Politics

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

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Chuka Umunna: the last disciple of New Labour’s third way

Chuka Umunna is the last disciple of the third way standing. At a Times fringe earlier, he was full of praise for centre-left European reformers such as the Italian PM Matteo Renzi and French PM Manuel Valls. Indeed, when Umunna spoke approvingly of the battle that Valls is having with his own party one sensed that it was something that Umunna would like to do himself. Umunna sought to portray himself as the reasonable outsider. He said that the biggest challenge in politics was to make compromise fashionable again. He urged the Labour party to embrace entrepreneurs and his tone about business and technology was unremittingly hopeful. His desire to command as much political

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why the Tories can’t really criticise Rachel Reeves on debt

Rachel Reeves’ interview on BBC Daily Politics may have been excruciating at times (below), but was it really the ‘car crash’ that the Tories are today claiming? Matthew Hancock is crowing that she pointed out the conditions necessary for reducing debt. She said:- ‘We are planning to get the national debt down, which means you have to be running a surplus to be able to do that. If you are going to have national debt falling you have to have a surplus overall… To get debt falling you have to have a surplus on overall spending.’  Whether wittingly or not, Reeves went further than Ed Balls. She said she wants a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Len McCluskey: Ed Balls’s long speech was good in parts

One thing that made Ed Balls’ speech to conference look a little less impressive was the barnstormer of an address from Len McCluskey to the hall shortly before. Delegates loved it, and not just because the Unite leader was saying the sorts of things that they wanted to hear. He was also passionate and interesting. He deservedly received the first proper standing ovation of the week. So what did McCluskey think of the speech that followed from Ed Balls? I caught up with the union boss afterwards, and he managed some faint praise: ‘Well, I think it was a long speech, and it was a very embracing speech, and I

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

After a flat speech from Ed Balls, what is Labour conference holding its breath for?

One of the curious traditions of Labour conference is that directly after the Shadow Chancellor’s speech, hard copies of his wise words are sold outside the conference hall. Any fiscally responsible Labour types trying to make difficult decisions about how to spend their money might be best advised to keep their £1 in their pockets for the time being, though. Today was not Ed Balls’ finest hour. It can’t just be that many people at Labour are exhausted after the Scottish campaign to react to their Shadow Chancellor’s speech. The reaction of the conference hall was far too flat for the last conference economy speech before the general election. And

Steerpike Steerpike

Esther McVey dodges White Dee debate

Upon leaving the Celebrity Big Brother house, Benefits Street star and Spectator contributor White Dee – also known as Deirdre Kelly – threatened to give ‘David Cameron a run for his money,’ and she’s true to her word. Fresh from this year’s Channel Five finale, Dee is about to enter a different sort of mad house full of self-obsessed prima donnas: Tory Party conference. Tory MP Mark Hoban has been nominated to debate Dee, after Esther McVey – another former telly star – chickened out of the showdown organised by Policy Exchange. Unlike McVey to dodge an opportunity for publicity.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Miliband aide: Labour has never addressed the way the economy works

What’s Ed Miliband’s vision for the economy? We’ll get the public version of that vision in a short while when Ed Balls gives his speech to the Labour conference, but last night one of Ed Miliband’s closest advisers gave us a more interesting glimpse of the underpinning of the Labour leader’s economic plan. Stewart Wood, a former aide to Gordon Brown and now a key member of Miliband’s team, gave a fringe interview to ResPublica’s Philip Blond. The two men nattered with glasses of wine in their hands (which were at one point topped up by a CCHQ suffer embedded behind enemy lines) about Wood’s values. One answer in particular,

Tom Gallagher

The Scottish Church showed little statesmanship or common sense during the referendum

A few hours after the final result of the Scottish referendum was announced, I visited the cemetery at Cille Bharra on the Outer Hebridean island of Barra. It’s the burial place of Sir Compton Mackenzie (1883-1972). I wondered what this versatile character, World War I British spymaster, novelist, and Catholic convert whom the students at Glasgow university elected as their rector in 1931, would have made of the result. He believed that the Catholic faith had greatly influenced the nations’s long-term personality and felt that its soul had shrivelled with the retreat of that faith to remote outposts such as Barra, where he had his home in the 1930s. An

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls: English votes plan is ‘most un-prime ministerial’ thing Cameron has done

Ed Balls wanted to spend his Today programme interview talking about his plans to cut the deficit by limiting child benefit increases to 1 per cent and cutting ministerial pay by five per cent. But he had two big stories to overcome that people seem more interested in. One is his accidental wounding of a journalist, which has made front page news, and the other is English votes for English laws, which is the even bigger front page news from the Labour conference so far (and with a newsless day in the hall yesterday, who can blame journalists for going after something else?). He tried two tactics, which rather cancelled

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Where Labour and The Spectator agree on social mobility

The Labour Party conference has got off to a very promising start, with The Spectator being complimented from the stage and applauded in the hall. ‘Here’s a publication you don’t hear praised that often at a Labour Conference: the Spectator,’ started Gloria De Piero, its equalities spokeswoman. But she did not, alas, go to quote our editorial ‘The false promise of “equality.“’ She was instead praising our working with the Social Mobility Foundation for summer internships – something that a lot of publications do, including the New Statesman. Her speech is above. It’s good to see both left and right agreed in the need to address declining social mobility in Britain. The penetration of the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour conference: The new politics, according to Hilary Benn

