Uk politics

Saturday

James Forsyth

May blossoms

The question about Theresa May has always been what does she believe? Well, today in the widest-ranging speech of her political career she went a long way to answering that. You can read the speech, delivered at the Conservative Home conference, here. Several things struck me about the speech. First, on economics May is not a classical liberal or a Lawsonian. Instead, she is more in the Michael Heseltine camp. She made the case for a buy British government procurement programme that strikes a ‘better balance between short-term value for the taxpayer and long-term benefits to the economy’. But, in other areas, May is prepared to be more free market

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Clegg plays tough guy in shouty Q&A with Lib Dem activists

Nick Clegg has just battled his way through a rather more grumpy than usual question-and-answer session at the Lib Dem spring conference. Normally, these sessions are an opportunity for the party to let off steam – they’re obviously far more robust than the sort of thing you’ll see in the House of Commons as they involve party members complaining about things that worry them, rather than telling Clegg how pleased they are with the Coalition’s record. And normally Clegg performs well: Q&A sessions are his strength. But this was a more robust session than usual, with considerably more steam: activists weren’t just anxious and keen to grill their leader, they

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories and Lib Dems strike deal on mansion tax vote

Further to Isabel’s post this morning, I understand from a senior coalition source that the two parties have now reached an agreement on how to handle Tuesday’s vote on Labour’s mansion tax motion. The Liberal Democrat leadership has assured their coalition partners that they’ll back a government amendment to it. This amendment will concede that the coalition parties have different views on the issue. The only question now is whether the speaker John Bercow will call it. I suspect that this agreement has been helped by a desire to limit coalition tensions post-Eastleigh and pre-Budget. There is also reluctance on the part of the Liberal Democrats to get dragged into

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem activists keep up pressure on sexism

The Lib Dem leadership has been trying its best this weekend to address the Lord Rennard allegations. I understand Tim Farron has been meeting activists to discuss any ongoing concerns. And the party also announced last night that it was creating a new group, Liberal Democrat Women, which, slightly confusingly, merges Women Lib Dems and the Campaign for Gender Balance. Another group with a more imaginative name is Rock the Boat, set up by Lib Dem activist James Shaddock, as a way of pressuring the leadership to examine not just the Rennard allegations, but the wider culture in the party. It boasts around 300 members currently. Female activists told Coffee

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems to hold mansion tax vote strategy meeting

Will the Lib Dems support Labour’s mansion tax vote? Vince Cable praised his pet policy idea last night, telling Lib Dem activists that it was an effective way of the government collecting revenue because properties can’t move. But on Tuesday, the party will have to decide how it should vote on a very carefully-worded Labour motion (which you can read here). I understand that the Lib Dem leadership is holding a meeting on Monday to decide its strategy for the vote, which is an Opposition Day debate, not government business. A source close to Vince Cable tells me: ‘It’s unlikely the party will end up voting for the Labour motion.’

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Vince Cable: Tory ‘ideologues’ waging ‘jihad’ against public spending

Vince Cable managed to hit all the Lib Dem spots last night with his fringe speech at the Lib Dem spring conference. He didn’t just mention the words ‘land value tax’, which set many Lib Dem heads nodding away with approval, but also managed to say ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ in Swahili, and accuse right-wing Conservatives of waging ‘jihad’ against public spending and public services. Here are three main points from his speech: 1. Cable said certain Tory ‘ideologues’ were waging ‘jihad’ against public spending. It wasn’t clear whether the Business Secretary was attacking his Tory Cabinet colleagues or backbenchers like Liam Fox and David Ruffley

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Shirley Williams: Nick Clegg is above all the victim of the Rennard scandal coverage

A crime reporter friend enjoys telling the story of his first black eye at the local Magistrates’ Court. Like so many, it occurred as he was leaving, and bumped into a convicted defendant. The conversation ran along these lines: Man convicted of awkward crime: You’re not putting this in the paper, are you? You can’t do this, it’ll ruin my business. Reporter, in his first job and in a chippy mood: You should have thought about then when you did it, mate. Man convicted of awkward crime’s right fist makes contact with reporter’s eye. I remembered this story this evening as the Lib Dems started their party’s spring conference in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An independent rap across the knuckles for the Prime Minister

Today’s letter from the Office of Budget Responsibility pointing out to David Cameron that the OBR’s growth forecasts have taken into account the effect of austerity on growth is embarrassing for the Prime Minister. This kind of letter is a gift to the opposition and Ed Balls has set about taking full advantage. Now, it is worth noting that Cameron’s comments in this case were more defensible than his ones about the national debt in the Conservative party political broadcast, which Fraser picked up on at the time. As government spin doctors have been vigorously arguing, Cameron was mainly talking about why growth has undershot the 2010 forecast which factored

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

What was it that made the Vicky Pryce trial so compelling?

Just about the only respectable moral that can be drawn from the grisly extended farce that was the Vicky Pryce trial is that the defence of marital coercion is a choice absurdity; one look at the feisty, tightlipped Ms Pryce should have been enough to persuade any jury that this one wasn’t a runner. Everything else about the trial was just horrible. And, obviously, utterly compelling. It’s a toss up between whether the calculated revelation about Pryce’s abortion – at her husband’s behest, she says – was worse than the publication of emails from her embittered son Peter to his father (for good measure she let it be known that

Rupert Myers

International Women’s Day is a bit silly

The British do not do seven day mourning the way many Venezuelans are for Hugo Chavez, neither – as a rule – do we flock to the roads to see the bodies of our politicians being driven through the streets. With the exception of Jeremy Bentham we do not – mercifully – put our departed on display.  We tend to leave that to communists. Just as Chavez’s death reminds us that we like to keep our grief low-key, it is fair to say that we are incredibly bad at most public events, with people grumbling, criticising, and proudly declaring that they are going away on holiday just to avoid the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour courts Lib Dem support with mansion tax motion

