Politics

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

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

The coalition’s Lib Dem conundrum

Yesterday, a “source close to the Prime Minister” told the Telegraph that we shouldn’t bother much with the opinion polls as at the moment. As they put it, “we’re only a few weeks into a new Parliament and we’ve got nearly five years to go before everyone really has to worry about the polls again.” But, make no mistake, there will be Lib Dems who are deeply concerned by how their party is polling at the moment. The YouGov poll in today’s Sunday Times, which has the yellow bird of liberty stuttering along at 12 percent, only underlines a remarkable decline since the election campaign (see chart above). The pressure

Saturday

Irwin Stelzer

What Washington thought of Cameron: smooth, genial, evasive — and tough

He came, he saw and, to the surprise of many in Washington, David Cameron conquered. Those who have been exposed to his personal charm were less surprised. For them, the surprise — perhaps they should have known better than to be surprised —- came from his willingness to resort to evasion. Faced with a specific question about his attitude towards Israel, the Prime Minister gave the usual answer about a two-state solution, the need for negotiations, etc. A few days later, before a Muslim rather than an American audience, he decided that Gaza is a prison, without mentioning that Hamas is the jailer, and that there are few prisons in

The Spectator

Dangerous Balls

The Spectator on the threat Ed Balls poses to the government For Conservatives, a leadership fight is a blood sport: a feast of passion, revenge and political violence. Labour’s current contest has thus far been the precise opposite: an excruciatingly dull five-way verbal joust between candidates who have nothing new or original to say. Two of the candidates regularly express their fraternal love for one another. Still, however tedious, the contest remains one of historic importance because the winner may well be the next Prime Minister. After all, it would be a surprise if the leader of an opposition party with 256 seats — enough to force the Tories into

Con Coughlin

Cameron has given up on Afghanistan

A fundamental shift has quietly taken place in Britain’s approach to Afghanistan: the focus is now on leaving, not winning. Con Coughlin asks if we are seeing the return of the politics of appeasement It is difficult to pinpoint the precise moment that David Cameron gave up on the war in Afghanistan. But the Prime Minister’s indisputable position today is that the Nato campaign is unwinnable, and that the sooner Britain withdraws its 10,000-strong combat contingent the better. Mr Cameron reached this depressing conclusion before the current furore over the leaking of 90,000 pages of low-grade intelligence and situation logs by the Australian anti-war campaigner Julian Assange through his website

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

As Hayward becomes the new Sir Fred, who will be Bob Dudley’s role model?

Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business I told you so — and I might even have said it first. ‘Hayward may have to be sacrificed,’ I wrote on 5 June. ‘In that case, the next man in the line of fire could be Bob Dudley, who has the advantage of being an American…’ I might have added that Dudley came into BP (where he takes over as chief executive on 1 October) by way of its 1998 takeover of Amoco, where he was a rising star; and the name Amoco is a contraction of ‘American Oil Company’, making President Obama’s symbolic victory over ‘British Petroleum’ complete. The departing Tony Hayward,

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 30 July 2010

…here’s a selection of posts made on Spectator.co.uk this week: Fraser Nelson outlines Pakistan’s double game in Afghanistan, and fears another EU power grab. Peter Hoskin watches Nick Clegg confirm his fiscal hawkishness, and argues that David Cameron’s provocative language over Gaza only obscures the issue. David Blackburn argues that there are few smoking guns in the WikiLeaks releases, and notices that David Cameron is not cutting it with India’s media. Rod Liddle wonders whether the Prime Minister understands the ‘Real Islam’. Melanie Phillips gives her take on David Cameron’s speech in Turkey. And the Spectator Arts Blog debates the death of the UK Film council.

Peter Hoskin

A Boris success story?

