Uk politics

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Small island will need to talk big on Syrian aid

Even though Vladimir Putin slotted Syria into the G20 agenda last night, no-one seriously thought that this meant the world leaders would come to a proper agreement on what to do about the conflict. In the last few minutes, David Cameron has told journalists covering the summit that ‘divisions are too great’ for a deal, and that Russia wants further evidence that the Assad regime was behind the terrible attack in August. George Osborne was on the Today programme earlier discussing the summit. He said: ‘We’ve set out what we think is the right response, obviously President Obama has set out what he wants to do and there is a

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Dot Wordsworth: We’ve been self-whipping since 1672

Isabel Hardman of this parish explained after last week’s government defeat that a deluded theory among the party leadership had held that Tory backbenchers were now self-whipping. When she aired this opinion on Radio 4, Michael White of the Guardian did a Frankie Howerd-style, ‘Ooh, Missus!’ routine. Surprisingly, self-whipping is no neologism. The satirical Nonconformist clergyman Robert Wild, in a poem on Charles II’s declaration of indulgence in 1672, refers to the ‘self-whippings, of the Popish Priests’. He meant the use of the discipline for ascetic motives. This was equally frowned upon by the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The calm, familiar hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ was

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Liam Byrne’s vulture strategy

David Aaronovitch’s furious Times column this morning described Ed Miliband as a vulture, swooping down on problems caused by this government rather than leading. If he wanted another example of how this leadership style has affected the rest of the Labour party, he could have done worse than to attend the Commons urgent question on universal credit this morning. There, Liam Byrne attacked Iain Duncan Smith’s handling of the project, saying: ‘What I want to say to the Secretary of State, however, is this: he has let this House form a picture of universal credit, which the nation’s auditor’s say is wrong. The most charitable explanation is that he has

Sebastian Payne

Michael Gove: I deplore the teaching unions, but not striking teachers

With the upcoming teaching unions’ strikes, is Michael Gove battling the teachers? Just days after the new school term has begun, the unions have announced the dates of the strikes — including one in the middle of the Tory conference — while blaming the Education Secretary for not listening to the concerns of their members. As Christine Blower, general secretary of the NUT, said on the World at One today: ‘With pay, pensions and working conditions being systematically attacked and an education secretary who refuses to listen or negotiate teachers now have no other choice’  listen to ‘Michael Gove & Christine Blower on the teaching unions’ strikes’ on Audioboo

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith turns up the jargon on universal credit

Iain Duncan Smith was in an aggressive mood when he appeared before MPs this morning to explain the latest awkward report on universal credit to the Commons. He combined his anger with a plethora of jargon. This made for an interesting debate, as it’s very difficult to sound punchy and angry while talking about ‘agile processes’, ‘roll-outs’ and ‘pathfinders’ (although mercifully he didn’t use ‘pathfinder as a verb’, as he and other colleagues have in the past). listen to ‘Iain Duncan Smith defends his welfare reforms in the Commons.’ on Audioboo At one point the Work and Pensions Secretary forcefully told MPs that he was looking at ‘rolling out in the

The Spectator

Toby Young: Should I be an MP?

In this week’s Spectator, columnist Toby Young toys with the idea of standing as a Conservative candidate in in Hammersmith. He examines the factors stacked against any chance of success, and the reasons he has for standing: Suppose I won. Then what? I’d be faced with the pride-swallowing siege that is the life of a newly elected MP. Forget about affairs of state. The only decision I’d have to make would be who to suck up to more, George Osborne or John Bercow? Neither prospect fills me with joy. Being a backbench MP is drudge work for the most part and I’d have to take a salary cut to do

Peter Lilley

Parliament has finally woken up – because voters are keeping their MPs in line

They should have seen it coming. A government defeat on an issue of war may be unprecedented, but defeat on the Syria vote did not come out of the blue. You can certainly blame poor party management, failure to prepare the ground, underestimating the poisonous legacy of Iraq — but such failings are common enough. The biggest single factor is one that ministers, the media and MPs themselves have failed to understand: Parliament has changed. The consensus has long been that Parliament no longer matters. It is assumed to be the docile creature of the government, full of spineless or ambitious MPs who are the slaves of the party whips.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

