Politics Archives

Sunday

7 Sep 2014

Come in Britain, your time is up

How do you kill an idea? That is the Unionist quandary this weekend. For a long time now the Better Together campaign has based its hostility to Scottish independence on the risks and uncertainties that, unavoidably, come with independence. This, they say, is what tests well with their focus groups. No-one gives a stuff about all that identity crap, they say, so there’s no need to talk about it. Instead, hype the unknowns – of both the known and unknown variety – and bang on and on about all that risk and all that uncertainty. Which, like, is fine. Until the point it ceases to be fine. Until the point

Ailsa Henderson

The myth of meritocratic Scotland

Alex Salmond argues that Scotland has unique values, distinct from those in the rest of the UK, that can be best expressed in an independent country. A new poll from the Sunday Times today shows Salmond on course to get his wish. But do Scots really hold different values to the rest of the UK? This is an edited extract from the forthcoming book ‘Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box: 50 things you need to know about political elections’, edited by Philip Cowley and Robert Ford, to be published by Biteback in October. Click here to pre-order it from The Spectator Bookshop. Successive election manifestos from political parties in Scotland have argued

Saturday

6 Sep 2014

Isabel Hardman

Shock poll: Scotland’s ‘Yes’ campaign pulls into lead. It’s 51% to 49%

Tomorrow’s Sunday Times poll by YouGov puts the Yes campaign ahead at 51 per cent, with No on 49 per cent when undecided voters are excluded (even when they’re included, ‘yes’ are still ahead by two points: 47-45). In the space of four weeks, ‘No’ has blown a 22-point lead. It was only recently that the No campaign started to wonder whether this could happen: previously there was an acceptance that the polls could narrow in the last few weeks, but the narrative was that the SNP were behind and were simply trying to engineer a close enough defeat for them to argue for a significant new settlement for Scotland. Now

Andrew Brown

The theological illiteracy of Eric Pickles

It is worrying that Eric Pickles is in charge of religion for this government. I first came across his footprints in Bradford, where in the Eighties he was as much responsible as any other politician for the introduction of ‘multicultural’ policies into English cities. He understood that there were Pakistani Muslim votes at stake, and introduced policies to gratify their sensibilities, something conveniently forgotten once he moved down to Essex. The central flaw in this policy was not that it encouraged Islam but that it locked Pakistani machine politics into the indigenous machine politics of local government. Labour turned out to be the main beneficiary of the process, though you

Friday

5 Sep 2014

Ed West

Scotland won’t become a foreign country just because of a vote

Hugo Rifkind had an interesting piece in the Times yesterday on the Scottish referendum arguing that the No campaign, by focussing on economics and pragmatism (where they obviously have the edge), had totally conceded the realm of emotion and attachment. Yet Rifkind, coming south in his twenties to settle in London, had found that England was his home, too, and ends his article explaining why Britain is indeed one country. The whole No campaign seems devoid of any idea of British patriotism, indeed barely mentions the B-word in its literature, instead approaching the thing like an unhappy spouse weighing up the costs of sticking with it or leaving to end

Isabel Hardman

Government loses ‘bedroom tax’ vote

The government has just lost a vote in the House of Commons on the ‘bedroom tax’/removal of the spare-room subsidy/underoccupancy penalty/Size Criteria for People Renting in the Social Rented Sector (the correct, if rather clunky, name). There was a three-line whip from the Tories on the vote, but the Lib Dems had decided they would support their colleague Andrew George’s bill to exempt those who cannot move to a smaller home, or who are disabled and live in an adapted property. The Bill had its second reading in the House of Commons today, and passed 306 votes to 231. Jacob Rees-Mogg moved an amendment that the Bill should be considered

Isabel Hardman

Cameron and Salmond: We shall not be moved

In the past two days, both David Cameron and Alex Salmond have denied that they will step down if their side loses the Scottish independence vote. The Scotsman reports Salmond saying: ‘No. We will continue to serve out the mandate we have been given and that applies to the SNP always. It applies to me – all of us.’ And yesterday David Cameron took special care to not to produce an easily-repeatable soundbite on his own position, while trying to remove the possibility that voting ‘Yes’ would result in his resignation. This could have been a gift for the SNP, who have made the campaign as much about getting rid

