Law

It may take another week to discover if Phil Woolas has the right to challenge the election court ruling that destroyed his career. To the delight of his cadre of supporters in the House, judges have said there are "difficult questions to resolve" - not about the evidence of Woolas' campaign making "false statements", but about the specific application of the Representation of the People Act (RPA). Before the last die is cast, here are two quick contextual points. First, it is not just Harriet Harman who is keen to shut down this episode - many folks on all sides of the House of Commons would like to pretend skulduggery of this kind is exceptional. It is not - Phil Woolas' behaviour is far from untypical of northern politics.

The violence at today’s student protest is, politically, a boon to the coalition. The story now is not the Lib Dems breaking their word but the storming of Millbank. The violence will also have cost the no-fees cause much public sympathy, we don’t like attempts at aggressive direct action in this country. There are questions that need to be answered after today, why were the cops so unprepared for the protest turning violent? I crossed through the protest at lunchtime and then it was quite clear that there was potential for trouble. I’m also bemused as to why it is taking so long to put a stop to the violence and deal with those involved. Given the political environment, this might well not be the last protest to turn nasty.

The Tory party’s acceptance of a 2.9 percent increase in the EU budget has persuaded Steve Richards that ‘Europe has ceased to be a toxic issue in British politics.’ As Steve acknowledges, this is in part because the Euro-sceptics have won the argument over the single currency. But it is also because the Tory parliamentary party has accepted that the coalition means nothing positive is happening on the Europe front for the next few years. One thing, though, needs to be borne in mind: the Tory party is more Euro-sceptic than it has been in living memory.

Neither Ed Miliband nor David Cameron had a good PMQs. Cameron let his irritation at questions about the appointment of his campaign photographer to a civil service post show. It was also a bit rich for him to criticise a Labour MP for asking a question scripted by the whips when Tory MPs ask patsy questions with monotonous regularity, I counted at least four in this session alone. But the regular shouts of ‘cheese, cheese’ from the Labour benches were clearly riling the Prime Minister. But it wasn’t a good session for Ed Miliband either. His delivery was rather halting and he stumbled on his words far more than he usually does. His jokes didn’t quite come off either.

It was unlikely that the Coalition could have played for any more time before lifting the ban on prisoner voting.  That was the tactic played by the previous Government, but now it seems the will of Strasbourg will prevail.  But the policy is wildly out of step with public opinion, hard to justify and difficult to administer – it is also another example of how our own Parliament and domestic courts have been undermined.     The public are opposed – usually on principle – to granting additional privileges to serving prisoners, especially when they have done little or nothing to earn it.  They are against voting rights in particular on the grounds that it is one of the rights that lawbreakers give up by virtue of their crime.

CoffeeHousers may like to see the full leaked letter (pasted below) to which I referred in The Spectator's cover story this week. It shows how the NUT is using Freedom of Information to try and force school heads to hand over a list of names of anyone who might support a campaign to opt out of local authority control and become quasi-independent Academies. We have blacked out any information that may reveal the source. This letter helps explain why Michael Gove will have so few names next week, when he lists the list of schools who have succeeded in their fast-track application. Out of the 3,000 eligible, a few dozen will have made it.

Has Mark Hoban just become the first victim of the New Labour landmines? He was asked on the Today Programme whether the Treasury had conducted a formal study assessing the impact of the cuts on ethnic minorities. Hoban was speechless - as well you might be. But the assessment, he was told, is required under Harriet Harman's Equalities Act. Has it been carried out? He avoided the question and was asked it again. And so it continued, a la Paxman v Howard. When Labour retreated, it sewed several landmines in the political territory it was about to cede. One of them was Harman's Equalities Act, which - as Pete blogged a while ago - mandates government "to consider how decisions might help to reduce inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage".

David Cameron's so-called “referendum lock" is supposed to ensure no more powers are handed to the EU. His thinking, bless him, is that if he just keeps a low profile and doesn't sign any extra treaties then things won't get worse. This fundamentally mistakes the way the EU works. As we say in the leader for this week's magazine, ever-greater integration is hardwired into the system. An example we cite is the coming European Investigatory Order, which Theresa May has naively described to other ministers as a tidying up exercise (Jack Straw said the same about the EU constitution).  As we put it: “Another power grab is looming. Plans are being drawn up for a European order that would mandate British police officers to follow requests lodged from overseas.

Before such fripperies were banned, al-Qaeda terrorists were given lessons in stand-up comedy while in high-security prisons. I’d have thought that the exploding underpants fraternity had natural advantages in comedy, but never mind. What I want to know is who gave the lessons? It’d be ironic if it was a voluntary group. The Mail has worked itself into a panicked fury about that the ban on prison parties would be revoked. To be fair to the Mail, Crispin Blunt, the Prisons Minister claimed as much in speech last night, and he vowed to abolish Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection - orders that incarcerate the sort of charmers who butcher you in the bus queue if you give 'em a look.

Very little is my immediate answer. The President’s approval ratings are biting the dust. Powerless to stem the tide of oil and unpopularity, Obama can only victimise a ‘foreign’ oil company. Obama may be embattled at home, but if any doubt the US President’s ability to influence global events, they need only look at BP’s share value and the pension funds derived thereof. BP is mired in an expensive oil disaster, but the President’s rhetoric about the ‘habitual environmental criminal’ and threatening BP with criminal proceedings demolishes market confidence. If the British government had condemned AIG, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch in similar tones, the US administration would have retorted. Cameron can do nothing.