Uk politics

Friday

Fraser Nelson

The death of the party conference

The party conference season is now underway, with Lib Dems gathering in Brighton. It’s time to admit that our political parties are in a bad way, and this has nothing to do with voter apathy. Britain’s political culture is bursting with life, it’s the parties that are dying. This will be horribly apparent in the conferences. David Cameron couldn’t even fill the hall for his speech last year, the first time in living memory that this happened. This is no reflection on his (usually excellent) speeches but the decay of conferences in general. Since they moved to the cities, they became geared at those with expense accounts rather than membership

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Thrasher Mitchell’s toxic tirade

Andrew Mitchell spent two years detoxifying his image at the International Development department, wearing charity wristbands and talking about polio vaccines. But however much success he enjoyed in creating a persona of a reasonable, mild-mannered man concerned with poverty (and our leading article this week disputes whether the programmes he led were anywhere near as successful as that), the man known as ‘Thrasher’ trashed that reputation this week. The Sun reports that he raged ‘You’re f***ing plebs’ at policemen who had the temerity to stop him from cycling out of the Downing Street gates. His tirade allegedly included him repeatedly telling the police officers that he was the chief whip,

Steerpike Steerpike

Telling tales: some infamous conference moments

What could possibly go wrong when you lock 10,000 political hacks and flacks in a hotel for 96 hours and let lobbyists pick up the tab? Well that’s party conference for you, and there have been some excellent tales of drunken debauchery over the last few years. The most riotous parties are the ones upstairs in the private suites of the main conference hotel. Representing the Tory side, Lord Strathclyde fills his bathtub with ice and champagne and opens his doors every year. Rumour has it that he always deserves a magnum for later. Last year, one Tory MP went so far as to punch a colleague. Other MPs had to drag one of them away. It was  all denials

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Farage’s floundering highlights Cameron’s EU challenge

By the end of his 8.10 interview on the Today programme, Nigel Farage was struggling a little. Once John Humphrys had taken him away from his hobby horse of a European Union Referendum, the UKIP leader started to wobble. Humphrys: Let’s have a look at your policies. A bit puzzling, in a way, and it’s not the first time a political leader has done this. You seem to want to cut back taxes, you want to roll back the state, and yet, you want to spend loads of money on loads of things. Farage: Well, we want to spend more money on defence, that is absolutely true, and we think,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Burstow goes rogue to attack Treasury

Hell hath no fury like a government minister sacked (as proven by our anonymous ‘Dumped by Dave’ piece this week). Another former minister, Paul Burstow, lost his job because Nick Clegg was miffed at the way the Lib Dem had failed to flag up the dangers in the Health and Social Care Bill. He’d already formed a habit of briefing against his own department when he was in office, so it’s no great shock that Burstow has decided to dish the dirt on the Treasury in the Telegraph today, claiming it is responsible for blocking reform of the social care system. He writes: ‘Of course, if fixing this was easy

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Coffee House Interview: Chris Skidmore on Britannia Unchained, ‘lazy’ Brits, and how the government should be unpopular

Before it had even appeared in reviewers’ postbags, the book that Chris Skidmore co-authored with four other Conservative MPs had created quite a stir in Westminster. ‘Brits so lazy’, said the Sun, about a chapter in Britannia Unchained which describes the British as being ‘among the worst idlers in the world’. That claim provoked rage from left-wingers, with Labour’s Chuka Umunna calling on David Cameron to ‘distance himself’ from the comments, which he said were ‘deeply insulting’. But Skidmore seems entirely unperturbed by the outcry. In fact, when we meet in his Westminster office, he seems quite taken with the idea that politicians should take a great deal of unpopularity

Alex Massie Alex Massie

John Swinney misses a trick – Spectator Blogs

There are days when Scottish independence seems a more than decent idea. Budget day at Holyrood is always one of them. I say budget day but it’s really faux-budget day because, at least until now, it’s always been only half a budget. A parliament that may spend but cannot tax is only half a parliament. So, if not independence then proper fiscal autonomy at least. That would make Holyrood a better, bigger, more responsible place. It might also provide incentives for better public policy. Might being the operative word, obviously. Nevertheless the reaction to the so-called budget John Swinney delivered yesterday has been encouraging. That is, the public sector unions

Sebastian Payne

Can UKIP become a serious political party?

