Politics

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

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Harriet Harman: Labour will not do ‘blanket opposition’

Ever since Labour started having to respond to Tory policy announcements, there have been little fissures in the party over what sort of stance it should take on welfare. When Harriet Harman announced that the party was ‘sympathetic’ to lowering the £26,000 welfare cap for workless households, one leadership campaign told me it was no consulted before that policy changed and that ‘nothing Harriet does now is set (or written) in stone’. Now, as Brendan Carlin reports in the Mail on Sunday, those behind-the-scenes mutterings are becoming a little more serious, with the party’s interim leader issuing what sounds like a stinging rebuke to the man who may well take

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

George Osborne will soon decide the salary of one in six British women

The Budget contained little economic analysis of George Osborne’s sensational plan for a £9 minimum wage for the over-25s. Of course, it’s not driven by economics: the main objective is to destabilise the Labour Party. So far, the policy is being defended by Tories using rather flimsy logic: business moaned when Tony Blair introduced the minimum wage, but did that create mass unemployment? Eh, no. So we can ignore those who moan now; they’ll come around. But, alas, things are a little more complicated than that. The OBR has already broken the news the Living Wage helps richest households almost twice as much as poorer ones, because so many minimum wage workers are the spouses of high earners.

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: A pilgrim in wartime

From ‘A Pilgrim in Wartime’, The Spectator, 10 July 1915: WITH a heavy bundle on her head, and gathered skirts which swung as she walked, I mistook her for a peasant carrying fodder home to the farm. Then as I saw the cockleshell sewn on to her cape my heart gave a bound. “O Pellegrina, stop and talk to me a while,” I cried. And there on the Fiesole hillside she turned to greet me—a little old woman, erect and agile, with white hair and brown, weather-beaten skin, her poor rough garments clean and neat. At once I felt she could be no ordinary pilgrim, and as I watched her

Saturday

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Commons courtesy

From ‘Parliament and Registration‘, The Spectator, 10 July 1915: The modern rigidity of the party system has enabled Ministers, once they have attained to power, to despise the House of Commons, for they know that the Whips will see that the party votes straight, and that is all they care about. This is a fundamental mistake, for the House of Commons in war time quite as much as in peace time is, with all its defects, one of the most valuable of our institutions. It provides the machinery for the criticism of the Government under conditions in which that criticism can most effectively be made and most effectively be answered.

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Place your bets! Bookies reveal favourites to be next BBC political editor

Yesterday Nick Robinson confirmed reports that he is leaving his role as the BBC’s political editor to join the Today programme. Now the race is on to find a worthy successor. Helpfully Ladbrokes have released a rather intriguing list of favourites for the job. Robinson’s deputy political editor James Landale is the favourite for the role at 5/2. David Cameron’s revelation to Landale that he wouldn’t ‘serve a third term’ if re-elected became one of the big stories of the elections. While this ought to win him favour upstairs, Landale has two problems: (a) he is not a woman (b) he is an Old Etonian. It’s thought that — in the interests of

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Theresa May vs Tim Farron

With Tim Farron the favourite to be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats and Theresa May still hopeful that she can succeed David Cameron in No.10, the pair may soon get to relive the 1992 election. Nick Forbes, the Labour Leader of Newcastle CC, has revealed an old article from the election which saw Tim Farron, Theresa May and Hilary Armstrong compete for the seat of North West Durham. https://twitter.com/nick_forbes/status/619462693897027584 Although Hilary Armstrong won at the time, the other two may eventually have the last laugh. Meanwhile, Mr S is glad to see that the Home Secretary has always had such a sharp sense of style.