Judging by the reaction in the conference hall, Hilary Benn’s speech was the best of this afternoon’s session. Several people gave him a standing ovation. His task was rather easier than Ed Miliband’s on Marr this morning, because the Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary could talk about hopey-changey Labour ideas, rather than the nopey-changey Labour opposition to English votes for English laws (EVEL). So Benn focused on the devolution to English cities and regions that Labour has been working on and talking about for months, arguing that it was the true way to respond to the referendum result. He said: ‘Our deal is for all parts of England. Conference,

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Ed Balls wounds journalist at bloody football match

Ed Balls playing football each year at Labour conference is almost as big as Ed Balls Day. The Shadow Chancellor always participates enthusiastically in the annual hacks vs MPs match. Sometimes, he’s a little too enthusiastic. Like today, when he accidentally wounded lobby journalist Rob Merrick. Still, the pair made up by the end of the match. Those who predict the General Election campaign will be a bloody battle were more correct than they could ever have imagined.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tristram Hunt sweet talks party faithful with newsless Labour conference speech

Tristram Hunt’s speech to the Labour conference was short and sweet. It was laden with sweeteners for party delegates, which is as things should be at these events, but perhaps his Blairite predecessors are feeling a little sour after the Shadow Education Secretary spent a fair bit of his time on the stage denouncing the principles they once espoused. Clearly the aim was to keep the party faithful happy – and they’d spent the session beforehand making quite clear that they wanted a screeching reversal over many of the Coalition’s education reform – because Hunt also attempted to galvanise them by talking about Michael Gove. And when he got bored

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Westminster leaders must now prove they can keep their promises

The Westminster party leaders have disagreed with much Alex Salmond has said recently. But it’s pretty difficult to fault the assessment of the aftermath of the referendum that he gave on today’s Sunday Politics. The First Minister said: ‘I am actually not surprised they are cavilling and reneging on commitments, I am only surprised by the speed at which they are doing it. They seem to be totally shameless in these matters. The Prime Minister wants to link change in Scotland to change in England. He wants to do that because he has difficulty in carrying his backbenchers on this and they are under pressure from UKIP. ‘The Labour leadership

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Will the English welsh on the Scots?

A few days ago Cameron, Clegg and Miliband made a ‘vow’ to Scottish voters – if they rejected separation, far more powers would be transferred to the Edinburgh parliament. Gordon Brown was sent to flesh this offer out, apparently with the backing of all three party leaders. With the ‘no’ vote now in the bag, this ‘vow’ and the timetable (it’d be done by Burns Night, said Brown) looks shaky: I’m told that Cameron has no intention of transferring any powers before the election and that he says Brown was freelancing. (He didn’t make this point before the referendum). Some Tory MPs, in turn, say that Cameron did not have

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband confronted by the English Question

Ed Miliband wouldn’t have wanted to spend his big, pre-conference interview talking about English votes for English law but that’s what he had to do on Marr this morning. Miliband was prepared to concede more English scrutiny for English legislation. But it is clear he won’t back English votes for English laws. He even argued that it was hard to describe tuition fees, which don’t apply in Scotland, as an issue just for the rest of the UK. listen to ‘Ed Miliband: ‘In favour of greater scrutiny’ of English issues by English MPs’ on Audioboo Miliband was much happier when the interview turned to the minimum wage and Labour’s plan

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Audio: Scottish teenagers on why the independence battle is just getting started

Will there be another Scottish independence referendum? I went back to my hometown, Nairn, yesterday to gauge the mood after the ‘no’ win. Highland Region split 53/47 for ‘no’, tighter than I imagined. I was also interested in the younger voters (and the newly-enfranchised 16 and 17-year-olds) – because their interest (or lack of it) may determine whether the issue of secession stays with us. Canadian PM Stephen Harper told me last month that Quebec’s youth got bored of the subject of secession, which is why the issue has cooled. As he put it, I do believe that at some point that people, particularly the younger generation [of Quebec] started to sit back and say: we’ve been

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Servants of the nation

From The Spectator, 19 September 1914: Friday’s Times contains a letter from Lord Cromer on “Germany and Ourselves” which will give a double pleasure to thousands of readers. Its wise and vigorous terms are most useful and most timely in themselves, and they show how completely he is now restored to health :— “Let me add my firm conviction that the fear, which seems to prevail in some quarters, that, as a result of the war, the external and internal policy of this country may be guided by what is termed the military party,’ is a pure delusion, and merely affords additional proof that as in the early days of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Have the Scottish Tories been detoxified?

The referendum campaign was a mixed experience for the Scottish Tories. On the one hand, it was a reminder of how much they are still hated in Scotland: End Tory rule forever, was one of the more frequently heard Nationalist battle cries. On the other, they had one of the campaign’s most effective advocates, Ruth Davidson and were accepted in as part of the cross party campaign. Indeed, it was telling that the Better Together campaign together rather than hiding Davidson away used her more and more as the campaign went on. In his Scotsman column today, the former Labour spin doctor John McTernan declares that ‘Ruth Davidson’s campaign has

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

In praise of Alex Salmond

Alex Salmond has proved himself the most effective party leader in Europe, let alone Britain. He has just run a terrifyingly effective campaign, perhaps the best I will ever witness. I could not disagree more with his aims, but to me that makes his achievement all the more remarkable. I doubt any other politician could have sold such a bad idea to 45 per cent of Scots. He ran rings around his opponents, outsmarting them all. He was so damn infuriating because he was so damn good: able to use humour, anger, audacity and caution when each was required. I can’t think of many politicians with his versatility. As a unionist, I’m delighted that the sharpest