Politics

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

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The Goldman Sachs candidate wins, but spare a thought for the popular loser

So now we know. It’s not the popular insider, the All Souls professor or the Whitehall veteran. It’s not an Old Etonian — uniquely, they couldn’t find one for the shortlist. The winner of the Governorship stakes turned out to be the Goldman Sachs candidate, Mark Carney, currently at the Bank of Canada but formerly of the Wall Street investment firm, the ‘giant vampire squid’ whose tentacles get everywhere. And that’s just about the only jibe that anyone has found to aim at him, because his credentials are pretty outstanding. To call him ‘the best person in the world’ for the job, as the Chancellor did, is tempting fate —

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Arts cuts? What arts cuts?

Luvvies have never really liked Tory governments. Poor Tracey Emin was nearly lynched by the arts crowds when she had the audacity to let David Cameron hang  one of her neon pieces in Downing Street. Things are getting heated with the new no-nonsense Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, who seems to have upset the triumvirate of darlings: Danny Boyle, Stephen Fry and Stephen Daldry. They have all laid into the government this week for apparently choking off arts funding, with the less-than-subtle undertone being that Tories are philistines. Needless to say, their star quality has given the story some glittering legs. It is true that ‘the Arts’ are taking about a 30

Jonathan Jones

Labour is sitting a little less comfortably for tomorrow’s by-elections

Tomorrow’s three by-elections — the 11th, 12th and 13th since the general election — should have been three easy Labour victories. They are defending majorities of 16,481 in Croydon North, 10,462 in Rotherham and 8,689 in Middlesbrough. And certainly neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats — second and third in all three seats in 2010 — look capable of overturning them. But Labour are not looking as comfortable as they’d hoped. In both Croydon North and Rotherham, they’ve come under threat from Respect, raising the possibility that we’ll see a repeat of the ‘Bradford Spring’ that saw George Galloway return to the Commons with 56 per cent of the

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: PM paints Work Programme a marvellous success

While Leveson packs his sun-cream and flip-flops and prepares for a holiday in Australia, the nation holds its breath in anticipation of his report. One lucky citizen, the prime minister, is permitted a sneak glance at the findings of the great inquisitor into press malpractice. At 11.45 this morning, the monumental hardback landed with a thump on Number 10’s doormat. David Cameron barely had time to turn to the index and see how many name-checks he’d been given before he was whisked off to the Commons to answer questions from Ed Miliband. It was not a great occasion. The opposition leader challenged Cameron on the failure of the Work Programme,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Coalition split over Leveson

I’m informed by someone involved in the coalition negotiations on the issue that the reason the Liberal Democrats want to be able to make their own statement on the Leveson Report is that they intend to back the rapid creation of a statutory back-stop for newspaper regulation. By contrast, I hear that David Cameron doesn’t want to back any press law, at least for now. The key moment tomorrow will come with a meeting of the Cabinet’s coalition committee at noon. It is scheduled for an hour and is meant to thrash out whether a common position can be agreed. Michael Gove, the government’s most passionate opponent of statutory regulation,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Grayling defends stand-off with ECHR on prisoner votes

Chris Grayling today defended the Government’s decision to square up to the European Court of Human Rights on prisoner votes. The Justice Secretary seemed to enjoy his hour and a half before the Justice Select Committee, and used it to make a number of typically forthright assertions about the criminal justice system. Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn attacked the minister for the government’s decision to refuse to give prisoners the vote, saying: ‘What message does this give to other countries if you are inviting the British parliament and judiciary to pick and choose which ECHR judgements it enacts or doesn’t enact? In any event, you could easily agree with the ECHR

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems seek alternative Leveson statement slot

As teams in secure rooms in Downing Street pore over the half dozen copies of the Leveson report, which arrived this morning, the Liberal Democrats are already starting to work out what they’ll need to do if David Cameron and Nick Clegg find they cannot agree on the government’s response. The Lib Dems have approached the Speaker to find out whether there is a possibility that Nick Clegg could give his own separate statement following Cameron’s own response in the Commons tomorrow afternoon. Sources say they hope that this is an unlikely scenario, but add that ‘he would like to be able to make his position clear in Parliament’ if

