Uk politics

Thursday

James Forsyth

Cameron’s mission for 2014: stay out of third place

European elections are normally an afterthought in British politics. As even David Cameron admits, most of us struggle to remember who our MEPs are. Two-thirds of us don’t even bother to vote for them. But this year, the European elections are threatening to dominate politics. Talk to Tory ministers and MPs about the year ahead, and they all look nervously towards May, because they know that the Conservative party is in real danger of coming third in a nationwide election for the first time in its history. In and of itself this need not matter too much. The trouble is that a third place finish would send the party into

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Osborne rains on Miliband’s parade with wage announcement

What an odd coincidence that on the eve of what’s being billed as a major economic speech by Ed Miliband, George Osborne sticks up his periscope and makes a big fat announcement on the minimum wage. The Chancellor and his colleagues have been mulling this increase for months, and have been making confusing but supportive noises over the past few weeks, and this evening would have seemed an odd time for the Chancellor to give an interview to the BBC on the subject if Osborne weren’t famed for being such an enthusiastic strategist. He told Nick Robinson that Britain could afford an above-inflation increase in the minimum wage: ‘The exact

Charlotte Henry

The cowardly Lib Dems should have taken action over Chris Rennard

Alistair Webster QC has decided that the threshold for disciplining Lord Rennard for sexually inappropriate behaviour could not be met, and that the allegations could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Webster’s statement can be read on Lib Dem Voice, as can a statement from Lord Rennard. It is the stomach turning arrogance with which Rennard says he will return to the fold that makes the blood boil the most. No apology, no contrition, just a brazen told-you-so attitude, as if nothing has happened. His legal representative, Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile, does him no favours either. Carlile has condemned the party membership for their response to Lord Rennard, and said

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will a Euro election defeat for Cameron lead to a Tory-Ukip pact?

The Conservative party has never come third in a nationwide election. But as today’s YouGov poll in The Sun shows, they are on course to be beaten into third place by Ukip in the European elections: Now, European elections are normally an after-thought in British politics. As even David Cameron admits, most of us can’t remember who our MEPs are and almost two-thirds of us don’t bother to vote for them. But as I say in the column this week, coming third behind Ukip will send the Tory party into a panic. In the weeks after the result, there’ll be calls for an electoral pact with Nigel Farage and his

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour’s minimum wage attack flops

Labour’s minimum wage debate in the Commons last night was designed mainly to humiliate the Conservatives about their past opposition to it and to remind voters that only the Labour party cares about those on low wages. But it failed on two counts. The first was that Rachel Reeves fell into the easy trap of accusing someone of missing a vote without double-checking whether this had been for a good reason (all the more surprising given the party’s recent rage over a Sun article describing Lucy Powell as ‘lazy’ when she had in fact been away on maternity leave). She laid into Vince Cable for failing to vote on Labour’s

Jamie Bartlett

Will 2014 be the year of the populist party?

With Ukip widely expected to win big in May’s elections, 2014 may well be the year of the populist party. Not easily categorised as left or right wing, populist parties across Europe pit the good, honest, ordinary voter against the out of touch, liberal, mainstream political elite. The populists claim to represent the former against the latter, an authentic and honest voice in a world of spin and self-interest. Nigel Farage is not the only one to be surfing the wave of widespread disillusionment, with politics in general and politicians in particular. In Italy, Beppe Grillo straddles both left and right. The popular comedian and blogger ran on a vehemently

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The fight for compassionate Conservatism

‘Has the Secretary of State, like me, managed to watch programmes such as Benefits Street and On Benefits & Proud? If so, has he, like me, been struck by the number who complain about welfare reform while able to afford copious amounts of cigarettes, have lots of tattoos, and watch Sky TV on the obligatory widescreen television?’ This question, from the Tory backbencher Philip Davies in Parliament this week, was not one Iain Duncan Smith would have welcomed. The Work and Pensions Secretary is desperate to avoid any language that casts the poor as the indolent authors of their own misfortune. But as he knows, not all of his Tory

