Uk politics

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem conference 2013: The key rows to watch

Nick Clegg is, on balance, starting his party’s conference in a reasonably strong position. There has been an amusing bitch fight today between party grandees, with Paddy Ashdown saying that ‘Matthew [Oakeshott]’s self-appointed position as a sort of vicar on earth for Vince does neither of them any good’, but largely Clegg can expect to at least arrive in Glasgow without any suggestions that this is a crucial conference for him. There will, however, be some bumps in the road over the next couple of days. The Lib Dem leader isn’t facing a leadership challenge, but he still has challenges to his authority as leader to weather: and they come

Sebastian Payne

Not even Conservative MPs want to attend their own party conference

Party conference season kicks off this weekend, but who is actually going? A ComRes poll out today suggests 38 per cent of Conservative backbenchers will be unlikely to attend their party’s annual gathering in Manchester. 14 per cent of Labour MPs have also stated they won’t be attending but thankfully for the Lib Dems, everyone polled said they would be probably or definitely be going: Why is this a particular problem for the Tories? In this week’s Spectator cover feature, Ross Clark examines the plight of all parties and their conferences. He argues the Conservative party is now more akin to a rural bus service: ‘The website ConservativeHome (which now

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Oakeshott attack on Nick Clegg highlights how safe the Lib Dem leader is

The Lib Dems have had a lot to get used to since coming into government: not least the growth of their conference from something that members could stroll in and out of with their knitting needles, and that only the most junior hacks were sent to. But only three years into holding conferences as a party of government, they’re starting to notice a pattern. Firstly, there will be a bit of rabble-rousing from the party’s president Tim Farron, who will drop some flirtatious hints about Labour, his heart beating on the left and how the Tories are a bit naughty. Then Vince Cable will say something a bit melancholy. Then

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Ed Miliband: weak, weird and out of his depth

The next election is going to be close. Very close, according to new polling from YouGov. When asked which government they would prefer after the next election, 41 per cent said a Conservative government led by David Cameron compared to 40 per cent for a Labour government led Ed Miliband. This does not mean Miliband is gaining momentum. In July, Labour had a 13 point lead in YouGov polls. Today, it has more than halved to just six points. The Times puts this down (£) to the Labour leader himself. The polling suggests he’s seen as weak, out of his depth and weird. When asked for three words to describe

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: I will scold Barroso for lecturing my party

José Manuel Barroso’s comments about euroscepticism might have revealed something rather warped about the Eurocrat mindset, but it has also provided quite an opportunity for David Cameron to show his party where his own loyalties lie. This afternoon the Prime Minister told Iain Dale’s LBC show that he planned to have a ‘pretty robust’ exchange with with the President of the European Commission. He said: ‘You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth in this job, and I sometimes tell other people what to do and sometimes people give you a bit of advice as well. I mean, the Barroso thing did annoy me, because frankly, you know, his

Frank Field

Time’s up for today’s welfare state

Welfare as we know it is doomed to defeat. It looks like going down to defeat from three major challenges, and each challenge comes from the sea change that is now so marked in public opinion. First, welfare has moved from one based on the duty to contribute before the right to help was conceded. Increasingly benefits are provided only after a test of income. Voters do not approve of this significant change. The next challenge comes from an increasing reluctance by voters to pay an ever growing share of their income in taxes, of which the largest part goes to a form of welfare with which they strongly disagree

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour get attacks in early on Toby Young

Toby Young has rattled some Labour cages by publicly mooting a bid for the Tory nomination for Hammersmith. ‘Z List Toryboy celebrity Toby Young wants to be an MP’ spins a Labour adviser Imran Ahmed. Then came the hammer blow: ‘Think he’s gotten House of Commons mixed up with Big Brother house.’ Oh, that one will hurt. Should have saved it for the leaflets! So who is Ahmed? Well he last hit the headlines after he was accused of ghost-writing tweets for his old boss Andy Slaughter – the Labour MP for Hammersmith. Could he be speaking with Slaughter’s voice again?

