All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
This year’s SNP conference has proved to be a somewhat tame affair with Nicola Sturgeon playing down talk of a second independence referendum. While hacks hoping to meet the party’s army of cybernats have so far been left disappointed, Mr S has compiled a selection of photos showcasing the slightly stranger elements of this year’s conference:
The SNP didn’t win the independence referendum, but is still talking about the lessons it can learn from what happened a year later. That’s because it wants to win the next one – and everyone at this conference believes that the next referendum only has question marks about when, not if, it will happen. SNP
Amber Rudd will be keeping a low profile this weekend. The sight of a working mother on Question Time, tearfully confronting the Energy Secretary over cuts to working tax credits, won’t have made easy viewing for the Tory press machine. Earlier this month, at Conservative Party Conference, George Osborne reiterated again and again that core
Last night, George Osborne interviewed Charles Moore to mark the publication of the second volume of Charles’s magisterial biography of Margaret Thatcher. You can watch the whole thing on the Policy Exchange website but one of the most striking things about the event, apart from Charles’s subtle needling of the Chancellor, was the questions that
The Labour leadership has abandoned plans to effectively neuter the party’s whips office after realising it is quite useful, Coffee House has learned. I understand that John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn had considered making the whips’ office more of an administrative entity which didn’t try to herd MPs into the right lobby. There had also
Nicola Sturgeon has a plan about how to achieve another independence referendum, even if there won’t be a pledge for one in the SNP’s next manifesto. On the Today programme, Sturgeon pointed the finger at the Tories in Westminster — the bogeymen she believes will help the nationalists make the case for independence: ‘I think we do what we have
Pity Stewart Hosie, the SNP’s deputy leader. He appeared on the Daily Politics today to defend the party’s North Sea oil revenue projections and its record in government on health spending. He seemed rather unprepared. When questioned by Andrew Neil on the SNP’s comically inaccurate projections for oil revenue (it expected over £8 billion by now; only
The things people say in anger are generally the most revealing things of all. So it was on last night’s Question Time when a clearly very angry Simon Schama confronted Rod Liddle of this parish on the question of migrants. I’m sure Rod himself will have something to say about this, but I thought it
Is the purpose of education to educate or socially engineer? It was announced yesterday that England is to have its first new grammar school in decades, and the strange thing is that not a single person in the media (that I could see) asked whether this would improve education standards. Instead the entire debate was
Power to the smartphones! The High Court has ruled in favour of Uber this morning after Transport for London and the taxi lobby asked it to clarify whether smartphones in private hire vehicles counted as taximeters. In the ruling, Mr Justice Ouseley said that the drivers’ app may be essential for calculating the fare but that did not make it the
Later this year, or more probably in the spring of 2016, the following scene may play out on the steps of the High Court in London. An editor will appear before the cameras and say: ‘I am instructing my reporters stop investigative journalism until the law is changed.’ The naïve who have failed to educate themselves
The SNP’s eight years in government have been devoid of much scrutiny but in many areas, it has been a disaster. On the latest View from 22 podcast, Adam Tomkins from Glasgow University discusses this week’s Spectator cover feature with Kevin Pringle, the SNP’s former head of communications. Why are Police Scotland, the NHS north of the border and Scotland’s education system failing to
The SNP are very, very happy that they now have 56 MPs in Westminster. But to listen to their conference in Aberdeen today, you’d think they were happiest that Labour is having a miserable time in the House of Commons. It wasn’t just Nicola Sturgeon’s speech, covered here, that showed their joy. It was also
The two major EU referendum campaigns have gone public over the last week: ‘Vote Leave, Take Control’ and ‘Britain Stronger In Europe’. Both camps have formidable campaigners at the helm: Dominic Cummings for Vote Leave and Will Straw for Stronger In. They both passionately believe in their causes and are prepared to do whatever it takes to win. Cummings is
You might have thought, mightn’t you, that a million arrivals in a year to a single European country, Germany – well, more than 800,000 and counting – would be enough to be going on with, wouldn’t you? After that, you wouldn’t actually be going out of your way to solicit more incomers into Europe in
Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour’s new leader, few of his colleagues have been more supportive than Diane Abbott. As well as defending John McDonnell on the Today show this week over his fiscal charter U-turn, the shadow secretary for international development — who reportedly once enjoyed a romance with Corbyn — took it upon
The thing about politics is that it is, you know, political. One of the consequences of Labour’s Scottish immolation is that Conservative ministers no longer feel the need to consult Labour grandees about what to do with Scotland. Gordon Brown’s advice is no longer required; the voices of Douglas Alexander and Alistair Darling need no longer
