Uk politics

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Not all eurosceptics are asking for more from the leadership

The Tory MPs who are unhappy with Number 10’s offer of a draft EU referendum bill have been making the most noise this morning, but there have been some interesting shifts in position from some hardline eurosceptics in the past few hours. Douglas Carswell, who is about as independently-minded as you can get, has come out all guns blazing in favour of the Prime Minister’s plan. He writes on his blog: ‘For several years, I have been agitating for the Prime Minister to offer an In / Out referendum. He’s now offering one. Cameron deserves much more credit for being the first Prime Minister in a generation to offer us

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Let’s hope Vicky Pryce’s book does teach us about prison

The departure of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce from prison yesterday has its lessons for us all, on how to make the most of adverse circumstances. Certainly that’s the happiest view of the news that Vicky Pryce is to publish a book about her experiences, called Prisonomics… yep, usefully echoing the title of her previous book, Greekonomics. That one had the merit that Ms Pryce knew quite a bit about the subject, as a Greek and an economist; but her two months at the soft end of the penal system in East Sutton Park prison in Kent may not give her much of an insight into the condition of women

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory EU turmoil allows Labour and Lib Dems to develop strong message discipline

The dizzy behaviour of the Tory party on Europe is allowing its opponents to develop an incredibly strong message discipline. This is ironic because the Labour party has its own European fault lines running through it, its own backbenchers calling for a referendum, and even some calling for a referendum bill before Cameron gets in. But the Conservative to-ing and fro-ing on the subject enable both parties to say that instead of arguing about Europe in the House of Commons, they plan to ‘focus on jobs and growth’. Norman Lamb made this point on the Today programme, saying: ‘The Lib Dems’ focus is on jobs and growth. I think people

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Tory leadership publishes draft EU referendum bill in a panic, and fails to convince backbenchers

David Cameron was trying to work out how on earth to deal with the latest Europe row in his party. He heard them demanding legislation in this parliament for a referendum in the next, and this evening, after nearly a year of letter-writing and speeches, he announced that the Tory party will publish a draft bill doing just that. They still can’t get it through Parliament through the government channels, so they’ll be putting it up for any willing backbencher (of which there are many) to adopt in the Private Member’s Bill ballot. Figures close to the Prime Minister were hinting to Tory MPs this evening there would be a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Barack Obama appears happy to help a leader in a spot of bother

Barack Obama just threw a protective arm around David Cameron at their joint press conference, stressing that ‘you have to see if you can fix what’s broken in an important relationship before you break it off ‘. The instant retweeting of this line by the Tory leadership’s communications channels  shows just how grateful they are for Obama’s verbal support for Cameron’s EU strategy. It is also worth noting, as they have gleefully tweeted, that Obama’s words also appear to be an endorsement of renegotiation as an approach. But does this actually matter? I suspect not. On this issue, Tory MPs are more worried about what their associations are saying and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Obama warns Britain that leaving the EU would be an isolationist step

President Obama took care this afternoon when asked about an EU referendum to give as nuanced an answer as possible. He emphasised repeatedly that this was a matter for the British people. He also affirmed Cameron’s ‘basic point that you probably want to see if you can fix what’s broken in a very important relationship’. Tory eurosceptics might be a little less impressed by this endorsement of Cameron’s strategy, but what they will be really unhappy with is the impression Obama gave that he believes an exit from Europe would be a sign that Britain is becoming more isolationist. The President said: ‘We have a special relationship with the United

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How will the Tory leadership deal with MPs wanting a UKIP pact?

