Uk politics

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Gove row paints dispiriting picture of a post-2015 Lib-Con coalition

The row between the Lib Dems and Conservatives over Ofsted has taken a curious turn this morning, with Lib Dem MP David Ward, not particularly well-liked by the leadership, appearing as a party spokesman on the Today programme. Given this is about someone’s fixed-term contract not being renewed (any voters who are bothering to pay attention to this row will wish a similar fuss was made when the same thing happened to them), it is, as Fraser said on Saturday, an entirely manufactured row designed to appeal to that very specific group of voters Nick Clegg is trying to court. But this row does raise an interesting question about the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Imagine the uproar if a Tory minister proposed a “do-it-yourself” NHS?

Consider these two stories. In the first the government approves new proposals to overhaul hospital outpatient care. For once there isn’t even much of a pretence that this will improve healthcare. It’s simply a question of saving money. Assuming the new proposals are implemented, many outpatients who had hitherto enjoyed (or endured) hospital appointments will be told to stay at home. Indeed they will be advised to “treat themselves”. What contact they have with a consultant will be of the “virtual” kind. Perhaps a quick telephone call if they are lucky. More likely, they will be told to download an app to their phone which will tell them how to

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Sally Morgan is wrong: quangos are not stuffed with Tories

Sally Morgan’s claim this morning that No10 is trying to purge non-Tories from quangos doesn’t ring true to me. Last time I checked, Team Cameron was still putting Labour types into quangos, oblivious to the game that Labour has been playing so long for so well. Exhibit A is the egregious Chris Smith, a former Labour Culture Secretary who has somehow ended up chairing the Environment Agency (whose incompetence can now be seen covering 23,000 acres of the in Somerset Levels). In the Labour years, the Labour Party was very good at deploying its own people to charities and quangos – making a good government-in-exile to attack a Tory government for

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs express concern about ‘stateless’ plan for terror suspects

Concern is growing across the House of Commons about Theresa May’s last-minute amendment to the Immigration Bill rendering foreign-born terror suspects ‘stateless’. Today on Radio 4’s the Week in Westminster, I interviewed Laura Sandys and Mark Reckless, two Tory MPs who occupy rather different ends of the Conservative spectrum. But both expressed discomfort with this proposal, and were clear they’d voted for it because they’d been promised a briefing afterwards. This is what Sandys said: ‘I supported it after I was assured that we would have a proper debrief and discuss it after it had gone through the House of Lords, and I am quite concerned about it, I don’t

James Forsyth James Forsyth

It’s cohabitation, not coalition now

The Tories and the Liberal Democrats are increasingly going their separate ways. But they’ll stay in government together until the election is called. As one Whitehall Lib Dem told me recently, ‘We’re not in a coalition now. We’re just cohabiting’ During the immigration bill, it was striking how Tory Ministers abstained on the Raab amendment while Lib Dem ministers voted against. Indeed, if there had been more votes, there would have been more coalition splits for the government had agreed to suspend ‘collective responsibility’ on various amendments. Oddly enough, though, this distancing is one of the reasons why the coalition looks likely to go the distance. In this week’s magazine,

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Serious concerns about plans to render terror suspects ‘stateless’

The row over the Immigration Bill is by no means over. It will go to the Lords next, where peers will doubtless have a few things to say about certain aspects of it. Theresa May is still in a hurry to get it through Parliament, so there will likely be some interesting tricks from the government side to try to speed things up. But Conservative MPs are also very concerned about something they backed last night which gained far less attention. The Home Secretary rushed out an amendment on Wednesday night which would render ‘stateless’ foreign-born terror suspects. The details are actually rather alarming: someone who had already naturalised in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why a summit in the pub with Hollande is the last thing Cameron needs today

