Politics

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

Tuesday

Matthew Dancona

The Tories force Darling to play catch up

The most important line was George Osborne’s: “From this day on let there be no doubt who is winning the battle of ideas.” That’s right. Darling was chasing the Tories in this statement in a way Gordon Brown never did – or had to – when he was Chancellor, although there was a hint of the future in Mr Brown’s last, supposedly “tax-cutting” Budget earlier this year. For a decade, the public bought into the line that the priority was to “invest” in health and education and that Conservative proposals to make even the most modest tax cuts would lead inexorably to the closure of schools and hospitals and the

The Spectator

Live Blog Darling’s speech

3:30pm: The House is in confrontational mood and Darling is off on a party political point scoring exercise straight away. First mention of aspiration, the new political buzz word. 3:35 Darling has just, as expected, downgraded his growth forecast for 2008 to 2 to 2.5%. Darling has adopted the Brown strategy of death by figures and throwing international comparisons around like confetti—a sure sign that  there is something to hide. 3:40pm Here’s Fraser’s early take: 1)      Language. It’s pure Brown! Right up from the preamble to weird sentenced like “Britain: the fastest growing major economy in the world”. You’d think the speechwriters would attempt a slight stylistic change. The result

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The blame game

The fall out from the election debacle continues this morning. The ‘young Turks’ surrounding Gordon Brown—principally, Douglas Alexander, Ed Balls and ED Miliband—are receiving much of the blame. One junior minister tells Rachel Sylvester, “I’m in despair about the cack-handedness of these arrogant little sods…These people don’t understand politics, they speak at think-tank seminars, not public meetings.” None of the young Turks want to end up carrying the can for this mistake. Hence, all the newspaper reports about who was much less gung ho than we’d realised and urging caution on the PM. A senior MP reports to Sylvester that the three of them are “fighting like ferrets in a

Monday

The Spectator

Listen live, tomorrow at 6:45pm

Tomorrow night from 6:45 pm, we’ll be broadcasting via this site a debate on the motion, “We should not be reluctant to assert the superiority of Western values.”  There is an all star cast of speakers involved.  David Aaronovitch, Douglas Murray and Ibn Warraq are speaking for the motion while Tariq Ramadan, William Dalrymple and Charles Glass are opposing it. Click here to read a piece that Douglas has written for us setting out his position.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown’s poll pretence

At his monthly press conference, Gordon Brown is keeping up the pretence that the polls had nothing to do with his decision not to call an election. But this is completely absurd as virtually every newspaper was told that Brown was going to study the polling data and then make up his mind.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown won’t send the young Turks into exile

Perhaps, the best guide to the mood in Brown world this morning comes in Jackie Ashley’s column in The Guardian. Ashley admits that Brown has had a terrible week and that his TV performance was less than convincing. Yet, she writes that Brown is unlikely to take his frustrations out on those who so stoked up the possibility of an early election: “Contrary to reports, he isn’t privately furious with ministers like Alexander or Balls; but he knows, and they know, they have all taken one heck of a hit. The young Turks are inevitably becoming the fall guys because there’s a lot of resentment, not least from other senior

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Election schmelection

Official: Gordon Brown bottles it. The News of the World poll showing the Tories with a six point lead in the marginals may have something to do with it. Tee hee: Alex Salmond calls Brown a “big feartie”. Also: “Those whom the gods seek to destroy they first render ridiculous, and this shambles leaves Gordon Brown looking totally ridiculous. “Labour are a shambles north of the Border, and shaky south of the Border.” UPDATE: Isaac Chotiner says I over-estimate the importance of this. Perhaps. It’s true that when the election is held in 2009 this will be ancient history. But it does damage Brown and that will hurt him –

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Gordon’s Recovery Plan

Now the Brown fight back begins. I hear tomorrow he will announce plans to accept 500 Iraqis as asylum seekers, thus helping the translators. Generous? Not if you consider that 1,550 immigrants settle in Britain each day, and that 520 Iraqis work for the Ministry of Defence. And what about Bosnian and Afghan staff? We’ll have to keep a very close eye on his announcements in the next few days.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Polls show that the Tories might have won an autumn election

The details of the YouGov / Sunday Times poll show just how dangerous a November election would have been for Labour. The Tories are ahead 41 to 38, but amongst those certain to vote their lead rises to 45-36: very close to the ten point advantage they need for a working majority. The Tories also lead by significant margins—10 and 20 points, respectively—on what would have been the two most important issues for voters in a November election, crime and immigration.  While the Tories also hold a very narrow lead on who would be most likely to raise people’s standard of living. There are good numbers in the poll for

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Gordon wasn’t ready for the fight

The Marr-Brown interview made me realise Brown wasn’t ready for this election either. His claim that the Tory inheritance tax proposal would have “led to economic disarray” is laughable and would have perished on the doorsteps. Yet, he will–“of course”–look at inheritance tax again (expect him to raise the threshold, copying the Tory policy). He says he does “not accept” that he will take a hit for this fiasco. He’d better not read an opinion poll for the next few weeks, then.

