Politics

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

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The word from Scotland

Brown’s PMQs performance, claiming Wendy Alexander in Scotland does not want an independence referendum, has baffled Scottish Labour. I call my old contacts and am told a shocking, but not surprising story.  Wendy Alexander asked Brown a while ago to approve her plan to call for an early independence referendum. Like Madame Tussauds, she didn’t get a reply. He dithered and he delayed. She figured McBroon didn’t care any more (sob!) and went ahead regardless. Just like that Miliband speech a while ago, Brown only wakes up to its significance when he reads it in the papers. Then tries to stuff the genie back in the bottle today, claiming she didn’t

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown should embrace the fight over the Union

Labour appears split over whether or not it wants a referendum on Scottish independence, Wendy Alexander is in favour but Gordon appears to be against. But I actually think Gordon should want such a referendum as it provides him with an opportunity, albeit a risky one, to get back on track. Here’s my thinking: 1). The pro-Union forces would win: The latest poll shows that only one in four voters support independence and being associated with a winning side would be good for Brown right now. 2). It would allow Brown to show his passion: A large part of Brown’s problem at the moment is that he appears to stand

Peter Hoskin

What will Cameron tell his MPs?

As Boulton & Co. are reporting, Cameron’s marshalling his MPs for a meeting this evening – “all must attend”, apparently.  As things go, it’s hardly earth-shattering news. But it’s a nice insight into the Team Cameron approach, nonetheless.  What will be said?  Sky’s source summarises the message as “We’re in for the long haul. Mustn’t get complacent”.  With the Crewe & Nantwich by-election only a couple of weeks away, such pep-talks could pay dividends.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Another victory for Cameron at PMQs

Another good show from Cameron and dismal one from Brown. Perhaps I’m growing too sensitised to this, but his half-truths and (in this case) outright lies really jump out at me. Cameron seemed to mock him dismissively – perhaps worse than attacking him. Here are my highlights. Cameron started with “Bendy Wendy” and her well-documented support for a referendum on Scottish independence. “That is not what she has said,” said Brown. Cameron at least had the quote handy – though he missed out the crucial “it’s time for him to put up or shut up”. Cameron quoted her saying “’I don’t fear the verdict of the Scottish People. Bring it

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Should the Tories throw Brown a lifeline at PMQs?

Tories should today hope that David Cameron gets panned in Prime Minister’s Questions. Hope that Brown scores a resounding success, and leaves with the applause of all Labour MPs ringing in his ears. The longer he clings to No10, the larger the next Tory majority will be. He is the single greatest weapon Cameron has.  Tories may delight in today’s Populus poll, but now that Brown-bashing has become a national sport do they want anyone else at the Despatch Box at noon on a Wednesday? Now is the time to throw Brown the lifeline he needs. To bomb. To lose Crewe. I have said before that I can’t see a

Peter Hoskin

Give Brown another kicking

A few people have mentioned this in various comment sections, but I thought I’d give it its own post.  Madame Tussauds are holding a vote on whether they should make a Gordon Brown waxwork.  Go and have your say.  It’s democracy in action. 

Peter Hoskin

Wendy Alexander adds to Brown’s woes

You can trust Wendy Alexander to make things more difficult for the Government.  The Labour MSP, and close ally of Brown, has called for a snap referendum on whether Scotland should break away from the Union – she might even table her own Bill to that end.  Thing is, none of this has been rubber-stamped by Downing Street. Of course, the issue of the Union has been gaining speed over the past few months.  But Alexander’s words have brought it to Brown’s gate far quicker than he’d have wanted.  The media (and the Scottish public?) will now be eager for a response from the Prime Minister.  With his political capital

Frank Field

Abolishing the 10p tax rate shattered the contract on which New Labour was based

Why is the abolition of the 10p rate of tax unlike any other rebellion of backbench Labour MPs? The answer lies in the mood of Labour backbenchers following decades of modernising the party, a process that began under Neil Kinnock but only became a root and branch operation under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Repeated Labour defeats in the 1950s were accompanied by the burst of outriders demanding a revision of an exclusively economic definition of socialism. This plea ought to have fallen on fertile ground. There has always been a sizeable proportion of activists who believe that socialism could not be achieved without first changing the kind of people

Matthew Lynn

Emperor Soros’s new clothes

Matthew Lynn says hedge-fund pioneer and currency speculator George Soros is still a brilliant player of markets — but as a philosopher, frankly, he’s incomprehensible If nothing else, three decades as one of the world’s most successful speculators has taught George Soros how to pitch a book. While the main title of his latest work, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, might not be the kind of thing to get Waterstone’s managers clearing their shelves, its subtitle — The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means — makes it bang up to date. Even better, Soros rushed it out as a digital download within days of the final words

