James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
When I meet Chris Grayling in his departmental office, I do a double take. The Justice Secretary is not wearing a suit or even his Lord Chancellor’s robes but a pair of pale chinos and a pink Ralph Lauren button-down shirt. Noticing my surprise, Grayling reveals that this is his definition of ‘smart casual’: he’s
The next election is going to be the big, post-crash debate that the country didn’t have in 2010. Ed Miliband, as his speech yesterday demonstrated, believes that radical state intervention is needed to deal with the ‘living standards crisis’. His answer to the fact that there’s no money left is to get companies to pick
Today we saw why Ed Miliband ran for the Labour leadership. This was not a speech that his brother could have delivered. It was the most left-wing speech I’ve heard from the leader of a British political party. It was, without a doubt, authentic Miliband and delivered with passion. Politically, I suspect the speech now
Ed Balls has just taken the scalpel to HS2 in an interview with Steve Richards. He talked about the project having ‘huge fiscal implications’ and questioned whether the ‘benefits are really there’. He then went on to stress that the question was not just whether HS2 provided value for money, but whether it was the
Much of the talk down in Brighton is of the coming shadow Cabinet reshuffle. One person frequently tipped for the chop is Stephen Twigg, the shadow Education secretary. There’s much chatter that he might be replaced by Liz Kendall. But judging by his interview in today’s Evening Standard, Twigg won’t go quietly. He declares that
If you want to know just how much anger Damian McBride’s book has created in the Labour party—and particularly its Blairite wing, just watch Alastair Campbell’s interview with Andrew Neil on The Sunday Politics. Campbell doesn’t scream or shout but the anger in his voice as he discusses McBride’s antics is palpable. He did not
Ed Miliband’s interview on the Andrew Marr show neatly summed up the Labour leader’s problems in cutting through. Marr started with a series of questions about Miliband’s plans to change Labour’s relationship with the unions. This might be an important issue but it is hardly one of paramount interest to the electorate and every minute
This is not the backdrop that Ed Miliband would have wanted for Labour conference. Labour’s poll lead has—according to YouGov—vanished, Damian McBride is dominating the news agenda and there’s talk of splits and division in this inner circle. But, as I say in the cover this week, you can’t write Ed Miliband off yet. He
If you want to know why Damian McBride was such a feared figure in Whitehall, read the section in his memoirs about how he sowed division between Charles Clarke, then the Home Secretary, and Louise Casey, the anti-social behaviour tsar. McBride’s approach was far more cunning than straight negative briefings or leaks. Rather, he went through
Tory MPs are currently heading off to Oxfordshire for an away day. But the Tory leadership is keen to emphasise that this isn’t just another BBQ-style event. There will, they say, be a substantial policy element to it as well which could make things interesting as regular rebels Sarah Wollaston, Adam Afriyie and Peter Bone
Tristram Hunt has the easy charm, quick wits and good looks that you would expect of a TV historian. His blond hair has the hint of a curl to it and the only surprise about his appearance is that there isn’t a college scarf wrapped round his neck. His Commons office, where we meet, resembles
A Tory MP bobbed up at Prime Minister’s Questions recently to ask David Cameron whether he was ‘aware that 4 per cent of people believe that Elvis is still alive? That is double the number, we hear today, who think that Edward Miliband is a natural leader?’ The Tory benches tittered, Labour MPs slumped into
Normally, a party that was down in the polls and on course to lose around a third of its parliamentary seats would be in a grim mood, with the leader under pressure. But we don’t live in normal times; we live in coalition times. So, the Liberal Democrats have just had a remarkably chipper conference
There has always been a sense that Nick Clegg and his coterie have been separate from the rest of the Liberal Democrats. They were more hard-headed in their politics, more professional in their approach and more ambitious for power. But every year of Clegg’s leadership, the party becomes more like the leader. This conference, the
This Liberal Democrat conference is demonstrating that the last election result was actually a relatively simple one for the Liberal Democrats. The parliamentary arithmetic meant that the party only had to decide whether it wanted to be in government or not. No one in the party could accuse those who backed the idea of being
A rather irritable Paddy Ashdown has just told Andrew Neil that the Lib Democrats are ‘a left-wing party’ but that their next coalition would be determined by the voters. Ashdown, whose chairing the Lib Dem election campaign, claimed that it simply wasn’t accurate to say that Lib Dems had a preference for who they’d like
The Lib Dem conference rally was never going to be the same without Sarah Teather and her comedy routine. With Teather persona non grata following her decision to step down, it was duly a much tamer affair. The only risqué jokes were about Lembit Opik being bitten in the nether regions by a sausage dog.
Look at the polls and you’d think that Nick Clegg’s circle would be down in the dumps. But, as I say in the magazine this week, they actually head to Glasgow in good spirits. Why, because Clegg’s position as party leader is secure and another hung parliament remains the most likely result of the next
Michael Fallon is on course to achieve something that eluded both Michael Heseltine and Peter Mandelson, the sale of the Royal Mail. Fallon is this government’s safe pair of hands, the minister who can be relied upon to get things done. But this second ministerial career (Fallon served as an education minister in Margaret Thatcher
His party may be struggling to reach double digits in the polls, but Nick Clegg is entitled to feel smug as he heads to Glasgow for this year’s Lib Dem conference. This gathering, the penultimate one before the general election, has long been circled in Westminster diaries as the moment when a challenge to his