Matthew Dancona

A ringside seat

Just left the Andrew Marr Show, where I was on the sofa discussing the day’s big story before the full broadcast of Andrew’s pre-recorded interview with Gordon, in which the PM called off the snap election. As I argue in today’s Sunday Telegraph, it is only a fortnight since Brown was on the very same show, insisting coquettishly that he would not be providing a ‘running commentary’ on his election planning. Now it looks as though it is he himself who is ‘running’ – from the people’s judgment which, his pollsters told him, could not be assumed to be positive. So often impressive since he entered Number Ten, Gordon looked

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown attempts damage control

Gordon Brown’s performance on Sunday AM this morning did little to repair the damage that has been done to his reputation. Brown kept stressing that he had a “duty to consider” an early election but never explained why it took him so long to rule it out. He talked endlessly about how he wanted to set out his vision for the country but didn’t give even a hint of what it was. While his insistence that “the easiest thing I could have done is called an election” sounded disingenuous in the light of this morning’s polls. David Cameron’s charge that Brown is “treating people like fools” will resonate if Brown

Saturday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 6 October 2007

Blackpool Such is the strange rhythm of politics that this turns out to be the most successful Conservative conference for many years. George Osborne, who only a week ago people kept telling me was a disaster, put in a commanding performance. His promise to lift the threshold of inheritance tax to £1 million did not provoke contempt for reverting to a ‘core vote’ strategy. Some say this is because, though not many pay the tax now, millions expect to one day. I suspect, too, that people actually like the idea that inheritance tax threatens them because the threat is a sort of status symbol. To say that you worry about

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Gordon Brown’s Just So Stories

The Tories don’t really want a November election, but after a successful conference – producing a bounce that has them level with Labour in one poll and three points behind in another – they’re quite happy to see Gordon Brown hoist on his own petard. Brown’s dance of the seven veils on the question of an election has damaged his authority. It’s not a very Prime Ministerial carry-on. Matthew Parris is, I think, absolutely right in Saturday’s Times: Unless he calls and wins the general election for which he has whetted our appetites, the Prime Minister’s standing will suffer the sort of chronic damage that arises when small doubts are

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron hits Brown hard

David Cameron takes a decidedly more aggressive tone in a piece he has written for tomorrow’s Sunday Times than he did on TV earlier. He writes, “what will now be remembered is farcical weeks of secret briefings, hurried policy announcements and, most shamefully of all, the exploitation of the British troops in Iraq for party political ends.” The Iraq trip really was where everything started to go horribly wrong for Brown. It looked crass and calculating and showed just how far he was prepared to go for party advantage. It is doubtful whether after the last week Brown can rebuild the level of public trust that he enjoyed in the first few

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Brown bottled it

The News of the World front page tomorrow blasts, “Poll kills election.” The details of the poll, which the News of the World kindly advanced to us, are grim for Labour and explain why Gordon Brown felt he couldn’t take the risk of going early.  77% think the government has done a bad job on immigration, 63% think the same on law and order, 62% on tax and 52% on the NHS. The one encouraging number for Brown is that only 37% of the public think the Conservatives are ready for government. However, one has to assume that this number will rise between now and 2009. Ian Kirby reports that Douglas

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories 3 points ahead in the country as a whole

It just keeps getting better and better for the Conservatives and worse and worse for Gordon Brown. A new YouGov poll shows that the Tories are now 3 points ahead of Labour—a remarkable turnaround from last Saturday’s YouGov poll which had them 11 points behind. The only potential dampener on Tory spirits tonight is the fact that the Lib Dems might now move against Ming seeing as there is almost certainly to be an election until 2009. As Tim points out, Lib Dem support has collapsed—it is down to a mere 11 percent. One has to imagine that pretty much any Lib Dem leader would do better than Ming with Nick

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Another blow to Brown

Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News, is famously fair minded. That makes his verdict on Brown simply devastating. He has just described this as “one of the worst blows to a serving prime minister that I can remember in quarter of a century of covering politics.” He blames the debacle on Brown’s advisers. “If I was giving him any advice tonight it would be ‘sack the lot of them’”. And he’s hiding away while Ming and Cameron are taking questions. “It’s not leadership as most people will understand it.” This is just a nuclear bomb.