Politics

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

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The demise of the speed camera

One of the more interesting influences on the Conservatives is behavioural economics. The book ‘Nudge’ informs quite a lot of their thinking and one of its author Richard Thaler is now an official advisor to the party; his co-author is heading up regulatory policy for Obama. One of the major British evangelists for behavioural economics and its insight is The Spectator’s own Wiki Man, Rory Sutherland. He drew this magazine’s attention to Thaler and Nudge long before people in the Westminster Village had cottoned onto it. I’m told that it was a piece that he wrote on Coffee House which inspired Theresa Villiers to announce the effective end of speed

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Man Who Would Be a Peer: General Sir Richard Dannatt

Plenty of Tories are, it seems, cock-a-hoop about the news, still to be confirmed, that General Sir Richard Dannatt is to be elevated to the House of Lords where he will become a Tory defence adviser and, perhaps, a minister in the next Conservative government. And, in fairness, one can see why the Conservatives would be so pleased. There’s no-one on the Labour benches who brings as much firepower to the political battlefield as General Dannatt. Yet if the government’s criticisms of General Dannatt were, at times, unseemly then so too was his very public dissension from (aspects of)  government policy at a time when he was, after all, in

Peter Hoskin

Pre-Freudian slip

Theresa May is chairing a discussion with a set of Conservative PPCs on ‘job clubs’, as part of this afternoon’s focus on welfare reform.  She kicks off asking one of the Tory PPCs on the panel, Maggie Throup, to talk about job clubs in her area: “So, Maggie, tell us about…”. Problem is, May addresses her remarks at the wrong PPC, Suzy Davis. Mistake realised, she wheels round and puts the same question to the actual Maggie Throup.  Not a good start. It’s picked up since. The welfare adviser David Freud, who jumped ship from Labour to the Tories, is now on stage. And he gets a cheer when he

David Blackburn

The Culture Secretary’s loaded gun is jammed

Ben Bradshaw is in gladiatorial combat with the Beeb. Battling the BBC is an all consuming passion for BB and, like the Lone Ranger, he fights alone. With Twitter as his Tonto, he has already fired salvos of no more than 140 characters at the Corporation’s “disgracefully feeble” scrutiny of the Conservatives, and this morning he targeted the Today Programme. Outraged by Evan Davis’, I thought, appropriately pointed interrogation of George Osborne, Bradshaw tweeted: “Another wholly feeble and biased Today programme rounded off with a fawning interview with a Tory pundit!!” I will gloss over the Culture Secretary’s use of two exclamation marks because, as the Education Secretary misspells the

Peter Hoskin

Rolling in it

Well, the Tories will be pleased.  According to Channel 4’s Gary Gibbon, they’ve made a tidy £1.5 million profit from their party conference.  When you consider how much must have been spent in Manchester – it’s a very slick operation with banners, screens and corporate hospitalities everywhere – this news is yet another sign (were one needed) of the Tories’ momentum.

Peter Hoskin

Expect more “fine print” on spending soon

Sifting through this morning’s papers, you’d say that it’s mission accomplished for George Osborne’s speech yesterday. The realigned Sun demonstrates how much it has got behind the Tories, by giving the Shadow Chancellor an absolutely glowing report (“the Shadow Chancellor came of age”). He also receives good-to-medium notices in the Times, the FT and the Independent, while the Guardian is more mixed, but hardly damning. In the Mail, Quentin Letts writes that “Yesterday the Boy became Boss George”. And so on and so on. You can see where they’re all coming from.  As I wrote yesterday, there’s much that was impressive in Osborne’s speech. But there were also some weaknesses

