Uk politics

Friday

Isabel Hardman

PM pushes for stricter immigration controls in Brussels

The Prime Minister is in Brussels today, trying to drum up support for stricter immigration controls on new countries joining the European Union. How much traction this gains will tell us a great deal about how successful his overall renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the EU might be. David Cameron’s supporters argue that the tide of ideas is clearly turning in his direction in Europe, and that he has clocked up a number of achievements already in persuading other leaders to think what he’s thinking, especially that cut he managed to achieve in the EU Budget. They also hope that the work MPs from the Fresh Start Project have been

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Tories try to adapt their food bank message

There was a food bank debate yesterday in the House of Commons. We all know that, but what few people can tell you is what was said. Instead, there is a furious debate raging about whether the Tories were laughing at poor people not having enough money for food, or whether Labour MPs were laughing too. I’ll leave that to other people to tussle over, suffice to say that it wasn’t the most edifying debate I’ve watched, mainly because as with all arguments in Westminster over food banks, both sides were jeering one another and making ugly accusations about each other too. These accusations tend to boil the problem of

Tim Farron

Labour are planning to fail future generations on housing – and they know it

Ed Milliband appears to have woken up this week – too late – to a housing crisis. He echoes his predecessors, who promised too little, too late and failed to deliver. Their lack of ambition will continue to fail the generation who couldn’t buy before the boom. As the IFS reports that even those born in the 60s and 70s are going to be worse off than the post-war generation, it’s no wonder that those in their 20s and 30s are angry. At the launch of his housing commission this week, Mr Milliband set out five ideas to meet Labour’s headline pledge of 200,000 homes.  This is not enough and

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Education reform works. Who knew?

Education reform that actually works is one of the noblest, but most thankless, tasks in politics. Noble because it’s necessary, thankless because it doesn’t earn much in the way of an electoral dividend. Polling consistently suggests fewer than 15% of people consider education a top priority. This is understandable. If you do not have children you are, often, less interested in education than if you do. If your children attend a good school (or, at least, if you are satisfied with the school they attend) you may not care too much about the schools other kids have to attend. Moreover, since education reform necessarily means telling the educational establishment it has

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Vince Cable: London is ‘becoming a kind of giant suction machine’

Vince Cable’s Today interview was remarkable for two reasons. The first was that the Business Secretary announced that he doesn’t want to ‘rush into legislation’ on zero hours contracts and instead wants to have another look at exclusivity agreements, where an employee is forced to work for one company only, even if they offer very few paid hours from week to week. This isn’t that surprising to those who have been following the debate: the Lib Dems found at their conference that their members were quite wary in Q&A sessions of outlawing these scary-sounding examples of labour market flexibility, and the Tories working on this are quite relaxed about tackling

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron to 1922 Committee: We must tell voters a hung parliament would threaten our radicalism

David Cameron received a rapturous banging of desks at the final meeting of the year for the 1922 Committee this evening. My sources have given me a run-down of what was said. Backbenchers were, I hear, very cheered by some of his words, particularly on his 2015 strategy. The Prime Minister told his MPs that the important thing to avoid is fighting Labour on their own territory. That means resisting being dragged into ding-dongs about payday loans and other pet issues that Labour likes to raise (the problem with this is that it creates a vacuum for Labour to invent its own description of what the nasty Tories think when

Alex Massie Alex Massie

What is David Cameron for?

A mischievous question, I know, but one prompted by Janan Ganesh’s latest Financial Times column. It is eight years since David Cameron became leader of the Conservative party and three and a half since he became Prime Minister. He may only have 18 months left in either post. We know – or think we know – a lot about Cameron. He is what he seems to be. Decent fellow, capable in a crisis, unruffled. A better-than-average product of his class and background. Thought he should be Prime Minister because he reckoned he’d “be good at it”. And yet the thought nags: what is he for? What is Cameron’s ministry about? As Ganesh

Sebastian Payne

Good news for the government: Unemployment falls again

More positive economic news this morning — the unemployment rate has fallen. In the last three months, unemployment has taken a surprising drop to 7.4 per cent, compared to 7.6 per cent for the three months before. As the chart below shows, the unemployment rate is now lower than at any time since the general election, and the lowest since April 2009: The number of people claiming Jobseeekers’ Allowance is also down by 36,700 while average pay also rose by a slender 0.8 per cent compared to the previous year (still below the rate of inflation). Despite this, the figures are good news for the government. The Employment Minister Esther

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Greg Barker interview: ‘Green crap’ was a curmudgeonly thing to say

You might be forgiven for thinking that the Conservative party has spent the past month or so taking all the green rubbish – or ‘crap’ as one source close to the Prime Minister was quoted as saying – out and forgetting it ever loved environmentalism. But visiting Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker’s office is a reminder that the party hasn’t quite purged its green, climate-change conscious past. He still has a green Union Jack cushion on one chair, and another with ‘Save the Planet’ embroidered on the case. There’s still a picture of the Prime Minister with a husky on a side table. Clearly Barker still thinks that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Faster curbs on ‘benefit tourism’ are easy-peasy compared with Cameron’s real EU task

The Prime Minister’s announcement today that he is fast-tracking his curbs on ‘benefit tourism’ was designed to reassure worried MPs that the government really is moving as fast as it can to do anything it can ahead of the lifting of transitional controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. When these curbs, which mean all EU jobseekers will have to wait for three months before they can apply for out-of-work benefits, were first briefed a few weeks ago, Downing Street suggested that they would not be ready for the 1 January deadline. Better to brief a later date and then speed things up, as the Prime Minister has today. But while

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Ukip and Tories scrap over their squeeze message

