Politics

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

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Ed Miliband’s road to nowhere

Ed Miliband’s negotiations with the White House to meet his hero Barack Obama aren’t going well, Nick Robinson reported on the Today programme this morning: ‘Ed Miliband’s team are desperate not to ruin their man’s chances of a visit to the White House by talking them up… The Labour leader’s aides point out that he has already met Barack Obama, though not at the White House. Some even say that Michael Howard never got to go when he was leader of the opposition – before remembering, perhaps, that that’s not the best parallel to draw. Don’t be fooled though, in Washington DC they’re in no doubt this is a meeting

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Three cheers for all those who avoid the UK’s huge taxes

‘Hypocrisy of the stars who shielded cash from taxman’, cries a headline in today’s Daily Mail. But are we sure that it’s really hypocrisy? Among those ‘outed’ as hypocrites is the actor Michael Caine. But Mr Steerpike seems to recall that the cockney lad has been a vocal campaigner against our tax system, which seem to be one of his pet peeves. In fact, in the late 1970s Caine moved to the States to avoid them. A country that charges 82 per cent tax on its highest earners isn’t a democracy – rather ‘a communist country without a dictator’, he has been quoted as saying. Another tax ‘hypocrite’ is TV’s Anne

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Great Brussels Steeplechase: runners and riders to be Britain’s next European Commissioner

Next week, EU leaders will meet to parcel out the top jobs in the next European Commission. So David Cameron doesn’t have long to decide who he is going to nominate—and Berlin is already bugging him for his pick. Here’s The Spectator‘s run down of the runners and riders. Andrew Lansley: Until recently the firm favourite. But in recent weeks support for him has fallen away. No. 10 has been irritated by the hints he has dropped about having been offered the job. It has also grasped that nominating someone as compensation for dropping them from the Cabinet is a recipe for getting a second-tier job. David Willetts: The science

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is cross-party agreement on surveillance legislation a good thing?

So all three party leaders agree that it’s worth rushing through emergency surveillance legislation. While David Cameron and Nick Clegg were holding their rare joint press conference, Ed Miliband released a joint letter with Yvette Cooper in which he said ‘we have been guided by our firm conviction that it is essential to maintain the security of our citizens and also ensure people’s privacy is protected’. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister both needed to make the case for the emergency legislation today but Nick Clegg also needed to make the case for his support for it, given he had rejected the full Communications Data Bill. He supports the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Michael Gove’s ‘personal crusade’

Michael Gove’s speech to today’s education reform conference is a robust defence of his reforms. He calls closing the attainment gap between rich and poor a ‘personal crusade for me’. But I suspect that the headlines will be grabbed by his claim that the teaching unions aren’t standing up for education but for their ‘own pay and pensions’. He says that the status quo isn’t good enough and ‘we mustn’t keep going backwards – and failing the poorest above all.’ What I found most striking, though, was Gove’s praise for how academy chains are turning round failing schools such as Downhills. Indeed, Gove clearly envisages a far greater role for

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Chris Patten keeps failing upwards – now he’s advising the Pope. Poor Pope.

There is a wearying inevitability to the announcement that Pope Francis’s reforms of the Vatican media will be overseen by Lord Patten of Barnes. Of course it was going to be him. It always is. The man defies the laws of political gravity. As Margaret Thatcher’s environment secretary he was responsible for the poll tax. He walked away from the disaster unscathed, explaining that it was nothing to do with him, guv, it was Thatch. As Tory chairman he presided over Major’s 1992 victory but lost his own seat. He was made governor of Hong Kong, where he stood up to China. But he went native with a vengeance as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Could Michael Howard be the next EU Commissioner?