UKIP members are gathering for their annual conference in Birmingham today and frustratingly for the party, it remains a niche political event. Unlike the media explosion for the other three political gatherings, UKIP’s two day rally will have no wall-to-wall TV coverage and little in-depth analysis of the speeches. But since Nigel Farage gathered his flock last year, Britain’s other party has seen its profile raised substantially. Martin Kettle admitted in the Guardian this week that UKIP are now a ‘force to be reckoned with’ who could become kingmakers that will ‘shape the 2015 election and the politics of Britain and Europe for a generation’. Polling suggests they are indeed a significant political

Thursday

James Forsyth

A blast of common sense on social media censorship

Munira Mirza, Boris Johnson’s deputy mayor for education and culture, provides a much needed blast of common sense in today’s Evening Standard. She says that the police, and society, need to calm down about people making idiotic and offensive comments on Twitter and other social media sites. As she points out, ‘Do the police have nothing better to do than patrol Twitter, hunting out people who send tasteless tweets?’ But there’s another reason to worry about this policing beyond the fact that it is a waste of resources: the more we race around arresting people for saying stupid things or things that go against the current orthodoxy, the less free

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The pupil premium and profit-making schools could be a winning combination

Ask any Liberal Democrat what their party has achieved in government, and the answer will involve the words ‘pupil premium’. It was a key manifesto pledge in 2010, and is one of the policies that the party is proudest of from its time in government so far. It’ll be sure to come up time and time again in speeches in Brighton, too. Which is why it’s rather awkward that with two days to go to the Liberal Democrat autumn conference, Ofsted has revealed ‘disturbing findings’ about the way schools are actually administering the premium. Chief Sir Michael Wilshaw said the extra £600 per pupil from a disadvantaged background was largely

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Nick Clegg’s viral apology video

The free publicity which comes with party political broadcasts is more powerful than the broadcast itself: nowadays, our MPs hope their messages will go viral. Nick Clegg’s apology has: and how. The below video has his voice being digitally altered (like Cher’s in Believe) but the result is far catchier. It demands to be watched: The video-maker has done Clegg a favour. Only the most cold-hearted cynic would feel a tinge of sympathy for him  here, which may be been the idea behind the video. What Tony Blair called the ‘masochism strategy’ where you apologise and get visibly beaten up, ideally by a pensioner, until voters start to pity you.

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 — Nick Clegg’s martyrdom, the personal statement scam and being sacked by David Cameron

Will Nick Clegg’s political career come to a crashing end in tandem with the end of the coalition? In this week’s magazine, James Forsyth examines how the Lib Dem leader has put the coalition cause ahead of both his party and own political career. On the latest View from 22 podcast, James examines the Lib Dem’s strategy shift back to making the coalition work: ‘I think this will be the last Lib Dem conference in which Nick Clegg receives a relatively warm reception. I think even the critics in his party know it’s far too early to change leader. Nick Clegg has decided to double down on coalition. Just this Monday, he

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Clegg’s attempt to repair tuition fee damage

Going into the last election, many of Nick Clegg’s closest allies and, I suspect, the Lib Dem leader himself found the tuition fees pledge embarrassing. It was precisely the kind of opportunistic policy that they had tried to wean the party off. But when it came to the election and it was still, despite their best efforts, party policy they decided to run with it. As soon as the election results came in, it was clear that Clegg’s exploitation of the subject was going to cause him problems seeing as both Tories and Labour were committed to the Browne review which was almost certain to come out for higher fees.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg apologises for tuition fees pledge

