Politics Archives

Saturday

9 November 2019

Can the Welsh Tories recover from their disastrous campaign launch?

Wales has not been the source of good electoral tidings for the Conservatives for a very long time. The party last won a general election here in ’59 – that’s 1859. Since then, Wales has had successive lengthy eras of Liberal and then Labour dominance, with the Conservatives rarely able to mount a serious challenge. The last person to defeat Labour in a general election in Wales was the Liberal, David Lloyd George – just after he led Britain to victory in world war one. Since then, Labour have come first in both votes and seats in the last 26 successive general elections. For a while, early in the 2017 campaign, it looked as if things would be different.

James Forsyth

What makes this election so unpredictable

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 them on course to win the election and return with a working majority. But, in the assessment of one of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet allies, this contest is ‘the most complicated election we have had. Two minor parties that can take from both major parties’. This dynamic means that this election will be more unpredictable than usual. There won’t be a straightforward national swing, rather a series of regional contests.

Katy Balls

Why the Tories remain optimistic despite a shaky campaign start

The first official week of the Conservatives' election campaign did not go as many inside CCHQ had hoped. A cabinet minister resigned, a row erupted over insensitive Tory comments on the Grenfell fire and a candidate stepped down over previous comments on rape. Despite this, the Conservatives end the week with a sense of cautious optimism about the next month. Tory MPs believe that Johnson steadied the ship on Wednesday evening with the party's official launch event in the Midlands. 'That calmed nerves,' says a member of government. 'Boris on form cheers up activists and candidates.' The Tories continue to hold a comfortable lead in the polls – and with parliament dissolved, they can now focus their efforts entirely on campaigning.

Friday

8 November 2019

Katy Balls

The Nicky Morgan Edition

27 min listen

Nicky Morgan is the Secretary of State for Culture, and former Conservative MP for Loughborough. Despite her success in Boris Johnson's cabinet, she announced that she'd be standing down at this election. On the podcast, she talks about student politics in Oxford with Dan Hannan, filling in Michael Gove's shoes as Education Secretary under David Cameron, firing herself for Theresa May when the latter became Prime Minister.Presented by Katy Balls.

Andrew Foxall

Putin benefits from the refusal to publish the Russian meddling report

It should be a national scandal, but it isn’t. Downing Street’s decision not to release the intelligence and security committee’s report on Russia ahead of the election has generated predictable and understandable anger and confusion. Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Emily Thornberry asked the government what it had “to hide” by not releasing the report. That is a fair question, for much is already known about Russia’s involvement in – if not, influence on – the UK’s democratic processes. Most obviously, in 2012 Russia’s embassy hosted the launch party of a group called ‘Conservative Friends of Russia'.

Robert Peston

Is a vote for the SNP really a vote for prime minister Corbyn?

Nicola Sturgeon says she wants to form a “progressive alliance” after the election to evict Boris Johnson from 10 Downing Street – which in practice means an arrangement with Labour to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister (this could be a formal coalition though Sturgeon told me she would prefer a less constraining arrangement). And she also says that in the event parliament is hung, on 13 December, there is literally no chance she would sustain the Tories in power – even if Johnson did a dramatic vote face and agreed she could have her cherished referendum on independence for Scotland. Which means that a vote for the SNP can be seen as a vote for Corbyn to become PM.

Gavin Mortimer

Poppy-wearing politicians must do more to help war heroes

It will be a sight for sore eyes on Sunday when leaders of the two main parties lay their wreaths at the cenotaph. Prime Minister Boris Johnson leads a government that last month failed to include legislation in the Queen's Speech to protect military veterans from prosecution; Jeremy Corbyn's close and long associations with the IRA are well-documented. Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has been out and about this week with his poppy, no doubt hoping the nation has forgotten what he said in 2003 at an event to mark the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. 'It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle,' he told his audience.

Geoffrey Alderman

Should rabbis dabble in politics?

Should rabbis dabble in politics? Should they use their influence to persuade their congregation to follow a certain political path? Should this authority extend to interventions in parliamentary elections and other matters of national debate? I pose these questions because in recent days British Jews has been confronted with some dramatic instances of very public rabbinical interventions which are of a shamelessly political, not to say party-political, nature. Consider two recent examples.

Thursday

7 November 2019

The Spectator

Letters: How to squash a Speaker

No special protection Sir: Rod Liddle’s joke that the election might be held on a date when Muslims cannot vote, thereby reducing support for Labour, has apparently led to outrage. There has been no similar outrage over your front cover (‘A vote is born’), which satirises the Christian nativity by portraying Johnson, Corbyn and Swinson visiting the stable in Bethlehem. It should be a principle of free speech in any free society that all religions are equally subject to satire, criticism and even gentle mockery; there should be no special protection for one set of beliefs over another. In allowing satire about two mainstream religions in the same issue, you have shown admirable balance.

Dot Wordsworth

What’s the different between ‘while’ and ‘whilst’?

‘Why is whilst only ever used in letters?’ asked my husband, casting aside an argumentative letter from his sister written in curly script and blue ballpoint. Why indeed? It cannot be wrong to use whilst, any more than amongst or amidst. But it goes with a certain register of genteel speech that can merge into officialese or hypercorrectness. Whilst, amongst and amidst started off by displaying what is called the adverbial genitive. English still shows the genitive through the suffix s (‘Dot’s charm’), and the apostrophe used with it is a mere spelling convention. In any case, s was added to words such as all way to indicate their function as adverbs: always. Similarly the adjective toward (meaning the opposite of untoward) became an adverb as towards.

