Politics

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

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Exclusive: Electoral Commission gives Al Murray’s party the green light

Oh dear, Mr S has some bad news for Nigel Farage. The Ukip leader’s South Thanet rival Al Murray has had his application to make the Freedom United Kingdom Party an officially registered political party approved. This means that he can now run for the coveted seat in May. The Electoral Commission has given the application the green light despite reservations from Ukip supporters that FUKP is too similar to Ukip so could muddle voters. A spokesman for the commission confirms the news:  ‘I can confirm that Al Murray’s party has had the name Free United Kingdom Party approved by the Electoral Commission. We have informed the party of our decision.’ The

Steerpike Steerpike

Ukip should not attack others for attacks

‘What I’m seeing in this election is the influence of these big American advisers and it’s becoming the most negative, personal and nasty campaign I’ve ever seen.’ So said Nigel Farage to LBC this morning, as he promised to ‘rise above’ personal attacks in the coming election slog. Stung by rumours about his declining health, fingers are being pointed about a certain antipodean master of the dark arts, but are Ukip really in any position to lecture on the Americanisation of our political process? Not only was Farage at CPAC last week to address the Republican right, his party’s official YouTube feed is littered with aggressive US style attack ads:

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Miliband under pressure over SNP pact

Labour has found Sir John Major rather useful in this Parliament, with his criticisms of government policy and praise of Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze. But his op-ed in today’s Telegraph in which he demands that Ed Miliband rule out a coalition with the Scottish National Party is rather less helpful. What makes this call even more unhelpful is that many Scottish Labour MPs are desperate for Miliband to rule out a pact because of the damage that shacking up with the SNP would do for their brand in Scotland. They will also have emerged from a bloody battle in which many of their number will have lost seats to

Steerpike Steerpike

Nigel Farage’s birthday message for Lord Ashcroft

As Lord Ashcroft turned 69 this week, the international businessman celebrated with a polling event on his birthday to announce the impending Labour bloodbath north of the border: ‘Good evening and welcome. If you have ever wondered what a pollster does to celebrate his birthday, now you know. Somebody kindly asked me this morning if this was the big “four-O”, and I was compelled to admit this estimate was outside the margin of error.’ Curiously, Mr S hears that the only party leader to wish the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party a happy birthday was Ukip’s Nigel Farage. With Ashcroft’s polls currently putting Ukip slightly behind the Tories in South

Steerpike Steerpike

Tony Blair spotted fine dining in Burma following his ‘blood money’ Labour donation

This week Tony Blair donated £106,000 to the Labour Party, with £1,000 going to each Labour candidate fighting for a target seat. Ed Miliband has since faced flak for accepting the ‘blood money’ funds, due to unease over the source of the cash given Blair’s dealings with dictatorships such as Kazakhstan. Not that any of this is worrying Blair. Mr S hears that the former Labour leader has been busy sunning himself in Myanmar, where human rights are regarded as among the worst in the world. Blair, who has an estimated worth of nearly £100 million, was spied fine dining in the country’s capital Naypyitaw. When a journalist inquired as to what he was doing there, they were

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: How to save the Union; who cares for Paolozzi’s murals

A disaster for unionists Sir: I share Alex Massie’s view that ‘this election is going to be a disaster’ for us unionists (‘Divided we fall’, 28 February). It is almost too painful to recall that it will mark the 60th anniversary of a great victory in May 1955 when the Tories, standing as Scottish Unionists, won more seats north of the border than their opponents and helped give Anthony Eden a secure majority. Under the baleful influence of George Osborne, who could not care less about the constitution, there seems little chance that the Tories will redeem themselves by proposing the one remaining policy that could save the Union: a

Peter Jones

Cicero’s advice for Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw

In responding as they did to the Daily Telegraph ‘sting’, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind may well have done nothing wrong by the letter of parliamentary law. But people’s perception of behaviour is quite another matter. The MPs’ bloated self-importance and Rifkind’s shameful defence of his actions, that no one would want to become an MP unless they could also line their pockets, did them no credit at all. The ancients knew all about this sort of thing. Roman senators, for example, made millions if they were posted abroad to run provinces. As cynics said, they had to make three fortunes: one to recoup election expenses from climbing the

