Uk politics

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Syria defeat: What next for David Cameron?

Having lost last night’s vote, David Cameron needs to spend today fighting back. There are quite a few ways he can do so. He can easily brush off the more excitable charges: that he faces a leadership challenge, or that Tories will come for him at party conference. They won’t. Cameron was elected to fix Britain, not Syria, and he’s doing quite well with the day job. Employment is at a record high, schools and welfare are being reformed, crime’s down. Cameron has not been defeated on a cornerstone of his foreign policy, but on a plan to join an American missile strike that may not take place. It was

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Syria defeat: what happened to the whips?

There are a number of serious implications of tonight’s result. But it’s worth briefly considering the whipping operation in the hours leading up to this vote. Firstly, there was no rebel whipping operation (as in, no backbenchers leading others to revolt, totting up numbers and issuing rebuttals of government claims) as there has been on other votes such as the Lords and EU budget and referendum rebellions, which means MPs were only being pulled away from the government position by their own instincts. Or they were being left to wander away from the government position. From the conversations I’ve had with MPs, the government whipping operation continued to be pretty

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Government LOSES Syria vote

In a surprise result this evening, the government lost its motion on Syria, with 272 MPs voting for and 285 voting against. The Prime Minister responded to the vote in the Chamber, with MPs on the Labour benches shouting ‘resign!’. He said: ‘Let me say the House has not voted for either motion tonight, I strongly believe in the need for a tough response to the use of chemical weapons, but I also believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons. It is very clear tonight that while the House has not passed a motion, it is clear to me that the British parliament reflecting the views of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour frontbencher resigns over Syria

Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick has tonight resigned from his party’s frontbench over the Syria vote, his party confirmed. The shadow transport minister told the Commons this evening that he felt his party’s amendment was still too open to military intervention. He said: ‘I have problems – for the honourable gentleman’s information – both with the Government motion and the Opposition amendment. I do not believe either is ultimately able to achieve the honourable ends that both sides of this house are trying to achieve. I’m opposed to military intervention in Syria, full stop. And to be honest with myself, and to be consistent on both questions, I will be voting

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Number 10 under fire for ‘succour’ comments

There are currently two debates raging in Parliament at the moment. One is a reasonably measured (and lengthy) exchange in the House of Commons chamber about the merits of intervening in Syria, and the merits of today’s government motion and Labour amendment on Syria. The other is in the corridors of the Palace of Westminster, around the coffee tables of Portcullis House and on MPs’ smartphones as Labour rages about the suggestion from a Number 10 source this afternoon that Ed Miliband had his colleagues are giving succour to the Assad regime. After the leaders had spoken in the Commons, a Downing Street source was asked by journalists whether Miliband

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ed Miliband’s problem is he’s trying to keep his options open on Syria

Ed Miliband’s scepticism about striking Syria puts him more in line with public opinion than David Cameron. On top of this, he’s had the better of the political manoeuvrings these past few days — forcing the Prime Minister to pull back from a straight parliamentary vote on military action. So, why then did his speech today fall so flat? Part of the problem is the nature of the Commons chamber. Tory MPs heckled and intervened on him effectively, rather throwing him off his stride. But the more fundamental problem is that Miliband is trying to keep his options open. Miliband’s opening was a strong argument against any British intervention in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron attacks Blair’s ghost in Syria debate

Tony Blair would have had less of a presence in today’s Commons debate on Syria if he’d actually turned up to it. The former Prime Minister was threaded throughout the speeches, and no more so than in David Cameron’s address to MPs. Cameron was keen to emphasise at every opportunity the difference between the government’s response to the current situation and the Blair government’s handling of the Iraq war. He was quick to refer to it, saying ‘I am deeply mindful of the lessons of previous conflicts’, and later said that Iraq ‘poisoned the well’ of public trust on military intervention. Though as James pointed out as the debate was

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Closing of the Nationalist Mind

A paper with the title Scottish Independence: Issues and Questions; Regulation, Supervision, Lender of Last Resort and Crisis Management is not one liable to set pulses racing on the streets of Auchtermuchty. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Nevertheless it is a matter of some importance. The paper, published by the David Hume Institute, was written by Professor Brian Quinn and reported upon by Bill Jamieson in today’s Scotsman. According to Quinn, who is an expert of some standing in these matters, a currency union between Scotland and the remainder of the United Kingdom would – or at least has the potential to be – sub-optimal. Actually we might already suspect that’s

Shiraz Maher

Hitting Assad – and hitting him hard – is urgent and necessary

There has been lots of debate about our impending intervention in the Syrian conflict today. Many of my Coffee House colleagues have counselled against intervention, arguing against Danny Finkelstein’s piece in the Times yesterday. I’m in broad agreement with the general sentiment of the piece, but some of its subtexts need greater illumination. Leave aside Finkelstein’s argument about omission bias. For a moment, forget the ‘complexities’ of the conflict, imbibed as it is with sectarian differences, confessional rivalries, and great power posturing. Even the discussion of what should happen next in Syria can wait for another day. The use of chemical weapons against civilians is an affront to the very

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Number 10: Ed Miliband wants to divide the nation on Syria

Even if you were wavering over whether Ed Miliband’s decision yesterday to reject the government’s motion on Syria (before it was published) was a political stunt, it’s a little more difficult to see why the Labour leader plans to continue to oppose the rewritten motion when it comes to a vote in the Commons this evening. You can read the full motion here. Number 10 is in no doubt that Labour now opposes this motion on political grounds rather than out of principle. A senior source says: ‘That just proves they are playing politics with this incredibly serious matter. They want to divide the nation on this matter and divide

