Politics

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

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The immigration arms race

Who is tougher on immigration? Neither the Tories nor Labour want to be left behind by Ukip, and have descended into an arms race over who can best crack down on EU migration. Today Ed Miliband’s party launched a two-pronged attack on the subject, with Yvette Cooper speaking in the morning about her plans to hire 1,000 additional border guards by imposing a charge on visitors from certain countries including the US, and Rachel Reeves announcing plans for a clampdown on EU migrants claiming out-of-work benefits. Amusingly, Reeves gave her policy to the MailOnline as an exclusive, just a few days after Ed Miliband spoke about dark forces out to get

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Embarrassing (Han)cock-up in Commons as govt loses pub vote

How did an amendment brought by a Lib Dem backbencher to an uncontroversial bill wind up with the government sustaining its first proper defeat? Today Greg Mulholland’s changes to the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill which would allow pub landlords to buy beer from whatever company they liked rather than the company who owns their premises passed 284 votes to 269. The Times’s Sam Coates reports that the minister responsible for the Bill, Matt Hancock, was seen grovelling to the Prime Minister for the defeat, which everyone involved regards as entirely unnecessary. This is the first proper defeat because it is the first time the government has lost a vote without

Steerpike Steerpike

Does George Osborne really lock his office fridge at night?

It seems the most exciting thing to come out of today’s Commons press gallery lunch with Danny Alexander was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s claim that George Osborne locks his fridge in the department. Mr Steerpike has never been afflicted by an attack of the munchies while lurking in that part of Whitehall but he had a quick word with a Treasury source, who informed him that the fridge in question is Danny’s fridge too, sitting right opposite his office and that it’s only locked at night (which makes Mr Steerpike wonder what Alexander was doing going through the Treasury larder at night when officials are so happy to

Caroline Dinenage

The Hunting Act has been successful and popular. It should now be made even better.

It’s hard to believe a whole decade has passed since the Hunting Act was passed on 18 November 2004. This legislation, undeniably one of the most contentious seen in modern political times, outlawed the killing of foxes, hares, mink and deer by dogs, ending centuries of cruelty. Over that period of time we have seen governments and Prime Ministers come and go, and yet the same arguments and political tensions over the Act persist. Just this year the Government abandoned any plans to weaken the Act, since it was clear they didn’t have sufficient Parliamentary support to proceed. The recent debate gave an opportunity for the pro-repeal lobby to make

Steerpike Steerpike

Yvette Cooper steals Tory immigration slogan from 2005

At the height of the 2005 election, the then Tory leader Michael Howard (advised by one Lynton Crosby) declared: ‘Let’s be clear. It’s not racist to talk about immigration. It’s not racist to criticise the system. It’s not racist to want to limit the numbers. It’s just plain common sense.’ Howard was lambasted by Labour for the speech, with cabinet ministers wheeled out to slam the Conservatives for ‘scurrilous, right-wing, ugly tactics’. Fast forward nine years and Yvette Cooper’s soundbite sounds a little familiar. In a speech today, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary declared: ‘It isn’t racist to be worried about immigration or to call for immigration reform.’ Even one of the campaign’s

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

MPs push George Osborne to give Autumn Statement wings

This year’s Autumn Statement isn’t going to be full of a great deal of Christmas cheer. But as it’ll take place just over five months before the General Election, Tory MPs are still pushing for small giveaways from the government to tempt voters to back their party. One such campaign comes from Andrew Bridgen, who has a track record of getting what he wants from the government by hook or by crook. He was a key figure in the rebellion which halted British intervention in Syria last year, and this year persuaded ministers to look at decriminalising non-payment of the TV licence fee. Now he wants the Treasury to abolish

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Myleene Klass attacks Ed Miliband’s ‘sexy’ mansion tax

