Politics

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

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Another nail in Labour’s progressive coffin

The day before A-level results are published, the Telegraph and the Independent report that traditional academic subjects, such as maths, physics and history are not being offered by a large minority of state schools. Here are the details:  ‘Around one in seven schools – 264 in total – did not enter any pupils for A-level geography in 2007 – the latest available information – and a similar proportion failed to enter students for physics. Figures also show that more than one in 10 comprehensives did not enter pupils for A-level chemistry, while six percent failed to enroll candidates for maths and seven per cent shunned biology. A further 145 schools

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

In Jura, Cameron has time to contemplate the emerging SNP-Tory alliance

For the first time since being elected party leader, David Cameron returned to his old holiday retreat of Jura last weekend. His father-in-law, Viscount Astor, owns an estate on the island which has some of the best deer-stalking terrain in Scotland. Although Mr Cameron is an accomplished shot, he did not join in this time — perhaps mindful of how photographs of him in tweeds and with a shotgun would go down on the urban election trail. He restricted himself instead to swimming, fishing and contemplating the battle ahead. This time next year, Mr Cameron will probably be the Prime Minister of Scotland — a title which is bolted on

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Who’s writing Andy Burnham’s scripts?

To prolong the success of #welovethenhs, Andy Burnham wrote David Cameron a letter yesterday which was so absurd it read like a Private Eye spoof. And today, Burnham is still trying to keep the pressure on the Tories and missing his target. He writes in the Guardian that Tories intend to turn ‘Britain’s best loved institution into the world’s biggest quango’ – a soundbite worthy of The Thick of it. Burnham’s premise is that Labour is self-evidently the party of the NHS and therefore any Tory proposals are inherently a ‘Bad Thing’:  The second dividing line is on NHS pay. Andrew Lansley drops heavy hints that the Tories would reintroduce

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Peter Mandelson and the Lockerbie Bomber

No, there’s no connection. Liberal Vision’s Angela Harbutt has some fun suggesting that the Prince of Darkness has been on manoeuvres again, this time plotting to spring the Lockerbie bomber from his cell in Greenock prison. It runs like this: Peter Mandelson was on Corfu again this summer and there he met Colonel Gaddafi’s son. Just days later reports surfaced that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi might be released. Coincidence? Surely not! Indeed, certainly not! Now Miss Harbutt is, I assume, not being entirely serious. And nor, I trust, is Tory Bear when he leaps aboard this bandwagon. But doubtless this is the sort of thing that plenty of people are quite

Monday

David Blackburn

Are Labour still in “send” mode?

Perhaps it was the barnstorming success of #welovethenhs, or the opportunity to create another Tsar, but Douglas Alexander has appointed Kerry McCarthy MP as ‘Labour’s Twitter Tsar’ ahead of the next election. In an interview with Labour List, McCarthy says she wants to emphasise that, “Rather than being something completely new, campaigning using new media is simply doing what we’ve always done in a new setting.” I’m intrigued to see how the government distils its ‘raft of measures’ into a tweet of 140 characters. McCarthy’s interview also suggests that Labour may have confused “sending” with “receiving”. As Robert Colvile said in a paper to the CPS, the internet is all

David Blackburn

Labour isn’t working

This PoliticsHome poll about ‘progressiveness’ hasn’t been picked up much, but it makes dreadful reading for the government. The Tories and Lib Dems were tied first for the prize of being considered the most progressive party. A mere 12% thought that Labour was the most progressive party, and they finished fourth behind the Greens. It’s clear that Labour’s response to Progressive Conservatism isn’t working. The poll demolishes the government’s lazy assumption that progressive politics is exclusively the property of the left. That assumption informed Mandelson’s barbs about “political cross-dressing”, and his strategy that had everything to do with personalities and nothing to do with policy. Also, that these results were

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 17 August 2009

…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: Fraser Nelson sets out why we need a proper debate about healthcare. James Forsyth reveals some cartoon cowardice, and says that the Tories must cut out the unforced errors. Peter Hoskin wonders whether George Osborne has downgraded the Tories’ health spending commitment, and watches Peter Mandelson continue his anti-Osborne operations. David Blackburn highlights one way to slim down the quangocracy. Martin Bright makes stands up for Jim Fitzpatrick. And Alex Massie laments the England selectors’ timid choices for the final Ashes test.