Ian Austin

Ian Austin: patriotic Labour voters should back Boris Johnson

The below is an edited transcript of Ian Austin's remarks on BBC Radio 4 Today. I only wanted to be a Labour MP. And I only ever really want to be the Labour MP for Dudley. It's been such a huge privilege to do this job – a job I've loved, a place I love. But I've got to be honest with people: I'm not going to run in this election. The country faces a big choice. There's only two people can be prime minister on December the 13th: Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson. And I think Jeremy Corbyn is completely unfit to lead our country. Completely unfit to lead the Labour Party. I joined the Labour Party as a teenager. I worked for the Labour Party in my 30s, I was a government adviser. In my 40s. I was an MP and a minister.

Robert Peston

John McDonnell’s big offer to northern voters

The two most important speeches to date of the election campaign have been made by the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor, Sajid Javid and John McDonnell, and not by their respective leaders. And it is just possible these will still be the most important speeches in five weeks time, on polling day. Because they set out how much each of the big parties would and could spend and invest in the event that either wins wins a majority of seats and could govern without the support of shackles or deals with other parties. McDonnell’s speech does something more, which ought to make Boris Johnson very anxious indeed. He makes an explicit promise to transfer money and POWER to the North of England. This may be hugely important.

Steerpike

Listen: Labour candidate’s agonising interview

When it was revealed this week that the Labour parliamentary candidate in Coventry South, Zarah Sultana, had previously said she would celebrate the deaths of Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu, few would have thought to defend her comments. In fact the candidate herself apologised this week for the remarks she made in 2015. One person though seemed to struggle with how best to respond to the past allegations today. Labour's candidate in Pudsey, Jane Aitchison, was on 5Live today, and was asked by presenter Emma Barnett whether Sultana should be allowed to stand, after these comments had come to light. The prospective MP first pleaded ignorance, saying: 'I think that needs to be looked at' and 'I don't know the details of it'.

James Kirkup

Should Stewart Jackson’s swimming pool disqualify him from being an MP?

How long should we remember the MPs’ expenses scandal? Should someone who used taxpayers’ money to kit out their home and renovate their swimming pool be allowed a second chance at being an MP? The imminent selection of a Conservative candidate in Sevenoaks raises such questions. Selections are politics in its most raw and spiteful form. The battles to be nominated in a seat where your party usually wins are the fiercest, nastiest and most consequential that many politicians will ever be involved in. Because selections matter so much – missing out a safe seat can mean your career is over before it begins – the resentments that flow from these battles can last for years and decades.

Katy Balls

Will former Labour MPs help the Tories break the ‘red wall’?

Will former Labour MPs help the Tories break the red wall? A key plank of the Tory path to a majority consists of winning seats in the Midlands and the North which have been Labour for generations. Many of these areas voted to leave in the EU referendum. The Tory hope is that a well-executed campaign in which they reinforce their Brexit message with increased public spending promises for domestic policies will lead to them winning Labour Leave voters over. However, as crucial to the strategy is how the vote splits between the various candidates standing in each constituency. Ian Austin – the independent MP for the key Tory target seat of Dudley North – has announced today that he will not seek re-election.

Steerpike

Diane Abbott’s fake news

The Labour party are not in high spirits today after their election campaign was derailed by the ex-Labour MP, Ian Austin, who this morning urged 'decent, patriotic' Labour voters to back Boris Johnson at the election because of Labour's continued problems with anti-Semitism. Deeply unhappy with the news was Labour's Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott, who moaned on Twitter about the 'wall-to-wall coverage' Austin's statement was receiving, which she compared to the silence that had greeted Ken Clarke's admission that he would not vote Conservative: https://twitter.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1192389402531704833?s=20 Perhaps though there might be a simpler reason Clarke's comments were not reported: mainly because he has never actually said he won't vote for the Tories.

Steerpike

Watch: Ex-Labour MP Ian Austin urges voters to back Boris

This is the explosive moment former Labour MP Ian Austin urges voters to back Boris Johnson. Austin, who announced that he was standing down as MP for Dudley North, told the Today programme that Corbyn is 'completely unfit to lead our country'. He said that despite being a Labour party member since he was a teenager, he was urging voters to back the Tories on 12 December: 'I have got to be honest. The country faces a big choice. There are only two people who can be prime minister on December 13th: Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson.

Nick Cohen

Sally Gimson’s deselection and the battle for Labour’s soul

Anyone who doubts that the far left is more interested in winning the faction fight within the Labour party than a general election, should look at how it has treated Sally Gimson, the Labour candidate in Bassetlaw. At least she was the Labour candidate until yesterday when Jon Lansman, a director of Momentum (it is a company, so the anti-capitalist campaigners can retain corporate control) and two other members of Labour’s National Executive Committee, Andi Fox from the transport union TSSA and Sarah Owen from the GMB, deselected her. Lansman and his comrades did not have the courtesy to explain to the world why. Indeed, we will see that every courtesy and every element of due process has been absent in the Gimson case.

Steven Fielding

What The Clangers can teach us about the snap election

On election night on 10 October 1974, the BBC broadcast a special episode of The Clangers, a children’s animated television series. The episode, ‘Vote for Froglet’, satirised the politics of the day, showing the gentle mouse-like Clangers rejecting a divisive two-party politics, essentially saying: ‘Sod off! The whole thing is a waste of everybody’s time!’ No two historical moments are exactly the same. But the desperate politics of mid-1970s Britain is certainly parallel to our own miserable times.

James Forsyth

Boris’s fate will be decided by Lib Dem voters

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 in 2017, then we are heading into hung parliament territory and a situation where the Tories cannot govern because they have no potential partners. The complication for the Tories is that they also need to win back a chunk of their Remain voters who have gone over to the Liberal Democrats and hold off a challenge from Jo Swinson’s party in a host of constituencies.