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Department of Britishness

When I lived in Washington, I sometimes forgot that one of the things I missed about Britain was actually the weather. Sure, there’d be glorious spring and fall days in DC but much of the time the climate was boringly predictable and frequently oppressively unpleasant. The variety of the British climate provides for a refreshing contrast even if such happy thoughts are necessarily fleeting in, say, November or March. No wonder we talk about it so much*. All of which is one way of noting that today – with temperatures still in the giddy 70s – 70% of my British Facebook friends’ status updates concern the weather and either a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

More than half of Labour voters want Brown to quit

The new Populus poll for The Times is going to stoke the mood of panic inside the Labour party. It finds that 55 percent of Labour voters want Brown to go and gives the Toryies the largest lead they have had, 11 points, in the history of the poll. To add to Labour’s woes, only 30 percent of voters trust Brown and Darling most with the economy. It is still extremely unlikely that Brown will be forced out. But the slew of bad news for Brown is going to lead to ever more vocal dissent within the Labour party.  Hat Tip: The invaluable Politics Home

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What Gordon can learn from Hillary

If Stephen Carter and his team are searching for inspiration for how to get Gordon Brown back in the game, they should look to Hillary Clinton. Since the beginning of March, she has shown that even politicians who are not naturals and have been in public life for decades can learn new tricks, and that you can turn being written off by the pundits to your advantage. The beginning of the Clinton revival was the realisation that she had two great strengths, her resilience and her policy knowledge. These are strengths that Brown shares and copying the Clinton model would at least get Brown going again. First, like Clinton, he

Matthew Dancona

Clarke lashes out (again)

Charles Clarke, as predicted earlier, has been distributing his article in the new Progress magazine. It is strong stuff: “First, we have to change the conduct of our politics. We should discard the techniques of ‘triangulation’, and ‘dividing lines’ with the Conservatives, which lead to the not entirely unjustified charge that we simply follow proposals from the Conservatives or the right-wing media, to minimise differences and remove lines of attack against us. We should finish with ‘dog whistle’ language, such as ‘British jobs for British workers’, which flatter some of the most chauvinistic and backward-looking parts of British society. We should suspend the black arts of divisive inner-party briefing and

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brownie No.3 – Gordon Brown’s “transitional” 10p tax rate

When Gordon Brown was defending his decision to scrap the 10p tax rate in April 2008, he spoke as if he was avenging a great moral wrong. “I think I should tell the House that 85 per cent of the benefits of the 10p rate go to higher-rate and basic-rate taxpayers, and that 11 million people, mainly the lowest-income people in the country, receive no benefit at all from it… We are determined to take action, because we are the party of fairness tackling poverty.” So why did he introduced this 10p tax with such great fanfare in 1999 if it was so regressive? On Sunday 4 May, he told

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown loses another popularity contest

It goes from tragedy to farce. Madame Tussauds has decided against having a Gordon Brown waxwork amongst its world leaders – he dithered over whether to sit for its sculptors and they got fed up waiting for a reply. “Since then we have had no response and, reflecting the climate after the Government’s performance in the recent local elections, our guests have become decidedly split about whether we should feature Mr Brown at all,” general manager Edward Fuller said.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron dodges the 10p tax issue

Cameron has three times avoided in his press conference answering what a Conservative government would do to help those people stung by the 10p tax. (No, A cock hasn’t crowed). A tough issue for him, and I’ll see if I can do any better as I travel with him on the train to Crewe. He also said he suspects Nicholas Boles (who dropped his own mayoral campaign after being diagnosed with cancer, from which he has now recovered) will keep working for Boris. Bruce Anderson asked yesterday who will play Jeeves to Wooster. Kinder souls may ask who will play Leo McGarry to his Bartlett. Whichever way you out it,

Matthew Dancona

The Labour beauty contest

The beauty contest begins: read Polly Toynbee in the Guardian today and her praise for James Purnell, the arch-Blairite Work and Pensions Secretary who is making a speech calling for Labour to emphasise fairness and social justice. David Miliband also enters the lists this week with a lecture in honour of his father, Ralph. Charles Clarke is expected to intervene (again) shortly. There will be others. I am reminded horribly of the period 1994-7 when the prospective successors to John Major jostled for position, all making speeches coated in plausible deniability but with a core of political gelignite: vote for me as the next leader. The question then, as now,

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who is Labour’s Chris Huhne?

Reading Fraser’s posts about the odds on who will succeed Gordon Brown as Labour leader and whether he will be challenged this side of a general election, it struck me that we need to look for Labour’s Chris Huhne or John Redwood: someone who doesn’t have much chance of putting themselves into contention unless they steal a march on their rivals. To my mind, this rules out the Milibands, Purnell and Balls who all probably think that they are better served by waiting. I’d also put Jon Cruddas in this camp, one of his major selling points in a 2010 leadership election will be that he is the clean hands