Politics

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

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Ed’s not dead

Crafty old Ed. After a week on death row, he was expected to arrive at PMQs and do the decent thing. Drink down a foaming cup of hemlock and depart the political stage for good. But Ed is made of sterner stuff than many of us realised. He was cunning, passionate and articulate today and his performance will have steadied the nerves of his anxious troops. It all began oddly. As soon as Miliband stood up he was greeted by a slightly over-done chorus of cheers from his backbenchers. This absurdity prompted a burst of satirical catcalling from the Tories. They knew this would be fun. Cameron would run rings

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband relieves the pressure

After last week’s performance and this weekend’s headlines, Ed Miliband needed a win at PMQs — and he got one. Knowing that David Cameron would attack him over the fact Labour will vote against the welfare reform bill this week, Miliband had a string of questions for the Prime Minister on the detail of the bill and whether people recovering from cancer would lose the contributory element of their benefits. The issue was both wonky and emotive. The fact the questions were about cancer meant that Cameron couldn’t deliver his usual string of put downs to Miliband. Indeed, when one Tory backbencher heckled him, the Labour leader shot back that

Peter Hoskin

Miliband and the past

Labour’s simmering resentments and self-doubts have been boiling over recently — and today is no different. Compare and contrast The Sun’s interview with Tony Blair with Andrew Grice’s article on Ed Balls in the Independent. For Blair, Labour ought to be claiming more credit for their preparatory role in some of the coalition’s reforms, such as the Academies programme. For Balls, they ought instead to be dodging blame for the state of the public finances. As Grice reports, “Ed Balls has rejected demands from allies of Ed Miliband that he admit Labour spent too much when they were in power.” From the rest of the piece, the shadow chancellor’s position

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 15 June 2011

VERDICT: The specifics of today’s exchange between David Cameron and Ed Miliband may have everyone rushing for this Macmillan press release, but the rhetorical positions were clear enough. There was the Labour leader, angrier and more indignant than usual, painting the government’s welfare reforms as cruel and insufficiently thought-through. And there was the PM, painting his opponent as yet another roadblock to reform. Neither really triumphed, although their battle will most likely set a template for in future. The coalition has extensive public backing for its changes to the welfare system. So, Miliband’s challenge is to attack certain aspects of them, without making Labour appear to be — as he

Peter Hoskin

Osborne comes to a decision on the banks — but the story doesn’t end there

In his speech to Mansion House last year, George Osborne asked a question of his frosted and cumberbunded audience: “Should we restrict or split the activities of banks?” In his speech tonight, he looks set to deliver an answer of his own. As Robert Peston reports, the Chancellor is to announce that the investment and retail arms of banks will be ringfenced off from each other, so that the dice rolls of the Masters of the Universe cannot tumble across everyday savers’ cash. This does not mean a complete, Glass-Steagall-style separation between the two halves. But, rather, it follows the recommendations of the interim report of the Vickers Commision: banks

Tuesday

David Blackburn

More than a soap opera

David Miliband is considering a return to frontline British politics. At least that is what Andrew Grice has heard. He reports: ‘David Miliband is considering a surprise comeback to frontline politics in an attempt to end speculation about a continuing rift with his brother Ed. Friends of the former Foreign Secretary said yesterday that his joining the Shadow Cabinet was a “live issue” in his circle of political allies. “There is a debate going on. Some people are arguing that it would be better to be a team player than look as though he is sulking on the sidelines,” said one source.’ Better for whom, I wonder? The fear that

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Inflation: cock-up, not conspiracy

Britain has the worst inflation in Western Europe; this is today’s story. CPI is 4.5 per cent and RPI is 5.2 per cent. This masks even worse rises which, as the IFS says today, hit the poor hardest. The price of a cauliflower is up 38 per cent to £1.26, potatoes are up 13 per cent to £1.54 a kilo. For millions, these are the most important metrics. Historically, it’s pretty bad. You’d think a Bank of England legally mandated to keep CPI inflation at 2 per cent would be horrified at this, and start vowing to tame the cost of living. After all, this isn’t just a statistic: it

Monday

Daniel Korski

Erdogan’s immediate dilemma

It seems that everyone won the election that was held in Turkey this weekend. Prime Minister Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) officially won, taking some 50 per cent of the vote, which is enough to secure him a third term in office, but not sufficient to enable his party to make changes to the constitution. As the BBC’s Gavin Hewitt notes, ‘Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey stands out. He is genuinely popular. He is socially conservative, but he has tapped into the aspirational mood of Turkey’s middle class.’ But although the opposition party, Republican People’s Party (CHP), lost the election they actually polled about a quarter of the

Peter Hoskin

Miliband borrows from the Cameroons for his most substantial speech so far

Thematically speaking, there wasn’t too much in Ed Miliband’s speech that we haven’t heard before. The middle is still squeezed, the Tories are still undermining the “Promise of Britain”, the bankers are still taking us for fools, and communities still need to be rebuilt. Even his remarks about benefit dependency bear comparion to those he made in February. But there was a difference here, and that was his punchiness. The Labour leader may not be the most freewheelin’ orator in town, but the text he delivered was less wonky than usual, more coherent and spikier. It was even — in parts — memorable. You do wonder whether Miliband has learnt

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

A Crooke from the Establishment

The American journalist Michael Weiss wrote recently, “Tony Blair can’t be a war criminal. If he were, George Galloway would support him.”  The joke works on the assumption that the backers of despots in the West are always from the Dostoevskian dregs of extremist politics: wild and frothing men, far from the polite and sensible mainstream in which the British establishment resides. With Bashar al-Assad committing war crimes against his own people, ask yourself what kind of man wrote this article in that eminently respectable journal of international affairs, Foreign Policy. As the Arab spring reached Syria at the beginning of April, he began the piece by warning readers that