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Benefits Street exposes Britain’s dirty secret – how welfare imprisons the poor

[audioplayer src=’http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_January_2014_v4.mp3′ title=’Fraser Nelson and Frank Field MP discuss Benefits Street’] Listen [/audioplayer]No scandal has been more successfully covered up than the appalling truth about what happens to Britain’s poorest people. We have, as a country, grown used to pretending they don’t exist; we shovel them off to edge-of-town housing estates and pay them to stay there in economic exile. We give them welfare for the foreseeable future, and wish them luck in their drug-addled welfare ghettos. This is our country’s dirty little secret, which has just been exposed by a devastating Channel 4 documentary. And the left are furious. The outrage over Benefits Street has been quite extraordinary, comparable only

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron urges Tory MPs to stop writing troublemaking letters

David Cameron addressed the parliamentary Conservative party last night. He took an opportunity to tell MPs to stop writing him public letters, and instead that they should approach him privately and that his ‘door is always open’. That opportunity was raised by Brighton Kemptown MP Simon Kirby, who complained about colleagues ‘banging on about Europe’ (even those who signed the letter are a bit worried about the amount of chat about Europe that it has provoked). But the meeting itself was focused on the party’s media strategy (with a presentation from Craig Oliver) and what one present described as ‘holistic election strategy’. That involved the PM sketching out the key

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Labour’s poll woes as economy grows

Is the improving economy harming Labour’s standing? According to a new Guardian/ICM survey out today, Labour is still ahead of the Conservatives by three points — but the gap is slowly shrinking. Since the last ICM poll in December, Labour’s lead has dropped to just three points, down from an eight point lead in November: Today’s poll also looks at how assured people are feeling about their own financial position and their ‘ability to keep up with the cost of living’. 52 per cent now feel confident about the state of their personal finances — the highest level since October 2010. Confidence in financial situations plummeted in 2010 and a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: We are still a green government

One of the most intriguing things about last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions was David Cameron’s decision to say he suspected the recent severe weather in the United Kingdom was linked to climate change. It seemed to be an interesting restatement of where the Prime Minister personally stands on green issues – a position that his own Environment Secretary Owen Paterson refused to back the very next day. So today when David Cameron appeared before the Liaison Committee to talk about, among other things, green issues, its members were understandably keen to probe him on whether, after the Green Crap Removals Team had rolled up their sleeves and got to work

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The mysterious absence of the Immigration Bill

What has happened to the Immigration Bill? It was supposed to come before the House of Commons for report stage before the close of play in December, but was cleverly bumped to avoid a hoo-ha over Nigel Mills’ amendment calling for transitional controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. The problem is, this clever bit of manoeuvring by those in charge of Commons business didn’t make a great deal of difference to the amendment’s popularity: the latest publication from the Vote Office, released after the Bill was bumped into this year but before the end of the winter term, shows 74 signatures. Now the gossip in the party is that the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Miliband returns to the ‘promise of Britain’ with pitch to middle class

Ed Miliband’s cost of living crisis campaign has, so far, tended to focus more on those who are seriously struggling and turning to food banks or turning off their heating in cold weather. But today the Labour leader turns to the middle classes in a Telegraph op ed. His assessment is downbeat as you would expect: Miliband needs pessimism in order to succeed in 2015, while the Tories need an upbeat vision (but not, as most senior party figures accept, so upbeat an economy that voters think it safe to back Labour). It is interesting that Miliband sees the middle class as a group worth bidding for: he clearly feels

Monday

Tom Huxley

Demonising? Episode 2 of ‘Benefits Street’ flatters a very ugly picture

The Synthetic Outrage Squad has been out in force over Channel 4’s Benefits Street, dubbing the series ‘poverty porn’ that ‘demonises’ a vulnerable group of people. In fact, as someone who’s lived in the city depicted on the programme for most of my life, what I saw not only rings true but also paints a rather flattering picture of life at the bottom in Birmingham. The reality can be much worse. Those who watched the second episode looking for ‘poverty porn’ would have wondered what all the fuss is about. It did not ‘demonise’ the poor; what we saw was a mother trying her hardest to give her children a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith: People are shocked by ‘Benefits Street’ and Labour will thank us for welfare reform

