James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
When a political party repeatedly uses an attack line it is nearly always because their polling shows that it works. This is certainly why the Tories keep calling Ed Miliband ‘weak’. Indeed, they’re so keen to keep hitting him with this charge that they’ve stopped accusing him of knifing his brother for fear of undercutting
The coalition parties have governed together for more than three years now, but they remain culturally very different beasts. When the Liberal Democrats held an away day last week, it was at a conference centre in Milton Keynes — picked, in the words of one Lib Dem, ‘because there are no distractions there’. The Tories
Tom Watson’s resignation from the shadow Cabinet won’t draw a line under the row about Unite’s influence over Labour. But, rather, it will escalate it. This is now a serious enough issue to have drawn a shadow Cabinet resignation. Watson’s self-indulgent resignation letter makes clear that he’s going partly because of Blairite criticism. As he
The Durand boarding school project is a wonderfully ambitious attempt to give children from one of the most deprived parts of London the kind of education that has traditionally only be available to a privileged few. But earlier this week, the National Audit Office criticised the Department for Education for handing over money for the
When Ed Miliband began at PMQs by asking about Egypt, it looked like he was going to do six high-minded questions on foreign affairs and thus dodge the political attack the Tories had lined up for him. But that wasn’t Miliband’s plan, after a couple of questions on Egypt he shifted to education. I suspect
Theresa May’s statement in the Commons today on stop and search strikes me as an important moment. Here, we had a Tory Home Secretary standing up and saying that she understood why some communities felt that stop and search was used unfairly and announcing a review of it. This is, as I said on Sunday,
Liberal Democrat leaders are used to having to do more to get noticed than the other party leaders. But it is still striking just how much the Deputy Prime Minister is doing to try and inject himself into the national conversation. Joining Nick Clegg’s weekly phone-in on LBC is a monthly press conference. One of
Michael Gove is not the only minister to be frustrated by the poor quality of letters drafted for his signature. One minister was horrified to find his reply to the Prime Minister starting ‘Good to here from you’. Another complains that his name is still spelt wrong, three years after he started in the job.
Andrew Neil’s interview of Michael Fallon on The Sunday Politics was a reminder of just how much of UK energy policy is determined by EU rules. When pressed on why there’s such a capacity crunch that there’s a risk of blackouts in the winter of 2015-16, Fallon explained that this was because a whole series
Friday’s vote on James Wharton’s EU referendum bill is going to push the whole Europe question right back up the political agenda. The Tories will try and use it to highlight their support for a vote and the opposition of the other major parliamentary parties. It will be very hard for Ed Miliband to go
One thing that was noticeably absent yesterday was Tory crowing about Labour having signed up to the coalition’s current spending plans. Instead, George Osborne’s response to Balls concentrated on whether Labour would borrow more. Given the Osborne-Balls relationship, you might have thought that the Chancellor would have relished the idea that Balls had been forced
In the battle for the media’s attention Danny Alexander’s infrastructure statement is losing out rather badly to George Osborne’s choice of burger — a more easily digestible subject than the specifics of the government guarantee for a new nuclear power station. When he was asked about it on the Today Programme, Osborne seemed rather baffled
On Monday night, a Tory donor spent £90,000 on a bust of David Cameron at the party’s summer ball. It was an encouraging sign that there are still Conservatives prepared to lavish money and praise on the Prime Minister, and a reminder that the Tories will be able to run an extremely well- funded campaign
listen to ‘Spending review 2013: the Coffee House analysis’ on Audioboo The Liberal Democrats insisted that they wouldn’t accept any more welfare cuts. But George Osborne still found a way to put welfare at the centre of his statement today as he sought to put, what he calls, the ‘welfare party’ on the back foot.
David Laws’ decision to hand Liam Byrne’s infamous ‘there’s no money’ note to ITV is intriguing. It suggests that the Liberal Democrat leadership intend to escalate their attacks on Labour. Laws must know the power of this image. For when he first mentioned it at an early Osborne/Laws press conference, Andy Coulson pushed hard for
All departments have now reached agreement with the Treasury in the spending review. Vince Cable’s Business Department, which was not expected to settle until the last possible moment, settled earlier this evening bringing the round to a conclusion. Finishing things off with two and a half days to spare is an achievement for George Osborne.
The Treasury is keen to downplay any sense of drama surrounding the spending review. On Marr this morning, George Osborne declared that he was ‘confident’ that he and Vince Cable would agree the BIS budget ‘in short order.’ He emphasised that the differences between them were not that large. Indeed, I’m informed that the differences
The next few days in Whitehall are going to be dominated by the remaining bits of the spending review. The Treasury remains confident that it will wrap everything up with relative ease, BIS seems to be the only department still causing genuine concern. But given that Cable is the left tent peg of this coalition
The other day, George Osborne was walking with his wife across the courtyard of the Royal Academy. In the evening sunshine, the Chancellor spotted another Tory MP in the opposite corner. The MP was on his mobile: a wave would have seen courtesies observed. But Osborne, who was dressed for dinner, strode over and waited
Ed Miliband’s approach at PMQs today was rather odd. He led, aggressively, on whether the government would implement the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards’ recommendation of a new criminal offence for negligent bankers. He asked the question in a manner that expected the answer no, but Cameron—predictably—said he would. At which point, the wind rather
