Politics

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

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron, Clegg and Miliband head to Scotland to make the case for the Union

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are combining forces and heading to Scotland tomorrow to make the case for the UK. Here’s their joint statement: ‘There is a lot that divides us – but there’s one thing on which we agree passionately: the United Kingdom is better together. That’s why all of us are agreed the right place for us to be tomorrow is in Scotland, not at Prime Minister’s Questions in Westminster. We want to be listening and talking to voters about the huge choice they face. Our message to the Scottish people will be simple: “We want you to stay.”‘ The presence of the three party leaders

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Devolution has given power to politicians, not people. Independence won’t change that

Gordon Brown has spoken, and the unionist parties are in agreement: if there’s a ‘no’ vote then more powers will be given – we’re told – ‘to Scotland’. There’ll be another commission and another Scotland Act. This so-called Devo Max should have been offered six months ago; to offer it in the last few days of the campaign smacks of panic. By moving more towards Salmond’s territory, the unionists conceded the premise: that more powers to the Edinburgh political elite is somehow the same as more powers to ‘Scotland’. And who could be against more power to Scotland? Not a single party, it seems, is questioning the premise: that the

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Erm what about the English?

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union” startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]One way or another, English nationalism, a beast the union kept in its cage, will prowl the land after the Scottish vote. If the Scots leave, of course, then nothing will stand in its way. The residual United Kingdom will be a greater England in all but name. If the ‘no’ campaign scrapes a victory, however, national feeling will if anything be more intense. Among the many reasons I cannot abide nationalist posturing is that victimhood always accompanies it. No one on these islands has cut a more ridiculous figure than

Stephen Barclay

Why is Britain arming countries that support terror in the Middle East?

Why is the UK still supplying arms to those who helped fund the so-called Islamic State, and what leverage does it bring? In the Prime Minister’s statement to the House of Commons following the Nato summit over the weekend, he spoke of seeking a broad base of support through the UN. Yet there was no mention of military action—as opposed to diplomatic assistance—from Gulf States. Islamic State has been bankrolled by wealthy Gulf individuals from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, and their Governments have failed to act to prevent it. In March 2014, Nouri al-Maliki, the outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister, accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of being ‘at war with Iraq’. Six

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will this desperate last-minute tactic save the ‘No’ campaign?

The Nationalists are of course right: this is a desperate last-minute tactic that the anti-independence camp never thought they’d have to dig out before 18 September. But with polls continually showing that the result is now too close to call, further powers on taxation and welfare, revealed by Gordon Brown last night, are an essential desperate last-minute tactic that the anti-independence camp needed to wheel out. Surgeons sometimes have to do desperate, last minute procedures to stop a patient dying in theatre, and sometimes those last-ditch attempts work. But no-one ever wants to be in that position. But is this promise of more powers – still quite technical – the

Damian Green

If government doesn’t work, whose fault is it?

The apparently eternal battle between politicians and bureaucrats for control of the government machine has been better for TV comedy writers than for the governance of Britain. Ministers complain that officials obstruct their plans to implement election promises; officials complain that special advisers drive a short-term media-obsessed agenda, and everyone objects to interference from the centre (except at the centre where everyone complains about off-message barons pursuing personal agendas). The first big divide that any minister faces is between policy advice and operational capacity. I will start with policy, because it is where the British Civil Service has always prided itself on providing a Rolls-Royce service. In most areas their

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Surprise? Gordon Brown sets out devolution timetable

Is Gordon Brown going on a freelancing operation with his timetable for new powers for a Scotland that votes ‘No’? The former Prime Minister has this afternoon released the timetable for further devolution, with the formal process beginning the day after the result, leading to a draft Scotland Bill being published by Burns Night in January 2015. Brown will say tonight that Labour is ‘taking the initiative’, but it seems that David Cameron hasn’t discussed this announcement with him and that this initiative-taking has taken Downing Street by surprise (it might also be surprised that Gordon Brown is taking the initiative on anything, but especially given the Prime Minister’s official

Steerpike Steerpike

The Labour candidate happy to cook his own goose

Labour like to campaign with the slogan ‘our NHS’, but are they taking their claim of owning the health service a little bit too far? Dr Mark Hayes is standing for the party in Selby, Yorkshire yet remains head of the local NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). When questions were raised about a conflict of interest between the roles, the good doctor admitted using NHS resources for his campaign, saying ‘the CCG will protect me from unwanted media enquiries.’ Why exactly is the taxpayer stumping up to field awkward questions for a Labour candidate? If Labour do win, Hayes is out of a job: Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham has pledged

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Stay, Scotland! Brits say why they want to keep their country united

For the first time in its 186-year history, The Spectator‘s cover story will be written by its readers: people from outside of Scotland, saying why they want Scotland to stay and keep our country united. Even over lunchtime, we have been deluged with people writing in to say why they want Scots to stay. Please keep these coming. If you have sent an email, ask two or three of your friends to send more: editor@spectator.co.uk. Include a picture if you don’t mind our using it. Put ‘STAY!’ in the subject title, and do say where you’re from. We’ll run them in the cover feature of the new Spectator, certainly, but I thought I’d share

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron and Clegg’s last-ditch attempts to save the Union

After the panic in Westminster over the weekend about the Sunday Times‘ poll putting ‘Yes’ in the lead came the something-must-be-dones. David Cameron said he would ‘strain every sinew’ to fight for a ‘No’ vote. But today his official spokesman was quizzed on the suggestion that he might have pulled out of a planned visit to Scotland this week (James reported in his Mail on Sunday column yesterday that the Prime Minister would stay down south this week ‘to leave the coast clear for Labour’). The spokesman said: ‘The Prime Minister will be in Scotland ahead of the election…There has been no change to the plan.’ Even in the summer,

