Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Mark Pritchard, the MP who tabled the animal welfare bill that has just been passed with ease, gave this speech earlier today. It’s an explosive insight into Downing Street’s often very fraught relationship with Conservative backbenchers.
We haven’t dwelt on the polls very much on Coffee House recently, although we have flagged up some nuggets on Twitter. Here are some of the measures of public opinion that provide an interesting backdrop to Westminster’s machinations: Labour in trouble despite poll leads Two weeks ago I reported on a poll that showed the extent of Ed Miliband’s unpopularity. There have since been a few more polls to compound his unease. ICM found that he had worse approval ratings even than Nick Clegg: YouGov find that 58 per cent of the public think he’s doing a bad job, but perhaps more worrying for “Red Ed” is that he even
Whenever an American conservative uses Winston Churchill to make a cheap political point you can be sure there’s nincompoopery on the way. Hats off to Peter Kirsanow for this contribution to the file: In 1940, Churchill appeared before the House of Commons and described Britain’s goal in World War II: “I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory despite all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.” This hyperbolic rube was too unsophisticated to appreciate that the goal doesn’t apply to overseas contigency [sic] operations or kinetic military actions. I’m sure you too are persuaded by the
Simon Hughes’ desire (£) to stop Oxbridge academics interviewing potential students is muddle headed as well as an attack on the right of these universities to run their own affairs. If the coalition wants universities to pick on academic potential rather than academic performance to date, then the interview is a crucial part of this process. Sitting down with an applicant gives academics a chance to assess how this student’s mind works, to ask questions that they haven’t been drilled for. It allows them to use their professional discretion in choosing to make, say, a lower offer to a pupil from an underperforming school who in the interview demonstrates that
When Ed Balls is around, there are no shortages of stories. Balls, as is so often the case, has been the talk of Westminster today. First, there was the chatter generated by the FT’s story that members of the shadow Cabinet were irritated that Balls’ proposed VAT cut hadn’t been run past them. Then, there was Alistair Darling strikingly failing to endorse Balls’ VAT cut on the Daily Politics and to round it all off the shadow Chancellor was leading for Labour in its opposition day debate on the economy. The Tories are convinced that Balls’ relations with his fellow shadow Cabinet members is a weak spot for Labour. Indeed,
The BBC World Service has been reprieved. An additional £2.2m will be spent to preserve the Arabic service, in line with some of the wishes of Foreign Affairs Select Committee Chairman Richard Ottaway and Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC and occasional consigliere to David Cameron. I don’t share the Foreign Office’s sometime view that this is a ‘massive u-turn’, but it is a significant development. Opposition to cuts to the World Service budget came from across the House; but it originated from Tory backbenchers, who were very confident that they would secure a concession. The subsequent climb down suggests that Downing Street is prepared to consult with and
At a time when the Euro is looking so weak, it is a wonder that so many countries are still queuing up to join. Estonia has recently joined, while Hungary and Bulgaria are keen as mustard to join as well. Make no mistake, these countries want to join. They go to lengths to stay for two years in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, while keeping inflation inline with the EU average. At a meeting this morning, the Hungarian foreign minister capped off his country¹s EU Presidency by declaring that Hungary is still focused on joining. But, even if these countries did not want to join the Euro, or felt perhaps
For all the talk of Cameron and his grasp of detail the fact remains that Miliband may, as Swot of the Lower Fourth, have the nuts and bolts but he’s wrong – hopelessly, utterly wrong – on policy. To recap, today he asked the Prime Minister: “Around 5,000 people each year are arrested on suspicion of rape and not charged … in certain cases these individuals have gone on to commit further offences and be convicted as a result of the DNA being held on the national database, but his proposal is that for those arrested and not charged the DNA would be disposed of straight away. “I ask him
The Prime Minister declared war at PMQs today. Not once but twice in the same sentence. ‘We’re at war in Libya and in Afghanistan,’ he said, in a throwaway footnote to some ritual noises about his ‘huge respect for our armed forces.’ Until this historic moment Britain had been engaged in peace-keeping and nation-building in Afghanistan, and in civilian protection and tyrant-bothering in Libya. But now it’s official. We’re mobilised on two fronts. Ed Miliband might have made more of this but he was too busy mentally preparing himself for this week’s shock ambush. This week’s shock ambush wasn’t quite as shocking as it might have been because it had
VERDICT: Ed Miliband repeated the same tactic as last week, concentrating on a specific policy area to test Cameron’s command of the details — and again it had the desired effect, although not quite so tellingly as before. The Prime Minister floundered and generalised on the issue of rape arrests, but managed to turn some of his discomfort back on the Labour leader, and ended their exchange sounding more confident than perhaps he was. He was then consideraby more surefooted throughout the backbench questions, particularly when it came to public sector pensions and to attacking Labour’s unfunded VAT cut. But, on the whole, this was another session to relieve the