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 13 June 2011

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson says that Labour is working towards a decade in Opposition. James Forsyth believes that David Miliband should join the shadow cabinet or quit British politics, and explains why education is becoming such a success story for the coalition. Peter Hoskin provides a guide to the Ed Balls Files, and reviews Labour’s collection of blunt knives. Jonathan Jones reports on the decline and fall of Newt Gingrich, and has news of a poll to worry Ed Miliband. Daniel Korski evaluates Robert Gates’ valedictory, and ponders the end of Assad. Martin Bright charts his latest quarrels with London

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne’s valuable weapon

Paul Waugh is tweeting that Number 10 is stressing that, pace this morning’s front pages and Lord Freud’s comments yesterday, the benefit cap remains. This is not surprising: the benefit cap was always a statement of values more than anything else. As George Osborne said at Tory conference, it was designed to ensure that, “No family on out of work benefits will get more than the average family gets by going out to work.” The cap was designed to say something both about the Tories’ values and those of its opponents. If Labour opposed it, they would put themselves on the wrong side of the whole welfare/fairness debate. It is

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

How long have the coalition and Ed got?

The received wisdom seems to be that while the government is, as Charles Clarke put it, utterly incoherent and inept, devoid of strategy and consistency of policy, Cameron is getting away with it because he has held office for only a year, ie he is still “new”. However, the same magnanimity of received wisdom has not attached itself to Ed Miliband who is thought to be similarly hopeless but without the honeymoon qualification; and yet, of course, he is much more new to his job than is Cameron. The difference, I suspect is a consequence of there being nobody one can think of who might take over from Cameron, whereas

Peter Hoskin

The day of the Lib Dem’s greatest ever triumph

Or so they will try to claim. For today is the day when Steve Field, the GP doing the listening part of the NHS listening exercise, will release his report into the government’s reforms. Judging from the convulsions of the grapvine, his recommendations will go something like this: more involvement for nurses and local officials, less private sector involvement and competitiveness, and a more relaxed timescale for introducing the changes. Although there are questions of degree hidden in that checklist, it is enough to have the Lib Dems heralding their “victory” for now. Paddy Ashdown was tapdancing across the airwaves yesterday, saying that Nick Clegg had “played a blinder”. “Am

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

David Miliband should join the shadow Cabinet or quit British politics

David Miliband’s statement today declares that he ‘wants no part’ of the ‘soap opera’ of leadership drama. But as long as David Miliband remains outside the shadow Cabinet and, therefore by definition, not doing everything he can to support his brother it will be easy for people to say that he is just waiting for Ed to fail. If David Miliband does not wish to be a focus for discontent with his brother but cannot bring himself to join the shadow Cabinet, then he should resign his seat. Only by leaving the Commons will he persuade some of his supporters that he is not the man who can — and

Jonathan Jones

A poll to compound Miliband’s woes

A YouGov poll for this morning’s Sunday Times provides proof of mounting disgruntlement with the Labour leader. And not just among the public as a whole, but also among Labour supporters. Asked whether Ed Miliband is doing well or badly as leader, just 30 per cent say “well” (including a tiny 3 per cent who say “very well”), while 53 per cent say “badly” (including 21 percent “very badly”). The bad news for Ed is that the “well” figure has barely moved since just after he was elected, when almost half said they didn’t know how well he was doing. Now an extra 31 per cent have formed an opinion

Peter Hoskin

Labour’s blunt knives

According to the Observer, and a slew of other papers, “senior Labour figures are believed to have put their leader on a timer to ‘up his game’ in the next few months if he is to avoid a full-blown leadership crisis later this year.” Which reminded me of all this: 20 April, 2008 “The Prime Minister, who is battling a growing rebellion over his abolition of the 10p tax rate, has been given until the end of the summer to turn things round by backbenchers angry at a string of image and policy failures.” (here) 24 May, 2008 “It is that Mr Brown be given until the end of July

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Labour is working towards a decade of Opposition

Is Ed Miliband finished? That’s the implication of many of the papers today — and David is portrayed as waiting in the wings, ready to claim his rightful inheritance. Dream on. Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party is hardly in crisis. If there was an election today, he’d win a Labour majority of 34. Dull men can win surprising victories, as John Major demonstrated in 1992. The Times’ notion that he has until party conference to save his leadership is just as fanciful. Labour Party Conferences are neverscenes of grassroots rebellion. The Tories are the ones who lay on fights, and some just turn up to Tory conference for

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Milidrama

No paper has been more critical of Ed Miliband than The Times. So it is in some ways not a surprise that the paper’s leader column today declares that he has until Labour conference to save his leadership. But this ultimatum stokes the sense of drama created by the combination of the Balls’ leaks and the publication of the speech that David Miliband would have given if he had won the leadership. Expect to hear David Cameron quoting from both these sets of documents at PMQs regularly over the next few weeks. The challenge now for Ed Miliband is to make lemonade out of these lemons. He needs to seize the attention

Peter Hoskin

Your three-point guide to today’s Ed Balls files

Less soap opera, and more policy grit, in today’s batch of Ed Balls files. There is, for instance, a lot on Gordon Brown’s proposed Bill of Rights (here, here, here and here), which is as ambrosia for future political historians, but is fairly turgid reading even for today’s political anoraks. Likewise the charts and doodlings related to the structure of Brown’s Downing Street. Yet some things do stand out. Here are a few of them: i) What the Treasury says, Brown didn’t do. You’ve got to admire the Treasury’s attempt to inject some realism into the fiscal calculus back in 2006. “Flat real” spending — i.e. public spending that rises