Politics

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

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Is this the death of another anti-Brown plot?

An eagle-eyed spot by Hopi Sen, who has posted on Barry Sheerman’s comments in the Huddersfield Examiner today.  If you remember, Sheerman was mooted as a key component in an anti-Brown plot, whereby he’d stand as chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party on a Get Gordon Out platform. Votes for Sheerman, it was thought, would be votes against Brown – and increase the pressure on the PM to stand down.  But in the Huddersfield Examiner, Sheerman suggests that, while he will stand for the PLP position, he won’t do so as part of a coup: “…Mr Sheerman denied this was part of a move to topple Gordon Brown. He said

Peter Hoskin

Selling assets at rock bottom prices – sound familiar?

So what to make of Gordon Brown’s plan to sell off an expected £16bn-worth of assets?  Like Charlie Elphicke over at CentreRight, I have my qualms. As he puts it, Brown has form when it comes to selling national assets at rock-bottom prices. And, in the immediate aftermath of the credit crunch and a recession, the prices he gets for our stake in Urenco, say, or the Dartford crossing, are likely to be rock bottom.   Besides, there’s an unmistakeable whiff of political opportunism about this plan. You can imagine the posturing now: “We’re selling off assets we can spare to protect jobs and frontline services, unlike those dastardly Tories…”

Peter Hoskin

Smith to apologise to Commons

Sky report that the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee have judged that Jacqui Smith was “clearly” wrong to claim that her sister’s home was her main residence.  Smith has been ordered to apologise to the Commons, which she’s expected to do later today.  No further action will be taken. Throw in the news about Damian Green’s “not proportionate” arrest, and the hubbub over Sir Thomas Legg’s letters, and you feel that today will do little to restore the public’s faith in the political class…

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The politics of growth

One strange side-effect of the car crash that was the Liberal Democrat conference is that no one dares say the word “cuts” anymore. Since Nick Clegg promised “savage cuts” – alarming his base in the process – we’re back to the normal euphemism of “efficiencies”. This, like so much in life, will have Gordon Brown hopping mad. He didn’t want to say “cuts” in the first place, and the whole farrago will prove (in his head) that he should stop taking advice from people outside his coterie.   The next stage in the debate is to focus on growth. As James revealed in his political column for the current edition

The Spectator

Just in case you missed them… | 12 October 2009

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson illuminates who is affected by Brown’s double hit. James Forsyth asks why the Pakistani Taliban are being given another opening and argues that Brown remains divorced from voters. Peter Hoskin thinks that No.10 will welcome Alan Johnson’s backing and says that Westminster will have to start thinking about expenses again. David Blackburn debates the rumour that David Davis is planning to return to frontline politics and sees the Italian Right preparing for life without Berlusconi. Martin Bright thinks that the Conservative conference proves that the party is far from being unbeatable. And Rod Liddle wonders when

David Blackburn

The Commons closes ranks

They are all in it together. This morning’s papers lead with the story that Members’ Estimate Committee will challenge Sir Thomas Legg’s demands that MPs repay excessive expense claims, on the grounds that Sir Thomas’ has applied retrospective rules on maintenance grants. Many MPs will take legal action to avoid repayment. The pro-transparency MP John Mann told the Guardian: “The Legg team have clearly got problems, because [MPs] don’t have the receipts for a lot of this stuff. Clearly, if someone has managed to get [a claim] signed off by the fees office then they have a case when asked to repay. “There could be as many as 200 MPs

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Is David Cameron going to be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?

