Ukip

An EU referendum pledge in the next Tory manifesto is ‘basically, a certainty’ according to one of those most closely involved in the party’s electoral strategy for 2015. The current plan is for the manifesto to declare that a Conservative government would renegotiate Britain’s membership of the European Union and then put the new terms to the people in a referendum within 18 months of the general election. I understand that the Tory line would be that they would urge staying in the EU if Britain’s concerns could be met through this process. But if the rest of the European Union refused to play ball, they would be prepared to

The results so far have been good but not spectacular for Labour. The BBC’s national vote share projection has them on 39 percent, the Tories on 31, and the Lib Dems on 16. These numbers would deliver a comfortable Labour majority on both the old and new boundaries. Strikingly, UKIP is averaging 14 percent in the wards it is standing in. This is an impressive result given that UKIP traditionally doesn’t do that well in local elections where Europe is less of an issue. I suspect that the result is a combination of the fact that the party’s agenda has widened beyond Europe in recent years, that the coalition has

On one side of the Atlantic, there’s Christine Lagarde begging for more cash for the IMF. On the other, there’s George Osborne more or less willing to hand it over on behalf of British taxpayers. This is how it’s been for months now. This is why it’s no surprise to read in today’s Telegraph that Osborne may be ‘close to agreeing’ an extra £10 billion for the fund. There are the usual caveats, of course: the Exchequer will only stump up if various other countries do likewise, and then the money has to go into one big pot for all the world, not into special mechanisms targetted at the eurozone.

The big question in British politics right now is what happens when the voters are dissatisfied with all the three main parties and their leaders. According to a recent opinion poll, David Cameron’s approval rating is now down to minus 27. According to the invaluable Anthony Wells, this is the lowest it has been since Cameron became Tory leader. But the PM’s numbers look positively healthy compared to Miliband’s (minus 41) and Clegg’s (minus 53). Dissatisfaction with political leaders isn’t the only indicator that people aren’t happy. As I report in the column this week, senior Downing Street aides have been much struck by polling showing that more than 40

George Galloway’s victory last night is a reminder of a wider problem in British politics: the low regard in which all main political parties are held. By-elections can throw up quirky victories, usually ironed out in the general election. There won’t be an army of Galloway’s marching on parliament at the next election. It’s like Glasgow East: a classic Labour safe seat-cum-‘rotten borough’ taken for granted (and ignored) for so long that the ruling party’s apparatus had atrophied. Like John Mason in Glasgow East, Galloway won’t last long.    But the same phenomenon which took Galloway to victory last night, and humbled the main parties, is also at work in

The Christmas double issue of The Spectator has now been retired from newsstands, and today our New Year edition emerges in its place. Among its articles casting forward into 2012 is a list of ten predictions by James Delingpole. Here’s just one of them, as a taster: ‘Ukip will become Britain’s third largest party. This will go almost completely unreported in the media. Other headlines you won’t read: “Climategate scientists: ‘Oh all right. We confess. We’ve just been making it up as we go along’”; “Vince Cable: ‘Only the free market can save us now’”; “Archbishop of Canterbury: ‘If water cannons don’t shift ’em then we should try napalm. It’s

‘This result… is a victory for Labour that shows the progress we are making under Ed Miliband’s leadership; a vote of confidence in the way that Labour is changing…’ Or, rather, it isn’t. Whatever Labour’s winning candidate in Feltham and Heston, Seema Malhotra, says, this byelection result was little more than an unsurprising Labour victory in a Labour area. The opinion polls, as we know, show more comprehensively what people think of the ‘progress’ that Labour is making under Ed Miliband’s leadership. And it’s far from a vote of confidence. Which isn’t to say that Malhotra underperformed in her byelection victory, last night. Not at all. Labour actually increased their

The number of Tory MPs set to defy the government in the vote on an EU referndum tomorrow now stands at around 90, and numerous backbenchers – including John Redwood and David Davis – have called on the Prime Minister to drop the three-line whip. Even though he is certain to win the vote, many are already accusing Cameron of “blundering” and mismanaging this affair. But others are now suggesting that Cameron is in fact displaying a great deal of political nous by taking on the hardline Eurosceptics in his party. In the Indepednent, John Rentoul declares that “Cameron is the one who will emerge victorious and strengthened” from tomorrow’s debate:  “He will win

‘Cat-flap’ is the story that just won’t go away. A report in today’s Guardian claims that the whole story may have been lifted from a speech made by Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party. One colleague of May’s tells the paper that “Not only has Ms May been caught out making up stories about the Human Rights Act for cheap laughs, she has been plagiarising her clap lines from the UK Independence party.” In the grand scheme of things, this is hardly the most serious charge. There’s just enough truth to the cat anecdote for May to have some ground to stand on and most Tories, understandably,

    You may notice that the Liberal Democrats don’t feature in the first two graphs of the by-election result in Barnsley Central last night. Or, rather, they do – they’re just subsumed under the ‘Others’ category, having finished in sixth place. Second in the general election, sixth last night. The 1,012 votes for the Lib Dems put them behind Labour, UKIP, the Tories, the BNP and an independent candidate called Tony Devoy. Their share of the vote has fallen by 13.1 points on last May’s result. This was an unequivocal, almost ritualistic, beating. Blood everywhere. And the other half of the coalition hasn’t escaped unbruised either. The Tories finished

Britain is avowedly eurosceptic. But euroscepticism is not homogeneous; there are different tones of disgust. Many decry further political integration; others oppose Europe’s penchant for protectionism; some are wary of the EU’s apparent collective socialism; a few are essentially pro-European but believe too much sovereignty has been ceded; others hope to redefine Britain’s cultural and political relationship with the Continent, as a bridge between the Old World and the Anglosphere; most see Brussels as an affront to elective democracy; and a handful just want out and vote UKIP. So it has always been – perhaps one reason why William Hague’s ‘ticking time-bomb’ has not yet exploded. Time passes and Britain