Uk politics

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls survives tricky Autumn Statement response under intense heckling

Labour has had a poor run of Autumn Statement and Budget responses for a couple of years now, and with only today’s statement and the 2015 Budget to go before the General Election, the stakes were pretty high for Ed Balls. The Tories had clearly turned up expecting him to do a terrible job, and their heckling club (which you can read more about here) was out in force. The Shadow Chancellor stood up to a wall of noise. Tory backbenchers had arranged a number of words to shout at him before entering the Chamber. I understand that one of them was ‘apologise’, which they’ve used before on Balls. It was

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Miliband chooses the wrong day to have a good PMQs

Ed Miliband has just managed to have a really good PMQs on a day when there is such a big story following the session that it will barely get reported. The Labour leader focused on broken promises, and cleverly managed to force the Prime Minister to talk about immigration by asking about the failure of the net migration target. David Cameron had planned not to talk about immigration at all, but he then found himself doing just that in the Chamber. Then the Labour leader moved on to the promised ‘no top-down reorganisation’ of the NHS. Then it got personal, with both men scrapping using party mess-ups as their weapons.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

No 10: Autumn Statement is to ‘stay on course for prosperity’

George Osborne’s pitch at today’s Autumn Statement will be for voters to give the Tories another five years leading the government to finish the job of balancing the books. Today the Prime Minister’s official spokesman summed up the address from the Chancellor that we’ll hear in just over half an hour as ‘an Autumn Statement to stay on course for prosperity’. Presumably we’ll get something a bit snappier than that from Osborne himself. We’re still waiting to see what the political trap is that he appears to be laying for Labour, with no more clarity on that mysterious three-line whip vote on Thursday. There’s a business statement due after the Autumn

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How will Ukip use its first Autumn Statement in Parliament?

A lot of focus today will be on how Labour would cut the deficit (and perhaps how George Osborne actually plans to get it done rather than just talking about it, given the Item Club warning that deficit reduction will plateau). Ed Balls has been arguing this morning that Labour would ‘balance the books in a fairer way’ but he’s got to show this afternoon when he responds to the Autumn Statement that Labour really can persuade voters to trust the party again on the economy, especially now that he and Ed Miliband rank behind Farage on this matter. But speaking of Farage, today is the first economic statement in

Kristian Niemietz

Danny Alexander’s house building pledge is just a cunning PR strategy

Danny Alexander’s latest plot to make the state a major player in housebuilding is just the latest in a line of useless political schemes to appease all the wrong people and let down all the right ones. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury made no effort today to tell us why the state would be particularly good at building houses any more than it would be good at baking bread or brewing beer. It is not clear whether his plan would even boost housing numbers. Take the government’s first foray into building for a while, which involves 10,000 new homes at Northstowe, a derelict RAF base in Cambridgeshire. What would

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

David Cameron and George Osborne still the most trusted on the economy

Good news for the Tories: a new ComRes poll confirms that David Cameron and George Osborne are the most trusted pair to ‘see the country through the current economic situation’. As the chart above shows, Labour’s two Eds are lagging significantly behind the present Tory leadership in the trust stakes, even coming in below Ukip’s Nigel Farage. These numbers reinforce the Conservatives’ strategy of talking up the economy (instead of say immigration) as the key to winning the next election. As Rachel Sylvester said in her Times column (£), the favourite phrase of Tory strategist Jim Messina is to say that ‘every day spent talking about Ukip issues such as Europe and immigration is

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What’s Osborne plotting now? Tories plan mysterious vote after Autumn Statement

The Conservative party is all abuzz this afternoon, but it’s not about the Autumn Statement. They’ve been told that there is a three-line whip vote on ‘something’ on Thursday. Not even the whips know what the vote is on, other than that they must tell MPs to turn up. Labour is also on a three-line whip. Apparently all will be revealed tomorrow at the Autumn Statement, which suggests that this is going to be some kind of elephant trap laid by George Osborne for Labour. It will most likely be the the ‘budget surplus rule’, which commits the government to eliminating the structural deficit by 2017/18 and is an attempt by the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

