Conservative party

Theresa May’s great gamble

Theresa May has long been clear about what sets her apart from other politicians: she doesn’t play political games. When she launched her bid for the top job last year, she was clear that — unlike her rivals — she hadn’t succumbed to the temptations of Westminster. She told us that she didn’t drink in the bars or gossip over lunch. She invited the TV cameras into her first Cabinet meeting as Prime Minister to record her telling ministers that ‘politics is not a game’. The danger for May in calling an election three years ahead of schedule is that it looks a lot like game-playing. Has a 20-point poll

Those who want a clear Brexit will need to make sure it is in the manifesto

Mrs May’s decision to call a snap general election is not very welcome, and I had thought she would think it too risky, but it makes sense — obviously because of Jeremy Corbyn and, a bit less obviously, because of public attitudes to her. She has brilliantly convinced people that she is a straightforward, unpolitical person who doesn’t descend to political games. This is untrue. She is, however, a person without childish vanity, celebrity hunger or media obsession. She benefits from a big cultural change, which descends from Mrs Thatcher, via all sorts of others — Angela Merkel, Ruth Davidson, Nicola Sturgeon. Women are now seen as stronger, more real

The Tories don’t need silly pledges to scare off Labour in this election

We are coming to the end of the first week of an election campaign that few were expecting when this week began. The parties are drawing their battle lines: the Tories are warning of a happy Vladimir Putin and a ‘coalition of chaos’ involving the SNP, Labour and the Lib Dems, while Labour is making this an anti-establishment election (though what precisely the Establishment is up to and which naughty coffee chains it involves remains vague, even for the party’s MPs promoting that message on the airwaves). The Lib Dems, meanwhile, had long worked out their pitch as the anti-Brexit party. Of course, not all Labour MPs are talking about

Charles Moore

Theresa May doesn’t trust enough people for a power ‘circle’. A triangle, maybe

The fact that nothing leaked about Mrs May’s snap election tells you much of what you need to know about her. It shows how iron is her discipline and how close her inner circle (so close, in fact, that it is a triangle rather than a circle). It suggests that she takes neither her cabinet nor her party into her confidence. It shows that if she wins the general election, her control of her administration will be much tighter than that of Margaret Thatcher (which was surprisingly loose) and even than that of David Cameron (which was surprisingly tight). Finally, it shows that if she loses, or gets a result

The Spectator Podcast: Election special

On this week’s episode, we discuss the two European nations that are are heading for the polls in the next couple of months. First, we look at Theresa May’s shock decision to hold a snap election, and then we cross the channel to consider the French election as they get set to whittle the field down to just two. With British news set to be dominated until June 8th by election fever (yet again), there was no place to start this week but with the fallout from the Prime Minister’s stunning U-turn on an early election. It’s a gamble, James Forsyth says in his cover piece this week, but with a portentially enormous pay

Rod Liddle

What I expect from this pointless election

A general election is called and in a matter of hours a neutral and unbiased BBC presenter has likened our Prime Minister to Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Governments rise and governments fall, but some things stay just as they always were. It was Eddie Mair on Radio 4’s PM programme who made the comparison, while interviewing the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd. In fairness to Mair, he had been alluding to Theresa May’s apparent wish to create ‘unity’ within Westminster, a truly stupid statement within an address which sometimes made no semantic sense and sounded, to my ears, petulant and arrogant. Then along came the opinion pollsters to tell us exactly what

Can Labour survive this general election?