Myleene Klass had a bit of a go at Ed Miliband last night when she appeared next to the Labour leader on The Agenda. She was very cross about what she described as a ‘sexy tax that says let’s take from the rich and give it to the poor’, which is of course Labour’s mansion tax. Apart from a rather awkward bit when she started pointing at a glass of water and said ‘you can’t just point at things and tax them!’, Klass has a point about the ‘sexy tax’ (which would be a great Labour theme tune, adapted from Justin Timberlake’s ‘Sexy Back’, in which the party could tell

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Pope Francis and ‘the Great Division’: the Catholic civil war draws closer

In the magazine a couple of weeks ago I asked if we were in the early stages of a Catholic civil war fuelled by confusion over Pope Francis’s apparent willingness to soften the Church’s pastoral approach to divorcees and gay people. Hostilities began during the disastrous Synod of the Family, at which liberal officials gave a press conference implying that the Church was about to admit remarried divorcees to Holy Communion and celebrate the positive aspects of gay unions. The synod fathers, furious at this hijacking of the proceedings, voted down every liberal proposal – leaving the Pope looking foolish. He has since sacked Cardinal Raymond Burke, the most truculent of the conservatives, from his post

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Is there anything Rory Stewart can’t do?

Having walked across Afghanistan, governed a province of Iraq and written award winning books about his adventures, now Rory Stewart has delivered his own son: ‘Penrith and the Border MP Rory Stewart has announced the birth of his first son – which he ended up delivering himself on the bathroom floor. Alexander Wolf Stewart was born at 5.30am last Wednesday. A press statement said he arrived so quickly that Mr Stewart had to deliver him before a midwife could arrive. It added: ‘The birth went very well and the baby and his mother, Shoshana, are very well. We are so so immensely happy and proud. It is such a happy

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Home Office questions: It’s all Labour’s fault

A week after uproar in the Commons over the vote on the European Arrest Warrant that was or wasn’t a vote, depending on what you fancied believing, Theresa May faced MPs at Home Office questions where she was rather quickly pulled up on that debacle. Shadow Home Office minister David Hanson asked why the House of Lords did get a vote on the European Arrest Warrant when MPs were denied the opportunity last week. May replied: ‘I have to say to the right honourable gentleman that I was very clear and in fact we spent quite a considerable time last Wednesday discussing the motion that had been brought forward by

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Anger at government incoherence on spending and debt

David Cameron had hoped that the UK’s £650 million contribution to the Green Climate Fund wouldn’t get much attention in the week that the Tories are going head-to-head with Ukip in Rochester and Strood. But there it is, in the newspapers today, with angry quotes. It is being billed as a threat to the Tory fight against Ukip, but some MPs think it has a wider resonance. One grumbles: ‘Why is Cameron one minute promising in the Guardian to not let up in tackling our debt and then the next splashing £650 million on a UN green fund? He’s like the guy who, when on a night out with people

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron warns of ‘red warning lights’ in world economy

Over the past few months, ministers have been using increasingly upbeat language about the British economy. ‘Britain is coming back’, ‘the economy is booming’, and ‘Britain, we did this together’ are examples of just some of the things George Osborne and colleagues have been saying. So why is David Cameron writingin the Guardian about ‘red warning lights’ on the dashboard of the global economy? The first reason is that all that upbeat language has always been couched in warnings about the global economy. George Osborne’s Conservative party conference speech this year contained a long passage about the problems in the world economy, so this is not a change in tune.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How should mainstream politicians talk about Ukip?

Mainstream politicians still aren’t sure how to talk about Ukip. There’s the question of whether the party’s European election and by-election successes will power them to a good result at the 2015 election, or whether this protest movement will fade a little by the time voters start thinking about the sort of government they like. There’s the question of whether Ukip is borrowing members of each mainstream party’s ‘core vote’, or whether neither the Tories nor Labour should consider voters ‘theirs’ any more anyway. And then there’s the question of how to talk about Ukip. Most senior politicians are agreed that you can’t call people who vote for Ukip fruitcakes or

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How the Rich Get Richer – my Channel 4 documentary

