Politics

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

Saturday

The Spectator

Barometer | 13 November 2010

Radical cheek Phil Woolas, the first MP for 99 years to have his election to Parliament overturned, has fewer supporters than the Radical MP John Wilkes, who managed to have his election overturned four times in the Middlesex election fiasco of 1768. —Wilkes was first barred from the House of Commons in 1763 after going into exile in France to escape a second trial on a charge of seditious libel. —He returned in 1768 to stand for election in Middlesex and won, but was then quickly imprisoned over a pornographic poem. —Four by-elections followed, all won by Wilkes; three times the election was declared void and on the final occasion

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The stupidity of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

The Yasmin Alibhai-Brown business is quite remarkable, isn’t it? She takes herself on to Radio Five Live to make her usual sententious and ill-thought out views on the stoning of Muslim women. Western politicians are not morally qualified to condemn such stonings, she said, because they’ve killed lots of Muslim women with bombs etc. Now, this is a typically stupid assessment, for all the obvious reasons. It implies that the allies were not morally qualified to condemn Nazi atrocities because they killed some of the very same people, largely inadvertently, with bombs and so on. It is, like the rest of YA-B’s journalism, an Aunt Sally argument scarcely worth the

Peter Hoskin

The Burmese government releases Aung San Suu Kyi

Celebration mixed with caution. That is the most natural response to the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, and it is the response being uttered by most of our politicians. Celebration, because one of the most high-profile examples of political tyranny in our age has seemingly been righted. Caution, because, despite their posturing, Burma’s military rulers are still averse to anything like real democracy. As William Hague has said, what about Burma’s 2,100 other political prisoners? And what hope that Suu Kyi’s release will mark a real shift in how the country conducts its politics? If Burma is to one day enjoy the “new opportunities for pluralism” that Daniel wrote

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

George Bush’s White House was straight out of Hollywood

It’s the very end of George W. Bush’s second presidential term, and Dick Cheney comes to see him in the White House to talk pardons. It’s the very end of George W. Bush’s second presidential term, and Dick Cheney comes to see him in the White House to talk pardons. Specifically, Cheney wants a pardon for Scooter Libby, a man notorious not, as you might expect, for existing under his own porn star name (it’s a game; you take the name of your first pet and your mother’s maiden name and put them together — trust me, it’s hilarious), but for perjuring himself in the byzantine court case resulting from

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The pledge divide

Over at the FT’s Westminster blog, Alex Barker asks why it is that David Cameron’s expensive personal pledge on pensioner benefits has survived the spending review while Nick Clegg’s personal pledge to scrap tuition fees, which would have cost roughly the same amount, has been spectacularly ditched. As Alex argues, one reason is that Clegg himself was not particularly attached to his pledge on fees. Indeed, he had tried to change the policy several times in opposition. The other is that George Osborne, who is the Tories’ chief election strategist as well as the Chancellor, is determined to protect the Cameron brand. When one right-winger made the case to him

The Spectator

The week that was | 12 November 2010

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson says that the 50p tax rate is the coalition’s most expensive policy, and explains the difference between English and Scottish poppies. James Forsyth writes that the Lib Dems have been spared by idiotic students, and sets out Labour’s Woolas trouble. Peter Hoskin outlines ten things you need to know about the IDS reforms, and reveals Alan Johnson’s deceptions and out-of-date figures. David Blackburn reports on Britain’s threadbare defence establishment, and highlights the mounting concerns over Ireland’s economy. Daniel Korksi tells our politicians to stop dreaming of Leo McGarry. Rod Liddle enjoys Labour’s latest method for

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can the Greens make good on the yellow’s broken promises?

One consequence of coalition and the student fees row is, as Nick Clegg said this morning, that the Lib Dems will be more careful about what they sign up to at the next election. This will create political space for a party that is prepared to advocate populist but unrealistic policies such as abolishing tuition fees. I strongly suspect that Labour will choose not to occupy this space, appearing credible will still be the most important thing to them. So, this raises the question of who will try and move into this slot? UKIP aren’t ideologically suited to it, although Farage is a canny enough operator that little can be

Peter Hoskin

Johnson’s deceptions and out-of-date figures

Oh, how Labour enjoy misleading the public about their record on the public finances. Ed Miliband did it a couple of weeks ago, with some very loose rhetoric about how the previous government had “paid down the debt”. And now Alan Johnson’s at it, with a fiery speech at the RSA which reheated many of the themes in his recent New Statesman article. The passage that struck me was this: “In 2007/08 as the crisis hit, we have the second lowest debt level in the G7 reduced by 14 percent in the 10 years we’d been in office… …The year before the crisis hit we were borrowing 2.4 percent of

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Poppy season

Keen-eyed spectators might have noticed Danny Alexander and Michael Gove wearing a slightly different type of poppy over the last few days: the Scottish Poppy. At the beginning of the poppy-wearing season they are for sale at the Scottish Office in Whitehall and are worn by certain Scots down here – any money that Andrew Marr will be wearing one on Sunday, for example.   What’s the difference? Scots poppies have four petals, and no green leaf.  The English version costs a little more to produce, and – one might argue – looks more sophisticated. But the Scots version can claim to be anatomically correct, because poppies don’t have green

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Lib Dems are spared by idiotic students

The violence at today’s student protest is, politically, a boon to the coalition. The story now is not the Lib Dems breaking their word but the storming of Millbank. The violence will also have cost the no-fees cause much public sympathy, we don’t like attempts at aggressive direct action in this country. There are questions that need to be answered after today, why were the cops so unprepared for the protest turning violent? I crossed through the protest at lunchtime and then it was quite clear that there was potential for trouble. I’m also bemused as to why it is taking so long to put a stop to the violence