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why The Spectator will take no part in state licensing of the press

Lord Justice Leveson reports at 1.30pm tomorrow and David Cameron has blocked out 90 minutes in parliament to respond. The big question is this: will he introduce state licensing of the media? A group of 42 Tory MPs wants him to, and No.10 apparently thinks they will rebel if he doesn’t. But this would mean revoking Britain’s 317-year history of press freedom, and give Parliament power to set the parameters under which the press operates. If the state seeks to compel publications to join the government scheme, then they face a choice: sign up, or defy the new law. In tomorrow’s Spectator, we make our choice. We say in our

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Lib Dems can use Leveson to show coalitions work

The Liberal Democrats’ strategic imperative in this parliament is to show that coalitions can work. Their response to the Leveson Inquiry is, I suspect, going to be part of this plan. Their position on the issue is hardening. Yesterday’s Guardian report that they would make clear if David Cameron was only speaking for the Conservative party not the government, has been followed by Nick Robinson’s news that Clegg will make his own statement in the Commons if no coalition position can be agreed. I understand that, ideally, Clegg would make his statement from the despatch box. In some ways this is not a bad issue for the Deputy Prime Minister

The Spectator

Why The Spectator won’t be part of a state licensed media

Anyone picking up a newspaper in recent days will have noticed that the press has been writing a lot about itself. Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into press practices and ethics has created anxiety at a time when newspapers were already haemorrhaging sales and influence. David Cameron’s government’s response to the report is nervously awaited, and a group of 42 Tory MPs is urging him to seize a ‘once-in-a-generation’ chance to regulate the press. They threaten to rebel if he doesn’t. The Prime Minister will be vilified whatever he decides to do. As the oldest continuously published weekly in the English language, The Spectator has seen this all before. The technology

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron to receive Leveson report as Tory party splits on press regulation

David Cameron will receive his copy of the Leveson report later today, and will meet twice with Nick Clegg to discuss its contents: once this evening, and again as part of a coalition committee tomorrow. There will be a Commons statement tomorrow at about 2.30 from the Prime Minister, but Nick Robinson reports this morning that the Deputy Prime Minister is considering speaking after his colleague if the pair fail to agree on the government’s response to the Leveson report. Those won’t be the only tensions over the recommendations from the Inquiry, though. Scores of Tories are among the 86 MPs,who have signed a letter which today pleads with the

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

Miliband’s false ‘millionaires’ tax cut’ attack

Messrs Miliband and Balls performed their pre-autumn statement double act today. If for some inexplicable reason you missed it, the Labour chiefs launched their Q&A with an attack on the government for its decision to cut 50p income tax rate to 45p: ‘The Government is about to give an average of £107,500 each to 8,000 people earning over a million a year. Not £40,000, but £107,500. To 8,000 millionaires. David Cameron and George Osborne are giving them this money. But it’s coming from you. ‘You are paying the price of their failure and them standing up for the wrong people. David Cameron and George Osborne believe the only way to persuade

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Would the Strasbourg Court end up in charge of any system of statutory regulation of the press?

In just over 18 hours, advance copies of the Leveson Report will be sent to the Prime Minister, various ministers and the other party leaders. The expectation in Westminster is very much that the Prime Minister will steer away from statutory regulation, saying instead that he wants to see if a new beefed up form of independent but non statutory regulation can do the job. Others in the coalition, remain keen on the idea of a one line bill setting up a statutory based but independent regulator. There is though, as there is with so many stories these days given its intrusion into our national life, an ECHR angle to

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Lord Patten’s select committee catfight

Sparks flew this morning in the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, as Lord Patten came to verbal blows with Tory MP Philip Davies over the extent of his involvement in the BBC. Patten has previously come in for criticism over allegedly holding down 14 separate jobs – including his role of chairman of the BBC Trust – but when asked about his day-to-day work at the corporation, he dismissed the MP’s ‘impertinent question.’ ‘Do you want to know my toilet habits?’ Patten scoffed. Fortunately, Davies didn’t, but he went on to describe the BBC as ‘a shambles’, asking: ‘Have you been actually putting in the hours?’ Perhaps wearied by