Could David Cameron be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? Clearly we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, but… Some regular commenters will hope so since this would, depending upon your political preferences, either be the long-awaited national awakening or an opportunity to put the uppity Jocks in thier place and see how many bannocks that butters. I’m indebted to Joan McAlpine for alerting me to Jackie Ashley’s column making exactly this case. Not making it persuasively but making it nevertheless. Now, granted, Ashley’s piece appears to be a curious mash-up of SNP and Labour talking points designed to suggest that the only patriotic vote is a Labour vote

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Why Fox-Hunting Matters

Members of the Bicester and Whaddon Chase Hunt. Photo: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images. And so it begins. As a traditionalist when it comes to these matters, I think it best that parties wait until they win an election before they water down or abandon their promises. Apparently, however, that’s an old-fashioned view these days. Despite repeated promises that there would be a government-sponsored bill to repeal the Hunting Act, it seems that Dave’s Conservatives are preparing to abandon that commitment and leave the matter to a Private Members’ Bill. According to Melissa Kite’s Telegraph report: The shadow cabinet member in charge of hunting last night confirmed that the party was considering

Sunday

David Blackburn

Davis for Home Secretary?

The Express’ William Hickey column reports that David Davis, not Chris Grayling, will serve as Home Secretary should the Tories win the election. Here’s what Hickey heard: ‘I’m now told there have been mounting whispers among MPs that Grayling could lose out to David Davis for the Home Secretary’s job should the Tories win the general election. Only this week Davis, who stood down from the shadow post last year in order to champion civil liberties at a by-election, signalled he was ready to return to frontbench politics if offered a “proper job”. A colleague tells me: “David has never really been part of Cameron’s inner circle but many of

Martin Bright

Michal Kaminski: An Astonishing New Twist

David Miliband has really gone for it in the Observer. Far from apologising for his Labour conference attacks on David Cameron’s right-wing alliance in the European parliament, he has suggested that Churchill would have been ashamed of the modern Tories for getting into bed with Poland’s Michal Kaminski and Latvia’s Roberts Zile.  I interviewed Mr Kaminski last week, and I found his responses to my questions on the wartime massacre of Jews by Poles at Jedwabne in north east Poland unconvincing. His comments to me have been picked up by The Observer today. Most worrying is the idea that he believes this massacre to be of a different order to

Peter Hoskin

They’ll have to start thinking about expenses again

So expenses are back – and in a fairly big way.  Not that they ever really went away, of course.  But you’d be forgiven for thinking that the parties had pretty much forgotten about them during conference season, so little was said about the issue.  But today it’s back on the front pages and, you suspect, back to the top of MPs’ priority lists.   According to the Sunday Telegraph, “more than half” of the Commons will be either told to repay dubious claims, or provide extra information about those claims, during the next part of Sir Thomas Legg’s investigation into expenses this week.  Gordon Brown is said to be among

Martin Bright

John Rentoul Calls it Right on Brown and Cameron

As he says himself in this week’s column in the Independent on Sunday, John Rentoul showed “slavish admiration for a former Prime Minister”. Such is his grief for Tony Blair that he can’t bear to utter his name.  I did wonder whether John would seamlessly shift his admiration from Blair to Cameron, but he has remained loyal to his former idol’s New Labour project. Even when I disagree with him (and possibly especially when I disagree with him) John Rentoul remains one of the most incisive political columnists writing today, even though he has lost his access to the highest levels of power.  At risk of falling into slavish admiration

Saturday

The Spectator

Beware the cheese police

Let’s hope that Gordon Brown was too busy trying to hex Cameron this week to notice the story about the Sainsbury’s staff member who refused to sell a pregnant customer cheese. Let’s hope that Gordon Brown was too busy trying to hex Cameron this week to notice the story about the Sainsbury’s staff member who refused to sell a pregnant customer cheese. Sainsbury’s defence was that it might be bad for baby, but it’s just the sort of incident that gives our desperate Prime Minister ideas. For all Labour’s devotion to guidelines and chivvying, not many of their bossy initiatives have much effect on behaviour — warnings don’t stop smokers; tax

