Politics

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

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

On to Blackpool

When I zipped through security, I knew something was up. The conference here is almost dead. The normal buzz of a Tuesday has vanished, even if Brown’s up for a soft focus Q&A with Mariella Frostrup tomorrow few are hanging around to see it. Alan Johnson’s NHS speech was underwhelming.  David Miliband’s speech was full of Blair-style verbless sentences, which made me feel rather nostalgic. But has divided the audience between those who found it odd, and those who saw in him the next leader. But 11 point Labour lead in YouGov’s poll has moved the gossip at the conference on to one topic – what will Cameron do now?

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

What they’re talking about in the bars of Bournemouth

Here’s a recap of the gossip around the bars last night..   1. Early election: Perhaps Brown started this hare running to wrong-foot the Tories, then came to take it seriously himself. Now the hype is so big, that perhaps Brown can’t stop it and will look cowardly if he doesn’t go now. He’s leaning towards a later election. 2. Bible: Plenty jokes about witch trials, Bible branding and Wicker Man style politics. “It made me feel like I was back in the Western Isles” says one fellow Scot down here. But obviously its part of the Brown brand. Hardly a day goes by without him reminding us that his

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why British jobs for British workers won’t work

As I type, a frustrated cleaner has just come in my room in Bournemouth. To my amazement, she’s English. We get talking about Brown’s “British jobs for British workers” mantra, and it dawns on me that she’s a living example of why it won’t work. She says she’s one of only three Brits in the hotel’s huge housekeeping staff. She’s doing an NVQ in housekeeping, enjoys her work but is still considering going on to benefits as she’s struggling to make ends meet. She lives in a council estate, few of her neighbours work and think it’s strange that she does given she’s no better off than them. But she

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The struggle takes many forms

Jon Cruddas’s latest conferences diary gives a great feeling for the Labour mood after yesterday’s speech. As Jon puts it, ‘Last night the Conference really kicked off.’ Do read it, if only to find out why Jon fears he is turning into Hazel Blears. 

The Spectator

How does Brown plan to deliver on his promises?

There is a consensus in the papers this morning that for all the politiical skill of Gordon Brown’s speech, it puts us no closer to knowing how Brown plans to achieve his ambitious aims. As Peter Riddell says in The Times, “we are no nearer to understanding how a Brown Britain would work in five or ten years’ time.” In The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland reports that, “One unreconciled Blairite listening to it all shook his head in despair, branding the speech as “dire”. Everyone wants a personalised NHS, he bellowed. “How’s he going to do it? “This central question – how?” – remained unanswered.”

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Nude Polish Women Party

Let’s hear it for the Polish Women’s Party: “We are beautiful, nude, proud. We are true and sincere, body and soul. This is not pornography, there is nothing to see in terms of sex, our faces are intelligent, concerned, proud. We do not have our mouths open nor our eyes closed… All that interests us is the future, the position of women in society. We will open the archives of the former secret communist agents, we will make known their corrupt affairs,” says party president Manuela Gretkowska. Indeed. [Hat-tip: Guido Fawkes]

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Not the front pages Gordon would have wanted

Despite all the courting of small ‘c’ conservatives in the speech, Gordon Brown doesn’t get the front page coverage he would have wanted in two key papers. The Sun’s front pages blares, ‘Not his finest hour’ and takes him to task for not promising a referendum on the EU Constitution/Treaty: The Sun was clearly serious when it promised to keep up the pressure until polling day. While the Daily Mail’s front page is dominated by a story about the McCanns. 

The Spectator

Conference Update

We’ve just posted the latest instalment of Jon Cruddas’s conference diary which includes details of a classic encounter with Peter Mandelson and an explanation of what Gordon Brown is trying to appeal to. We also have a sketch from Lloyd Evans on Gordon Brown’s performance which absolutely skewers the Labour leader.

The Spectator

Brown’s national party

Talk here is turning to Brown’s decision not to blast the Tories in his speech. This fits with the idea of him transcending party division, and of course wooing Tory voters. The new business cards they’re handing out here say “New Labour for Britain” the last two words in far larger type. And this is the new hype: Labour is trying to mutate into a British national party (so to speak) quietly picking up the flags, rhetoric and other nationalistic paraphernalia junked by the Cameroon Tories.

