Politics

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

Friday

Peter Hoskin

All quiet on the Chilcot front

I just took a quick stroll around the block from Old Queen St, to check out the situation on the ground outside the Chilcot Inquiry.  The most striking thing is how few protestors there are – about ten at most, I’d say, and a fraction of the number that marched out against Blair a few weeks ago.  Brown doesn’t even make one placard’s list of – and I quote – “Lying R. Soles,” which includes Blair, Campbell, Straw and Goldsmith. It’s all rather suggestive of how Brown has managed, over the years, to separate himself from those who made the political and moral case for war.  But there lies the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s betrayal of Basra is the real issue here

Might Gordon Brown get away with it at the Chilcot Inquiry today? I suspect so. The media seems obsessed with the run-up to war, whereas the real crime was the betrayal of Basra. Brown made false claims to Parliament about the fall of violence in the city which, as he would have known, was being left in the hands of Shiite death squads. He would have known that, as the Chilcot Inquiry established, we had just a couple of hundred soldiers trying to keep peace in a city of millions. He misled Britain out of Basra as knowingly and mendaciously as Blair led Britain into Iraq – leaving the people

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Tory lead cut to 2 percent in 60 key marginals

One of the refrains made in response to the recent spate of opinion polls is that they don’t really capture what’s going on in the marginals – the real battlgrounds where the election will be fought.  Well, now we have a YouGov/Channel 4 poll which specifically covers 60 key marginal sets, and it provides more evidence that Labour are closing ground on the Tories.  Here are the headline figures, compared to the last marginals poll for Channel 4, a year ago: Conservatives — 39 (down 4) Labour — 37 (up 1) Lib Dems — 35 (up 2) And YouGov’s Peter Kellner provides a useful explanation of what they mean: “The

Peter Hoskin

Any fallout that the Tories face over Ashcroft is of their own making<br />

Although the heat seems to be coming off Lord Ashcroft himself, attention is now rapidly focussing on the Tory leadership.  I mean, it was one thing when William Hague admitted that he didn’t know about Ashcroft’s tax status until a few months ago – but quite another when it emerges that David Cameron only found out “within the last month”.  As I said in my last post, there seems to have been, at the very best, astonishing naivety on the part of the Cameron & Co.  They should have seen these problems coming months ago, and tried to defuse them then – rather than being forced on to the defensive,

Peter Hoskin

Ashcroft in the clear?<br />

The Beeb were reporting it an hour or so ago, but now it’s been confirmed: the Electoral Commission has cleared the Tories and Lord Ashcroft of any wrongdoing over £5.1 million worth of donations from his company, Bearwood Corporate Services Limited.  Sure, there are still questions surrounding this whole affair – most of them to do with the Tories’ naivety in their handling of it.  But you suspect that this announcement will draw some of the political poison out of proceedings.  Not that that will stop Harriet Harman or her colleagues in the Labour party… UPDATE: Channel 4’s Cathy Newman is reporting that David Cameron only knew about Ashcroft’s non-dom

Peter Hoskin

Available from all good bookshops…

… this September: Tony Blair’s memoirs, entititled The Journey.  Question is, what does this say about his hopes for a Labour victory?  Or will all the juicy Blarite-Brownite stuff be cut out?  Either way, the cover will be what you see on the left.

Allister Heath

Britain on the brink

It is a calculation that should fill all of us with an immense sense of dread: there is now a 72.2 percent chance of a hung parliament. Or so says Michael Saunders, Citigroup’s chief European economist and the one man in the City everybody listens to when it comes to the interaction between parliamentary politics and the financial markets. His model, which incorporates the standard data about the Westminster first-past-the post system, and into which he has fed all of the latest polls, also suggests that there is just a 6.2 percent chance of strong Tory majority, a 19.1 percent chance of a weak one and 2.5 percent chance of

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Problem of Too Much Democracy

In general terms I’m a fan of more, much more, local democracy. I think it could do much to improve civic life and promote a genuine local politics of real accountability and value. In other words, it can be a liberating force for good. However, it’s also true that one can perhaps take the principle too far. Here’s Jonathan Bernstein to explain why: Yesterday was election day in Texas, and I voted.  And I voted.  And then I voted some more.  If my count was correct, I voted fifty-two times.  I voted for Governor, and I voted for U.S. House and Texas House and Texas Senate…OK, I didn’t actually know

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Hague gives Hattie a PMQs kicking

Brown bunked off PMQs today, claiming a prior luncheon engagement with President Zuma of South Africa. Downing Street blamed the Queen for double-booking the PM. Can that be true? The head of state deprives the Commons of its democratic right to shout ‘Answer the question’ at a block of granite. Perhaps she had their best interests at heart. Hattie Harman, replacing the PM, turned up in a pair of alarmingly shrill pink glasses. Opposite her, William Hague wore a sober suit of inky blue. He looked ominously business-like as he aimed his first shot at her. Why had Brown cut the helicopter budget while the country was fighting two wars?

Peter Hoskin

Michael Foot, 1913 – 2010

The former Labour leader Michael Foot died today, aged 96.  A man whose politics I doubt many CoffeeHousers will share, and whose period in charge of the Labour party might not be remembered with much fondness by those who do.  But his commitment, integrity and intelligence still stand as a bright, clear example to politicians today.  I’d recommend you read the warm and thoughful tributes from Tom Harris, Jon Snow, Dan Hannan, Sunder Katwala and Alastair Campbell, among others.

