Politics

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

Thursday

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

The first Spectator cruise

It’s a complete recipe for disaster of course. By which I mean being trapped at sea with The Spectator’s ‘Low life’ correspondent for an entire week. That’s seven whole days. At sea. Crikey! Not that Jeremy Clarke isn’t the best of company (he is — everyone adores him) and not that we won’t all have the hugest of fun. After all, Cunard’s Queen Victoria has at least a dozen different watering holes to keep us (and JC) happy, from the Golden Lion pub to the swanky Commodore Club for pre- and post-prandial cocktails. No, it’s just that I fear hangovers of Wagnerian proportions, appalling damage to my liver and —

The Spectator

Before Dad’s Army

From ‘Our Home Guards’, The Spectator, 10 April 1915: There is nothing of the national picnic; or of playing at soldiers about the Home Guards. Those who enter the corps mean business, and not a good time in the open air under a series of military aliases. Some of the special features of the movement are most interesting. Mr Harris in his letter mentions the example of Bradford. In this city the Volunteer movement has created something like a social and moral revolution. It has given the city a corporate military feeling akin to that which existed in the great Flemish towns in the 14th century.

Sam Waley-Cohen

Grand National Notebook

‘How’s your shoulder?’ someone asked recently, and it was only then I realised, for the first time in a while, that my shoulder felt good again. In last year’s Grand National — you might recall if you watched it on television — I had a heavy fall when going well on Long Run, the wonderful horse on whom I won the Gold Cup. I landed on my shoulder and had to hobble off the course. Those famously intimidating Grand National fences may have been made a bit more forgiving in recent years — thank God! — but they are still huge, and when you fall going over one it hurts.

Luke Coppen

The Catholic crack-up

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/edcouldstillwin/media.mp3″ title=”Freddy Gray and Damian Thompson discuss the Catholic crack-up” startat=1403] Listen [/audioplayer]A scurrilous rumour recently swept Rome: the Pope had summoned the Vatican’s finance czar over his expenses. When Cardinal George Pell admitted spending more than £3,000 on a designer kitchen unit, Francis quipped: ‘What, is it made of solid gold?’ That never happened, of course, but the tittle-tattle served a purpose. The story appeared in an Italian magazine just as Francis was deciding how much power to give Cardinal Pell over the curial accounts. Influential figures wanted to keep their money away from the cardinal’s prying eyes. What better way than to present him as a rogue

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Ashcroft marginal polls show Tory-Labour races remain tight — and Ukip is falling behind

The Tory-Labour battleground remains very close. Lord Ashcroft has returned to ten competitive marginal seats in his latest round of polling and has found swings to Labour, ranging from 0.5 per cent to four per cent. According to his latest polls, the Conservatives are set to hold onto five of these marginals: Blackpool North & Cleveleys, Gloucester, Kingswood, Pendle and Loughborough — the last represented by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan. Use the interactive chart above to see the latest polls. In the other five marginals, Pudsey is a tie between the two parties — as it was in November last year — while Labour is set to take Harrow East,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Ruth Davidson, Scotland’s Iron Lady, could be just what the Tories need

Nicola Sturgeon has been described as a rock star politician. In Tuesday’s STV debate she looked like one who is suffering from second album syndrome. Having impressed a UK-wide audience in the seven-leader ITV debate last week, her reception at the Scottish version was far more muted, with some instant polls suggesting a narrow victory for Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy. A dispassionate observer might place Sturgeon third, behind Murphy and an impressively plucky Ruth Davidson. It takes something to stand before a Scottish audience, where the Tory brand isn’t just toxic but radioactive, and earn applause for making the case to reintroduce prescription charges. Ruth Davidson is unlikely to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The referendum is still defining Scottish politics

