Uk politics

Well, that didn’t last long: in April, I rejoined the Labour Party. Last Sunday, I cancelled my subscription and cut up my membership card. Being part of the official opposition to a Tory Government, my conscience can live with; being the official opposition to the unborn, it cannot. I've always leaned towards backing Labour. And while my radicalism may have mellowed somewhat in my old age, I would certainly have voted for Jeremy Corbyn in the first leadership contest. So when the snap election was called, it seemed like an obvious move to put my money where my ballot is.

I’ve been on the campaign trail in Scotland, and was struck by how often education was raised by voters – underlining a trend of the SNP’s domestic record catching up with Nicola Sturgeon. She had come prepared for her interview with Andrew Neil on this point, but how reliable were her answers? Ms Sturgeon’s tactic is to drag any discussion about education into the land of acronyms and statistics, knowing that the best way to get out of a tight spot is to make the subject sound dull, or parochial. But online, we have infinite space to team up with people who know these briefs, and scrutinise politician’s answers. The result is below. A health warning: this is about details, and about Scotland.

At one of Lord Ashcroft’s focus groups recently, participants were asked what jobs they thought might suit politicians if they were not, well, politicians. In Edinburgh, one respondent unkindly suggested Nicola Sturgeon would make an excellent traffic warden. For her part poor Kezia Dugdale - I’m afraid 'Poor Kezia Dugdale' has become the accepted form of labelling the Scottish Labour leader - was reckoned to be just the sort of person who would thrive working in a pet rescue centre. There are many times that must seem preferable to leading the Labour party in Scotland. For the whole of this campaign Ms Dugdale has suggested that the very last thing Scotland, and indeed the United Kingdom, needs is a second referendum on independence. No, no, no, she says.

The most memorable poster of the 2015 general election campaign was an image of Alex Salmond with Ed Miliband snug in his top pocket. As Adam Boulton points out today, the Tories haven’t tried to revisit that image, but Nicola Sturgeon might have helped them along. She expects Theresa May to win a majority, she said. But if it’s a hung parliament, asked Andrew Neil, would she work with Mr Corbyn on his tax and spend? Her answer:- ‘We’ll work for progressive policies and we’ll work for the policies we put forward in our Manifesto. If there was to be a hung parliament of course we would look to be part of a progressive alliance that pursued progressive policies.

We learned something important from Jeremy Corbyn’s interview with Andrew Neil: The Labour leader wants to be Prime Minister and will do whatever it takes. His soppier critics often announce their sympathy for a man who would be much happier on the backbenches. Do not believe a word of it. Listen instead to what he told the BBC presenter and you will hear a man trying to rewrite his record and trusting that most voters know too little to challenge him.  Corbyn told Neil: 'I didn’t support the IRA. I don’t support the IRA. What I want everywhere is a peace process.’ This is a lie. Corbyn opposed the Anglo-Irish agreement. He reportedly lobbied the government on behalf of IRA prisoners.

AN: Mr Corbyn, today you drew a link between terror attacks at home and British actions abroad. Do you believe if Britain had not followed the foreign policy it has since Tony Blair was in office the attack on Manchester would not have happened? JC: The attack on Manchester was shocking, appalling, indefensible, wrong in every possible way. The parallel I was drawing this morning was that a number of people ever since the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have drawn attention to the links with foreign policy, including Boris Johnson in 2005, two former heads of MI5, and of course the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. And the point I was making was we have to make our streets secure. We have to make our population secure.

Never underestimate the resilience of the Welsh Labour party. Up until now, this year's general election had looked like it was going to be an historic one in Wales, where the Conservatives have not won since the 1850s, and Labour have come first in both votes and seats every time since 1922. Both Welsh polls conducted since the election was called had given the Tories a clear lead, and put them on all-time high levels of support. But the latest Welsh poll, published today, puts a very different light on things. Labour are now, it appears, back in a clear lead: up nine percentage points in the last two weeks, to 44 per cent, and ten points ahead of the Conservatives whose rating has slumped by seven per cent over the past fortnight.

After the agony of the recent ITV opposition leaders’ debate, the Scottish leaders’ debate felt like a much-needed upgrade – in terms of leaders, and debate. Both Ruth Davidson and Nicola Sturgeon are better speakers than most MPs, and Kezia Dugdale (Labour leader in Scotland) makes more sense than anyone on Labour’s front bench. In the UK we get ‘strong and stable’ clichés from the Tories, a tragicomedy from Labour and either sex or marijuana from the Liberal Democrats. The BBC Scotland debate, deftly compered by Sarah Smith, felt like proper politics. The debate we should have had in the rest of the UK, but haven't. It was rowdy. Scots often are.

The security services are a rum lot. All that intrigue gets to you eventually, and that’s not counting those who sign up with less than laudable intentions. Harold Wilson was paranoid but not necessarily wrong.  So when Jeremy Corbyn’s MI5 file finds its way onto the front page of the Daily Telegraph, even those not well-disposed to the Labour leader could be forgiven for arching an eyebrow. Are the spooks spooked by the possibility of Britain’s first Marxist prime minister?  For those who came up with Corbyn in 1970s and ‘80s, those heady days of the hard-Left when revolution was ever round the corner, this is obviously the case.