Daniel Korski

Future foreign policy

If the Tories win power (still a big “if” these days), William Hague will walk into King Charles Street, be greeted by the FCO’s Permanent Secretary Peter Ricketts, meet his new staff and be briefed on the Office he will lead and the foreign challenges Britain faces. There will be plenty on his plate. Calls from foreign dignitaries, preparations for forthcoming summits, a discussion of key priorities, and suggestions for how to reorganise the machinery of government. There will also be a need to prepare the FCO’s contribution to a cost-cutting exercise.      But there ought to be an early discussion about how the world is changing and the

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 3 March 2010

Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1201: And here we go.  Obviously, with Brown meeting Zuma, it’s the deputies today. Harman starts with condolences for the fallen. 1202: Incidentally, Cameron is being interviewed on TalkSport radio, if you want to listen to that. 1203: First question: why manufacturing has fallen under Labour. Harman says that this is the Tories “talking the country down”. Hm. Easier than actually answering the question, I suppose… 1204: This PMQs is already getting noisily partisan.  A second question brings some “do nothing Tories” innuendo from Harman.  Jeers and cheers all round. 1206: Hague now.  His first question is whether Brown was wrong to cut

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour will relish this opportunity to prolong the Ashcroft story

When Gordon Brown pulled out of PMQs this week because of Jacob Zuma’s state visit there was much chortling that he didn’t much fancy PMQs. But I suspect that Labour is rather glad that William Hague is up today; no Tory politician is more central to the Ashcroft peerage than Hague, and Hague’s appearance at the despatch box is Labour’s best chance of taking this story into a third day. Hague will have his line that Ashcroft would pay ‘tens of millions a year in tax’ thrown back at him repeatedly. Hague’s trips with Ashcroft to various foreign locales will also get an outing. There is something incredibly frustrating about

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why the Tories should talk about immigration

Should the Tories talk about immigration? This will bring back a lot of bad memories for the modernisers, who believe that this hurt them in 2005. But, as Tim Montgomerie says over at CiF today, the picture has transformed since then. The total number of immigrant workers has risen 25 per cent, to 3.5 million. And nationally, immigrants now make up a remarkable 15 percent of the workforce (see graph below) – which puts us up there with America. Except our immigration is handled in a haphazard way that creates plenty of bad feeling. Talk to a Tory candidate and they will say there’s only one issue that gets cut-through

Peter Hoskin

How the televised leaders’ debates will work

The various parties involved in the televised leaders’ debate have finally come to an agreement on how they will work.  You can read full details here, courtesy of Sky.  But the main points are: i) Topics and locations. The first debate will be hosted by ITV’s Alastair Stewart, in Manchester, and will cover domestic affairs.  The second will be Sky’s Adam Boulton, in Bristol, and will cover foreign policy.  And the third will be the Beeb’s David Dimbleby, in Birmingham, on the economy. ii) Structure. The rather rigid structure of each programme will be as follows: “Each leader will make an opening statement on the theme of the debate lasting

Daniel Korski

NATO – with or without the US?

Over on Foreign Policy magazine, Andrew J Bacevich and I are going at each other. Topic: the nature of the transatlantic relationship. In the slipstream of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates’ lament about Europeans’ pacifist leanings, Professor Bacevich wrote a delightfully provocative piece arguing the US should leave NATO: “If NATO has a future, it will find that future back where the alliance began: in Europe. NATO’s founding mission of guaranteeing the security of European democracies has lost none of its relevance. Although the Soviet threat has vanished, Russia remains. And Russia, even if no longer a military superpower, does not exactly qualify as a status quo country. The Kremlin

Peter Hoskin

Is this the closest that Brown’s government has come to a <em>mea culpa</em>?

A striking passage from Peter Mandelson’s speech at Mansion House last night: “Starting in the 1980s we allowed the diversity of the British economy – or lack of it – to approach the limits of what was prudent. Sometimes there was an economic fatalism about manufacturing decline and falling British goods exports, rather than seeing them as something that policy and private enterprise should address. Our economy, and certainly our corporate tax base, became too dependent on the City. We were also carrying a huge hidden insurance liability for a sector that was taking badly understood and inadequately policed risks.” Yes, I know Mandelson takes things back to the 1980s

Peter Hoskin

Labour’s pursuit of Ashcroft could backfire

I wrote yesterday that Lord Ashcroft’s statement about his tax status should have drawn a “rather neat line under the issue”.  Sure, it’s hardly ideal that someone with such influence in our politics hasn’t been paying UK taxes on much of his wealth (something which could equally be said of Labour donors like Lord Paul and Lakshmi Mittal), and was keeping mysterious about it.  But at least, now, most of the uncertainty surrounding Ashcroft’s position has been removed.  And we have his indication that he will become a full UK taxpayer in due course.   But I hadn’t counted on the tenacity of Labour, who are trying to spin this

Daniel Korski

Britain’s man inside the UN

Sir John Holmes, the highest placed Briton at the UN, is leaving his job early. A long-serving Foreign Office mandarin, Sir John’s appointment by UN chief Ban Ki-Moon to be the UN’s Coordinator for Humanitarian Relief originally came as a surprise. The post is responsible for oversight of all emergencies requiring UN humanitarian assistance, and acts as the focal point for relief activities. Everyone had assumed that the British diplomat’s background lent itself more readily to the top political job at the UN, rather than the humanitarian portfolio. But Sir John (who will replace Jeremy Greenstock as director of Ditchley Park), has by all accounts done very well in the