Thursday

4 Sep 2014

Peter Jones

Would Alex Salmond give up his job to a heckler? It happened in Athens

Alex Salmond claims to be thrilled that so many people in Scotland are suddenly gripped by politics. The importance of the question before the Scots — the future of their 8.5 per cent of the United Kingdom — is only part of the reason. What really animates them is that the decision is in their hands, not Alex Salmond’s. To see what happens when such genuine power-to-the-people is on display, consider the events of 425 BC. In their war against Sparta, the Athenians, masters of the sea, had trapped 420 Spartans on the island of Sphacteria. But it was proving difficult to get them off, and time was running out. In

The Spectator

Letters: Andrew Roberts on Cameron, and a defence of Kate Bush

Advice for Cameron Sir: David Cameron once saved my life from a school of Portuguese man o’ war jellyfish, so now’s the time for me to save his political life with this advice: to do nothing. The British people are a fair-minded lot; they will give him another term in office because he and George Osborne have delivered the best growth rates in Europe despite the monstrous overspending and boom-bust of the Blair-Brown years. Every newly incoming ministry since the war has been re-elected — except Ted Heath’s, which broke all the rules anyhow — and this one will be too. Douglas Carswell is an intelligent man who has made

The Spectator

An undiplomatic history of British diplomatic dinners

In poor taste US Ambassador Matthew Barzun attracted the ire of chefs for complaining that he had been served lamb and potatoes too often since arriving in Britain. Some others who have landed in the oxtail soup after complaining about British food: — At a summit in 2005 former French President Jacques Chirac was said to have joked with world leaders that his country’s problems with Nato originated from being persuaded to try haggis by its former secretary-general George Robertson. He went on to say of the British: ‘one cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad’. — A lawyer acting for former Liberian president Charles Taylor, now serving a

James Forsyth

Can the Tory party locate its secret weapon?

It used to be said that loyalty was the Tory party’s secret weapon. But this supposed strength hasn’t been very apparent in recent years. Indeed, at times, it seems that the Tory party hasn’t quite recovered from the demons unleashed by Margaret Thatcher’s ouster twenty-odd years ago. Douglas Carswell’s defection means that Westminster, when it is not panicking about the Scottish referendum, is chuntering about whether his move to Ukip is the harbinger of a bigger Tory split to come, one that The Spectator explores this week. Worryingly for the Tory loyalists, there are people on all sides of the party are preparing for this fight. As one Tory

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Ukip offers to pay for polls for would-be defectors

Ukip have been approaching potential defectors and offering to pay for a poll in their constituency that shows how well they’d do as a Ukip candidate, Coffee House has learned. Since boasting last week that they had a few more MPs who might defect to the party, Ukip have been trying again with some Conservatives they believe to be vulnerable. They approached one with what the MP describes as a ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach. ‘The pitch was you’re a great guy and we’ll pay for a poll with you as hypothetical Ukip candidate if you defect,’ said the MP, who didn’t want to be named. ‘The stick was we’ll soon select a

Digby Warde-Aldam

Paul McCartney telling me to vote No makes me want to vote Yes

‘Scotland, stay with us!’ David Bowie declared back in February. And what Bowie says (or doesn’t, quite – attentive readers will remember that he got Kate Moss to say it for him) others parrot. A few days ago, Sir Paul ‘Macca’ McCartney added his name to an open letter urging the people of Scotland to join the Bowie bandwagon. He was late to the party – the other signatories make up a bizarre (and almost entirely English) cross-section of the British entertainment establishment, from Simon Cowell to David Starkey to Cliff Richard. An impressive love-in, then. But it begs the question: will it actually swing any votes? As a young-ish