No 10: EU leaders are on PM’s side after Polish minister criticises immigration plans

The European response to David Cameron’s immigration speech last week was pretty positive, but at some point between now and the formal renegotiation, someone was going to chuck a fly in the ointment. Last night Poland’s deputy foreign minister Rafal Trzaskowski told Newsnight that his country would have a ‘red line’ against Britain treating immigrants from the EU differently when it comes to benefits. He said: ‘If one wants to get away with all the benefits that are enshrined in the regulation of EU and treat immigrants from EU differently, and for example only pay benefits after four years of their stay in Britain or extradite people who can’t find

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Who cares that Liz Lochhead has joined the SNP?

Is it acceptable for writers to sport their political allegiances publicly? In more sensible times you’d hardly need to consider the question since its answer would ordinarily be so bleedin’ obvious. These, of course, are neither sensible nor ordinary times. So it is with the fauxtroversy over whether or not it is acceptable – or, worse, appropriate – for Liz Lochhead to have joined the SNP.  This is a real thing, it seems and yet another example of how politics corrupts most things it touches. Lochhead, you see, is not just a poet she is Scotland’s Makar (or poet laureate) and therefore, god help us, it’s all very different. For some reason. People are

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Danny Alexander reveals government to build new homes

How much of a role should the government have in building homes? The vogue these days is for talking about localist solutions and helping the private sector to grow, but today Danny Alexander signalled a significant shift in the other direction. As he launched the 2014 National Infrastructure Plan, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said he was examining how the state could commission and pay for new developments itself. The government is already building 10,000 homes at former RAF base Northstowe in Cambridgeshire, which is the first instance of the government working as a developer. Alexander said: ‘An idea I’ve been promoting is direct government commissioning of housing. The

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

George Osborne’s Autumn Statement choreography makes life doubly difficult for Labour

George Osborne is choreographing his autumn statement week to make things as difficult as possible for Labour. At present senior ministers are travelling the country handing out nice things to voters as they unveil details of the 2014 National Infrastructure Plan. Yesterday’s roads bonanza has been replaced by a garden city, better flood defences and a tidal project in Swansea today. You can almost hear the Chancellor singing ‘roll out the barrel’ as he and colleagues indulge in American-style pork-barrel politics by handing out many of these goodies to seats they want to hold or win (read Seb’s piece yesterday). But though Labour can accuse Osborne of a cynical focus

Monday

The Spectator

The best and the worst of Gordon Brown

Tonight Gordon Brown announced he will stand down as an MP at the next election. Current political leaders have been paying tribute, with Ed Miliband calling his old boss a ‘towering figure’, while David Cameron said he was ‘someone dedicated to public service and has worked very hard for other people’. Even those who worked with Brown accept in their tributes to their former boss that he wasn’t perfect, while pointing out the good they felt he did in his long spell in frontline politics. So what were Brown’s good and bad bits? Spectator editor Fraser Nelson and our political editor James Forsyth pick one of each: Fraser Nelson Good: He

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Class war at Education questions

Labour is very pleased with the amount of attention it garnered for its new private schools policy when Tristram Hunt unveiled it last week. So it was natural that the Shadow Education Secretary used this as his main line of attack at today’s Education Questions. He set the scene first using one of his shadow ministerial team Alison McGovern, who contrasted bankers’ pay rising by 7 per cent on average with a 1 per cent rise for nursery staff. It was clear that Labour was keen for a game of Us vs Them. Hunt then piggybacked onto a question from party colleague Ian Lucas about the public benefit of private

