Conservative party

Friday

Ross Clark

Iain Duncan Smith assesses the government’s welfare record

When the Conservatives returned to power in 2010, in coalition with the Lib Dems, lifting people out of poverty was one of their signature policies. It would be hard to say that now. Theresa May has shown more interest in devoting time and energy to the ‘just about managing’ classes further up the socio-economic spectrum. Iain Duncan Smith, who as work and pensions secretary set the poverty agenda, is no longer a minister – while Brexit has come to dominate the agenda of a weakened government. So what was achieved during what looks like a brief flirtation with social justice – and what, if anything, happens now? The most obvious achievement,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The government’s fragility is good news for Parliament

This first week back in Parliament has proved quite how fragile the government’s power is. It may be able to govern in a technical sense – announcing bills, occupying Downing Street, and so on – but it cannot guarantee that it will get what it wants in the Commons. Having to accept the Stella Creasy amendment on free abortions for women from Northern Ireland shows that, but this is just the start of a legislative free-for-all in which MPs from all parties are able to propose changes to any bill ministers put forward, and know that they stand an unusual chance of success. It just takes a handful of Tory

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 29 June 2017

Home In preparation for the vote on the Queen’s Speech, the Government, after weeks of negotiations, bought the support of the Democratic Unionist Party in the House of Commons by promising to spend a billion or two pounds in Northern Ireland on broadband and other good things. In reply to expostulations from the Opposition, Nigel Dodds, the parliamentary leader of the DUP, told the Commons: ‘We might publish all the correspondence and conversations we had in 2010 with Labour front-benchers, and in 2015 with Labour front-benchers, and indeed also the Scottish National party, because some of the faux outrage we have heard is hypocrisy.’ Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party,

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Is it time for a tax hike?

The 48 per cent have spoken – and they want higher taxes, according to the British Social Attitudes survey. In the wake of a general election in which Labour won support based on a manifesto of free spending, is it time for a rethink on tax? And should we wave goodbye to the era of austerity? Here’s what today’s newspapers make of the case for a tax hike: We are ‘at a fiscal crossroads’, says the Daily Telegraph. During their dismal election campaign, the Tories ‘failed to make the case for living within our means’ and the ‘public appetite for prudence’ appears to be waning. Yet for all the cheer from

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why May must stay

Sometimes crises end simply because all of the participants are exhausted. Essentially, this is what has happened with the post-election Tory leadership crisis. No one has the energy for a fight, so Theresa May carries on as Prime Minister. Conservative MPs say it is now almost certain that she will make it to the summer break and will still be in place at party conference. If the coronation of a new leader could be arranged, things would be very different. But it can’t be. From the great offices of state down, the Tories are simply too split – over both policy and personnel – for the succession to be resolved

Bruce Anderson

A toast to the new Scottish dawn

‘Stands Scotland where it did?’ As the bottles circulated, we were able to answer Macduff’s question in much more optimistic terms than would have seemed possible even a month earlier, thanks to Ruth Davidson, the Malcolm Canmore of our age. It is extraordinary. Scottish Tories spent almost 20 years on the fringes of politics, marginalised and derided. During that black period, it was clear no other force in Scotland could be relied on to defend the Union. After the Nats’ triumph in 2015, an unpleasant version of Rousseau’s general will seem to have triumphed with it. If you did not support the SNP, you were not a proper Scot. If

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May will be feeling the heat at today’s PMQs

What a very different atmosphere the House of Commons Chamber will have today for its first PMQs since the election. In the week before Parliament dissolved, Tory MPs were in a most obsequious mood, reciting the ‘strong and stable’ slogan that Theresa May started her campaign with, and even telling the Prime Minister that ‘I am confident that the country will be safe after the election under strong and stable leadership’ (sadly Peter Lilley, who made this prediction, stood down at the election and so is not in Parliament to offer his insight into how he feels about the state of the country now). It will be interesting to see

Monday

David Gordon

Give the DUP a chance

A political party barely known outside Northern Ireland now holds the balance of power in Parliament. Nobody saw it coming, but then that’s the new catchphrase in politics. So who are the DUP? And do they deserve the pillorying that has been coming their way since the general election catapulted them into the spotlight? I have been watching the party up close for decades. Yet while the DUP isn’t always a pretty sight to behold, the party is much more complicated than the hysterical stereotyping makes out. It’s true that the DUP has its roots in uncompromising unionism and religion. And for many years it was little more than a one-man’s fan club: the political extension of Ian Paisley’s hardline

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why some Tories are deeply worried about the DUP deal

The Tory DUP deal has been signed in Downing Street this morning, the text of it is on the government website and there’ll be a statement in the Commons on it later. This is as formal as a confidence and supply deal can get. So, why were the Tories so keen on such a formal deal? Well, there were three reasons for it. The whips’ office wanted the certainty of a written agreement rather than having to survive hand to mouth; note that the deal was signed by the chief whip not the Prime Minister. The whips’ hope that this certainty will mean both that the government can get its

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Theresa May’s Government is safe – for now

The Government’s deal with the DUP is done – but it has come at a price. The confidence and supply agreement – which falls short of a formal coalition but will be enough to keep Theresa May in power – will set the Government back £1bn. The deal spells out £200m for infrastructure, £75m for ultra-fast broadband, £100m over five years to tackle deprivation, £50m on health and education, £100m on health service reform and £50m on mental health funding in Northern Ireland. Despite the cost, though, there’ll be a big sigh of relief among the Conservatives that the deal (which you can read here) is now, finally, across the line. With a

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Corbynism isn’t funny any more