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sir Mervyn defends George Osborne’s QE trick

Sir Mervyn King told MPs, slightly wearily, at the end of today’s Treasury Select Committee hearing, that this was his 100th appearance before a parliamentary committee since he joined the Bank of England. It was as rigorous a session as any of the 99 others that the Governor has sat through in his time, with the committee members choosing in particular to attack the decision to transfer £37 billion from debt interest in the Asset Purchase Facility from the Bank’s QE budget back to the Treasury. As Jonathan blogged on Monday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies warned George Osborne against using that transfer to meet his debt target, and MPs

Steerpike Steerpike

I spy spice

Two thousand spice lovers crossed the river last night for the enormous British Curry Awards at Battersea Evolution. Between dousing my tongue with milk to calm the fiery dishes, I chatted about Leveson with the Justice Secretary and adoption with the leader of UKIP. The former was coy, the latter seething. Other political heavies braved the curries’ heat: a dinner jacket-less Patrick McLoughlin sat at a top table, as did Francis Maude, who was wearing a tie for a change. Maude was not too chatty with Nigel Farage; but sources close to the pinstriped-one say that Grayling was much friendlier. The Justice Secretary went through a limited but subtly different range of facial expressions: polite bewilderment

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How David Cameron could defuse the threat of UKIP defections

Is a group of MPs preparing to leave the Tory party’s benches and defect to UKIP? Christopher Hope has a good scoop in today’s Telegraph that UKIP’s Treasurer Stuart Wheeler has had secret talks with eight MPs about a possible defection. Wheeler told the paper that he had held ‘completely confidential’ meetings with MPs. Apparently unaware of the irony of spilling the beans to a journalist about these ‘completely confidential’ meetings, even if he doesn’t name any of those involved, the Treasurer said: ‘I have had lunch secretly if you like, in a completely confidential way, with eight different Tory MPs.’ He added: ‘Each was promised by me that I

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

No ifs. No buts. Heathrow must have a third runway. Or must it?

‘No ifs. No buts. Heathrow must have a third runway.’ This was our motion of the evening at last night’s Spectator debate, but when it came to kick-off time, it appeared the audience was there for the taking. The pre-vote count found a majority of nine votes against the motion, but with 21 undecided attendees, everything was still left to play for. Graham Brady – Chairman of the 1922 committee, and MP for Altringham and Sale West (with Manchester Airport on his doorstep, he added) – opened the debate by speaking for the motion. With more than a nod to David Cameron’s conference speech in Birmingham, Brady argued: ‘We are

Alex Massie Alex Massie

UKIP is not a libertarian party – Spectator Blogs

I’m sure, as James says, that the idea of some kind of Tory-UKIP non-aggression pact will not go away. But that’s because many Tory backbenchers are remarkably stupid. Proponents of a Tory-UKIP alliance ignore the stubborn fact that many voters – voters the Tories need if they are to win a majority – aren’t too keen on UKIP. There is no point adding one vote from the right if it costs you two from the middle, mainstream ground of British politics. Besides, the Tories are not every UKIP voter’s second-choice and, anyway, the real battle is for the Liberal Democrat vote. Be that as it may, it is UKIP’s insistence

Monday

Jonathan Jones

Thatcher’s favourite think tank backs Danny Alexander

In the run-up to the Budget in March, Danny Alexander was pushing for the abolition of higher-rate relief on pension contributions, which would save the government £7 billion plus a year. George Osborne didn’t include it in his Budget, but today the Liberal Democrat gets support from a perhaps unlikely quarter: the Centre for Policy Studies. Echoing the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s analysis, Michael Johnson’s CPS report says: ‘Today’s tax-based incentives to save for retirement are hugely expensive and, worse, ineffectively deployed. Skewed towards the wealthy, they do far less than they should to minimise pensioner poverty. Furthermore, they do little to catalyse a savings culture amongst younger workers,