Daniel Korski

G-20 in Seoul: Beyond “Camerkelism”

David Cameron is now in Seoul for the first G-20 summit hosted by a non–G-7 member state. It will be the Prime Minister’s second G-20. But things have changed dramatically since he came to power and had to jet to Toronto for his multilateral baptism. Then the Prime Minister’s arguments for austerity measures were theoretical – and a minority position. Now, they are real and have become the majority view. “Camerkelism”, the idea that short-term fiscal consolidation will induce sufficient private-sector activity to more than fully offset the fiscal drag seems to be in the ascendant. Yet the forced smiles at the traditional G-20 class photo will belie a number

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Do Newspapers Influence Elections?

Alex Barker notes that despite the Guardian’s endorsement of the Liberal Democrats this year (still richly amusing!), the Lib Dems actually won a smaller share of the Guardian-reader vote in 2010 than they had in 2005: Chart from Kavanagh & Crowley’s The British General Election of 2010. Some other things to note: Daily Mirror readers were much more motivated to vote than Sun readers. The SNP can have won the support of just 15% of Daily Record readers. Nothing happened between 2005 and 2010 to make Independent readers change their minds about anything. Times readers, by contrast, are the well-read swing-vote. Meanwhile, the Tory share of the Daily Mail vote

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Cheating on the students

Writhe, squirm, cringe and cower. The Commons wanted to inflict ritual punishments on Nick Clegg today for his broken pledges on student fees. The plan nearly succeeded. With Cameron in China, (finding out what happened to our manufacturing base), Clegg took his place at the dispatch box opposite Harriet Harman.    Long practice has given Harman some skill, and even self-possession, at the dispatch box. She had an exceptionally easy target today. As she stood up to give Slick Nick a roasting, the streets around parliament were swelling with angry university-goers waving photos of Clegg signing his fateful election pledge on fees. The LibDem manifesto was being burned in public.

Peter Hoskin

The politics of the student protests

The student protests really are throwing up some extraordinary images. Who’d have thought that they’d end up smashing their way in to the lobby of Tory HQ, setting fire to placards, hurling bricks and other objects – and all as news helicopters buzz insistently overhead? It’s not Paris ’68, but it’s certainly not traditional British reserve either. I’d be tempted to say that this is the fury of a generation which, as I’ve written before, has generally been excluded from the political conversation – if, like Iain Dale, I didn’t suspect that this demonstration had been overtaken by a bunch of dubious fringe groups. So, instead, I’ll refer CoffeeHousers to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Social Conservatives vs Fiscal Conservatives, Part CXIV

When Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana, proposed a GOP “truce” on social issues it was clear that a) he was interested in running for the party’s presidential nomination and b) that his moderate views on said social issues would most probably be a significant handicap. Lo and behold, South Carolina’s Jim DeMint – sometimes seen as the senior Tea Party figure in the Senate and a potential 2012 candidate himself – pipes up to claim you “can’t be a fiscal conservative and not be a social conservative.” This would be news to Milton Friedman, among others. (Though you can argue the extent to which Friedman, like Hayek, was

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s Woolas trouble

This Phil Woolas business is fast becoming a rather large problem for Ed Miliband. Those Labour MPs who are organising a fighting fund for Woolas are effectively defying the party leadership. Remarkably, he is on course to raise £50,000 by Friday. There is a whole slew of explanations for why Labour MPs are, to borrow a phrase, standing by Phil. First of all, the idea of judges overturning election results isn’t popular. Second, he’s a well-liked and sociable colleague, and no one who has fought a Lib Dem has much sympathy with their complaints about dirty tactics. But after these explanations, we move into more murky territory. There is still

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Stop dreaming of Leo McGarry

The West Wing has an amazing hold over Fleet Street. The TV series has not only taught a generation of British reporters about US politics but even influenced the way that they see the workings of Westminster. Every time centre-right writers think David Cameron is seen as having made a mistake – mistreated his back-benchers, hired a personal photographer or made a foreign policy gaffe – they trot out the same refrain: No 10 needs a powerful Leo McGarry-type chief of staff who can bring the various parts of the operation together from Steve Hilton’s work to Andy Coulson’ operation. An enforcer, a puller-togetherer. I have three arguments against a

Daniel Korski

Time for Sir Humphrey to retire

The British government is 99.9999999 percent staffed by apolitical Civil Servants with the statistically irrelevant remainder being political appointees. The Sir Humphreys, rather than being pushed around, are very much in charge. Too much in charge. Ministers get only two Special Advisers – or SpAds – each who are placed away from the Minister’s office and in the beginning of the Government’s term often had to fight to even join meetings with their bosses. Some are knowledgeable experts other researchers with little experience beyond a few years in an MPs office. In what looks like a partisan broadcast from Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, Rachel Sylvester in The Times (£) says

Peter Hoskin

Gordon Brown speaks out about not speaking out

Courtesy of Andrew Sparrow’s ever-superb live blog of the political day, from Brown’s appearance before the Commons development committee: “Let’s not get into this in any detail because it’s a diversion from what we’re doing, and I think it’s unfortunate that this is the sort of question that is the first question to this committee from a member. Let’s put it this way, most former prime ministers have rarely spoken in the house at all. I have decided obviously to concentrate on my constituency work and on some of the work that I’ve been doing internationally. But, at the same time, I have taken a very big interest in some