(Update: you can now watch the documentary online here) Inequality is rising up the political agenda right now, but the debate usually descends into clichés about wealth, bankers and tax. On Monday, I try to look at the subject more broadly in a Dispatches documentary for Channel 4 entitled How the Rich Get Richer (clip above). I write about it in the Sunday Telegraph today. Inequality UK, a documentary presented by Fraser Nelson from Fraser Nelson on Vimeo. First, the problem is not (as Ed Miliband would have you believe) rich people paying zero tax. For the documentary, I submitted a Freedom of Information request asking after the top 0.01

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Rochester won’t provide much relief for Labour

Thursday can’t come soon enough for shadow Cabinet loyalists. They believe that the Rochester by-election will provide Ed Miliband with some ‘breathing space’ and turn the spotlight on David Cameron’s troubles with his own side.   To be sure, losing another seat to Ukip will be bad for Cameron and the Tories. But based on conversations I’ve had in the past few days, I don’t think it will cause the crisis that many expected just a few weeks ago. Equally, Labour won’t gain any positive momentum out of a by-election in which it comes third.   There are, I say in the Mail on Sunday, two reasons why the expected

Saturday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

A hard-Left anarchist tears into Isis and its liberal apologists. Blimey

Update: He’s called Martin Wright and you can see a clip of him speaking here at a Class War event in 1985. In it he reveals that he used to support the National Front, which isn’t a massive surprise, though he moved away from racism pretty quickly. Click through and you’ll discover just how much anarchists hate Owen Jones. Martin – I’ve yet to discover his surname – is a hard-Left anarchist from the old white working class who hates Britain’s liberal media. But not half as much as he hates Isis and its ‘Gap Year Jihadists’ for whom he won’t shed a tear if they’re wiped out by a drone. This YouTube video

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Hammond tries to thread the needle on EU immigration

Philip Hammond’s interview in The Telegraph this morning is striking for several reasons. First, Hammond admits that Britain isn’t going to regain full control of its borders in the renegotiation. As he puts it, ‘“If your ambition is that we have total unfettered control of our own borders to do what we like, that isn’t compatible with membership of the European Union, it’s as simple as that. And people who advocate that know jolly well it is not compatible with membership of the European Union. So if that’s what you want, you’re essentially talking about leaving the European Union.”   But he does seem to think that agreement on something

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The recklessness of CCHQ

The Conservatives have released a rather silly leaflet for the Rochester by-election contrasting Mark Reckless with their candidate Kelly Tolhurst. As if to highlight that it might be a silly leaflet, it features the phrase ‘the straight choice’, which some thought had gone out of fashion in 1983. Then it goes through Tolhurst’s local credentials, followed by Reckless’s Establishment background. You can see what they’re trying to do here, which is to undermine Ukip’s anti-Establishment pitch. That’s why the Conservatives held a postal primary to select their new candidate once Reckless had defected. But what makes all this sudden interest in local candidates for local people, open primaries and so

Steerpike Steerpike

MI5 mystery at Millbank: has the pig left the building?

Of all the watering holes across the capital, Mr S knows full well that the Pig and Eye club is both the most elusive and exclusive. So Steerpike was curious to hear that the MI5 joint has apparently been forced to change its name in order to err on the right side of political correctness. Originally set up by spies during the Cold War in their then-headquarters on Curzon Street, the Pig and Eye was a place where secret agents could meet over a drink – or five – without risk of being overheard by the wrong people. Peter Wright wrote of frequenting it in his best-selling espionage book Spycatcher. The secret establishment is then

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sir John Major, Cameron’s unofficial EU negotiator

John Major’s speech in Berlin yesterday was aimed at a European audience, but his warning that Britain has a just under 50% chance of quitting the EU still gets plenty of pick-up in the British press this morning. The former Prime Minister hasn’t always helped Downing Street out in his interventions over the past few years, but Number 10 did work with Major on this speech. His arguments are beautifully-written and striking because they come from a pro-European former leader. Major is not someone who European leaders will discount as a raving eurosceptic, and therefore his stark warning about the chances of Britain leaving should be taken seriously. He said: