Politics

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

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron repulses Harman’s misdirected assault

The PMQs attack No 10 was expecting from Labour on the Coalition’s planned spending cuts did not materialise and today’s was another relatively quiet affair. It started with a minute’s silence in memory of those who died in the shootings in Cumbria. Harman asked one question on gun laws before moving on to the electoral roll and whether it is fair to redraw the boundaries on a roll that does not include three and a half million people. Harman would be on quite strong ground here except for the fact that the boundaries were redrawn under the last government using this electoral register, a point Cameron made. When Harman moved

David Blackburn

BREAKING: Abbott has made it onto the ballot

David Miliband’s patronising ruse has worked. The rumours that have circulated for half an hour or so have now been confirmed by the BBC. I wonder what damage Abbott will now cause the other candidates? Also, what does it say for the case for diversity and Labour’s internal policy debate if Abbott’s election was a stitch-up?  

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Abbott wields the knife

When she’s not breaking into her constituents homes and biting their children in the dead of night, Diane Abbott has been busy stabbing her fellow left wing Labour MP, John McDonnell, in the back. It was Abbott who brought to the world’s slightly nonplussed attention the “quip” made by McDonnell about wishing to assassinate Margaret Thatcher. She did this in order to force the likeable McDonnell out of the race so that she might pick up the left wing MPs who nominated him. Very fraternal of you, love. But successful, as it turns out, for McDonnell has indeed now withdrawn. If Abbott gets all of his MPs, however, she’s still

David Blackburn

PMQs Live-blog

12:00 Stay tuned for coverage As a prelude, the House stands for a minute’s silence in memory of those killed in Cumbria. 12:02: And we’re off – 3 more soldiers killed in Afghanistan over the past week. 12:04: Labour MP Albert Owen asks for a referendum on giving further powers to the Welsh assembly. Cameron has pledged a ‘respect agenda’, which means there will be such a referendum but next year rather than this. Cameron says there is a debate about institutional issues but people in Wales want to hear about schools and hospitals as well. 12:06: Lib Dem MP Tim Farron (deputy leadership hopeful) wants a pledge to protect

David Blackburn

The Labour leadership race descends into farce

Perhaps it’s just me but this morning’s Labour leadership machinations are a farce of political correctness. Everyone is falling over themselves to be as nice as possible and essentially rig the ballot so that Diane Abbott receives a nomination. As James notes, it’s a peculiar tactic as Abbott will cause no end of trouble for the ‘serious’ contenders for the ultimate prize. Needless to say, David Miliband, that auteur of absurdity, planted the banana skin. Attempting to be magnanimous but excelling in pomposity, he has voted for Abbot and urges all to do the same. My hunch is that there are many on the right of the party who will

James Forsyth James Forsyth

John McDonnell pulls out of Labour leadership race in an effort to get Diane Abbott on the ballot

John McDonnell’s decision to pull out of the Labour leadership contest should help Diane Abbott get the number of nominations required. But it is worth pointing out why so many Labour people at Westminster are not thrilled about this prospect despite the fact she would stop the contest from being between four embarrassingly similar figures. Their fear is that Abbott—with her TV skills and fondness for one-liners—will spend the contest making jokes at the expense of the four white male Oxbridge special advisers turned politicians she is running against. She won’t win but the tags she applies to her opponents could stick, making it even more difficult for the new

David Blackburn

A day of elections at Westminster

By the end of the day, we will know the identity of the Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader and the chairmen of Select Committees as well as a sense of the shape of the Labour leadership contest. The races for the Select Committees are a mix of near certainties and unknown quantities. Keith Vaz is expected to return to the chair of the Home Affairs Committee. Michael Fallon is understood to have the backing of the members of the Treasury Select Committee, whilst his rival Andrew Tyrie is in with a shout of winning the cross party vote. The leadership races are clear cut. Simon Hughes’ team have briefed that their

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Nats go nuclear on the Lib Dems

The Scottish and Welsh Nationalists have managed to prompt the first Commons vote where one of the governing parties has to vote against its own manifesto. They have put down an amendment calling for Trident to be included in the SDR, which will be voted on at 10pm tonight. The Lib Dem manifesto commits the party to ‘Saying no to the like for like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system, which could cost £100 billion. We will hold a full defence review to establish the best alternative for Britain’s future security.’ But the Coalition agreement states that the government will keep Britain’s nuclear deterent and says that the renewal

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Malignancy of Ed Balls

I’ve only just got round to reading Ed Balls’ piece in the Observer in which he argues that Britain should be more protectionist in europe. Of course that’s not quite what he says, but “revisiting” the question of the free movement of peoples across the EU is essentially a protectionist measure. Anyway it reminded me of Evelyn Waugh’s response to the news that Randolph Churchill had successfully had a benign tumour removed: “It was a typical triumph of modern science, to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant, and remove it.” This is a little unfair on Labour since it had other achievements to boast of. Nevertheless,

Daniel Korski

Achtung, Liam

Defence Secretary Liam Fox is used to looking across the Atlantic for military inspiration and across the English Channel to France for the future of defence cooperation. But he might do well to look somewhere else – namely to Germany where the young defence minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, has launched one of the Cabinet’s most ambitious cost-cutting programmes. He is planning to cut the number of active-duty soldiers from 250,000 to 150,000 as part of a an effort to find  €1bn (£840m) worth of cuts as part of the government’s €80 billion austerity programme. He is even contemplating an end to compulsory military service — something normally seen as a

David Blackburn

How long can Cameron blame Labour?

