Uk politics

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Tories go public with EU referendum bill

This story broke as an exclusive in tonight’s Coffee House Evening Blend, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political stories. Click here to subscribe. The Conservatives will table James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill for an EU referendum tonight for publication tomorrow. Coffee House has exclusive details of the changes to this piece of legislation, and a clever new plan by the party to make the most of this backbench bill as possible. The bill has been amended following extensive talks between Wharton and Conservative backbenchers about its wording. It now includes a requirement for the Secretary of State to announce the date of the referendum by the end

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Syria crisis: debate turns to shoulda, woulda, coulda on tactics

The debate about the Syrian crisis is now as much about shoulda, woulda, coulda, as it is about what can happen now. Douglas Alexander’s response to the G8 communique this afternoon said: ‘This statement begs the question whether a different diplomatic approach by the Prime Minister, not focusing so much effort on lifting the arms embargo, but instead engaging the Russians at an earlier stage, could have resulted in a different and more positive outcome.’ So Labour would not have started from here. Beyond that Alexander isn’t clear about when that golden opportunity for engaging the Russians was, and whether he really believes that there was a point at which

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cable and Willetts: the house-trained ministers?

There are few worse insults for a minister than to be called ‘house trained’. It implies that the vested interests of your department have you under their thumb. So, Vince Cable and David Willetts should be rather alarmed that one notoriously left-wing academic is boasting that they pretty much are. In an article in Times Higher Education, Martin McQuillan of Kingston University describes the pair as ‘mostly house-trained.’ One person involved in the whole spending review conundrum irritably pointed me towards the McQuillan piece when asked how things were going with BIS. McQuillan’s essay is really a long screed against Michael Gove. His agenda is to stop universities being put

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

G8: leaders agree Lough Erne declaration and Syria communique

Remember that last communique signed at a summit of world leaders, the really challenging one that they’re all worried they will never meet in reality? You don’t? How strange. David Cameron mused at the weekend that these agreements that take days to draft end up in an ‘elephant’s graveyard’, and to try to show that his rolled up sleeves are having an effect on this G8 summit in Lough Erne, he has insisted on a 10-point ‘declaration’ signed by the leaders. Here it is: Private enterprise drives growth, reduces poverty, and creates jobs and prosperity for people around the world. Governments have a special responsibility to make proper rules and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ken Clarke reignites What Would Thatcher Do? to argue for an ‘In’ referendum vote

Those cracking jokes about bears visiting the woods following Ken Clarke’s latest warning about the dangers of Britain leaving the EU miss the point. The former Chancellor and Minister without Portfolio is firstly echoing the stance of his boss, rather than briefing against him, and is secondly continuing to plug away at the case for ‘In’ which has struggled to gain as much momentum and noise as that for leaving. The Europhile faction of the Conservative party has been very poor at organising itself and going on the attack thus far. Clarke uses yesterday’s official opening of talks on the EU/US bilateral trade deal to warn in today’s Telegraph that

Monday

Isabel Hardman

School choice is not a scandal: Gove nails Twigg’s rum brand of localism

Michael Gove is naturally having some fun with Stephen Twigg’s schools speech. The Education Secretary has responded to Twigg’s plan for ‘parent academies’ by saying: ‘Labour’s policy on free schools is so tortured they should send in the UN to end the suffering. On the one hand Stephen Twigg says he will end the free school programme, but on the other he says he would set up ‘parent-led’ and ‘teacher-led academies’ – free schools under a different name. As Andrew Adonis has said this morning, “free schools are academies without a predecessor school”. When is a free school not a free school? When Stephen Twigg is trying to appease the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How central government could slim down – and why it probably won’t

The Treasury is entering its last minute negotiations with recalcitrant departments ahead of next week’s spending review announcement. But for all the talk of ‘difficult decisions’, the settlement doesn’t look as though it will take some of the more difficult decisions about the shape of government itself. In a Free Enterprise Group paper published today, Tory MP Dominic Raab argues that ministers should be looking for savings by scrapping departments altogether, not coming to settlements which merely maintain the current messy setup. Raab argues that Britain has many more government departments than other developed countries such as the US, Germany and Sweden. He seems quite keen to rule himself off

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour is after the Tories’ localism crown

Stephen Twigg is, as he probably expected, coming in for a bit of flak on his U-turn on free schools this morning. Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary has launched his own plan for ‘parent academies’, which Toby Young and James Kirkup have had some fun with here. But he is basically doing what Lord Adonis has long hoped the party would do, accepting that free schools are a variant of the last Labour government’s academies programme anyway. He just needed to find a new brand that wouldn’t send the teaching unions into orbit. But what’s interesting is that Twigg also devoted large sections of his speech to trying to steal the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

William Hague: There are ‘no palatable options’ in Syria

While the G8 begins today with splits already clear on Syria, David Cameron will be aware, as he sits down for talks with world leaders, that the splits in his own Parliament are becoming increasingly vocal. It’s not just Boris Johnson’s column in today’s Telegraph in which the Mayor of London warns that ‘we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs’. Tory MPs have started openly discussing the lack of support for arming the rebels. Johnson’s intervention could be read by some as yet another attempt to undermine the PM who appears to be considering arming the rebels out of a deep personal conviction, given

Sunday

James Forsyth

Cameron wants to change the military balance in Syria, but how do you do that without arming the Islamists?

