Politics

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

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Knives out for Warsi in reshuffle

After a few weeks of Boris vs George, Conservatives are now starting to gossip about something a little more immediate: a post-European elections reshuffle. I understand that the Prime Minister is currently experiencing concerted lobbying from many ministers and backbenchers to remove Baroness Warsi from her post as ‘senior minister of state’ after her decision to wave about a front page on the ‘Eton Mess’ in Number 10 on ITV’s The Agenda a few weeks ago. There was fury at a senior level in the Conservative party about Warsi’s behaviour: she was punching her party’s bruise on class. One minister says: ‘She should be dropped down a hole and a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Peers launch bid to neuter controversial ‘stateless’ plan in Immigration Bill

Remember that rather curious change to the Immigration Bill that would render foreign-born terror suspects ‘stateless’ that ministers managed to sneak through while most MPs were in a tizz about Dominic Raab? Well, it’s facing its first major battle in the House of Lords soon, with a group of peers tabling an amendment which would in effect neuter it or spark a row in the Commons. The new clause, tabled by crossbenchers Lord Pannick and Lord Brown, Lib Dem former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Macdonald and Labour’s Baroness Smith, proposes setting up a committee of MPs and peers to consider whether the stateless policy should go ahead. This proposal

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Clegg, Farage and the poverty of Britain’s EU debate

Two of the writers I most admire have fallen out over the Clegg vs Farage debate. James Kirkup calls it for the Lib Dem leader (his reasons here) and Peter Oborne for Farage – but I’m in the happy position of being able to disagree with both of them. I think they both lost, and I explain why in my Daily Telegraph column today. Clegg has decided to ride the Ukip wave, positioning himself as the patron saint of Europhiles who loathe the sight of Nigel Farage. He will be calculating that there are more of them than LibDem supporters. But I regarded their debate on Wednesday as rather sterile,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron’s slow mission to convince sceptics at home and in Europe

Today’s joint FT article by George Osborne and Wolfgang Schäuble is yet another exhibit for David Cameron to wave at critics of his EU policy. While Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg fight over In or Out with no chance of leading the government that presents that choice to the British people (read Fraser’s Telegraph column on this), David Cameron can say that he is inching closer to winning debates, point by point, with European leaders. Today’s article contains the important acceptance that non-eurozone countries should be protected rather than disadvantaged by treaty change: ‘A stable euro is good for the global economy, and especially for Europe. The crisis has shown that

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Will Nick and Nigel be sidelined from the 2015 TV debates?

Has last night’s debate affected Nigel Farage’s chances of being involved in the general election TV debates? Although the broadcasters and political parties have yet to agree any dates or formats, the precedent has been set and the public will be expecting them. With weasel words from No.10 and a bullish attitude from some broadcasters, there’s a long way to go before an agreement is made. The public already have a clear idea of what they expect. According to the last YouGov polling on the subject, nearly half believe there should be a four-way debate between Cameron, Miliband, Clegg and Farage: [datawrapper chart=”http://charts.spectator.co.uk/chart/noqHV/”] It’ll be interesting to see whether the

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Boris should call a referendum

Everyone can see that the West has no idea what to do about Russian power in the Ukraine. Britain, in particular, is at the margins. It is time for the Mayor of London to fulfil his historic role of stealing a march on more conventional politicians. Boris should take a leaf out of President Putin’s book and call a referendum of Londoners. He should ask them whether they would like all Russian housing in London to be seized, and be inhabited, instead, by British families. I predict a Yes vote whose percentage would exceed even that of the recent Crimean plebiscite. Obviously the Mayor, unlike Putin, has no military forces

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Clegg and Farage’s real mission: getting their voters to turn up

‘You guys always love the zero sum game, you know, politics as Premier League football,’ Paddy Ashdown said this morning when asked whether he accepted whether his leader had lost last night’s LBC debate on Europe. This sounded ridiculous initially: of course politics is like Premier League football. The party that comes second in a general election doesn’t skip away arguing that it was the taking part that counts, it retreats to lick its wounds. listen to ‘Lord Ashdown on the Nick vs Nigel debate’ on Audioboo

Ed West Ed West

Hampstead and Kilburn – it would be a disgrace if the Lib Dems don’t back Maajid Nawaz to the hilt

In the past 30 years British English has received a number of loan words from Arabic, words which would have meant very little to our young grandparents but are now familiar enough to be used metaphorically: jihad, fatwa, taliban, dhimmi. Almost all refer to religion and religious conflict, and have a slightly unwelcome ear to most people. (It wasn’t always like this, of course; Arabic has in the past given us a number of terms, from zero to orange to racket and nadir, not to mention countless scientific phrases). One word I would like to see imported, however, is asabiyyah, a term which is best translated as ‘cohesion’, but more

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Nick vs Nigel sketch: Farage edged ahead of a pompous Clegg – but there was no knock-out blow

Never mind the arguments, the body language said it all at the EU debate last night. Nigel Farage was relaxed, smiley and upbeat. Nick Clegg had a solemn and rather shifty air. He looked like a plain clothes undertaker handing out business cards in Casualty. Power has enclosed him in a layer of pomposity and self-righteousness (adding to a pretty thick undercoat, it has to be said), and he admitted no flicker of warmth or humour to his performance. Even his geniality was ice cold. When asked a question by the audience he memorised the questioner’s name and used it repeatedly during his answer. Where did he get that trick?

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Has Ed Miliband’s luck finally run out?

