Politics

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

Sunday

David Blackburn

Ideologues and pragmatists

Over at the books blog, former Tory MP Jerry Hayes has reviewed James Hanning and Francis Elliott’s Cameron: Practically a Conservative. The key to Hanning and Elliott’s analysis resides in their title. David Cameron is a practical politician, not an ideologue; his quiet values instilled by a comfortable upbringing and a natural talent for conciliation. Jerry concludes: ‘Personally, I would hate to be governed by an ideologue who had to jump through self-imposed Jesuitical hoops before making a decision. I much prefer someone who tries to do the right thing, even if they don’t always succeed.’ I recommend reading the review in full (and Jerry recommends all to read the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The EU referendum, you read it here first

Many Spectator subscribers, picking up today’s newspapers, will be a bit puzzled. Is it news that David Cameron has come round to the idea of an EU referendum? Haven’t they read that somewhere before? This sensation is called Déjà Lu, and it I’m afraid afflicts all Spectator subscribers. Cameron’s decision to change his position on the EU was revealed by James Forsyth back in May. As so often, his weekly political column gave real-time updates of the No10’s decision-making process as it happened. He wrote then:  ‘A referendum on Europe is the obvious answer. It is one the leadership seems set to embrace. The popularity of Cameron’s EU veto made

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Be careful what you wish for, Bercow plotters

Tory MPs are plotting to oust Speaker Bercow, the Sun on Sunday reports today. They are apparently furious that Bercow allowed Chris Bryant to brand Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt a ‘liar’ in his party’s opposition day debate calling for a full investigation into Hunt’s conduct. The Speaker refused to censure Bryant because he argued the unparliamentary language mirrored the wording of Labour’s motion for the debate. This attempted coup is another sign of the fierce loyalty that backbenchers feel for the Culture Secretary. You insult Hunt, and you insult the party: the Lib Dems learned that after they allowed their MPs to abstain on that motion and lost any goodwill

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband calls for a banking inquiry

The momentum for a public inquiry into banking is growing. The Daily Mail front page demands ‘Put Bankers In the Dock’. While Ed Miliband has given an interview (£) to The Times in which he calls for an inquiry into the ‘institutional corruption in the City’. Miliband thinks that this inquiry should be tasked with drawing up a code of conduct for investment bankers equivalent to the one governing solicitors. Bankers who breached this code would be struck off.   Now, many will say that Labour have a cheek lecturing on banking regulation given the total failure of the new system they introduced. James Chapman also reports that ‘government sources

David Blackburn

Who is the enemy?

It is Armed Forces Day and army morale is low – according to the Telegraph at least. The prospect of a 20 per cent cut in personnel is provoking anger in the ranks, which the civilian can perceive dimly by looking at the posts left on the Army Rumour Service. Rumours of amalgamation and abolition have been circulating for some time in the run up to next week’s announcement. The Telegraph reports that historic English regiments are going to be remoulded, especially those that rely on foreign recruits (usually from the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands). Two of the so-called ‘Super Regiments’, the Yorkshire Regiment and the Rifles, are set lose

David Blackburn

Miliband speaks to the common people

Ed Miliband stands accused of many faults, but he rarely slips an opportunity to be opportunistic. James has said that the error and arrogance of the banking establishment, epitomised by the LIBOR and mis-selling scandals, allows Miliband to pose as a ‘tribune of the people’. And so it has come to pass. Miliband has today addressed the Fabian Society – a generous audience for him to be sure, but a suitably humble platform for him nonetheless.  He received a sort of reverse show trial: a lot of predictable questions to which he gave answers of breath-taking predictability. But that is their strength. Tony Parsons has a piece in today’s Mirror

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Jockeying for position in post-coalition politics

‘Coalition is like a see-saw,’ David Cameron used to say. The line, delivered with that confident smile which says politics is child’s play to me, summed up Cameron’s approach to the job in the first months of his government. Back then, he thought it was his and Clegg’s job to shift the weight around so that no one fell off the see-saw. This was based on the premise that the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister could control events; they could ensure that any victory for the social democratic wing of the Liberal Democrats was followed by something that pleased the Tory right. But Cameron and Clegg don’t have the

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Libor is an opportunity for Miliband

The Libor scandal is both a threat and an opportunity for Labour. The threat is that the abuses took place under a regulatory system that was devised by the last Labour government and by a Chancellor who both Eds worked for. As I said yesterday, the Tories are determined to hammer Balls — a former City minister — on this. But the opportunity is that it offers Ed Miliband a chance to act as if he is the tribune of the people, the leader brave enough to take on the powerful. So as with News International and phone hacking, we’ve seen Miliband getting out in front in terms of calling

Fredrik Erixon

Europe’s illusory deal

After Merkel’s decision to allow Eurozone funds to be used to bail out Spanish and Italian banks, the press tomorrow may declare – yet again – that some kind of breakthrough has been reached and that the Teutonic queen of austerity has been forced down from her throne. But, as ever with the Euro summits, there is less – far less – than meets the eye. Here’s my take:  1. Growth pact. Any pact representing no more than 0.0096 per cent of Eurozone GDP is hardly going to have a discernible effect, so let’s not pretend otherwise. 2. About those no-strings bailouts. It seems countries can access bailout funds without

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Italy and Spain put Merkel in the corner

