Uk politics

We are still waiting for David Cameron’s immigration speech, expected ‘this week’. The Conservatives tried to get their apology in early for failing to meet their target to get net migration into the ‘tens of thousands’, with a series of interventions starting this summer in which top Cabinet ministers started to highlight the problems with having a target when you can’t control EU migration, ahead of today’s figures showing that the target is an ex-target, or a ‘comment’, as Theresa May tried to pass it off as recently. Fraser looks at why missing that target is a good thing for this country in his post here. But it is bad

One of the major themes of this year’s big Tory reshuffle was the attempt to detoxify certain policy areas where a minister was involved in a stand-off with certain groups the Tory party would quite like to vote for them. Michael Gove lost his job as Education Secretary for this reason, and so too did Nick Boles find himself being moved from Planning to Skills. Owen Paterson’s departure was a bit more complicated: his aide warned in the days before the reshuffle that to move the Environment Secretary would be to leave 12 million voters in the countryside without a voice, but he was in the midst of pretty high

Fight! Two senior Labour MPs locked horns yesterday over the Scottish leadership contest. Ivan Lewis and Tom Watson scrapped after the latter wrote a piece endorsing left-leaning Neil Findlay for the leadership. Lewis tweeted shortly after Watson promoted his piece that ‘it’s essential that Scots decide best person to be leader of Scottish Labour. Others interfering not in the interests of the Labour Party’. Watson took this as it was clearly meant and dived straight in with a retort: ‘Presumably you’d rather they quietly elect your candidate whilst we all watch. Plus ça change.’ This is ostensibly a debate between the two men about rival candidates in the contest for

David Cameron is set to give his big immigration speech this coming week, according to the Sunday Times, while James reports that Labour is to turn up the volume on the subject too. Both party leaderships are under pressure from their backbenches to take the Ukip threat seriously and give voters a clear sense that they would crack down on immigration. Both parties do need to deal with their legacies. Labour’s one has been much-picked-over and apologised for. But the Tories are also realising that they won’t have as much to boast about come the election as they’d hoped. That’s why Theresa May today finally moved from using weird words

What’s the most significant political story of the week, Ukip winning Rochester or Emily Thornberry’s resignation? Well, I suspect, it might be neither of them and that the really big event this week happened north of the border, Nicola Sturgeon being sworn in as First Minister. For the new SNP leader is riding a quite remarkable wave of popularity. Right now, she’s addressing a rally at the Glasgow Hydro, a 12,000 seat venue that she sold out faster than Kylie Minogue—what other politician in Britain could hope to do that?   As I say in the column this week, what makes Sturgeon’s popularity all the more remarkable is that she

On zero sleep and only seven hours after being re-elected, Mark Reckless was back in the Commons and sitting on the opposition benches. Rushing back to take part in a Labour PR stunt/debate on the NHS in order to shore up a Ukip weakspot, Reckless wasted no time in getting sworn back in. The Tory benches were deserted for his return, but he was given a grudging welcome back by MPs of all colours. ‘Listening to Reckless you would never think he had voted for the privatisation at the heart of the Health and Social Care Act 18 times’, mused Labour’s Bill Easterson. ‘First speech by Mark Reckless for UKIP

This story first went out in tonight’s Evening Blend email, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political developments. Sign up here. Mark Reckless seems pretty confident of a win in today’s Rochester and Strood by-election – sources have told Coffee House that the Commons authorities have been asked whether he can be introduced as a Ukip MP tomorrow so that he can vote on Clive Efford’s NHS bill. When asked, Reckless told Coffee House: ‘In terms of the procedures, they are convoluted so I’ve asked other people to look at it in terms of what’s possible to do. Others are looking at those but I don’t know if they’ve reached