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Nick Clegg is heading to Glasgow in good spirits

Look at the polls and you’d think that Nick Clegg’s circle would be down in the dumps. But, as I say in the magazine this week, they actually head to Glasgow in good spirits. Why, because Clegg’s position as party leader is secure and another hung parliament remains the most likely result of the next election. If in May 2010, you’d said that Clegg would back a strike on a Middle Eastern country without a UN mandate and then lost a House of Commons vote on the issue with 24 of his 57 MPs not backing him on it, we’d have assumed that he’d have been toast. But Clegg’s position

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Two weeks after his Syria defeat, David Cameron looks less wounded than many thought

It’s two weeks since David Cameron looked rather sick in the House of Commons and Labour MPs jeered ‘resign’ following his defeat on Syria. On that night, all sorts of wild predictions were flying around about what this meant for the Prime Minister. But even some of the more sanguine commentary looked rather misplaced this week when Cameron was able to stand up at PMQs and produce a range of punchy jokes about how weak Ed Miliband was. Could a Prime Minister who had just lost a vote on a matter of war really call the leader of the opposition weak? Cameron’s wounds have healed a little quicker than many

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Yes, Royal Mail should be privatised.

In this morning’s post: enticing offers from McDonald’s, Domino’s pizza, Sainsbury’s a local clothes shop and a children’s charity. Arriving later today: a couriered parcel from Amazon.  That’s often the reality of the modern British postal service. The Royal Mail delivers things you don’t want; private companies deliver the things you do. Which is one reason why all the arguments citing the fact that Margaret Thatcher – sorry, even Margaret Thatcher – thought privatising the Royal Mail a step too far are cute but utterly irrelevant. It’s a different world now. One in which if things are to stay the same they must change. And so, on balance, the partial privatisation of

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Andrew Mitchell is still waiting for justice

A week ago next Thursday marks the first anniversary of the Curious Incident of the Chief Whip in the Night-time. The chief whip, Andrew Mitchell, did nothing — or very little — in the night-time. That was the curious incident. There is not the slightest evidence that he called the policemen on the gates of Downing Street ‘plebs’; and this has now been admitted. It is clear, with plenty of evidence on Channel 4 News, that some police, with some accomplices, spread a story against Mr Mitchell, possibly to protect themselves against an expected complaint from him after they refused to let him through the gates on his bicycle. As

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22: the end of political parties, RBS and Lib Dem conference preview

Have political parties had their day? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Ross Clark and Fraser Nelson debate whether party conferences are now pointless, filled with lobbyists not members, and whether parties no longer have a purpose. Are we entering a post-party politics? What, if anything, can be done to fix the relationship between Britain’s interest in politics and our parties? The Telegraph’s Iain Martin also discusses the breakup of RBS with the publication of his new book Making It Happen this week. What did RBS fail in such a spectacular fashion? How strong was the Scottish connection to the financial crash? Was Fred the Shred entirely responsible? What

Nigel Farndale

The importance of not being called Nigel

You know what the real problem with Nigel Farage is? It’s not his politics, for they are a matter of personal taste. No, it’s something more objective. His name. And not that improbable surname, either, the one that makes him sound like a Bond villain. It’s the Nigel. There’s a passage in Julian Barnes’s novel Talking It Over which summarises the problem nicely. One of the characters, Oliver, used to be called Nigel until he changed his name by deed poll. ‘You can’t go through the whole of your life being called Nigel, can you?’ he explains. ‘You can’t even go through a whole book being called Nigel. Some names

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Cameron lands the blows with cheesy jokes

