James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
David Cameron kicked the can down the road on Europe today. What he announced will be enough to keep the vast majority of Tories united behind the leadership until the election; the party is close enough to power that most people are not inclined to rock the boat. But judging from those I’ve spoken with
The word coming out of Committee Room 14 is that David Cameron has just told his MPs that his party’s manifesto will not contain a commitment to a referendum on whatever repatriation package that the Tories manage to negotiate once in government. The most that he said was that if a Tory government was unsatisfied
The front benches on both sides felt that they had to say that they accepted Kelly in full and so Harriet Harman and Sir George Young did just that. One member of the shadow Cabinet told me earlier this week the only option for the political class is unconditional surrender. But it does seem like
The accusations of betrayal being hurled at David Cameron are, for the reasons I outlined earlier, deeply unfair. It is Labour that has broken its promise, not the Tories – a point that the Tories should be shouting from the rooftops. Also, Euro-sceptics should remember that Cameron did keep the pledge he made during the
The Guardian reports this morning that, “One in five – two million – British children now live in households where neither parent has a job.” This is an incredibly worrying statistic. The evidence suggests that worklessness is corrosive and soul-destroying. A child growing up in a workless household will, for obvious reasons, tend to have
With the Czech constitutional court’s decision removing one of the final barriers to ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, attention is turning to what the Tories will do next. What we know they won’t do is hold a post-ratification referendum. This is prompting cries of betrayal from some. But this charge is unfair. Cameron’s “cast-iron pledge”
There’s a heartening story in the Evening Standard today of the difference that public service reform can make. The paper reports that Harris City Academy is the first school in the country to receive a perfect Ofsted score under the new inspection system. This is a transformation since 1991 when at Sylvan High School ,
Abdullah Abdullah dropping out of the Afghan election run off and Hamid Karzai being elected by default has left the Nato-led coalition in a very difficult situation. After the level of fraud in the first round it is hard to claim that Karzai is a legitimate leader. But equally, leaving Afghanistan remains as unplatable an
The Conservative leadership claims that a British Bill of Rights would serve to guide judges in interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights and so give Britain some discretion in how the rights which exist in the Charter — many of which are vague — are applied in this country. But in the new issue
Tim Montgomerie has the scoop that the Tories will not hold a referendum on Lisbon if it has been ratified by the next general election. A vote on Lisbon once it had been ratified would only have had moral force so the Tory policy shift is not a betrayal of Euro-scepticism. However, the party will
The prize for this weekend’s most comic briefing must go to the ‘leading Brown ally’ who told Simon Walters that the PM would go if everyone else in the Labour party wasn’t even more hopeless than he was. Here are the choice paragraphs: Mr Brown’s supporters said he views Foreign Secretary David Miliband as ‘lightweight’,
I have long thought that the secrecy surrounding Lord Ashcroft’s tax affairs is a strategic liability for the Conservative party. The Conservatives should be able to say if their party vice-chairmen is domiciled in this country for tax purposes. Indeed, openness about this point should be a condition of him holding the position. The Observer
There has been speculation in the press recently that Michael Heseltine might be offered a Cabinet post after the next election. But in an interview for the BBC’s Straight Talk with Andrew Neil, Hesletine is fairly Shermanesque in his denials: “I would be 77, and frankly David Cameron does not need 77 year olds in
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics When William Hague put on his masterful performance at the Dispatch Box last year, imagining how Gordon Brown would feel as President Blair’s motorcade pulled into Downing Street, it seemed the funniest thing in the world to the Tories. But the last laugh may yet be on them.
Politics in this country lacks a proper ideas infrastructure. One of the major reasons for this is that the universities play so little part in policy making and the broader policy debate. Vernon Bogdanor has an important piece on the reasons for this in this week’s New Statesman. His argument is that the bureaucratisation of
Next week is going to be dominated by Sir Christopher Kelly’s scheme for reforming MPs’ expenses and allowances. The party leaders are trying to force these reforms through, believing that it would be disastrous for the reputation of politics if MPs don’t accept these reforms in full. But the leaks about what Kelly will propose
A contact just back from Brussels tells me that the putative Blair candidacy, which I wrote about this week, is in trouble. Apparently the supporters of Jean Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg PM, are frank that the purpose of his candidacy is to polarise the field with him—Federalist, anti-Iraq—on one side and Blair on the other.
During the TA debate yesterday, Bob Ainsworth tried to explain why the government had ended up making the cut in the first place. One of the reasons Ainsworth advanced was that recruitment for the regular army had been stronger than expected. But the army remains below its target strength. The exchange between Fox and Ainsworth
George Osborne’s speech on Monday calling for huge cash bonuses not to be paid this year drew an angry response from those hoping to receive huge cash bonuses – and various City and business pressure groups. A few years ago I would have felt deeply uncomfortable with what Obsorne proposed, but because nearly every bank
When the story of there being controversy over Liz Truss’s selection as the Tory candidate for South West Norfolk because she had once has an affair with a Tory MP arose last weekend, I dismissed it. My immediate reaction was that the media was just looking for a follow up story to the row over