‘There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics,’ reflected James Callaghan in 1979, conscious he was about to be turfed out of Number 10. He didn’t know the half of it. While Margaret Thatcher’s election did herald the end of the post-war consensus, it kept the Conservative/Labour ‘mould’ intact, despite later attempts by the SDP/Liberal alliance to break it. But with a ‘Brexit election’ now called for 8 June, Labour will be fighting for its very survival. The last great national political realignment was the 1922 general election in which Labour beat the Liberals into second place for the first time. This was

Nick Hilton

Even a crushing election defeat might not spell the end of Jeremy Corbyn

After the referendum, Jeremy Corbyn said that Labour was ‘very, very ready’ to contest a general election. Which is good news, because that’s precisely the task he now faces. In the world of Corbyn’s most ardent supporters, the snap election has been greeted with something like glee. Their greatest fear – that Corbyn may not survive in the leadership long enough to face the public at large – has been alleviated. Momentum’s Michael Chessum tweeted that there ‘absolutely is a path to victory for Labour… We’ll have to be bold, but it’s there’, while Paul Mason said that ‘a progressive alliance can beat the Tory hard Brexit plan’. That jubilation on the

Like them or not, Theresa May’s grammar school plans will end the postcode lottery of education

Grammar Schools. Now there’s a potent pair of words. Mention them, and genial conversation will instantly shift into awkward silence or seething torrents of passion. In either case, reasoned argument is in short supply. Yet now that Theresa May seems committed to overturning Labour’s ban on opening new grammar schools, discussion is vital. But instead of rehashing the same arguments in favour of academically selective schools, or raking over the same problems they can cause, it’s important instead to look carefully at the evidence about whether grammar schools really do promote ‘social mobility’. One of the major themes of anti-grammar salvos is that they don’t. And to make this point, the crudest approach is typically

The National Trust could teach Theresa May and the Tories a thing or two

What drove Theresa May to break off from a trade trip to the Middle East to chuck a half-brick at the National Trust over some Easter bunnies? Maybe Dame Helen Ghosh, the Trust’s Director General, knows. When the two worked together at the Home Office, they got along like a house on fire: there were flames, some screaming and eventually someone (Dame Helen, as it happens) left the building through a window. Given that history, it’s probably unwise to suggest that Mrs May might learn something from Dame Helen and the Trust instead of battering them, but I’ll give it a go anyway. The lesson is about members. The Trust

Regressive Conservatism

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party is coming to resemble a drunk trying to get home on a bike. Most of the time he just pushes it along, but occasionally he mounts the saddle and whirls into action — only to find himself swiftly spread-eagled on the road. Take next month’s local elections. Corbyn launched his party’s campaign trying to bemoan the state of Britain. There are plenty of statistics which he could have trotted out to depict a country underperforming on living standards, debt levels and social mobility. But he chose to cite a supposed decline in life expectancy — which is demonstrably and famously wrong. Life expectancy

Tom Goodenough

Mark Reckless’s defection presents the Tories with a conundrum

Mark Reckless infuriated many Tories when he defected to Ukip. Now, he’s defected again – and made few people happy in the process. The Ukip AM has announced that he is joining the Conservative Group in the Welsh Assembly, where he sits as a regional representative. Not for the first time, he is following in the footsteps of Douglas Carswell – this time by leaving Ukip behind. And his reasons for doing so are similar to Carswell’s: Brexit means that it’s mission accomplished. In his statement, he says: ‘I am joining the Conservative Group in the Welsh Assembly. I leave Ukip positively, having achieved our joint aim, a successful referendum

Should conservatives fear new working-class support? Some clearly do

In America, an argument has broken out among journalists, writers and intellectuals in the aftermath of the presidential election about whether Trump’s white working-class voters were decent, upright citizens let down by the supercilious liberal establishment or whether they were, in Hilary Clinton’s words, a racist, sexist, homophobic basket of deplorables. The curious thing about this debate is that the defenders of Trump’s supporters are, for the most part, left–wingers, like the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who spent five years chronicling a depressed blue-collar community in Louisiana, while those who disparage them as ‘in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles’

The liberals and the deplorables

In America, an argument has broken out among journalists, writers and intellectuals in the aftermath of the presidential election about whether Trump’s white working-class voters were decent, upright citizens let down by the supercilious liberal establishment or whether they were, in Hilary Clinton’s words, a racist, sexist, homophobic basket of deplorables. The curious thing about this debate is that the defenders of Trump’s supporters are, for the most part, left–wingers, like the Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, who spent five years chronicling a depressed blue-collar community in Louisiana, while those who disparage them as ‘in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles’

