Politics

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

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The search for peace leads Britain to pay a Taliban impostor

That the British government paid a substantial sums of money and attention to someone who they thought was Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a Taliban leader who was the civil aviation minister in the Taliban government, but who turned out to be a shopkeeper from Pakistan shows just how eager Britain is for some kind of political deal that would make it possible for British troops to leave by 2015, the deadline that David Cameron has set. The Washington Post’s piece on the matter, has the Afghan government blaming the mistake on British ‘haste’ for a political settlement.  In The Times the recently retired US representative in Kandahar, reflects that “senior

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband: “Yes, I am a socialist”

Ed Miliband was doing the interview rounds today, and CoffeeHouses may be interested in the below – an edited version of his exchange with Nicky Campbell on Five Live. NC: Is the problem union power?  MPs and the constituencies clearly voted for your brother, Alan Johnson’s favourite candidate.  He was a clear winner in those two parts of the party, and many people say union influence has to be limited.  Now this is a real test of your guts, isn’t it?  Is it the right thing to do? EM: I see it a different way, Nicky, to be honest.  I see that politics as a whole, in every party, is

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Labour’s problem with the media

On the Today programme this morning an incredulous John Humprhys could not believe Ed Miliband’s suggestion that the “squeezed middle” consisted of people earning a bit above or a bit below £26,000. The Institute of Fiscal Studies might have told Humprhys that this was indeed the band in the middle of British society, and that only the richest 15 per cent or so of people pay the 40 percent tax rate. When I last spoke to the IFS, it told me that it makes as much sense to look household income as individual salaries. By this measure, families bringing in £30-£50,000 a year make up the broad middle class, which

David Blackburn

Tory and Labour grandees unite against AV

The NOtoAV campaign has unveiled its patrons. It’s an impressive list. Margaret Beckett is the President, supported by Blunkett, Falconer, Prescott, Reid and Emily Thornberry on one side and Ken Clarke, Micheal Gove, William Hague, Steve Norris and Baroness Warsi on the other. The squeeze is on. The YEStoAV campaign has Labour supporters, but they aren’t quite so august. Iain Martin reckons that the YES team are faced with a cross-party opposition that can get these diverse big beasts working together. Iain calls it a pincer movement on the Lib Dems. The strategy is to characterise electoral reform as aan exclusively sectional interest: Clegg’s fixation. With his singular brand of native wit, John

Thursday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

MPs can’t speak their minds anymore

Howard Flight was made a peer fairly recently, presumably because there is no place in parliament for someone who has a tendency to speak his mind. Back in 2005, whilst being Chief Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Arundel, he made the revolutionary suggestion that the Tory Party might, some day, a lot further down the line, quite fancy the notion of tax cuts. He was not merely sacked from his front bench post for this vile and unconscionable notion, but deselected. Now he has said that the cuts to child benefit will penalise the middle classes more than they penalise the working classes. This is unequivocally true. But

David Blackburn

The Lib Dems are in quiet turmoil over tuition fees

A cruel north wind heralds the Lib Dem’s discontent. In public, the party has withstood criticism of its apparent u-turn on student finance, helped in part by the more puerile elements of the student protest. Ministers, from both wings of the party, have stressed that coalition necessitates compromise: tuition fees had to rise; therefore, the Lib Dems’ task in government was to protect the poorest, which they seemingly have. Backbenchers hedged their bets, saying that they were scrutinising the legislation before deciding how to vote.     But consternation has reigned in private. This morning, weeks of whispered disgruntlement broke into open tension. Politics Home reports hat the Lib Dems met

Mark Littlewood

The Big Society is a threat to Labour

If you think there really is a big idea behind the Big Society, then you agree with the unlikely pairing of Jon Cruddas (Lab, Dagenham) and Jesse Norman (Con, Hereford). The latter’s new book, The Big Society: The Anatomy of the New Politics, attempts the seemingly impossible task of providing a grand philosophical narrative to underscore David Cameron’s often amorphous rhetoric. Cruddas and Norman debated at the Institute of Economic Affairs last night, alongside the IEA’s Professor Philip Booth and Dr Steve Davies. The ninety minute discussion did more to expose the philosophical fault lines in modern British politics than any public event I’ve attended since the General Election. Jesse

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The problem for Gove is that structures beget standards

As you’d expect, Michael Gove’s White Paper is a feast of good sense. His speech in the Commons was powerful analysis, and his rebuttal of Labour MPs fun to watch. He’s all for making kids learn properly in primary school, retaining order in the classroom, making detention easier and better modern language teaching. Amen, amen, amen. But, I fear that the White Paper will not be transformative, for a simple reason: the schools system is broken. It doesn’t respond to instructions. The Education Secretary does not run education – power rests with local authorities and the teaching unions. They’re not too keen on Gove, and have allies in parliament ready

Daniel Korski

Britain should have a Freedom Minister

Has liberal democracy lifted people out of poverty? To a casual observer, the answer is unequivocally yes. One part of the world – the industrialised democratic northern half – is both richer, and healthier than the (historically undemocratic) South or East. Coincidence?   The West’s success may be a function of north Europe’s temperate climate, cultural mores shaped on the windswept British isles and European plains, the competition spurred by centuries of warfare, the invention of modern banking, the head-start provided by inventors, colonial conquests and possibly even the ideas and ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Judeo-Christian faith. But many other regions had similar in-puts. Perhaps the West was just blessed

