Uk politics

So both the Lib Dems and the Tories have yielded to the inevitable, and passed on the Joan LB Edwards donation to the Treasury. Their responses were swifter than even critical friends might have expected. The Lib Dems were first out of the starting blocks in the race to the moral high ground by announcing they’d be writing a cheque to the Treasury. But before Nick Clegg even had time to start recording a new autotune version of ‘I’m Sorry’ about how ‘we took a donation that we couldn’t possibly keep (but frankly could have done with given the state of the party coffers)’, the Tories decided they had to

Last December, after one of the most brutal PMQs this Parliament has seen, David Cameron was walking through the corridors of the Palace of Westminster to address a 1922 Committee meeting. Ed Miliband had subjected the Prime Minister to a real savaging, and Labour backbenchers had loyally joined in, raising a constituent’s suicide and describing Cameron’s government as ‘grandeur for the few, the workhouse for the many’. It had been a bleak session. Heading for Committee Room 14, the Prime Minister bumped into a junior minister, who was keen to reassure him that everything would come out in the wash. He told Cameron that ‘they can go for the emotional

Labour’s failure to fill the summer news vacuum has now become a news story in itself. Ed Miliband comes back from holiday to find the Sunday papers full of stories about Labour grumbling, shadow Cabinet reshuffles and the like. But there’ll be no dramatic return by Miliband. There are no plans for big set piece speeches or a whistle-stop tour of Britain. One reason why Miliband himself has been so quiet this summer is that conference is already dominating his, and his team’s, thoughts. As I say in the Mail on Sunday today, they view conference as crucial to their efforts to persuade the country that Miliband is Prime Ministerial.

Would Labour destabilise Britain’s fragile economic recovery? The Tories are keen to convince the nation that Labour would, ahead of Miliband’s expected offensive on the state of the economy and the cost of living. Positive growth forecasts, increasing construction and export figures  all add to the perception that the economy is on the up; but, as I discussed earlier this week, the mood in the country is still cautious and many people are struggling to make ends meet. Treasury minister Sajid Javid tackles this problem in the Telegraph today. He contextualises his party’s optimism for the recovery with reference to his own background, and explains why the hardships will be worth it

David Cameron is committed to an EU referendum if he’s still Prime Minister after the next election. We also know that he’d like to lead the ‘In’ side if he can get a good enough deal. Given this, the fact that the FT is reporting that Ivan Rogers, the PM’s Europe adviser, is the frontrunner to be Britain’s ambassador to the EU is particularly disappointing. Rogers is a cerebral chap who knows the EU and its institutions back to front. But what he is not is someone who is a natural at driving a hard bargain. As one insider says, ‘he’s not a tough negotiator like Cunliffe’, a reference to

An old Washington cliche has it that a gaffe is what happens when a politician inadvertently blurts out the truth or, in a variation on the theme, reveals what he really thinks. Enter Lord Howell. In ordinary circumstances Peer Says Something Daft might be thought as newsworthy as Friday Follows Thursday but Lord Howell is not some backwoods eccentric. He’s a former cabinet minister and, more pertinently, George Osborne’s father-in-law. Perhaps this should not matter but it does just as there’s a certain frisson felt when David Cameron’s father-in-law criticises government policy. So Lord Howell’s remarks that fracking be concentrated in the dismal desolate shires of northern England are interesting because they appear to confirm what

Lord Howell has got himself into a spot of fracking bother this afternoon. The Newcastle Chronicle reports that George Osborne’s father-in-law says fracking should be carried out in ‘unhabituated and desolate areas’. Nothing too controversial about that, except Howell singled out the north east of England, where there is apparently ‘plenty of room’. Howell — an energy secretary under Margaret Thatcher — said at Lords’ questions: ‘I mean there obviously are, in beautiful natural areas, worries about not just the drilling and the fracking, which I think are exaggerated, but about the trucks, and the delivery, and the roads, and the disturbance, and those about justified worries. ‘But there are