Politics

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

Saturday

David Blackburn

Clegg: there is no future for the Lib Dems on the left

Nick Clegg has opened the political season with a very singular statement: ‘There is no future for us as left-wing rivals to Labour. Clegg urges his internal critics to be patient: the future could be yellow if the coalition is maintained. It’s a gamble. Immediately, Clegg has alienated those who abandoned Labour for the Lib Dems and his explicit disavowal of ‘left-wing’ politics will have the social democratic wing of his party reaching for their hat and coats. But, Clegg has planted his colours on politics’ crowded centre ground, recasting his party’s identity as an economically liberal and socially liberal centrist movement. Bargaining that the era of majority government is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

To govern is to choose: it’s a lesson the Lib Dems are learning the hard way

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics ‘Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government,’ David Steel told the Liberal Assembly in 1981. Twenty-nine years, six leaders and a merger with the Social Democrats later, the party is at last in government, but not in the way it had hoped. The Liberal Democrats have historically prescribed higher spending as the cure for most government problems. Yet today, in coalition with the Conservatives, they are proposing the largest public spending cuts since the 1920s (the last Lib-Con government). So far, the Liberal Democrats have held it together. Not a single parliamentarian has defected. Only a few councillors have quit. But

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Let’s hear it for contempt

The Blairite ‘Respect agenda’ is bunkum. We must all be free to insult each other or else only bullies will prevail Stealthily, an idea which was born under New Labour has wormed itself into the imagination of post-millennial Britain. It is the concept of Respect, not least as applied to how we talk or write about each other. The implications of the ‘Respect agenda’ for free speech are perilous, and subterranean — the more insidious for imposing self-censorship by means of a model of supposed 21st-century good manners backed by laws which ‘send a message’ and chill the climate in which ‘hate-speech’ might otherwise occur. The message is that we

Friday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Pope: moderation is Britain’s national instinct

Another good speech from Pope Benedict XVI, grand in historical sweep and intellectual clarity. His softly spoken, yet heavily-accented, English demands some mental concentration. And it was funny watching some of the tired looking politicians squinting as they tried to figure out what on earth the Pontiff was saying.   But if his voice was tricky to hear, his message was reasonably clear. He was effusive in his praise for this country’s parliamentary history, for common law, and for British democracy. At the same time, he did not shrink from suggesting that modern Britain is at risk of detaching itself from the Christian philosophical tradition that underpins everything that he

The Spectator

The week that was | 17 September 2010

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week. Fraser Nelson introduces the new look Spectator. James Forsyth asks who is behind Nick Boles’ proposed Tory-Liberal pact, and wonders if the polls are telling the story of the Labour leadership. Peter Hoskin says that Nick Clegg is getting forceful on welfare reform, and reports on Osborne and Cooper’s knock about. David Blackburn opposes the government’s EU policy, and argues that a Whitehall cabal has hijacked the spending review. Hon Ruth Richardson explains how she re-balanced New Zealand’s budget. Susan Hill ponders age. Rod Liddle stokes the moronic inferno. Alex Massie reflects on the Labour leadership. And

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

When the Pope met Boris

A good scoop from The Catholic Herald. Stuart Reid reveals what Mayor Boris Johnson said to the Pontiff last night: ‘I’d like to tell you what went on in the Royal Suite at Terminal 4 last night when Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, met Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope of Rome. “I told the Pope,” said Boris, “that what was wrong with Britain was that the Roman Emperor Honorius told the Brits in 410 AD that Rome was no longer able to protect them. “From that time,” said Boris to the Pope, “the British have had a sense of desertion, of confusion, of rejection.” What did the Pope make of

Peter Hoskin

Balls, McBride and off-the-record briefings

John Rentoul has already pulled the best passage from this preview of a forthcoming radio series on Gordon Brown. But I reckon that the testimony of Spencer Livermore, the former strategy chief in No.10, deserves a spot in the Westminster scrapbook: “Mr Livermore, who was Downing Street’s director of political strategy, regrets not warning about the downside of scrapping the election when Team Brown got cold feet as polling in marginal seats suggested only a slim Labour majority. ‘I don’t think it’s possible. Does anyone?’ the Prime Minister told his inner circle at the crucial meeting. The mood was ‘very, very sombre’, according to Mr Livermore. Ed Miliband told Mr

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Don’t Worry About the Opinion Polls

I’ve suggested that the current crop of opinion polls are meaningless. That’s not true. As a friend pointed out, they measure public opinion and that can’t be considered wholly meaningless. So let me put it another way: the “meaning” of the opinion polls is, at present, greatly over-valued by the Westminster Village. Happily, uber-expert Philip Cowley is on hand to act as an expert witness in this case: Several of my Labour-supporting friends have a spring in their step – level in the polls at last, as revealed by yesterday’s Reuters/Ipsos-MORI poll. How rubbish this new coalition government must be. It took New Labour years to lose its poll lead

Peter Hoskin

Cable: interim immigration cap is “very damaging to the UK economy”

After stumbling in his crusade for a graduate contribution, Vince Cable seemed to go a bit quiet. But this morning he’s roared back into the newspapers with another attack on coalition policy. The target of his anger is, once again, the immigration cap – but he’s being far less equivocal about it this time around. The way in which the cap is being implemented this year, he tells the FT, is “very damaging to the UK economy.” To force the point home, he says he has a  “file full” of companies who are suffering because of it. And, for good measure, the word “damaging” gets deployed once or twice more.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Labour leadership contest, all over bar the voting