It took them 13 hours, but eurozone leaders have finally agreed to use bailout funds to recapitalise banks directly. The deal, which was reached at 4am (David Cameron had gone to bed at 1am because this is a eurozone, not EU matter), involved Germany giving in to the demands of Italy and Spain. You can read the statement from the euro area leaders here, but essentially what it says is that the refinancing will not take place until a single banking supervisor is set up, to be run by the European Central Bank. This was originally going to be a long-term project, but leaders have now set a deadline of

Thursday

Penny Mordaunt

Lords reform is an ill-considered pet project

At the first meeting of the 1922 Committee following the 2010 election, I was the only new MP to speak. I used my time to set out why I would support a coalition: the country was in an economic crisis and at war; we knew what needed to be done – deal with the debt and radically reform education, welfare, local government, healthcare and defence; and we knew no one else was going to do it. In the following two years my rebelliousness has stretched as far as two abstentions on votes against opposition amendments. The first was on a Labour amendment to extend national insurance contribution holidays for start-ups

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The EU campaign that won’t go away

Just when the whips were sighing with relief that Europe has been pushed down the agenda by Lords reform, a rather awkward letter from over 100 Tory MPs flops on to the Prime Minister’s doormat. ConHome has the scoop this morning that John Baron has brought together a large group of MPs  who are calling for legislation to be written that ensures there will be a referendum in the next Parliament on the issue. When I spoke to Baron earlier, he told me that four more have joined, although he has agreed with colleagues that the full list of names will be known only to him and the Prime Minister.

Jonathan Jones

Clegg: Lords Reform Bill isn’t human rights-compatible

If I told you one Cabinet member had put forward a Bill that’s incompatible with the Human Rights Act, who would you guess I was talking about? Surely not Nick Clegg, the man who has repeatedly defended that Act against calls for it to be scrapped? And yet — as Adam Wagner has just pointed out on the UK Human Rights Blog — there it is, on the front page of the House of Lords Reform Bill: ‘The Deputy Prime Minister has made the following statement under section 19(1)(b) of the Human Rights Act 1998: I am unable to make a statement of compatibility under section 19(1)(a) of the Human

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Whatever happened to freedom of speech?

The issues raised by the Twitter Joke case have been gone over so thoroughly that, as is so often in public debate, only the obvious question remains undiscussed and unanswered: whatever happened to the right to free speech? The Human Rights Act guarantees it. Article 10 states: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.’ 

That this is a new type of free speech case is beyond doubt to my mind. I’ve an essay in the current issue of Standpoint on how the web is

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The return of St. Tony

What is it, do you suppose, that Tony Blair has learned in the five years since he ceased to be Prime Minister that would make him a better Prime Minister now? That the Brazilians speak Portuguese, perhaps — this was a fact apparently unknown to him hitherto. What else? Blair has done an interview with Andrew Marr during which he said he would very much like another crack at leading our country, and that the last five years had been very useful and he’d learned lots of stuff which would enable him to do the job better. He also doled out the usual advice to the current Labour leader Ed

Sebastian Payne

Blair’s bid for elder statesmanship

Tony Blair has chosen this summer to launch his re-entry mission into British politics. He hired a UK communications director in May, guest-edited the Evening Standard yesterday and agreed to a rather intriguing interview in same paper, stating he would like to return to office, while accepting it was not likely. So what is the aim of Mr Blair’s new campaign? Blair had little choice than to take a back seat during the Brown premiership. But the dismal failure of his successor, followed by Miliband’s growing authority and strong Labour polling, makes now the perfect time for the former prime minister to start rehabilitating his image. Until now, he has

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Union is safe

The Union is safe — at least if last night’s Spectator debate was anything to go by. The motion ‘It’s time to let Scotland go’ was defeated by 254 votes to 43. The SNP weren’t present (they demanded two representatives on the panel, and we refused), but independent nationalist Margo MacDonald opened the debate. I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in a summary of proceedings.   1) Margo MacDonald (for the motion) focused on foreign misadventures: Scottish soldiers should not fight American wars with British guns that were a greater threat to their own side than to the enemy. Money saved would go to essential social security. She explained that

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Osborne goes for Balls over Libor scandal

The Libor scandal is yet another blow to the reputation of the City of London. Alistair Darling may have been right when he told George Osborne that we’re ‘kidding ourselves if we think this was the only country where this happened.’ But there’s no getting away from the fact that an uncomfortably large number of financial scandals start in London.     In the Commons, Osborne seemed keen to move towards a more American-style system of regulation with more prosecuting powers for the FSA and new criminal offences. But he was also keen to make a political point, this happened under the last government and a regulatory system set up

Wednesday

The Spectator

PMQs live — 27 June

Follow our live coverage of Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday 27th June <a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=af4caace23″ >PMQs live – 27th June 2012</a>

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Miliband’s notes still lack gusto

Ed Miliband was spoilt for choice at today’s PMQs. Scarcely a week goes by without the government reneging on some budget promise, so Labour’s  leader had a whole fistful of blunders to consider. Wisely, he took the simplest option and quoted an apologia made by David Cameron on April 11th. ‘I will defend every part of the budget,’ the prime minister told some interviewer somewhere. ‘I worked on it very closely with the Chancellor. Line by line.’ That was pure gold for Miliband. And pure poison for the prime minister. ‘What went wrong?’ asked the Labour leader casually.   Cameron flipped into full denial mode. ‘I cannot be a U-turn!’