Sebastian Payne

The MPs who will benefit from George’s marvellous marginals medicine

‘The biggest, boldest and most far-reaching roads programme for decades’ — or the biggest, boldest marginal constituency programme? George Osborne has magicked up £15 billion for 84 new roads, some 100 overall improvements, totalling 1,300 miles of new lanes across the country. Unsurprisingly for an overtly political chancellor like Osborne, a majority of these roads will benefit marginal constituencies. The Telegraph has figured out all of the MPs who will benefit from the road spending and has calculated as many of 2/3 of the proposed improvements will help marginal constituencies. These are the most marginal Tory seats who will benefit  from George’s marvellous marginal medicine: A34: Nicola Blackwood [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/j0UIo/index.html”] £50 million pounds of improvements to

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

George Osborne’s roads bonanza is the most fun he’ll have for a while

George Osborne has been looking forward to this particular Autumn Statement for a while because it is the opportunity for him and other colleagues to tour the country like Santa with a large infrastructure sack, handing out £15bn of road improvements to marginal constituencies and helping voters feel as though the recovery is making their lives better. Today is a day of jostling between the Chancellor and his Lib Dem colleagues who also want to take lots of credit for the goodies that they are handing out. But Wednesday looks as though it will be a little less cheerful, given the warning from the Ernst & Young Item Club that

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Oo-err! Top five gags from Penny Mordaunt, minister for innuendo

Tory MP Penny Mourdant has caused a stir in Sunday’s papers over her confession at our Parliamentarian of the Year awards that she said ‘cock’ in Parliament as a bet with her colleagues in the Royal Navy, where she serves as a reservist. As winner of our Speech of the Year award, Mourdant clearly has a way with words. Here are her top five gags (so far): 1. Caring for your kit in the field One of the highlights of her award-winning Loyal Speech earlier this year was a gag about her Royal Navy training: ‘I have benefited from some excellent training by the Royal Navy but on one occasion I felt it was not as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories to shut up about immigration and talk about the economy instead

There is a simple political test for the autumn statement, does it make the economy Topic A again? The Tories’ election strategy relies on the economy being the dominant issue of the campaign. If it is not, it is very hard to see how Cameron and co can win.   The Tories want everything to be seen through the prism of the economy. Hence Osborne’s emphasis this morning that he can only put an extra £2 billion into the NHS because the economy is strong.   In recent months, immigration has supplanted the economy as voters’ top concern. This has been to Ukip—and not the Tories—benefit. This is why Cameron’s

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

The menace of memes: how pictures can paint a thousand lies

It’s very fashionable these days to be despondent about the quality of our politicians. They’re all lazy liars who look only to their interests and neglect their duties to their constituents because they’d rather be grunting and snorting around a trough before sticking their snouts in it. And while the expenses scandal, resignations and court cases show that a lot of anti-politics sentiment has been provoked by the politicians themselves, it’s worth remembering that not every accusation levelled at Westminster is fair. Over the past couple of years, a trend for internet memes about politicians has grown. Those graphics tend to juxtapose two images from Parliament, one showing lots of MPs

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Tory backbenchers talk out ‘revenge evictions’ bill

Fridays in the House of Commons Chamber are rarely edifying experiences, and today a number of MPs and campaigners are very exercised that two backbenchers managed to talk out a private members’ bill which claimed to give tenants better protection against so-called ‘revenge evictions’. These evictions are when a tenant complains about the leaking bath or mouldy wall and finds themselves being turfed out by their landlord. Sarah Teather had introduced the Tenancies (Reform) Bill to prevent landlords issuing no-fault eviction notices if they had failed to meet safety standards and their tenant had formally complained about them. The government decided to support it and so did Labour, though many

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Enraged euro-rebels threaten trouble after Cameron’s immigration speech fails to satisfy

One of the aims of David Cameron’s big immigration speech was to settle the issue with his backbenchers before returning to talk about the economy. Based on conversations I’ve had this morning with the key movers and shakers in the eurosceptic wing of the Tory party, he hasn’t got very close to settling the issue at all. Indeed, I suspect that there will be trouble before long. Members of the hardcore of eurosceptics I describe in this week’s politics column are unhappy with what they think is a lack of ambition from the Prime Minister. They feel he’s been flirting with them a bit too much on this issue and