Politics

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

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Top Tory rails against Osborne’s Stamp Duty reform

Tory MP Mark Field is not a happy bunny about Osborne’s Autumn Statement. Writing to members of his association, the MP for the Cities of London and Westminster has blasted the Chancellor’s ‘unfortunate’ move over stamp duty — despite claiming to be sympathetic to the ‘politics’ of ‘soaking the remaining rich’. Mr S thought the full rant was worth reproducing here: ‘Those buying a £2 million home will now have to find £153,750 in cold hard cash to hand over to the Treasury, up from £100,000. Meanwhile, those purchasing a property valued at £5 million will have to pay £513,750 in duty, coincidentally precisely the same amount as the cost

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Another UN official who makes me more likely to vote Ukip

The latest half-witted United Nations official to stick the boot into the United Kingdom is one Francois Crepeau, UN ‘Special Rapperteur’ (nope, sorry, don’t recognise the term), on the Rights of Human Migrants. Crepeau, who comes from the useless part of Canada, said that British fears about immigration were ‘utter bullshit’. He added that if the British people voted for Ukip it would ‘not be cool’. Mr Crepeau’s intervention made me 30 per cent more likely to vote Ukip next May – and if Farage suggested we leave the UN as well as the EU, make that fifty per cent. Crepeau is the third UN official to have decided recently that of

Hamish Macdonell

Nicola Sturgeon shows how she means to go on by picking a fight with the Queen

Downing Street, we are told, wants to ‘re-set’ the relationship between Westminster and Holyrood after the referendum. UK ministers apparently want an atmosphere of ‘co-operation; to exist between the two governments. Well, that’s great but it only seems to be going one way. Just take a look at what Nicola Sturgeon has decided to do over the funding over the Royal Family. Under the Smith Commission proposals, Scotland is going to get control over all Crown Estate assets north of the border. At the moment, the Crown Estates profits are used to fund the Royal Family. So, if the Crown Estate loses a chunk of its assets, it will lose a chunk of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories aren’t planning to run a £23 billion surplus in 2019/20

All the talk about the ‘colossal’ cuts to come if the Tories win re-election has been predicated on the assumption that the Tories are committed to running a £23 billion surplus in 2019/20. But this assumption is wrong. As David Gauke told Andrew Neil just now, ‘At the moment the OBR predicts that we will have a surplus of £23 billion, but we’re not making a commitment to the British people, that’s what the number will be in 2019.’ Instead, I understand — after extensive conversations with members of the Chancellor’s circle — that the Tories intend to start increasing spending in line with inflation once the Budget is back

Sebastian Payne

Ukip hires BBC’s Paul ‘Gobby’ Lambert as new Director of Communications

Ukip has announced that BBC political producer Paul Lambert will be the party’s new Director of Communications. Ukip has offered the job to various prominent figures but it has not been filled full-time since Patrick O’Flynn, another media defector, was elected as an MEP in May. Lambert is one of the most well-known journalists in Westminster, usually found outside Downing Street heckling ministers with awkward questions, hence his nickname of Gobby. Bringing in an experienced Westminster journalist like Lambert is another sign that Ukip are attempting to beef up and professionalise their media operation. It’s unlikely Lambert would allow ill-conveived events like the Ukip Carnival to take place. In a statement, Lambert said he believes ‘Ukip is today the place

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Coalition wars: What are George Osborne and Nick Clegg up to?

If the Coalition started cohabiting earlier this year, it has now moved into the phase where the two parties are posting mean things about each other on Facebook and trying to get the kids to take sides. George Osborne has a grump in today’s Sunday Times about the emphasis that the Lib Dems want to place on tax rises to plug the gap after the 2015 election. He writes: ‘The Liberal Democrats are now arguing with themselves, so it’s hard to work out exactly what they think. While they sign up to deficit reduction, they want more tax rises rather than spending cuts. But they shouldn’t pretend to people that

Saturday

Sebastian Payne

Tories attack Nigel Farage over breastfeeding remarks

Ukip’s crisis is the Conservatives’ gain. Following Nigel Farage’s comments about ‘ostentatious’ breastfeeding, Conservative HQ have been promoting this graphic online, with a title noting that Farage is ‘making it up as he goes along’: This kind of graphic is just another example of how the Tories have become more proactive in promoting their point of view on social media over last year, using Twitter as an opportunity to attack others while protecting their position. This Farage one is an example of both: it hits out at Ukip for their perceived flakiness — expect to see much more of this in the coming months — while reminding voters that Ukip also has a

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Should politicians grumble about awkward stories?

