Uk politics

There are many reasons for this but let’s begin with the first and simplest: it is the British Broadcasting Corporation. Who could have imagined that an organisation that, rightly or not, sees itself as both creator and guardian of much of modern Britain’s identity and culture might think itself threatened by a movement hell-bent on destroying, or at least significantly changing, that identity and culture? I know, me neither. Now of course the BBC is not consciously or deliberately biased against the SNP and against Scottish independence. It is scrupulous about ensuring ‘No’ voices are balanced by ‘Yes’ voices just as, in other areas and debates it does its best to be

Dominic Cummings is at it again. Michael Gove’s former advisor has become a reliably entertaining guide to the Whitehall labyrinth. It is plain, too, that Cummings likes to think of himself as a Teller Of Hard Truths Many Of Which Our Masters Prefer Not To Contemplate Too Deeply If At All. This is fun. His latest post purports to be about swing voters, immigration and the EU but it is really about the biggest problem afflicting the Conservative party: who is it for? And who is it seen to be for? As Cummings puts it: The fundamental problem the Conservative Party has had since 1997 at least is that it

David Cameron has survived the post-Juncker post-mortem without a Tory grandee briefing against him. This is comforting for the Prime Minister, although he shouldn’t assume that he has the full loyalty of his party: it is quite clear that many are simply holding their fire until after the General Election. David Davis, who will again become a dangerous figure in 2015 if Cameron holds onto power, reminded everyone of what the PM has got coming to him when he popped up on the Today programme this morning. Davis said: ‘He’s had a very, very difficult few weeks to say the least, but what he has to do is turn this

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_26_June_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss whether Labour should let Miliband be Miliband” startat=934] Listen [/audioplayer]That bacon bap earlier this month was not the cause of Ed Miliband’s unpopularity. Ed Miliband’s unpopularity was the cause of the bacon bap. Scant comfort this will give the Labour leader and his fabled ‘advisers’, but they can stop worrying about food-related photographic gaffes because once the world is out to get you, the world will get you, and if they don’t get you one way they’ll get you another. Sooner or later Mr Miliband will have to eat, and sooner or later a shutter will click as he opens his mouth.

When John Prescott used to wax garrulous about a ‘superhighway’ from Hull to Liverpool, everyone assumed it was a wheeze to spray southern taxpayers’ money across the region he saw as his power base. When George Osborne decided to ‘start a conversation’ this week about a super-city along the same route, an English equivalent of Germany’s Ruhr valley connected by yet another decades-away high-speed rail project, everyone assumed it was about recapturing votes in northern conurbations where Tory MPs and councillors are an endangered species. But on past form you’d still expect me — ardent northerner and rail buff that I am — to embrace this back-of-a-Downing-Street-envelope concept, however cynical