Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

In a brave move, David Cameron sets fire to his authority

It is always useful to remember Robert Conquest’s suggestion that The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.  No, I don’t know why David Cameron would amputate his authority before he runs for re-election either. But that’s what he has done today by ruling out running for a third term in office.  I dare say it was an honest – and spontaneous – answer to a simple question. But still: what a bizarre thing to do, not least because no-one expected him to run again in 2020 even if, by some good fortune, he returns to

Steerpike Steerpike

Revealed: Labour candidate’s joke about Oscar Pistorius shooting

David Cameron is facing calls from Labour to discipline a local council candidate after they dressed as Oscar Pistorius for a costume party. Gregg Peers – who is standing for the Conservatives in a Cumbria County Council by-election – posted photos of himself in the fancy dress on his Facebook page. Labour’s Liz Kendall has said the Prime Minister must ‘show he takes violence against women seriously by taking immediate action against his candidate’. The MP for Leicester West adds that ‘the Conservatives must explain why they promoted him to senior positions in their party’. But isn’t it time for the Labour party to also show that they take violence against women seriously?

Sebastian Payne

Mini Election: Sajid Javid on appealing to ethnic minorities and negative campaigning

The Conservative party still doesn’t attract enough ethnic minorities. In this week’s Mini Election video, I visit Essex to speak to the Culture Secretary Sajid Javid about what the Tories have done to increase their appeal to non-white voters. He thinks Baroness Warsi is wrong and believes that the Conservatives are not ‘set to lose’ the Muslim vote in May. We discussed whether Lord Bates’ comments about immigrant mothers having too many babies were likely to turn voters away. Javid acknowledged that there are real concerns about immigration that need to be addressed but did not explicitly say he disagreed with Bates’ remarks. With the proper campaign just one week away, is Javid at all concerned that

Steerpike Steerpike

Ed Miliband’s brother bother is back

Miliband finally got some good media coverage this weekend. Alas, it was David rather than Ed who was on the receiving end. The Labour leader’s brother was branded ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ in a glowing profile in the Sunday Times. According to well sourced ‘friends’, the former Foreign Secretary turned Labour leadership loser has conquered America and is ready to ride back as a white knight. ‘David wants Ed to be prime minister. End of story’, says a spokesman. Yet reading between the lines, things are obviously still a little bit tense. On Budget Day, David failed to mention his sibling once despite tweeting all the way through his brother’s scatty response to Osborne’s budget.

Sebastian Payne

Another poll suggests Labour wipeout in Scotland

Will the SNP eviscerate Scottish Labour? A new poll from the Guardian/ICM today suggests once again that the SNP is on course to do very well in the upcoming general election — and is currently on course to take 29 seats from Labour. As with Lord Ashcroft’s polling earlier this month, the numbers suggest that the swing from Labour to the SNP shows no signs of ebbing away. The SNP is currently on 43 per cent, the same as the last ICM poll in December, while Labour are 16 points behind on 27 per cent. The Scottish Tories are up one point to 14 per cent while the Lib Dems are languishing

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Could the Tories do a deal with the SNP? (Yes they could)

We have been here before, you know. Seven years ago Alex Salmond looked forward to the prospect of a hung parliament and spied an opportunity to ‘make Westminster dance to a Scottish jig’. If Scotland returned at least 20 SNP MPs – members, as the then First Minister indelicately put it, ‘ready, willing, and able to defend our parliament and our people’ – then Scotland’s interests might yet hold the balance of power in London. Not, he stressed, as part of any formal coalition but on a case-by-case and vote-by-vote basis. That didn’t happen, of course. The SNP won only six seats in 2010. Still, a victory delayed is not the

Steerpike Steerpike

Which Spectator columnist thinks Sarah Vine is both ‘an idiot’ and ‘a pox’?

