Uk politics

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Teaching union talks dissolve into farce over guest list

How kind of the teaching unions to get us all in the mood for Christmas with a nice big pantomime. The latest amusing drama from the NUT and NASUWT is over a meeting that they’re supposed to be having with Michael Gove about their ongoing industrial dispute. This dispute, if you will remember, nearly led to the unions holding nationwide strikes over performance-related pay. But those strikes were called off on the offer of more talks with Gove. Now the talks themselves are mired in a row over who has been invited: the NASUWT and NUT do not want representatives from other unions coming along because they feel the dispute

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Commons decides to #LetBritainDecide

After hours of really insightful discussions about bacon butties, MPs have finally approved the third reading of the #LetBritainDecide Bill in the Commons. The legislation will now pass to the House of Lords, where the fun really begins. I’ve already written that the Bill has served its purpose in uniting the Conservative party. But it is worth noting that Labour’s position has not moved one jot during this process. Douglas Alexander might have been right when he told the Chamber that ‘this is not a bill about the Conservatives trusting the public but about Conservative backbenchers not trusting a Conservative Prime Minister’, but that scarcely excuses the Labour position, which

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

No 10: the government has not asked for a price freeze

If today’s energy bills confusion is an example of how the government plants stories, it really is a poor gardener of news. Number 10 this morning denied that ministers had asked the energy companies for a price freeze, with the Prime Minister’s spokesman saying: ‘The government has not asked for a price freeze’ and added that ‘people should wait for the Autumn Statement when we will spell out our plans to roll back the impact of levies on people’s energy bills’. The spokesman explained that the government will be focusing on the need for more competition through the annual competition review and rolling back the levies and charges on energy

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Latest Tory energy stance gives ground to Labour

One of the techniques that horror writers employ to make their novels as frightening as possible is to avoid describing their monster in any great detail. Read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and by and large it will be your own imagination filling in the details of Victor Frankenstein’s creation as the creature lumbers out of its inventor’s room and into the streets of Ingolstadt. Our imaginations frighten us far more than authors can. The same elision is at work in politics, except the authors aren’t doing themselves any favours. The Tories have a habit of staying very quiet indeed on a social problem, whether it be payday loans or something else

Thursday

James Forsyth

Will George Osborne play Santa next week?

When George Osborne stands up next week to deliver the autumn statement, he’ll have some good news to deliver. Not only is autumn, the dreariest of the British seasons over, but borrowing has come in lower than expected and the OBR will upgrade the growth forecasts. But the return of growth, as I say in the magazine this week, poses a strategic dilemma for Osborne. If he declares the economic emergency over, the public might conclude it was safe to turn back to Labour. But equally he has to show voters that he’s sharing the proceeds of growth. I suspect that Osborne will steer clear of too many sweetners. They’ll

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory agitators choose their stalking horses carefully

Labour is enjoying some success with its narrative that the government is running scared of all sorts of awkward votes and campaigns at the moment, from plain packaging to payday loans. Yesterday Miliband’s spinners were briefing that this included the Immigration Bill amendment tabled by Nigel Mills and supported by influential backbenchers such as 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady. It now has 49 signatures. It’s worth noting that Mills’ amendment is the latest example of how Tory Eurosceptics now work together to get what they want from the Prime Minister. I explained this unity between the factions in a recent Telegraph column: ‘Now all these factions have united into a

Sebastian Payne

South Thanet polling highlights the Ukip threat in 2015

It appears Laura Sandys has made the right decision to stand down at the next election. A new poll from Survation targeting her South Thanet constituency suggests that if a general election took place tomorrow, the Tories would fail to hold onto the seat. In the constituency once represented by Jonathan Aitken, the Conservatives have dropped 20 points since the last general election, pushing them into third place. Labour would take the seat with 35 per cent of the vote but most worryingly for some, Ukip’s vote has risen hugely, shooting into second place with 30 per cent: Constituency level polling is quite rare, so it’s always interesting to see

The Spectator

Boris Johnson falls foul of the ‘you can’t say that’ rule

Last night, Sebastian Payne described Boris Johnson as being a politician who ‘prides himself on being one of the few politicians who gets away with saying the unsayable’. He was covering the Mayor of London’s lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, where Boris said the following: ‘Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130. The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scotland and the EU: Mariano Rajoy should just jog on.

It’s bad enough being lectured by politicians from Edinburgh or even London. That, I suppose, is to be expected however. Irritating but normal. It’s rather different when foreigners – real foreigners – decide to interfere in our own constitutional rammy. It smacks of impertinence. When that intervention comes from the leader – to put it in Sun-speak – of a nation of donkey-slaying, rock-coveting bankrupts it’s even less respectable. So the suggestion made yesterday by Mariano Rajoy, Prime Minister of what we still call Spain, that an independent Scotland would, by creating a new country, need to reapply for EU membership is hackle-raising stuff. You’re tempted to reply jog on, pal. Of course

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Boris Johnson: greed can be good

Boris Johnson prides himself on being one of the few politicians who gets away with saying the unsayable. He stuck to that theme tonight with his Margaret Thatcher lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, in which he argued that greed isn’t a bad thing. He said: ‘But I also hope that there is no return to that spirit of Loadsamoney heartlessness – figuratively riffling banknotes under the noses of the homeless; and I hope that this time the Gordon Gekkos of London are conspicuous not just for their greed – valid motivator though greed may be for economic progress – as for what they give and do for the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: The tide of ideas and opinion is going in my direction on EU reform