Nigel Farage says his party is in talks with a number of Conservative associations about a joint endorsement with UKIP. He told the Daily Politics today that ‘there is no doubt that there are Tory associations, and one Labour that I know of, who are saying “look, the law was changed two years ago, there is a provision now, that one candidate can have the endorsement of two political parties, i.e. two logos on the ballot paper”‘. Farage added that ‘there are associations out there that I believe want this’. Freshly returned to the Tory benches, Nadine Dorries made the case for this in yesterday’s Sun on Sunday. She wrote:

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Childish childcare bickering continues

Last winter, the surest way to get a Lib Dem to ring you back was to mention the words ‘boundary changes’. Better still to write a piece criticising the party’s decision to scupper the reforms as a revenge for the collapse of Lords reform, and no matter whether it was late at night or early on a Saturday morning when all normal people are still hiding under their duvets or sitting self-consciously in independent coffee shops, the Lib Dems would ring very quickly indeed. The same thing is happening now over the plan to relax childcare ratios. This morning I wrote as a throwaway comment that the party was blocking

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron needs to become a man with a plan

‘I’m a man with a plan,’ David Cameron told the Conservative party conference in 2008. Now the Prime Minister is struggling to give the impression he does have a plan for dealing with the Europe problem in his party: and he needs one, because things are going to get a lot stickier. The furore around tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech amendment is in many ways rather amusing because however backbenchers, PPSs and ministers vote, it doesn’t change a thing outside the Commons chamber. It simply says the Tory party wishes there had been an EU referendum bill in the Queen’s Speech. For all the criticisms that he’s running behind his party on

Sunday

Sophie Moullin

US universities beat the best of British: on teaching and social mobility

The combined endowments of the three top US universities alone is more than Britain’s entire defence budget. Luckily the risk of American invasion is still one of graduate students seeking a cheaper option, with old-world charm and brand name. But the days of Oxbridge and the Russell Group holding ranks with the ‘new money’ Ivy League are numbered. Not just because more money funds more, and better, research. But because US universities also use that money to do a better job finding, investing in and nurturing potential – potential often still excluded in the UK. They show that excellence need not mean elitism, and that’s a lesson the British academe

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Philip Hammond becomes 2nd Cabinet minister to say he would vote to leave EU today

If the Tory leadership had hoped that a few weeks of reconciliation between David Cameron and his backbenchers would lead to a new, serene phase in party management, they couldn’t be more wrong. Things seem to be getting worse on Europe: today two Cabinet ministers have felt emboldened by the Queen’s Speech vote this week to say that on the current terms of Britain’s membership of the EU, they would leave. James covered Michael Gove’s comments this morning, and this evening Defence Secretary Philip Hammond joined in, telling John Pienaar that Britain needed a better settlement in order to stay in the EU. This is a transcript of the exchange

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Gove: I’d vote to leave the EU if referendum held today

In a firecracker of an interview on the Andrew Marr Show, Michael Gove confirmed that if an EU referendum was held today he would vote out. But he followed this by saying to James Landale that he backed the Prime Minister’s plans to renegotiate and hoped that a satisfactory form of membership could be agreed. Significantly, Gove indicated that David Cameron would set out the Conservative ‘negotiating platform’ before the next election. This has been a key demand of Euro-sceptic Conservatives but one that Cameron has resisted. He is reluctant to provide anything akin to a renegotiation scorecard. Gove’s intervention changes the terms of debate. It means that every Conservative

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove’s love of a good scrap sometimes leads him up blind alleys

Michael Gove is right about almost everything, but like most know-it-alls, he has a habit of putting people’s backs up when telling them he’s right. That’s the theme of a piece I’ve written for the Telegraph today about the Education Secretary’s desire to meddle not just with what goes on in the classroom but also in what children get up to when they’re at home. You can read his full speech on this which is, as always, very interesting and lively, at the bottom of this post. The opening section, in which he asked parents whether they’d rather see their children reading Twilight or Middlemarch, playing Angry Birds, or coding

Friday

Sebastian Payne

If Eric Pickles is cutting the town hall rich list, here are the Tories to talk to