Understandably, David Cameron is blaming Labour for the age of austerity he must inaugurate, and will continue to blame Labour. Dominic Lawson asks a simple question in this morning’s Independent: how long can that tactic soften the opprobrium his government will incur? ‘After all, when Margaret Thatcher’s government cut the unsustainably vast subsidies to public sector industries – from coal-mining to car manufacturing – which her Labour predecessors had not dared to confront, it established her reputation among millions as a cruel and heartless prime minister. It will be fascinating to see if the much more soothing rhetoric of a Conservative government in coalition with the Liberal Democrats can convince

Alex Massie Alex Massie

2012 Tea Leaves

A pair of interesting developments in the early manoevering for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in 2012. 1. Sarah Palin endorses Terry Branstad in the Iowa gubernatorial race rather than his opponent Vander Plaats even though Plaats is the favoured candidate of Tea Partying types and prominent evangelicals such as James Dobson. Odd, no? Actually, no it’s not odd at all. Branstad, who is making a comeback a decade after he last served as Governor, is much more likely to win. Palin isn’t stupid and she knows enough to know there’s no point in needlessly antagonising the man who will probably be the next governor of Iowa. 2. A characteristically

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ed Balls and the art of opposition

There’s been a lot said about Ed Balls’ Observer piece on immigration. But the most striking thing about it to my mind is that it shows that Balls has made the transition to an opposition mindset.   Take his proposal that ‘Europe’s leaders need to revisit the Free Movement Directive’. This is classic opposition politics; suggest something that sounds good but it practically impossible. The other EU member states are unlikely to agree to agree to renegotiating this directive. But the Tories can hardly point this out; emphasising the UK government’s impotence when it comes to changing the rules of the game would hardly go down well with the Tory

David Blackburn

The Prince of Darkness passes into night

If Ed Miliband wins, it’s curtains for Peter Mandelson. Michael Crick reports this exchange between GMB president Mary Turner and Ed Miliband. ‘”As Labour leader, would you invite Peter Mandelson to join your shadow cabinet?” “All of us believe in dignity in retirement,” replied Ed Miliband.’ Is Mordor mobilising? You bet your sweet life it is. No. In reality, I think that Mandelson, the uncompromising diarist, is finished with frontline Labour politics, and it with him.

David Blackburn

The previous government’s economic failure laid bare

As Ben Brogan notes, there was a clean symmetry to David Cameron’s speech this morning: the crisis was Labour’s fault; therefore, Labour is to blame for the painful measures needed to restore stability. As Cameron put it: ‘I think people understand by now that the debt crisis is the legacy of the last government. But exactly the same applies to the action we will take to deal with it.’ Cameron made constant reference to the actions of the ‘previous government’. As a foretaste of what the Independent Office for Budget Responsibility will expose, Cameron alleged that Alistair Darling withheld estimates that Britain will be repaying £70bn per annum in debt

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Dave’s Cuts are Really Gordon’s Cuts

David Cameron’s speech on reducing public spending, curbing the deficit and tackling the national debt was important stuff. Not least because, at some length, he pointed out the poisonous position the incoming government faces to make it clear that, far from being Tory cuts, when the axe comes, as fall it must, the underlying responsibility for these spending cuts belongs to Labour not the Camerlegg Ministry.  In one sense this is cheeky: it’s Dave’s ball now and his to play with and decide the rules too. And it was a stretch to say that spending reductions aren’t driven by at least an element of “theory or ideology”. They are. Which

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron lays the ground for cuts

David Cameron’s speech today was about preparing people for the cuts to come, persuading them that Labour’s mismanagement of the public finances had made this ‘unavoidable’ and reassuring them that he had no ideological desire to make cuts and so would do them in the most sensitive way possible. Cameron managed to pull this off fairly effectively. He is managing the rhetorical transition from leader of the opposition to Prime Minister fairly well. In a way, what Cameron is doing now is the easy bit: the intellectual case for dealing with the deficit is unarguable. It is when the Coalition has to outline not broad principles but the specifics that

Charlotte Gore

How the coalition makes room for Labour

Whoever wins Labour’s leadership, whether it’s a breed of Miliband or Balls, its future will be dominated by its understanding of how it found itself on opposition benches. Philip Gould, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the other progenitors of the New Labour project – were wrong. Their fatal assumption was that their core vote, the working classes, had no-where else to go. Labour, therefore, could reach out the middle classes, broadening their support and thus New Labour was born. At first their calculations were correct. Two slogans, “Education, Education, Education” and “Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime” brought together the two separate demographics to create a powerful

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 7 June 2010

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk Fraser Nelson tells the story of another Rachel, and catches Vince Cable on manoeuvres. James Forsyth sees that David Cameron will not campaign either for or against voting reform, and notes that George Osborne is off to a fine start on the global stage. David Blackburn believes the Labour leadership candidates pine for the past, and notes that the coalition is committed to tackling poverty. Susan Hill comments on a dish best never served. Rod Liddle runs against prevailing opinion on David Laws. And Melanie Phillips attacks the western left’s alternative universe.