Channel 4 screens the second episode of its Benefits Street documentary tonight, as a petition calling for it to be taken off the air has gained over 30,000 signatures. Labour MPs are trying to use it as an example of the way the media, and by extension the Conservatives, stigmatise benefit claimants. So perhaps it was only natural that a Conservative MP would do the same and use the programme to make a political point during Work and Pensions Questions in the Commons this afternoon. Philip Davies asked Iain Duncan Smith whether he too had been struck by ‘the number of people on there who manage to combine complaining about

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What the minimum wage debate tells us about the Tory Right

The Conservative debate about the minimum wage continues today, with campaign group Renewal pushing for an increase, at least in line with inflation. Renewal is launching an interesting agenda today aimed at making capitalism work for groups who currently feel it fails them, such as the low paid and those living in deindustrialised towns in northern England. The group’s work, ‘Renewing Capitalism’, is supported by Robert Halfon, the Tory MP who is always trying to work out ways of broadening the Conservative appeal. He says: ‘It was a big mistake for the Conservative party to oppose the minimum wage. We must right that wrong by at least increasing it in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Fracking incentives ‘pathetic’ and ‘insulting’, Tory MP warns

Many plaudits this morning for ministers such as Michael Fallon who have catalysed the government’s push ahead with fracking. The only question, though, is whether enthusiasm in Whitehall will translate into enthusiasm in local communities. Ministers are pointing to a change in the incentives for communities which means they can now keep 100 per cent of business rates from extraction sites. But it certainly hasn’t impressed Ben Wallace, the Tory MP for Wyre and Preston North, who is a vocal spokesman for the group of MPs whose constituencies sit on the Bowland Shale. Wallace tells me: ‘What they are offering us today – an extra £850,000 of business rates is pathetic,

Sunday

Charles Moore

Gordon Brown’s Chang Song-Thaek-style plot

Before Chang Song-Thaek was executed in North Korea last month for being a ‘wicked political careerist, trickster and traitor for all ages’, he allegedly confessed to his crimes. ‘I didn’t fix a definite time for the coup,’ he said, ‘But it was my intention to concentrate … all economic organs on the cabinet and become premier when the economy goes totally bankrupt and the state is on the verge of collapse …I thought that if I solve the problem of people’s living …by spending an enormous amount of funds …after becoming premier, the people will shout “hurrah” for me and I will succeed in a smooth way.’ Luckily, North Korea

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg: Tory benefit plan is ‘Chinese-style family policy’

Did Nick Clegg recite his entire Andrew Marr interview from memory? The Deputy Prime Minister managed to cram so many soundbites into his answers that anyone wondering what the months in the run-up to the 2015 generation election will be like will have sunk into a pit of misery at how dull and formulaic it is all going to be. Thank goodness for those trouble-making Tory MPs with their letters who are at least trying to make things a bit more unpredictable, eh? As well as doling out his favourite lines such as ‘flirting with exit’ ‘the Conservatives have decided to swerve wildly in this direction and that’ and the

Friday

Matthew Goodwin

Nick Griffin supports the Golden Dawn in Athens as the BNP falls apart

One hundred and twenty eight days from now, British voters will head to the polls to have their say in elections to the European Parliament and local elections. Between now and then, much of the political debate will continue to focus on the UK Independence Party, which has mobilised the single most successful insurgency in English politics since 1945 (and one that we put under the microscope in a forthcoming book). Among pundits and politicians there is a consensus that 2014 will be another record year for the Ukippers. But as one insurgent has prospered, another has fallen. While the elections in 2014 may see Ukip’s revolt on the right reach new