After the week he’s had in the Commons, no-one would blame David Cameron for heading for the pub today. Unfortunately, he’s got François Hollande in tow as he pitches up at a pub in his constituency, and the pair are supposed to be discussing European reform over the pork scratchings. This isn’t great timing, frankly. The rebellious mood of the Tory party is in part down to a desire from backbenchers for more details of Cameron’s European renegotiation plan – and signs that he’s going to get what he wants too. A summit with another norther European country might yield more positive noises on this, as Cameron does have allies

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Raab amendment fails – but govt left looking weak and confused

So Labour did save the government’s bacon by voting against the Raab amendment on deportation while the government abstained on it. 97 MPs backed Dominic Raab’s amendment with the two tellers, that’s 99 MPs): a very clear message to ministers. This includes 86 Conservatives, according to the vote analysis, and 9 Labour MPs. The Mills amendment wasn’t voted on, so we’ll never know how successful the whips were in driving that rebellion to ground. There are a number of things that are remarkable about this. The first is the utter disorganisation not just within the parties but also across the parties. The Opposition decided to vote against something that the

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Battle for Threadneedle Street

I thought it obvious that Mark Carney’s trip to Scotland yesterday was a bad day for Alex Salmond and the Scottish nationalists. Sure, the governor of the Bank of England said, a currency union between Scotland the the rump UK could happen and be made to work but it would be fraught with difficulty and sacrifice too. Do you really want to do that? How lucky do you feel? Carney, being a Canadian and therefore a man crippled by politeness, did not add “punk”. In response the SNP were reduced to pushing a meaningless poll which found 70% of Britons favouring a currency union after independence. That is, 70% of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

David Cameron and the Tory payroll vote to abstain on the Raab amendment

As we revealed on Twitter earlier, David Cameron and the Tory payroll vote will abstain on Dominic Raab’s amendment. Downing Street’s logic is that they are sympathetic to the amendment’s aims but believe it to be non-compliant, eg not compatible with the law, and so are barred from voting for it by the ministerial code. But the Liberal Democrats will vote against the amendment, which is another sign of how the two coalition parties are now merely cohabiting . Inside Downing Street, they hope that this position will prevent a split in the Tory ranks and I suspect that this will help the whips persuade a few more MPs not

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The whips are getting stronger – but will it be enough to stop Raab?

So now that the Speaker has called Dominic Raab’s amendment on deportation, the government whips have a frenzied few hours ahead of them as they try to peel off rebels. But this amendment has 106 signatures (two have joined since yesterday) and the rebels are expecting more to back it too. Labour told Coffee House yesterday that it will not support something that is illegal – but that still leaves room for the party to abstain rather than vote against. So we now have a situation where the amendment that caused all the fuss over the past few months – the Mills amendment on transitional controls for Bulgarian and Romanian

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Audio: Douglas Carswell on why he was wrong to rebel

Douglas Carswell is one of the Conservatives’ most active Euro rebels. So we invited him to our View From 22 podcast to discuss this week’s leading article, which says the rebellion has descended into childish attempts to destabilise the Prime Minister. Given that he has rebelled dozens of times, we thought, he’d disagree. To our surprise, he instead told us  he has had a rather substantial change of heart — and has decided to give up rebelling. Furthermore he says that, on reflection, he regrets not only signing tomorrow’s rebel amendment on immigration but Bernard Jenkin’s letter to No.10 on EU regulation. Towards the end of the podcast, he poses

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour rejects rebel deportation call as Immigration Bill crisis talks continue

Labour will not support Dominic Raab’s Immigration Bill amendment on the deportation of foreign criminals. A party source tells me that ‘if the government are saying that something is illegal, then we can’t support it’. Which will come as a relief to the whips, given the level of support for the proposal. I also hear that the Tory whips seriously intend that the amendment never reaches a vote in the first place, using the plethora of government amendments and ministers talking until the time limit on debate for the legislation is reached. This will cause uproar, but well-placed sources tell me the whips are determined that this amendment is not

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The right-wing case for Scottish independence

