Politics

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

Wednesday

Martin Bright

Why the Reshuffle is Not the Solution

As I wandered through parliament on Monday evening I bumped into a former minister who had just come out of the do-or-die parliamentary Labour Party meeting. He reached in his pocket and showed me a text message on his mobile from a constituency activist: “So it’s a slow, lingering death then,” it said. This was the week the Labour Party finally, definitively admitted defeat. The European elections demonstrated that Labour can’t win under Gordon Brown’s leadership. James Purnell’s courage in being the first Cabinet minister to voice what his colleagues know to be the case was met with shuffling feet and bowed heads. The expressions of loyalty from those who

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs of the undead

Usually it’s the war-dead who overshadow the start of PMQs. Today it was the undead. Brown is back and if the Labour rebels really believed his promise to ‘listen’ their trust seems to have been misplaced. This was the Brown of old, the unbudgeable slab of granite, the obsessive numerologist casting statistics in all directions like a witchdoctor sprinkling charms to ward off evil. Two planted questions gave him a chance to bring up the ‘ten percent reduction’ allegedly referred to by Andrew Lansley in this morning’s interview about Tory spending plans. Brown seemed to be cruising at this point. With his statement on electoral reform in his pocket he

Martin Bright

Insanity has always been integral to New Labour

Martin Bright says that the party labels its enemies as ‘mad’ for Freudian reasons: ‘projecting’ its own collective and individual mental disorders upon foes and rebels alike What is it with New Labour and accusations of psychological weakness? No sooner had Hazel Blears announced her resignation from the Cabinet but dark murmurings bubbled up from Downing Street that the Salford MP ‘couldn’t handle it’. She had clearly cracked under the pressure following revelations about her expenses, it was suggested. Peter Mandelson appeared to be supportive when he told Sky News that Hazel Blears had a right to be angry that her career had ended in humiliation after doing such a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

There’s never been a better time to join Labour

Labour had a good night on Sunday. Not Gordon Brown, not Ed Balls, not the Milibands, nor any other of the other ministers who will have been bundled out of office within the next 12 months. They are, of course, doomed. For them ahead lies nothing but months of humiliation, followed, for many of them, by unemployment. But for the Labour party as an institution it is another matter. In spite of suffering an even heavier drubbing in the local and European elections than had been predicted, the Labour party on Sunday ensured its survival and recovery to power some time in the 2020s. I am so sure of this

Anne Mcelvoy

Dave has some special new Labour friends

Anne McElvoy spots a new political type: the ‘Labrators’ who have more in common with Cameron than Brown, and may co-operate with a Tory government The Labrators are coming: cross-bred symbols of shifting political times. Labour by background and allegiance, they empathise with many of the New Conservatives’ aims and obsessions. As for the political divide, they don’t so much straddle it, as just ignore it. The only question is how far they’ll go, now that the party that dominated the landscape is a shrunken spectre of its former self. ‘The thing to watch,’ says one of the resigners from Cabinet last week, ‘is who will get involved with Project

Matthew Dancona

Tony, Gordon and Peter saved Labour: now they’ll destroy it

Matthew d’Ancona says that, by sticking with Brown, Labour has opted for a mad collective delusion. The party is still in thrall to the trio who invented New Labour and cannot think beyond the Blair-Brown era — an incapacity for which it will pay a terrible price In Westminster this week, I have felt like the boy in the movie The Sixth Sense. You remember the character and his famous line. ‘I see dead people,’ he tells his therapist, Bruce Willis, ‘walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.’ How often does the boy see

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The View from the North

Away from the BNP and the Woes of Brown (which sounds like an Aberfeldy tea-room or something) the other notable european result came in Scotland where the SNP’s handsome victory (29-21 over Labour) confirmed that Labour can no longer automatically consider itself the natural governing party in Scotland. Given that the 2007 Holyrood election was essentially a tie (the SNP winning on away goals), this was the first time the SNP had ever routed Labour in a national election. Sure, Labour’s difficulties at Westminster played a large part in this, but only a part. Their inability to counter Alex Salmond’s merry band at Holyrood was also a factor. This, even

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Miliband’s plan for the country

The exchange that follows is not a spoof. It happened on the Today programme this morning and simply defies parody. David Miliband is taking of the need for “radical change”. James Naughtie says that it “failed to occur”. He replies: “No no no. It did occur on the economy. You cannot deny that we have been anything but extremely radical on the economy.” Nor would I deny it. But to suggest this is a good thing? This, seriously, is what Miliband proposes. It is material that can launch a thousand Tory attack posters: Miliband is literally pointing to the economy, the banking mess, and using it as an example if

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

So what would you do if you were a Labour minister?

Boss Man d’Ancona asks us to consider what we would think and what we would do were we Labour MPs. A scary thought, I know but that’s the point of the exercise. For myself, I like to think I’d agree with Tom Harris. That is, if I were a Labour backbencher I’d be very concerned about my employment prospects and would welcome pretty much Anyone But Gordon as leader. How much worse could any alternative leader be? But if I were a member of the cabinet and someone who had leadership ambitions myself, I might see matters rather differently and conclude that while Labour would certainly be well-served by a

Matthew Dancona

If you were a Labour MP…

A thought experiment, albeit an unpalatable one: imagine you were a Labour MP (I know, I know, but indulge me) and the fate of the Prime Minister and thus, by implication, the nation lay in your hands tonight and tomorrow. What would you do? Your party has just suffered a historic defeat, taking a disastrous 15 per cent of the vote. The Government is enfeebled and without trajectory, propped up only by Labour cowardice and Peter Mandelson’s will-power. Your natural supporters have fled to the fascist Right, resulting in the election of two BNP MEPs. You face total obliteration in the general election, whenever it comes. I take it as

