Uk politics

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Why Mike Penning can afford to be so aggressive about the benefit cap

What a combative interviewee Mike Penning made on the Today programme. The new work and pensions minister clearly felt that given the benefit cap is the most popular policy pollsters have touched in a long while (73% support the cap in principle), he could take the presenters and the Chartered Institute of Housing, which criticises the policy in a report today, to task in the most direct way possible. ‘I’m really disappointed,’ he said, adding that the work was ‘fundamentally flawed’ and scolding the BBC for even reporting it: ‘I’m really disappointed with the work that’s been done there because it’s fundamentally flawed, and actually disappointed again with the BBC’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron ‘lost’ PMQs, but he’s moving into a better position on energy bills

David Cameron took a pasting at PMQs today. Ed Miliband, armed with a whole slew of lines from John Major’s speech yesterday, deftly mocked the Prime Minister. Cameron, faced by a Labour wall of noise, struggled to make his replies heard. At one point, he rose to his feet thinking Miliband had finished, only for the Labour leader to contemptuously signal at him to sit down. listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron v s Miliband on energy prices’ on Audioboo But Cameron did announce some policies today that might offer him a way out of the energy hole he’s currently in. First, he made clear that he wants to scale back the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs silence on Grangemouth benefits SNP

Ed Davey is currently answering an urgent question in the Commons on the Grangemouth petrochemical plant. He urged Ineos and Unite to return to talks, describing the failure of the negotiations as ‘regrettable’. As the questions from backbenchers to Davey continue, it’s worth noting that there wasn’t a single mention of the plant at Prime Minister’s Questions, even though the closure of that plant will lead to around 800 people losing their jobs. Ineos estimates that around 10,000 jobs rely indirectly on the factory. The SNP have already picked up on this silence, and can quite easily argue that it shows that Westminster doesn’t care about jobs in Scotland. Even

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sir John Major and the Number 10 vacuum

When Ed Miliband announced his eye-catching energy policy, Tory MPs hoped that their party would respond in kind with something similarly interesting to voters but that would really work. They hoped this would underline that the Conservative party is the party of government, while Miliband was only suitable for opposition. George Osborne’s conference fuel duty freeze and his noises about green taxes and levies on fuel bills reassured many of them, but Sir John Major’s intervention yesterday has highlighted the vacuum caused by a refusal by Number 10 to engage with what one strategist described to me as ‘the footling little things’. One MP said after Major’s speech: ‘Number 10

Tuesday

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Boris imitates Dave

Is Boris trying to imitate David Cameron? The Mayor of London usually likes to leave the Prime Minister wriggling awkwardly by stealing any show going, but today Boris seemed to be taking a leaf out of his rival’s book. Both men have recently fessed up to needing glasses, and at his select committee appearance today, the Mayor seemed to be emulating Cameron by awkwardly taking his new eyewear on and off throughout the session.

The Spectator

Transcript: John Major calls for an emergency tax on energy companies

Sir John Major told a Westminster lunch this afternoon that the government should impose an emergency tax upon the energy companies to help families keep warm this winter. Here is a transcript of what the former Conservative Prime Minister said: I think when Ed Miliband made his suggestions about energy some weeks ago, I think his heart was in the right place but his head had gone walkabout. But he did touch on an issue that’s very important. The private sector is something the Conservative party supports, but when the private sector goes wrong, or behaves badly, I think it’s entirely right to make changes and put it right. Governments

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

In areas of weakness, Labour can only complain that the government isn’t tough enough

Much of the coverage of today’s Immigration Bill has centred around those controversial ‘go home’ vans, now ditched because they only sent one person home. Theresa May told the Commons this afternoon that ‘we won’t be rolling out the vans, they were too much of a blunt instrument’. In response to a question from Keith Vaz, she said: ‘What I said to the right honourable gentleman is I didn’t have a flash of blinding light one day and walk into the Home Office and say, I know, why don’t we do this?’ What I have done is looked at the interim evaluation in relation to the vans. There were some

Sebastian Payne

Finally, an end to health tourism in Britain?

‘When this paper reported a senior surgeon’s warning that health tourism could be costing the NHS “billions”‘, begins today’s leader in the Daily Mail on the government’s efforts to clamp down on treating foreign nationals. That’s one (rather cheeky) way of putting it. Another way is ‘When this newspaper reported a piece that appeared in The Spectator and made it a cover’. For our subscribers, it was that familiar feeling of déjà lu — when you read in the newspapers something you first saw in our pages. But the problem of NHS tourism, which Prof J Meirion Thomas exposed, is at last being addressed. Dr Thomas’ original Spectator article appeared in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘Now we’re relevant’: Lib Dems see free schools row as ‘win’

The Lib Dems are coming in for a beating this morning from the Tories over Nick Clegg’s decision to go public with his thoughts on the flaws and limitations of the free schools programme. Rachel Sylvester and James Chapman both have very strong briefings from Conservative sources about the Deputy Prime Minister’s comments, while the Lib Dems are annoyed both that there is such a fuss about a new plank in the differentiation strategy and also that they have apparently held this policy for a long time. Sources close to Clegg are highlighting that the Lib Dem spring conference backed a motion supported by the leadership which called for all

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sacked minister suggests making government messier – and better

After every reshuffle, sacked ministers choose to tread a number of different paths. Some go rogue, either to the extent that Tim Loughton has since losing his job last year, or at least in publicly criticising their party’s policy, as Jeremy Browne has since being sacked in this year’s round. Others go to ground, receive appreciative applause in the Chamber when they ask very anodyne questions about the local incinerator in their constituency, but don’t bother their former bosses. And a very small number decide to offer some quiet thoughts on how things might be better. Sacked housing minister Mark Prisk seems to have gone down the third route. I