David Cameron is in Brussels today with the European Commission not hiding its irritation at the slow pace of the British renegotiation. One member of the Cabinet committee handling the renegotiation admits that ‘We were hoping to be further ahead than we are now’. Though, they blame the hold-up not on Britain being unclear about
One of the key aims of this SNP conference in Aberdeen is for the party to reach out to those who are worried that voting for the party in the Holyrood elections will raise the spectre of a second referendum that many voters are wary of, given how divisive the first one was in some families
Remember those Tory posters that put a tiny Ed Miliband in Alex Salmond’s coat pocket? Well, it’s only five months since the general election, but Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t seem all that keen to put Jeremy Corbyn in her handbag. She seemed to suggest that she had given up on being able to work with the
SNP members are gathering for the first day of their party’s autumn conference in Aberdeen. The party is keen to trumpet quite how much has changed in a year, and it’s not just proud of its 56 MPs. Last night it released ‘figures showing the scale of its growth since the referendum’. These include the
Oh dear. With Boris Johnson needing to mount a political comeback pretty soon in order to have any hope of stopping George Osborne’s bid to be the next Conservative leader, the Mayor of London could do with some good PR. So unfortunately an incident that occurred on his trip to Japan is unlikely to prove helpful. Johnson
As Labour’s new shadow City Minister, Richard Burgon will be hoping to prove that his party isn’t as anti-business as they were seen to be in the last election. Alas, his interview with Cathy Newman on Channel 4 news last night will have done little to help his cause. Burgon — who was one of the
The two central figures in the Kids Company fiasco, Camila Batmanghelidjh and Alan Yentob, have been grilled by the Public Administration Committee this morning and it’s gone very badly for both. As you might expect, Batmanghelidjh shirked all responsibility for the collapse of the charity she founded – outrageously blaming civil servants who blew the whistle on
The United States has abandoned training rebel forces on the ground in Syria but not equipping them, or at least some of them, and over the weekend its military cargo planes dropped 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups in the north of the country. All apparently reached their intended target: yet another hastily formed
Over 20 Labour MPs rebelled against their party whip and abstained on the government’s fiscal charter this evening. The Labour party claimed there were 20 abstentions, but the Tories claimed the number was closer to 28. This is the full list of abstentions which didn’t include authorised absences (some of whom would have been would-be rebels who
Corbyn’s PMQ’s strategy is now clear. Hopeful emailers send their lifestyle details to Labour HQ and a computer sifts the figures to find the voter likeliest to cause the prime minister’s cheeks to blush purple with shame. Today’s lucky winner was Kelly, (no surname given), a single mum on £7.20 per hour who works for
The status of Labour’s council of seven economic advisers is becoming a little clearer. Following Danny Blanchflower’s revelation that John McDonnell didn’t consult him about the fiscal charter, another adviser has said the team has yet to meet — and it wasn’t even the shadow chancellor’s idea. On the World at One, Ann Pettifor, director of Prime Economics and one of Labour’s seven
The ‘Out’ campaign in the EU referendum has seized on comments made by Jean-Claude Juncker where he appears to say that Britain doesn’t need the European Union. He ‘appears’ to say it in the sense that the key word is rather muffled – and his team are insisting he said Britain does need the EU. You
Earlier this year Sandi Toksvig stepped down from her role on Radio 4’s The News Quiz to launch a career in politics as part of the newly-formed Women’s Equality Party. Speaking about her decision to leave the BBC for politics, the presenter-turned-politician said that she had had enough of making jokes about politicians and instead wanted
Jeremy Corbyn’s second outing at PMQs was better than his first. Rather than having all six questions determined by the email-writing public, he now uses a question from a member of the public to introduce a topic and then asks his own follow ups. Corbyn combined this with a few old-style put downs—mockingly declaring that
Although Jeremy Corbyn has decided to adopt a more civil approach when it comes to PMQs, the message appears to have not yet reached all Labour MPs. After a fairly polite exchange between Corbyn and Cameron today, it fell upon Labour’s Kevin Brennan to lower the tone with a pig jibe. Speaking about Lord Ashcroft’s David
There are only two occasions in my life where I have had lengthy, in-depth debates about where grown adults should sit. One was planning my wedding. The other was PMQs. The reason for the second discussion was raised by Nick Clegg on Newsnight yesterday when he said that sitting mutely next to David Cameron at
It’s fair to say that during Nick Clegg’s time in the coalition, the former deputy Prime Minister appeared to make a number of catastrophic mistakes when it came to the wellbeing of his party. However, when asked in an interview on Newsnight what he would list as his biggest regret, the former deputy Prime Minister chose not