One of the most striking things about Scotland is how the referendum still dominates politics here. I’ve seen more Yes posters and stickers than I’ve seen posters for any political party. The referendum also goes a long way to explaining the SNP surge. In Edinburgh East, for instance, 17 thousand people voted Labour in 2010, giving the party a nine thousand majority. Considering that the seat has been Labour since 1935, you’d expect that to be enough for the party to hold on easily. But as the SNP candidate for the seat Tommy Sheppard pointed out to me, 27 thousand people in this seat voted Yes last autumn. If he

Toby Young Toby Young

Ed Miliband couldn’t care less about education reform

The editor of The Spectator isn’t the only person thinking about the prospect of Ed Miliband becoming the next Prime Minister. Eighty educationalists have signed a letter in the Daily Mail today warning about the danger of a future Labour government curtailing academy freedoms. They’re concerned about Ed Miliband’s pledge that Labour would reintroduce ‘a proper local authority framework for all schools’ – which sounds a lot like placing all taxpayer-funded schools back under local authority control. The letter-writers flag up two freedoms they are particularly concerned about: the freedom that academies and free schools have to set their own pay and conditions and the freedom they have over the curriculum.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP continue to defy the usual laws of politics

It’s nice to be noticed. I cannot recall the Scottish portion of a UK general election ever exciting this much interest from folk unfortunate enough to live south of the Tweed. I don’t blame southrons for wondering just what in god’s name is happening up here, however. These are uncharted waters for all of us. And yet, despite that, it is a little less revolutionary than it seems at first. Consider these numbers: 39, 33, 29, 32. That’s the share of the constituency vote won by Labour in the four elections to the Scottish parliament. And then there are these numbers: 29, 27, 33 and 45. That’s the share won

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Election fatigue strikes again

After Mr S revealed the angry note one disgruntled voter in Bedford put on their door after being bombarded with Labour campaign leaflets, election fatigue has now spread to children too. It’s not just Labour having a negative effect on the public; David Cameron appeared to have sent a child to sleep on a trip to the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Primary School in Westhoughton. If you know of anyone else who has fallen victim to this condition, please notify Steerpike immediately.

Sebastian Payne

Watch: Green Party releases quirky PPB with spoof boy band ‘Coalition’

The party political broadcasts of this campaign have been pretty dull. Until the Green Party released its video entitled ‘Change The Tune’ this afternoon, that is. The Greens suggest that David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage are all so similar they might as well be in the same boyband. Cue some truly terrible lookalikes in the band ‘Coalition’ singing about ‘a party political harmony’, ‘austerity, oh austerity’ and ‘joining the one true coalition’. You can watch the PPB — which has surprisingly high production values for a small party — above, or download the song (for free) from Bandcamp. At first, the video seems completely baffling: why on earth would a political

Steerpike Steerpike

Ed Balls is dodging the airwaves

Ed Balls has gone to ground after his BBC interview surfaced from January undermining Labour’s big policy announcement on non-doms. So far his disappointing deputies Chris Leslie and Shabana Mahmood have been deployed to clean up his mess on the airwaves. With a limited degree of success. Mr S can reveal that this is no accident. According to telly sources, the shadow chancellor is currently refusing media bids from Sky News, Channel 4 News and Newsnight. Surely he won’t be able to hide behind Leslie and Mahmood all day? listen to ‘Shabana Mahmood challenged over Labour’s plan to ‘abolish’ non-dom tax status’ on audioBoom

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour ignore the yellow peril

Labour have not had much luck in this campaign when it comes to buses. Leaving aside the brouhaha over the sexist ‘pink van‘, the travelling Miliband entourage and press pack were lucky not to get towed in Warwick today. The official Labour campaign bus spent the entirety of Ed Miliband’s speech on a double yellow.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why is Nigel Farage in Grimsby instead of battling for South Thanet?

