Uk politics

Thursday

James Forsyth

The Tory party are finally going to have to decide about Europe. It’ll break them

By the time the G8 is next held in this country, the United Kingdom may well have left the European Union. In the next eight years, the question of whether Britain is in or out will be settled. We know that if David Cameron is Prime Minister after the next election, that decision will be made in 2017. But whoever is in No. 10, a referendum is coming. When it comes, the Tory party will have to decide whether it is for exit or staying in. Either way, it is hard to see the party staying together. On Monday, we had a preview of the coming argument. David Cameron gave

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

George Osborne’s Lloyds sale will be all about votes – just as Mervyn King warned

When a politician’s speech is spun ten days in advance, you know there’s trouble behind the scenes. Next week’s Mansion House dinner will be seen by City attendees principally as a farewell to Sir Mervyn King — and journalists present (including your columnist) will be timing the ovation to see how it compares with Eddie George’s full five minutes in 2003. But we learn that the Chancellor is ‘poised’ to use the occasion to ‘signal’ a public offer of Lloyds Banking Group shares that could raise up to £17 billion and mark a turning point in the post-crisis clean-up of the banking sector. By giving discounts to small investors, it

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Energy special: It’s decision time on shale gas

‘UK shale Eldorado just off the M62’, declared the Financial Times, reporting a huge gas find below Cheshire. Shale gas is natural gas trapped in beds of underground shale; it can be released by hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’, which means pumping water, sand and chemicals into the shale under high pressure. That much we know for sure — but we also know that Eldorado, the city of gold lost in South America’s rainforests, turned out to be one of the world’s great myths. Had the FT forgotten, or was it issuing a coded warning? Either way, it provided a reminder that the scale, viability and dangers of the ‘shale gas

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Stephen Hester’s departure: who would want the RBS job?

I do not envy the search committee tasked with finding a new CEO for RBS after Stephen Hester’s departure. The bank is an anomaly, publicly owned but supposedly run at arms’-length from government. However, when banking controversies hit, as they so often do, they hit RBS hardest as it is majority-owned by the taxpayer. I suspect that everyone approached for the job will be acutely aware that Hester has had to twice forego his bonus under political pressure. Hester has long argued privately that selling off a tranche of RBS shares would be a good thing, sending a signal that the bank would soon be returned to private ownership and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem sexual harassment report: what you need to know

Helena Morrissey has published her report on the allegations of sexism in the Liberal Democrats triggered by the Lord Rennard scandal. In short, she concludes that there wasn’t a cover-up, but her report suggests the party was guilty more of a cock-up. She told journalists this afternoon that ‘mistakes were definitely made by Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and Jo Swinson’, and that ‘I think the party should have done things differently’. Here are the five main points from the 59-page report on ‘Processes and culture within the Liberal Democrats and Recommendations for Change’: 1. The party failed to address complaints properly, but did not consciously cover them up. Morrissey’s report

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron wins PMQs… or does he?

Well, that was an easy Prime Minister’s Questions for David Cameron, wasn’t it? Sometimes the PM just turns up for work and knocks it out of the park. It helped, of course, that for once he had his own team cheering him along, with backbencher after backbencher leaping up to ask loyal questions. The whips will be toasting a win in their office this afternoon. The Prime Minister had some very good retorts to Ed Miliband indeed. If Labour had a good week on welfare last week, the happy feelings will have evaporated today as Cameron managed to ridicule them not just on the detail of their spending pledges –

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Conservatives to take Labour and Lib Dem MPs with them to EU renegotiation talks

Tories preparing the ground for David Cameron’s renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe are to take MPs from other parties with them as they visit European cities, Coffee House has learned. The Fresh Start Project, made up of Conservative MPs campaigning for reform of the European Union, has already visited Prague, Warsaw and Berlin to hold preliminary meetings setting out the need for change. Its next round of visits will include members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for European Reform, which is co-chaired by Fresh Start’s Andrea Leadsom and Labour’s Thomas Docherty. The Conservative MPs organising the visits think including other parties will help them secure more meetings and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories pressure Labour and Lib Dems on EU bill