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Nick Clegg takes a cooking lesson

Miriam Clegg said in a recent interview that she had banned her husband Nick Clegg from the kitchen on ‘health and safety grounds’. But happily, the leader of the Liberal Democrats can now have at least one dish to his name after spending a day making Cornish pasties as part of the St Piran’s Day festivities with pupils at the St Merryn school in Cornwall. The new skill may come in useful in May should Clegg have to consider a new career path after the general election.

Sebastian Payne

Five things I learnt after going behind the scenes with Ukip

Ukip is fighting its most important and difficult election campaign to date. If the party is victorious in May, there is a chance it will become an established Westminster force — around for many years to come. But if Ukip fails, its chance to crack the Commons will have passed and the party’s peak will be judged as being the Rochester & Strood and Clacton by-elections last year. In the magazine this week, I go behind the scenes with Ukip to find out how the election campaign is going, and what victory looks like for the party. Here are five things I learnt from my time with the People’s Army in London, Essex

Douglas Murray

Was Netanyahu’s message worth the diplomatic damage it caused?

For weeks before his plane set off for Washington, Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress was exhaustingly analysed here in DC. Did Speaker Boehner adequately notify the White House about the invitation? How angry was the President really about this fait accompli? Were the Republicans using the invite to try to show themselves to be more pro-Israel than their Democrat rivals? Or were certain Democrats talking of no-shows and walk-outs during the speech only in order to show themselves more critical of Israel than the Republicans? By the day of the speech it seemed both sides had need of the fight. Of course Netanyahu had not single-handedly created this

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron may have chickened out, but the broadcasters cocked up the TV debates

So David Cameron won’t debate anyone unless the broadcasters agree to his exact specifications, Ed Miliband won’t debate Clegg in Cameron’s place and has instead offered Harriet Harman, and the broadcasters are threatening to empty chair anyone who refuses to turn up to any of their debates. It’s fair to say that the TV debates are firstly very unlikely to happen and secondly in the most unimpressive mess. Though the Prime Minister is ducking out of them for the selfish reasons outlined here, the blame must ultimately lie with the broadcasters for making it possible for him to do so. They have managed to mess up at every stage of

Ed West Ed West

Never mind Ukip’s immigration policy, Britain has an emigration problem

Ukip has unveiled its new Aussie-style immigration policy, just a week after the latest bad immigration news for the government. The news was bad only in a sense, as high immigration levels are a symptom of a healthy economy; after all, the Venezuelan government doesn’t break into a sweat every time the immigration figures come in, thanks to the genius of Chavenomics. But it’s all bad news for the Tories because most people would like restrictions on the rate of population growth, and of immigration-led social change, and the government made promises it clearly couldn’t keep. Yet the British economy is doing well and Ukip realise therefore that there is a

Steerpike Steerpike

Has a Tory MP been editing his Wikipedia page from the Houses of Parliament?

Thanks to the internet, it has become increasingly difficult for politicians to hide any past indiscretions. However, this hasn’t put some MPs off from trying. Mr S has noticed some edits have recently been made to Tory MP Craig Whittaker’s Wikipedia profile. The page has had some interesting amendments, with two negative references to the MP for Calder Valley being deleted. First, an edit in December saw all reference taken out to an incident in 2011 where Whittaker was arrested for an alleged attack on his son outside a petrol station. A second change was then made which saw a line deleted regarding claims that he had misled his constituents over cuts to the NHS. Whittaker has

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Putin’s empire building, Osborne’s election plans and what Ukip want

Are we heading into a new Cold War? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, we revisit Vladimir Putin’s empire building plans and the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens debates his intentions with author Ben Judah. Is the West right to mistrust Putin? Do we have the moral upper hand regarding the situation in Ukraine? And should nations always assume that NATO and the EU always have better democratic solutions than Russia? Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth also discuss George Osborne’s interest in the north and what it means for the Tories’ electioneering plans. Will the Conservatives pick up support outside of their comfort areas? Should the Manchester area have devolved