Labour is still pursuing its mansion tax vote, with the debate set for next Tuesday. It’s a clever piece of political timing by Ed Miliband’s party, as the text of the motion is now out and about in time for the Lib Dems to assemble in Brighton for their Spring Conference. Vince Cable is speaking tonight at a fringe event, and will undoubtedly be asked whether he wants the Lib Dems to support it. The motion, which the party has just released, reads as follows: ‘That this House believes that a mansion tax on properties worth over £2million, to fund a tax cut for millions of people on middle and

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ed Miliband’s Convenient, Part-Time, Cowardly, Zionism

For a few hours this morning it looked as though Ed Miliband might do something uncharacteristically courageous. The Jewish Chronicle reported that the Labour leader had described himself as a Zionist at a meeting organised by the Board of Deputies. It may be sad that this would need to be considered, as Dan Hodges put it, ‘a brave and welcome statement’ but that’s the modern British left for you. Mr Hodges wondered if Miliband would ‘stand by’ this statement. His scepticism was sensible. And sure enough, word comes that Miliband’s views have been ‘misinterpreted’ by the Jewish Chronicle. As Hodges relates the story: ‘Asked at the event whether he was

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Labour will have to get used to about-turns on policies it opposed

Yesterday Ed Miliband reiterated his party’s existing policies on immigration for voters, today Yvette Cooper went into further detail about how Labour would address the policy area in government. Like Miliband’s PPB, Cooper’s speech speech to IPPR included an acknowledgement that politicians don’t like to talk about immigration, and a mea culpa. She said Labour should have been quicker to bring in the Australian-style points-based system, that the party should have kept transitional controls for Eastern Europe, and that as a government it should have ‘looked more at the impact, and been ready to talk about problems. Cooper was heavy on the policy detail, and some of that detail included

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron DOES have a magic money tree

So David Cameron says there is ‘no magic money tree’. In his big economy speech today, the Prime Minister said:  ‘Now of course there are plenty of people out there with different advice about how to fix our broken economy. Some say cut more and borrow less, others cut less and borrow more. Go faster. Go slower. Cut taxes. Put them up. We need to cut through all this and tell people some plain truths. So let me speak frankly and do just that. ‘There are some people who think we don’t have to take all these tough decisions to deal with our debts. They say that our focus on

Harry Cole

The Lib Dems make another personal scandal their party’s problem

Another evening and another set of headlines opening with the now familiar line ‘senior Liberal Democrats have denied they knew’. Not the allegations about Lord Rennard (which he denies) this time, but whether they had any prior warning in spring 2011 about the coming storm that seems likely to land Chris Huhne and his ex-wife in jail. What should have been a scandal about Chris Huhne could taint the entire senior party. Isabel argues that the political fallout from today’s verdict and next week’s sentencing of Pryce and Huhne will be relatively minor. In the short-term I agree, but in the long-run days like today are occurring a little too

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce: the politics

What is the political impact of the Chris Huhne/Vicky Pryce case? It’s a question that you’ll hear a lot from those who view everything through what Edward Leigh might call the merciless prism of politics. And yet, as James Kirkup points out on his Telegraph blog, this is more about a terrible family breakdown than it is about the Liberal Democrats. However, as we’re still holding up that merciless prism of politics, here are a few thoughts. The first is that of course people will discuss this in the bars at the Lib Dem spring conference this weekend. But will it overshadow the event itself? Not really: this has become a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘We aren’t connecting with the electorate’: Michael Fabricant on the Tory election challenge

The only Tory more Tiggerish than Michael Fabricant is the party chairman Grant Shapps, and perhaps that’s why the two work so well together on campaigns. But even the jovial Conservative vice chairman is exhausted after the full-throttle Eastleigh by-election. Fabricant was shouted at in the street by a voter who, thinking he was a Lib Dem, harangued him about Chris Huhne, and one voter placed notice on a wheelie bin telling campaigners to dump their leaflets there, not through the letterbox. But in spite of that, from the glowing way he describes the campaign, you might be forgiven for thinking the Tories won it, or at least came second,

The Spectator

Vicky Pryce found guilty

Vicky Pryce has been found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of perverting the course of justice by taking speeding points for her ex-husband Chris Huhne. Huhne had already pleaded guilty, but Pryce had pleaded not guilty on the grounds of marital coercion. The jury rejected her defence. The pair will be sentenced at a later date. The offence took place over a speeding incident in 2003, and Pryce had claimed she had been forced by her husband to sign a form saying she was the driver of the car, not him. More analysis to follow…

Len Shackleton

Do public sector job cuts hit women disproportionately?

As we move towards the budget we will be hearing more and more warnings about the impact of further cuts in public sector employment. One line, pursued repeatedly by the TUC and the Fawcett Society since Mr Osborne’s first budget, is that such cuts will particularly impact on women. As the public sector employs more women than men, it is argued, the cuts mean higher unemployment for women. It has even been suggested that an Impact Assessment along these lines would conclude that public sector cuts breach the Equality Act. I don’t know about that. But it is worth pointing out how difficult it is to assess the impact of

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The bossy state shouldn’t stop us buying cigarettes with pleasing packaging

The Government’s bid to make Britain that little bit more like Australia, in a bad way, by requiring cigarettes to be sold in plain white packaging may well be announced on that annual irritant, No Smoking Day, next Wednesday. And for good measure, it may throw in a ban on smoking in cars carrying children under 16. The only upshot of that last one will be to make it that bit more difficult to get a lift for a child. I am not  a serious smoker. I can manage perhaps two or three cigarettes a year, Clinton style, but that’s enough to forfeit a premium rate of life insurance (actually