Steerpike Steerpike

Andy Burnham talks equality at £1400 private members’ club

Throughout his career, Andy Burnham has been keen to point out that he is not one of the ‘metropolitan elite’. The Labour leadership hopeful says that ‘for too long there has been a sense of a metropolitan elite at the top of the Labour party’. So Mr S was curious to learn the venue for a talk he is giving next week. Burnham will appear at the Soho House private members’ club on Tuesday to read ‘a short story about equality and justice’. While Steerpike is sure Burnham’s words will be sincere, he worries that the venue – which is popular with Hugh Grant, Madonna and Kirsty Young – may distract from the message. To

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

George Osborne’s Macmillan mission starts today

Those in favour of more housebuilding in this country like to tell the story of Winston Churchill’s deal with Harold Macmillan in which the Prime Minister told his housing minister to meet the Tory target of building 300,000 new homes. ‘It is a gamble – it will make or mar your political career,’ Churchill told Macmillan. Well, Macmillan hit the target a year early, and we all know what happened to his political career. Given George Osborne was clearly thinking about the implications for his own career of this week’s Budget, it is perhaps hardly surprising that housing plays a strong part. The Chancellor has today announced plans to get

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Can my secretary marry her sister?

Virginia Utley, my secretary when I edited this paper, has written to Prime Minister and Chancellor, jointly. She asks, ‘Please could you tell me what a family is?’ Nowadays, she goes on, you teach us that a family can be made up of men who love men or women who love women, who must therefore be equally entitled to marry one another. ‘Now,’ she continues, her sister and she ‘both think boys are very nice but neither of us met one we quite liked enough to marry… So my sister and I have bought a house together and have lived happily there for years and years and years.’ So, ‘Please

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Euclid’s theorem of the Irish

The excellently named Euclid Tsakalotos has become the Greek finance minister after the sacking (tsaking?) of Varoufakis. He was educated at St Paul’s in the 1970s, and went on to Oxford. This atrocious suffering made him, even at the time, a supporter of Irish republicanism. In March this year, he popped up at a Sinn Fein conference and began his speech by apologising for his English accent, adding that ‘in mitigating circumstances, I am married to a Celt’. Euclid’s theorem is that the Irish are ‘honorary southerners’, now forming an arc of leftist insurrection which runs from Dublin, through Podemos in Spain, to Athens. Given the horrors inflicted on these

Thursday

Christina Lamb

Diary – 9 July 2015

One strange consequence of my job as a foreign correspondent is discovering beautiful places when terrible things happen in them. So it was that I have been spending the past couple of weeks in Tunisia, a land of azure skies, whitewashed houses and apricot light which has inspired artists such as Paul Klee. That beauty — along with soft sandy beaches, local rosé and low prices — also attracted hundreds of thousands of British tourists. Not any more, after a young Tunisian took a gun from inside a beach umbrella at the resort of Sousse and slaughtered 38 holidaymakers, 30 of them British. Almost every Tunisian I met apologised on

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 9 July 2015

Even if everything goes wronger still, the Greek No vote is a great victory for the left. Until now, the left has not mounted a serious challenge to the claims of the EU. It is extraordinary how it has been cowed. The single currency, especially a single currency without a ‘social dimension’ and political union, is the classic ‘bankers’ ramp’ against which the left always used to inveigh. It is a huge collective device to put banks before workers, if necessary reducing the latter to poverty. Greece is an almost perfect example of this, with the rescue designed to save European banks, not Greek people. More than a quarter of

Steerpike Steerpike

Iain Duncan Smith: I did not take Viagra on Budget day

Although George Osborne was on the front page of every paper this morning following his Budget announcement, it was Iain Duncan Smith who came the closest to breaking the internet yesterday. The Work and Pensions Secretary became the subject of ridicule after he was filmed in the Commons vigorously fist-pumping following Osborne’s National Living Wage announcement. So when IDS appeared on LBC this afternoon to speak to Iain Dale, the host couldn’t help but ask a question George Osborne had avoided in an interview this morning: Was Viagra to blame for Iain Duncan Smith’s excitable appearance in the chamber? The Conservative politician replied that not only had he not taken it, he

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Left-wing Eurosceptics are finally starting to reveal themselves

Even if everything goes wronger still, the Greek No vote is a great victory for the left. Until now, the left has not mounted a serious challenge to the claims of the EU. It is extraordinary how it has been cowed. The single currency, especially a single currency without a ‘social dimension’ and political union, is the classic ‘bankers’ ramp’ against which the left always used to inveigh. It is a huge collective device to put banks before workers, if necessary reducing the latter to poverty. Greece is an almost perfect example of this, with the rescue designed to save European banks, not Greek people. More than a quarter of

