Politics

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

James Forsyth

Miliband gets serious about phone hacking

The striking thing about the phone hacking debate is that Ed Miliband is sitting on the Labour front bench, a statement of how seriously the Labour leader is now taking this issue. Miliband nodded vigorously when Chris Bryant declared that if Rebekah Brooks had a single shred of decency she would resign. Dominic Grieve is currently replying for the government and is taking a consensual line. I suspect that Grieve, unlike many ministers, has no great love for News International. His career has never recovered from his clashing, when Shadow Home Secretary, with Rebekah Brooks over how the tabloids report crime. It is said that from that day on, Andy

James Forsyth

A beating, but not as harsh as it might have been

PMQs today was a taste for David Cameron of what he will have to face over the coming weeks as the scandal surrounding the News of the World continues to grow. Ed Miliband asked him whether he agreed that Rebekah Brooks — a friend of Cameron’s —should resign and then mocked him when he wouldn’t answer. The Labour leader than pushed him on whether News International should be stopped from taking over BSkyB and derided him when he said the matter was out of his hands. Finally, he slammed him for his decision to bring Andy Coulson — who had resigned as editor of the News of the World because

Westminster prepares for a day of News International

The cascade of News of the World stories has, this morning, become a deluge. On top of last night’s Andy Coulson news — which, as George Eaton points out, really oughtn’t be that surprising — we have the Indepedent claiming that Rebekah Brooks personally “commissioned searches” from one of the private investigators tangled up in the Milly Dowler affair. The Guardian reveals that Cabinet ministers are minded to establish a full review into both ownership and regulation of the media. And the Telegraph suggests that the bereaved families of those killed in the 7 July bombing may have had their phones targeted. “It is thought that journalists were seeking to

James Forsyth

The parties take their positions as the phone hacking story deepens

The political plates on phone hacking are shifting rapidly. The story has now ‘gone mainstream’ following the accusations about how the phones of Milly Dowler and the parents of the Soham victims may have been hacked.  Politicians are racing to catch up. Ed Miliband is rapidly moving into a more robust position. The Labour leadership doesn’t want to appear vindictive, to turn this into Labour v. Murdoch. But they are now prepared to openly question the future of Rebekah Brooks and Ed Miliband’s language this evening about how ‘it is up to senior executives at the News of the World and News International to start taking responsibility for criminal activities

Alex Massie

Reagan Would Raise the Debt Ceiling

Nevertheless if you are the type of Republican who feels the need to ask What would Reagan do? then you should probably read David Brooks’ column today: If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases. A normal Republican Party would seize the opportunity to put a long-term limit on the growth of government. It would seize the opportunity to put the country on a sound fiscal footing. It would seize the opportunity to do these things

Regulators on the rack over phone hacking

The latest, hideous developments in the phone hacking scandal are emblazoned across all this morning’s papers — all, that is, expect the tabloids. And our political leadership is putting voice to its concerns, too. Only this morning, David Cameron said of the allegations surrounding the News of the World that, “If they are true, this is a truly dreadful act and a truly dreadful situation.” And Ed Miliband has since given an atypically firm and assertive interview, calling on Rebekah Brooks to “consider her conscience and consider her position.” Perhaps he was stung by Tom Watson’s criticism, last night, that all three party leaders have “let the Dowler family down”

Alex Massie

In Praise of Dan Hodges

It is important to praise Dan Hodges. He should be nurtured and honoured and bathed with tender affection by the right. Hug him close my friends, otherwise there’s a risk the left might start to listen to him. Since they would be wise to do so he should be cultivated by Tories so much the better to discredit his perfectly sensible analysis of Labour’s troubles. His latest post for Labour Uncut is a splendid thing indeed. Tearing in to Blue Labour, Purple Labour and all the rest* of it he concludes: But where in God’s name are the politicians? Where, more to the point, is the leader of the Labour

Fraser Nelson

Barroso’s EU confidence trick

Say what you like about Jose Manuel Barroso, he’s a wily old card. The European Commission president makes public demands for Britain to surrender its rebate in European Union membership fees. The government refuses. Then, hey presto! Headlines suggesting that Brussels has been seen off. “Brussels bribe to buy off UK rebate,” says the Daily Mail. “Britain’s rebate is fully justified and we are not going to give way on it,” a Treasury spokesman tells the media. The quotation is true, Barroso did indeed offer £23 billion to tweak the UK funding formula, and a short-termist like Gordon Brown might have accepted. But the battle for Britain’s EU spending was

James Forsyth

To see whether the coalition will last, watch how the Lib Dems respond to Dilnot

The approach that the Liberal Democrats take to social care over the next few weeks and months will be the best guide we have to how they now view the future of the coalition. If, in the coming all party talks, they effectively ally with Labour and try to score points off the Tories by suggesting that their coalition partners are ‘too mean’ to fund a solution to the problem then it will be apparent that they have moved fully into distancing mode and are preparing to position themselves as the party who restrained the Tories. This would imply a Lib Dem exit from the coalition sometime well before the

