Uk politics

A couple of months ago, the Leave campaign seemed constantly grumpy, complaining about media coverage, colleagues and the use of the government machine in this referendum. But now, with just a week to go until polling day, this seems to have reversed. The Brexiteers’ continuing poll lead has spooked Remain, and Remain really isn’t dealing with it all that well. It wasn’t just the way that the pro-Remain politicians ganged up on Boris Johnson during their TV debate last week. And it isn’t just the way that government ministers including George Osborne seem to be resorting to increasingly desperate interventions such as a scary Brexit Budget that disgusted so many

The polls are tight, so George Osborne has a cunning plan. He’ll present a “Brexit budget” where he will spell out how he’ll punish voters if they vote to leave the European Union. He’ll be forced to tear up his election pledge not to raise taxes: the voters will have provoked him, you see. Pushed him too far.  He has all kind of sums in mind, that they won’t like one bit, starting with an extra 2p on the basic rate of income tax. Fuel duty will rise. The higher rate of income tax will go up 3p. Another 5 per cent on alcohol and fuel duties. Then £2 billion off

Gordon Brown is busy trying to reset the Remain campaign with a rather leftier tone today. As Tom writes, Labour voters are far less solid in their support for Britain staying in the European Union than the party had hoped, and so the campaign is being handed over to the party so that it can have a proper go at telling its voters that it supports staying in (something not all of them have yet noticed). A group of 20 Labour MPs has also penned a letter pleading for more airtime for Labour voices. It argues: ‘The impact of a leave vote will be catastrophic for the British people. Mainstream

Campaigns only last for a few weeks, but politicians can be defined by what they say during those campaigns. Ed Miliband will never live down the #EdStone, Zac Goldsmith will always be stained by his murkier attacks on Sadiq Khan – and I suspect David Cameron will never manage to shake off the threat he made to pensioners today. At times, it can seem as if he’s got confused and has set out to attack his own reputation, rather than that of his opponents. Those who watched George Osborne grilled by Andrew Neil last week will know the issue: the Remain campaign has decided to pretend that pensioners will be worse off after Brexit.

All sides of the Remain campaign are turning their fire on Boris Johnson at the moment. But these attacks are, I argue in The Sun today, a mistake by the Remainers. First, it makes Boris, the most popular politician in the country, the face of the Out campaign when the IN campaign’s strategic aim is to make voters think that Nigel Farage embodies the Out case. Second, it means that the whole referendum is seen through the prism of the Tory leadership. This is not only bad for Tory party unity post-referendum, but also makes it harder for IN campaign to get the support of Labour party voters as it

Tonight’s TV clash on the EU referendum is being billed as Boris Johnson being ganged up on by a group of women. True, the former Mayor is the only chap in tonight’s line-up (which will give him an unusual glimpse into what most debates feel like for most women in Westminster most of the time), the others being Nicola Sturgeon, Angela Eagle and Amber Rudd on the Remain side, with Andrea Leadsom and Gisela Stuart joining him to argue for Leave. And it is true that he may feel he has to moderate his debating manner: he probably can’t get away with bluster and charm when faced with the no-nonsense, aggressive

Something about the extension of the deadline for registering to vote in the EU referendum doesn’t add up. It even smells a bit fishy. Last night, the registration website crashed as tens of thousands of people tried to register before the midnight deadline; and in response, parliament today announced that it will pass emergency legislation to extend the registration period until midnight on Thursday. So in order to address a two-hour glut of registrations, the registration period will be stretched another 48 hours? Two days of further registration to mop up two hours’ worth of crashed, failed registrations? What’s going on? There’s a danger we’re witnessing the politicisation of the

One of the ways that Number 10 likes to signal to Westminster that it is taking a situation seriously is to hold a meeting in Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. Calling COBRA is a sign that this is a Crisis, and that the Government has got it under control, simply by meeting in a rather dull room. If the Crisis is a little more serious than all the issues that have summoned COBRA, such as Ash Dieback and horsemeat, then the most important thing that Number 10 can do is call a press conference with the Prime Minister. David Cameron doesn’t do that many press conferences at all, despite promising in