Nigel Farage is in Great Grimsby today, campaigning with Ukip candidate Victoria Ayling. The last Ashcroft poll focusing on Great Grimsby put Ukip behind Labour by one point, and that was in December 2014. Farage started his day at the docks before visiting a local fish market, to highlight the problems that the European Union’s fisheries policies have caused in towns like Grimsby. But one of the questions is whether Farage can afford to be spending time away from South Thanet when his chances there are on a knife edge. Ukip has one safe seat, and that’s Douglas Carswell’s. Farage has to win his seat and the polls suggest he

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour’s non-dom millionaire donor stays silent over Ed’s proposals

Today Ed Miliband has announced with all guns blazing that the Labour party will abolish non-dom status if they are elected in May. The party has labelled the current non-dom tax rules as ‘ridiculous’. However, according to an interview Ed Balls gave earlier this year, cutting it would ‘cost Britain money’. Even if this is the case Labour doesn’t appear too rattled, seeing this as a moral point rather than just a financial one. Still, Mr S couldn’t help but recall the £5.1 million Labour accepted from the non-dom donor Lakshmi Mittal. The steel tycoon multi-millionaire is a British citizen with non-dom status as his company ArcelorMittal is largely based in Luxembourg. Steerpike has contacted Mittal to see what he makes

Steerpike Steerpike

Ed Balls on tape admitting his non-dom policy will ‘cost Britain money’

Oh dear – it looks like Labour’s new non-dom policy is unravelling already. Everyone knows that Ed Balls did not abolish non-dom status while in government because he knew that people would scarper. So it would lead to less revenue, less money from the rich – and, ergo, a greater share of the burden to be paid by the poor. So it sounds progressive, but is actually regressive. Balls now denies ever holding such a belief. But Mr S has come across an interview he gave to BBC Radio Leeds just 13 weeks ago:- listen to ‘Ed Balls in January: Abolishing non-dom status would ‘end up costing Britain money’’ on audioBoom  

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 29 days to go

Finally, we have a policy to debate. Ed Miliband has set the agenda for the campaign today with a pledge that Labour would scrap the ‘non-dom’ tax status. After weeks of personal attacks, Miliband has shaken things up a little — but is the announcement already falling apart? To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main stories. 1. No more non-doms In a speech at Warwick University today, Ed Miliband will say ‘there are now 116,000 non-doms, costing hundreds of millions of pounds to our country, it can no longer be justified.’ In short, having non-dom tax status is a way for very wealthy people

Matthew Sinclair

Ed Miliband is deliberately misleading ‘you and me’ on the non-dom rules

When he announced Labour Party proposals for changes to the non-dom rules, Ed Miliband tried very hard to be as misleading as possible without lying. He seems to have failed. He said that non-doms ‘aren’t required to pay taxes like you and me’. They are. Non-doms are required to pay the same UK taxes as the rest of us on their UK income and foreign income remitted to the UK. Most of us don’t have any non-UK income, let alone non-UK income which we do not wish to remit to the UK (regardless of the tax treatment, it would mean we couldn’t spend it here) and therefore we do not

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Ed Balls running scared from debating George Osborne?

When Ed Balls appeared alongside George Osborne on the Andrew Marr Show earlier this year, the Shadow Chancellor told viewers how much he wanted to have a TV debate with the Chancellor. Balls was so keen that he made Osborne shake on a debate live on air. ‘In fact I’d like to go further,’ he cried. ‘George and I do not need the broadcasters to sort things out. George is not a coward.’ Indeed Osborne is not a coward, but could it be that Balls is a chicken? Mr S only asks as word reaches him that plans for a Chancellors’ debate this week have been shelved after Balls demanded

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband pledges to abolish non-dom tax status

Ed Miliband will tomorrow pledge to abolish the non-domicile rule which allows very wealthy people to avoid paying tax on much of their income. The Labour leader will say: ‘There are people who live here in Britain like you and me, work here in Britain like you and me, are permanently settled here in Britain, like you and me, but aren’t required to pay taxes like you and me because they take advantage of what has become an increasingly arcane 200-year-old loophole. There are now 116,000 non-doms, costing hundreds of millions of pounds to our country, it can no longer be justified, and it makes Britain an offshore tax haven