David Blackburn

Cameron needs to tackle the expenses scandal head on

The current consensus issue in British politics is not to discuss the expenses scandal. The so-called ‘New politics’ was a brief footnote in both Brown’s and Clegg’s conference speeches, but public anger remains palpable. Daniel Finkelstein points out that the Tories stand to lose the most from sidelining the issue: continuity undoes their claim that they stand for wholesale change. That is unquestionably true. Whilst the leadership prepare us for the age of austerity, visions of duck houses, moats and servants’ wings pervade the public consciousness, even though those responsible have been disciplined. David Cameron has been at the forefront of the ‘clean-up politics’ debate: Alan Duncan’s sacking, the proposed

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Generally speaking, British voters haven’t taken to the Waffen SS

I am still not sure quite why the Conservative Party is determined to ally itself in Europe with the Waffen SS and Poland’s vigorous and exciting “No Yids or Queers” party. It has no need to do so. I assume Mr Cameron is at least mildly anti-SS and, while he might not in general like homosexuals or foreigners, has no wish to behave particularly nastily toward them. The Tories are in danger of making themselves look every bit as ridiculous over Europe as they looked in 1996, if for very different reasons. The party’s new allies, the Polish Law and Order Party and the Latvian Freedom and Fatherland Party (that

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Aside from saving Gordon Brown, twice, what’s Peter Mandelson ever done for us?

For such a Big Beast, Ken Clarke’s speech this afternoon was very pedestrian. Admittedly, the subject matter, cutting red tape for small businesses, was unlikely to inspire a carnival of Churchillian wit and verve. However, Clarke did provide activists with a whiff of red of meat: he trashed Mandelson’s come back. “Yes, I agree with him – responsibly and in the national interest – agree with him on the future of Royal Mail.  We agreed with him when he took his Bill through the House of Lords.  And what happened?  That weak and dithering Prime Minister – Gordon Brown – has stopped him bringing his Bill into the House of

Peter Hoskin

Cameron & Osborne getting into a muddle over 50p tax

When Fraser interviewed David Cameron last week, the Tory leader suggested that the 50p tax rate would be easy to drop, if necessary.  If it doesn’t raise any money, then – voilà! – it’s gone.  In fact, here are the Tory leader’s words: “If you’re right that it raises no revenue, even in the short term then clearly it would be painless and advantageous to get rid of it at an early stage.” But George Osborne’s policy package today contains this little nugget, taken from the press notes: “The new 50p tax rate and associated changes to the taxation of higher earners should be kept in place for at least

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Gotcha!

When David Cameron turned up to The Spectator’s party last night, I thought it only decent to ply him with a glass of fizz. After all, a magazine whose motto is “champagne for the brain” can hardly begrudge champagne for the guests. And what’s the harm, I thought – there were no photographers at the party. Right? Wrong. The picture is now on the front page of the Evening Standard – with yours truly beside Cameron having just plonked it in his hand a few seconds earlier. I promise, it wasn’t a set-up: we thought we’d cleared the place of photographers. We heard that someone  a photo and my colleague

Peter Hoskin

Nothing exceptional, but a job well done by Osborne

They stopped letting people into the conference hall for George Osborne’s speech long before the Shadow Chancellor took to the platform – it was packed, not even standing room.  There was certainly an anticipatory buzz among Tory supporters, particularly after some of the policy announcements trailed in the papers this morning.  One delegate assured me that “this is the speech when George will convince the nation that he’s the man to deal with Brown’s mess.”  Everyone seemed pretty breathless. So did he pull it off?  Well, my immediate response is “yes and no”.  Probably more “yes” than “no”.  There was much that was impressive in the speech.  Osborne touched on

Peter Hoskin

How are the Tories responding to Labour’s pay freeze?

So what do the Tories make of Alistair Darling’s limelight-grabbing decision to freeze public sector pay? The ones I’ve spoken to seem perfectly relaxed with it. A little bit annoyed perhaps: wouldn’t you be, if your opponents appeared to cynically delay an announcement that they could have made during their own party conference last week?  But they’re confident that the public will see through the stunt, and that it will actually reflect badly on Brown & Co.  On top of that, the Tories are sure that Labour will make little headway in a news agenda that will be dominated by Tory announcements for the next few days. It’s hard to

Peter Hoskin

Will the civil service block Tory Euroscepticism?

