Uk politics

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Kelly Tolhurst wins Rochester primary on turnout of 5,688

Kelly Tolhurst has won the open primary to be Conservative candidate for Rochester and Strood, I understand. The result is not due to be announced until this evening, but I hear that Tolhurst won by fewer than 50 votes on a turnout of 4,000. The turnout is the key in this as it will give some indication as to the level of interest in the constituency in the Conservative candidate. It is worth bearing in mind that the turnout in Sarah Wollaston’s open primary in Totnes was 16,497. That much lower turnout in a more high-profile contest following a defection will add to party worries following yet another poll showing

Anne Jolis

NHS ambulance trouble is more complex than miserly Tories and NHS privatisation

English NHS ambulance services are spending twice as much on private ambulances than they were in 2012, according to Labour, while response-times have lengthened and ambulance staff appear increasingly disgruntled.[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_28_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Julia Manning joins Mary Wakefield and Fraser Nelson to discuss the 999 crisis.” startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer] So there’s something else to blame on the Tory government, lest anyone feared a shortage. Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham lost no time in charging that ‘these figures show just how quickly the NHS is changing under David Cameron.’ Perhaps. Spectator subscribers, however, know the ambulance troubles are more complex than just miserly Tories and creeping NHS privatisation. Assuming, that is, they caught Mary Wakefield’s inside-look (literally)

Steerpike Steerpike

Breitbart’s loss is Nigel Farage’s gain – or is it?

It’s no great surprise that Raheem Kassam, the troublesome managing editor of Breitbart London, has left his job. Kassam is a wildly self-important figure who flits about on the internet Right. Mr Kassam is famed for his inflated sense of self-importance, and Mr S particularly enjoyed the write up of the new job, mysteriously under an anonymous by-line on Breitbart: ‘Breitbart London understands from senior UKIP sources that Kassam was picked specifically for his political nous and campaigning prowess.’ What’s intriguing, though, is Kassam’s new job: he has been taken on as a ‘senior adviser’ by Nigel Farage. Kassam is a professional wind-up merchant, of sorts, too — and trained in

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

‘Hang ’em high!’ – leftists for the death penalty, re Pistorius et al

O, the fury of my Sisters over the risible punishment (I’ve seen longer sentences in Ulysses) handed out to Oscar Pistorius! I’m with them all the way on this one. On hearing that India had issued the death penalty to the four men convicted of raping and murdering a student in Delhi last year, my first reaction was, ‘Ooo, good ­I hope it’s televised!’ I have long been a supporter of the death ­penalty for any type of killing except the most self-defensive kind – and I see this as an important part of my identity as a feminist, especially. Two women a week are killed by partners or ex-partners,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The UKIP effect: killing the thing you love

This chart, courtesy of Mike Smithson, shows Ipsos-Mori’s polling on British membership of the European Union. It shows support for leaving the EU is no higher now than it was 20 years ago. I’ll wager this surprises you. As you can see, there has always been a constituency for leaving the EU. Public enthusiasm for the european project has always been conditional. Despite that, the unhappiness of a known known has generally proved more attractive than the uncertainty of a known unknown. (This, ahem, is also true of certain other constitutional questions with which we have wrestled recently.) But how can this be? How can UKIP be soaring in the

Daniel Hannan

How Cameron could make the EU a winning issue (and why he won’t)

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_23_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Mats Persson and Matthew Elliott discuss Europe” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]Imagine if David Cameron actually meant it. Imagine if he really did follow through with his implied threat to campaign for Brexit in the absence of better terms from Brussels. You can picture the televised address. An oak-panelled background with a large union flag hanging sedately in the corner, the PM with that furrowed house-captain expression he sometimes does. The script pretty much writes itself. ‘All of you know how hard I tried to secure a new deal. I was often criticised for being too conciliatory, but it was my duty to do whatever was in my

James Forsyth James Forsyth

It’s not just Ukip that’s changing Cameron’s mind about immigration

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_23_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Mats Persson and Matthew Elliott discuss Europe” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]It is easy to mock David Cameron on immigration. Under pressure from the public and from Ukip, he’s having to hot-foot it to a tougher position on the free movement of labour within the European Union. Ideas dismissed as unworkable only a few months ago are now on the table. But it’s not all political positioning. There really is a serious case for Britain to be treated differently from eurozone countries when it comes to freedom of movement. Whoever ends up in government after the next election, Britain’s relationship with the EU is going to have to