Eric Pickles is a driven man on a mission to slash spending and waste in local government. As the latest round of budget cuts just enacted highlights, Pickles has managed to keep the local government spending bill under control, but how successful has he been in curbing the often-controversial top executive pay in the public sector? In their detailed annual Town Hall Rich List, the Taxpayers’ Alliance reports that despite finding the first drop in the number of town hall staff earning more than £100,000 since 2007, 2,525 staffers are still earning more than £100,000 a year. 103 councils managed to hire more staff in this pay bracket last year

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Please, stop trying to solve the Women’s Vote problem by banging on about childcare

Flicking through my diary this morning, I came across something I’d scrawled as ‘All the Tory ladies’ without further explanation. It turned out to be one of those drinks events for people in Parliament who happen to be women, presumably where we all stand around and talk about how great/terrible it is to be a woman, depending on the sort of day we’ve had. I was reminded of this again by James Kirkup’s excellent blog examining the great power of Mumsnet over the British political establishment. He also charts Number 10’s attempts to appeal to women, by inviting ‘women in the media’ for drinks, trying to get the PM into

Jonathan Jones

Is nice but dim such a bad thing for Labour?

Labour’s lead in the polls has been pretty steady at around 10 points for a little over a year now. So why does today’s Guardian carry an article with the headline ‘Outright election victory in 2015 looks a distant prospect, pollster tells Labour’? It’s based on two YouGov polls — commissioned by Progress and actually conducted two months ago, but released today. The first asked voters to put each of the parties into one of four categories: ‘nice and smart’, ‘nice but dim’, ‘mean but smart’ and ‘mean and dim’. Labour seems to come out best, in that it has the highest proportion choosing ‘nice and smart’ and the lowest

Charles Moore Charles Moore

If a policeman stops you, accuse him of raping you and force him to arrest himself.

Now that virtually any well-known male entertainer of a certain age is arrested for alleged sexual offences, it is becoming clear that this is more a culture war than a set of proper criminal investigations. This does not necessarily mean that all the allegations are false — look at Stuart Hall — but it does suggest that a new way has been found of ruining people’s reputations before anyone has established their guilt. The undeniable fact that so many of the men accused wore deplorable clothes in public all through the 1970s is not, in itself, proof of iniquity. Enraged by Leveson, the press argue that naming people being investigated for sex

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sarah Wollaston, the next ticking Tory timebomb

MPs are having a party next week to celebrate the return of Nadine Dorries to the Tory fold. But as they pop champagne corks for the Prodigal Daughter, they might be wondering whether a similar drama could unfold with another of their number. Dr Sarah Wollaston appears to be growing increasingly angry with her party’s leadership, and isn’t afraid to say it in the press. She may be a very different Conservative to Dorries, but there’s a risk that she moves into the same open stand-off territory that led to her colleague flying to the jungle. Many observers wrongly assume that the trouble began when Dorries told Giles Dilnot that

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Game-changing

In the days when we had bottles of milk delivered, some tits discovered how to peck through the foil tops and consume the cream beneath. Suddenly all the tits were at it. This illustrated what the alternative scientist Rupert Sheldrake called morphic resonance. Something similar has happened over the past days with the phrase game-changing. Trevor Kavanagh, in the Sun, commented: ‘The local elections delivered a ground-breaking, game-changing, seismic political moment.’ In the Independent, Donald Macintyre compared ‘Ukip’s position to that of the game-changing SDP’. Except, in the days of the Gang of Four, the obligatory epithet was not game-changing but breaking the mould. That metaphor was used erroneously almost

James Forsyth James Forsyth

If Cameron is going to win in 2015, he is going to need a lot of help from Boris

One consequence of the local elections is that no Tory now denies that they need to win over UKIP voters to win the next election. How to do that, though, remains a subject of intense debate — last night’s 1922 Committee meeting with Grant Shapps discussed this point and ran massively over as a result. A large part of Nigel Farage’s appeal is stylistic. He is a technicolour character compared to the monochrome politicians of Westminster. He paints in primary colours rather than shades of grey. Now, Cameron can’t, and shouldn’t, ape this. He is not that kind of politician and would look inauthentic if he tried to be. But