Monday

Steerpike

David Cameron resigns…according to Wales Online

It has been an eventful afternoon at the Western Mail and South Wales Echo. As seen in the screen grab above, Wales Online, the papers’ online variant, reported (and tweeted) that the Prime Minister resigned at 16:33 today. It was a ‘shock’ resignation and the government was ‘rocked’ by the news, apparently. As you’d expect for such breaking news, the piece quickly garnered traffic from Facebook and Twitter. But, Cameroons will be relieved to hear, it was only a test: Apologies to anyone who saw that unfortunately published article just now – a training exercise never intended to see the light of day. — Wales Online (@WalesOnline) October 21, 2013

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Andrew Mitchell: A strange apology

Over the past thirteen months since the ‘plebgate’ row broke over Andrew Mitchell and subsequently broke the then chief whip’s career, a number of pieces entitled or themed ‘Andrew Mitchell: An apology’ have appeared here and there as more has come to light about the allegations levelled at Mitchell. In most cases the writers accept that an initial op-ed or blog that they penned about his alleged behaviour wasn’t, with the benefit of hindsight and more information, correct. None have been quite so striking as the statement released this afternoon by the three Police Federation officers who met Mitchell after the allegations surfaced. Here is the statement from Inspector Ken

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris’s immigration issue

When you discuss Boris Johnson’s leadership prospects with Tory MPs, one subject nearly always comes up: immigration. The Mayor is a liberal on the subject while most of the party takes a far more sceptical view. Tory MPs wonder how he’ll explain to the electorate why he once backed an amnesty for illegal immigrants. But Boris’s Telegraph column today shows how he can make a better — and more demotic — case for immigration than any other politician. He is prepared to tackle the subject and, what he calls, ‘this sense of indigenous injustice’ head-on. He’s also surely right that the solution to ever-rising house prices in London is to build

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem free school confusion undermines Clegg’s ‘sausage machine’ model

What does everyone think about free schools? That’s the question that is being asked of every Liberal Democrat who has the misfortune to pop up in broadcast interviews today, because it seems that you can now take any position you want on the subject, so long as you’re wearing a certain hat or you’ve got your fingers crossed behind your back. Ed Davey this morning tried to explain the difference between what David Laws said last week at the despatch box in defence of free schools and what David Laws apparently thinks when he’s not at the despatch box. Davey told the Today programme: ‘He is defending the Government’s position

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Justin Welby and the Downing Street grid

One man who isn’t on message at the start of the government’s economy week is Justin Welby, who has been warning against excessive jubilation at the end of this week when the next tranche of GDP figures are released. He told the Telegraph: ‘A flourishing economy is necessary but not sufficient. A healthy society flourishes and distributes economic resources effectively, but also has a deep spiritual base which gives it its virtue.’ This sounds a little bit like pre-2010 David Cameron, but it doesn’t quite chime with the political offensive that the Tories want to go on this week, accusing Labour of making consistently bad predictions about the economy. The

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Hinkley nuclear deal: what it means for the global race and the big freeze

Today is, as we all know, the start of economy week in Westminster, with politicians striving to show that all that jubilant talk about dawns breaking over the hill this summer wasn’t misplaced. The Hinkley Point deal, the first new nuclear plant in a generation, is supposed to show that Britain is open for business, is building, and is providing jobs and training for a new generation of workers in a new generation of nuclear plants. On the Today programme this morning Energy Secretary Ed Davey tried to outline some of the value that this deal with EDF and Beijing-controlled energy companies China National Nuclear Corporation and China General Nuclear

Sunday

James Forsyth

Is it still the economy, stupid?

The coalition wants this week to be all about the GDP figures, out on Friday. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, Downing Street is confident that they’ll show the economy is continuing to grow at a relatively decent clip and is already working out how to make political out of that. They have, as Simon Walters reports, already prepared a video mocking Labour’s claims that the coalition’s polices would lead to a million more people on the dole. Ed Miliband’s circle expects that the GDP numbers will again be positive. But they take the view that as long as prices are increasing faster than wages, squeezing voters’ living

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg isn’t the only senior Lib Dem who could damage free schools

After Nick Clegg decided to have a grump about free schools in a paper whose own polling suggests they are popular with the public (more on this from Fraser), the Education department has hit back, reminding those who are frightened of that over-used word ‘ideology’ just what the big idea behind free schools really is: ‘Free schools are raising standards and giving parents more choice. They are run by teachers – not local bureaucrats or Westminster politicians – and are free to set their own curriculum, decide how they spend their money and employ who they think are the best people for the job. This Government is not going to

Friday

Sebastian Payne

The final chapter of the Kings Priory School debacle

This morning, I was honoured to attend the official opening service and ceremony of the Kings Priory School in Tynemouth. As I’m sure regular Coffee House readers are aware, I’ve followed the creation of this academy in my home region with much interest. Despite Labour’s initial plans to sabotage the merger of the private King’s School and the state Priory Primary School, the new institution finally opened its door six week ago. It’s a fantastic addition to one of the country’s poorest boroughs. Who better to open this school than Andrew Adonis, the man responsible for rejuvenating Kenneth Baker’s academies policy? At the ceremony today, Adonis explained to pupils how

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why politicians shouldn’t say ‘should’

David Cameron is currently trying to work out what his position on jumpers is after Number 10 was forced to issue an amazing clarification this afternoon. A spokesman said: ‘To be clear, it is entirely false to suggest the PM would advise people they should wear jumpers to stay warm. Any suggestion to the contrary is mischief-making. The Prime Minister would point people to a range of things being done to help people with their fuel bills, such as legislating to put everyone on the best tariff for them. He believes Labour’s “price freeze” policy is a con – and certainly would not advise people on what they should wear.’