Credit where credit’s due to the Tory spin machine for following up a good idea and putting pressure on Labour and the Lib Dems. This doesn’t happen very often, so it’s noteworthy. The party has launched a website called Let Britain Decide, which asks the public to back James Wharton’s private member’s bill for an EU referendum. It asks visitors to sign up to the campaign, lobby their MP, write to their local paper and brandish posters supporting the bill. A clever little paragraph on the site reads: ‘Currently, only one of the main three political parties believes the British people deserve a say on Europe: the Conservatives. They are

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The backbench hunt for Sir David Nicholson’s scalp continues

Today’s hearing of the Public Accounts Committee is going to be real box office stuff. Sir David Nicholson is giving evidence, supposedly on the NHS IT programme, but he’ll find himself confronted by Tory committee member Steve Barclay, who, armed with freedom of information evidence of 52 gagging orders in the NHS, will demand that the health service boss step down immediately. This is what Nicholson told the Health Select Committee when he gave evidence on 5 March (full transcript here): Barbara Keeley: What do you think, as chief executive of the NHS, of a loophole like that existing-where £500,000 of taxpayers’ money could be used to gag somebody who

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Forget the spies: councils want the Snooper’s Charter, too

The Tories aren’t giving up just yet on the Communications Data Bill, and Keir Starmer’s intervention, reported in the Sun this morning, will help their cause. The Director of Public Prosecutions’ letter was written before Nick Clegg announced he was blocking the legislation, and argues that ‘communications data is so important that any reduction in capability would create a real risk to future prosecutions’. The problem for the Home Office is that it needs to make the case for this legislation not just in the face of cynicism that it is really needed, which has only increased following the revelations about the NSA’s Prism programme. Ministers also need to convince

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson’s 2020 vision: 5 key points

Boy, is Boris Johnson persuasive. Not for him the anodyne policy documents that anyone else in regional or central government prefers to produce. His 2020 Vision document, launched today, is brimming with the sort of wit and turn of phrase that he deploys in his speeches and broadcasts. It says a key part of the Olympic road network ‘turned out at the eleventh hour to be about as robust as a freshly dunked digestive biscuit’, says low standards of literacy and numeracy are ‘a melancholy fact’ and a ‘savage reproach’, and offers interesting but useless facts such as ‘the world’s first traffic light arrived at the House of Commons in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Diane Abbott, darling of the reforming Right

Perhaps the Bilderberg conference has had a lasting effect on Parliament, after all. Today we saw what can only be a conspiracy between the Labour left and Michael Gove’s band of reforming right-wingers. As the Education Secretary unveiled his plans to reform GCSEs, he was accosted by Diane Abbott, rarely knowingly in agreement with much of what the Coalition is doing. But the Labour MP didn’t want to tell Gove he was wrong. She wanted to say he was right. She asked Gove whether he agreed that ‘an emphasis on rigorous qualifications and an emphasis on attaining core academic subjects is not, as is sometimes argued, contrary to the interests

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How should Labour deal with the teaching unions?

While dealing with the teaching unions is a simple stand-off for Michael Gove, spare a thought for poor old Stephen Twigg, Labour’s shadow education secretary, who has to work out how on earth to deal with the NUT and NASUWT habit of opposing everything. There is a palpable sense of frustration on the Labour frontbenches about the way the two largest unions in particular behave. Twigg has made clear that he does not support strike action planned over a general raft of discontent over many different issues, and he has opposed the work-to-rule industrial action promoted by these unions too. On performance-related pay, the unions behave as though Voldemort is

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Teaching unions: don’t reform exams, you might upset someone!