The laughing should stop, says the Sun, which calls Corbynism a ‘joke’ which ‘simply isn’t funny any more’. The Labour leader has now said himself that he could be PM within six months. If he does make it to Downing Street, ‘terrifyingly, says the Sun, Trident could be gone’. And in just a few days ‘Corbyn would leave Britain open to attack’. A Corbyn government would also be ‘financially ruinous, militarily empty and so confused on Brexit and immigration that his own party contradicts itself at every turn’. After Corbyn’s rapturous reception over the weekend at Glastonbury, ‘let’s hope’ says the Sun, that the ‘enthusiasm’ for Corbyn ‘remains in a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Britain is in desperate need of a truly national party

I am not sure I can think of any great public assembly in Britain I’d enjoy less than Glastonbury. Within reason, I’m not sure you could even pay me to go there. Glastonbury is a place for dear Hugo Rifkind not for me, and that’s the way I imagine we both prefer it.  Still, there was something worth seeing at Glastonbury this year. Jeremy Corbyn, obviously. His appearance was remarkable, even if it has also prompted a fresh outbreak of one of Britain’s under-appreciated traditional sports: members of the middle-class sneering at other members of the middle-class.  Even so, two things can be said about this. First, the Labour party

Saturday

Fredrik Erixon

Why the right is losing its way

If the British Conservative party is feeling stunned, having calamitously misread the public mood in a general election, then it is in good company. Across Europe, right-wing parties are struggling to find messages that resonate. It’s not that voters have turned away from conservative ideas: polls show a huge number interested in individual liberty, lower taxes and the nation state. The problem is that conservative parties have given up on those ideas — and, as a result, voters are giving up on them. Take Fredrik Reinfeldt, prime minister of my native Sweden between 2006 and 2014. He started off well, reforming welfare and cutting taxes. But then it all went

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s exhaustion makes more blunders inevitable

Theresa May’s body language on leaving the European Council summit last night shows quite how much of a toll the past few weeks have taken on the Prime Minister. She looks exhausted. Now, you don’t have to feel sorry for May: she did, after all, decide to call the snap election that has proved to be her undoing – even though so many people thought she would be mad not to call it with the Labour party appearing to be so weak. But it is worth noting that the most important people in government – and the most important people involved in the attempts to keep the government together – are

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

A threadbare Queen’s Speech isn’t such a bad thing

Can you remember what was in this week’s Queen’s Speech? Boris Johnson couldn’t on the day it was unveiled, making a total mess of trying to sell it on Radio 4’s PM programme. But as the week draws to an end, the main question about the Speech is whether it will pass unamended, not whether the legislation it includes will make much of a difference.  But is a ‘threadbare speech’ really such a bad thing? Governments of all hues suffer from a compulsive disorder that leads them to legislate merely for the sake of it. No minister wants to leave his or her department without a piece of legislation to

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Corbyn overtakes May on question of who would make the best PM

Would Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May make a better Prime Minister? In April, when Theresa May called the election, that question was barely worth asking: 54 per cent backed May compared to just 15 per cent who opted for Corbyn. Now that’s all changed. For the first time, Jeremy Corbyn has overtaken Theresa May on the question of who would do the best job running the country. A YouGov poll in the Times today puts Corbyn on 35 per cent; just 34 per cent picked the PM. We don’t necessarily need a YouGov survey to tell us but this demonstrates the utter collapse in Theresa May’s popularity. More troublingly for

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

What are the Conservatives for?

Should it be Boris? He was twice elected mayor of a Labour city and if the Tory mission is to stop Jeremy Corybn, surely you need someone charismatic to see off a populist. Then again, David Davis is a dependable caretaker, a bruiser who can hold the line on Brexit. Or why not skip a generation? There’s the articulate Priti Patel and the accomplished Dominic Raab. And to make this party go with a bang, why not ask Michael Gove to be someone’s campaign manager? He’ll change his mind on the day and then: pow! They’ll all form a circular firing squad, like last time, and whoever’s left standing wins.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Labour and the Lib Dems are as much to blame as the Tories for Grenfell Tower

I haven’t been in Camden this afternoon, so I can’t vouch for there being no marches of activists holding banners with the words ‘Labour Out’ and ‘Corbyn Must Go’, but somehow I doubt there are – and I certainly haven’t seen them on the news. But why not? Last week we saw no end of left-wing activists out on the streets trying to exploit the Grenfell Tower tragedy for their own party political purposes – trying to present it as a case of callous Tories treating the lives of the poor as worthless as they slash their way through budgets with abandon.   Yes, Kensington and Chelsea is a Conservative-controlled borough

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: The dying of the right

On this week’s episode, we look at conservatism’s apparent decline, how society has responded to the Grenfell Tower tragedy, and whether young people have had their critical faculties vanquished by a certain boy wizard. First up: This time last year many were wondering whether the left, in Britain and abroad, was in terminal decline. The Brexit vote and Trump’s shock victory seemed only to compound that, and yet, just a few months later, the Spectator now has a cover piece, by Fraser Nelson, declaring that conservatism needs saving. How did we get here? And can anything be done about it? To discuss this, Fraser joined the podcast along with Michael Heseltine. As Fraser writes in

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The Tories are in office but not in power

This was a Queen’s Speech to fit the ‘sombre mood of the nation’, says the FT. ‘British politics is in a state of paralysis,’ and the government’s plan ‘was notable for what it lacked’, the paper says – pointing to the key manifesto pledges cast aside. It’s good news that some of these policies – such as a free vote on the hunting ban – are gone. But there’s further good news, too, in the form of Theresa May’s ‘belated recognition of the complexity of the Brexit process’, the FT says. Indeed, ‘Mrs May’s monopoly over the terms of Brexit has also been broken’ – with Philip Hammond among those now