Politics

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

Saturday

James Harland

Penguin’s irrational exuberance

What’s the biggest threat to the stability of the global economy today? Derivatives? Hedge funds? The credit crunch? Actually it could be Pearson, the company that owns the Financial Times. How so? By allowing its Penguin imprint to pay $8.5 million for the memoirs of Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve. Let me explain. In March last year, Penguin won an auction for worldwide rights to Greenspan’s memoirs — titled The Age of Turbulence — beating off competition from the rest of the publishing industry. The cheque it ultimately wrote was the second-largest ever paid for a non-fiction book, only beaten by Bill Clinton’s My Life

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

More grim poll news for Brown

Gordon’s decision just got trickier. The latest figures from The Guardian / ICM poll show that 48% of voters want a November poll compared to 43% who don’t. However, 58% of Labour supporters don’t want Gordon to go early. Tory backers are 17% more certain to vote than their Labour counterparts the poll reveals and the people who would be missing from the electoral roll come November are from groups that traditionally support Labour more strongly than the Conservatives. So if Brown goes early there’s a real risk he could end up with a wafer-thin majority or even a hung parliament. But backing down now is not going to be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A week is a long time in politics

Rarely has that old cliché seemed so true. On Saturday, Anthony King wrote that “Mr Cameron looks increasingly like a rich man’s Iain Duncan Smith” and with the Tories behind by double digits in the polls he had the number to back up his point. Tory modernisers were fretting about how an increased Labour majority and a fourth defeat would dish the party for a generation. While David Cameron was being repeatedly told that nothing short of the performance of his life could pull the party back from the abyss. A week later and all the pressure is on Gordon Brown. With the Tories now effectively level-pegging, Brown faces the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown’s number cruncher

This morning the chances of an early election have receded considerably but it is not over yet. Gordon Brown receives internal polling today and tomorrow and if these numbers look good he might still go for it. Indeed, if one was a Labour Pangloss one might even say that there is a benefit in the Tory bounce in that if Brown called an election now the first polls of the campaign would see the Tories falling back as the memories of conference faded. The person guiding Gordon through these polling numbers will be Deborah Mattinson. Mattinson is one of Brown’s closest advisers and runs many of the Citizen Juries on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories bounce level

This morning’s polls will be causing consternation in Downing Street. ICM in The Guardian finds the two parties level on 38 points and Populus for The Times has Labour ahead 39 to 36.  If Labour went for an election now it is far from certain that Gordon Brown would increase his majority. To go to the country looking for a mandate and come back with fewer seats than Tony Blair achieved in his worst electoral performance would leave Brown a wounded PM.  As Peter Riddell writes in The Times, “Gordon Brown needs an exit strategy, fast.” The debate in Westminster is about how much permanent damage would be done to

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Labour’s lead drops by 7 points, what will Brown do now?

It’s 7pm and the Channel 4/YouGov poll is out: Lab40, Tory36, LibDem13. Now, 40% isn’t bad for Labour – but a lead that’s shrunk from 11 points to 4 emphasises the volatility of polls in an era where party identification and tribal loyalties have never been weaker. We must factor in the post-conference bounce, so the “real” Labour lead is probably 7 points – but less in the marginals. If Brown goes next week, the bar is high for him: he needs to do better than Blair. A reduced majority will be emasculating, and he risks losing his majority. What a plonker he’d look. But then again – will the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Tories bounce

I’m hearing unconfirmed reports that the Channel Four/YouGov poll has Labour’s lead reduced to four points. The last YouGov poll (for the Telegraph) had a Labour lead of 11 points. Given the margin of error in these polls, that takes us into reduced majority territory for Brown. The phrase “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough” springs to mind. The results will be here at 7pm. Crucial for Cameron not to let the momentum slip. He must start campaigning now as if the election had already started. It is time to start spelling out family and education plans. As James said, Brown is at his worst when

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Taxing the hand that feeds

The Tories have issued a document defending their plan to pay for the £3.5bn cost of their inheritance tax cut by taxing non dom. Still, the only source they can cite for their claim there will be 150,000 non doms to tax is Accountancy Age magazine. That’s because there is no reliable data: the Tories and the Treasury are fighting each other by stabbing in the dark. No one knows how many non doms there are, how much they earn or how many would skedaddle if asked to give £25k a year to a Tory government. I’m relaxed about funding inheritance tax cuts, though. The state will take £553bn this

Hywel Williams

The lazy party

I must have been watching some other conference. Judging by the general view taken of David Cameron’s speech to the Tory conference yesterday this was a masterly exercise in understated urbanity. What I heard instead was a rambling and diffuse statement of aims, conspicuous only in its failure to communicate energy and ambition. Of course it’s true that post-Blair we’ve become suspicious of false messiahs and glib oratory. Nowadays we shudder at those creepy millenarian visions the former prime minister used to dish out when addressing Labour conferences. But a political leader seeking to take his party into government after long years in opposition needs star qualities of drive rather

