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May 2016 elections: The Spectator guide

Britain goes to the polls this week, as electoral contests take place in London, Scotland, Wales and across England. They’re the elections which James Forsyth described in the Spectator last week as the ones ‘no one has even heard of’. So what will happen on Thursday night and when will the results be announced? Here’s The Spectator’s run-through of the May 2016 elections: London Mayoral election: Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan go head-to-head in the London Mayoral contest. In 2012, Boris and Ken ran a close-fought race, with Boris getting 971,000 first-round votes to Ken’s 889,918. The relatively small margin between the two meant the result didn’t filter through until

The Spectator podcast: When the right goes wrong | 30 April 2016

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Is crazy all the rage in today’s politics and are conservatives going a little bit mad? That’s the topic for this week’s Spectator cover piece in which Freddy Gray argues that in America and in Britain, the right is tearing itself apart. Whilst Brits might be busy pointing and laughing at Donald Trump, all over the world conservatism is having a nervous breakdown, says Freddy. And the EU referendum is starting to prove that British Conservatives can be as barmy as everyone else.

Fear and loathing

Strange as it may seem, there are still people around David Cameron who regard the Scottish referendum campaign as a great success. Yes, they say, the nationalists didn’t like the original ‘Project Fear’ — the attempt to frighten Scotland into voting no — but it worked. Alex Salmond was defeated by a 10 per cent margin — proof, it’s argued, that relentless negativity works. Those who complain about it are either losers, or too squeamish to win. Andrew Cooper, chief of the Scottish ‘in’ campaign, said afterwards that the only criticism he would accept is that it was not negative enough. This attitude is a poison in the bloodstream of

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: When the right goes wrong

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Is crazy all the rage in today’s politics and are conservatives going a little bit mad? That’s the topic for this week’s Spectator cover piece in which Freddy Gray argues that in America and in Britain, the right is tearing itself apart. Whilst Brits might be busy pointing and laughing at Donald Trump, all over the world conservatism is having a nervous breakdown, says Freddy. And the EU referendum is starting to prove that British Conservatives can be as barmy as everyone else.

Nicola Sturgeon borrows Thatcher’s election slogan

Although Nicola Sturgeon puts her career in politics down to Margaret Thatcher, she scarcely has anything positive to say about the Iron Lady. In fact, the SNP leader says that she entered politics as a result of her anger at the impact of Thatcher’s politics on Scotland. Still, she appears to have no qualms about borrowing one of the methods Thatcher used to help ensure success at the polls. The SNP’s latest election advert bears the slogan ‘don’t just hope for a better Scotland, vote for one’. As Scottish Labour have since pointed out, this bears a strong resemblance to Thatcher’s 1979 election slogan, which read: ‘Don’t just hope for a better life. Vote for

The SNP manifesto reveals a new approach to Scottish nationalism

Do you want to know what it looks like when one party has become the most dominant force in its country’s political history, when one in every 30-odd voters is a member of that party and when it is regularly topping 50 per cent in the polls? Then look no further than central Edinburgh this morning where Nicola Sturgeon was launching the SNP’s Holyrood election manifesto. The queues to get in to the Edinburgh International Conference Centre stretched back for several streets as supporters and party members waited eagerly in the warm spring sunshine for the chance to hear, and see, their leader in person. The inside of the hall

Will Ruth Davidson’s ski-doo stunts pay off at the ballot box?

Just a few days into the official campaign for the Holyrood elections and Ruth Davidson has had to change her tactics. The plan had originally been for the Scottish Conservatives to run a serious campaign which has fewer tanks than the election campaign, and more serious speeches. ‘We tried that whole idea of you know we’re going to do this really stripped down, just speeches, and just like listening to people bla bla bla,’ says Davidson. ‘And then kind of all the press went this is really boring and we went, yeah, it kind of is.’ And so Davidson has been playing ice hockey, racing blue and red cars, and

