Politics

It is a strange form of bombardment. Days, sometimes weeks, can pass without any movement from the Metropolitan Police and it seems as if the all-clear is about to be sounded above the Downing Street bunker. Then, from nowhere, comes another arrest, a fresh revelation, and the turmoil starts again. Even the sadist in Gordon Brown will have seen enough by now, knowing that the pain inflicted on Tony Blair is inflicting lasting damage to the reputation of the party Brown will soon lead. Once, the Chancellor hoped to draw a line under the disastrous loans-for-honours debacle with a triple whammy of legislation. He would agree a deal on party

Mark Benton is quite clear why he followed his father into working for Rolls-Royce; after three years toiling away as a roofer, he discovered that ‘it’s nice and warm in here…. Oops, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that.’ Benton, 28, born and bred in Derby, rushes to add that he’s better paid, has had five different jobs since joining nine years ago, and is literally at the cutting edge of the company’s technology, machining turbine blades. Let’s get one thing straight: Rolls-Royce Group plc doesn’t make motor cars. The famous badge and ‘spirit of ecstasy’ statuette on your Roller are there under licence and should a jumped-up carmaker decide to

Just after the 2001 election, the triumphant Tony Blair had a plan: he would split the Home Office in two. The PM had been appalled by its performance in New Labour’s first term and had already decided to move Jack Straw to the Foreign Office. But the problem, he feared, could only be solved by creating two new departments. Peter Mandelson urged him to proceed — yet, in the event, both were talked out of it by the Civil Service. I am told that Mr Blair has regretted this ever since. He will now have his revenge from beyond the political grave. John Reid’s new blueprint to create two distinct

Are you a hedger or a ditcher? The distinction was invented to describe the opposition to Asquith’s threat to the House of Lords in 1911, and it applies today to Euroscepticism. It is not a coincidence that Lord Willoughby de Broke, one of the two Conservative peers who have just joined Ukip, is the grandson of the 19th Lord Willoughby de Broke, who was perhaps the greatest of the ditchers. The 19th baron wrote: ‘There is nothing so wicked as a compromise about a principle.’ For Willoughby de Broke 19 (as Americans might call him) the principle was the power of the hereditary peerage; for Willoughby de Broke 21 it

If a week is a long time in politics, then 13 years is a positive eternity. In 1994 it emerged that the new Leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, had sent his eldest child, Euan, to the London Oratory School — a school that had opted out of town hall control under a Conservative policy strongly opposed by Labour. ‘Any parent wants the best for their children,’ Mr Blair said at the time. ‘I am not going to make a choice for my child on the basis of what is the politically correct thing to do.’ Far from damaging the Labour leader, his robust defence of his family’s decision burnished

It is clear from the Prime Minister’s new year message (issued somewhat surreally from the Florida home of the Bee Gee Robin Gibb) that he has already entered elder statesman mode. His theme was that Mr Brown must continue along the path which Mr Blair claims to have set: ‘[Labour] is dominating the battle of ideas. It will continue to do so provided it continues to be New Labour. This isn’t just about policy, though it is certainly about taking the tough decisions that prepare Britain for the future. It is also about our instincts, our ability to keep the core coalition together.’ In other words, the Prime Minister was

It is hard to describe the Slave Trade Abolition Bill 1807 as a Labour victory, given that it predates the party by a century. Still, this does not deter Tony Blair or Gordon Brown from staking their claim to it. ‘The reactionaries told us that to abolish slavery was an impossible cause,’ the Chancellor recently declared to Labour members. Abolition was a great victory against ‘Tory money’, said the Prime Minister. On the eve of the bicentennial year of William Wilberforce’s legislation, both men are preparing to take a vicarious (if wholly undeserved) bow. Set aside the fact that Wilberforce was a Tory MP. Messrs Blair and Brown make a

Iain Duncan Smith must have dreamed about the moment he would stun the Blair government into silence. Derision was the government’s main response to his interventions when he was Conservative leader and, even a year after his ‘quiet man’ conference speech, Labour MPs still amused themselves by saying ‘sshh’ when he rose to speak in the Chamber. Now, after three years spent thinking and rebuilding his political identity, he has returned to the front line with a report on social breakdown — and one to which Labour seems quite unable to respond. IDS’s Social Justice Commission was set up to address the break-up of families, a social trend which has

It is strange to find myself at odds with several fellow Thatcherites, but it seems to me obvious that David Cameron’s first year as Tory leader, which falls this week, has been a success. What his critics cannot get into their heads is that opposition is completely different from government. You can’t do: you must just be. So the first thing you have to be, particularly when people have long disliked your party, is nice. I read that focus groups say that Cameron has a ‘kind face’. Serious-minded people scoff at such things, but if voters thought he had an unkind face, the Tories would get nowhere. As for the