David Cameron and Vladimir Putin have just concluded their pre G8 talks, the main topic of which was Syria. Cameron wants to use the next few days to try and persuade the Russians to stop backing Assad; the weapons they’ve been sending him have enabled him to gain the upper hand on the rebels militarily. Cameron instinctively wants to do something about the slaughter in the Levant for both strategic and moral reasons. As one figure intimately involved in British policy making on Syria told me earlier, ‘The one certainty is that, if nothing is done, not only will lives be lost, not only will Assad not negotiate, but we

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Parliament get a vote on Syria? PM says ‘basically yes’

David Cameron is far more optimistic than Nick Clegg about arming the Syrian rebels: that much has been clear for a while. He explained why he’s optimistic on Sky’s Murnaghan programme this morning, arguing that if the West doesn’t work with the ‘good’ rebels, then the ‘bad’ rebels will have more of an opportunity to flourish. He said: ‘I want to help the Syrian opposition to succeed and my argument is this: yes there are elements of the Syrian opposition that are deeply unsavoury, that are very dangerous, very extremist and I want nothing to do with them. I’d like them driven out of Syria. They’re linked to al Qaeda.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Someone has got to win the next election

It is easy to make a case for why all three main parties should do badly at the next election. After five years of austerity, who will vote for the Tories who didn’t in 2010? And how will they stop those dissatisfied with the compromises of coalition from sloping off to Ukip? As for Labour, why would the public want to put them back in charge just five years after booting them out? This question has special force given that the Labour leadership is so identified with that failed belief that boom and bust had been ended. Then, there’s the Liberal Democrats—they’ve alienated their left-leaning supporters and lost their status

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tony Blair is pessimistic about the chances that Europe will change

Tony Blair has plenty to say on the crisis in Syria in his interview in today’s Times, as you might expect. But he also makes a few points on other aspects of foreign policy that are worth noting, particularly regarding Europe. The former Prime Minister tells Alice Thompson and Rachel Sylvester that David Cameron was wrong to offer a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. He says: ‘We should at least pause for thought on this. I can tell you, people around the world now ask about this constantly, with an air of incredulity that Britain should even think of such a thing. Europe will be a lot

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Where the teaching unions have a good point

The teaching unions have spent a lot of this week getting angry about one thing or another, but one of their number, the National Association of Head Teachers, did make a good point yesterday when reacting to Ofsted’s report on bright kids. Russell Hobby, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers – not the most aggressive of the unions – said: ‘However, the government’s league table culture deserves a measure of the blame for this situation. For too long, schools have been forced into the middle ground, to get students over thresholds at the expense of both the most and least able. Education has become a numbers game,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why Defence Secretaries go native

When Philip Hammond was sent to the Ministry of Defence, his skills as a bean counter were much lauded. Colleagues hoped that he wouldn’t, like other Defence Secretaries, go native. He quite obviously has done that, and quicker than many thought, holding out as the strongest shop steward of the National Union of Ministers in the 2015/16 Spending Review negotiations. His case may well be boosted by General Sir Peter Wall’s intervention on Jeff Randall’s programme last night – the head of the Army warned that further cuts could damage the force’s ‘professional competence’ – but Hammond’s own interview on the same programme is worth watching as well. When asked

Thursday

The Spectator

Theresa May’s Reform speech: full text

This is the full text of a speech delivered this week by Home Secretary Theresa May to the Reform think tank. We’re delivering more with less – so let’s have the courage of our convictions Thank you.  A year or two ago I appeared on ‘Question Time’, and before the filming Shirley Williams introduced me to somebody.  “This is Theresa May,” she said, “our first female Home Secretary.”  I pointed out to Shirley that Jacqui Smith was Home Secretary in 2007, three years before me.  So Shirley immediately looked at her friend and said, “This is Theresa May, our first tall female Home Secretary.” Thank you, Chris, for your more

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories toast Labour abstention plan for EU bill

From being all over the shop in the past few months when it came to message discipline, the Tories have gone into overdrive in the last two days after the launch of the Let Britain Decide website on James Wharton’s EU referendum bill. It’s now difficult to see the wood for the tweets on how the Tories are the only ones who will #letBritaindecide, and that has got a great deal worse now that Guido has published a leak of Labour’s whipping arrangements for the vote. He’s too weak and he’s too scared to #LetBritainDecide @ed_miliband orders Labour to abstain from EU referendum vote letbritaindecide.com — Julian Smith MP (@JulianSmithMP)

Sebastian Payne

Michael Gove is vindicated by Ofsted – our brightest kids are being let down

Ofsted has provided an independent boost for Michael Gove today. Just days after his plans to toughen up GCSEs were finally confirmed; a survey lambasts non-selective secondary schools for systematically failing thousands of bright children. Instead of challenging their abilities, Ofsted says the most intelligent pupils are being left to ‘tread water’. The numbers in the report back up these disturbing claims. After surveying 41 schools and observing 2,000 lessons, Ofsted says 65 per cent of high-attaining pupils at primary school failed to achieve an A* or A grade in non-selective secondary schools. A quarter of pupils (27,000) previously classified as high attaining did not achieve a B grade in

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Europe will end David Cameron’s political career

Poor old David Cameron has never been blessed with attractive options on the European front. But for a while it was possible to suppose that it might not ruin his career to anything like the degree it helped to scupper the ministries of John Major and Margaret Thatcher. That pretence is over, however. There’s a storm coming and Cameron will be shipwrecked on the Belgian coast and that will be that. A few months ago I suggested that all the talk of Tory “unity” on the European question was so much hogwash. The best that could be said was that all these clever ploys and stratagems for renegotiating Britain’s membership

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Tory plan to beat Miliband

The Tories are chuffed with yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions (the knockabout, that is, not the serious bit), and with Labour’s continuing struggle to make any impact in the polls. Earlier this week, Lynton Crosby spoke to the parliamentary party about how they should aim to beat Miliband. He told them that while Miliband is a weak leader, the way to beat him is to highlight his areas of weakness, rather than his personal flaws. This means that the party will be focusing on how Labour is faring on welfare and the economy, rather than mocking Miliband for making his colleagues coffee (which is a line David Cameron really should drop).