Politics

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

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband is a wonk. Why doesn’t he check his facts?

A few weeks ago, I was reading the newly-published Modernisers’ Manifesto (pdf) published by Bright Blue and a fact jumped out: ‘London is a tearaway success, responsible for 79 per cent of all private sector jobs growth since 2010’. Startling fact, I though – I’d missed that. But about ten minutes of Googling showed that it wasn’t quite true. The fact was from a report by an IPPR offshoot, the Centre for Cities. It used survey data that went up to 2012, before the jobs boom started. You can find the real figures on the ONS website, and here’s what they show. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/oRem6/index.html”] But here’s the thing. This wrong

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May announces independent inquiry into child abuse allegations

Theresa May has just given as comprehensive a response as possible to the allegations of child abuse in the Commons. Insisting the government will leave no stone unturned in pursuit of the allegations, the Home Secretary told MPs that there will an independent inquiry panel, along the lines of the Hillsborough inquiry, which will examine not just how the Home Office dealt with allegations, but also how the police and prosecutors dealt with information handed to them. As a non-statutory inquiry, it will be able to begin its work sooner and will be at a lower risk of prejudicing criminal investigations because it will begin with a review of documentary

Ian Warren

Could Farage win if he stands in Thanet South?

Will he or won’t he stand in Thanet South? Nigel Farage’s name has been circulating in connection with this constituency for months, after the sitting Tory MP Laura Sandys announced she was standing down. But it’s all grown a whole lot more complicated in the past few days because a former Ukip member, Craig Mackinlay, has been selected to stand for the Conservatives. Now, the Ukip leader must decide whether standing against a former comrade will weaken his appeal in the seat. But how strong is that appeal anyway? The following data allows the households within Thanet South constituency to be segmented into 69 distinct demographic groups, and the chart

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour is falling in love with localism – but is it ignoring the individual?

Today’s New Deal for England announcement by Labour doesn’t just underline how much of the political action is in the regions at the moment, but how the party is coming to terms with some of the mistakes that it made when it was last in government. The significant devolution of power and spending to local government announced today by the Local Government Innovation Taskforce is a clever way for Ed Balls to save money, but it’s also a recognition across the party that a centralised state did not delve the sort of results it should have done in the party’s 13 years of power, and so something must change. It

Steerpike Steerpike

Chuka’s struggle

Chuka Umunna was on the receiving end of an internet storm after he suggested that people who vote UKIP are either too old or too stupid to do things like ‘sending and receiving an email, browsing the internet, filling in an online form.’ Angry E-Kippers flooded the Shadow Business Secretary’s inbox with proof to the contrary. Now it seems it is Chuka who is struggling online: ‘Parliament’s computers are being upgraded,’ moans the self-styled smooth operator. ‘It is absolutely awful – would love to go back to the previous version!’ So it is not just Ukip that harks back to a bygone age.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May to give ‘significant’ statement on child abuse row

What can we expect from the government response to the growing child abuse dossier row? Government sources are stressing this morning that Theresa May’s Commons statement will be ‘significant’ and that its content will be broader than simply naming the QC looking at the Home Office dossier. Based on David Cameron’s handling of previous historic cases such as Bloody Sunday and Hillsborough, the Prime Minister will want to give every impression that this government is doing everything it can to go where previous governments may have failed to or refused. It’s clear from the briefings and readiness of ministers including George Osborne and Nick Clegg to go on the airwaves

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tristram Hunt won’t condemn the NUT’s strike, but is he ready for a confrontation?

Tristram Hunt is getting a fair bit of stick from the Conservatives for refusing to condemn the strike action planned by the National Union of Teachers on this morning’s Andrew Marr Show. The Shadow Education Secretary merely said ‘it’s not up to me to tell trade unionists what to do – what I want is teachers in classrooms in a conversation with the Secretary of State so we get over these kind of hurdles’. He said the current stand-off was ‘as a result, partly, of some of the incendiary language from the Secretary of State’. Certainly when you read some of the NUT’s literature around its industrial action, it’s difficult

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Spectator Readers’ Tea Party, in pictures

Last night’s summer party was only the warm-up. Today, we invited some of our subscribers over for a cup of tea in the garden here at 22 Old Queen St. It’s a chance for us to meet the people we work for – the best-read, best-humoured cohort of people in Britain (and beyond). Andrew Neil, Taki, Jeremy Clarke, Hugo Rifkind, ‘Dear’ Mary Killen, Peter ‘Ancient & Modern’ Jones and Rory ‘Wiki Man’ Sutherland were all there – with about 120 of our closest (yet un-met) friends. Spectator subscribers aren’t buyers of a product, they’re members of a club. To join them (and us) for just £1 a week, click here. Anyway,

Steerpike Steerpike

Baldwin’s blunder

Labour’s ‘media grid’ for this week had Miliband’s millionaire spinner Tom Baldwin pencilled in to brief Times journalist Rachel Sylvester and give her an exclusive story for Tuesday’s paper. When the paper landed it was actually lots of Labour figures slagging off the leader, and saying how Ed had lots of policies but not the character to be PM. That’s some class A spinning for you.

Steerpike Steerpike

The Spectator’s summer party, in pictures

Last night The Spectator held their annual summer party at what the Mail Online have now christened ‘Spectator House’ (aka our Old Queen Street offices). Here is a selection of photos from the bash, courtesy of Alan Davidson.      