As strange as it sounds, the launch of Boris’s cycle hire scheme is a significant moment for the Mayor of London. It’s exactly the kind of ruse which, if it fails, will provide his opponents with an exaggeratedly high-profile target to aim at come election time. So here, as it’s Friday, is some great footage of Boris explaining why he trusts it will be a success:

Peter Hoskin

The Balls dilemma

How could I have forgotten to mention this in my last post? In that YouGov poll on the Labour leadership race, Ed Balls finished in a resounding last place. Yep, the former Schools Secretary is stuck on 11 percent of first preference votes – behind both Diane Abbott and Andy Burnham, who are tied on 12 percent, as well as both Miliband brothers of course. And the news has got Jim Pickard and Mehdi Hasan wondering: just what will Balls do next? Has he given up on winning? Will he drop out of the race and concentrate on becoming shadow chancellor? I know plenty of Tories who wouldn’t know whether

Peter Hoskin

Jon Cruddas continues to swing behind David Miliband

One thing’s for sure: the Labour leadership contest is a lot more uncertain than a lot of people expected. Polls such as that by YouGov today, and analysis by Left Foot Forward last week, suggest that the Brothers Miliband are pushing each other all the way to the finishing line – particularly when second preference votes are stirred into the mix. Which is perhaps the main reason why even the smallest interventions could have an influence on the result, and are worth tracking if you’re minded towards that kind of thing. In which case, I point you towards Jon Cruddas’s article for the latest New Statesman in which he makes

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Clegg confirms his fiscal hawkishness

Nick Robinson’s documentary on the coalition negotiations is just under four hours away, but I suspect we’ve already heard about one of its key moments. As various outlets are reporting this afternoon, Nick Clegg tells Robinson that he had changed his mind about the pace of spending cuts sometime before the coalition agreement. Or as he puts it: “I changed my mind earlier than that … firstly remember between March and the actual general election … a financial earthquake occurred in on our European doorstep.” This matters because the Lib Dem manifesto said that spending shouldn’t be cut (above and beyond Labour’s plans) this year – and that the squeeze

Peter Hoskin

5 days that changed the country

Westminster has rewound the tape today, in anticipation of Nick Robinson’s documentary on the coalition negotiations tonight. There’s speculation about what Nick Clegg did or didn’t say back in May; Anthony Seldon has a piece on Gordon Brown’s side of things in the Independent; and Robinson himself has a summary article in the Telegraph. Much of what’s revealed so far could already be pieced together from the Mandelson memoirs, as well as from Westminister chatter, but some of the new contexts are eyecatching. This, for instance, from Robinson, suggests just how important personality politics was during those days after the election: “Gordon Brown had not prepared a policy offer, nor

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Cameron lambasts Pakistan whilst on Indian trade mission. Bad move

Oh for the days of inactive prime ministers. After yesterday’s hot-headedness about Gaza, comes an even more deliberately pointed statement. Cameron said: ‘[Pakistan] should not be allowed to promote the export of terror whether to India, whether to Afghanistan or to anywhere else in the world.’ I agree, providing of course it is established that the Pakistani state is fomenting terror and the Wikileaks revelations do not give that impression. That said, the Pakistan government is responsible for all of its agents, and they should curb S-Wing’s collusion with the Taliban and its affiliates in Waziristan. Cameron and Obama are right to press the Pakistani authorities. But a goodwill tour

David Blackburn

Match-maker Merv

Mervyn King’s evidence to the Treasury select committee has Westminster’s tired tongues wagging this afternoon. King re-iterated his long-held position that market confidence will imperil long-term recovery unless the deficit was confronted immediately. Nick Clegg has said that a personal conversation with King changed his mind on cutting the deficit early. Paul Waugh, Jeremy Warner and James Macintyre have varying takes on the Governor’s remarks and their bearing on the coalition’s formation. I’d just observe that King may have been Cameron and Clegg’s unwitting matchmaker. But equally, no party was honest about cuts during the election. It was the great unmentionable, which would suggest that cutting had to come sooner