William Hague tells the 1922 that ‘lessons will be learned’ from Syria vote

William Hague’s appearance at the 1922 Committee has underlined the fact that the Tory party is now split on foreign policy. I’m told that the questions that the Foreign Secretary received were pretty much evenly split between the passionate supporters of intervention in Syria and its passionate opponents. Those present calculate that the room was evenly split between the two factions. Hague, I understand, made a robust case for why Britain needs to remain an outward looking nation that is prepared to use its military forces. But he did say, when asked, that ‘lessons will be learned’ from how the Syria vote was handled. This answer will fuel Westminster speculation

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: does David Cameron have any idea of MPs’ real concerns with the Lobbying Bill?

There’s nothing wrong with the Prime Minister turning up to PMQs with a snappy line that he wants those watching to remember. But sometimes as the exchanges wear on, the risk grows that the clever line isn’t going to get a showing because the questions haven’t been quite right. And so the line gets shoehorned into an answer that isn’t quite relevant. Take today’s question from Margaret Beckett on the lobbying bill that last night some Tory MPs decided to vote against. Beckett asked: ‘Why does the PM believe that his plans to restrict lobbying are opposed by organisations from the Salvation Army, Countryside Alliance, Oxfam, the British Legion and so

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘To sack Jesse Norman over a moral issue like whether to support war is outrageous’

Jesse Norman’s departure from the policy board hasn’t come as a huge surprise to many Tory MPs: I was with one after the vote who was subjecting his twitter feed to a lengthy examination to work out whether Norman was stranded overseas. The only evidence available was that Norman went to a beer festival on 26 August and found out about the recall from the BBC and Easyjet. ‘I love beer festivals, but I also know when to turn up,’ grumbled the MP. It would have been a terrible message to send to other backbenchers if Norman hadn’t been moved from his job. This is a sign of Number 10

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Jesse Norman to leave No.10 policy board after Syria vote

Jesse Norman is to leave the Number 10 policy board after abstaining in last week’s vote on Syria, I have learned. It was made clear to the Tory MP, who is known to have disagreed with the government’s position on Syria, that this was an inevitable consequence of avoiding a three-line whip vote. But I understand that the decision was made more in sorrow than in anger, and sources hope the path back for Norman will be a quick one. An announcement on his replacement will be made shortly. The policy board hasn’t, as I revealed in the politics column last week, gelled brilliantly yet, but colleagues found Norman impressive

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tom Watson: the Labour man with a plan

Ed Miliband needs to reassure his backbenchers that he does indeed have a good plan after the GMB union announced it was cutting its affiliation funds to the party by 90 per cent. But someone else already has a plan: and it looks strangely like one that will cause the Labour leader a bit of grief. Tom Watson has this morning written a blog in which he suggests that ending the link between the party and the unions ‘is a very serious development that threatens a pillar of our democracy that has endured for over one hundred years’.  He writes: ‘Over the next year we have been asked to consider

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

GMB funding blow for Labour shows need for a clear plan from Miliband

Has Labour got a plan? If it does, the GMB doesn’t like it, announcing this morning that it will cut its affiliation funds from £1.2 million to £150,000, effective from january 2014. The cut is to reflect the number of the union’s members who it estimates would choose to affiliate to the Labour party under the new reforms announced by Ed Miliband. In a statement this morning, the union said: ‘GMB CEC expressed considerable regret about the apparent lack of understanding the proposal mooted by Ed Miliband will have on the collective nature of trade union engagement with the Labour Party. ‘A further source of considerable regret to the CEC

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

No-one has any plans for a second vote on Syria, part II

Today’s Foreign Office Questions was a far classier affair than yesterday’s rather snippy session with Philip Hammond on Defence. William Hague chose not to tell Labour that they had no authority when talking about Syria, instead choosing to focus on the humanitarian situation that Britain can still do something about. His first answer was as follows: ‘The United Nations has announced that there are now 2 million Syrian refugees in the region. The United Kingdom is already the second largest donor, supporting more than 900,000 Syrians, and we will do more. The president of the Syrian National Coalition will visit London on Thursday, when we will discuss further support to

Sebastian Payne

How can Labour respond to the rapid rise and popularity of free schools?