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron’s retreat on Syria vote: why it happened and what it means

To be fair to David Cameron, he’s not the only leader who’s performed a volte-face in the past 24 hours. If you’d listened to Ed Miliband yesterday afternoon, you might have been forgiven for thinking that he was quite likely to support the government’s motion on Syria, so long as it was and ‘legal’ and had specific and limited aims. listen to ‘Ed Miliband: Labour would consider supporting limited action in Syria’ on Audioboo

The Spectator

The Government’s motion on Syria – and Labour’s amendment

Government motion: This House: Deplores the use of chemical weapons in Syria on 21 August 2013 by the Assad regime, which caused hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries of Syrian civilians; Recalls the importance of upholding the worldwide prohibition on the use of chemical weapons under international law; Agrees that a strong humanitarian response is required from the international community and that this may, if necessary, require military action that is legal, proportionate and focused on savings lives by preventing and deterring further use of Syria’s chemical weapons; Notes the failure of the United Nations Security Council over the last two years to take united action in response to

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour to vote against government motion on Syria

Ed Miliband has now confirmed that he will table a Labour amendment to the government’s motion on Syria, demanding that the Prime Minister return to the Commons once the UN weapons inspectors have reported, thereby delaying the main vote on intervention. And Labour will vote against the government’s motion. Whether you think this is a wise move from Miliband depends partly on whether you think he’s as worried as some in the Conservative party are about the case for intervention, the lack of evidence and the legality of it, or whether you suspect that this is more about the problems supporting intervention outright would have caused a party still haunted

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How will the Tory whips handle tomorrow’s Syria vote?

The government has yet to compose the motion that MPs will debate and vote on in tomorrow’s Commons debate on Syria. And while some MPs are making clear that they are very nervous about the prospect of intervention, many others are yet to make up their minds. This means that as they return to Parliament today and tomorrow ahead of the debate (which starts at 2.30pm), they are sitting targets for the whips. There are some MPs like John Baron who are clear that they do not support intervention. Then there are a number of independently-minded MPs like Douglas Carswell and Sarah Wollaston who aren’t worth much of a whip’s

The Spectator

David Cameron and Barack Obama’s latest call on Syria – a readout

David Cameron and Barack Obama spoke last night again about the situation in Syria. Below is a readout of the call from Number 10: ‘The PM spoke to President Obama last night to further discuss the serious response to last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria. ‘Ahead of today’s NSC, it was an opportunity for the PM to hear the latest US thinking on the issue and to set out the options being considered by the Government. ‘Both leaders agreed that all the information available confirmed a chemical weapons attack had taken place, noting that even the Iranian President and Syrian regime had conceded this. And they both agreed they

Sebastian Payne

UK government is one of the world’s top pryers into user data on Facebook and Twitter

Our government loves to snoop. Nick Cohen explained in the Spectator last year why Britain is becoming a surveillance state, and now we have an indication of how much data they have attempted to extract from social networks. Facebook has released its first figures on government requests for data on its users. As the chart below shows, the UK comes third for the amount of data requested, behind the United States and India: It’s a similar story for Twitter, whose figures from January to June 2013 show that the UK is again third for number of requests, behind the same countries as Facebook: On the internet telephoning service Skype, the

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Audio: Cameron, Clegg and Miliband on Syria and what their statements tell us

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband this afternoon gave statements on Britain’s response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria. There were important similarities between the statements which are worth examining. Here is what we learned: 1. The action must be legal. Miliband told the cameras after the meeting that ‘when I saw the Prime Minister this afternoon I said to him that we the Labour party would consider supporting international action, but only on the basis that it was legal’. Meanwhile Clegg and Cameron both insisted that the measures being considered were legal. Clegg said: ‘Any steps we will take will have to be legal. This Government,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

George Orwell’s lesson for Jamie Oliver

Jamie Oliver, eh, what a card? Why can’t Britain’s revolting poor eat better food? If they can afford televisions they can afford mussels and rocket too, don’t ya know? Something like that anyway. But instead they loaf in front of the goggle-box stuffing their fat faces with lardy ready-meals and fast food. What is to be done with them? And why can’t they be more like the Spanish or the Italians? Never mind that Italian children are more likely to be obese than British children. Never mind, too, that kids in impoverished southern Italy are more likely to be overweight than children in the wealthier north. Instead just fantasise about a

Sebastian Payne

Michael Gove’s not-so-gentle reminder to Ed Miliband

Surprise, surprise — Michael Gove doesn’t think much of Ed Miliband. To keep up the momentum on Labour’s summer of discontent, the Education Secretary gave a speech at Conservative HQ this morning, focusing on Labour’s troubled relationship with the trade unions — again. He was clearly enjoying himself as he compared the Labour leader’s present position to two of the party’s moderate forces: ‘And if anyone thinks I am asking too much I ask simply this – what would Blair do? Indeed, what would even Kinnock have done? ‘The sad truth is that – charming, intelligent, eloquent, thoughtful, generous and chivalrous as Ed Miliband may be – in this critical

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Breaking: Parliament will be recalled for a vote on Syria

David Cameron has just confirmed that Parliament will be recalled on Thursday for MPs to vote on a government motion regarding the response to the chemical attacks in Syria. In reality, it would have been very difficult for the government to do anything else. But the question now is whether the statement that is offered to MPs is enough firstly to convince wavering coalition MPs of the case for intervention (and the case for the specific intervention chosen) and secondly to convince the Labour party not to whip its MPs against the vote: something Douglas Alexander this morning warned could happen. listen to ‘Douglas Alexander on intervention in Syria’ on