Uk politics

This brightened the day. Alastair Campbell, courtesy of his complete diaries, on Ed Balls: “Ed Balls spoke drivel, a never-ending collection of words that just ran into each other and became devoid of meaning.”

It’s John Prescott’s birthday – or Lord Prescott, as he will soon be. How odd of JP to don the ermine, given that he is on record saying that he hates titles, flunkery and ‘flooding’ the House of Lords with appointees – a practice in which he and Blair excelled as it happens.  He appeared on the Today programme this morning to defend his lordly person and was emphatically unintelligible. Listen to it; it’s a classic. You know Prescott’s the EU’s environment ‘rapporteur’? Terrifying.   John Humphrys objected to Prescott’s hypocrisy, but if Prescott doesn’t want to retire from public life then he must sit in the Lords. Which is an argument for

There’s something Galsworthian about Danny Alexander, the man of property. A downy press secretary for the Cairngorm National Park bought a south London hovel in 1999, re-designated it his second home in 2005 when he became an MP, and the Bright Young Thing then sold it in 2007 for £300,000. The dashing Cabinet Minister’s recent mortgage claims of £1,100 per month suggest an existence amid more salubrious environs – Volvos, delicatessens and Oxfam. Alexander didn’t cheat his way to Cheam, or wherever he lives. ‘There is no suggestion that Mr Alexander has broken any tax laws,’ opine the authors of this morning’s expenses expose. Alexander was liable for capital Gains Tax courtesy

Four weeks into the new government and the National Security Council machinery is still being put in place and ministers are still getting read into their briefs. The visit by William Hague, Andrew Mitchell and Liam Fox to Afghanistan was important, despite the brouhaha over the Defence Secretary’s comments. Such a visit was simply not imaginable under the Brown government. On the other hand, insiders say there is no real difference yet from the NSID committee that Gordon Brown created and the National Security Council that David Cameron has convened – except that the latter meets weekly, producing a torrent of tasks for officials. Permanent Secretaries are meeting regularly to

Even a general election could not shorten the expenses crisis’s shadow. The Telegraph has the scoop that David Laws apparently abused the second home allowance between 2006 and 2009, claiming tens of thousands of pounds for rooms owned by his long-term partner. MPs have been banned from leasing accommodation from their partners since 2006. Spice is added to the scandal in that Laws escaped exposure during last year’s witch hunt because he did not disclose that his landlord, James Lundie, was also his lover. Laws and Lundie have been involved since 2001; their attachment was kept secret from family and friends. Laws’s defends his actions as being designed to guard

Wondering why David Laws put in such a convincing performance when defending the government’s cuts at the dispatch box on Wednesday?  This little detail from Allegra Stratton’s excellent profile of him might help explain: “A friend confirmed that for the past six months, as the official Lib Dem party line decided on by Vince Cable was no cuts, Laws had been telling friends he believed the markets wouldn’t tolerate it. ‘He has been saying privately the cuts have to start straight after the election,’ they said.”

All kinds of hoohah about last night’s Question Time, for which Downing St refused to put up a panellist because of Alastair Campbell’s involvement.  If he was replaced with a shadow minister, they said, they would happily get involved.  But, as the excutive editor of Question Time explains here, the Beeb wasn’t prepared to go along with that.  So Campbell got to lord it up in front of the cameras. For the reasons outlined by Guido and Iain Dale, it was probably a slight mis-step by the coalition – but not one, in itself, that will have any important rammifications for them or the public.  For while it’s not the

Was the delayed ballot in Thirsk and Malton a referendum on the coalition government?  If so, the result released in the early hours of this morning will greatly reassure David Cameron and Nick Clegg.  The Tory candidate Anne McIntosh won the seat with 52.9 percent of the vote (up from 51.9 percent in 2005), and the Lib Dems came second with 23.3 percent of the vote (up from 18.8 percent).  Labour were pushed way down into third place on 13.5 percent (down from 23.4 percent). So, over three-quarters of the vote for the two coalition parties. I’d be hesitant to draw any firm conclusions from a one-off election, conducted under