The Labour leadership hustings are over, tonight’s one on Question Time was the last one. As has been the case at so many previous hustings, Ed Balls was the most intellectually forceful of the contenders. Whatever you think of his arguments on the economy (and I disagree with them), he puts them across with a clarity and directness that none of the other candidates can match. It was revealing how when Ed Balls took issue with Andy Burnham’s accurate statement that there would have been ‘significant job loses’ under Labour, the others all backed away. In the contest between the two front runners, David Miliband was the more statesman-like refusing to get drawn into

Thursday

Mark Littlewood

Finding a narrative of hope

In these grim dark days of austerity and cuts, the coalition urgently needs to find a compelling political narrative of hope and optimism. David Cameron’s Big Society rhetoric occasionally threatens to contain some philosophical depth, but suffers from the same problem as most new fangled analyses of the world. Namely, it is so fluffy that it becomes bewildering.   To the government’s credit, they have managed to prepare the public for the upcoming belt tightening. This achievement is all the more remarkable given the woeful refusal of either coalition party to admit the scale of the fiscal problem facing Britain during the general election campaign.   But softening up public

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Andrew Mitchell recasts DfiD’s role

Andrew Mitchell’s speech today at the Royal College of Defence Studies confirms me in my view that Mitchell is one of the most impressive members of the current government. Mitchell, a former soldier, is moving the Department for International Development away from being the government wing of Oxfam and into a department that plays its part in delivering Britain’s foreign policy objectives. The main theme of his speech today was that DfID and the Ministry of Defence have to work more closely together in post-conflict environments. For instance, Mitchell has cut aid to middle income countries to redirect it to Afghanistan, where it can play a role in trying to

Peter Hoskin

Clegg gets forceful over welfare

Enter Nick Clegg with another self-assured article for a national newspaper. A few weeks ago, it was his defence of the coalition’s Budget for the FT that caught the eye. Today, it’s his case for welfare reform in the Times (£). These may be arguments, about dependency and disincentives, that you’ve heard before – but here they’re packaged in a particularly clear and persuasive way. Just what’s needed as the welfare wars, between Labour and the coalition, spill back into newsprint.   Writing about the article, the Times frames it as “Nick Clegg [putting] himself on a collision course with his party” – and you can see why they might

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

The “progressive coalition” cuts its teeth

Trust Bob Crow to turn down the charm. Explaining why he was boycotting Mervyn King’s address to the TUC today, the RMT union boss managed to liken the Governor of the Bank of England to both the “devil” and the “Sheriff of Nottingham”. Unsurprising, perhaps – but it’s yet another reminder of why, for the Labour leadership contenders, marching in lockstep with the unions may not be such a good idea. To Harriet Harman, a Labour Party bound to Crow & Co. might be a “progressive coalition”. But to the rest of the country, it will probably look slightly left of sane. Only David Miliband, to his credit, seems to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

There’s No British Tea Party: Here’s Why

More on Christine O’Donnell’s stunning victory in the Delaware GOP Senate primary in due course but it’s worth pointing out that such a triumph almost certainly could not happen in Britain. Not even in our new primary-friendly Tory party. Because most of the contests called primaries in Britain are really forms of caucus, not proper primaries and even the so-called “open primaries” that have been held by postal ballot are actually only semi-open. In each case voters are offered a choice of candidates who have been approved by Tory HQ. It is not, in other words a truly open process and consequently it’s exceedingly difficult for a grass-roots rebellion to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ed Miliband is No Abraham Lincoln but David Miliband is a Little Like Hillary Clinton

Are Labour really going to make Ed Miliband their next leader? Tea leaves and whatever passes for momentum in this race suggest that this is quite possible. If the younger Miliband – the one who, allegedly, can speak “normal” – does prevail then what hesitant conclusions may be drawn? 1. David Miliband’s support at Westminster may have hurt his chances in the other constituencies. Miliband Major ran – in as much as this strolling leadership contest ever amounted to a race – on experience, authority and the sense that he was the inevitable victor. But as Hillary Clinton can tell you, experience, authority and inevitability don’t count for as much

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Citizen Castro rains on Comrade Hattie’s last parade

There was praise for Fidel Castro – of all people – at PMQs today. That the tribute came from a Tory MP must make this a unique event in the annals of parliament. Castro’s recent admission that Cuba’s state monopolies might profit from a little nibbling around the edges gave Priti Patel, (Con, Witham), a bright idea. She asked the prime minister if the Marxist cigar-enthusiast might visit the TUC Conference to share his economic vision with the brothers. The PM, who seemed calm, fresh and genially bullish today, caught the joke and ran with it. He offered his own tribute to the semi-retired dictator. ‘Even Comrade Castro is on

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 15 September 2010

Stay tuned for live coverage of today’s Cameron vs Harman clash from 1200. 1200: A prompt start. Cameron begins with condolences for the fallen in Afghanistan. Clegg grabs the PM by the elbow as he sits down – making sure there wasn’t an embarrassing lap-sitting moment, I think. 1201: Julian Smith asks whether it is “irresponsible” of Labour to back union strikes. Cameron says it is, natch, 1203: A dignified start by Harman. She passes on her congratulations for the Cameron’s new baby, and her condolences for the death of his father. Her question is about what progress the government is making on tackling human trafficking. 1204: Cameron quips that

David Blackburn

A Whitehall cabal has Fox by the short and curlies

The Defence Select Committee delivers a familiar litany this morning. The Strategic Defence Review (a structural reform of Britain’s defence establishment) is being driven by savings not threat, consultation has been insufficient and cuts will be implemented at terrifying speed. The committee’s report concludes that the review will be to the detriment of Britain’s defence capabilities. Liam Fox’s summer battle with Downing Street has been overshadowed by IDS’ belligerence. In truth Fox has already lost. The National Security Council, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office have put him in a strait-jacket and hijacked his review. The opportunity to reform procurement and phase out obsolete heavy merchandise and training, both of