Chuckle not, it exists. Wealthy Nation, a new grouplet formed by the eminent historian Michael Fry, is making the case that Scotland can be an admirably prosperous little country after independence provided, that is, she casts off the soft-left Caledonian consensus that remains wearily orthodox thinking north of the Tweed and Solway. Fry, whose new history of Scotland from Waterloo to Mons I commend to you without reservation, set out his case in The Scotsman earlier this month. If Scotland is to be free, she must be rich and she will not be rich unless her politics moves to the right. As he put it: On blogs and websites I

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Leaked memo suggests ministers could accept Raab deportation call

Though the PM and whips have been in a tizz about Nigel Mills’ amendment to the Immigration Bill, it’s Dominic Raab’s call to narrow the grounds for appeal in the deportation of foreign criminals that could cause real problems in tomorrow afternoon’s debate. There is a chance that it could pass, while the Mills amendment can just be notched up as an embarrassing rebellion. But do ministers really need to reject the amendment at all? In March, Theresa May told the Prime Minister that the same clause, originally tacked to the Crime and Courts Bill, ‘would be incompatible with the ECHR and counter-productive’ because the European Court of Human Rights

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Alex Salmond writes a cheque – in pounds sterling – he cannot honour

As I type this, Alex Salmond and Mark Carney are chowing over porridge at Bute House, the First Minister’s official residence in Edinburgh. There is always the risk of exaggerating the importance of these things but this morning’s meeting with the Governor of the Bank of England may be the most important encounter Alex Salmond has this year. The question is simple: will an independent Scotland be able to forge a currency union with the rump United Kingdom? The answers, for all the First Minister’s bland assurances that such a union is in everyone’s interests, are not so simple. Like poker players, politicians often have a “tell”. When Salmond offers

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Govt deal means UK will accept Syrian refugees

As expected, the government has changed its stance on Syrian refugees this evening ahead of what had looked to be a difficult vote in the House of Commons tomorrow. Nick Clegg has just announced that the UK will now offer refuge to vulnerable Syrians such as women and girls who have experienced or are at risk of sexual violence, the elderly, survivors of torture and disabled people. This will only likely equate to a few hundred, but there will be no quota for the number of refugees the UK takes. Clegg said this evening: ‘The Coalition Government wants to play our part in helping to alleviate the immense suffering in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: David Cameron holds crisis talks with MPs over Immigration Bill

David Cameron has been summoning Tory backbenchers to Number 10 today to personally persuade them not to back an amendment to the Immigration Bill that would reintroduce controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. I have learned that a number of possible waverers who could be persuaded to change their mind and drop their support for Nigel Mills’ amendment have been called to Downing Street as part of a serious whipping operation by the government. The whips and party leadership have also been trying out a number of unusual tactics to minimise Thursday’s rebellion: 1. Tabling ‘backbench amendments’ Whips are also trying to persuade backbenchers that it is sufficient to back

Sebastian Payne

A. C. Grayling interview: being hated, the need for private universities and celebrity academics

Professor Anthony Clifford Grayling is on top of the world. Well, Bloomsbury. Sitting in his office overlooking Bedford Square, the Master of the New College of Humanities can barely contain his self-satisfaction. ‘We have been more successful than anybody could have guessed,’ he informs me. Two years ago, ‘one of the most hated men in academia’ was the target of eggs, smoke bombs and insults when he announced a new £18,000-a-year private university. His aim was to marry the tutorial teaching model with a challenging liberal arts course — with the help of some celebrity friends. Academics, foes and friends all rounded against Grayling and willed his experiment to fail.

Edwina Currie

Food banks aren’t solving problems — they can make things worse too

This article was corrected. Originally it stated that ‘This tiny organisation doesn’t run a single food bank – it merely advises church and community groups on how to’. But the copy has been changed to reflect the reality of the Trust’s work. The Trussell Trust has responded here. The Trussell Trust is having a field day. This tiny organisation which runs a food bank in Salisbury and advises and supports a network of over 400 food banks nationwide says there has been a 170% increase in people using food banks in the last 12 months. Of course; that’s because there are more food banks. As anyone with their wits about them can