Just in case you missed them… | 4 July 2011

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson considers Osborne’s voteless recovery. James Forsyth notes that Boris has turned against HS2, and says the times are changing in Europe. Peter Hoskin watches Yvette Cooper attack the coalition’s immigration policy from the right. David Blackburn reviews IDS’ great expectations, and reveals that the government is confident it can defeat Jose Manuel Barroso over the EU Budget. Daniel Korski interviews Andrew Mitchell. And Martin Bright reacts to the Johann Hari affair.

Coffee House Interview: Andrew Mitchell

The government has stuck to its guns on overseas aid, promising to donate 0.7 per cent of our national income to other countries. In the Chancellor’s words, the government will not balance the books on backs of the world’s poorest people. In fact, as the criticism of the policy was at its highest the Prime Minster hosted a development summit in London and pledged £814m to help vaccinate children around the world against preventable diseases like pneumonia. On this issue, David Cameron does not seem for turning — however many letters he receives from the Defence Secretary.   But Liam Fox is not alone. A slew of recent polls show

Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s voteless recovery?

This is a strange old recovery. The News of the World has an interesting ICM poll today, showing that 66 per cent think the economy is getting worse. It’s not: GDP is growing and we have the second-highest job creation in the G7. Rather than losing jobs to China, we’re flogging Coventry-made Jaguars to Beijing billionaires (one of the random gems uncovered by our new Twitter feed @LocalInterest). So why is everyone so glum? And why do 52 per cent think that David Cameron and George Osborne are doing “a bad job” with the economy?   In theory, Osborne’s recovery is coming on well. His “cuts” agenda is simply a

Cooper takes on the coalition from the right

What an intriguing interview Yvette Cooper gave to Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan show this morning — and not just because she was standing, ruffled and incongruous, in a field somewhere. I was live-tweeting proceedings here, and there was much to anticipate even before she appeared. On top of today’s stories about housing benefit, social care and immigration, the shadow home secretary would also have to deal with the comments made by Lord Goldsmith during the show’s newspaper review. “It’s not clear what Ed Miliband stands for,” said Goldsmith, to cheers from the Tory press team. “I don’t think the rifts in the party have been healed.” But, in the end, it

James Forsyth

Europe, the times they are a-changin’

Before writing my column for The Spectator this week I asked one of the most clued-up Eurosceptics on the centre right what opt-outs Britain should push for in any negotiation over an EU treaty change. His answer, to my surprise, was “forget that, we should just leave”. This answer took me aback because this person had been the embodiment of the view that the European Union could be reformed from within. But people are dropping this view at a rapid rate for reasons that Matthew Parris explained with his typical eloquence in The Times (£) yesterday. I wrote in The Spectator this week that two Cabinet ministers now favour leaving

James Forsyth

Boris comes out against high-speed rail

The news, via a leaked letter, that Boris Johnson now opposes high-speed rail will come as little surprise to the government. Boris has been moving to this position for quite some time and the Department for Transport resigned itself to the mayor coming out against the scheme earlier this week. Recently, one of Boris’ senior aides visited the Department for Transport and said that the mayor would only support the scheme if there was an additional tube line from Euston as part of it. But when the Department for Transport pushed for details of where this line would go to, and how it would be engineered it became apparent that

Britain’s ill-defined counter-terror strategy exposed by America’s clarity

In a post over at the Staggers, defence and security expert Matt Cavanagh has compared and contrasted Barack Obama’s review of US counter-terrorism policy and the coalition’s recent update of the Prevent strategy, together with David Cameron’s professed ‘muscular liberalism’. Here are his insights: ‘The new (American) strategy contains a fairly detailed discussion of the Arab Spring, arguing for applying “targeted force on Al Qaida at a time when its ideology is under extreme pressure” from events in North Africa and the Middle East. By contrast, Britain’s revised Prevent strategy published three weeks ago, mentions these events only once – in a footnote, saying with characteristic bureaucratic obtuseness that it’s

James Forsyth

Politics: ‘Best in Europe’ is no longer good enough

If there’s one phrase that infuriates Tory radicals more than any other, it’s ‘We’re the best in Europe at …’. If there’s one phrase that infuriates Tory radicals more than any other, it’s ‘We’re the best in Europe at …’. The words are used among the bureaucratic establishment as an excuse for accepting the status quo. The logic is that as long as Britain is the best in Europe, then all is well. But this is emphatically not the case. Europe is a continent in decline. According to work by the Prime Minister’s own office, it is probable that Europe will go from having four of the ten largest economies