Martin Bright

The Foreign Office responds

I have just received some answers from the Foreign Office about the Bangladesh war crimes tribunal. I asked if William Hague had sent a letter to his counterpart in Bangladesh saying that there were no war criminals from the 1971 independence war in Britain. A spokesman said that while they did not comment on leaked documents, the following points could be made with reference to the war crimes trials currently taking place in Bangladesh: 1) The UK wants to see all war criminals brought to justice. It is essential that all war crimes’ tribunals are held to internationally accepted standards and that anyone accused of a war crime is given

David Blackburn

Gove starts the revolution

The Spectator has been a long-term fan of Michael Gove – indeed, we named him the single best reason to vote Tory at the last election. His ‘free school’ reforms are laudable and the emphasis on improving standards is imperative. Under the previous government, Britain slid down the international rankings of educational attainment. A tide of politically correct initiatives robbed teachers of their classrooms and discipline suffered. The post code lottery under which state education operates sentences the poorest and most vulnerable in society to rot in under-funded sink schools. Reform is both a moral crusade and a necessity if Britain is to continuing punching above its weight in the

David Blackburn

PMQs Live blog | 24 November 2010

VERDICT: Ed Miliband did well. He exploited the Cabinet divide on school sport and also illustrated how teachers are wary of Gove’s plans. If anything, this reveals the complexity of the opposition facing Gove, and the extent to which it is ingrained, even within Conservative circles. There was also a withering and effective personal attack on Gove. Cameron laid out his government’s stall: Gove (and arguably Cameron) will stand or fall by it. For once, Labour’s opposition was very clearly delineated. So it should have been: courtesy of the long established system, state education is Labour’s natural territory and many of its MPs and councillors cut their teeth running it

Daniel Korski

Balkan promises still to keep

One of the many areas that the Conservative Party took a very different line from Labour was on the Western Balkans. William Hague travelled to the region, frequently asked questions in Parliament and had the war-torn region written into the Coalition Agreement as a government priority. Seven months into the government’s mandate, how has Britain’s Balkan policy changed? How has Britain been able to affect things for the better? The answer is a tad disappointing. There are no more British soldiers or diplomats in the region than there were before the election. Reconstruction funds are slated to decrease. At the Sarajevo Summit earlier this year,  the Foreign Secretary had the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Mandy, Gordon and The Thick of It

Hannah Rothschild’s BBC4 programme following Peter Mandelson during the months running-up to the election was, like almost everything involving the Prince of Darkness, a hoot. But, blimey, there were parts of it that seemed to come straight from The Thick of It. I mean, here’s the voice of frustrated image-makers and strategists the world over: If he [Gordon] can be normal and human with people as he walks through a railway station then let him do it. I want him both to be brainy – he can have his braininess, he can have all the braininess he wants –  but i also want him to be sufficiently relaxed and approachable

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Dave Spart Returns to the Guardian

Well, perhaps he’s never left. There’s much to enjoy in – and something nostalgic about – this piece by Michael Chessum and Jonathan Moses in today’s Guardian. Apparently “politics as usual has failed” so, naturally, alternative methods must be sought. Now, as it happens, one can understand why students are disappointed by the Liberal Democrats’ flip-flop on university funding. But this is bunk: And mobilise we must. The coalition’s proposals represent a nigh irreversible transformation of higher education, and the commodification of knowledge and learning. Mobilise all you like, comrades. But while there’s an intrinsic value to knowledge and learning they are also, quite evidently commodities. That’s why they have

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Coy Cleggites?

In a must read post, Anthony Wells notes that there is a new variant of the Shy Tory and Bashful Blairite: the Coy Cleggite. Traditionally, ICM and Populus have allocated up to 50 percent of undecided respondents to the party they voted for at the last election. Wells writes: ‘Polls are now showing a large proportion of people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 saying they don’t know how they would vote in an election tomorrow, and ICM’s reallocation of don’t knows is now favouring them. In ICM’s last three polls the re-allocation of don’t knows has bumped up the level of Liberal Democrat support by 2 points – yesterday’s

David Blackburn

Who will benefit from the Royal wedding?

David Cameron is playing down the effect the Royal Wedding will have on the 5th May elections, especially the AV referendum. Fleet Street’s having none of it however. On the one hand, Benedict Brogan can already hear the pops of champagne corks in the No to AV campaign offices. He reasons: ‘One consequence of the Royal wedding will be to make it even more difficult for AV supporters to get their campaign motoring in time for the referendum.’ On the other, Alex Barker makes the case for the Lib Dems’ Yes to AV campaign. He has a three point-plan, centring on low turnout following reduced campaign time. This, he thinks,

David Blackburn

Another coalition compromise, this time on immigration

Agreement has been reached on the troublesome immigration cap. The BBC reports that skilled non-EU migration will be limited to 43,000. This is just a 13 percent reduction from this year’s cap and there are numerous exemptions to be made; notably, inter-company transfers will not be included when workers earn more than £40,000 per annum. This is a considerable moment for the coalition because the cap was thought unworkable. The Conservatives have their cap, a pep pill for the embattled Home Secretary.  But this is also a victory for Vince, who is being feted by businessmen across the airwaves this morning. Cable and May have also been praised by Migration

Monday

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Nick Clegg and the Jilted Bride

The Lib Dem press office is one of the sorriest sights in Westminster. A handful of untrained party officers are dealing with a wave of hostility nothing in their right-thinking, left-leaning lives has prepared them for. They thought that they were good. For as long as they can remember everyone they have met has assured them that they were good. Tories were mean and greedy, New Labour was authoritarian and war-mongering. They, by contrast, had always been the nice people in the nice party – maybe a little silly, maybe a little naïve, but fundamentally decent. Now they are hated. As my colleague Julian Glover reports in the Guardian today: