Uk politics

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

The government’s work experience scheme isn’t headed for the plug hole

Depending on which paper you read this morning, the government’s work experience scheme is either heading for the plug hole or going from strength to strength. The Guardian has an editorial praising Cait Reilly, the geology graduate who fought the workfare scheme she found herself on, The Telegraph says workfare can ‘still do the job for Britain’, and The Sun carries a bullish piece by Iain Duncan Smith on why the scheme is not ‘slave labour’. The problem is that everyone has managed to interpret yesterday’s Court of Appeal judgement as favouring their own view of the scheme. Reilly emerged yesterday with her lawyer to claim victory, but the Work

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems and Labour concerned by Tory Leveson Royal Charter plans

Does the Royal Charter, published by the Conservative party this afternoon, take politicians any further away from meddling with press regulation? The charter is the Tory answer to the statutory underpinning recommended by Lord Leveson, and the party is keen to stress that it ‘does not require statute and enables the principles of Leveson to be fulfilled without legislation’. But is this plan any better? Well, the charter, which you can read here, can only be unpicked or changed if the leaders of all three parties confirm they agree with this and if the change gets the support of at least two thirds of MPs. It also needs the support

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Wanted: Press officer for Afriyie plotters

Adam Afriyie’s team have been on the hunt for a press officer, I understand. Even though the backbencher has tried to play down claims that he’s taking aim at the Tory leadership, a source in the communications community says that Afriyie’s camp have been asking individuals to join them as a press spokesman and strategist. The Sunday Times reported at the weekend that Afriyie recently approached Portland Communications asking for advice, but it appears that his team have also been looking to take on someone to represent them and help with their plotting strategy. In this case, I hear the individual they approached turned their offer down.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg: I spent months making the case for an EU budget cut

Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions is rarely an uplifting experience: more like watching some hapless chap stuck in a room full of his ex-girlfriends, all pointing angrily at him, like the wedding reception scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Somehow Peter Bone either manages to get his name on the Order Paper or to tag along at the end of another question to bring up one of the more painful rows in the Coalition relationship, the boundary reforms, or when he’s in a really good mood, what the DPM would do if David Cameron were run over by a bus. He did so again today, even though the Tories have

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Secret justice bill unites senior Tory and Lib Dem MPs

Last week ministers managed to rewrite some of the protections in the controversial Justice and Security Bill while it was being scrutinised in committee: this week backbenchers MPs are starting to hit back. I reported in late January that Andrew Tyrie was considering amending the legislation, and that a group of Tory MPs was minded to support him. He has now tabled a series of changes for the report stage of the Bill in the Commons, with the support of Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes. Tyrie’s proposals involve creating an elected chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee who is an MP, which is one of the recommendations in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cross-party consensus on Leveson tested with Royal Charter plan

The Conservatives publish their plans for a Royal Charter to underpin regulation of the press today. Although the cross-party talks have been more successful than most imagined, with no rows or public posturing, today is the day when that consensus is tested. There’s also another test on the way for the three parties, which is the return of the Defamation Bill to the Commons towards the end of February or start of March. This Bill was amended last week by peers – including Tories – to include low-cost arbitration for members of a press regulator, overseen by a ‘recognition commission’ and a statutory requirement for pre-notification. This amendment, an attempt

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Planning Minister: Govt must be tough on new migrants to protect housing from more pressure

MPs’ concerns about how many Bulgarian and Romanian migrants might come to this country when transitional controls are lifted aren’t going away any time soon, by the looks of things. There were six questions on the order paper from Conservative MPs about the matter at Home Office questions yesterday, for starters. But I’ve also spoken to a minister who is uneasy about the impact that the end of the controls will have on his own sector. Planning Minister Nick Boles told me: ‘Put it this way, we should have been more worried than we were about the pressure on housing and other public services from the last set of entrant

Monday

Jonathan Jones

Briefing: What is the government doing to inheritance tax?

The Death Tax has risen again. The government estimates that its proposals for social care funding will cost the Treasury £1 billion a year. That will be met through a combination of not compensating government departments for the higher National Insurance contributions they will have to pay under the new single-tier state pension and freezing the level at which inheritance tax kicks in at £325,000 until 2019 – the source of the ‘death tax’ accusations today. Freezing the inheritance tax threshold The inheritance tax threshold (or ‘nil-rate band’) is the amount of an estate that is not taxed. It rose in both cash- and real-terms throughout the Labour years, but

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

EU Budget: Cameron shows off his strong negotiating hand

David Cameron could barely contain himself when he addressed MPs on his victory in last week’s EU budget talks. ‘I didn’t quite get a thank you!’ he jeered at Ed Miliband once the Labour leader had finished his response. ‘But I will give him a thank you for the non-thank you.’ He also mocked Ed Balls for saying ‘hear, hear’ when the PM mentioned the need for spending constraint in the EU as so many of its member states struggled with austerity measures. Obligingly, Balls then cheered ‘hear, hear’ as often as he could, and continued to do so when his own leader started talking. For Ed Miliband, this was

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Barwell wins bill battle against mental health discrimination

Gavin Barwell’s bill to end discrimination against those suffering from mental illnesses received its third reading in the House of Lords this afternoon, which means it is just a small hop, skip and jump from becoming an Act of Parliament. The legislation will end automatic blocks on those receiving regular treatment for any mental health disorder from sitting on a jury and from continuing to work as a company director, as well as repealing the section of the Mental Health Act 1983 which automatically removes an MP from their seat if they have been sectioned for more than six months. That Barwell managed to gain the support of not just

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tory poll weaknesses show why an Eastleigh win is so important

The latest ICM poll for The Guardian is interesting because it highlights the weakness in both the Tory and Labour positions. The Tories are 12 points behind on 29, doing appallingly with women voters—trailing Labour 25-51, and haven’t managed to halt UKIP’s momentum. But Labour’s position is not as strong as the headline figures suggest. A plurality of voters still places the blame for the economic slowdown on Labour’s ‘unsustainable spending’. Polls in mid-term do not tell us that much. But the more bad news they bring for the Tories, the grimmer the mood on their benches will become. This is one of the things which makes Eastleigh so important

Shiraz Maher

A long overdue counterblast to the Left’s thinking on Islamists

A three year open sore within the human rights community will be closed this evening when Gita Sahgal officially launches her new organisation, the Centre for Secular Space, at Toynbee Hall. Sahgal will also be launching the group’s first report, ‘Double Bind: The Muslim Right, the Anglo-American Left, and Universal Human Rights’ highlighting the ongoing scandal of the left’s promiscuous embrace of radical Islamists. The story of Gita Sahgal has been covered before but is worth revisiting. A lifelong human rights activist, Sahgal worked on issues relating to women’s rights, religious extremism, and racism before heading up the Gender Unit at Amnesty International. Then, three years ago she was dramatically

Christian Guy

Social care reforms: clever politics, bad government

Judge a Government on its priorities.  And then its priorities within priorities.  Amidst the clamour for rapid and credible deficit reduction, the dawning reality that green shoots won’t sprout unaided, Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reform and Michael Gove’s education revolution, social care did make the hastily compiled Coalition to-do list. But a Government’s Parliamentary programme is a game of two halves, and within weeks of Andrew Dilnot’s radical report in 2011, it became clear that any such reform would be a second half priority. Today, after months of cross-party Whitehall wrangling and internal Coalition debate, the Health Secretary proudly unveils the Government’s offer.  A new cap on the total social

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Social care reforms: the good and bad news

Jeremy Hunt is unveiling the government’s long-awaited reforms to the funding of social care today. This is the next announcement in the government’s mid-term review series, and while it addresses a serious issue, it’s probably the biggest disappointment to date, and not just because it doesn’t match the ambition of the reforms proposed by Andrew Dilnot. The good news is that no-one will have to pay more than £75,000 for the costs of their social care: that is the personal help, washing, and clothing, but not the cost of accommodation or food. The government says this upper limit means insurance companies will now be able to offer policies which cover

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Davey sounds more enthusiastic about Nick Clegg than Nick Clegg himself

It took a while for Nick Clegg to confirm that he would stay with his party to 2015, but today his colleague Ed Davey did him a favour (or perhaps not) and confirmed on his behalf that Clegg would stay not just through the next election, but would lead his party into the 2020 election. He told Andrew Neil on the Sunday Politics: ‘I’m really very supportive of what Nick has been doing, I think he’s the best leader we’ve ever had and I think he’s going to lead the party not just into the next election but into the one after that.’ Ed Davey is obviously trying to fend

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour’s Eastleigh by-election fight

The Eastleigh by-election machine is well and truly up and running this weekend, with ministers starting to make their way down to the Hampshire constituency to start campaigning. The focus is on the two coalition parties who have now both chosen their candidates, but it’s also interesting to see what Labour’s up to in the constituency. Labour came second in the 1994 by-election, but as the graph below shows, the party then embarked on a slide which saw it poll third in the four subsequent elections. What’s interesting, though, is that though the party hasn’t yet announced its candidate, it’s had a stall down in the town for two weeks

Saturday

James Forsyth

Where’s the outrage?

There’s normally no shortage of outrage in our politics. In Britain today, we specialise in working ourselves into a bate. This is what makes the lack of outrage at what happened at Mid Staffs all the more peculiar. If the government had received a report detailing such appalling behaviour in any institution other than an NHS hospital and responded so meekly, there would have been a series of angry front pages denouncing Whitehall complacency. The government is considering changing the law of the land because of what happened at the care home Winterbourne View, which was appalling but nowhere near as serious as what happened at Mid Staffs. But when

Richard Marsh

Jeremy Hunt’s promising path as Health Secretary

When Jeremy Hunt became Health Secretary last September, the Google Alert I set up against his name would spew forth a regular stream of contemptuous comment on the new appointment. Invariably accompanied by an unflattering photo – quite often that one (above) where Hunt arrives in Downing Street looking less ready for a Cabinet meeting than as the stand-in children’s entertainer – the pieces conformed to an ordained boiler-plate. They would focus either on his Murdoch-stained record in office, or on the certainty that he was about to privatise the NHS out of existence or, failing that, on the general observation that here was another public school twit, capable of

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Victorious PM paints himself as Camileo the EU heretic

In his victory address after the successful EU Budget deal this afternoon, David Cameron sought to paint himself once again as a Galileo-style EU heretic who spoke truth to power. This was all about what Cameron himself had achieved: his press conference statement was full of first person references to what he had ‘slashed’ and ‘achieved’. At one point he even said ‘at last someone has come along’ to sort the EU’s ‘credit card’, again clearly referring to himself. This echoes the Prime Minister’s Europe speech last month where he talked about Europe’s ‘experience of heretics who turned out to have a point’. Today he was Camileo, the heretic who

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories use Chris Huhne as Eastleigh by-election weapon

The Conservatives have just published their poster for the Eastleigh by-election. Like most campaigns, they’re capitalising on the fact that the Tory candidate, Maria Hutchings, is local. But in their slogan they’ve also told voters that she’s the one constituents can trust. This shows that, even though Nick Clegg argued in the Q&A after his speech yesterday that the contest shouldn’t be about Chris Huhne, the party wants to make as much of the former Energy Secretary’s exit as they possibly can in this bloody battle. UPDATE, 17.40pm: A rather sardonic Lib Dem source tells me: ‘I have to say, campaigning against Chris Huhne when he’s not a candidate is