David Blackburn

Hughes leaps to the coalition’s defence

Simon Hughes is defending his party’s core interests with singular ferocity. Today, he has turned on Labour’s decision not support the AV bill. Hughes told the BBC: ‘They can’t, in any logic, oppose the idea that you have equal numbers of voters per seat. And they are trying to pretend somehow putting equal numbers of voters per seat proposal to go with AV makes it something they can’t support. It is an indefensible position, they are playing games, and their new leader will hugely embarrassed by this decision.’ It’s clever politics from the point of view of the coalition: get the Lib Dems to attack Labour’s apparent duplicity from the

David Blackburn

David Cameron is not cutting it with India’s media

The British press has worked itself into a gibbering mass of excitement about Cameron’s visit to India. The Indian press has barely noticed it. There is no mention of Cameron on the front page of The Times of India’s website, which is dominated by the spat between cricketing legends Bishen Bedi and Muttiah Muralitharan – in fact, those two are all over the press. Also, the Hindustan Times leads with a scintillating description of a parliamentary point of order; the Calcutta Telegraph splashes with an account of army operations against Maoist rebels in northern Bengal. India Daily has coverage of the Wikileaks saga. And IndiaTV is fixated by an extraordinary

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The immigration battle

Why is Vince Cable kicking off about immigration? Sure, to cause trouble – this is what he sees as his role. His ego can’t quite fit in that department. But the pledge to have immigration in the “tens of thousands” was not in the coalition agreement. At the time, David Cameron said this was an oversight and that it was still government policy. But as James said in his political column in the magazine, a great divide has emerged between policies in that bald coalition agreement and those mentioned verbally. The policies in the documents are now deemed sacrosanct, and things not in it – like the extraordinary pledge to

David Blackburn

Who should make the concessions to appease the AV rebels? Cameron or Clegg?

The honeymoon has been spoilt by a bout of food poisoning: Tory dining clubs have decided to obstruct the AV bill. More than 50 Tory MPs will rebel because they believe the referendum should be held on a day other than May 5th and that the referendum should not be binding unless turnout exceeds an agreed minimum. Labour, already masters at opposition, will oppose the bill on the grounds that it includes changes to electoral boundaries – a reform that would lessen the in-built bias in favour of Labour, but which it haughtily considers ‘gerrymandering’. For the sake of the coalition, Cameron owes it to Clegg to at least deliver

Tuesday

David Blackburn

A worrying poll for the Tories

Ipsos-MORI’s July political poll will make uncomfortable reading for the coalition as the summer break looms. It has the Tories on 40 percent, Labour on 38 percent and the Lib Dems on 14 percent . It is just one poll – the Tory lead is usually around 7 points – but the Lib Dems’ crisis is real enough. George Eaton’s spot on when he says that Labour’s resurgence is ‘impressive’. The worry is that cuts have not yet been felt, and that the Lib Dem position can only get worse. The coalition has all sorts of possible plans to protect the Lib Dems. With growth as it is, Osborne could

David Blackburn

Dave’s pageant is all very well, but India wants to talk immigration

In 1690, Thomas ‘Diamond’ Pitt led an opulent delegation of the East India Company’s Madras factors, bearing their wares, to the Nawab of the Carnatic, the richest man in southern India, with the intention of buying him out. They succeeded, but Pitt had nothing on David Cameron’s delegation.  Six cabinet ministers, more than 10 CEOs and God knows how many diplomats are accompanying the Prime Minister. The only person missing is Nick – but that sort of thing is frowned upon by Delhi’s Edwardianly genteel political classes. As I wrote yesterday, pageantry titillates commercial diplomacy, and Cameron is staking everything on this mission. As the Independent reported yesterday, current Anglo-Indian bilateral trade is worth

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Does the Prime Minister understand the ‘Real Islam’?

The Prime Minister has decided that Turkey should be a member of the EU in order to form some sort of bridge with the rest of the Muslim world. He has also made the same mistake that the last government – and most apologists on the left made about Islam. He said of those people critical of Islam: ‘They see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists. They think the values of Islam can never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies or cultures.’ In other words he is setting himself up as a Koranic expert, much as did Blair, in being able