Politics

Thanks to David Maddox for this gem. During a debate on BBC Scotland last night, marking a decade of devolution, Iain Gray, leader of the Labour party at Holyrood, boasted of the parliament’s achievements: Has it [the Scottish Parliament] made a difference?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes it has. When the Parliament started one in five children in this country lived in poverty. That’s now one in three. That’s significant progress.” God knows, mind you, how much more of this progress we can take. Oh, Iain Gray was once a teacher. His subject? Mathematics, obviously…

Last night’s edition of BBC2’s The Conspiracy Files was a fine piece of television. It examined the conspiracy theories surrounding the bombings of July 7 2005 and if you haven’t seen it, watch it again right now. At first I thought it was going to be another piece of gratuitous “what if?” television. But it was so much better than that. By taking the conspiracy theories surrounding the atrocities at face value, the programme makers gave the loons enough rope with which to hang themeslves. The theory that Israelis were somehow warned of the attacks in advance was forensically dismantled and the idea that the bombs were planted under the

The best New Labour policies have always been designed for sale to liberals and reactionaries at the same time. When I was on The Observer I always made a point of asking for the Mail on Sunday half of the story whenever I was pitched a Sunday trail for a policy launch during the week ahead. Of course this briefing of journalists in advance of a government launch will no longer happen in the new era of parliamentary propriety (until the next time). But its worth applying this to the latest Gordon Brown policy document: Building Britain’s Future. Some of this policy fits the model perfectly. The  employment “guarantee” for under 25s

Does it matter if immigrants have taken (or created) all the new jobs in the British private sector? I reveal this in my News of the World column today, as the key fact from a data request I made from the ONS. It’s a divisive topic, and even exploring it make ministers feel uncomfortable. But this ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach to immigration has not just given the BNP the political space needed for its electoral breakthrough three weeks ago, but left ministers ignorant about what’s going on in our labour market. Between Q1 of 1997 and Q1 of 2009, immigrants account for 106% of new jobs in the private sector – ie, there are more new workers

This may seem a peculiar thing to say after weeks of anger from the public and self-laceration among MPs, but I’m not talking about the fall-out from the expenses scandal. I was in Westminster for the first time in ages the other day to attend a meeting about Bangladesh in the Lords. I can’t remember the number of the committee room now and I could certainly never locate it again. The Commons (or was it Lords?) staff were very helpful in helping me find it, although stricltly speaking they allowed me down a stretch of corrridor and down a staircase that was out-of-bounds. At the end of it I felt

Here’s a disturbing report from one of the great institutions of the land: They cannot be assimilated and absorbed into the British race. They remain a people by themselves, segregated by reason of their race, their customs, their traditions and above all by their loyalty to their religion, and are gradually and inevitable dividing Britain, racially, socially and ecclesiastically… Already there is a bitter feeling among the British working classes against the muslim intruders. As the latter increases, and the British people realise the seriousness of the menace to their racial supremacy in their native land, this bitterness will develop into a race antagonism which will have disastrous consequences for

Although I’ve long felt that the Unionist parties would have been well-advised to call Alex Salmond’s bluff and have an independence referendum as soon as possible (like, er, this year), the notion that Gordon Brown might decide to hold a referendum on Scottish independence the same day as a general election strikes me as a typically Broonian too-clever-by-half wheeze that, upon closer inspection, turns out to be utterly daft. In other words, James Macintyre’s story in the New Statesman is sufficiently silly that one cannot immediately discount it. Here’s what Macintyre writes: Meanwhile, a separate idea, bold if controversial, is quietly being considered for the same election day: a referendum

Kitty Ussher’s article in today’s Evening Standard made me think again about the consequences of the MPs’ expenses scandal. Kitty will be leaving us at the next election because she wants to put her family first (a reworking of the old “more time with my family” formula). Her question is a fair one: “Am I alone in wanting to see my young family in that crucial gap between school ending and lights out?” It is right that she resigned as a minister, but I do wonder about the scale of this shock to parliament. The combination of almost certain electoral oblivion and expenses revelations means that we will lose two