Matthew Engel

Escape from Omnishambleshire: the case for the old county boundaries

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_23_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Matthew Engel and Tom Holland discuss counties” startat=785] Listen [/audioplayer]Just over 35 years ago, in August 1979, Christopher Booker wrote a cri de coeur in The Spectator calling for the return of England’s ancient counties and the repeal of the 1972 Local Government Act, under which most of them had been either merged, mauled, mangled or murdered. It drew a large and almost wholly supportive response from figures as distinguished as Professor Richard Cobb (‘Booker has rendered us all a ray of hope’) and Michael Wharton, a.k.a. the Telegraph columnist Peter Simple: ‘What strange beings, in what strange offices, on what strange drawing-boards, worked out these

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Ukip 13 points ahead in Rochester & Strood

Tonight, we have a second poll from Rochester & Strood and it again shows Ukip ahead. Mark Reckless doesn’t lead by Clacton margins—Ukip are on 43 and the Tories 30 in this ComRes poll—but his advantage is formidable with just four weeks to go. Particularly alarming for the Tories is how many voters there intend to use this by-election to kick the government. 62 percent of those polled agree with the statement that, ‘“This by-election is a good opportunity for me to show David Cameron and the Conservative Party how unhappy I am with their government”   Having already announced that Cameron—and every other Tory member of the Cabinet—will visit

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Cameron and Miliband squabble over the NHS, while saying nothing

It didn’t work. But it was a good idea. David Cameron prepared an ambush for Ed Miliband at PMQs today. The trouble was he attacked the Labour leader for a vice he himself has mastered with conspicuous aplomb: question dodging. Miliband is clearly in trouble. He’s using his only remaining strength, the NHS, to prop up his burgeoning weaknesses. Expect this to continue till next May. There’s always a calamity somewhere in the NHS and for Miliband, ill tidings are like gold dust. He painted a picture of a basket-case health system that would have shamed a failed state in the Middle Ages. Cameron, he said, wasted billions on a

Steerpike Steerpike

Gunpowder, treason and caviar – selling out in Westminster, Guido style

If you’re going to sell out to the establishment, you might as well do so on an industrial scale. As the PM told the Guido Fawkes blog’s ten -ear anniversary party at the Institute of Directors last night, via video link, ‘what better way’ to celebrate ‘rejecting’ the cosy political classes than a posh dinner of caviar and champagne in the heart of Westminster. Guy Fawkes would have been turning in his grave, as cabinet ministers including Francis Maude and Liz Truss, and mysterious billionaires such as Michael Hintze and Lord Ashcroft, along with 200 of Westminster’s finest, came to pay homage to a decade of sniping from waspish troublemakers.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ukip’s unsavoury Polish ally in the European Parliament

One of the best arguments against European political integration is the people with whom British political parties end up allied in the European Parliament. For reasons of parliamentary influence and, let’s be frank, money, British parties don’t want to sit on their own, so instead sit as part of broader European groups. Now, all of these groups contain MEPs whose views would be considered distasteful in Britain. But even by this standard, Ukip’s latest recruit to its group seems pretty extreme — Robert Iwaszkiewicz comes from a party that even Marine Le Pen refused to do business with. The leader of his party, the Polish Congress of the New Right,

Monday

Alex Massie

Tories reveal innovative new election strategy…

It is a bold approach but, who knows, perhaps it is just crazy enough to work. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a strategy on immigration best summarised like this: UKIP ARE RIGHT. DON’T VOTE FOR THEM. Thank heavens for Ed Miliband, eh? He’s the Tories’ last, best, weapon. What a cheery thought that is.