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_27_March_2014.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss whether Miliband’s luck has run out” startat=802] Listen [/audioplayer]Ask anyone in Westminster about the obstacles to a Tory victory in next year’s election and you’ll hear a well-rehearsed answer. The constituency boundaries are so ancient that Labour can win on a far lower share of vote; Ukip is eating into the Tories’ base while the coalition has united the left behind Labour; being beaten by Ukip in the European elections will send Tory MPs into a regicidal frenzy. By contrast, Labour appears to be holding itself together; its problems are hidden well below the waterline. But that’s changing. The Budget has brought

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Nigel Farage wins LBC debate but will he regret ‘blood on their hands’ comment?

Tonight’s YouGov poll says that Nigel Farage won the debate with Nick Clegg by 57 per cent to 37 per cent. But, intriguingly, the plurality of those polled said that they’d vote to stay in the EU. For Farage, the hope has to be that this victory gives him back some of the momentum that he lost when Romanian and Bulgarian immigration failed to become the problem that he had predicted it would be. He’ll also be happy with the fact that 70 per cent of Tory voters polled said that he’d won. The Liberal Democrats will not be surprised to lose tonight. For them, the bonus is that Clegg

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Ed Balls ruins Miliband’s piece of theatre

Last week, if you can remember that far back, World War Three was about to start in Ukraine. The fixture was postponed, thankfully, and politics at Westminster has returned to the usual domestic blood-letting. Both leaders were in chipper mood. Cameron sees everything moving in his direction, including the Labour party which has accepted his benefits cap. Miliband was equally buoyed up. He was grinning and skipping at the despatch box like a boxing kangaroo. The energy giant SSE had just announced a price freeze till 2016. Which is exactly what Miliband prescribed last autumn. So today, at least, he appears to be running the country. Naturally he made the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Small Labour rebellion as 22 MPs vote against welfare cap

The Commons has just backed the government’s welfare cap by 520 votes to 22 against. As that figure for the Noes will include SNP MPs, this means a very small rebellion on the Labour benches – around 13. Party sources were yesterday briefing they expected around two dozen of their backbenchers to vote against. Tory deputy chief whip Greg Hands has already taken the opportunity to tweet the names of those he saw going through the No lobbies in this vote. 13 Lab rebels on Welfare Cap: Abbott, Campbell, Clark, Connarty, Corbyn, Hopkins, Jackson, McDonnell, Mudie, Riordan, Skinner, T Watson,Wood — Greg Hands (@GregHands) March 26, 2014   We’ll bring

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Nick Clegg stands to beat Nigel Farage in tonight’s Europe debate. Here’s why.

Tonight is the first round of the Clegg/Farage debate on Britain’s EU membership. It is perfectly possible that both of the leaders could benefit from it. They could emerge as champions of their causes and gain plaudits for having the courage to debate the issue. But I suspect that this won’t happen. They both believe too passionately in their positions on Europe to play it safe, thought they might be cautious tonight knowing that there’s another debate coming in a week’s time. One other thing that has raised the stakes is the barrage against Farage. If Farage has a poor night tonight, there’ll be a lot of talk about how

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs: Lib Dems have thwarted changes to fox hunting law

Ed Miliband started strongly at PMQs today. He seized on Scottish and Southern’s announcement that they’ll freeze energy prices as a justification of his most popular policy, the energy price freeze. He mockingly asked Cameron if he still thought the idea was unworkable and a Communist plot. listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron vs Miliband on energy prices’ on Audioboo

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: who will take credit for SSE’s price freeze?

Perhaps both David Cameron and Ed Miliband will try to take credit for SSE’s announcement that it is freezing its prices until 2016 when they tussle at PMQs. Number 10 this morning said: ‘Anything which helps consumers with their bills is to be welcomed, of course and one of the things that the company is explaining today is it is able to, a principle reason why it is able to make this decision is because of the rolling back of the green levies and green charges, which is a result of this government.’ This is true, but it’s not quite the full picture. The only reason the government decided to

Alex Massie Alex Massie

It is not surprising that the polls on Scottish independence are tightening…

There are some pollsters who believe nothing has changed since 2011. All the storm and blast, bluff and bluster about Scottish independence has had no impact at all. The settled will of the Scottish people remains settles: more power for Edinburgh but no to independence. Oddly YouGov’s Peter Kellner is one of these pollsters. Oddly because, as the chart above shows, his own polling organisation’s reports show that the race is, as long expected, tightening. There is a small but definite drift to Yes. True, at its present rate it will not be enough to prevail come September. But it is quite possible that the drift towards a Yes vote

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

‘Net migration’ is bogus. Maybe we should look at ‘net foreign migration’?

Mark Field, MP for Westminster, has set up a brand new campaign group of Tory backbenchers called Managed Migration – as opposed, you might think, to the unmanaged sort we have at present. But he’s not actually in favour of managing migration in the conventional sense; he wants the PM to drop the party’s commitment to containing overall numbers of net migrants to the ‘tens of thousands’ though there seems fat chance of that just now.  Big increases in net migration, he says, are a tribute to the recovering economy. He’s got a point in one sense. As the economy improves, fewer Brits want to leave, which has an effect on net numbers.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nick v Nigel: what Cameron should worry about as he watches today’s fight

Even though it’s not unreasonable to predict that both Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage can emerge from tonight’s LBC debate feeling they’ve won (they’re preaching to quite different choirs), it’s still worth remembering that the one who lands a killer blow or smart put down will get the best clip on the 10 o’clock news. David Cameron says he won’t be watching the debate, implying he’s not bothered by this sideshow. Few believe this. But as he does furtively follow the exchanges while pretending to watch one of his favourite box sets, the Prime Minister will see both Farage and Clegg rubbish his renegotiation strategy. The former thinks it is