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown rage

Martin Bright sheds light on what Brown’s inner circle are thinking about an early election in this week’s New Statesman. What stands out, though, is how thin-skinned they are.  Danny Finkelstein’s story about the influence of Bob Shrum on his conference speech has clearly got under their skin. One aide tells Bright that, “The behaviour of the Tories and some sections of the media shows they are already electioneering. Why should Gordon put up with another six months of this when he can’t fight back?” Also note how Camilla Cavendish reveals in The Times this morning that, “The Prime Minister’s penchant for calling certain journalists in the early hours of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Gordon go?

There are two schools of thought on whether the chances of an early election have increased or receded since last week. On the one hand, the Tory conference was a success and Labour’s polling in its key marginals is “patchy and extremely tight”, according to The Independent; suggesting that Gordon Brown should hold off.  On the other hand, as Matt argued on the Today Programme when he moved his election clock two minutes closer to midnight, if Brown doesn’t go now it will look like Cameron has scared him off. Realistically, Brown is unlikley to lose any early election. But he could easily see Labour’s majority reduced and with it his

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Prime Minister Cameron?

David Cameron has just given a remarkable speech to the Tory party conference in Blackpool. A week ago it looked as though the Tories were done and Project Cameron an embarrassing fiasco. Now, after a successful conference, Cameron may have wrong-footed Labour himself. In other words, these remain febrile times. Cameron’s task was to demonstrate that he had the ability to rise above party, persuading his television audience (and the doubters in his own party) that he has it in him to be Prime Minister. My sense was that he succeeded and that he did so in part because of the bold, even fresh, approach he took. This was not

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Not even kissing cousins anymore…

One other thing about David Cameron’s speech: there was quite a lot in it that mainstream Democrats in the United States would have had little problem endorsing – the environment, the anxiety many people feel about a fast-changing world, the breaking of the military covenant etc etc. Then again, the Tories have little desire to be associated with the current Republican party.  You can tell how enamoured the Tories are with the GOP by the Republicans who have been in Blackpool this week. Arnold Schwarzenegger was supposed to give a keynote address (he pulled out at the last minute) but Mike Bloomberg was present and given a prominent speaking position

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What Cameron achieved

A few hours on from the end of conference and the new political landscape is becoming clearer. David Cameron has succeeded in uniting the Conservative party and the right more broadly behind him. The policies announced in Blackpool mean that Conservatives of all stripes now have positive reasons to want a Tory government. The leadership has also succeeded in distilling the work of the policy groups without anyone’s toys disappearing out of the pram. The more challenging bit comes now: they have to win over the country. As Tim notes, the news segments on the speech have been positive but watching them it is hard to feel that the case

Stuart Reid

Did I watch the same speech?

What planet am I from? What have I been smoking? Matt and Fraser understand politics far better than I can ever hope to, but after reading their blogs I can scarcely believe we all witnessed the same event this afternoon. What I saw was a car crash, or at any rate an accident in a school playground. On Monday, with George Osborne’s pledge on inheritance tax, the Tories had the metropolitan Guardian vote more or less in the bag, and for 24 hours they looked like possible winners. Today they look like losers again. David Cameron’s speech was a feat of memory but of nothing else. It was the same

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Labour spin on the speech

Hilariously, Labour is briefing that Gordon Brown did not watch Cameron’s speech. I suspect they wouldn’t be saying that if Dave had bombed. The more people I speak to, the greater the reception seems to be. George Osborne was joking that he should photograph and frame yesterday’s papers, the best he’d see in a while. Tomorrow’s may be just as good for Cameron. PS Cameron now sitting a few seats down from me on the train in goat class. Letwin in first. Correction: Though Letwin told me he was going to First (“It is a business trip”) he ended up sitting behind Cameron when the leader took his place in

Matthew Dancona

Cameron passes the test

Bookended by the soothing techno of Moby and a (perhaps unintended) reference to Jimmy Cliff’s “You Can Get It If You Really Want It”, David Cameron today gave a speech that – if nothing else – stretched the boundaries of virtuosity in political performance. To speak with grace and confidence, for more than an hour, with only a few notes was an astonishing feat of memory and endurance. This, of course, is an important part of the Tories’ election message, starting today. They want to present Dave as gutsy and up for it, in contrast to Gordon the Ditherer, Bottler Brown. The final passage of the speech was as close to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How did Cam do?

My initial reaction is that it was good but not a home run. The ending was very strong but there was a bit towards the end when it ran out of steam a little bit. If I was Gordon, I’d be feeling a lot less confident of increasing Tony Blair’s majority in an election this year. The question is, has Brown put his neck out too far to pull back now?