Matthew parris

HS2 was given an emphatic vote of no confidence at The Specator’s debate last night, where Matthew Parris and Nigel Farage led their respective teams into battle. This was the debate that Westminster will not have (all parties are officially agreed on the project) which is all the better for us. Farage claimed he loves infrastructure projects in general but hates HS2 as it’s a Westminster vanity project. Farage attempted to marry Ukip’s (inconsistent) support for high speed rail with his ardent opposition to HS2: ‘There are so many things we could do. And yes, let’s look at the Great Central railway project…we are not luddites, we are not backwards. I want

The government’s approach to the HS2 debate has changed. Up until recently, government sources would wave away the suggestion that Labour might withdraw its support for the project. They’d point to Andrew Adonis and his influence on Ed Miliband to explain why Ed Balls’s doubts about it didn’t matter that much. But this has now changed. They’ve now decided, in the words of one Number 10 figure, that they need to ‘smoke Labour out on the issue’. Over the next few weeks, we’ll see the Tories trying to put more and more pressure on Labour to say whether or not they’ll back it. Number 10 is acutely aware that, at

Cecil Parkinson: Underestimated – but unbowed Even among Mrs Thatcher’s original shadow Cabinet, there were those who simply did not believe that she would be capable of dealing with the problems of a declining country. To a man they were wrong. Each underestimated the determination of Margaret Thatcher. She did not regard the manifesto on which she had been elected as a set of pledges designed merely to win an election and to be abandoned when the going got tough. She intended to honour hers: to reduce the role of the state; to transfer power to the people. Trade union members were given the right to elect their leaders at regular

George Osborne has been behaving rather oddly of late. Normally, he’s known as the ‘submarine’ for surfacing only twice a year. Now, it’s twice a week. On Tuesday he delivered a speech to supermarket staff, talking tough on welfare and sometimes lapsing into a Dick Van Dyke mockney accent. On Thursday he used the Philpott case to raise questions about the welfare system. Yesterday, David Cameron backed him. It looks like a concerted effort to speak on the wavelength of target voters – but will it work?  In this week’s Spectator, Matthew Parris suggests it may not. He has spoken at length to many of the 40 MPs who hold

Charles Moore and Matthew Parris, Spectator columnists both, represent two of the distinct philosophical and intellectual tradition that make up the Conservative party these days. Their columns today should give every Conservative pause for thought. Matthew is surely right that ‘For every protest junkie in a tent outside St Paul’s yelling: “Down with global capitalism” there are a thousand middle-income householders in Bromley, Bletchley and Barrow, studying directors’ pay and muttering: “It just isn’t right.”’. While the nub of Charles’ column is contained in these two sentences: ‘“Abolish wealth,” cried one of their posters. Don’t the angry campers realise that the West’s bankers and politicians are managing it nicely without

Ok, ok – so PMQs may be of more interest inside Westminster than out.  But, love it or loathe it, it’s still one of those things which affects the mood music of politics and how it is reported.  Far better for a party leader to do it well, than to be bludgeoned by his opponent at the dispatch box. Which is why Team Dave should internalise Matthew Parris’s article in the Times today.  Not only is it typically readable, but it’s packed full of sound advice for how the Tory leader should present himself in the weekly knockabout sessions.  Here’s a snippet: “Millions are now eyeing Mr Cameron up as