Politics

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

Friday

23 May 2014

Today’s Westminster projections show that Labour is not in a comfortable place

We now have both the BBC’s projected national vote share and Sky’s Westminster projection of what this result would mean in parliamentary seats. Both show Labour ahead but not by much. They are on 31 percent of the vote to the Tories’ 29 according to the BBC. While Sky’s parliamentary projection has Labour a handful of seats short of a majority. With a year to go, and with the economy expected to grow strongly, in the next 12 months, this is not a comfortable place for Labour to be. There’s a reason why more Labour MPs than Tory ones have been taking to the airways to sound off about their

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s strange response to Ukip’s success

Labour has a strange response today to Ukip’s success. Ed Miliband has argued that ‘there is deep discontent with the way the country is run and a deep desire to change’, which almost suggests that the results have been resoundingly good for Labour. True, the party has won seats – 152 net gains so far – and reeled in big fishes from the Conservatives such as Hammersmith and Fulham Council. But Ukip is stealing votes from Miliband’s party, Labour is not doing as well as it could be expected to, and the Labour leader’s point seems to be as much about the factors driving voters to Ukip as it is

Mark Pritchard

The Tories and Ukip: deal or no deal?

I can understand why some of my Conservative colleagues are calling for a pact with Ukip. At varying times over the past few years I have been concerned that our party isn’t doing enough to respond to the electorate’s hunger for an EU referendum, and I agreed that Ukip put necessary pressure on all political parties, and especially on the Conservatives in getting them to commit to a European referendum. However, time has moved on and the Conservative Party—and the country—now has that pledge. This is a time to hold our individual and collective nerve – and not to make knee-jerk decisions while we’re focussed on today’s results and not

Isabel Hardman

Labour MP warns on party’s failure to equip activists for battle with Ukip

Labour’s performance in the local elections is a blessing for the Conservatives. A less impressive showing in the polls for the Opposition a year out from the general election, with key target councils failing to go red and what John Curtice has described as a ‘failure to do well enough’ means the story is not just about the government getting a pounding. Number 10 sources are arguing that ‘Labour are actually going backwards’. Some MPs long known to be vocal critics of Ed Miliband are taking to the airwaves to criticise him. Graham Stringer has attacked the Labour leader’s ‘unprofessional’ team. Simon Danczuk has just told LBC that ‘I’m not

The Spectator

The Ukip effect: live local election results

Ukip is celebrating after winning council seats from all three main parties across the country. Nigel Farage’s party has already exceeded its target of 80 gains in the local elections. On a night of upsets, Labour took control of Tory flagship council Hammersmith and Fulham and the Conservatives took Kingston-upon-Thames. But Labour also failed to make gains in key target marginals such as Thurrock, Tamworth and Swindon, and the party’s performance has been weaker than expected. Labour Conservative Lib Dem Ukip Councils 80 (+5) 40 (-12) 6 (-1) 0 Seats 2047 (+330) 1333 (-173) 409 (-244) 163 (+128) Barnet – Conservative hold Milton Keynes – No overall control (same) Havering – No overall

Isabel Hardman

Shapps slaps down fresh calls for Ukip pact

Inevitably, given Ukip has made strong gains overnight, some Conservative MPs have been renewing their calls for a Tory-Ukip pact. Conservative ministers have been quick to brush this off, with Grant Shapps arguing: ‘We’re not going to have a pact or joint candidates, or whatever. It can’t happen on a technical basis because we do not allow joint candidates to stand… It’s not going to happen because we’re the Conservative party; we are the best chance to offer an in/out referendum, the only chance.’ Michael Gove was also asked about this on Good Morning Britain, and he said: ‘Absolutely not. I don’t think we should have a pact.’ The Tories

Isabel Hardman

Local elections 2014: overnight round-up

Around a third of all councils up for election yesterday have now declared. Here are the results so far: So far the Conservatives have lost eight councils, with 15 declared Conservative. The Tories have 1,005 seats (a loss of 85). Labour has gained 73 seats with 1,280 now Labour and two councils, with 25 declared Labour. The Lib Dems have one council declared for them, losing one. Seven councils have moved to no overall control – a total of 16 councils are NOC so far. Ukip has not won any councils but has gained 81 seats taking it 102. This means the party has already met its target of 80