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_10_July_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the EU Commissioner role” startat=732] Listen [/audioplayer]In recent weeks British government visitors to Berlin have been confronted with a persistent question: when will David Cameron make up his mind about who he’ll send to Brussels? Picking a European commissioner is a big decision: Tony Blair sent Peter Mandelson, who went on to become the EU trade commissioner. Gordon Brown nominated Cathy Ashton, who picked up the foreign affairs post. There is a tradition of Brits landing relatively big jobs — and, ergo, power and influence. But prime ministers need to send someone with enough heft and zest. Angela Merkel is not racked

Michael Ware

Wave power is a really, really stupid idea. That’s why it’s getting so much taxpayer subsidy

The surface of the sea is a hostile and unforgiving place. Although it covers 71 per cent of the planet, nothing much bigger than a speck lives there. Obviously, lots of slimy and scaly things swim around beneath the surface — but on the very top, pretty much zilch. Mother Nature has found niches for life in the desert, the Arctic and deep underground but, after 4.5 billion years of trying, she is passing on the surface of the sea, thanks all the same. Now you would think that this very long experiment in trying to evolve life in a hostile environment would act as some kind of hint to

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Now that everyone’s a journalist, anyone can be sued

Trying to count posts on the web is like trying to number grains of sand on a beach. In June 2012, a data management company called Domo attempted the fool’s errand nevertheless. It calculated that, every minute, the then 2.1 billion users uploaded 48 hours of YouTube video, shared 684,478 pieces of content on Facebook, published 27,778 new posts on Tumblr and sent about 100,000 tweets. Its figures were not exhaustive and they were out of date in an instant, but for a moment they captured the explosion of self-expression the net has brought. As the European Court’s demand that Google hide writing that breaks no law shows, technological change

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Ed Miliband has giving up on winning – now he just wants to enjoy losing

Today we saw a brand new Ed Miliband. And a brand new campaign strategy. He’s given up trying to win the election. All he wants to do now is to enjoy losing it and to go down in style. This must be quite a relief to him. For the next 10 months he can ignore the grassroots and the business vote and the floaters and swingers in the key marginals. He can even dismiss the tedious views of his Manson Family shadow cabinet. What matters now is to raise a cheer from the die-hard loyalists. To put a spring in the step of the back-room boys. To hearten the SpAds

Steerpike Steerpike

We are all numbers in Labour’s computer now

In 1975 Margaret Thatcher said in her ‘Free Society’ speech to the Conservative Party Conference: ‘Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a state computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.’ Mr S could not help but recall these fine words after an email arrived from the Labour Party asking him to enter chunks of personal data into its website, such as his postcode and date of birth,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ed Miliband needs to mix things up to avoid Cameron’s PMQs attacks

Ed Miliband’s first few questions to David Cameron today were about the various inquiries into child abuse. Miliband wasn’t interested in creating controversy: he didn’t ask about whether Lady Butler-Sloss was the right person to run the inquiry given that her late brother was Attorney General when Geoffrey Dickens handed his file to the Home Secretary. But then Miliband turned to the NHS and the atmosphere in the House flipped. listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron and Miliband’ on Audioboo Cameron defiantly defended his use of statistics from last week. But it was once Miliband had asked his last question that Cameron went into full attack mode. He started denouncing Labour and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Inside the whips’ ‘dirt books’

So all three parties are to trawl their ‘dirt books’ held by the whips and disclose any evidence that they find of child abuse. The role of the whips was raised by Lisa Nandy in the Commons on Monday, when she quoted former Tory chief whip Tim Fortescue, who told Michael Cockerell’s documentary on the whips: ‘Anyone with any sense, who was in trouble, would come to the whips and tell them the truth, and say now, ‘I’m in a jam, can you help?’. It might be debt, it might be… a scandal involving small boys, or any kind of scandal in which… a member seemed likely to be mixed

Tuesday

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

A pundit for a PM

A new Coffee House competition: who can identify the most pointless comment on events made by our PM? You’ll be spoilt for choice. Cameron has become, these days, Britain’s uber-pundit. No celebrity death goes unlamented by the PM; no news story is too trivial, or too serious for him to spit out a soundbite, grandstanding, passing judgment, or passing the buck. ‘I am determined that lessons will be learnt,’ ‘This must never happen again’ etc etc. Here’s a recent one that’s irritated me. After an announcement that airports are to tighten security, DC announced with great gravitas: ‘The safety of passengers must come first.’ Well, yes, thanks PM. First before