David Cameron managed to win Prime Minister’s Questions today by shoehorning in a series of smart one-liners about Ed Miliband’s leadership. It says a lot about how the Prime Minister has managed to recover quite impressively from his defeat over Syria that he has been able to continue his ‘weak’ attack line. On that Thursday night in the Commons when the government lost its vote, it seemed that Cameron was dangerously weakened. Today he threw out jokes about Miliband having ‘folded faster than a Bournemouth deck chair’, that the Labour leader ‘went to Bournemouth and he completely bottled it’ and that ‘he told us it was going to be Raging

Sebastian Payne

Patrick McLoughlin: we don’t need HS2 for speed

Finally, an HS2 argument from the government that isn’t entirely based on speculative forecasts or political positioning. The transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin has given a speech at the Institution of Civil Engineers this morning, taking on HS2’s growing number of critics. Of course, it wouldn’t be a transport speech without some economic forecasts. The Department for Transport have released a new report from KPMG, suggesting the line will lead to a £15 billion annual boost to the economy. But the overall theme is about making the HS2 debate about capacity: ‘The reason we need HS2 isn’t for its speed…the benefits of faster journeys are easy to explain. But the main

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Eeyore Cable undermines George Osborne by echoing his comments on the economy

Poor Vince Cable. He just can’t help but brim with joy about the economy. He’s often spotted skipping across Parliament square to the Business department, humming ‘Oh, Happy Day!’ under his breath at the latest set of GDP figures. George Osborne and Cable’s Tory colleagues are always having to tell Vince to calm down a bit: he doesn’t want to seem too complacent about the clouds lifting from the economy. But even such a joyful Lib Dem as Dr Cable must have been a little dispirited to read that everyone has written his speech this morning up as an attempt to undermine George Osborne. ‘I think George Osborne’s comments the

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans resigns following sex charges

The Conservative MP for Ribble Valley Nigel Evans has resigned as Deputy Speaker following an announcement he will be charged with offences including sexual assault, indecent assault and rape. The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement this evening: ‘Following an investigation by Lancashire police, the Crown Prosecution Service has received a file of evidence in the case of Mr Nigel Evans MP which concerns allegations of a sexual nature. ‘After careful consideration, we have concluded that there is sufficient evidence and that it is in the public interest to prosecute Mr Evans. Lancashire Constabulary has therefore been authorised to charge two counts of indecent assault, five counts of sexual assault

Sebastian Payne

Who donates what to the Labour party?

Who donates to Labour? It’s a question asked countless times since Ed Miliband began to reconsider his party’s links with the trade unions but there has been much confusion over the numbers, in particular the importance to Labour of union funding. Here’s a quick guide to who donates how much to the Labour party. 1. How much do Labour receive in donations? In 2012, Labour received £19 million in donations, which is roughly the same as the year before and in 2008, a similar point in the electoral cycle. It’s still down from £25 million at the last general election: For comparison, the Conservative party received £14 million in 2012

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband avoids a showy showdown with the unions

When Ed Miliband peaks, he really knows how to do it. His speech at last autumn’s Labour conference was magnificent. Given the pressure on him to convince the unions to back his reforms to their links to the Labour party, you’d expect he’d have picked today’s address to the Trades Union Congress conference to deliver another blinder. Sadly today was not a peak in the range of Miliband speeches. Sure, he produced a vaguely funny joke about a chap called ‘Red Ed’ who was in fact the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Stanley. Miliband told the conference that Stanley was ‘the man who first legislated to allow trade unions in this

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The lobbying bill is a pernicious attack on freedom. All good men (and women) should oppose it.

Sometimes, you know, I come close to despair. These are the times when you think the Reverend I.M Jolly was right. About everything. I mean, you could read Benedict Brogan’s column in today’s Telegraph and think that with friends like these the free press – to say nothing of the freedoms of the ordinary citizen – have no need for enemies. To begin with, the headline is not encouraging. Shining a light on the shadowy figures who shape our politics. It’s just a little too close to the sort of thing you might find in a BNP newsletter. But perhaps, you may think, as is so often the case the headline is a