All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
What is Britain’s role in the world? And what resources will be devoted to sustaining it? These questions, germane for more than 40 years anyway, have an extra urgency in this New Age of Austerity. Liam Fox is addressing the Scottish Tory conference as I write this. Fox reiterates the urgent need for a post-election
The expenses scandal just keeps getting better and better for David Cameron. No, you read that right. The departure of Andrew Mackay is indeed a grievous loss to the Tory leader’s inner circle and – self-evidently – a grotesque embarrassment. But, by pre-empting press disclosure, it shows that Mr Cameron will not wait for the
In a risky break from blogging orthodoxy, I’m actually attending a political event today (and tomorrow!) and have travelled north to Perth for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party’s annual conference. Next year’s election – assuming we have to wait until then – will be a strange one in Scotland since, for the first time,
Labour has fallen to its lowest ever opinion poll rating in a YouGov poll for The Sun. On the general election question, the Tories were at 41 down two from the last YouGov poll, Labour on 22 down five and the Lib Dems up one on 19. The Sun calculates that this would deliver the
Damian McBride may be gone, but his spirit lives on in Labour’s latest party political broadcast (watch it after the jump). It features a young chap in a suit (boo! class enemy!) who goes into an empty room and starts hitting a punchbag. Then it comes up with all sorts of claims that could have
Up until now, there’s been safety in numbers for those MPs caught up in this scandal. If, for example, the revelations about Alistair Darling had come out on their own, I suspect, they would have placed his career in jeopardy. But now, what Fraser calls, ‘the punishment momentum’ is building; two thirds of the Conservative
‘If you ain’t a swing, you don’t mean a thing’ is sadly an adage that British political parties live by. Come the next election, the parties will concentrate their efforts on the battleground street and ignore their own safe seats and those of the other parties. This targeting leaves most voters feeling ignored. The disillusionment
How significant is Andrew MacKay’s departure? A few weeks ago, I did a column on his weird Rasputin-like influence over David Cameron. His role is to sniff the air, see which tribes of Tory MPs are gathering where. To advise, say, if David Davis is up to mischief on the backbenches. To be a shadow
Just in case some politicians aren’t aware how angry the public are over these rotten expense claims, I’d recommend they read Patrick Barkham’s article in the Guardian today. He’s visited the constituencies of five MPs who have been implicated in the mess this week – Geoff Hoon, George Osborne, Hazel Blears, Alan Duncan and Douglas
Has the expenses scandal claimed its first scalp? Sky are reporting that Andrew MacKay has resigned as David Cameron’s Commons aide after his expense claims revealed, in the words of a Tory spokesman, “an unacceptable situation”. Questions abound. Was this a receipt nasty so bad that – unlike others so far – it demanded an
Pity poor Michael Martin. Or, rather, don’t. The Speaker’s coming under increased attack today, and rightly so. As the Daily Mail reports this morning, there are now several plots to oust him from the role: we’ve got Douglas Carswell’s commons motion; a move to have him knifed by “a delegation from the Privy Counsel”; a
There was a crazy puff piece for the Endless War on Drugs on the BBC News tonight in which the reporter, Mark Easton, was handed a story by the Serious Organised Crime Agency full of dramatic pictres and supposedly encouraging figures. Coincidentally, this appeared the day before Soca releases its annual report and at a
I have been reading Marcia Williams’s 1972 memoir of her time with Harold Wilson, Inside Number 10 (no don’t ask why) and come to the chapter with the wonderful title The Inevitability of Gradualness. Here, Wilson’s former personal and private secretary weighs up the successes and failures of the 1960s Wilson governments. On the negative
A quiet, chastened, nervous House of Commons today. Like a bunch of naughty schoolboys caught wrecking the art-block and forced to clean it up. The Prime Minister, looking even more dank and grotty than usual, faltered as he recited the names of last week’s war dead from Afghanistan. By contrast Cameron’s bright, youthful demeanour served
Day six in the Telegraph’s investigation of MPs’ expenses, and the latest revelations are perhaps the most outrageous so far. Exhibit A: the Labour MP Elliot Morley, who claimed £16,000 for interest payments on, erm, a mortgage that had been paid off 18 months previously. Other allegations include: Fabian Hamilton declaring his mother’s house in
Patrick Wintour’s write-up of the continuing expenses scandal today contains a neat insight into a recent Cabinet meeting: “Only one cabinet minister, Andy Burnham, the culture secretary, told his colleagues that if he had contributed to the problem through his expenses claims then he was quite willing to offer his apologies. No other cabinet minister
Put this in the file marked “Obscured by the expenses row”: a report that the Government will continue to keep PFI projects off the books, in spite of advice from a whole host of accountancy and industry professionals. As the FT puts it: “In spite of the widespread expectation that almost all PFI projects would
