Uk politics

A number of Labour MPs are campaigning in Oldham today, with fears growing in the party that it could be in serious trouble in the by-election there. Even though Michael Meacher won the seat in May with a 14,000 majority, the fears that I reported last week about white working class voters turning away from Labour and plumping instead for Ukip seem to be growing. No MP who has been there has anything positive to say about what they’ve seen, other than that their candidate, Jim McMahon, is hugely impressive. Some Labourites with a good knowledge of the seat are worried that the party may do well in postal votes, but

As David Cameron confirmed in his statement to the Commons today, he will set out his strategy on attacking Islamic State in Syria on Thursday. MPs will then get the weekend to consider their positions, with a vote expected next week. A number of odd things are happening in preparation for this vote. One is that the Tory whips are being incredibly nice to people they normally ignore: Labour MPs. I understand that there is a briefing scheduled for Wednesday for Labour MPs at the Ministry of Defence, with a similar one for Tory MPs at a separate time. As I said this morning, it looks as though Labour MPs

It’s quite clear what the Tory approach to a vote on British involvement in action against Islamic State in Syria will be: the Prime Minister will set out his strategy for this later this week, warning MPs that they need to choose to be ‘Churchill not Chamberlain’. George Osborne warned this morning on Marr that a second defeat in the Commons on Syria ‘would be a publicity coup for Isil, that would send a terrible message about Britain’s role in the world’. But Labour’s position is, of course, not clear at all at present. Jeremy Corbyn’s slogan of ‘straight talking, honest politics’ sounds like an aspiration at present. Caroline Flint

David Cameron will set out his case for air strikes against IS in Syria to the Commons late next week. Cameron is, as I say in my Sun column today, immensely frustrated by the current British position of only bombing Islamic State in Iraq and not Syria. But he knows that it would be politically back breaking for him to lose another Commons vote on a matter of war and peace, so is proceeding cautiously.   But last night’s UN resolution has strengthened Cameron’s hand. Even before that, 30 Labour MPs were certain to back Cameron on this issue and another 30 were highly likely to. With a UN resolution

Cutting the police was always going to be difficult without a terror attack just before the spending review, but naturally the events in Paris have made it much more difficult for the Treasury to stand up to the Home office in a fight that was going to happen anyway. The leaked letter from one of the most senior police officers to Theresa May warning that cutting police numbers would ‘reduce very significantly’ the UK’s ability to respond to a terror attack is very helpful indeed to the Home Secretary. So helpful that she is unlikely to be the one calling for a leak inquiry. Similarly, Andy Burnham’s original push for

That 98 per cent of junior doctors have voted in favour of strike action over their new contract shows the extent of the stand-off between the medical profession and Jeremy Hunt. It is not possible that all the members of the BMA who turned out to vote (76 per cent) are raving left-wingers. Most of them weren’t particularly politicised before this dispute. The question that a number of Tory MPs and ministers are asking is whether a generation of people who, given their education and income bracket, fall quite naturally into the group normally pretty likely to vote Tory are now never going to do so because of the bad blood

The House of Lords has tonight voted to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote in the EU referendum. This question will now go to the Commons, which can try and overturn it and send the bill back to the Lords—so-called ‘ping pong’. The government has already made clear tonight that it will try and overturn this amendment. But, intriguingly, some Tory MPs have told me that they think the Commons will actually back votes at 16 for the referendum when this comes back down to the Commons. If this does happen, this could delay the referendum as the Electoral Commission argue that extra time will be needed to

Senior politicians have so far been rather cautious in their response to the Paris attacks. But today David Cameron gave a much more robust and intentional statement on the British reaction to what happened on Friday night. He used his slot in the Commons to re-state the case for British involvement in military action against Islamic State in Syria, and said that he would be setting out in detail his strategy and reasons for getting involved in the coming days. It is clear that the Prime Minister wants to push for a vote on this soon, and given he will not bring a vote to the Commons unless he believes

Jeremy Corbyn has given an interesting round of interviews to the broadcast media this afternoon, in which he has questioned the legality of the drone strike which is believed to have killed Mohammed Emwazi, or ‘Jihadi John’, and said he would be ‘unhappy’ with a shoot-to-kill policy on Britain’s streets. Speaking to ITV, the Labour leader said ‘I’m awaiting an explanation of where the legal basis was for that incident’. On shoot to kill, he told the BBC that: ‘I’m not happy with the shoot to kill policy in general, I think that is quite dangerous and I think can often be counterproductive, I think that you have to have

Unlike political Twitter, which was full of armchair experts extolling their own surprisingly untapped talent while the Paris attacks were still taking place on Friday night, senior politicians have today been rather cautious in their responses to the massacre. Theresa May repeatedly told the Marr Show that there were ‘lessons to be learned’ from the attacks, but that it was ‘too early to tell’ what the fate of the Schengen agreement would be. She also said that there needed to be political consensus on British action against Isis in Syria. But she was carefully non-specific, saying: ‘It is of course important that we look at the lessons to be learned

Labour is having the sort of day that Ukip used to offer up on a reasonably regular basis. Jeremy Corbyn’s head of policy Andrew Fisher has been suspended and faces an investigation by the party for urging voters in his constituency to back the Class War candidate over the Labour one. But Jeremy Corbyn has backed his head of policy, saying he hopes the matter can be resolved quickly. Corbyn said this afternoon: ‘I have full confidence in Andrew Fisher and his work. I respect the integrity of the General Secretary’s office and trust that this matter will be settled as quickly as possible.’ These sorts of stories are the