Politics

Today, as the Tories are eager to remind us, would have been election day if Gordon hadn’t lost his nerve. What would have happened will be a great parlour game for years to come but Anthony Wells’s analysis is well worth noting: “More importantly looking at the current polls I suspect Labour would have been ahead in an election today. The polls straight after the Conservative party conference when Gordon Brown decided not to have an election were showing a temporary Conservative boost from a successful party conference. In this alternate universe they would probably have subsided. In the polls we’ve seen lately Gordon Brown’s approval ratings have plummeted and

Cameron again handled the immigration issue well today, and is linking it to welfare reform. Why do we have so many vacancies in Britain, asked Humphrys? Because of the perverse incentives of our welfare state, he says. While this may perplex the pollys of this world, it will make sense to the majority. It’s what David Davis calls “council estate politics”. People see immigrants come in to work, see the family over the road on benefits enjoying holidays they cannot afford, and conclude that something stinks. These were Thatcher’s people. It is great to see Cameron tuning in to them.

David Cameron braved The Today Programme this morning to talk immigration. The interview exposed the openings that the Tories have given with their pledge to reduce the overall level of net immigration. John Humphrys kept pressing Cameron on what his ideal number of immigrant would be and Cameron wouldn’t—or couldn’t—answer the question. Humphrys then moved on to asking him whether he wasn’t effectively seeking to stop black immigration to Britain as white Europeans would be able to come here without hindrance while Commonwealth or other migrants would be subject to quotas. Cameron dealt with this question well and listening to his tone it was impossible to imagine that race was

Just in case anyone was wondering, the Tories would like to hint (ever so gently) that Cameron socked it to those hand amputators in his meeting with them today. Or, in diplomatic language of a spokesman, “Most of the 45 minute meeting was spent discussing co-operation between Britain and Saudi Arabia on counter-terrorism matters, including radicalisation inside and outside UK mosques, and the importance of stopping this radicalisation and the sources of funding for it.” Get your Wahhabi cash out of our mosques, in other words? Let’s see how the papers play it tomorrow (if at all).

Gordon Brown has today handed a huge advantage to the Conservatives. His speech on education shows he has no ideas for it. There will be a five year plan to eradicate failing schools (if only they’d thought of that in 1997, eh?) and our Dear Leader will ask all pupils to consider apprenticeships. Has Brown ever wondered why–if targets and plans worked–the Soviet Union failed? The Tories, under Michael Gove, have a different way. They would adopt the Swedish system, and give parents control. They could set up their own schools by liaising with the many groups who would, if paid £5,500 a pupil, set up small schools in a

Nick Clegg’s announcement that if ID cards are introduced he will simply refuse to register is smart politics. First, it prevents Chris Huhne from gaining a monopoly on eye-catching, activist-pleasing ideas in the Lib Dem leadership contest. Second, it shows that Clegg is prepared to exploit the greater license that the leader of the third party has. However, stridently the Tories oppose ID cards it is hard to imagine David Cameron or David Davis indulging in civil disobedience. The key test for any Lib Dem leader is to get their party noticed. This is what Ming Campbell was incapable of doing and why he ultimately failed as leader. This pledge

As I predicted yesterday, Michael Gove’s speech to the Bow Group this morning was a belter: as trenchant and subtle an analysis of Gordon Brown’s politics as any Tory politician has yet made. The Gover launched his attack more in sorrow than in anger – and it was all the deadlier for that. Look at his choice of historical precedents for the Prime Minister: David Lloyd George – one of our most historically significant Chancellors whose peacetime premiership descended into an exercise in idealism-free positioning, truckling to establishment media figures and ideological drift. Lyndon B Johnson – a man whose early career was marked by a genuine desire to tackle