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Labour go after the youth vote

With the under-25s seen to be the losers in George Osborne’s Budget yesterday, it seems Labour have found an audience they might actually be able to win over. Bring on the youth. Ed Miliband tried to relive his glory days in Parliament this lunchtime as he met with a throng of school girls representing the Milifandom: Right now in PCH @Ed_Miliband is assembling some kind of #Milifandom zombie army. Run for your lives! pic.twitter.com/KyRlHwK09i — Eye Spy MP (@eyespymp) July 9, 2015 He's briefing the #Milifandom. This could turn ugly at any moment. WHERE THE F### IS SECURITY? pic.twitter.com/poC1GPI68x — Eye Spy MP (@eyespymp) July 9, 2015 Not wanting to be outdone, future

Paul Johnson

The IFS’s verdict on George Osborne’s ‘deeply disappointing’ Budget

In the March Budget – and, indeed in the Conservative manifesto – we were promised budget balance by 2018-19. That magic moment has now been shifted back a year. In part, that reflects a gentler than planned path for spending cuts, including welfare spending cuts. The gentler path does not however represent a let up in the overall scale of cuts – other than for defence. Spending in unprotected departments (those other than health, overseas aid, schools and, now, defence) will still have fallen by about a third in real terms over the ten years to April 2020. The Budget was certainly not short on measures. The scorecard shows net

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP MP makes ‘depravity’ gaffe in maiden speech

After the newly elected SNP MP Phil Boswell gave his first speech in Parliament yesterday, he won praise from Henry Bellingham for a ‘superb maiden speech’. Still, Mr S suspects there is room for improvement. With rumours abound that an SNP MP made a faux pas in their maiden speech yesterday, Mr S thought Boswell’s effort merited further examination: Apparently a new SNP MP has described his constituency as having areas of grave "depravity" in maiden speech today… — Jim Pickard 🐋 (@PickardJE) July 8, 2015 Speaking about the need for greater powers and fewer cuts in Scotland following the Budget announcement, the MP for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill spoke of the ‘darkness

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The New Labour influences on Osborne’s Budget

George Osborne had a ringside seat for New Labour’s dominance of British politics and you could see the influence that this has had on him in the Budget. First, there was Osborne’s determination to unpick the structural changes that Gordon Brown had made to move British politics to the left. So, Osborne took the axe to tax credits not only limiting the numbers who’ll receive them in future, down from nine out of ten families with children in 2010 to five in ten by 2020, but he also attacked the intellectual rationale for them, arguing that they have actually kept wages down. But the Budget also owed something to Tony

Douglas Murray

‘Banging on about Europe’ doesn’t seem so dumb now, does it?

As we watch the Eurozone catastrophe enter its latest ‘final phase’ one phrase keeps recurring to me.  That phrase is ‘banging on about Europe’.  Does anybody else remember when those words were used (at least since Maastricht I think) to dismiss absolutely anybody who was worried about the overreach or mismanagement of the whole EU project?  Europhiles from the three main parties loved the phrase.  Whenever they wanted to portray a political opponent as a tedious, fringe obsessive the words sprung to their lips.  For instance, whenever he wanted to paint the Tory party as a right bunch of nutters, Nick Clegg would portray them as the type of bores who

Steerpike Steerpike

Harriet Harman struggles to get her point across

On all counts, yesterday’s Budget was not a great day for Labour. The party found themselves in an awkward position as they struggled to decide how best to respond to a Budget which in part used policies they had endorsed ahead of the election. To make matters worse, Steerpike understands that Harriet Harman failed to get her message across to many of her colleagues. An unfortunately timed fire alarm at Portcullis House meant MPs and Parliamentary researchers were evacuated from the premises just as George Osborne was nearing the end of his Budget announcement. By the time they got back in the building, they only managed to catch the very tail end of Harman’s