Saturday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Importance of Penance

Following this excellent column at the Daily Beast, Bruce Bartlett, a veteran Republican whose credentials are established by his work for Jack Kemp, Ronald Reagan and Goerge HW Bush, emails Steve Benen to make a very useful point: I believe that political parties should do penance for their mistakes and just losing power is not enough. Part of that involves understanding why those mistakes were made and how to prevent them from happening again. Republicans, however, have done no penance. They just pretend that they did nothing wrong. But until they do penance they don’t deserve any credibility and should be ignored until they do. That’s what my attacks on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The candidate from Kabul

Rory Stewart’s career to date reads like something from the heyday of the empire. Rory Stewart’s career to date reads like something from the heyday of the empire. Eton and Oxford- educated, he has been a tutor to royalty, an officer in the Black Watch, the deputy governor of an Iraqi province, has founded a charity in Afghanistan and has written two critically acclaimed books as well as walking across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal. Now he wants to be a Tory MP. With Brad Pitt having already bought the movie rights to Stewart’s life story, one would have thought that the Tories would be revelling in their new

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Let’s hear it for the python that had the civic good sense to eat Wilbur the cat

Rod Liddle takes issue with Wilbur’s grieving owners who want a change in the law to impose restrictions upon creatures such as snakes. What we really need is a new citizen’s right to defend ourselves against the feline menace It’s been a grim summer for news, all things considered, what with Afghanistan and flying pig flu and the rain and now Harriet Harman squatting over us all like one of those terrifying smallpox deities the Hindus have. So I thought I’d share with you a story which, in the midst of this gloom, cheered me up enormously. It is the story of a little ginger and white pussycat called Wilbur,

Friday

Martin Bright

Stand up for Jim Fitzpatrick

Jim Fitzpatrick, the Labour MP for Poplar and Canning Town has probably just lost his seat to George Galloway who plans to challenge him at the next election. But Fitzpatrick was right not to attend a segregated Muslim wedding if he didn’t want to. He wanted to sit with his wife, Shelia. I don’t blame him for choosing not to be separated from her. Most of the reporting of this event has been absurdly ill-informed and sensationalist.  You can read the BBC’s report for a reasonably straight account. The condemnatory words of the Muslim Council of Britain are entirely predicatble. The ceremony was held at the London Muslim Centre, which is attached to East London mosque,

The Spectator

The week that was | 14 August 2009

…here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk this week. Fraser Nelson says that Lord Mandelson’s attempt to incite class war avoids the real problems confronting education, and laments the fate of ‘Brown’s children’. James Forsyth says that understanding the real origins of the Osborne – Mandelson feud reveals why Mandelson is perpetuating it, and wants a constructive debate on the NHS. Peter Hoskin argues that Mandelson’s inept counterattack proves Labour are clueless about how to respond to George Osborne’s Progressive Conservatism, and doubts that Daniel Hannan’s comments about the NHS will damage the Tories in the long run. David Blackburn asks what is wrong with being a career

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Mencken’s Thought for the Day

Writing the diary column* for this week’s edition of the magazine, I can’t believe I failed to quote from HL Mencken. The insufferable nonsense provoked by what passes for a healthcare “debate” (on both sides of the Atlantic) would have entertained the Sage of Baltimore no end. As Peter Suderman reminds one, Mencken viewed these absurdities with an appropriately jaundiced eye: “I enjoy democracy immensely,” he wrote. “It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down.” Quite so. Quite so. *Probably the only