In a video message released this evening, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg apologised for his party’s pre-election pledge to vote against any rise in tuition fees. Clegg said: ‘We made a promise before the election that we would vote against any rise in fees under any circumstances. But that was a mistake. It was a pledge made with the best of intentions – but we shouldn’t have made a promise we weren’t absolutely sure we could deliver. ‘I shouldn’t have committed to a policy that was so expensive when there was no money around. Not least when the most likely way we’d end up in Government was in coalition with

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lib Dems committing to radical future for the coalition

Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander, David Laws and a couple of Lib Dem advisers spent Monday at Chequers. They were there to discuss the final details of the coalition’s mid-term review with David Cameron and George Osborne. I understand that this document will now contain new coalition commitments on the economy, education, welfare, childcare and social mobility. As I say in tomorrow’s Spectator, I suspect that this meeting tells us more about the state of the government than what Clegg will say in Brighton or Cameron in Birmingham. It is further evidence that after a period of coalition paralysis, the two leaderships have decided that their best hope is to go

The Spectator

Sacked minister spills the reshuffle beans

In tomorrow’s Spectator, an anonymous former minister recounts their experiences of David Cameron’s reshuffle. They describe the walk in to see the Prime Minister – through the back entrance where the cameras cannot see ministers arrive – and the way the Prime Minister tries to placate them by explaining that there are ‘303 someone elses’ that he needs to keep happy. You can read the full copy below, or in the magazine from tomorrow: Divorce is something I have yet to experience personally but Dave’s reshuffle has set me up nicely for any future threat to my own nuptial bliss. Out of the blue comes the call. It’s Dave’s office.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Our debate on welfare reform is a dismal scandal – Spectator Blogs

On balance, Iain Duncan Smith’s spell as Tory leader can’t be remembered as an unmitigated success. Be that as it may, sometimes there are second acts in political lives and, just occasionally, these are worth celebrating. IDS is one example of this. Nevertheless, even a man as palpably decent and well-meaning as IDS doesn’t always pitch his argument about welfare reform in the best, most sensible or plausible fashion. This is unfortunate, not least because it allows his opponents to question his good faith. And good faith matters in politics. Especially when you’re attempting to overhaul welfare. At the best of times this is a sensitive issue requiring a deft

Jonathon Porritt

James Brokenshire’s assurances on the snooping bill only raise further concerns

What do you do if a regulator has failed? Leave them unreformed and instead give them greater powers? That is the line Home Office Minister James Brokenshire is arguing. The regulator in question is the Interception of Communications Commissioner and the powers relate to online monitoring. For the Draft Communications Data Bill would not only give the government far more scope to monitor what we do online, but Brokenshire also argues we should be reassured that a large part of these new powers would be monitored by that Commissioner. However, take a look at the record and what you see is a failed regulator. Most damningly, in 2011 the New

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Re-arranging the desk chairs on the Titanic

New Tory Chairman Grant Shapps has taken the dramatic step of reinstalling the general election countdown clock in CCHQ to remind staffers that there are only 959 days until voters deliver their verdict on the Conservatives’ time in government. Shapps has also got something else planned, which is to rearrange the desks. I understand that he told the 1922 committee last week that he wants to make Tory party press officers sit next to the researchers who cover each specific policy area so that they can feed one another information effectively. Currently they sit on different banks of desks. One CCHQ veteran points out to me that Shapps’ exciting desk

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris continues to push Heathrow campaign

As much as conference planners would wish it otherwise, one of the biggest stories from the Tory conference will be Boris Johnson’s speech and fringe appearance. It would be a surprise if he didn’t take at least one opportunity while in Birmingham to flag up his ongoing campaign against a government U-turn on Heathrow expansion, even if it were an apparently spontaneous answer to a question from a member of the fringe audience. As I reported last week, he has been looking for a Conservative MP to lead that campaign, and the Standard’s Peter Dominiczak then revealed that the Mayor has also approached MPs from other parties. Today the Mayor