James Forsyth

Ukip surge as Labour make sluggish progress

Only one party can be happy with the local elections results so far, Ukip. Nigel Farage’s party has so far added 86 councilors to its tally and these results suggest that Sunday, when the European Election votes are counted, should be a good night for the party. Labour’s results have been mixed to disappointing. Their best news of the night was picking up Hammersmith and Fulham off the Tories. Knocking over one of the Tories’ flagship councils will delight Labour. But Hammersmith is a region where the demographics have been running against the Tories, look at how Shaun Bailey failed to win the parliamentary seat last time. Labour has also

Thursday

22 May 2014

Charles Moore

David Cameron’s plot to keep us in the EU (it’s working)

I write this before the results of the European elections, making the not very original guess that Ukip will do well. Few have noticed that the rise of Ukip coincides with a fall in the number of people saying they will vote to get Britain out of the EU. The change is quite big. The latest Ipsos Mori poll has 54 per cent wanting to stay in (and 37 per cent wanting to get out), compared with 41 per cent (with 49 per cent outers) in September 2011. If getting out becomes the strident property of a single party dedicated to the purpose, it becomes highly unlikely that the majority

Rod Liddle

I’ve had it with the insufferable London elite. Have you?

‘I’ve had it with these people. They are so smug; they think they know everything and they know nothing. They want a good kick in the face.’ So said a close friend of mine, more usually a Labour voter, before she went out to vote for Ukip earlier today. I think it was the Jasmine Lawrence thing which tipped her over the edge. Jasmine is, improbably enough, the boss of the BBC’s News Channel. She had ‘tweeted’ that Ukip was a sexist and racist party – yesterday. Of course, she should be sacked. Right now. The BBC’s News Channel is supposedly impartial – that’s what we pay for, an impartial service.

Isabel Hardman

Polls closed: what to expect

Now the waiting begins. If you’re interested in the results of around 50 councils which expect to declare overnight, here they are: Basildon, Basingstoke & Deane, Bexley, Birmingham, Bolton, Brentwood, Broxbourne, Bristol, Cambridge, Cannock Chase, Carlisle, Castle Point, Colchester, Coventry, Croydon, Daventry, Derby, Eastleigh, Enfield, Fareham, Gloucester, Gosport, Hammersmith & Fulham, Haringey, Harlow, Hartlepool, Hastings, Havant, Hertsmere, Ipswich, Kingston-upon-Hull, Kingston-upon-Thames, Lincoln, Liverpool, Maidstone, Merton, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Peterborough, Portsmouth, Purbeck Redbridge, Richmond-upon-Thames, Rochdale, Rochford, Rotherham, Runnymede, Rushmoor, Sandwell, South Tyneside, Southampton, Southend-on-Sea, Stevenage, Stratford-on-Avon, Sunderland, Sutton, Swindon, Tameside, Tamworth, Tandridge, Thurrock, Walsall, Wandsworth, Welwyn Hatfield, Wigan, Worcester. Here are some particularly interesting results to look out for: Kingston-upon-Thames: The Conservatives hope

Anthony Painter

Theresa May vs Police Federation – the showdown as it happened

Theresa May’s speech to the Police Federation yesterday will go down as one of the most significant moments in this parliament (writes Fraser Nelson). Below is the best account I’ve seen of it, from the RSA’s Anthony Painter. He has kindly agreed for us to cross-post it here. The Police Federation’s conference yesterday didn’t go according to plan. The Independent Review, represented by Sir David Normington and myself, was due to address the Police Federation conference in Bournemouth. A big concern was that the Conference would pick and choose between the 36 recommendations of the Review’s final report and pass one or two amendments that would alter the substance of the recommendations. The