One thing that has been abundantly clear about the Tory plan for Ukip is that it will involve a long, slow ‘squeeze message’ (more on that here) that has already been deployed: the vote Ukip, get Miliband line. Naturally, Ukip is keen to counter that and argue that in fact this early squeeze message to encourage voters to think strategically is just wrong. To that end, party donor Alan Bown has taken out a full-page advertisement in the Telegraph today that argues ‘UKIP stand poised for a major breakthrough in 2015, within reach of victory in many seats across the country’. He outlines the results of four polls: in the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Today’s aviation fuss changes nothing about the 2015 election

If you were hoping for great drama over the Davies Commission’s interim report, you’ve got a while longer. As Patrick McLoughlin made clear in the Commons today, you’re unlikely to hear anything more than ministers repeatedly arguing that something must be done about Britain’s aviation capacity. Just not anything in particular this side of the 2015 general election. The Transport Secretary said: ‘I know that colleagues on both sides of the House will have their views on the content of the commission’s interim report, and in particular on the choices made in shortlisting these options. My principal concern as Secretary of State for Transport is to protect the integrity and

Sebastian Payne

CofE takes aim at payday lenders. But what about the banks?

Does Christmas have to start with a payday loan? No, according to the Church of England. The Church has unveiled its annual advertising campaign this morning, posing this very question to the residents of Manchester. As usual, the CofE is worried Britons are becoming ignorant about the origins of Christmas. As one of the adverts (pictured above) from Christmas starts with Christ shows, the aim is to remind Britain of the religious nature of the festive season as well as urging people not to go into debt to finance Christmas. But are the payday loan companies the only companies the Church should be worried about? In a recent Barometer column,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Airports Commission focuses on new runways at Heathrow and Gatwick

In the past few minutes, the Airports Commission has published its interim report. It’s the first big opportunity for there to be a political row over aviation capacity since the government kicked the issue into the long grass, and Sir Howard Davies’ shortlist in this interim report certainly provides some opportunities for a row. The shortlist as it stands does not include Boris Johnson’s favoured Estuary Airport, instead favouring new runways at Heathrow and Gatwick. The Commission will now consider a 3,000 metre runway south of the existing runway at Gatwick, and two different runways at Heathrow: a 3,500 metre runway to the northwest of the airport, and a 6,000

Monday

Sebastian Payne

Briefing: The Davies Airport Commission

What’s happening? Tomorrow, former CBI economist Howard Davies will release an interim report on the options for expanding Britain’s airport capacity. Some of the possibilities Davies has been considering include developing the regional airports (possibly with a High Speed rail element), building a new giant hub airport in the Thames Estuary, expanding capacity at Gatwick or Stansted Airports, or building a new runway at Heathrow. What will Davies say tomorrow? Both Sky News and the Sunday Times have reported that Davies is going to back three ‘favoured options’ in his report: Third runway at Heathrow Third runway at Heathrow and one at Gatwick Two new runways at Heathrow As well

The Spectator

Should Gatwick Airport have a second runway?

What’s the future for British airports? Earlier this month, The Spectator hosted a lunchtime discussion sponsored by Gatwick Airport with MPs and policymakers who had come to test its thesis: that expanding London’s second airport is the most sensible way forward, as it would boost competition while causing a fraction of the noise pollution. The debate was chaired by Andrew Neil. Also present were Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, political editor James Forsyth, client services director Melissa McAdden, Kwasi Kwarteng MP and the Institute of Directors’ Simon Walker. Andrew Neil opened the discussion by asking Stewart Wingate if he expected the Davies report was moving in the direction of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Labour split on planning and housebuilding

Ed Miliband’s housebuilding announcement today is rather a re-heated announcement of his conference pledges on housing. Eric Pickles has already set out on Coffee House his belief that these new ideas are ‘more of the same high-tax and top-down policies that led to their housing boom and bust’. The announcement certainly allows for a bit of a knockabout between the two parties, neither of which has much to boast about when it comes to housing, but there’s one point that’s worth noting about the Labour leader’s announcement today. Over the past few months, the party’s Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary Hilary Benn and policy review chief Jon Cruddas have

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May: We need to restrict free movement rights

Ministers don’t comment on leaked reports, as Theresa May said on the Today programme this morning, but they can jolly well make clear what they think of them, especially if those leaked reports are quite helpful to calming Conservative backbench grumbles. The Home Secretary didn’t distance herself from the leak in the Sunday Times that she wants a 75,000 cap on the number of EU migrants per year, and repeated David Cameron’s call for reform of freedom of movement, saying: ‘What the Prime Minister has said and what I said is that in looking at reform of the EU we need to look at this whole question of the arrangements

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Nadhim Zahawi’s child benefit call is rare outburst from No10 policy board

Number 10 was quick to pour cold water on Nadhim Zahawi’s suggestion in the Mail on Sunday that child-related welfare benefits should be restricted to two children per family (for new births only), with a source saying that ‘this is not government policy and is not supported by the Prime Minister’. But aside from whether this is a good policy or not, Zahawi’s intervention is interesting as it marks a significant departure from the way the Number 10 policy board, of which he is a member, works. Zahawi has only recently joined, but his colleagues on the board have been instructed to be entirely discreet about their work. Jo Johnson,

Sebastian Payne

Despite the improving economy, George Osborne is still unpopular

Now that the economy is recovering and George Osborne has overtaken Ed Balls in the polls for having the best economic policies, he may be forgiven for wondering if wider rehabilitation is next. The Chancellor’s allies have long seen him as the man who will succeed David Cameron, perhaps in 2018, and imagine that his problem — looking too young — will remedy itself and that his personal popularity will recover along with the economy. Today’s polls suggest this isn’t happening – at least, not yet. While the Chancellor’s professional reputation is recovering from the omnishambolic 2012 budget his personal reputation is still pretty low. In today’s Independent on Sunday,