All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Today’s recommendations from IPSA on MPs pay have been with met the condemnation we’ve come to expect regarding our politicians — snouts in troughs, out of touch political class, etc. But it’s not simply MPs giving themselves more money. Here are the key five points of what the independent recommendations are actually proposing: 1. Overall cost of
Steerpike is back in this week’s edition of The Spectator. With union barons in the news, it’s the perfect time to reveal their expensive tastes: The wine waiters at Claridges are taking a keen interest in the investigation into malpractice in Falkirk. And they’re hoping that Unite will be fully exonerated. Len McCluskey likes to
This all looks terribly good fun, don’t you think? Spectacular towers which will make wonderful bonfires: it must have taken them ages. My only caveat is that they are all in Northern Ireland. Is there no enterprising alliance over here which might do something similar to celebrate the glorious military success of King William of
Today’s Daily Mirror has exposed half a scandal: that the tax changes under this government have hit the poor harder that the rich. That’s what you get when you jack up VAT: it hits everyone, but will hit the poor proportionally harder. But this year, the lower-paid half of British workers will be asked for
Why has the Met Office become so inaccurate at predicting weather in the UK? On the latest View from 22 podcast, author Rupert Darwall explains why out of the last 13 years of weather predictions by the Met, 12 have been incorrect. How does the Met Office go about predicting weather? Are these inaccuracies down
It has often been said that there is no perfect time for an increase in MPs’ pay. If that is true then surely now would be the most imperfect time. All MPs who are doing their job to any percentage of excellence know that our constituents are feeling very concerned for the future. Any spare
It’s the peak of the summer party season. Half a dozen events competed for the Westminster crowd last night. The bookies at Ladbrokes made themselves outsiders by holding their booze-up on a boat that cast off a tad too early in the evening. The Adam Smith Institute hosted a bash on the Thames, while a stuffy parliament
One of David Cameron’s better lines at Prime Minister’s Questions was that the trade unions ‘buy the candidates, they buy the policies and they buy the leader’. In his final response to Ed Miliband, he said: ‘What is Labour’s policy on Royal Mail? It is determined by the Communication Workers Union. What is its policy
Andy Murray’s joy is now complete. Yes, he won Wimbledon and all that, but his crowning glory came today when he was mentioned at the start of PMQs. Cameron apparently has no idea how goofy and devious he looked last Sunday when he half-opened the door of Downing Street and stepped out to greet Murray
That was as loud as the Prime Minister’s Questions that immediately preceded the last election. The Labour benches were clearly determined to ensure that there was no repeat of last week’s mauling of Ed Miliband. They barracked David Cameron from the off, even chanting ‘weak, weak, weak’ during his answers and almost every Labour question
Imagine that you’re a passenger in a car driving down a country road at 20mph. All of a sudden the driver hits the accelerator and you’re now zinging away at 60mph. If asked what speed you were going at, what would you say? I’d imagine probably something like 80mph, at least until you became accustomed
Walk down a corridor in the Palace of Westminster today and you’ll likely be taken aside by a Tory backbencher who wants to vent their frustration about Britain opting back into the European Arrest Warrant. At the moment, the mood is of concern rather than rebellion — a reflection of the fact that Tory MPs
The Conservatives are a happy bunch at the moment. But for how much longer? They might be riding on the crest of a wave after the second reading of James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill for an EU referendum. But already forces are at work to disrupt the happy harmony. Labour MP Mike Gapes has this
One of the promises from the last round of ‘new politics’ pledges when the Tories were in opposition was a cut in the number of special advisers in a government, on the grounds that SpAds are evil beasts who cost a lot of money. Like many ‘new politics’ pledges, though, this sounded superbly pious in
Mr Steerpike is still a boy at heart: I feel giddy with anticipation on the first morning of an Ashes series. England versus Australia. 5 Test matches. A golden summer in the offing. There’s nothing like this rivalry in sport, at least to those for whom it matters. And perhaps it matters most to those
The warm reception to Ed Miliband’s speech yesterday was so eerily positive that it could never have lasted. Today we get the first taste of the real battle to come, with the GMB warning that they’d be ‘lucky if 10% of our current affiliation levels say yes, they want to be members of the Labour
MPs held a debate in Westminster Hall today about zero hours contracts. Actually, to be specific, Labour MPs held a Westminster Hall debate today, which Jo Swinson replied to as the employment minister. Adjournment debates aren’t often that newsworthy, but what made this debate noteworthy was that it marks another example of the Conservatives failing