Critics and fans of Michael Gove alike accept that sometimes the Education Secretary can be a little too pugnacious. He often encourages the pantomime boos that accompany him, and will throw himself into any fight with gusto. But then the representatives of the leading teaching unions pop up to criticise his reforms, and it becomes very clear how Gove ended up like this. Christine Blower’s interview on the Today programme was one notable example. The NUT general secretary argued that grades hadn’t necessarily been devalued, and that the reforms might devalue the achievements of those children who have already passed their exams. She said: ‘We think this is slightly rushed

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Yeo steps aside: how Parliament could improve its reputation with a simple rule change

As Fraser reported earlier, Tim Yeo has stepped aside from the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee chairmanship following the Sunday Times’ sting this weekend. What’s astonishing is not his decision this evening, but that he even had the opportunity to chair the committee when he had quite so many declared interests in the sector. It is a story that Guido Fawkes has been hammering away at for months. Paul Goodman made the very sensible suggestion on ConHome at the weekend that while there is nothing wrong with run-of-the-mill backbenchers having outside interests, select committee chairmen should be barred from having any interests that might conflict with their role leading

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Trust me, I’m a Foreign Secretary, says William Hague on Prism

William Hague’s statement on Prism was a masterclass in not answering the question. Hague calmly, but determinedly, stuck to the line that he wasn’t going to comment on leaks — which made the whole statement slightly pointless as it was being given in response to a leak. His whole approach was ‘trust me’, which will work with those who do trust me but do nothing to reassure those who don’t trust him, government or the security services. Hague begun by dropping a heavy hint that attacks on the Olympics had been foiled by GCHQ/NSA cooperation. He also went out of his way to deny the accusation that GCHQ and the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ken Clarke keeps Bilderberg secrets close to his (reptilian) chest

What an afternoon it has been for conspiracy lovers. First the Speaker summoned Ken Clarke to the Commons to answer an urgent question from arch theorist Michael Meacher about the Bilderberg meeting, and then MPs took it in turns to ask William Hague whether the Prism allegations meant they were under surveillance from the state. It was quite difficult to distinguish between the two, given we learnt little from either. First, Bilderberg. MPs arrived hoping that the scales would fall from their eyes as the minister revealed the great secrets of this high-powered conference. ‘The people who attend change slightly each year,’ explained Clarke, presumably referring to their metamorphosis into

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Finally, the Tory whips are cracking down on open dissent

Lurk around the Palace of Westminster today and you might hear a strange creaking noise. It’s not the Commons air conditioning, which has broken and is making appropriately eerie noises ahead of an urgent question on the Bilderberg meeting. No, that creaking sound is the Tory Whips’ Office finally limbering up to do something about wayward MPs. Sir George Young summoned backbencher Andrew Bridgen for an urgent meeting today after his letter of no confidence was leaked to the Mail on Sunday and he wrote an op-ed for the same paper saying ‘there is a credibility problem with the current leader’ and that the current situation was ‘like being in

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Ed Balls is right: it’s time to think again about pensioners

You can accuse Ed Balls of a great many things (and we do), but he doesn’t do gaffes. His interviews are always worth paying close attention to, because every soundbite is carefully-considered, weighed for its political potency and constantly reused. Anyone who missed his interview with Andrew Neil yesterday should catch it (here) because – like Ben Brogan – I suspect it marks a new direction in UK economic debate: that pensioners’ benefits should be subject to cuts, like everything else. The curious way that George Osborne conducts his economic policy – as a constant game of chess against a political opponent – confers great power on Ed Balls. What

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Three questions for William Hague on PRISM

William Hague will come to the House of Commons today to offer some answers on the US National Security Agency’s PRISM programme. Here are three key questions MPs will want answered: What can he tell the Commons about how such an exchange of information could work? Douglas Alexander told Today he will be asking for information on the legal framework governing the UK access to information from the programme. Hague said yesterday that he could neither confirm nor deny that he was aware of PRISM, but he will still be asked about how interactions between the intelligence agencies are regulated. Are they able to circumvent British law by approaching the