Nick De Bois

Ed Miliband’s windfall tax on tobacco to fund the NHS is economically illiterate

The ‘windfall tax’, a concept introduced in the UK by the Blair government, is by definition a one-off seizure of revenue from a profitable industry, to fund an invariably unprofitable but popular project. It has been justified as putting ‘right a bad deal’ on the excesses of profits of unpopular industries. Between 1997 and 1998, Gordon Brown raised £5 billion from privatised utility companies to fund the Welfare-to-Work Programme. Today we have face another well-intentioned policy initiative, of ensuring every NHS patient is guaranteed a cancer test within 7 days, supposedly to be funded by a windfall tax on tobacco companies. Labour’s incoherent economic policy is enough to challenge whether

Sunday

Anne Jolis

Happy Sunday, Nigel Farage – Barroso snubs Cameron’s migration cap

Everyone’s favourite unelected European was doing the broadcasting rounds this morning, popping up on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show to tell David Cameron that he can forget any plans to cap the number of EU immigrants in Britain. Here’s what José Manuel Barroso had to say:- “Any kind of arbitrary cap seems to be not in conformity with Europeans laws. For us it is very important – the principle of non-discrimination. The freedom of movement is a very important principle in the internal market: movement of goods, of capital, of services and of people. By the way, I remember when prime minister Cameron called me to ask the commission to be tough ensuring the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

David Cameron and Ken Clarke clash over Ukip and immigration

Ken Clarke is one of the biggest beasts left in the Tory jungle. He had been a fixture in every Tory government since Ted Heaths time until Cameron retired him at the last reshuffle. But Clarke is clearly deeply concerned with Cameron’s strategy at the moment.   On Tuesday night, at a meeting of the Tory parliamentary party, Clarke warned Cameron that by talking up immigration so much, he was only helping Ukip. He argued that the public have an ‘insatiable appetite’ for clampdowns on immigration and so the Tories could never match Ukip on this. He said that, instead, the Tories should be talking about their strongest suit, the

Saturday

James Forsyth

Labour’s NHS strategy – tax tobacco, save the cancer patients

Labour wants the next election to be about the NHS, one of their strongest issues. Party strategists have been struck by how it has been rising up voters’ list of concerns and now want to keep it there. Ed Miliband’s pledge today that Labour will ensure that people who fear they have cancer are seen and tested for within a week is astute politics. It keeps the NHS near the top of the political agenda. It is also paid for by a levy on the tobacco companies, which have few friends and little public sympathy. Meanwhile Labour can claim that this is a prudent use of £150 million as cancer

Anne Jolis

Happy ‘anti-slavery day’ to Clapham Christians, et al

October 18 is ‘anti human-trafficking’ day by 2007 Act of European Parliament; along with ‘anti-slavery day’ by 2010 Act of UK Parliament. So there’s that, for the 29.8 million people worldwide estimated to live in forced servitude. Over at SlaveryFootprint.org, your correspondent learns that I personally make use of 37 slaves in my London routine, mostly through my consumer electronics and my larger-than-average appetite. The survey, laden with factoids about the coerced labour behind shrimp cocktail and mascara, is macro-analysis at its mushiest – and a far more worthwhile use of 15 minutes online than all the ‘carbon-footprint’ calculators put together. The UK’s draft Modern Slavery Bill, due to be in force by next summer, goes past mere symbolism. Though you

Conor Burns

Margaret Thatcher would expect the Tories to retake control of Britain’s borders

In a 1978 interview to mark her third year as leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher addressed public concerns with immigration, stating that ‘people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped’. Goodness knows what word she would use to describe the situation we face today. Anyone who has knocked on doors or surveyed their constituents in recent years will tell you the public have had enough. Immigration into the UK is the number one concern to the British public and, in my judgment, a party that does not address it will not win. In 2003 427,000 people arrived in Britain. In the years that followed

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Why the Tories think they can win in Rochester

One of the bits of their Parliamentary party meeting this week that cheered Conservative MPs the most was a speech by Tracey Crouch on why the Tories could win the Rochester and Strood by-election. Many of her colleagues who like to spend their spare time staring at spreadsheets are sincerely worried that the party could lose the seat, leading to all hell breaking loose in the party. Crouch, who represents the neighbouring constituency and will act as the campaign aide to the candidate once she is selected (the shortlist in the postal primary is a choice between two women), told the room that the demographic of Rochester favours the Conservatives