Ed Miliband got it right. Faced with a fiasco in Falkirk, where the trade union, Unite, attempted to fix the Parliamentary selection process, the Labour leader has come out on the right side of the argument about political reform. In our eagerness to attack him, we Conservatives are in danger of putting itself on the
Ed Miliband struggled to reach ‘the journalistic community’ at his big speech and press conference today. ‘Where’s Sky, ah there, Mark isn’t it?’, asked Ed. ‘Alistair’ came the reply. Not content with this faux pas, Miliband failed to recognize the BBC’s Nick Robinson and managed to slight Channel Four’s pompous political editor Gary Gibbon. And
Hacked Off are feeling pretty hacked off. John Prescott has resigned as a Privy Councillor, depriving the Queen of his advice. And why? Because the press has come up with its own plans for regulation, and the enemies of press freedom hate it. Mr Steerpike enjoyed last night’s debate between Hacked Off’s Brian Cathcart, a
Journalists in the Westminster bubble like to point out on Big Speech Days like this that the public couldn’t care a jot about whether Ed Miliband is having a Clause IV moment. They’re right, but that doesn’t stop everyone in the bubble getting rather overexcited about a speech in a sweaty room off Fleet Street
Tony Blair has welcomed Ed Miliband’s “big speech” on reforming Labour’s relationship with its Trade Union backers. And so has Len McCluskey, chief potentate at Unite, the Union whose allegedly nefarious activities in Falkirk have prodded Miliband towards reform. Blair expects Miliband’s proposals to change everything; McCluskey, presumably, is confident any changes will prove largely
By insisting that trade unionists must opt-in to party membership, Ed Miliband has taken a bold and brave first step in reforming Labour’s troublesome relationship with its affiliated trade unions. At a stroke, he has gone far beyond the achievements of his modernising predecessors, John Smith and Tony Blair. Considerable fanfare accompanied the introduction of
Mr Steerpike was impressed to see that Ed Miliband took on the ultimate power walk this morning on the way to his Big Speech on trade unions.
There was a point in Ed Miliband’s speech on a ‘better politics’ where it became clear that for the rest of our lives we’re all going to be trapped in an endless cycle of opposition politicians announcing that they are going to forge a ‘new politics’, as though some other chap hadn’t said the same
Let me start by saying how pleased I am to be here at the St Bride’s Foundation. Only a few hundred yards from where the Labour Party was founded over a century ago. And especially to be here with so many community organisers and Labour Party members from right across the country. I am here
Last month I wrote a post arguing that an awful lot of opinion polling is worthless. The public mood matters – and measuring it is important – but when it comes to the detail of actual government policy the public is, generally speaking, clueless. Well, whaddyaknow, but here’s a new Ipsos-Mori survey which confirms my
I think it was the arrival into the debate of those Blairite ghosts Mandelson and Reid which helped me make my mind up. Somehow, Ed Miliband has been coerced into taking on the Unite union on the grounds that they are doing shady business on the matter of selecting candidates. Mandelson and Reid are both
Ed Miliband’s speech today isn’t an attempt to close down the row over Falkirk, but to get back on top of the issue, rather than appearing to be bounced along by events. What it will do is open a huge row with the union bosses: one the Labour leader needs to be seen to have
Ed Miliband is giving a speech tomorrow morning on ‘the biggest Labour party reforms for a generation’ to shake up the party’s relationship with the unions. It’s a ‘One Nation Politics’ speech, which shows the Labour leader thinks his ‘One Nation’ tag can even be applied to cleaning up a mess in your own party,
When a political party repeatedly uses an attack line it is nearly always because their polling shows that it works. This is certainly why the Tories keep calling Ed Miliband ‘weak’. Indeed, they’re so keen to keep hitting him with this charge that they’ve stopped accusing him of knifing his brother for fear of undercutting
If you had the misfortune to miss Theresa May’s statement on the deportation of Abu Qatada this afternoon, it would hardly stretch your imagination to work out how the occasion went. It involved MPs cheering May, May making it clear that the government has done very well and then pointing out (again) that she does
The prime minister’s appearance at Wimbledon yesterday, and his invitation of Andy Murray to Downing Street, has got some miserable lefty tongues wagging. No doubt they are livid that the ‘Curse of Cameron’ has lifted, while the memory of Gordon ‘Jonah’ Brown putting the mockers on British sporting endeavour lives. Moaners will always moan that our
Last week Lynton Crosby and David Cameron briefed Conservative MPs on the threat posed by Ukip. Their timing was impeccable: today’s YouGov poll showing 19 per cent of Conservative members would seriously consider voting for Nigel Farage’s party could have sent Tory MPs into orbit, but instead they have been reassured that the party has