-point ‘pledge card’. I don’t think we’ve had one of these from Labour for a couple of years now, although they do tend to reserve them