Uk politics

Ed Miliband didn’t produce a spectacular response to the Budget, but neither did he have a bad outing at the despatch box. It was certainly better than his performance last year, and Labour MPs seem – in public at least – quite cheered by the whole thing. The Labour leader did have to contend with a wall of noise from heckling Tory MPs. The Treasury Support Group has got rather carried away with itself at the past couple of economic statements, producing a boorish roar that requires frequent interruptions from the Speaker rather than under-the-radar witty cricket sledging which works in unsettling the Opposition. You don’t want the public or indeed even

Here is a preview of James Forsyth’s political column from this week’s Spectator, out tomorrow George Osborne usually tells his aides to prepare for each Budget as if it were his last. This time round, the Chancellor and those around him needed no reminding of what is at stake. They knew that this statement had to boost the Tory election campaign and define the choice facing voters in May, otherwise it really will be the last Budget he gives. As one Tory MP put it, ‘The Budget’s got to deliver some political momentum or we’re done for.’ Osborne has long been aware of the importance of this Budget for his

Ed Miliband has today ruled out a formal coalition between Labour and the SNP. Labour hope that this will draw the sting from Tory claims that if you vote Labour, you’ll get SNP and put pressure on Cameron to rule out any deal with Ukip. But, as Nicola Sturgeon has been quick to point out, the SNP weren’t keen on a formal coalition. Rather, what has been talked about is something more akin to a confidence and supply deal with the SNP agreeing to vote for Miliband’s Queen Speech and Budget in return for specific concessions.  This is something that Miliband, for the obvious reason that he might need it

Can Nigel Farage survive as leader of Ukip if he doesn’t become an MP? Although he stood in South Thanet ten years ago — and gained a meagre 5 per cent of the vote — he has much bigger hopes for the impending election. But the dangers are also much higher than ever before. As I wrote in the Spectator recently, if Farage doesn’t win South Thanet, his position as Ukip leader would become untenable. He admitted to me it ‘could be a car crash’ if he doesn’t become an MP. Farage has publicly admitted today that South Thanet won’t be an easy fight and there is a huge danger if he doesn’t

Someone once said (it may have been me) that while the left looks for traitors the right looks for converts. Only in Britain’s centre ground, however, are converts treated as traitors. Maajid Nawaz is one of the most interesting public figures I know. As a young man growing up on the Essex coast, he received an education in both varieties of modern far-right thinking: the racist and the religious. Racist gangs and Combat 18 were active in his area. He reacted against them, as any boy of spirit would. But his reaction took the form of joining Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Hizb was the marijuana or soft porn of radical Islam in the