Of all the countless leaflets, pamphlets and circulars being handed out in Manchester, one of the most interesting is a glossy collection of essays entitled Cameron’s Britain.  It has been put together by the folk at Portland PR – who recently hosted that “war game” which James reported back on – and has entries on everything from the NHS to tackling global poverty. As it doesn’t seem to be online, I figured it’s worth quoting from one of the most insightful essays of the bunch: that by Steve Morris, a former Downing St adviser, on the Whitehall machinery that the next government will have to get to grips with.  Norris

David Blackburn

Further, stronger, faster

Later today, George Osborne will elaborate on the Conservatives’ plan to raise the state pension age to 66. The rise will be enacted by 2016 at the earliest and will save an estimated £13bn per year. The Tories will review how they can accelerate the original planned pension age rise, dated for 2026, that would link the state pension with earnings. There’s much to elaborate upon, notably how the rise will affect female retirement age and exactly how much money would be saved overall. But essentially, this move should be welcomed. It is realistic and proves that there’s substance to the Conservatives’ cuts agenda beyond ‘trimming bureaucracy’ and burning quangos. George Osborne describes the proposal “one of those

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Tories in the stocks

Here’s something new for party conference season: real people. About 200 of them. Firemen. Unemployed. And, yes, workers. They are brought to you courtesy of Victoria Derbyshire’s Five Live show, where I am sitting at the back listening to this mass focus group session. It has become (for me, anyway) an unmissable feature of the party conference season – a welcome injection of real life into the all-too-myopic conferences. Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet members turn up knowing that this session will be about all the normal, disinterested person will hear about the conference. Now and again, she asks them to clap or boo depending if they agree or disagree. It’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Europe question won’t dominate conference but it hasn’t gone away

There is a reluctant acceptance here that Lisbon will have been ratified by next May and that the Tories won’t hold a post-ratification referendum. But it is important to understand why the leadership is getting away with a position that is so unpopular with the grassroots. Partly it is a reflection of the fact that the party has rediscovered its discipline, it wants to win again and is prepared to swallow quite a lot on the way. But more important is that the party believes the leadership is Euro-sceptic; that Cameron is–to use Bruce Anderson’s phrase—not tainted by ‘federasty’. The view here is that if Cameron doesn’t have the time

David Blackburn

Labour isn’t working. Have a drink

Thanks to Guido for snapping this arresting political slogan. The Conservatives will now sweep the country; of that I have now doubt. But as ever, there is a complication. In what is clearly an indication of the Tories’ target audience and political intent, lashings of Scotch and Newcastle Brown Ale are readily available, but Eric Pickles has banned Champagne. Is this the precursor of a hardening Eurosceptic line…?

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 5 October 2009

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson says the times they are a changing, and thinks that now is the time to start banging on about Europe. James Forsyth wonders which of the speakers at this Tory conference will make it into Cameron’s cabinet, and watches the Tories trying to hold the line on Europe. David Blackburn discusses the implications of Brown agreeing to appear in a TV debate, in principle, and argues that Cameron’s radical agenda is best for Britain. Martin Bright ponders Cameron’s strange European bedfellows. Rod Liddle notes that the bankers were contrite but resistant to change. And Alex Massie

David Blackburn

The Tories look evasive on Europe, but now is not the time to clarify

The phrase “we will not let matters rest” sounds slightly menacing, but it’s completely opaque. Is it time for the Tories to define what they mean by it? The leading article in the Times argues that perhaps it is. ‘Now that the Irish have ratified the Lisbon treaty at the second attempt, the Conservative Party needs to listen to Robert Peel. In 1834 Peel issued a manifesto in Tamworth in which he said the Conservative Party should now accept the Great Reform Act which it had vigorously opposed. Now that David Cameron finds himself struggling to clarify the circumstances in which he will offer the nation a referendum on the