Revealed: the 63 Labour seats the Tories could snatch at the next election

Theresa May has once again ruled out a snap general election but that doesn’t mean the temptation to hold one will go away. Today’s ICM poll shows why: the Tories, on 45 per cent, have a 19-point lead over Labour. This pushes the Government’s poll lead up by three points following a fortnight dominated by Philip Hammond’s Budget debacle, his subsequent u-turn over hiking national insurance rates and Theresa May coming under pressure from the SNP. With Jeremy Corbyn in charge of the Labour party, the usual rules that a government would be punished for a bungled budget need not apply. In fact even after a raft of dismal headlines for Philip Hammond,

Numbers 10 & 11 need to find a better way of working together

Philip Hammond should be sending George Osborne a case of the finest claret. For Osborne’s decision to accept the editorship of the Evening Standard, has distracted Westminster’s from  this week’s spectacular Budget reversal. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, the fallout from it will be felt for some time. Even Hammond’s Cabinet allies admit that ‘Of course, he’s damaged’ by the whole issue. But those in May’s circle are blunter. Pointing out the mistake was ‘staring you right in the face’ before he made it and that the National Insurance hike on the self-employed ‘was pushed back several times’ by Number 10. They predict that ‘his arrogance

Hammond’s humiliation

After Philip Hammond delivered his Budget last week, he went to speak to a meeting of Conservative backbench MPs. Several were deeply alarmed about his tearing up of their manifesto pledge not to raise National Insurance. One asked him how sure he was about all this. Would they find themselves going out to defend this tax rise to their constituents, only to find him abandoning the policy later? No, the Chancellor replied, he would not change his mind. This tax rise was the centrepiece of his Budget, and it could not be scrapped. He was not for turning. For a Chancellor to abandon his main Budget policy within a week is nothing

The Tory Budget rebellion is growing

The Tory rebellion over the tax hike on the self-employed isn’t abating, it is intensifying as I say in The Sun this morning. As one Cabinet Minister tells me, Tory MPs ‘left the Budget feeling a little bit concerned. They’ve seen the papers, and thought this isn’t good. After the emails and constituency stuff, there’ll be even more nervous’. One Tory backbencher, who is a good judge of the mood of the parliamentary party, says ‘People are not happy at all. Somethings’ got to change’. But Philip Hammond is digging in. He is ‘absolutely determined not to retreat on this’ according to one Cabinet ally of his. He has, I’m

Tories, tax and trust – a warning from history

I was on the Question Time panel last night, and suspected that the issue of National Insurance might crop up – and that Karen Bradley, the Culture Secretary, would be sent out to defend the indefensible. Like all ministers, she has to repeat Philip Hammond’s bizarre claim that the Tories had not broken a manifesto pledge. That when they repeatedly promised not to raise National Insurance they meant only part of the National Insurance. The 2015 Tory manifesto contained no such caveat (I brought a copy along to the studio) and it’s impossible for any minister to claim otherwise. Hammond has already been accused of ‘lying’ – a strong word,

Revealed: The full list of Tory MPs who have spoken out against the Chancellor

Given that Jeremy Corbyn barely seemed to notice Philip Hammond’s Budget blunder, it’s unlikely the Chancellor will be too worried about Labour’s response to the National Insurance rates row. He will be troubled, though, by the rumblings on the backbenches behind him. The prospect of a Tory revolt is now very much on the cards; 18 Conservative MPs – including former leader Iain Duncan Smith and Tory whip Guto Bebb – have publicly spoken out against the policy. Because Tory MPs were voted in on a manifesto pledge not to raise NI contributions – and will inevitably be getting it in the neck from angry constituents over the coming days –