James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
With UKIP regularly challenging the Liberal Democrats for third place in the polls, the party is now beginning to be treated with the seriousness it deserves. In an interview on the Sunday Politics, Nigel Farage made his usual, spiky case for leaving the European Union. Farage argued that he wants a free-trade deal with the
David Cameron spent yesterday campaigning for Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner candidates in Bedfordshire and Leicestershire. The visits, though, received scant national attention: the only coverage I’ve spotted so far is on page 33 of The Times. Talk to ministers and they maintain that the Police and Crime Commissioner elections are more visible out in
There’s no such thing as a safe seat in a by-election as Bradford West demonstrated. But it would still be a major shock if Labour lost Rotherham, a seat they’ve held since 1933. But the three by-elections coming up after Corby—Middlesborough, Croydon North and, now, Rotherham—will test how much Labour has learnt from the Bradford
‘I thought it would hurt more than it did’ one loyalist minister remarked after last night’s government defeat on the EU budget. The fact that the vote isn’t going to bring the government down or bind its hands is what is consoling Cameron loyalists. They are also pointing out that the Eurosceptic vote split with
Since the end of the recession was confirmed a few days ago, confidence has returned to at least one part of -Britain. Ministers are beginning to strut again as they wander round Whitehall and their conversations include the occasional reference to a second term. Political recovery will, they think, follow economic recovery. As evidence for
The government has just suffered an embarrassing defeat on the EU budget. The rebel amendment, which called for a cut rather than the real terms freeze David Cameron is proposing, passed by 307 votes to 294. There are, I think, three significant consequences of tonight’s vote. First, it has been yet another reminder that David
The Prime Minister needed to reassure his own side at PMQs today on the EU budget and give his whips something to work with. He largely did that, saying almost immediately that his position was that at best, he’d like it cut and at worst, frozen. That Cameron has said he’d like it cut will
At PMQs today, David Cameron will need to go some distance to meet his backbenchers and head off a government defeat tonight on the EU budget. He’ll need to say that he personally would like to see the EU Budget reduced and that if other countries are prepared to agree to that, he’d be delighted.
Gabby Bertin is one of David Cameron’s long-marchers; she has been with him since he won the leadership in 2005. Bertin has acted as his political spokeswoman for the last seven years, pushing the Cameron message and dealing calmly with the inevitable crises and mishaps. Few people know what Cameron thinks as well as Bertin
Cutting the EU budget is a very good idea. Much of it is spent inefficiently and its priorities are all wrong, 40 percent of it goes on agriculture. Given that a cut would also be popular with voters, why doesn’t David Cameron propose one? The reason is that there’s virtually no chance of getting agreement
Since leaving the Cabinet, Liam Fox has acted as a cross between a scout and an out-rider for various of his former Conservative Cabinet colleagues. In a speech in Oslo tomorrow, he’ll argue that the only way to deal with the Euro crisis is for all of those countries who cannot realistically cope with the
Danny Alexander told Andrew Neil on The Sunday Politics that even if he had known the economy would only grow by 0.6% rather than the five and a half percent plus that the Office of Budget Responsibility predicted in 2010, he would still have backed the austerity programme. ‘The judgment we made was the right
In The Spectator this week, Charles Moore argued that David Cameron — despite his oft-stated desire to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership — doesn’t actually have a European policy. Charles’ criticisms have clearly stung. For in his Telegraph column, he outlines what post-2015, the Conservatives would seek in any renegotiation: “In essence, the
The EU budget negotiation, now a month away, promises to be David Cameron’s next big European test. The Prime Minister has repeatedly declared that he wants to see the EU budget frozen at 2011 levels and that he’s prepared to use the need for unanimity to achieve that. The Economist this week has a very
A large part of the Tory message at the next election will be ‘don’t let Labour ruin the economy again’. One of the things that will help the Tories make this a topic of the campaign is Ed Balls’s constant desire to defend the record of the last Labour government. As Jonathan noted earlier, when
The saga of whether Lynton Crosby, the hard-charging Australian strategist who ran Boris Johnson’s successful mayoral campaigns, will join the Cameron operation continues. I understand that contrary to popular belief the obstacle to Crosby coming in is not the money. One senior source tells me that ‘If it was just about money, Andrew Feldman would
The economy is out of recession. It grew by 1 per cent in the third quarter of this year, which is the fastest quarterly growth rate since 2007. This positive number makes it a lot easier for the coalition to claim that the economy is ‘healing’. Expect to see ministers heading to TV studios to
There’s a spectre haunting the Conservative party, the spectre of a voteless recovery. Under the gothic arches of the House of Commons, small groups of Tory MPs stand around nervously debating whether ‘it’s John Major all over again’. Their fear is that a Conservative government will preside over an economic recovery but receive scant thanks
David Cameron was in a particularly irritable mood at Prime Minister’s Questions today. But he did what he needed to do and made clear that ‘prisoners are not getting the vote under this government’. It seems there may be another Commons vote to further demonstrate the will of the House on this matter. If there
The issue of prisoner votes has turned into a question of trust between David Cameron and his backbenchers. Most Tory MPs well remember that the Prime Minister’s initial intention was to comply with the Strasbourg court’s ruling; he only changed his mind after seeing how strong feelings were on the issue on the Tory benches