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour seem to enjoy standing against Tory Speakers

‘A secret plot to boot John Bercow out of the Commons is being drawn up by senior Tory MPs,’ reported yesterday’s Mail on Sunday. Apparently a plan is afoot to field ‘a “proper” Tory candidate against him’, something that would ‘drive a coach and horses through the convention at Westminster that sitting Commons Speakers are never challenged at General Elections by candidates from the three main political parties’. This ‘convention’ sounds a little iffy to Mr S, especially given that Labour stood against Speaker Weatherill and Speaker Selwyn Lloyd and Speaker Hylton-Foster and Speaker Clifton Brown and Speaker FitzRoy. In fact, the only Tory Speakers that Labour failed to stand

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Alistair Darling: I’m still confident No campaign will win

Alistair Darling continues to insist that he’s confident of victory in the Scottish independence campaign, telling the Today programme this morning that ‘I am confident that we will win, because we do have a very strong positive vision of what Scotland can be’. But he didn’t strengthen that vision either with further promises about powers that Scotland could expect in the event of a ‘No’ vote, or indeed with any change of tack in his campaign rhetoric. The former Chancellor’s arguments this morning were very much those he has doggedly stuck to all along that have held back wavering voters from supporting ‘Yes’. But when ‘Yes’ has the Big Mo,

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

People power can save the Union

If Scotland does vote for separation—as the latest YouGov poll suggests it will, we’ll enter the most unpredictable political period in living memory. But before we start contemplating the consequences of a Yes vote, it is worth thinking about what is giving independence momentum in Scotland. It is not just being driven by nationalist fervour but by the same anti-politics sentiment that is riling politics right across the United Kingdom. Voters who are fed up with Westminster and disappointed by politics are seeing voting Yes as a chance to rip up the whole system and start again. Breaking up the United Kingdom is, perhaps, the ultimate expression of anti-politics. This

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Spectator podcast special: Scotland’s shock poll

Would you bet on Scotland staying in the union? Isabel Hardman asks Hamish Macdonell, my former Scotsman colleague, in a podcast she presented this morning. Its about a minute from the end: listen to ‘Scotland’s ‘yes’ camp takes the lead (Spectator podcast special)’ on Audioboo

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The unions hated Gove because he actually cared about social mobility

There’s an interesting interview in The Guardian this weekend with one of the most famous teachers, or ex-teachers, in Britain, Katharine Birbalsingh. You’ll probably know her. She’s the woman with fabulous hair who got a standing ovation at the Tory Party conference for a speech about a broken education system – ‘it’s broken because it keeps poor children poor’ – which confirmed the existence of ‘a culture of excuses, of low standards”. It was more or less a vindication of Michael Gove, then Education Secretary, and all he stood for. Now she says she regrets that speech – ‘it ruined my life. I should probably have kept my head down’. She’s

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Come in Britain, your time is up

How do you kill an idea? That is the Unionist quandary this weekend. For a long time now the Better Together campaign has based its hostility to Scottish independence on the risks and uncertainties that, unavoidably, come with independence. This, they say, is what tests well with their focus groups. No-one gives a stuff about all that identity crap, they say, so there’s no need to talk about it. Instead, hype the unknowns – of both the known and unknown variety – and bang on and on about all that risk and all that uncertainty. Which, like, is fine. Until the point it ceases to be fine. Until the point

Ailsa Henderson

The myth of meritocratic Scotland

Alex Salmond argues that Scotland has unique values, distinct from those in the rest of the UK, that can be best expressed in an independent country. A new poll from the Sunday Times today shows Salmond on course to get his wish. But do Scots really hold different values to the rest of the UK? This is an edited extract from the forthcoming book ‘Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box: 50 things you need to know about political elections’, edited by Philip Cowley and Robert Ford, to be published by Biteback in October. Click here to pre-order it from The Spectator Bookshop. Successive election manifestos from political parties in Scotland have argued

Saturday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Shock poll: Scotland’s ‘Yes’ campaign pulls into lead. It’s 51% to 49%

Tomorrow’s Sunday Times poll by YouGov puts the Yes campaign ahead at 51 per cent, with No on 49 per cent when undecided voters are excluded (even when they’re included, ‘yes’ are still ahead by two points: 47-45). In the space of four weeks, ‘No’ has blown a 22-point lead. It was only recently that the No campaign started to wonder whether this could happen: previously there was an acceptance that the polls could narrow in the last few weeks, but the narrative was that the SNP were behind and were simply trying to engineer a close enough defeat for them to argue for a significant new settlement for Scotland. Now

Andrew Brown

The theological illiteracy of Eric Pickles

It is worrying that Eric Pickles is in charge of religion for this government. I first came across his footprints in Bradford, where in the Eighties he was as much responsible as any other politician for the introduction of ‘multicultural’ policies into English cities. He understood that there were Pakistani Muslim votes at stake, and introduced policies to gratify their sensibilities, something conveniently forgotten once he moved down to Essex. The central flaw in this policy was not that it encouraged Islam but that it locked Pakistani machine politics into the indigenous machine politics of local government. Labour turned out to be the main beneficiary of the process, though you

Friday

Ed West Ed West

Scotland won’t become a foreign country just because of a vote

Hugo Rifkind had an interesting piece in the Times yesterday on the Scottish referendum arguing that the No campaign, by focussing on economics and pragmatism (where they obviously have the edge), had totally conceded the realm of emotion and attachment. Yet Rifkind, coming south in his twenties to settle in London, had found that England was his home, too, and ends his article explaining why Britain is indeed one country. The whole No campaign seems devoid of any idea of British patriotism, indeed barely mentions the B-word in its literature, instead approaching the thing like an unhappy spouse weighing up the costs of sticking with it or leaving to end