Steerpike Steerpike

Nick Clegg’s self-pitying guide to parenting

‘I’m like any parent,’ says Nick Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister, privy councillor and universally derided leader of the Liberal Democrats). Speaking to the Radio Times, as any old parent might do, Average Dad Nick pleaded with his offspring: ‘The first, most visceral instinct you have as a parent is you want to protect your children, and politics is a very rough business you know. It’s absolutely not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned, so I wouldn’t likely recommend to my children to go into politics.’ Pity. Mr S was getting rather misty eyed at the prospect of young Miguel or Antonio seeking high office in order to restore the family name. Who will

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘Hopeless’ Warsi ‘resisting’ David Cameron’s fight against extremism

The government has failed to produce an adequate strategy to tackle non-violent extremism because the minister in charge of it is said to disagree with the Prime Minister’s approach, sources have told Coffee House. Baroness Warsi is alleged by multiple sources in and out of government to have consistently resisted calls to develop a proper strategy on integration and tackling extremism at its roots, even though this is the Prime Minister’s policy and part of her job at the Communities and Local Government department. One source says: ‘Sayeeda made clear when she got the job at CLG that she didn’t agree with the Prime Minister and that she simply wasn’t

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Harriet Harman’s push for gender equality – and her own career

Harriet Harman’s scathing attack on the top men in politics for their failure to advance gender equality has certainly annoyed Damian McBride, who argues that Labour’s deputy leader is talking ‘utter bilge’. It’s utter bilge from Harriet, done to make her attack on Dave look non-partisan. And shameful timing given the work GB is doing in Nigeria. — Damian McBride (@DPMcBride) July 8, 2014 The Standard reports that Harman will say at an event tonight: ‘And imagine the consternation in my office when we discovered that my involvement in the London G20 summit was inclusion at the No10 dinner for the G20 leaders’ wives.’ Presumably she is talking about this

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Home Office acts busy, hoping to avoid a ‘tide of public anger’

Theresa May updated the Cabinet this morning on the inquiry she has launched into how public bodies have dealt with allegations of child abuse. The name of the inquiry panel chair and the terms of reference haven’t yet been announced, but when the Prime Minister’s official spokesman was asked when they might emerge, he said ‘I would expect an announcement on the chair of the panel soon’. Asked to define ‘soon’, the spokesman said ‘pretty soon’, which suggests that we will get more answers either before the Home Office Permanent Secretary Mark Sedwill sits down at 3.15pm to give evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, or that these announcements

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Labour’s true believers ask Ed Miliband to repeat past Tory mistakes.

The first, and perhaps most important, thing to say about the 2015 general election is that it is Labour’s to lose. The second thing to say is that Ed Miliband might be just the man to do it. Nevertheless and despite Miliband’s awkwardness Tory optimists should ask themselves a very simple question: Which seats will we win in 2015 that we failed to win in 2010? Perhaps a handful will be taken from the Lib Dems and perhaps another handful can be snatched elsewhere but, overall, the battlefield picture is pretty damn bleak. But perhaps Labour will help. Miliband’s problem is that his position is not secure to hunker down, do bugger

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Universal Credit ‘hasn’t been signed off’ – what does that mean?

Is Universal Credit progressing as well as it should? Yesterday Sir Bob Kerslake, who is not consistently helpful to political colleagues, dropped a bit of a bombshell during a Public Accounts Committee hearing. Discussing the Treasury and the business case for Universal Credit: ‘We shouldn’t beat about the bush: it hasn’t been signed off.’ Labour got very excited about this, with Chris Bryant pointing out that last week Esther McVey told Rachel Reeves in a parliamentary answer that ‘the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has approved the UC Strategic Outline Business Case plans for the remainder of this Parliament’. The DWP argues that this is wrong, and that the Treasury