Thursday

Peter Jones

Brussels will treat Britain as Macedonia treated Sparta

The EU is a federation of states (Latin foedus, ‘treaty’, from the same root as fides, ‘trust, good faith’). But for how long can such a federation endure a recalcitrant member? At some stage the crunch will come, as it came for Sparta. In 338 bc Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, completed his conquest of the Greek city-states (poleis) and formed them — for the first time ever — into a political federation. All poleis sent representatives to the Council meetings, but executive power was invested in Philip, and when he was assassinated in 336 bc, in Alexander, it was Macedon that called the shots, and that was

Andrew Roberts

From jailbird to social butterfly – the return of Conrad Black

The former proprietor of this magazine, Conrad Black, is in London at the moment with his gorgeous wife Barbara, and I’ve got very bad news for those of his enemies who predicted that he’d be a social pariah when he got out of jail. At lunches, parties and dinners I’ve attended this week in his honour, he and Barbara have been feted by the leader of one of Britain’s largest political parties, a household-name supermodel, a former foreign policy adviser to a revered prime minister, members of the royal family, a senior industrialist, a former Commonwealth prime minister, a former British foreign secretary, several House of Lords colleagues of his

René Lavanchy

Labour’s infrastructure plans are good enough for George Osborne to steal

In some countries, infrastructure planning can be exciting. Two years ago, I was watching a group of Dutch civil servants gleefully manoeuvring a DeLorean sports car around a conference hall, its wheels squealing on the polished floor. Why? Because the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment was holding a summit, and the theme was, you’ve guessed it, ‘Back to the Future’. With leprechaun zeal, officials reeled off ambitious long-term plans to invest billions of euros in roads, rail and waterworks: all with cross-party political support. Compared to the Dutch display, Ed Miliband’s efforts to enthuse British business over his plans for a national infrastructure commission don’t seem so corny. You can’t

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A disunited kingdom would be a mess – it needs to be kept together

If Scotland did leave, it would be a disaster for the rump UK that would be left behind, I argue in the magazine this week. We would go from Great Britain to little Britain. Every time the Prime Minister of the rUK raised his voice on the world stage, he would be met by a mocking chorus of ‘you couldn’t even keep your own country together’. Beyond this, there are the slew of practical problems that Scottish independence would raise. Where would Trident be based? In the best case scenario you would end up with the submarines in Devon while the actual nuclear weapons were stored three hours’ drive away

Sebastian Payne

Video: Frank Field pulls apart the coalition’s Modern Slavery Bill

How radical is the coalition’s Modern Slavery Bill? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, the Labour MP Frank Field discusses the government’s efforts to clamp down on slavery and human trafficking with Isabel Hardman. Will the result be a Tory victory, a coalition win or a cross-party effort? Is Theresa May lacking the gumption to block slavery in the supply chain, or are David Cameron and George Osborne worried it will be seen as too anti-business? You can watch the video highlights of the debate above, or listen to the full podcast here.  

Steerpike Steerpike

Ed’s business speech literally cloaked in darkness

Mr S wandered down to Ed Miliband’s big business speech at the ‘Inclusive Prosperity’ conference at the Science Museum today, and it has to be said: it was all a bit weird. While the space age theme of the ‘breakout’ coffee room was rather funky, it was so dark that you could not actually see anyone’s face or work out who you are talking to. The whole thing had the feel of a night club—all be it one hosting a geek-themed fetish evening—about it. Perhaps this is how the Labour leader likes to interact with big business – cloaking it in darkness so he can pretend it is not there.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What Britain will lose if Scotland goes

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_3_July_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson and Eddie Bone discuss whether the UK could survive without Scotland” startat=41] Listen [/audioplayer]On 19 September, people over all Britain could wake up in a diminished country, one that doesn’t bestride the world stage but hobbles instead. If Scotland votes to leave the United Kingdom, it would be Britain’s greatest ever defeat: the nation would have voted to abolish itself. The rump that would be left behind after a Scottish yes vote would become a global laughing stock. Whenever the Prime Minister of what remained of the United Kingdom raised his voice in the international arena, he would be met by a chorus of

Simon Heffer

Vote yes, Scots – and set the English free

It is a sign of how no one expects Scotland to vote yes in September that no serious planning has been done about the consequences. By contrast, Gladstone shut himself away for days in the spring of 1886 drawing up the Bill that would have bestowed Home Rule on the Irish, plotting what it would mean for almost every aspect of the shared lives of Ireland and Britain. Scotland already has what Parnell would have called Home Rule. The creation of a Scottish Free State would be a different matter, and few have started to assess what that would mean. This is a pity, not just for practical reasons, but

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Miliband’s integer attacks dissolve into a whirl-pool of squiggles

It was damn close. And it scored top marks for effort. Miliband’s plan today was to prove that Cameron’s NHS policy is a disaster. And to prove it with Cameron’s own admissions. Or omissions. ‘It’s four years since his top-down re-organisation of the NHS,’ began Miliband in that quiet, meticulous manner that always foretells a forensic ambush. ‘Have the numbers waiting for cancer treatment got better or worse?’ Cameron instinctively dodged the question. Miliband moved on to A&E waiting times. Cameron shifted and ducked again. Miliband asked about numbers waiting over four hours on a trolley. Cameron ran for cover. With each refusal Miliband triumphantly recited the figures that the