After Sarah Vine took Ed Miliband to task in an acerbic Daily Mail column for having a bare kitchen, the wife of Michael Gove received a grilling on the BBC’s This Week from both Alan Johnson and Michael Portillo. Now, Mr S’s colleague Tanya Gold has joined in. Writing in this week’s edition of the Spectator, Gold takes time out of her review of the restaurant Kitty Fisher’s – which is a favourite of David Cameron’s – to call Vine both ‘an idiot’ and ‘a pox’: ‘Here I address Sarah Vine, or Mrs Michael Gove, the Daily Mail columnist who analysed the smaller of the so-far-discovered Miliband kitchens and decided that Labour is, on the

Sunday

Molly Guinness

Thank goodness we only have to watch one TV debate

The treasurer of one of Manchester’s Conservative clubs is a lifelong Labour voter who votes only as a mark of respect for his father, who always voted Labour. He’s one of the few club regulars we met who bothers to vote, but he never watches the news and takes pride in knowing nothing about politics. I was in Manchester looking for disaffected voters with the World Service’s political correspondent Rob Watson; Manchester Central had the lowest turnout at the last election. We talked to a lot of people who had a similar attitude – ‘I’d rather be a hypocrite than powerless’, said one man in Wetherspoon’s. It’s a bit like

James Forsyth James Forsyth

When will voters really tune into the election campaign?

With just over six weeks to go to polling day, the mood of the parties is now largely determined by the opinion polls. This morning’s crop are a mixed bunch. Survation for the Mail on Sunday has a 4 point Labour lead, YouGov has Labour two ahead but Opinium has the Tories on 36% and ahead by three. What seems clear is that the Budget hasn’t had a decisive impact on the polls. Yet most Tory MPs, including those who’ve been highly critical of Osborne in the past, are happy with it. One senior backbencher told me, ‘Burnishing a reputation for responsibility is more valuable than anything else. Glitzy giveaways

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Debate deal finally reached

After months of negotiations, a final deal on debates has now been reached. There will be no head to head debate between Cameron and Miliband. Instead, there will be one seven way debate on April 2nd broadcast on ITV. There will also be an opposition leaders’ debate on the 16th of April on the BBC featuring Labour, the SNP, UKIP, the Greens and Plaid Cymru. On top of these debates, David Cameron and Ed Miliband will both do separate interviews, taking questions from a studio audience on Thursday for a Channel 4 / Sky programme. Then, on 3oth of April, Cameron, Miliband and Nick Clegg will appear separately on a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Boris approach

It is sometimes easy to forget that Boris is more than just a personality, that he has policy views too. In interviews with The Mail and The Times this morning, Boris sets out his own philosophy. It is, as you would expect from someone who voted for Ken Clarke in the 2001 leadership contest, a broadly one nation platform. Johnson argues that the Tories should not ‘simply shrug their shoulders’ about inequality and backs Iain Duncan Smith’s plan to extend the right to buy to housing association properties. He also talks about immigration far more positively than Cameron does, saying that ‘Politicians need to point out that immigration is a

Steerpike Steerpike

Are the Tories already planning how to push through their next coalition?

Are CCHQ already planning how to push through their next coalition? Mr S only asks as word reaches Steerpike that Conservative backbenchers have been urged to return to London immediately after the General Election in the potential event of a snap vote. The pressure is on for any future coalition to be put to the parliamentary party after this failed to happen in 2010. ‘There is a lot of soreness about how the party was bounced last time around into accepting the last deal, and we shall not be bounced this time around,’ a 1922 Committee source recently told the BBC. An email from the Government Chief Whip which suggests plans are afoot has been passed to Mr S: ‘Please

Friday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Keith O’Brien stripped of the rank of cardinal – an extraordinary disgrace for the Scottish Church

Keith O’Brien, former Cardinal Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, was today stripped of the rank of cardinal by Pope Francis. Technically he has resigned. But the statement above leaves us in little doubt that O’Brien has had the red hat forcibly removed from him. He’s the first cardinal to lose his title since Louis Billot, a French Jesuit who resigned as cardinal in 1927 in protest at the Church’s condemnation of the far-Right anti-Semitic Action Française movement. Billot was the only cardinal to resign in the 20th century. [Update: see discussion in the thread over O’Brien’s title. This he has not lost, de jure, but de facto he is no longer

Daniel Jackson

Scottish nationalism is hypersensitive and insular. So is the newspaper it has spawned