Scotland is a self-confident nation – not a one-party state

Politics, as we know, makes the strangest of bedfellows. Step forward Tam Dalyell, Laird of The Binns and erstwhile Father of the House, and the editor of this estimable organ. In the space of this last week I have heard/read both sources refer to Scotland having a one-party state in the shape of the Scottish National Party; the former at Glasgow’s Aye Write! Book Festival and the latter in an editorial on Donald Trump. I would have expected better from both! At the last count there were certainly a handful of countries to whom that description could properly be applied. North Korea and the People’s Republic of China spring to

Steerpike

Watch: Jackie Baillie’s disastrous Sunday Politics interview — ‘to call that a “car-crash” would show a lack of respect to automotive accidents’

With the Scottish Parliament elections set to take place in May, the SNP are expected to once again top the polls. As for the other parties, Kezia Dugdale’s beleaguered Scottish Labour will be attempting to fight off Ruth Davidson’s conservatives for second place. So, with Dugdale desperately needing to win back disillusioned voters, she may live to regret sending Jackie Baillie, the Scottish MSP, onto yesterday’s Sunday Politics. In an interview with Gordon Brewer, Baillie attempted to put forward her party’s new economic policy which claims to offer a way to end austerity which is not ‘prescriptive’. Alas Brewer was unconvinced, suggesting that the policy amounted to promising to put people’s taxes out without

Watch: SNP politician in a spin on Question Time over free school meals

This week’s Question Time saw David Dimbleby joined by a panel comprised of Emily Thornberry, Roger Helmer, Nicky Morgan, Tasmina Sheikh and Institute of Economic Affairs director Mark Littlewood. With the Budget up for debate, Morgan found herself having to defend her party’s planned cuts. Alas things didn’t go to plan when she appeared to claim that the Budget was merely a suggestion by claiming disability cuts may not actually go through. ‘It is something that has been put forward, there has been a review, there has been a suggestion, we are not ready to bring the legislation forward.’ Next on the agenda was the sugar tax. When it came to the

Collapse in North Sea revenues destroys the SNP’s economic argument

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/spectatorpolitics/georgeosbornesbudget-2016/media.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss today’s Budget”] Listen [/audioplayer]Alex Salmond had planned 24 March 2016 as his independence day and the budget he published during the Scottish independence referendum envisaged it having up to £7.5 billion of oil to spend. Today’s Budget shows that the figure will, instead be zero: precisely 100 per cent less than what the SNP had told Scots. Without it, the Scottish budget simply would not stand up. The basic point – ‘it’s Scotland’s oil!’ – has been the SNP refrain for years. There’s still oil in the North Sea but there’s no profit. The above graph shows how North Sea revenues – seen by the

The Left are making a pact with God over Sunday trading laws

Later today, barring last minute developments, Labour and SNP MPs will temporarily unite with the Conservatives’ religious right to defeat the government’s plans to liberalise Sunday trading laws — echoing the defeat which Mrs Thatcher suffered on the same subject 30 years ago. The Left will chirrup, but why is it apparently in favour of keeping Sunday special when logic dictates that it ought to be against? The Reverend Giles Fraser aside, the Left nowadays is generally quite anti-God –– or it is certainly against the promotion of Christianity as an established religion. In the diverse, multi-cultural society of its dreams, no religion is superior than any other and none

SNP politician struggles with the deficit

During the Scottish independence referendum, the SNP claimed that Scotland’s oil revenues for 2016-17 would be somewhere in the region of £7.9 billion. However, since then the oil price has plummeted meaning the revenues will likely be just a fraction of their estimate. So, now would be an opportune time for the SNP to show that despite the figure faux pas, they still have a firm grasp of the UK economy. Alas one SNP politician appears to lack a basic understanding of finance. John Mason, the SNP MSP for Glasgow Shettleson, has tweeted his tax return — making the point that he hopes some of the tax he pays will stay in Scotland this time around: Arrived

David Cameron is going to have to give the SNP what it wants

All Westminster might be agog with the latest shenanigans vis-a-vis the got-to-happen-at-some-point EU referendum but most sentient folk in this blessed land are magnificently uninterested in the matter. Not even this morning’s Telegraph splash – ‘Attorney General may back Brexit’  – can stir them from their slumber. At best the majors will have asked, over their E&B this morning, ‘Who is the Attorney General these days?’ North of the border, matters are just as quiet even though another great question remains unsettled. As yet, you see, there is no agreement on the terms of a ‘fiscal framework’ which will underpin the relationship between the finances of the devolved parliament in Edinburgh and the

