Politics

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

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

The ghost of David Miliband hovers over Ed’s election results

While the focus remains fixed on the dramas of Coalitionville, it’s worth remembering that today’s votes are meaningful for Ed Miliband too. The Labour leader may not be facing the prospect of resignations, nor even outcry, at their various outcomes. But this is, nonetheless, the first major electoral moment of his leadership. He might well be judged on it. In which case, much will depend on the extent to which Labour advances in England have already been priced into the electoral calculus. If the party’s footsoldiers regard sweeping gains — of perhaps around 1,000 seats — as some sort of default, then attention may turn instead to the turnaround in

Matthew Elliott

Make sure you vote NO today

Today I urge everyone who believes in our democracy to vote ‘no’ to the unfair and expensive Alternative Vote (AV) system.   The recent polls have been encouraging but you must remember that there is no turnout threshold today – any complacency and the UK could sleepwalk into a heavily flawed voting system that we would struggle to get rid of.   Instead of voting being clear, simple and effective like our current system, the Alternative Vote’s complex counting process breaks the principle of ‘One Person, One Vote’ which is the foundation of our democracy. People who vote for the fringe parties, like the BNP, can have their votes counted

Peter Hoskin

Election day is here at last

The usual form, on mornings such as these, is to put up a post setting the scene for the elections ahead – although, really, there’s not much more to add than was said yesterday. Apart from a readers’ survey in the Metro this morning, the only poll to hit after yesterday’s ICM bombshell is a YouGov one for the Sun, and it gives No a 20-point lead. Even given the complications of turnout and geography, it looks as though Team No are heading for a straightforward victory. As if to underline his increased personal involvement in the campaign, and perhaps tie himself that little bit closer to the eventual result,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

HMQ’s AV Victory

The success of Prince William’s wedding was one thing but if you want another indication that, whatever people think they think of Prince Charles right now, the monarchy is in no imminent danger consider the fate of the referendum on introducing the alternative vote for Westminster elections. I suggest that republicans are among today’s losers. Assuming the polls are right, that is. If the British public rejects a relatively minor change to the electoral system there is almost no chance, at any conceivable point in any conceivable future, they will vote for a republic. Custom and the Burkean arguments for custom are powerful things (and probably the best arguments in

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Scotsman Sees Sense

The Scotsman’s endorsement of the SNP and the Scottish Conservatives is so thoroughly, even startlingly, sensible it could almost have been written by me*. [T]here is no other credible candidate for First Minister beyond Mr Salmond. Despite his party’s apparently staunch commitment to statism, we also know the SNP leader is passionate about the role of business and free enterprise in generating jobs and growth for Scotland, within or outwith the Union. In that, he and many of his colleagues – finance secretary John Swinney is one – share the beliefs of the Tories, and we feel there may be common ground between them. SCOTLAND needs a strong First Minister

Jonathan Jones

Your guide to tomorrow’s elections

In light of ICM’s latest poll, Lib Dems might be relieved to hear that tomorrow isn’t all about the AV referendum. But it’s a meagre sort of relief: they’re facing a drubbing in the local elections too. We’ve put together a quick guide to those elections, as well as those in Scotland and Wales, so that CoffeeHousers know what to look out for, and Lib Dems know what to fear. Here it is: England The main question hovering over England’s local elections is: how big will Labour’s gains be? There are around 9,400 seats up for contention, of which the Conservatives currently hold about 5,000; Labour, 1,600; and the Lib

James Forsyth James Forsyth

New ICM poll has No 36 — thirty six — points ahead

Tonight’s ICM poll is even worse for the Yes campaign than last night’s ComRes poll. The poll, in tomorrow’s Guardian, has Yes heading for defeat by a margin of more than two-to-one and in every single region of the country. The turnout adjusted numbers are No 68, Yes 32. If these last two polls are accurate, and it is difficult to estimate what the turnout will be tomorrow, it will be a monumental humiliation for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. Defeat on this scale would take Lib Dem nervousness about what the coalition is doing to the party’s brand to a whole new level. Indeed, its effect would be

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A session of Dickens, Ernie the Milkman and Jack Dromey

There was an eerie, eve-of-battle calm about today’s PMQs. The real bust-up isn’t due till Friday. The votes will be in, AV will be out, Clegg will be down and Huhne will be calculating his next move. Before today’s session everyone expected Labour to co-ordinate an ambush and try to light Cameron’s ever-combustible fuse. But the chamber was under-populated and the opposition hadn’t troubled to devise a battle-plan. Miliband carried the fight to the PM. With an assured forensic performance he methodically built up the case against Cameron as a promise-breaker, a question-dodger and a budget-slasher. Cameron dealt with the assault by absorbing rather than repulsing it. But at the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A very quiet exchange

PMQs today was dominated by the parties trying to get their lines out ahead of the voting on Thursday. David Cameron accused “Labour local authorities of playing politics with people’s jobs” and urged voters “not to let Labour do to your council, what they did to our country.” He received plenty of chances to make his local election case as Tory backbenchers served up one patsy question on councils after another. Ed Miliband jibed that the coalition was no longer two parties working together in the national interest but “two parties threatening to sue each other in their own interest,” a reference to Huhne’s hyperbolic threat to sue over the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why I voted no

I voted no to AV (postal vote) for a bunch of reasons; the first, and probably most important, is that nobody really wants it. The British public has not been clamouring for constitutional change; as we know, the vote is simply a device to facilitate the coalition. The Lib Dems don’t really want it – press them on the issue and they mumble well, it’s better than what we have, just about, but without the remotest enthusiasm. The majority of the Labour Party and almost all Tories oppose it. But it’s also a matter of fairness. All electoral systems are flawed and I’m aware that an MP elected with only