A lot of political types are very cross with the ‘biased media’ today. Ukip is currently the most aerated because some journalists ‘fabricated’ (which is today synonymous with ‘transcribed’) some remarks Nigel Farage made about whether or not restaurants are right to tell women to put napkins over themselves when breastfeeding. Number 10 is very angry with the BBC’s Norman Smith because he talked about the Road to Wigan Pier which is not an OK way of describing the public spending cuts still to come (but the IFS describing them as ‘grotesque’ and ‘colossal’ apparently is). Labour has been annoyed for months that journalists keep pointing out mistakes that Ed Miliband makes. Unusually,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nigel Farage: Women should avoid ‘ostentatious’ breastfeeding

Nigel Farage has waded into the row about a mother being asked to cover up while breastfeeding her baby by suggesting that women should avoid ‘openly ostentatious’ behaviour. The Ukip leader told LBC: ‘I’m not particularly bothered by it but I know that a lot of people do feel very uncomfortable and look, this is just a matter of common sense, isn’t it?’ Nick Ferrari then asked what was common sense. Farage replied: ‘Well, I think that given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isn’t too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that isn’t openly ostentatious.’ He then suggested that breastfeeding women could ‘perhaps sit

Sebastian Payne

The Ukip juggernaut continues: Tim Aker wins Thurrock council by-election

Ukip’s Tim Aker is now juggling three jobs. Last night, the 29-year-old won a by-election in the Aveley & Uplands ward in Thurrock, adding councillor to his existing titles of MEP for the East of England and Ukip’s Head of Policy. Although their vote share dropped, Aker won the by-election with 40 percent of the vote, a strong result that keeps the Ukip momentum going as the year draws to a close. He had a dirty battle with the Tories, who disturbed leaflets referring to him as ‘Timür Aker’, in what appeared to be a reminder of his Turkish roots. As James wrote in the Mail on Sunday last week, this was a

Thursday

Peter Jones

Aristotle had David Mellor’s number (Andrew Mitchell’s, too)

Andrew Mitchell and his ‘effing pleb’ of a policeman, David Mellor and his ‘stupid sweaty little shit of a taxi driver’ — Aristotle would have been delighted at how precisely they matched his analysis of the angry man. The emotions, said Aristotle, especially anger, alter one’s judgment, causing both distress and pleasure. For example, lowly policemen and taxi drivers would not normally have been anywhere on the radar of the two Ms. But feeling crossed by such little people, they changed their minds about them, distressed at their impertinence but relishing the prospect of revenge by putting them in their place. Aristotle quotes Achilles at this point, who in the

The Spectator

George Osborne’s ambition deficit

When George Osborne first became Chancellor, he asked to be judged on his ability to reduce the deficit. He does not make that request any more. This year’s deficit is almost three times higher than the £37 billion he originally planned, but he understandably glossed over this point when delivering his Autumn Statement. He has other interests now: pension reform, building motorways, or spending more on GPs. The mission to balance the books has been delayed until the end of the decade — or, perhaps, the start of the next. He said this week that his extra spending was made possible by ‘the hard decisions that we have taken’. This can

Steerpike Steerpike

Tony Blair reaches out to Gove

Tony Blair has taken some time out from posing awkwardly with his wife in order to pen a piece for the New York Times. While he tries to avoid getting drawn on talking about UK domestic politics explicitly, his feeling are poorly hidden: ‘…there have grown up powerful interest groups that can stand in the way of substantial and necessary reform. Anyone who has ever tried to reform an education system, for example, knows how tough and bitter a struggle it is. The bureaucracy fights change. The teachers’ unions fight change. The public gets whipped up to defeat change even when it is in the public’s own interest. The nearest