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 8 June 2009

Here are some posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Coffee House live-blogged the Euro-election.  You can read the live blog here. Matthew d’Ancona provides an update on the Labour coup. Fraser Nelson laments the government of automatons. James Forsyth wonders whether Brown will be forced out in the autumn, and reports that more Labour members want Brown to go than stay. Peter Hoskin looks into when Brown gave up on thie idea of Chancellor Balls, and wonders whether Harriet Harman will make her mark on Brown’s week from hell. Martin Bright says that Brown’s latest reshufflkke has delivered the least democratic Cabinet since the War. Clive Davis reveals the

Matthew Dancona

The symptoms of a sickly political system

‘The fascists are coming’ read the coverline of the Spectator’s May 30 issue. Fraser’s brilliant cover piece, analysing the cunning and tactical mutability of the BNP, looks all too bleakly prescient this morning. It is axiomatic to democracy that we have to tolerate views we find objectionable. But, really, the election of two BNP MEPs last  night shows how sickly our political system is: like a virus preying on a badly weakened body with a shattered immune system. I hope Sky will post Adam Boulton’s superb interview with Nick Griffin last night (before the BNP leader was elected). Although Griffin was wearing a suit and trying to sound like a

Saturday

Matthew Dancona

Your coup update

Just been on Newsnight – yes, a special Saturday edition – to take part in what amounted to a Lineker-style half time coup round up. Charlie Kennedy, who knows what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a successful leadership coup, made the astute point that it is authority, not arithmetic that really counts. Forget procedure: this is all about the power vacuum left at the centre – a PM who cannot  even dictate the identity of his Chancellor – and the Labour movement’s will to do something about it. As I say in my Sunday Telegraph column – already online – the Cabinet has behaved with

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Gordon Brown, Caroline Flint, the Scorpion and the Frog

Of all the blunders made by Gordon Brown and his henchmen, few were as easily avoidable as that which led to Caroline Flint’s resignation. Equally, few do more to illuminate a simple, but vital truth: Gordon Brown just isn’t very good at politics. Flint might have been a troublesome minister and far too close to Hazel Blears for her own good, but so what? And, sure, perhaps she was being presumptious when she asked for a better job as the price for her loyalty and willingness to make a fool of herself by defending the beleaguered Prime Minister in public. But, again, so what? There are plenty of jobs avaialable

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Message from Gordon Brown

El Gordo addresses the nation: This government will never stop fighting for ordinary people in these extraordinary times. Today I have reshaped the government around three clear priorities. Cleaning up politics, getting through this downturn fairly and giving people greater control over their public services. We need a clean up of our politics in this country. Politicians must serve the public, and not themselves. We will act quickly to bring in an independent regulator to scrutinise the behaviour of our MPs. We will introduce a tough, legally binding code of conduct for MPs. In addition every single expense claim made by MPs of all parties over the last four years

Alex Massie Alex Massie

What about the Ministry of Defence?

Via Facebook, a friend makes a very good point: John Hutton’s successor as Secretary of State for Defence will be the fifth person to hold that job in the last five years. No wonder there’s a total lack of continuity at the MoD. This is, to put it mildly, no way to treat what should be one of the most important jobs in government. And this at a time when, however fitfully, we’ve been fighting two wars. One trusts that the next government will treat the MoD more seriously. But, as I’ve suggested, when it comes to Tory defence policy there seems to be quite a bit of heavy-lifting that

Matthew Dancona

The idea of a Sheerman-Miliband plot is rubbish

The smears begin: Number Ten is briefing that Barry Sheerman’s calls for a secret ballot on the Labour leadership are part of an elaborate Miliband-ite plot – the “how-they-are-connected” reasoning being that the MP for Huddersfield and chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, is also the father of one of David Miliband’s advisers, Madlin Sadler. The clear objective is to get Mr Sheerman, who has been an MP for 30 years, deselected. Rumour control: I remember Mr Sheerman from the days when I wrote about education and the idea that he would do something so significant and so alien to his loyalist instincts simply at his daughter’s

Matthew Dancona

Livingstone carries the standard for the Labour left

That it should come to this: one can barely turn on the television without seeing Ken Livingstone vociferously defending Gordon Brown against what he describes, wrongly, as an “uber-Blairite plot.” Ken – of all people – says that this disunity really will not do, and that Labour has a duty to rally behind the Prime Minister and his high-spending, interventionist policies. The two men once nursed one of the great hatreds in British politics. In 1998, for example, Livingstone wrote that “Gordon is not up to his job… The end result… is that Britain is now heading towards a recession entirely of Gordon’s making.”  Two years later, Brown wrote a

Matthew Dancona

Is this the measure of Johnson?

Susan Boyle leaves the Priory, Alan Johnson goes to the Home Office.  Or is it the other way round? The revolving doors continue to spin. I have long been mystified by Mr Johnson’s position as the Pearly Dauphin, the heir apparent to Gordon Brown. Nobody has been able to explain to me why he should be the next Prime Minister other than the undeniable fact that he has the Cockney charm of an early episode of Minder. Now I like Minder and the works of Guy Ritchie as much as the next man. But I do not see their relevance to the identity of the next occupant of Number Ten

Thursday

Matthew Dancona

The end has come for Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown is finished. I said so on Newsnight last night and I say it again now with even more conviction. In James Purnell, he has lost a truly formidable Cabinet colleague, the best and the brightest of his generation, and one of the few senior Labour figures to grasp the full extent and novelty of the Cameron revival – much more than the neo-Blairite as which he is often caricatured in media profiles. Purnell also has the countenance and personality of a future leader – as the Spectator tipped last year. I hope he reconsiders his statement that he will not run in the leadership election which must surely