One of the staples of the Westminster summer party season is speculation about future leadership contests and so I rather suspect that Ben Brogan’s piece on the coming George Osborne Boris Johnson leadership contest will be much referenced in the coming weeks. Any speculation about a future leadership contest is, obviously, absurdly premature. If a week is a long time in politics, six years is almost a geological era. But the prospect of Obsorne versus Johnson is, as Tim Montgomerie puts it, so ‘delicious’ that Westminster Village people will take any excuse to talk about it. What makes the contest so appetising is that Osborne and Johnson’s strengths are so
Andrew Mitchell was recently informed that the public is split 50:50 for and against increasing the international aid budget to £12 billion in 2013. A YouGov@Cambridge poll for Politics Home suggests that he should get some better advice. The poll shows that while the public is indeed split fairly evenly on the general principle of aid (41 per cent in favour, 38 per cent against), when it comes to the government’s promise to increase the aid budget by a third, those against outnumber those for by more than 2 to 1. The policy is by no means a Cameroon brainchild. In 1970 the United Nations set the target for government
Here’s a clue for politicians: when you’re asked if you’ve just criminalised the national anthem and all you can do is say “Er, maybe, it all kinda depends on the circumstances” the chances are you’ve produced a bill that tests even the patient, hard-to-exhaust, limits of parliamentary absurdity and you should probably put it through the shredder and start again. If, that is, you should even be legislating in these matters at all. We do things differently in Scotia New and Braw, don’t you know? So today the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee took evidence on the government’s planned and loopy and shameful and illiberal Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening
The most important thing about Jon Huntsman is that he’s a much better general election candidate than he is a contender for the Republican party’s nomination. His job is to persuade the Republican electorate that even if they don’t much like him or can’t be quite sure they can trust him, he’s the guy with the best chance of turfing Barack Obama from the White House. His message: Settle for me! It almost worked for John Kerry! That’s a tricky proposition given that Huntsman was happy to serve in the Obama administration. It’s also a problem given his minimal name recognition, the fact he comes from a small state and
The toughening-up effort continued with David Cameron’s press conference just now. There he was, at the prime ministerial lectern, not just announcing a stricter sentencing system than Ken Clarke broached a few weeks ago, but explaining why the government’s change of mind was actually “a sign of strength”. Out are the 50 per cent sentence reductions for those who plead guilty early. In is a commtiment to jail those caught using a knife threateningly, as well as a bundle of tougher measures all round. “Being strong is about being prepared to admit that you didn’t get everything right the first time around,” said Mr Cameron, again and again. His other
The government’s u-turn on sentencing reveals something quite important about the Lib Dems’ approach to coalition. Despite having backed Ken Clarke in private, they have stayed as far away as possible from the issue in public. The Liberal Democrats were determined not to put themselves on the wrong side of the public on this issue, to end up copping the blame for ‘soft sentencing’. As one senior Liberal Democrat said to me recently, “we’re determined not to walk into any bear pits. If there is a big flashing neon sign above something saying ‘Tory trap’, we’ve got to be disciplined enough not to fall into it.” Clegg’s circle
Toughness, or at least the appearance of it, is clearly the theme of the week on Downing Street. After the vacillations over NHS reform, David Cameron seems to be going out of his way to sound that little bit more hard. There’s the headline on the front of today’s Times, for instance: “Cameron to Europe: not one penny more.” And there was the PM’s claim, yesterday, that a Tory majority government would be “tougher” on immigration and welfare. Even the recent hyperactivity of Michael Gove is, I’m sure, all part of the plan, given that schools reform is broadly one of the areas where the government will (probably) never apologise,
The normal Monday morning calm of The Spectator was disturbed today by an argument about David Cameron’s comments about fathers who go ‘AWOL’. I thought Cameron was right to say what he did, my editor didn’t. He felt that it wasn’t the Prime Minister’s job to moralise, and that him doing so was the beginning of a descent into totalitarianism. The reason I think Cameron was right to speak out is that so many of the problems in this country are social or cultural. They can’t be solved by another piece of legislation or a government initiative. Rather, they require a broader cultural shift: a move away from the
…here are some posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson gives his take on David Cameron’s attack on bad dads. James Forsyth reveals that George Osborne is throwing his weight behind education reform, and says that enshrining the military covenant in law might not be a good idea. Peter Hoskin reports on Michael Gove’s plan to fix the exam system, and looks into a rumour about private sector pensions. Daniel Korski watches the latest war of words over the Falklands. And Faith Based charts the rise of the Mormons.
Boris, we know, has never had any compunctions about distinguishing his views from those of the coalition government. Take his recent proclamations on the unions or on the economy, for instance. But his latest remarks are still striking in their forthrightness. Exhibit A is the article he has written for today’s Sun, which — although it doesn’t mention Ken Clarke by name — clearly has the Justice Secretary in mind when it exhorts that “it’s time to stop offering shorter sentences and get-out clauses.” And Exhibit B is his column for the Telegraph, which waxes condemnatory about Greece and the euro. As George Osborne struggles to limit our involvment in