Sebastian Payne

Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe dies, aged 85

Jeremy Thorpe, the former leader of the Liberal Party, has passed away aged 85, after suffering from Parkinson’s disease for many years. Thorpe will unfortunately be best remembered for the affair that ended his career, involving a former male model and a shot dog. The Spectator’s Guide to Political Scandals explained what happened: ‘Thorpe was a dashing young Liberal MP, elected in 1959 aged 30. A former president of the Oxford Union, everything was falling into place for him. But in 1961 he met Norman Scott, a troubled individual who would plague Thorpe for the rest of his life. Scott claimed that Thorpe had sex with him, an act that would have been illegal at the

Paul Johnson

‘Expect cuts on a colossal scale’ – the IFS verdict on George Osborne’s Autumn Statement

Some of yesterday’s biggest announcements were not from the Chancellor at all, they were from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. Robert Chote and his team announced two big changes to the public finances. The first was a really substantial downgrade to expected tax revenues. It’s the fall in expected revenues of nearly £8 billion this year which accounts for the disappointing fall in the size of the deficit. Look out just three years to 2017-18 and the shortfall hits £21 billion. This lack of buoyancy in tax revenues, associated with poor earnings growth, looks like being a continued cause for concern. The only reason that that didn’t drive a

Sebastian Payne

Eight different ways Ukip would spend Britain’s international aid budget

The Autumn Statement was Ukip’s first economic test as a Westminster party, so how did they fare? In their initial response, economic spokesman Patrick O’Flynn lambasted George Osborne for ‘smoke and mirror politics’ over the deficit. ‘The brutal truth is that the Government has comprehensively failed in its central mission to wipe out the deficit’, said O’Flynn. But where would Ukip cut back spending? ‘So huge and unaffordable expenditures are continuing in the areas of foreign aid, alternative energy, an excessive per capita spending settlement for Scotland and of course our massive net EU contribution.’ Ah, international aid. The Sunday Telegraph’s Iain Martin had a tête-à-tête on Twitter with Douglas Carswell about Ukip’s

Sebastian Payne

Revealed: where George Osborne’s axe will fall hardest

If you think George Osborne has been a mad axe man, just wait to see the cuts he has planned for the next Parliament. To return a budget surplus by the end of the decade, government spending will have to be slashed — but which departments will bear the brunt of his axe? The answer (shown in the above chart) is buried in the OBR’s report on the Autumn Statement. Assuming ring fences on health, education and overseas aid spending, ‘other’ departmental government spending stands to be slashed by 42 per cent, or £61.3 billion over the next five years. The Home Office, Ministry of Defence and Business Department would all be vulnerable. As well as these cuts to the other

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Breaking: Tory MP Mark Pritchard arrested on rape allegations

Mark Pritchard, MP for the Wrekin in Shropshire, was arrested on Tuesday following an allegation of rape. The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: ‘We can confirm that a 48-year-old man voluntarily attended a north London police station on Tuesday, 2 December where he was arrested, following an allegation of rape in central London. He has been bailed to a date in early January 2015 pending further enquiries.’ It wrote said the following in a letter sent to the Speaker’s Office: ‘I write to inform you that on 2nd December 2014, Mark Pritchard MP was arrested at 6.14pm at Holborn Police Station in London by MPS officers. Mr Pritchard was questioned by police

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The three Tory vulnerabilities Osborne is hoping to shut down

In the last few days, George Osborne has moved to close down three Tory vulnerabilities ahead of the election campaign. First, there was the decision to put another £2 billion into the NHS. Osborne has always believed that support for the NHS is the most important feature of Tory modernisation and this extra money has rather undercut Labour’s commitment to spend another £2.5 billion on the health service. The Tory hope is that this extra money, and the party essentially signing up to Simon Stevens blueprint for the NHS, will prevent health from becoming the major election issue that Labour need it to be. Second, Osborne has tried to neuter

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The BBC is right to point out failure on debt. Osborne is wrong to complain about it

George Osborne has in the past year assembled a coterie of advisers to help him become more human, more stylish, thinner and more in touch with voters. But this morning it seemed he’d turned to his Cabinet colleague Iain Duncan Smith for media training before popping up on the Radio 4’s Today programme, as the Chancellor quickly became tetchy when asked the ‘wrong’ sort of questions. He gets angry about 7 minutes in… listen to ‘Osborne: ‘I’m the first to say there is more to do’ ’ on audioBoom