Uk politics

Last week was Labour’s best of the campaign so far and the Tories’ worst. The row over tax avoidance and Lord Fink’s comments reinforced the damaging perception that the Tories are the party of the rich. It also raised Labour morale, frontbenchers who used to be pessimistic about the party’s electoral prospects are now bullish. But there is a danger that this tactical victory could turn into a strategic defeat. For Miliband by denouncing tax avoidance—which is legal—and setting himself up as a moral arbiter on the issue, has made his tax affairs and those of his shadow Cabinet, MPs and donors a legitimate subject of public interest. They no

What’s wrong with our politics? Now that more and people are turning to ‘anti-politics’ parties, this question is becoming steadily more fashionable and urgent. It’s now even got its own BBC Three documentary (the ultimate sign that an issue is dead serious, natch), called An Idiot’s Guide to Politics, presented by Jolyon Rubinstein from the Revolution Will Be Televised. The idea behind the programme was that Rubinstein would examine why people, particularly young adults, are so disengaged from politics and don’t want to vote, and why politics is in such a mess. The picture Rubinstein presented was rather depressing for two reasons. The first was that politicians do break promises

Ed Miliband’s party has ended up having a reasonably good week, even though it’s been a pretty tough battle. Today’s front pages have not been good at all, something the party leader’s supporters are obviously disappointed by, but given the story about a comparison between the row about Lord Fink’s tax affairs and the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone was made by an aide, not Miliband, and then reported in a way that was initially misinterpreted, the focus of the row is not Miliband himself. The line about Miliband’s own tax affairs was inevitable, too. But it depends whether anyone can find anything to continue the story. The Conservatives have

With less than three months to go to the election, politics is pretty partisan at Westminster at the moment as PMQs today demonstrated. But there is one area where there is, despite the proximity of polling day, a bi-partisan consensus emerging: civil service reform. This morning, both Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, and his opposite number Lucy Powell, who is also in day to day charge of the Labour campaign, appeared at the conference of Govern Up, a new think tank on civil service reform headed up by the former Tory Minister Nick Herbert and the ex-Labour frontbencher John Healey. Now, the reason that both parties are so interested