Uk politics

Tuesday

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

Sunday

Jerry Hayes

Harry Mount is wrong: Chris Grayling’s legal aid reforms will damage justice

I just wonder how long Harry Mount has been waiting to put his boot into the Bar. Having a first-class degree from Oxford, membership of the Bullingdon Club and then getting a pupillage in a top class set of chambers, it must have been devastating to his well-nurtured ego to have been turned down for a tenancy. His piece in this week’s Spectator was a masterpiece of bitterness and bile. It was a travesty of what is really happening. There are no fat fees at the criminal Bar. Far from spiralling out of control the criminal legal aid budget has been cut by a third from 2006/7 and fees  between

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

European Commission does eurosceptics’ dirty work, again.

Defenders of the status quo in the European Union like to argue that 3 million jobs in this country currently depend on Britain’s membership. Aside from the rather shaky maths behind that figure, it’s striking that today Chris Grayling is making a stand on a Brussels plan that will cost jobs in this country, rather than boost them. The Sunday Telegraph reports the Justice Secretary accusing the European Commission of ‘not living in the real world’, with new data protection laws threatening to cost british businesses around £360 million a year. Grayling makes it very clear in his interview with the newspaper that he views these proposals as a direct

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ed Balls: Labour will include pensions in its welfare cap

Ed Balls has just told Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics that Labour will include pensions in their welfare cap. This opens up a major dividing line with the Tories who have been clear that George Osborne will exclude pensions from his spending cap. I suspect that Balls and Ed Miliband will now be badgered with questions about whether, if necessary, they’ll cut pensions — or not up-rate them — to meet the cap. Given the power of the grey vote in British politics (Labour estimates that one in every two voters in 2010 was over 55) they are going to come under massive pressure to rule this out. But,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tim Yeo pulls out of media appearances after Sunday Times sting

Tim Yeo was due to appear on Sky News’ Murnaghan programme, and on the BBC’s Sunday Politics this morning. But he’s just pulled out of both interviews, where he would have been asked about the Sunday Times’ story alleging that he coached a witness to his own select committee on the right answers. Yeo denies that he behaved improperly and told the newspaper that he had never offered parliamentary advice or advocacy. What will be interesting about the fallout from this latest round of allegations is whether politicians use it to advance their own pet theories about how parliament needs reform, or whether they examine what the particular allegations were. While

Charles Moore Charles Moore

First Mercer, now Yeo – isn’t it time politicians tried to entrap journalists?

Now that it has become commonplace for the press to entrap MPs and peers, why don’t our legislators try to turn the tables? I suggest that ministers sidle up to journalists (secretly filming them the while) and offer them honours. They should hint that the honour is conditional on favourable coverage, and agree to meet again in six months. In between, they should track what the journalists write, and then, when they have trapped their victims, expose the pattern. Another trick would be for politicians to get friends to pretend to be businessmen offering journalists money or freebies to place products in their stories and features. These tactics would get

Saturday

James Forsyth

Prism controversy will deepen coalition divisions over the snooper’s charter

GCHQ’s use of the US monitoring system Prism is threatening to turn into a major political row. Douglas Alexander is demanding that William Hague come to the House of Commons to explain what GCHQ was doing and what the legal basis for it was. But this controversy is going to have an effect on coalition relations too. It is going to intensify Liberal Democrat opposition to the measures included in the Communications Data Bill. This comes at a time when David Cameron has decided, as he made clear in the Commons on Monday, that the measures in it are needed. In the United States, the Obama administration is pushing back

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Let’s get fracking

Great news on the fracking front. A company called IGas says it’s sitting on a huge shale gas reserve deep below Cheshire. Given the company’s ‘most likely’ estimate of 102 trillion cubic feet of gas, and a potential extraction rate of around 15 per cent, that could fulfil five years of UK gas demand, which runs at three trillion cubic feet per year — half of it currently imported. The other leading player in this field, Cuadrilla, has already claimed reserves of 200 trillion cubic feet in Lancashire, so all told (and subject to lots of caveats) that could be 15 years’ worth of fuel to keep us going until

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

The snoopers’ error

Eeek! The snooper’s charter is back from the dead! And still, for some reason, its advocates don’t seem able to grasp that the objections stem not from what they want to do, but from the manner in which they wish to do it. It’s not about your web history, they say, or your browsing habits or anything like that. Rather, again and again, they use the analogy of telephones. The idea is that the law currently facilitates monitoring when terrorists or criminals ring each other, but not when they Skype each other or send emails. And, as Theresa May keeps telling us, all they want to do is bring the

Friday

Sebastian Payne

David Cameron is no longer more popular than his party

For the first time, David Cameron is trailing behind his party, according to the latest polling from Lord Ashcroft. Labour has long struggled with this problem, but as the charts below show, voters now also feel more favourable towards the Conservatives than they do to Cameron himself: The PM’s allies within the party have long argued he is their greatest electoral asset, and this would make any attempt at removing him a folly. Now this is no longer the case, the dissenters have a whole new round of ammunition to fire at the leadership. Cameron need not utterly despair — he’s still the preferred option to Miliband as Prime Minister

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Mutually assured silence: a cross-party 2015 election strategy

The Institute for Fiscal Studies gave one of its cheering presentations today on quite how miserable things are going to be for a good while longer. Today’s event was on the forthcoming spending review, but the IFS and Institute for Government also offered some predictions about the long-term economic picture. In a briefing note, the two organisations warned that we are likely to have not one but two austerity elections. It said: ‘If the UK experience proves to be as drawn out as the Canadian one, we should expect not just 2015 but also 2020 to be an austerity election. Spending reductions are set to be a long-term feature of

Duncan O'Leary

Ed Miliband’s welfare plans will hit young people. Here’s how he could fund them fairly

Ed Miliband thinks a contributory principle in welfare is the way to show voters that his party supports a ‘something-for-something’ approach. Yesterday he proposed to restore that principle, with higher entitlements for those with good records. This was at the heart of the Beveridge settlement, but has been diluted by successive governments, the current one included. Labour has to show that it can pay for this sort of system, though, and Miliband’s answer is to raise the hurdle for contributory welfare, so that claimants must have worked longer than the current two-year period to qualify for the contributory benefit. The implication is that more people will go straight through the

Donna Edmunds

Childcare for all: a necessity not a luxury

How many small children do you think you could look after? Three? Four? Maybe not even one without someone else on hand? It’s a question Liz Truss says she is asked regularly, although as she points out, no one asks her Department of Health colleagues whether they could perform keyhole surgery. That’s the problem with the current debate around childcare: it’s too emotional. Tired parents, nerves frayed from watching their brood run riot throughout the house ask themselves ‘how could anyone look after a group of small children all day?’ Feeling overtakes fact, which makes reasoned discussion impossible. Take this comment by Justine Roberts, Mumsnet Founder and CEO: ‘There’s a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour’s localism epiphany

Just because Labour has been taking a big dose of reality this week doesn’t mean the party is now refusing to make the most of any botch job by the Coalition. So we’ve come to the funny situation where the Opposition party famed for its centralised approach to planning which failed to build enough homes in any year is taking the high ground on housebuilding. The Telegraph reports that Shadow Communities and Local Government secretary Hilary Benn now believes ‘local communities should decide where they want new homes and developments to go and then give their consent in the form of planning permission’ and that ‘we have to make localism