Peter Hoskin

The Tories have been put on the back foot, but don’t expect permanent damage

There’s plenty to be sceptical about with this #welovetheNHS Twitter campaign – not least the manner in which it’s falsely polarising the debate into “lovers” or “haters”, given that 140-character “tweets” hardly allow for nuanced arguments.  But, as Fraser pointed out last night, there’s little doubting that it’s a spot of good luck for Gordon Brown: a campaign by the left, for the left, which he managed to seize on with uncharacteristic speed.   Indeed, Brown beat David Cameron to the punch for perhaps the first time in months, and has put the Tory leader on the defensive.  Hence Cameron’s blog post last night, which set out his own #reasonsforlovingtheNHSbutstillwantingittoimprove,

David Blackburn

Cameron plans to cut ministers’ pay

Poor old Alan Duncan might have to survive on emergency rations. The Guardian reports that David Cameron is planning to cut ministerial pay if the Tories win the next election. Here are the details: ‘David Cameron is planning to make his ministers take significant salary cuts if he forms the next government, senior sources have told the Guardian. The Conservative party high command have calculated that if they are to push through cuts in public services, their politicians have to show they are prepared to “take a financial hit”. A pay cut would also help the party as it attempts to renegotiate public sector pay deals. One senior Tory said

Thursday

Martin Bright

Let the Alan Duncan Incident Be a Warning to You, Mr Cameron

The last time I was invited to Alan Duncan’s office in the House of Commons I took a film camera with me. I didn’t hide it and took a film crew along with me. Duncan was charming, if a little cheesy, and talked eloquently about why Ken Livingstone’s oil deal with Hugo Chavez was bad news for London and Venezuela. But during the interview there was something that gave me a glimpse into Alan Duncan’s soul. Not an off-the-cuff comment about MPs having to live on rations. But a framed photograph proudly displayed on a bookshelf. It was a screenshot from Prime Minister’s questions of Alan Duncan alongside George Osborne

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Finally, a stroke of good luck for Gordon Brown

This UK-US spat over the NHS has spilled over into a snowballing twitter campaign, with comments flooding in from Brits. Nigel Lawson said the NHS was like a religion to Britain, and many have come to defend the faith. Brown has lent his support to the campaign, and it’s perfect for him. It allows him to play the patriotic card, telling those yanks (especially – boo – the conservative ones who watch Fox news, and their neocon supporters like Class Enemy Hannan) where to shove it. He also gives President Obama – he of Obama Beach fame – some political support. Finally, it allows him to claim that the NHS

David Blackburn

What’s wrong with being a career politician?

Nadine Dorries has broken her holiday to argue that the fallout from the expenses scandal will alter the make-up of Parliament for the worse: ‘The new pernicious rule for MPs to declare hours spent on outside interests will prevent the multi-skilled, clever, articulate, learned individuals who are, by their own obvious track record of achievement, the type of people Parliament desperately needs to attract and retain – from even considering a life as an MP. Instead we will see the emergence of a new breed of MP: those who will enter Parliament because they are rich, or careerist.’ The contempt the public holds for politicians makes it unlikely that careerists

Peter Hoskin

The Tory grassroots deliver their verdict on Alan Duncan

The Tory grassroots have spoken, and they want Alan Duncan out.  Here are the main results from a poll which has just been published over at ConservativeHome: “A ConservativeHome.com poll of 1,622 Tory members carried out today finds 65% want Alan Duncan to resign and 55% think he should be sacked. A massive 91% think he should be moved from his current job where he has a role in deciding Conservative policy on MPs’ expenses and allowances. 61% are dissatisfied with Alan Duncan’s performance. 31% are satisfied.  This makes him the least popular member of the shadow cabinet. 38% agreed that ‘Alan Duncan was telling the truth – the antagonism

Peter Hoskin

Mandy: Brown would “relish” televised debates with Cameron

So Mandy’s brought up the idea of a public debate between Brown and Cameron again, claiming – in interview with Sky (see footage above) – that the PM would “relish” the opportunity to “take the fight to the Conservatives”.  If you remember, the last time Mandy mentioned it, Downing St quickly moved to dampen all the speculation – the rumour was that Brown was going to challenge* Cameron to a series of debates in his conference speech, and was irritated at the PoD for giving the game away so early.  But now that Mandy has made the same point again – indeed, even more forcefully this time – I reckon