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Tell Mama and the battle for the future of British Islam

Tell Mama is Britain’s most prominent opponent of anti-Muslim prejudice. It monitors everything from criminal assaults to everyday abuse. The far right loathes it, and the Conservative press sells the grotesque pretence that the group exaggerates prejudice to divert attention from the horror of Islamist violence. But attacks from the right only wound. Tell Mama’s ‘friends’ in the Muslim community have turned out to be far more dangerous and are threatening to destroy the organisation. ‘I am on a knife edge,’ one activist told me. ‘I may just leave. I’m so fed up.’ Two weeks ago Andrew Gilligan reported in the Sunday Telegraph that Baroness Warsi’s Whitehall working group on

Sebastian Payne

What Ukip wants: get Farage elected, then prepare for a Labour collapse in the north

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/putin-s-empire-building/media.mp3″ title=”Sebastian Payne and Matthew Goodwin discuss what goes on behind the scenes at Ukip” startat=1222] Listen [/audioplayer]In Ukip’s Mayfair headquarters there is a copy of Banksy’s monkey with the sign around its neck: ‘Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge’. It seems appropriate. For years, Nigel Farage and his party were dismissed as a bunch of cranks. Within three months, they could be propping up David Cameron’s government, having named their price — perhaps an EU referendum before the year is out. Conservatives stopped sneering at Ukip a while ago. Now they’re more worried about its ambitions. What does Ukip want? Will it attack from the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

George Osborne interview: smaller government is not enough

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/putin-s-empire-building/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson discuss Osborne’s election manoeuvres ” startat=839] Listen [/audioplayer]Puccini’s doesn’t seem like George Osborne’s sort of restaurant. It is a pizza-and-pasta place in the safely Labour constituency of Salford and Eccles, Greater Manchester, most notable for the fact that Sir Alex Ferguson once took his whole squad there. (‘Penne alla Giggs’ is still on offer to prove it.) In recent years, however, the Chancellor has become something of a regular — he has even taken the Prime Minister along — and is made welcome to the point that when we met there last Thursday diners queued to be photographed with him. The Chancellor used

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

It’s now clear: David Cameron was never a real moderniser

I have a friend who was a Young Conservative. Just the one, I promise, and he’s grown out of it by now. I remember him, though, back from a party conference, freshly despairing, some time in the bleak, dandruffy Tory doldrums of 2000-ish. ‘It would be very easy,’ I remember him wailing, ‘for them to have some funky lights and Morcheeba playing in the background. Couldn’t they at least do that?’ Easy or not, it would be another five years and two bald leaders before they’d do anything of the sort. By then it would be the Killers, rather than Morcheeba, but the idea was much the same. It’s easy

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s debate ‘offer’ means he’s chickening out while pretending not to

So David Cameron has made his ‘final offer’, his final condition on which he will or won’t sign up to the TV debates. And it is a clever way of appearing to care about the TV debates while ensuring that they don’t happen at all. In a letter to the BBC tonight, the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications Craig Oliver has said he will only agree to one debate – lasting 90 minutes, between seven party leaders. And that’s it. Number 10 sources are briefing that the Prime Minister’s rejection of a two-way with Ed Miliband is because we have left the era of two-party politics. Well yes, but we also

Sebastian Payne

New Ashcroft polling points to Labour/SNP bloodbath

Has the SNP threat to Labour in Scotland abated? Not yet according to Lord Ashcroft, who has released his latest round of constituency level polling. Focusing on the SNP/Labour marginals, Ashcroft has found that in five current Labour strongholds, the SNP are on track to swipe away four of them: Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock, Dumfries & Galloway Edinburgh South West and Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath — the latter of course being represented by Gordon Brown. The only good news for Labour is East Renfrewshire, where Labour has a one-point lead. Thankfully for the party, it’s their leader Jim Murphy’s seat.  In the single Conservative Scottish seat, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale, the Tories are neck