Isabel Hardman

Michael Fabricant sharpens his attack on John Bercow

MPs are continuing to chip away at John Bercow as best they can. At questions following the Business Statement in the Commons this morning, Simon Burns repeated his question about that ‘floating’ letter that he mentioned after Prime Minister’s Questions and which the Prime Minister has been joking about to Tory MPs. Hague pointed out that ‘things do not float around in Number 10. That is not the way Number 10 operates, I’m very pleased to say. The Prime Minister has received a letter this week from you, Mr Speaker, I’m sure you don’t mind me saying, in which you ask that the appointment of Carol Mills is delayed further

Isabel Hardman

Support grows for British air strikes against Isis

If there is a strategy buried under the ‘no strategy’ response by the US and the UK to Isis, it seems to be that David Cameron and Barack Obama have preferred to make the case for greater military involvement by waiting for everyone else to get frustrated that nothing is happening. Where a few weeks ago, there was plenty of muttering about the polls and the public being weary of intervention, we see today that voters are starting to push for greater UK involvement. They are not, of course, in favour of boots on the ground (one of those phrases that is as worn out now as a very old

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Decline and rise again

Verb says to noun, ‘Would you like to conjugate?’ Noun replies, ‘No, I decline.’ A nice witticism for Latin-lovers brought up on L.A. Wilding’s Latin Course for Schools; but do today’s prep-school Latin pupils have any idea what a conjugation or a declension is? Some do and some don’t, is the answer, and it all depends on which textbook your teacher uses and how much he or she believes in the importance of grammar over the importance of enjoying a story. The story of Latin teaching in this country over the last 130 years has been one of reaction and counter-reaction; and there are signs of a counter-counter-reaction on the

Isabel Hardman

How Eurosceptics will squeeze Cameron

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the Tory civil war” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]Tory backbenchers, who have been happy for months, are once more sunk in gloom, sitting in dejected huddles in the Commons tearoom. William Hague went to gauge the morale of the troops there this week and was told by one MP that the atmosphere was akin to the tail end of 1996; a party waiting for what feels like inevitable defeat. In public and on the news Tories put on a brave face, but in private, it’s grim. But while the Tory leadership has lost the momentum it built up over the past few

James Forsyth

The Tories are in civil war. If that doesn’t change, they’ll lose

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the Tory civil war” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]The general election is now Ed Miliband’s to lose. This is not a controversial statement: the polls say it, the bookmakers say it and in the last week several of David Cameron’s own ministers have come to believe it. The confidence that seemed to envelop the Conservative party before the summer recess has been replaced by a sense of doom. On its own, Douglas Carswell’s defection to Ukip would not be seen as a body blow — but it hammers home the fact that the right is fractured and many Tory voters made the

Damian Thompson

Is Britain hardening its heart against Muslims?

British public opinion has never really turned against Muslims. According to Pew’s 2014 Global Attitudes survey, 26 per cent of us have ‘unfavourable’ attitudes towards Muslims in this country; compare that to 46 per cent in Spain, 53 per cent in Greece and 63 per cent in Italy. Our national tolerance has, so far, proved robust. Even after the 7/7 London bombings, favourable attitudes towards Muslims in Britain dipped by only a couple of points. But is it strong enough to survive the horrors of Isis and Rotherham coming to light simultaneously? It feels as if we are on the verge of an anti-Muslim backlash that could spread beyond the

Hugo Rifkind

Is clicking on Jennifer Lawrence’s naked pictures really as bad as hacking and distributing them?

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Emma Barnett and Jamie Bartlett discuss the leaked photos” startat=1312] Listen [/audioplayer]‘If you click on Jennifer Lawrence’s naked pictures,’ said the headline on the Guardian’s website, ‘you’re perpetuating her abuse.’ That gave me pause. Even though I haven’t. In all honesty, I haven’t even had the opportunity, and I thought I actually followed quite a lot of invasive perverts on Twitter. But if I had, and I had… well, just clicking? Really? The creepy mouth-breather who hacked them, sure. Definite abuse there. Might as well be hiding behind her curtains. And the people who circulate them. ‘Stand on this hillside,’ they could be saying, ‘and point

Unlock full access to The Spectator

Sunday

Saturday

Friday

Thursday