James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Boris Johnson has just revealed the biggest policy offer in the Tory manifesto. He told workers on Teesside today that the Tories want to raise the National Insurance threshold to £12,000. Now, I understand that this would not all be done at once. But it is telling that the Tories have chosen to prioritise this
Last night’s leaders debate was a scrappy affair. The format meant that neither leader was able to get going properly and that there was little back and forth between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. It is hard to imagine that it will have changed many voters’ minds. Indeed, a snap YouGov poll suggested that it
It will be the biggest moment of the campaign so far. On Tuesday night, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn will go head to head in an ITV debate. I say in The Sun this morning that this debate is the biggest risk that Boris Johnson has taken in this election. There’s a reason why none
Despite the consistent poll lead and projections of a majority of about 40 seats, the Tories are still nervous. They are nervous because they are uncertain, because their route to victory involves taking seats that the Tories haven’t won in living memory, so no one has a proper sense of how well (or otherwise) it’s
Four weeks from now, voters will be heading to their polling station, and the result of this election remains unpredictable. Today’s NHS stats and the recent flooding are reminders of the particular dangers of a winter election to the governing party. But a week into the campaign, the chances of a Tory majority have increased,
Boris Johnson’s speech today was an attempt to set this election up as a choice between a Tory majority government and a hung parliament. He argued that if the Tories got the nine extra seats they need from their 2017 performance, then Brexit would ‘get done’ and the country would be able to move on
It would obviously have been better for the Tories if Nigel Farage had announced that the Brexit party was standing down everywhere. As Katy Balls says, even now, his party is standing in those very Labour held marginals that the Tories need to win a majority. But I still think today’s Brexit party announcement has increased
Every election campaign has a wobble. But the Tories broke new ground in managing to wobble before they’d even launched their campaign. However, the formal start of the Tory campaign on Wednesday night does appear to have stabilised things, I say in The Sun this morning. I understand that the Tories own polling still shows
The Tories’ great fear in this campaign is that they can get their vote out, squeeze the Brexit party right down and still lose. Why? Because their strategy relies on the Liberal Democrats taking a chunk out of Labour’s Remain vote. If Labour manages to rally the Remain vote in the way that it did
When you ask those at CCHQ why this election isn’t going to be like 2017, one of the answers they give is that Boris Johnson is a better campaigner than Theresa May. Tonight’s Tory launch was meant to show that off. The Tories held it in the evening so that they could have a crowd
After a torrid 36 hours for the Tory party which has seen one Cabinet Minister resign and another have to apologise, Boris Johnson spoke from the steps of Downing Street before heading out on to the campaign trail. He argued that he didn’t want this election but it had to happen because Parliament was frustrating
Normally wrangles about TV debates go on for weeks before one is agreed. Yet, before the election campaign has even formally started, ITV have announced a TV debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson on November 19th. This’ll be the first election head to heard this country has had. Agreement on this debate has been
This general election isn’t the most important in a generation, it is the most significant in the lifetime of anyone born since 1945. It will decide whether Brexit happens, whether Britain has the most left-wing prime minister in its history, whether the Scottish Nationalists are able to secure a second independence referendum and whether Britain’s
The House of Commons has just voted by 438 to 20 for a 12 December election. Given that amendments on extending the franchise were not selected as they were out of scope, the Commons has also backed an election with the existing general election franchise. Even in these unpredictable times, it would be jaw dropping if
Jeremy Corbyn has said that Labour will back a December election. This means that it is now highly likely to happen. Indeed, the only thing that could prevent it would be if an amendment was added to the bill changing the franchise: for example, giving 16 and 17-year-olds or EU nationals the vote. In those
By the end of the day tomorrow, we will know if Boris Johnson is going to get the 2019 election he craves. Minutes ago he responded to the government’s failure to get the two thirds vote necessary for an election under tonight’s Fixed-term Parliament Act motion by saying that the government would present a bill
As Boris Johnson laid out his plan at political Cabinet on Thursday, it quickly became apparent how much of it was dependent on factors outside of his control. I write in The Sun this morning that he said that he still hoped that the EU would offer only the shortest of extensions, forcing parliament to
Word tonight is that Labour will whip its MPs to abstain on Monday’s general election vote. Officially, Labour won’t formally declare its position until tomorrow. But if its MPs do abstain this means that the government won’t secure the necessary two-thirds support to dissolve parliament under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. So no general election
The key Brexit vote tonight is on the programme motion. The sense is that the government has the votes to carry the second reading. But that wouldn’t guarantee the UK leaving on 31 October, as the committee and report stages could take weeks and see a slew of amendment added to the bill. If Boris Johnson
The purpose of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is to put the Withdrawal Agreement into UK domestic law. Nothing that MPs add to it can change the text of what the UK and the EU agreed last week. For this reason it is wrong, whatever the merits of it, to try and add a customs union