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 4 May 2011

VERDICT: A sedate sort of PMQs today, particularly in comparison to the fizz and fire of recent sessions. The reason is simply the date: with the local elections tomorrow, much of the emphasis was on making a straightforward pitch for votes. Miliband’s was to attack the “broken promises” of the coalition — a charge that, if not exactly new, is one he is deploying more and more. Whereas Cameron’s was to emphasise that councils can make cuts while improving services — and that Tory councils have been particularly successful in doing so. Both men broadcast their messages today, without really scarring the other. The winners and losers will be better

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Whatever the Lib Dems claim, Michael Gove will be voting No tomorrow

A senior Liberal Democrat is putting it about this morning that Michael Gove, the education secretary, will be voting for AV tomorrow. But a very close friend of Gove tells me that ‘this is categorically untrue. Michael will be voting to keep first past the post.’ This Lib Dem’s briefing strikes me as rather ham-fisted. One might even call it disorganised wickedness. UPDATE: Michael Gove is not only voting No tomorrow, he’s getting out the vote for No. The education secretary, who has up to now stayed out of the referendum campaign, will be making phone calls to remind Conservatives to go out and vote No tomorrow from CCHQ this

Daniel Korski

Is Chris Huhne proving coalitions don’t work?

This country’s not used to coalitions. So when we got one we were sceptical. When it worked, we remained sceptical. When it worked really well, taking decisions that a majority Labour government dared not take, we began to come around to the idea. Most people seemed to accept that they could live with a coalition; that it had a certain utility. Now, we don’t know what to think following the spat between George Osborne and Chris Huhne. Is this proof that the coalition cannot work or merely an example of the way coalitions work? There are certainly worse examples of inter-coalition war in countries that often have coalition governments. German

Peter Hoskin

Yes to AV on the ropes as the final round approaches

Thanks to this ComRes poll, the question floating around Westminster this morning is: how much?! You see, with only a day to go until the AV referendum, it has the No camp on 66 per cent, and the Yes camp on 34. That puts No a punishing 32 points ahead of its rival. Even allowing for the peculiarities of a bank holiday weekend – as noted by Anthony Wells here – it’s still an astonishing gap. It augurs a landslide. Or does it? To my mind, much still rests on turnout and on the voting patterns of Wales, Scotland, etc. Yet there’s no denying that Yes are up against it

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The significance of today’s Cabinet bust-up

On the Today Programme this morning, David Cameron stressed that for all the tensions about the AV referendum, ministers were still capable of sitting round a table and working together. But within a couple of hours of saying this, Chris Huhne had destroyed this argument by using Cabinet to continue his attack about the tactics of the No campaign.   When the Energy Secretary is demanding that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor justify their behaviour to him it is impossible to pretend that it is business as usual. It is now indisputable that the fallout from the AV referendum campaign is having an impact on the functioning of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Clegg’s implicit attack on the Tories

Up until a few months ago, David Cameron and Nick Clegg tried to avoid doing big set piece broadcast interviews on the same day. This was driven by a desire to both maximise the coalition’s dominance of the media agenda and to avoid having to give a running commentary on what the other had said. But this rule has gone out of the window as the AV referendum has got rougher and rougher. So, following on from their both doing separate interviews on Andrew Marr on Sunday, they both were on the Today Programme this morning. Clegg even told Justin Webb to ask Cameron about the split between the two

Jonathan Jones

How the Canadian elections panned out

The votes have been counted, and the results of the Canadian federal election are in. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives Stephen Harper’s Conservatives performed much more strongly than many expected, securing their first majority since 1993 by 13 seats. The New Democratic Party’s vote did indeed hold up: they took 31 per cent of the vote (almost exactly as the latest polls predicted), and won 102 seats, beating the Liberals by a wide margin to become the official opposition. The Liberals had their worst election result in their 144-year history, returning fewer than half the MPs they had going into the election. The Bloc Québécois had a disastrous night too, also suffering

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Huhne lays into Cameron and Osborne at Cabinet

At Cabinet this morning, I am told that Chris Huhne directly challenged David Cameron and George Osborne about the claims that the No campaign have been making. He asked them both in turn, if they were going to — or could — defend them. Osborne responded by telling Huhne that his behaviour was inappropriate and that Cabinet wasn’t the place for such disputes. The fact that this row broke out in Cabinet shows just how badly relations within the coalition have been damaged bv the AV campaign. That Huhne is leading the anti-Tory charge even within Cabinet will also stoke the rumours about what the Energy Secretary is planning to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

John Humphrys makes the case for voting No to AV

Is AV too complex? Ask John Humphrys, who unwittingly made the case against switching system today, in conversation with David Cameron on the Today programme. It became clear that Humphrys believed that everyone’s second preference vote would be counted under AV — and Cameron pounced. Here’s the transcript: DC: If you go to an AV system you start counting some people’s votes more than once. And you end up, in the words of Churchill… JH: No you don’t. It simply isn’t true that you count votes more than once. DC: Yes, you count all the votes. You start eliminating candidates, and you count people’s second preferences. JH: And I have

Monday

Jonathan Jones

A brief guide to the Canadian elections

Today Canadians go to the polls for their fourth general election in seven years, after Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government fell to an unprecedented motion citing it for contempt of Parliament. The story of the campaign has undoubtedly been the meteoric rise of Jack Layton’s New Democratic Party. Until now, the centre-left NDP had been the third party nationally — and, in fact, fourth in number of seats, due to the regional strength of the Bloc Québécois. However, they have enjoyed a steady surge over the past three weeks, with the election-eve polls putting them on about 31 per cent — more than 10 points ahead of the previously second-placed