Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
The government’s proposals for incarcerating suspects for up to 42 days before being required, however inconveniently, to produce a charge are, naturally, appalling. How can you be so sure? Well, they must be: 65% of the public supports them. In other poll news, ICM puts the Tories on 42%, Labour 26% and the Liberal Democrats on 21%. This is extraordinary: how can one in five Britons be prepared to vote for the Lib Dems?
In The News of The World today, Ian Kirby reports that: “Last night, however, Mr Brown insisted all his Cabinet would stay in their jobs till the next General Election. He would change only junior ministers.” If this is accurate, then it is great news for the Tories. At the moment, the Tories have the stronger front bench but there is a decent amount of talent on the Labour back benches which could even things up. It also means that Labour’s most effective communicator—Alan Johnson—won’t be moved into more of a frontline role.
Ok, so Jack Straw may not quite have used the word “ditherer”, but here’s what he has to say about the PM in a Channel 4 documentary, aired tomorrow: “[Brown is] someone who is cautious in his decision-making.” Apparently, that’s in stark contrast to Blair, who was “a much more instinctive decision-maker”. Jacqui Smith and the Labour deputy chief whip, Nick Brown, weigh in with their thoughts on the election-that-wasn’t as well. They’re less than kind. But Straw’s words are the ones that will upset No.10 the most. Until now, he’s been largely supportive of our Dear Leader – at least in public. So this represents the first real sign that he might be prepared to take
The latest ICM poll for The Sunday Telegraph has the Tories on 42, Labour 26 and the Lib Dems 21. Labour’s ranking is the lowest it has ever been in an ICM survey. What is really interesting about the poll is its findings on terrorism. 65 percent of the public back the government on 42 days, even two-thirds of Conservative supporters are in favour of the measure. Yet, still the public by 32 to 28 think that the Tories have the tougher policies to deal with terrorism. This suggests that the public, rightly, do not view 42 days as the be all and end all of counter-terrorism. The fieldwork for
Should the Prime Minister (and, increasingly, each party leader) name and honour the recent fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan at PMQs? I had thought this quite respectful, but when I was in Afghanistan I was surprised to find a number of soldiers opposed to it. Their problem is that it reads to the nation a narrative of failure when the incredible success of the military during the turnaround against the Taleban barely gets a mention. I raised this with Brig Mark Carelton-Smith, commander of Taskforce Helmand, when I was in Lashkar Gah and I print his response in my News of the World column today. “The casualty rate is not
I suspect that MPs are sufficiently craven – and willing to put the government’s political prospects ahead of any petty concerns about principle or, god help us, justice – that they will endorse the government’s appalling proposal that terrorist suspects can be held for up to 42 days before the state need produce a charge. In a better, more sensible world, all MPs would read John Major’s article in The Times yesterday. For good measure Major, who of course survived an IRA assassination attempt himself (a mortar attack on Downing Street that blew in the windows during a cabinet meeting), decries the illiberality of the government’s ID card proposals and
Peter Oborne in The Mail today details the tensions between the government and the Bank of England. Oborne writes that, The truth is that relations between the Bank and Treasury are close to breaking point. They are easily the worst since the Sixties, when Harold Wilson fought a vicious and prolonged battle with the Bank of England over the level of sterling. Bank governor Mervyn King regards Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, with hostility and contempt. The feeling is reciprocated. Chancellor Darling – as ever, the hapless cipher of the Prime Minister – is working flat out to undermine the integrity and authority of the Bank. As Britain heads towards its
Looking back over the past week’s news cycle, I reckon it’s the first one for some time that Labour have come out on top over the Conservatives. That’s partly down to Jacqui Smith’s rallying cry to the 42-day detention rebels, which – as the papers have it – could well have averted a disaster for Gordon Brown. But it’s mostly due to that old problem: politicians and their expenses. The bad news for the Tories started with the finding that the Conservative MEP Giles Chichester had disgracefully pumped £thousands of EU money into a family company. Of course, Chichester stepped down swiftly enough, and many Tories must have hoped that,
In her only print interview, Jacqui Smith tells Matthew d’Ancona that her proposal for the detention of terror suspects does not undermine Magna Carta, that she is ‘frustrated’ by Lord Goldsmith, and that the ‘West Midlands housewife’ is a better judge of the threat than MPs In a government stuffed with malfunctioning robots, nervous wrecks and preening Fauntleroys, Jacqui Smith shows every sign of being a fully paid-up member of the human race. Which, as it happens, is the first lucky break Gordon Brown has had in months. It is a slight exaggeration to say that the Home Secretary holds her boss’s future in her hands — but only slight.
It’s a funny old thing, the Labour party. For ten years it tolerated Tony Blair, hoping that if it put up with him long enough, it would get the leader it really wanted. Naturally, it also assumed that this would entail having the best bits of Mr Blair (winning) without the war-mongering, populist, slippery, free-market parts. Go Gordon! Well we know what happened next. Mr Brown enjoyed the shortest honeymoon since Ian McEwan’s uptight couple failed to get it together at Chesil Beach. A slew of bad luck and bad management combined to change his image from proud Atlas, on whose shoulders the British economy could rest secure, to Mr
When Leo McKinstry objected to his neighbours’ plan to build two blocks of flats, he quickly discovered the limits of ‘community empowerment’ under New Labour There is an increasingly Orwellian tone about the language of the Labour government. The Ministry of Truth, the state propaganda machine in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, would have been only too pleased with the doublethink of the fashionable mantra ‘together in diversity’, endlessly repeated to justify the destructive creed of multiculturalism, or the inanity of the advertising slogan ‘the People’s Post Office’, launched at the very time when a mass cull of local post offices is underway against the wishes of the people. Equally dishonest is
Guardianista logic: I like classics I think classics should be promoted Boris Johnson promotes the classics Boris Johnson is a toff Boris Johnson is therefore damaging the classics The classics would be better off with no champion than with Boris. Seriously.
Some highlights of the week on Spectator.co.uk: James Forsyth wonders whether Nick Clegg is about to perform a left turn, and claims that Sir Richard Dannat is right to be concerned about the pay that servicemen receive. Fraser Nelson thinks the economy points to a two term Tory government, and points out the truth behind Brown’s “record employment”. Peter Hoskin recommends a set of British documentaries. Stephen Pollard takes on Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Clive Davis says the downfall of Chet Baker is the “ultimate anti-heroin commercial”. Melanie Phillips discusses the “enemy within British education”. Americano ponders what might be next for Obama and McCain. And, over on Trading Floor, Tim Worstall questions whether
There is a little glimmer of hope this afternoon for Gordon Brown: the Politics Home 5,000 Panel reports that Brown’s ratings are no longer falling. The bad news is that they have bottomed out with 77 percent of voters disapproving of the job Brown is doing. If the Prime Minister’s mood is improved by this news then he shouldn’t read Ben Brogan’s blog which warns of trouble ahead for Brown from a possible Scottish by-election. A defeat in his own backyard would be another personal humiliation for Brown.
Strikingly good BBC Question Time last night, the highlight of which was David Miliband being asked if he could save the Labour Party. He avoided that question, but his answers to the others seemed to suggest he is ruling himself out of the job because he made so many mistakes. First, he admitted he became Foreign Secretary without knowing that Robert Mugabe had been given an honorary knighthood – something that has been a contentious issue since Blair was dragged into it five years ago. Then, on 42 days, Miliband claimed “you can be held for up to four years in France” – it’s actually four days, as Shami Chakrabarti
Over at Centre Right, Tim Montgomerie flags up a new poll that shows the No campaign leading in Ireland in advance of next week’s vote on the Lisbon Treaty. The No side, in a dramatic reversal, is now five points up over the Yes camp but with many voters still undecided. A defeat for the treaty formerly known as the Constitution in Ireland would, at the least, throw Brussels into confusion. It would also push this issue back up the agenda in Britain reminding voters of how they were denied the referendum they had been promised, giving Gordon Brown yet another problem to deal with.
Tony Blair’s return to the GMTV sofa and Parliament yesterday showed up Gordon Brown’s communications deficiencies. Blair spoke in fluent human, defused tensions with the odd joke and was relaxed in his command of the detail. In short, it was a reminder of why Blair was such a formidable politician and helped explain why Brown is struggling so badly.. Ann Treneman sums it up nicely in The Times: The tan, the wry asides, the puppet hand gestures, the fluent grasp of detail, the excuses about Cherie. It all seemed so familiar and looked so utterly effortless. Poor Gordon. How he must wish that the Ghost of Blair would haunt someone else.
Even the Cabinet is demob happy… Adam Bouton reports: I was taken aback this week to hear that one senior member of the Cabinet is cheerfully telling colleagues that he has been over-promoted but intends “to enjoy it while it lasts”. James Forsyth asks whom could it be? Is Des Browne sufficiently self-aware (and cheerful) to be the one? Of course, the country rather takes the view that the Prime Minister himself has been over-promoted…
The intriguing power struggle between Gordon Brown and Mervyn King has just heated up a few notches. Since (finally) securing his second term as Bank of England governor, King has been emboldened and is saying – in code – ‘no more of your funny games, Brown’. I blogged earlier about his assessment of Treasury spin. He has become more frank in his economic assessments, telling it how it is. Ditto his chief economist Charles Bean, who has compared the recent plunge in the pound to Black Wednesday. Now King is pushing for Bean to become his deputy, replacing the recently-departed Rachel Lomax. This is all bad news for Brown, whose
A friend of Coffee House passes on an email from Progress which announces a series of seminars “which will ask whether progressives need to revisit their conception of the role of the state in the light of the political challenge presented by David Cameron’s espousal of a post-bureaucratic state.” It is interesting enough that a Labour group is now holding seminars on the Tory’s ideas. But who is speaking at these meetings is absolutely fascinating, it reads like a who’s who of Blairism. John Hutton, Hazel Blears, James Purnell and Tessa Jowell—the remaining Blairite cabinet ministers—are each introducing a session. Others involved include Alan Milburn, Tony Giddens and Matthew Taylor.