Barack Obama has made clamping down on tax havens one of his key talking points. It is easy to see why he has taken this approach which enables him to sound both populist and patriotic. On the stump, Obama liked to joke that a building in the Cayman Islands that was the registered home of
Brown looked dejected, buffeted and battered by events. Cameron looked confident, in charge of them. The Tory leader kicked off asking why all new claims can’t be put online? (Ben Wallace did so ages ago, and was hated by many in his party, but Cameron backed him). Brown’s response was in auto-garble, speaking as if
Few sights are more stomach-churning than the British press in one of its perennial fits of moral outrage. Judging by the leader columns of the past few days, the whole of Fleet Street is shocked — shocked! — to discover that MPs have been fiddling their expenses. Could these be the same professionals I have
Expect much ado about expenses in PMQs today, especially after David Cameron took the lead on the issue yesterday. Live coverage from 1200. 1203: Brown now. First question from the Labour benches: a mention of MPs’ expenses, and what can Brown do to “invest” in skills – “unemployment is not a price worth paying”. Brown
Nick Robinson reports that the parties are still banging out the details of an agreement on expenses. Robinson reports that “What remains at issue is that Labour wants a cap on the amount that can be spent on mortgage interest payments and the Lib Dems are arguing that MPs should repay any gain they make
Question: how can you tell that David Cameron has taken the lead on expenses? Answer: all the other party leaders are now copying him. In response to the Lib Dem revelations today, Nick Clegg has asked his MPs to repay their dubious claims. While Gordon Brown has done another lap of the media circuit; putting
Is this the oddest argument in favour of torture yet? Karl Rove says that failing to torture prisoners only encourages al-Qaeda. Taking, for example, the memoranda about the enhanced interrogation techniques and making them public has been a value to our enemy. It has served, frankly, I think, as a recruiting tool. They can now
Like Bagehot I think this one of most entertaining – and revealing – reactions to the revelations of the Great Expenses Swindle of 2009: The latest batch of expenses details revealed by the Telegraph included the fact that Peterborough MP Stewart Jackson had made a claim of £304.10 for the upkeep of a swimming pool.
Leave aside the specifics: when David Cameron walks into Number Ten, his press conference this afternoon should be remembered as one of the non-electoral milestones on the road from Opposition to power. Compare and contrast the image of Gordon being interviewed on a train when the Telegraph story first broke last week – blaming the
The problem with being a newspaper columnist is that you have to keep finding new stuff to say. New is more important than better, you understand. So when everyone is outraged (and, hell, justifiably so for once!) by the spectacle of MPs’ outrageous abuse of the spirit, and often the letter, of their expense arrangements
In normal circumstances, Lord Tebbit’s intervention this morning – urging voters to punish the main parties for the expenses scandal at in the June 4 elections – would almost certainly be a disciplinary matter. But these are anything but normal circumstances, and David Cameron would be ill-advised to take action against the mighty Chingford Polecat.
One of the key questions as to how the expenses scandal will play out politically, is how it affects the Liberal Democrats. The Telegraph have just posted the teaser for their story tomorrow, here’s the key paragraph: “Expenses claims submitted by 12 Liberal Democrats, from senior spokesmen to a number of back benchers, will be
Well, sort of. There’s a serious shortage of coins in Argentina at the moment, possibly because they’re worth more, as commodities prices rise, when they’re melted down and resold. Or it may have a different explanation. It’s a mystery! Anyway… The coin scarcity has created a strange predicament: Merchants regularly refuse to sell their goods
How fitting that in the week that dozens of MPs have been accused of defrauding taxpayers, Gordon Brown has today decided to make his first ever keynote speech on crime. The speech comes nine months after the Prime Minister last warned that crime would rise in the downturn, and was briefed as “an attempt to
David Cameron has called a press conference for 1530, and you can probably guess the topic that will dominate proceedings (hint: MPs’ expenses). He’s said to have spent today figuring out how to deal with the miscreants in his party, so will we hear what the punishment will be? Stay tuned for live coverage. 1522:
One of the things that makes me angriest about the whole expenses scandal is that our politicians have conspired to reduce their standing at a time when the country is in economic crisis and the global situation is becoming increasingly precarious. Yesterday, Robert Gates, Obama’s Secretary of Defense who is a holdover from the Bush
David Miliband has given a provocative interview to the Evening Standard’s Anne McElvoy. Here’s how he replied when McElvoy asked him if he was up for another tilt at the leadership: “I really won’t go there. I rule nothing in and nothing out and it’s invidious, where we are now, to talk about it.” He’s