Charles Moore

David Cameron’s plot to keep us in the EU (it’s working) | 22 May 2014

Constance Watson

Listen: what the people of Brixton and Chelsea think of Ukip and Farage

London is, like the rest of the country, heading to the polls today. Coffee House went down to Brixton High Street to find out how people intend to vote, and gauge their views on Nigel Farage and UKIP. We found some some who intend to support Farage, others who were more apathetic. This is what they had to say: listen to ‘The people of Brixton on Ukip and Nigel Farage’ on Audioboo And on the other side of town, the people of Chelsea (although less willing to chat) had polarising views on Ukip and the Farage racism row: listen to ‘The people of Chelsea on Ukip and Nigel Farage’ on

Isabel Hardman

The other awkward European vote

When polls close tonight, another vote will open in one part of the country that could cause a bit of European trouble for David Cameron. Tory MPs Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone and Conservative candidate for Corby Tom Pursglove are running a In/Out referendum in North Northamptonshire, consulting around 250,000 people across three constituencies on Britain’s membership of the European Union. The trio have timed the poll for after the European and local elections have closed for votes but before the result of the European elections is declared, partly so that they cannot be accused of making trouble in any way. They are, they argue, simply following Conservative party policy

James Forsyth

How has Farage prospered? By keeping his message simple

Whatever the result is when the votes are counted, there’s no doubt who has dominated this campaign: Ukip. From the Farage-Clegg debates to the discussions during the past few days about Romanian neighbours, it has been the other parties that have been responding to Ukip. A party that has no MPs and received a mere 3 per cent at the last general election has managed to set the agenda for a nationwide election. To try and understand how Ukip have done this, I went out on the road with Nigel Farage. One of the things that marks Farage out from the other party leaders is that he relishes debate. When

Carola Binney

The death of student activism

Oxford students heard this morning that, after a three-day referendum, our student union, OUSU, will be disaffiliating from the National Union of Students. I voted to break with the NUS, and I felt confident doing so: Oxford’s membership currently costs us over £25,000 a year, and, aside from the dubious satisfaction of knowing that Nick Clegg will never be short of misspelt placards to stare at, no one has a clue what we get in return. The most notable thing about the referendum was how little people cared. The turnout was just 15 per cent, despite voting taking place online. And this wasn’t an isolated example of lack of engagement

Peter Robins

The pleasures of voting

The rhetoric with which we are exhorted to vote is grand and sententious: do your civic duty; people died so that you could etc. etc. The rhetoric with which we’re exhorted not to vote is grander and more pretentious still. All of it makes voting sound like something between a chore and a possibly pointless low-level military mission, a matter of long queues and secrecy and mild, pervasive paranoia. In fact, for me at least, voting is a small but reliable pleasure. The thing I miss most about my old flat in the middle of Peckham is the polling station that came with it. This was Rye Lane Baptist Chapel, quite

Ed West

You know you’re a European when…

Today’s European election is not just a matter of deciding who gets to represent my made-up region in Brussels’ toy town parliament. It is a celebration of our common heritage as a people, and our proud record of centuries of killing each other in futile wars and thinking up political schemes that never work. Some proud Europeans have described their own ideas about what marks us out as Europeans. Here are mine: 1). You work to live, not live to work, and after 30 years of 30 hour-weeks you get to retire for another 27 years. And you get angry when people suggest that this insane system will leave your

Isabel Hardman

Today’s migration figures show why Cameron should drop his ‘tens of thousands’ target

The inconveniently-timed net migration figures are out this morning, and they’re not good for the Prime Minister’s pledge to get immigration into the ‘tens of thousands’ by the general election. The Office for National Statistics estimates that net long-term migration to the UK was 212,000 in 2013. This is a rise—one the ONS says is ‘not a statistically significant increase’—from 177,000 the previous year. But what is ‘significant’ is the increase in the number of EU migrants – 201,000 EU citizens came to the UK in 2013, up from 158,000 the previous year. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/ZtESo/index.html”] The figures released today show 214,000 people came to the UK for work in 2013, which

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