As the new school year begins, the Department for Education has announced 93 new free schools are opening — more than double opened last September — creating 46,000 new places. With a total of 174 free schools now open, the evidence suggests Michael Gove’s free school programme is taking off. This is how many have opened since the election: But though free schools are flourishing, there’s still a squeeze underway.  The Local Government Association today warns that half of the school districts in England will run out of places within two years due to ‘unnecessary restrictions’ on councils: ‘Its analysis of local authority data suggests about 1,000 of the 2,277

Ryan Bourne

Increasing the minimum wage will only harm the lowest paid

‘If you earn £6 an hour flipping burgers then Allegra might have good news for you,’ said Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight yesterday. Paxman was of course introducing the mooted Conservative Party policy idea to increase the minimum wage, a story reported by Allegra Stratton. Stratton responded: ‘We’ve learnt that the Prime Minister’s advisors are thinking of turning Tory policy on its head and raising the minimum wage – not yet, but some time before the next election.’ For me, this brief exchange and the rest of the Newsnight piece reflected the state of the debate on this issue in the UK. First, Jeremy Paxman assumed that those flipping burgers would

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Andrew Lansley: we can’t afford to delay the Lobbying Bill

For a bill purportedly about transparency, the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill has quite a lot of muddied water swirling around it at the moment. Leader of the House Andrew Lansley is currently giving evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on the legislation, which many fear has all sorts of unintended consequences (it’s worth reading Mark Wallace on ConHome for more detail on the potential problems). But the chair of the Committee, Graham Allen, is an outspoken critic of the Bill. He thinks it’s a dog’s breakfast (Douglas Carswell recently went one better, saying ‘far more thought has gone into pet nutrition’, and Paul

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Game of Numbers: Pollsters Go To War in Scotland

On Sunday an opinion poll was just a poll. Nothing to be too excited by. Unreliable too. The real poll – the one that counts – is still a year away. So put not your faith in numbers. Disappointment that way lies. On Monday the mood in the Scottish nationalist camp changed. Opinion polls now offered a persuasive and necessary reminder that Scotland’s on the march. A march that ends in freedom and liberty and whisky next September as an ancient country reasserts her prerogatives  and takes here rightful place in the family of nations once again. Polls are pure dead brilliant, don’t you know? From which you will gather

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

CCHQ is already carrying out Andy Coulson’s GQ advice on Ukip

The Conservative party may have lost its summer momentum, but at least it isn’t worrying about Ukip at the moment. Former spin chief Andy Coulson is doing some worrying in this month’s GQ on the Tory party’s behalf, warning that the party needs an even stronger message on Europe to counter the threat of Nigel Farage’s party. But some of his advice will hearten CCHQ, as spinners and researchers are already ahead of Coulson. The article says: ‘UKIP must be taken seriously so as to expose just how empty-headed it really is. Every utterance must be recorded and analysed, every speech given proper attention by some of the bigger, more

Monday

Sebastian Payne

Could making Whitehall smaller, better, faster, stronger save £70 billion?

The government could save £70 billion from the Whitehall spending bill by moving into a new digitised age. That’s the gist of a new report from Policy Exchange, detailing the amount of archaic waste that exists in the civil service. Some of the examples in the Smaller, Better, Faster, Stronger report are astounding — the Crown Prosecution Service prints one million sheets of paper every day. Two articulated lorries loaded with letters and paperwork drive into the DVLA every day. Policy Exchange suggests many of these wasteful paper-based services could be taken to a central online location, aka the GOV.UK website. Bringing the government’s online presence into once place has been divisive. I think it’s a great example of