Scottish Labour, peering into the abyss, wake up and decide to do something

Last week Kezia Dugdale, the leader of the Scottish Labour party, ventured south to the Imperial capital to brief the shadow cabinet on her party’s prospects in the forthcoming elections to the Scottish Parliament. Lucky her. According to the New Statesman’s George Eaton, Dugdale’s presentation was greeted with great enthusiasm. It was, one member of the shadow cabinet declared, ‘brilliant’ while another said Dugdale had ‘blown away’ her South British colleagues. Ominously, Eaton reported that ‘After loudly applauding her, frontbenchers left vowing to do more to help their colleagues north of the border (at least one shadow cabinet minister will visit each week)’. To which the only sensible response is, Jeez, hasn’t Kezia suffered enough already? The very

Scotland’s free-speech opponents remain as hypocritical as they are illiberal. Shame on them.

Like an old friend you do not actually like very much, the Scottish government’s Offensive Behaviour at Football Act will not go away. It is five years since this offensive piece of legislation was passed and time has done nothing to lessen either its absurdity or its offensiveness. To recap for readers who, for doubtless honourable reasons, have not kept up with one of the more extraordinary speech-curbing measures passed by any UK legislature in recent years, the bill’s premise is that creating new kinds of thought and speech crime can eliminate thoughts and speech deemed offensive. (Some past reflections on this execrable bill can be found here, here and here.)

A Trident debate could send chaos into the heart of Scottish Labour

When will ministers hold their vote on Trident renewal? The Sun reports today that the ‘main gate’ decision on the size of the fleet will take place by the end of March, throwing Labour into disarray ahead of elections in Scotland, Wales, London and local government. Cunning thinkers in the Tory party point out that for the vote to have maximum political effect, it needs to take place closer to the start of March. This is so that MSPs can also have a debate on Trident in the Scottish Parliament before Holyrood rises on 23 March for the election campaign. The SNP could decide to call a debate on the matter

Letters | 14 January 2016

Borderline case Sir: Alex Massie (‘The painful truth for Ruth’, 9 January) correctly identifies the challenges facing the Scottish Conservatives. But he is wrong to say it will ‘never’ be the moment for a Tory revival. Tax devolution is a game-changer. For the first time in years, the Conservative party gets to fight a Scottish battle on its strengths of economic competence; meanwhile, the SNP finally gets to demonstrate how to eliminate austerity and raise public spending — all without raising taxes. (In a low oil-price environment.) Toxic Tories? Not half as toxic as Labour are now. Post-referendum, voter positions are deeply entrenched and a party that can’t even agree on

Podcast special: 2015 in review

Christmas is almost here, so it’s time for our annual year in review podcast. In this View from 22 hour-long special, I’m delighted to be joined by a stellar line-up of Spectator contributors to look back on the events of the past twelve months, as well as asking each of our guests for their person of 2015. Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss the surprise Tory victory in May’s general election and how David Cameron has finally proven himself a winner. Does he now have the whole Conservative party behind him? And who should take credit for this victory? Fraser Nelson and Alex Massie look at the rise and rise of the SNP and how Nicola Sturgeon managed to

Alex Massie

2016 will be another great year for ‘The most dangerous woman in Britain’

Yesterday a new Scottish opinion poll reported that 58 percent of voters intend to endorse SNP candidates when the choosing time comes for next year’s Holyrood elections. By any reasonable measure this is excessive, even extravagant. But there we have it. As it happens, I would be surprised if the SNP polled that well on election day itself but we live in a time of astonishment so even the previously impossible can no longer be reckoned entirely improbable. And, besides, what is the alternative? Nicola Sturgeon’s greatest strength is that no-one else – or at least no-one outside her own party – can be thought a plausible First Minister. Everyone