David Cameron’s restrictions on welfare for new migrants have pleased Tory backbenchers – but not enough for them to drop their Commons campaign for the transitional immigration controls to be extended. There are now 46 Conservative MPs signed up to support it, and I’ve just spoken to Nigel Mills, who tabled the amendment, who said: ‘The Prime Minister’s announcements are welcome steps in the right direction. However the issues with our current levels of unemployment and pressures on other public services would not be tackled so I still believe we need to keep the restrictions in place, and so I will still proceed with my amendment.’ Labour is briefing that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Miliband attacks PM for ‘intellectual collapse’ at tepid PMQs

Commentators sometimes like to describe a particular session of Prime Minister’s Questions as ‘vintage’. If ‘vintage’ is the correct description for the good weeks, this one was more of a serving of tepid Blue Nun. David Cameron was in a very odd mood indeed. He was clearly pleased with an early quip referencing Miliband’s Desert Island Discs appearance. He joked that Miliband ‘isn’t loving Marx, he’s loving Engels instead’. The joke was so dreadful that the entire Chamber convulsed as though winded by a fast-moving cricket ball. Miliband attacked the Prime Minister on his inconsistency over payday loan caps and climate change policy. This was a good theme, and gave

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron, Osborne and Crosby grilled by backbenchers: exclusive details

Last night David Cameron, George Osborne and Lynton Crosby held a meeting with the Conservative parliamentary party. Coffee House has exclusive details of what took place. There was a presentation on how well the party was doing from the Prime Minister (without any new information), and one from Lynton Crosby in which the strategist asked Tory MP James Morris to stand up and take a round of applause for passing on the ‘nightmare’ email from the Ed Miliband’s office to the Mail on Sunday. Sir George Young brought less exciting news that MPs will have to pull their weight a great deal more by serving on more statutory instrument committees.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Immigration announcement aims to take stings out of a number of tails

David Cameron knows that the only criticism from other parties of his plans to restrict welfare access for new migrants will be that he isn’t being tough enough. Such is the fear on all sides of being accused of repeating what the Prime Minister describes in his FT article as the ‘monumental mistake’ of the last Labour government that the only option on the table for Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg will be to support the move. It will be interesting to see how Miliband fares at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Given Labour has put forward its own ‘tough’ proposals and given Yvette Cooper went to such lengths to complain

Tuesday

Harry Cole

Salmond is stuck in the ‘Yes2AV’ trap

‘When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another’, the best way of going about it probably isn’t to write a 670-page document and then snarkily deride journalists who point out the obvious holes in it. As an old romantic, vaguely sympathetic to the dream of Scottish independence, I have long suspected that the SNP leadership are the greatest hindrance to the separatist cause. Alex Salmond’s off-form, dull, dreary performance this morning only served to reconfirm that feeling. While separation is unlikely and potentially dangerous, increased devolution shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. The ‘devo-max’

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Andrew Mitchell vows to continue Plebgate fight

So Andrew Mitchell is going to pursue his fight with the police over the ‘plebgate’ row, even though the Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence to suggest the officer who claimed Andrew Mitchell called him a pleb was lying. The former Conservative chief whip told a press conference this afternoon that not only is he pursuing his libel action against The Sun newspaper, but that he will use this opportunity in court to force PC Toby Rowland, the officer who wrote the account of the altercation that involved the word ‘pleb’, to give his story under oath. Rowland is not one of the five police officers facing disciplinary

Hamish Macdonell

What’s hidden inside the Scottish Independence White Paper?

Hidden away in the 650-page White Paper on Scottish Independence are a number of very interesting developments, none of which were championed by the SNP beforehand but every one of which has the potential to shape the campaign. Here are just a few of them: 1. A major move on nuclear weapons. The SNP’s position on Trident and nuclear weapons is well known. An independent Scotland would kick Trident out of its current base on the Clyde and become a ‘non-nuclear’ state with only conventional armed forces. Also, Scotland would be so defiantly anti-nuclear that it would not let ships carrying nuclear weapons enter its water or its ports. Oh really? What

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Influential 1922 Committee chair backs rebel immigration call

The swell of support continues for Nigel Mills’ amendment to the Immigration Bill which would most likely land the British government in court by trying to extend transitional controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants to 2018. I have learned that Graham Brady, influential chair of the 1922 Committee, has now signed the amendment too, and the rebels organising behind it tell me they now have more than 40 backers. The list now includes a number of 1922 Committee executive members, including Nick de Bois, John Whittingdale, Charles Walker and Jason McCartney. A number of Conservative MPs who have never rebelled before (yes, they exist) are considering signing the amendment because they

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Crap and courage of convictions: the political problem with Osborne’s payday loan plan

There is still a great deal of heat and rather a little less light over George Osborne’s decision to ‘step in where government needs to step in’ and cap the cost of payday loans. Does this mean he’s actually a lefty? What is he up to? Writing for the Telegraph, David Skelton, founder of the very thoughtful Renewal campaign to broaden the Conservative party’s appeal, argues that this is ‘the right thing to do and it sends a powerful signal that the party will tackle rip-off companies and help the vulnerable’. But Allister Heath argues in his City AM column that this is not the right way to help those

Alistair Darling

Alistair Darling: the flaws in Alex Salmond’s white paper on independence

Nothing has changed as a result of today’s White Paper. There is nothing that we found out today that we didn’t already know. Yesterday Alex Salmond’s case for breaking up the UK was based on assertions. Today it is still based on assertions. The simple fact is that the nationalists have ducked the opportunity to answer any of the big questions about our country’s future. They promised us facts. What they have given us is a wish list with no prices attached. If this White Paper was going to be credible, it had to address the fundamental issues that people are concerned about. They didn’t. We still don’t know what