Politics

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

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What we know now

Here are a few things that I think we’ve learnt from last night’s result: 1). The Tories are now the best closers in British politics: In London, the local elections and last night the Tories did significantly better than the final opinion polls suggested they would. This suggests that the Tory ground game is now good enough to add a couple of points to their score. At the next election, this could make the difference between a slim and solid Tory majority. 2). ‘Tory hatred’ no longer moves votes: The Labour campaign desperately tried to whip up prejudice against a public school educated, lawyer who looked and sounded like a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Does Labour have no alternative to Brown?

Considering the size of the swing to the Tories last night, it no longer seems silly to talk about a leadership challenge to Gordon Brown. But Michael White’s analysis this morning neatly sums up why an actual challenge—as opposed to talk of one—is still unlikely: “Can Labour MPs and their union paymasters, busy flexing their muscles again, get rid of Brown? In theory, yes. It would take 70 or so names to trigger a confidence vote. But who is there to take over, who could make a significant difference, even – unlikely – if the prime minister decided to walk? Most Labour MPs have no more experience of a political

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Crewe goes bright blue, will Labour now dump Brown?

If on April 29th, when Labour announced the date of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, you had told people that the Tories would win the seat by 7,860 votes you would have been laughed out of town. This result shows just how much in politics has changed in the last few weeks. The Tories have passed every test they have been presented with, Labour has failed every one. The Tories took the London Mayoralty, made huge gains in the local elections and have now triumphed in this by-election with a 17.6 percent swing. A few weeks ago, the idea that Gordon Brown would be challenged for the Labour leadership would

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tory majority of 7,860

The Returning Officer has just declared the official result and Edward Timpson is the new MP for Crewe and Nantwich. This is a massive defeat for Labour and will make many Labour MPs distinctly fearful about their own prospects.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Final result sometime after 2am

No one is disputing that Labour has taken a mighty kicking tonight but we are going to have to wait until a little bit after 2am for the formal declaration. Turnout was high at 58 percent, but the word is that Tory Nantwich turned out in force while Labour Crewe stayed at home. This suggests that the Labour campaign had the opposite effect from intended–turning out the Tory base.  

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will the recess save Brown?

The one consolation for Gordon Brown about tonight’s result is that the MPs are all leaving Westminster for the Whitsun recess and so the opportunities to plot will be limited. Alternatively, MPs could get it in the neck from their constituents and local parties about how bad things are and return to London steeled to the task ahead.

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s expectations management strategy fails again

If there is one aspect where the Tories still feel that they lag behind Labour it is expectations management. Tory staffers feel frustrated that Labour succeeds so easily in getting its worst case scenarios into the journalistic blood stream. But once again things are going to be a lot worse for Labour than even they though. Earlier in the week, Labour were spinning that a defeat by 3,000 or less would be a decent result for them. Whether the Tory majority is going to be big enough to ‘force the bastard out’ remains to be seen.  

James Forsyth James Forsyth

It is a now a question of how big the Tory majority will be

It appears pretty much certain that the Tories have won tonight’s by-election and reports are that they might have done so by a truly staggering margin. If the margins that are being discussed are accurate, and it is likely that they are, then this really could endanger Brown’s position. It seems that tonight is going to be another triumph for Eric Pickles and the Tory campaign team. Stay tuned.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Basra, a city filled with hope

Basra, Iraq Two years ago when Des Browne came here they wouldn’t let him out of the car. Now, he can do a walkabout in downtown Basra. The liberation on March 25th, when the Iraqi army’s Charge of the Knights liberated the city from the Shi’ite militias, has transformed the situation here. When Prime Minister Maliki announced the Charge of the Knights, Muqtada al-Sadr mocked it as the charge of the mice. But is has turned into the biggest surprise successes of the war. Maliki is making his army’s presence felt in Basra–there are check-points with the Iraqi flag on them all over the city—and he has gone from zero

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour is out of ideas

Westminster might be waiting for the voters of Crewe and Nantwich to cast their ballots, but we have already learned one thing from the campaign: Labour’s policy cupboard is bare. That Labour’s hopes of hanging onto this normally safe seat rest solely on hoping for a sympathy vote for the daughter of the popular, recently deceased MP and on caricaturing the Tory candidate as a toff shows that no one in the Labour campaign team can think of a compelling, positive reason to vote for the party. Martin Bright nails this point in his New Statesman column when he asks what would someone on the left see if they looked

Peter Hoskin

Are the Tories in landslide mode?