The Spectator

Brown writes the Tories out of the script

For me, the most striking feature of Brown’s speech was what was missing from it: not the election date but the Conservative Party. You would not think that less than a year ago most senior Labour figures feared that David Cameron’s appeal to switchers in marginal seats was so strong that a hung Parliament was the best they could hope for. Now, in private at least, the same ministers debate the scale of the majority which they now confidently expect, whenever the election is called. Brown barely deigned to mention the Conservative Party or to pay David Cameron the compliment of launching a full-frontal attack on him. Instead, he spoke,

The Spectator

Gordon Brown’s speech

2:40pm: So far, Brown is trying to lay out a third way between equality of outcome and opportunity pitching New Labour as the party of aspiration and community. Brown’s delivery is relaxed and confident and he is managing, just, not to talk in his trademark machine gun blasts. 2:45pm Brown talks about a 10 year plan for education and how every student leaving school at 18 will now have a qualification. Low-income pupils will be financed from 16 through to the end of their university degree. This, says Brown, will be a symbol of a society not divided by class but united by aspiration. Aspiration and talent are clearly the

The Spectator

What Brown’s speech will tell us about his election plans

The word is that Gordon Brown’s speech will not mention when he might go to the country. Indeed, judging by his rather tetchy performance on the Today Programme this morning he appears to regretting letting the speculation reach such a fever pitch. But his address will still give us plenty of clues to his thinking. If it is stuffed with, to borrow a phrase, eye-catching initiatives with which he can be personally associated such as this deep clean of hospitals and a reversal on 24 hour drinking, which he hinted heavily at this morning, then it will suggest that he really is going to go. But if he sets out

The Spectator

The Sun rains on Brown’s parade

The one cloud on the Bournemouth horizon for Gordon Brown this morning is the vigorous campaign that the Sun has launched today for a referendum on the EU treaty formerly known as the constitution. The front page of the paper declares, “Never have so few decided so much for so many.” Inside, the first seven pages are devoted to the issue with the Sun warning that Britain “faces the greatest threat as an independent sovereign state since the dark days of World War II.” There follows a pledge to fight this cause “right up to the next election.” As Tim Montgomerie notes, this campaign might give Brown pause about going

The Spectator

Brown previews his big speech

Today is G-Day, and Gordon is doing the rounds of the broadcasters before his big speech this afternoon. Up against Sky’s Adam Boulton, Brown led off, as he did on Marr yesterday, on the “personalised” NHS – although when Adam mentioned that this very New Labour approach to health reform had been welcomed by Peter Mandelson at a meeting last night, the PM could barely muster a nod of disgusted recognition. On election timing, he was positively sharp in response to Adam’s perfectly legitimate questions: “The first person I shall talk to is The Queen and not Sky TV.” Let’s remember that promise if, by chance, the date is actually

Sunday

The Spectator

More good poll news for Brown

The case for Gordon Brown going to the country in October just keeps getting stronger.  A poll in tomorrow’s Sun puts Labour on 42%–8 points ahead of the Tories, an increase in the lead of 3 points since the start of the month. (The indispensable Conservative Home has details). While the Sunday Times reports that Labour’s internal polling has them up by a massive 14% if the election were to be held now.  I’ve always been sceptical about the likelihood of Brown calling an election so soon as it undercuts one of his key assets, the perception that he is a serious man who is just interested in getting things

The Spectator

The new Labour split

In the conference hotel bar, there is but one subject under heated discussion, and it is, like treason, a matter of dates. The old Blair-Brown conference clash (RIP) has been replaced this year by a rather different sort of division: the Octobrists versus the Mayites, the ‘go now, Gordon’ camp versus the ‘wait and see’ crew. I suspect that this divide within the conference is nowhere more vivid than inside the capacious brain of the PM himself. He is, we know, capable of great resolve, boldness and theatricality: witness his granting of independence to the Bank of England, and his formidably choreographed entrance as Prime Minister. But he also has

The Spectator

Fisking Darling

The Labour Party conference is already turning out to be a stage where a fictional narrative of events is being established and Alistair Darling’s speech was no exception. Here is a small list of correctives.   1) “Record of economic growth not achieved by any other economy” Um, the UK has had the worst growth in the English speaking world since 1997. Most developed countries have grown faster. See theOECD growth tables for proof.   2) “Youth unemployment is down by 90% in Dorset and that is what a Labour government has delivered”. Um, youth unemployment has (scandalously) risen under Labour across the UK (see here).   3) He claimed

The Spectator

Will Brown take the October plunge?

Two moments stood out for me in Gordon’s Andrew Marr interview: when the PM discussed the health service, not only personalised but capable of delivering to patients the “doctor that they want, the GP at the time they want” he was echoing his recent tea-guest, Margaret Thatcher (I want to go to the hospital of my choice, on the day I want, at the time I want.) Not much comfort for public sector workers there. Second, when Marr expertly pressed him on election timing, Brown let slip the extent to which he is now absorbed by this matter. Asked about Callaghan’s famous decision not to go to the country in

The Spectator

What to watch for in Bournemouth

Gordon’s first Labour conference as Prime Minister begins today: it could conceivably be his last. Just as last year’s gathering of the party in Manchester was dominated by Tony Blair’s farewell and the prospects for smooth transition to the Brown regime, the proceedings in Bournemouth will be consumed by a single question and one that will almost certainly not be mentioned on the conference floor: the timing of the election (see Andrew Rawnsley’s typically shrewd analysis of the pros and cons of an early poll in today’s Observer). As absorbing as this question undoubtedly is – will he? won’t he? –  it also pays to listen to what Brown actually