Last year Russia Today launched a poster campaign with a fanciful strapline: ‘This is what happens when there is no second opinion’. The extraordinary implication is that the conflict could have been avoided, if only we had listened to Putin. This is such an obvious fallacy that it’s hardly worth dwelling on. But RT (as it now likes to be known, as if people don’t know what the ‘R’ stands for) is producing lightly disguised state propaganda. The viewers know it and so do the mercenaries that make it. In contrast, Scotland’s new pro-independence daily newspaper – ‘The National’– is written with earnest conviction. Its contributors are devout believers, and

Graham Brady-Mp

Parliament is weak and ineffective — it needs to change

Only a third of the public think Parliament is effective in holding government to account: two thirds want improvement of our democratic institutions. We struggle to get more than two in three adults to cast a vote at a general election. It is widely held that anti-politics is the prevailing mood of our times. With depressing regularity though, discussions involving politicians and the media focus not on how to improve our democracy, but rather on how we can better communicate the brilliance of our achievements to those too cynical or ill-informed to see them. My eighteen years in the Commons have led me to a different conclusion: I think Parliament is weak, ineffective and in need of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Main parties seem rather old and tired, say voters

Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with negative campaigning (though surely there’s something a bit wrong about being inaccurate). But when parties pontificate about crafting messages of hope and avoiding smears and falsehood, before plumping for the latter, can they really be surprised that overall voters are a bit cheesed off with mainstream politics? All the parties negatively campaign against negative campaigning, accusing the others of doing something that they too are doing, and hoping that no-one notices. Well, voters do seem to notice. They’re also not particularly thrilled with any of the parties. While the Tories might be pleased that the first YouGov poll after the Budget puts them two points

Sebastian Payne

Mini Election: Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz discusses fighting a three way marginal

Will the Liberal Democrats make any gains in the London suburbs at the upcoming election? In the latest Mini Election video, I went to Hampstead & Kilburn to speak to Maajid Nawaz, the Liberal Democrat candidate and head of counter-extremism think tank Quilliam, to discuss his campaign to win this seat, which was a three-way marginal at the last election. Nawaz discusses how his work with Quilliam has strengthened his reputation locally when the Liberal Democrats’ national reputation has taken a beating. Given the publicity surrounding his involvement in the Jesus and Mo cartoons furore and calls for him to be deselected, Nawaz said he still thinks the recognition makes it

Steerpike Steerpike

Breaking: Ukip not in crisis

After the Ukip MEP Janice Atkinson was suspended from her party following claims that a member of her staff tried to get a fake receipt to increase an expense claim, media pundits have claimed that Ukip is in crisis. However, according to Nigel Farage’s right hand man, this is not the case.  Raheem Kassam has taken to Twitter to say that things are going so swimmingly for Ukippers that he even has time to play on his Xbox, while members of the press office have been spending time in the pub. That’s all cleared up then.

Sebastian Payne

Janice Atkinson is just the latest example of Ukip’s persistent problem with candidates

Ukip is in crisis once again. Today’s Sun reveals that Janice Atkinson, an MEP for the South East and PPC for Folkestone and Hythe, has been suspended and may face a police enquiry over a fake receipt from a Margate restaurant. The party appears to be washing its hands of Atkinson, with Guido reporting she has been advised to find legal counsel. On LBC this morning, Nigel Farage distanced himself from Atkinson, saying he was ‘deeply shocked’ by her actions, describing them as ‘one of the most incredibly stupid and dishonest things I’ve ever seen in my life’:  ‘We have suspended Janice Atkinson and we will hold a disciplinary hearing as soon as possible which will be

Thursday

The Spectator

The Conservatives should be the party of immigrants — and here’s how they can be

For a long while, the Conservatives have been puzzled about their lack of popularity among immigrants. In theory, the Conservative party should be the natural home of new voters who are ambitious, entrepreneurial, hard-working and family-orientated. The immigrant vote — to the extent it can be considered a coherent block at all — ought to be fertile Tory territory. By and large, these are families who have moved to Britain to get ahead and to avail themselves of what Michael Howard called ‘the British dream’. Yet at the last election fewer than one in five ethnic minority voters endorsed Conservative candidates and the party is unlikely to fare much better