Uk politics

Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement may have taken Westminster by surprise but it wasn’t a shock to her party leadership. Indeed, by the time the First Minister left her Bute House press conference this afternoon, a new Yes campaign website was already up and running with appeals for money, campaign material and a video from Ms Sturgeon explaining her decision. That should be another sharp reminder to the unionist parties that they are dealing with a very, very competent electoral machine in the SNP. This is a party, after all, which has wiped the floor with its opponents in all recent elections and which, crucially, has learned its lessons from its failed independence bid

Throughout David Cameron and George Osborne’s six-year double act, we seldom heard of serious arguments between them. Both were keen to avoid a repeat of the Blair-Brown psychodrama and prided themselves on their indivisibility. Same with their respective teams. You would never pick up the Sunday papers and read the sort of No. 10 vs No. 11 insults that we see this morning. The Sunday Telegraph splashes on ‘Cabinet war over Budget shambles’ and describes how even the Cabinet were not told that Philip Hammond was about to break their manifesto commitment not to raise National Insurance. Most of the Cabinet is hopping mad: one member last week told me that Hammond’s breaking

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

In an interview with the BBC last night, Nicola Sturgeon suggested that the autumn of next year would be a ‘common sense’ time to hold another referendum on Scottish independence. Which would, of course, mean voting without knowing what the terms of the Brexit would be. (Or, perhaps, whether it will really happen.) Why the haste? This is another topic that came up on Question Time last night. I suggested that Sturgeon’s sense of urgency might be explained by opinion polls showing her ‘tanking’ approval rating. The 2021 Holyrood election will probably end the majority for independence, given that the SNP will have been in power for 14 years by then

It’s fair to say that Philip Hammond hasn’t charmed Fleet Street with his Spring Budget.  There is little sympathy even from newspapers inclined to agree with a Conservative assessment of how to run the economy. Broken promises are potent in politics – just ask the Liberal Democrats. The Tories made their tax lock pledge in the 2015 election as they were hoovering up seats from the Lib Dems who were being punished for failing to keep a pledge on tuition fees they had made at the previous election. Westminster had almost forgotten the tuition fee row. Voters hadn’t.  The argument that bringing National Insurance for the self-employed into line with

Ahead of his budget announcement this week, Philip Hammond has told Andrew Marr that the UK may continue to face EU contributions after Brexit, though he dismissed claims of a £60bn divorce fee as ‘a piece of negotiating strategy’. The Chancellor looked relaxed as he shrugged off the potential failure of a trade deal with the EU, stating simply that ‘we will forge new trade deals around the world’. In a typically uncharismatic performance, Hammond also poured cold water on the Resolution Foundation’s findings that the so-called ‘just about managing’ are going to be severely squeezed over the next three years. ‘I don’t recognise these numbers,’ he said, ‘various bodies publish various numbers,

Theresa May might have won every Brexit vote in the House of Commons so far, but it’s getting trickier now. The House of Lords this week rejected the plan to trigger Article 50 without offering assurances to EU nationals, knowing that most MPs are sympathetic. I understand that the Tory whips are working hard to whittle down threatened rebellion at the ‘ping-pong’ stage. Given that everyone in Vote Leave pledged to protect EU nationals – as did four out of the five original Tory leadership contenders – it’s harder work. Quite a few rebels feel they need to make a point about the status of EU citizens. The whips will

In the past few minutes, the government has lost a vote in the House of Lords on a key aspect of Brexit: the status of EU nationals. Peers are at the Committee Stage of the bill that allows the government to trigger Article 50, and despite attempts by Home Secretary Amber Rudd to reassure them that this issue will be the priority once the negotiations for Britain to leave the European Union have begun, they backed Amendment 9b, which says the government should guarantee now that EU nationals living in the UK will have their rights protected. The House voted 358 to 256 for the cross-party amendment. Rudd was watching

Gerald Kaufman, who has died aged 86, was instrumental in saving the Labour Party, back when the Labour Party was something that could still be saved. It was Kaufman who pithily pegged the 1983 manifesto as ‘the longest suicide note in history’. He knew the phrase would hang around the far-left and dog any attempt to dodge responsibility for the calamity.  In his heart, he was a radical, but he parted ways with the 1980s Labour left in its mush-headed confusion of ends and means. The mush is now party policy but Kaufman expended considerable wit keeping it at bay during the Kinnock years. A multilateralist, the former Daily Mirror journalist

As Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader, has recently discovered, there usually comes a point in a British political career when you have to apologise to Liverpool. The origins of this custom are obscure, rather like the rule that the Cap of Maintenance must accompany the Sovereign to the State Opening of Parliament, but it must not be questioned. It is no good asking why Liverpool should receive more apologies than, for instance, Runcorn or Milton Keynes: you must just say sorry. Rather than having to stammer an inconvenient ‘mea culpa’ at a by- election it would be more sensible to get your apology in first. I suggest that all election

Copeland was a truly awful result for Labour. But as I say in The Sun this morning, the really alarming things for Labour is that things can get worse for them. Many Labour MPs have been operating on the assumption that the NHS will keep the party’s loses down to a manageable level in 2020. But Copeland suggests that this hope is misplaced. Labour went all in on the health service there and had no shortage of material to work with, the maternity unit at the local hospital is under threat. By the end of the campaign, Labour’s message was perilously close to vote for us or the baby gets