We’ve just uploaded the content from the latest magazine on to the website, and I’d suggest you read Fraser’s politics column ahead of the results from Crewe and Nantwich tonight.  In it, Fraser writes of how the Tories are unofficially shifting to a “landslide strategy”.  They now regard a whole host of marginal seats as “in the bag”, so party resources, cash and effort are being diverted to those seats which were considered “unwinnable” before Cameron took charge.  Crewe’s something of a pilot for this approach, so the result is of extreme importance to Cameron & Co.  What do CoffeeHousers make of the strategy?  Is it a masterstroke?  Or a risk too far?  As always, have your

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Great Expectations

Politics Home’s Insider panel’s benchmarks for the Crewe and Nantwich by-election give us a pretty good idea of how the pundit class would treat various results tonight. If the Tory majority is over 4,000, the panel thinks, that Labour would go into a tailspin and it would be confirmed that the Tories were on their way back to Downing Street. So, if the Tories do win tonight—watch the majority. Brown can probably weather a fairly narrow loss, but a thumping defeat would take us into a whole new political stage. 

Peter Hoskin

Brown losing friends. Rapidly

You can add another entry to the list of those who don’t like Gordon Brown: the unions.  Over the past few days we’ve been tracking growning union disgruntlement -and the possibility of a Summer of Strikes – over on Trading Floor.  And now that mood’s been encapsulated in a speech delivered by Brendan Barber, the TUC’s general secretary, last night.  He certainly didn’t pull his punches – the Government needs to “reconfigure its DNA”, as it “has not been clear about what it wants to be – and where it now wants to go”. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to see who Brown’s allies are.  The unions don’t like him; business

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Graph of the Day

Courtesy of Danny Finkelstein: The red line shows Labour’s approval rating since 2005, the blue John Major’s 1992-97 ministry. Nuff said. (The bulge was the brief Brown Summer in which, helped by not being Tony Blair and his calm response to terrorism, Brown was for a moment or two actually quite popular.)

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour Conference abolishes Britishness

I’ve just been filing in an application for credentials to the Labour party conference and was gobsmacked to find that you could not declare your nationality to be British. Instead, you had to pick English, Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh or a foreign nationality. I’m sure that this is just an oversight. But given how much Gordon Brown talks about Britishness and the giant Union flag backdrop at the special Labour conference that elected him leader, it is rather amusing. I’m now considering starting a campaign: British passes for British hacks.  

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why the abortion time limit will soon come down

Sadly, the abortion vote last night pretty much split down party lines with 83 percent of Tories in favour of a lower limit and 80 percent of Labour MPs supported the 24 week status quo. It would be a disaster for British politics if abortion was to become a partisan issue—imagine the Commons continually changing the time limit after an election in much the way that US administrations suspend or enact the Mexico City policy. Indeed, my one criticism of the campaign against the 24 week timeframe for so-called ‘social abortions’ is that some of its advocates veered too quickly into partisan language. But I am hopeful the time limit

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Police problems for Labour as the Home Secretary gets banged to rights

Labour must be hoping that not many people in Crewe and Nantwich decide to watch the evening news tonight. For if they do, what they’ll see is hardly like to encourage them to vote Labour. The first item, if the BBC website is any guide, is going to be Jacqui Smith being berated by Jan Berry, chair of the Police Federation. With the Home Secretary sitting on the stage, Berry joked about Smith’s past drug use and then absolutely went for her over the government’s failure to backdate the pay rise set by the Police Arbitration Tribunal. She asked who in the Cabinet stood up for police and then denounced

Peter Hoskin

Are Labour going the way of Major’s Tories?

Daniel Finkelstein highlights this fascinating graph over at Comment Central.  The red line represents Labour’s opinion poll ratings since 2005; the blue line those of John Major’s government between 1992 and 1997.  With the exception of a Labour spike during the “Brown bounce”, the correlation sure is striking: