Politics

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

Tuesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Straw breaks his silence

Jack Straw has emerged from his self-imposed purdah to offer his support to Gordon Brown on The World at One. Straw declared “I’m absolutely convinced that Gordon Brown is the very best person to lead the Labour party and the government through these difficulties and beyond.” He went on to say that, “Nothing that has happened has changed my view that he is the best man for the job” (which makes me think that Straw holds his colleagues in rather low regard). Just in case he hadn’t sufficiently reassured the Brownites who have been so enraged by his silence, he concluded: “There is no contest, there will be no contest

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown 6/4 to go before the next election

William Hill have just sent through their latest odds on Brown’s prospects. Brown is 6/4 to go before the next election 7 to 2 to leave this year 15/8 to be replaced in 2009 11/10 to go in 2010 The small odds on Brown going before the next election suggest that the punters are more bearish on Brown than the pundits. I suspect that, if you don’t mind your money being tied up for so long, the value bet might be on Brown going in 2009. If the party get absolutely slaughtered in the European and local elections on June 4th then Labour MPs might decide that, to save their

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown needs to look at his fuel gauge

The Mirror and The Sun both devote their lead editorial to arguing against the planned rise in vehicle excise duty and the rising cost of fuel. The Mirror—which is the one reliably pro-Brown paper in Fleet Street—leader will cause particular concern among jittery Labour MPs. It warns that the “rebellion…has the potential to be more damaging than the row over the 10p tax rate.” It urges Brown to “act now, signal that a 2p rise in fuel duty will not go ahead and make clear he is listening on vehicle excise duty.” 42 days and the vehicle excise duty revolt will give us our first guide to how much Brown’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Cruddas manifesto

Jon Cruddas, the Labour backbencher who came third but with the most first preference votes in last year’s deputy leadership contest and is tipped by many as a good outside bet to be the next Labour leader, has an interesting piece in The Independent this morning. He argues that the calls for an instant change of leader are misguided but contends that Labour can’t carry on with the same set of policies.  These are what Cruddas would like to see as the new set of dividing lines between Labour and the Tories: “Where the Tories would rely on market forces to bring down living costs, Labour can enforce fairer prices. Where the Tories want more

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Gordon’s problems have come from trying to be too flash

Jackie Ashley’s column in The Guardian today shows just how downhearted those who yearned for a Brown premiership now are. It is an admirably frank piece. One point in it, though, needs rebutting. Ashley rather dolefully writes that:    When one looks at the success and popularity of Boris Johnson in London, it seems obvious that Brownites underestimated the importance of style and swagger, certainly humour, in this celebrity and television-driven age. We thought people might find a non-flashy, dour, rather private man a refreshing change. We were mistaken. This view that somehow the public are to blame for wanting a celeb-PM doesn’t tally with the facts. The two biggest blows

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A Straw in the wind

Today’s Guardian reveals that Brown, unsurprisingly, plans to hang on until the last possible moment before going to the country. Brown hopes that two years will give him time to turn thing round or—more realistically—that something will turn up in this period. More immediately, though, all eyes seem to be on Jack Straw who is, word has it, putting himself forward as the man who could tell Gordon the game is up. The Guardian reports that: Eyebrows were raised when Straw pulled out of a planned broadcast interview on Friday in the wake of the byelection defeat. It is not clear when he will next appear on the media. “Jack

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s problems go far deeper than Brown

There’s a seductive narrative emerging that places all the blame for Labour’s problems on Gordon Brown’s personal and presentational failings. It has obvious appeal to those Labour MPs who believe that if Brown would go all would be well and to our personality-driven media. But as Matt writes in The Sunday Telegraph, “It is certainly an epic delusion to imagine that the removal of Mr Brown and his instant replacement by A N Other would do the trick.” The truth is that Labour has been directionless for quite a while now. Tony Blair had towards the end of his premiership a clear idea of where he wanted to take the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband far from Shermanesque in his denials

David Miliband was on Adam Boulton’s show today and described reports that he is manoeuvring for the leadership as ‘fiction’. But his denial of interest in challenging Brown left him plenty of wriggle room : “I am not in the market for any job other than the one I have at the moment.” If Miliband really wants to show that he is not signalling to Labour MPs that he would step in if other people would do the dirty work of getting rid of Brown then he needs to issue a Shermanesque statement. Sherman, a Union Civil War General, denied all interest in running for president in1884 with the statement

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Taliban’s changing tactics

Helmand Province, Afghanistan I have adopted the Gordon Brown strategy and disappeared after a bad by-election result for Labour. My excuse is that I’m now in Afghanistan, finding out how things are in Helmand. Afghanistan is an amazing country whose people combine abject poverty with the ability to endure weather of -20c in winter to 50c in summer. Such hardiness makes for resolute fighters, but it seems the Taliban have failed to recruit for this season. The poppy harvest ended three weeks ago, and the fighting usually starts immediately as the hired $10 Taliban” swap ploughshares for Kalashnikovs. Not this time, though. As one solider told me “the problem with

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband on manoeuvres

The Sunday Times reports this morning that David Miliband is readying himself for a run at the leadership. A source close to Miliband tells the paper that “David is not going to do anything until a vacancy arises, but he is ready to go for it. There will be no public display from him in the next few weeks but he and his supporters will be making it clear to backbenchers that there is an alternative to Gordon.” Miliband’s plan reflects a phenomenal sense of entitlement. He plans to leave to his colleagues the grubby and difficult task of prising Brown from Number 10. He will then glide into the

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Campbell to Cherie: I never swore at your hairdresser

There is a classic letter from Alistair Campbell in The Times today disputing Cherie Blair’s account in her book of how Campbell swore at her hairdresser.   Sir, Before “you’re only a f***ing hairdresser” replaces “we don’t do God” as my most quoted remark, could I make clear that while I did say “we don’t do God” to an American magazine journalist, I have never described Andre Suard as “only a f***ing hairdresser” to anyone. There are other direct quotations attributed to me in your recent serialisation of Cherie Blair’s book which were not accurate, but this is the one I would like to deny, not least since it goes

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband’s gift to McCain

John McCain and Barack Obama have been involved in a fierce back and forth about Obama’s willingness to meet with the Iranian leadership without preconditions. McCain claims that Obama’s willingness to do this shows that he does not have the judgement or the experience to be commander in chief, while Obama argues that McCain’s refusal to sit down with America’s enemies proves that McCain comes from the George W. Bush school of diplomacy. David Miliband has now waded into this debate. The Times reports that when Miliband met with Obama’s foreign policy team he queried the wisdom of Obama’s proposed approach. This is fantastic news for the McCain campaign who

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Carter get Brown?

Gordon Brown has survived the first 30 hours after Crewe and Nantwich. In public, the cabinet has remained supportive and even among backbenchers those prepared to openly call for leadership contest are few and far between. Behind the scenes, though, things are different—just look at the string of anonymous quotes in today’s papers. But no one is yet prepared to be, in Martin Kettle’s phrase, ‘Labour’s Geoffrey Howe.’ One man to watch in all this is Stephen Carter, the man that Brown hired to create and market ‘new Gordon.’ If Carter were to walk it would be taken as proof that Brown is incapable of change and that Labour has

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Writing Labour off

Peter Riddell  is rightly regarded as the dean of the Parliamentary press corp. He is not a man prone to exaggeration or over-excitement which is what makes the conclusion to his column this morning so important: Ministers and MPs have to decide whether to continue with him, or to change leader again in the hope of reducing, if not preventing, electoral defeat. The combination of the May Day elections and Crewe and Nantwich has persuaded Westminster that the Tories will win the next election with an overall majority; the conversation has now shifted to how Labour can minimise its loses. One wonders how much stomach the new hired hands at

Dan Hannan

Ireland’s EU referendum will be no walkover

Daniel Hannan says that the vote on the Lisbon Treaty is not in the bag for the ‘Yes’ camp, which has no argument to offer. Meanwhile, the ‘No’ campaign is gaining ground every day In Brussels, even the smuggest fonctionnaires are starting to look uneasy. After the French and Dutch ‘No’ votes of 2005, EU leaders determined that there should be no more plebiscites. But there was one vote they couldn’t cancel: Ireland’s national constitution requires referendums on any cession of sovereignty. And so, in three weeks’ time, three million Irish voters will cast proxy ballots for 500 million unconsulted Europeans, determining whether the EU gets the Lisbon Treaty, née

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Beneath the radar, the Tory party is working on a strategy to win by a landslide

These are bad times for Conservatives fighting the tightest marginal seats. About a year ago they were given generous resources to help them campaign, to promote their candidates and to rubbish Labour in general. Now, the cash is drying up. Unofficially, these target seats are being designated as ‘in the bag’ and the money instead is being diverted to constituencies that, pre-Cameron, were regarded as utterly unwinnable. No one in Conservative headquarters is calling it by its name — to do so would court the lethal charge of complacency — but what is being discreetly developed is nothing less than a landslide strategy. This explains the energy with which the

The Spectator

Here’s what we call progress

‘Progress prevails’: thus did the Guardian’s editorial on Wednesday celebrate the defeat of amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would have reduced the upper limit of 24 weeks for abortion and ensured that IVF clinics would need at least to consider the need for ‘supportive parenting and a father or male role model’. The newspaper observed that ‘political incorrectness [had] threatened to run wild’ in the Commons but ‘the heartening outcome was that the progressives prevailed’. By what perverse definition can it be counted ‘progress’ that the law governing abortion has remained unchanged since 1990, despite dramatic changes both in neonatal care and scientific imaging? The argument

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Welcome to the United States of Amnesia

Gore Vidal tells Mary Wakefield that America has forgotten its constitutional roots, and explains why Bobby Kennedy was ‘the biggest son of a bitch in politics’ To kill time, as I wait for Gore Vidal by the reception desk in Claridge’s, I leaf through the pages of his memoirs, looking at the photographs. One in particular takes my fancy: Gore aged three, in the garden of his grandfather’s house in Washington DC — a dapper little chap in shorts and a smart round-collared shirt, tending what seem to be cabbages. He’s glancing up at the camera half-amused, entirely self-possessed. He’s so unusually composed for a toddler, that I squint at

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Brown Toastwatch

So, as expected, the Tories win the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. Handsomely. The remarkable thing is that it took so long and that the Tory brand remained so toxic that this is the first by-election gain the party has enjoyed enjoyed since Labour came to power in 1997. In fact, it’s the Tories first bye-election gain since 1982. But all things must come to an end. Once the worm turns it stays turned. This, remember, is seat number 165 on the Tories’ list of target seats. A 17.6% swing is at the high end of Tory hopes. True, this result alone won’t topple Gordon Brown. He will limp on. Labour’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

If Labour want to limit the damage, then Alan Johnson is their best bet

One of the reasons that most pundits still think that Gordon Brown will survive is that there is no obvious alternative to him. Personally, I’m sceptical as to whether anyone could now deny the Tories an overall majority at the next election barring some unforeseen event; the public mood really does appear to have shifted decisively against Labour. However, I do think that Alan Johnson would keep the Tory majority down more effectively than anyone else. Johnson is the best communicator in the cabinet and has a natural rapport with the voters. His life story is attractive and he seems to understand the aspiring classes better than anyone else in