The Spectator

The Cameron era has begun

Power, or the expectation of it, has a transformative effect on political parties. It was draining from the Labour party at its conference in Brighton last week, just as obviously as it was rushing towards the Conservatives in Manchester this week. Gordon Brown sounded angry and shrill, saying nothing about how he would tackle the deficit. His was a strategy for opposition. The Conservatives provided leadership — talking about public sector pay freezes. They were listened to with the respect afforded a government-in-waiting. This was the objective of the conference, and it was clearly achieved. What we learned in Manchester, primarily, was the way in which a Conservative government will set

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown’s double hit

What is the true price of Gordon Brown’s economic incompetence and inept bank regulation? The soaring national debt is one. And if you own a mortgage, you’ll find that you’re paying another. The gulf between the Bank of England base rate and the average mortgage rate is now at a huge high – as banks rip off their customers, trying to fill the hole in their balance sheets. This is an under-discussed topic. The “action we have taken” (a phrase Brown uses to try to lay claim to the Bank of England’s base rate reduction) would have a far greater effect on the economy if the UK banking system was

David Blackburn

A shaming episode

The Culture Secretary would be advised to keep his fingers to himself. Following Wednesday’s Twitter gaffe, he let fly on Twitter once again. His target was David Cameron’s demolition of the state. All Bradshaw hit was Cameron’s dead son Ivan. He tweeted: ‘the camerons got good nhs care thanks to Labour’s investment and reform. Is this the ‘big government’ the derides.’ (sic) Bradshaw then issued a clarification, not an apology, on Twitter: ‘it wasn’t meant to be offensive. Point is they will the ends but not the means. Need positive government to deliver these things.’ (sic) Twitter is an internet gimmick, not the floor of the House of Commons, and as

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The British electorate prefers its toffs to act with chutzpah

We all know the truth about the wealth and privilege of the future Tory front bench, says Rod Liddle, but it’s better to brazen it out like Boris than try to seem apologetic The Labour party’s cynical attempt to target the opposition as a party of champagne-guzzling toffs, preening and loaded Hooray-Henrys and chinless, mewing, high-born upper-crust monkeys may well work. There are still quite a lot of people in this country who are sufficiently bitter and petty to hold the Tories’ background and upbringing against them and, as it happens, I’m one of them. I suspect there are another couple of million or so of us at large, mostly

Dan Hannan

We can trust Cameron on Europe

Eurosceptics are not ‘swivel-eyed’ or psychotic, says Daniel Hannan, and it’s only Labour propagandists who think the party is divided on this issue As the Conservative conference got underway, newspapers led with reports of a right-wing insurgency against David Cameron. For four successive days the story continued: there was, we kept being told, an almighty barney about whether the Conservatives would hold a referendum if the Lisbon Treaty were already in force. I was nonplussed and, to be honest, slightly miffed. If there really was a Eurosceptic rebellion, why hadn’t anyone told me? More to the point, what exactly was I supposed to be rebelling against? The Irish referendum didn’t

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What George Osborne didn’t tell you about the Tories’ radical economic agenda

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics It was as if the banks were taunting the Conservatives when they arrived into Manchester Piccadilly on Sunday: the cash machines at the station had run out of money. The queues were snaking around the escalators, and Tory activists could do little. This, of course, is excellent preparation for government in the age of austerity. What to do when money is in such short supply? It’s a question that the Conservatives are developing a convincing answer to — but very little of their thinking was revealed in Manchester this week. This was the iceberg conference: only a small part of Tory policy was

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 9 October 2009

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week Fraser Nelson praises Cameron’s revolutionary speech, and believes that the Tories’ welfare plan doesn’t go far enough. James Forsyth argues that the Tories cannot be matched, and says that the Europe won’t go away fot the Tories. Peter Hoskin witnesses a job well done by George Osborne, and sees Andrew Lansley keeping the spending taps on. David Blackburn thinks that Cameron must tackle the expenses scandal head on, and finds the Culture Secretary declaring war on the BBC. Lloyd Evans says Dave has his Goliath in his sights. Daniel Korski is perturbed by General Sir Richard Dannatt.