Uk politics

There is no point in anyone trying to defend Oliver Letwin’s 1985 memo to Margaret Thatcher in which the then aide to the Prime Minister argued that white people were not prone to public disorder and that regeneration of inner city areas would only result in those from ethnic minorities setting up ‘in the disco and drug trade’. No-one has really tried, though Tim Montgomerie has rather kindly said that in his experience, the Downing Street policy chief doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. But it’s clear that at some point the gaffe-prone minister had a racist thought, and that he was comfortable enough with that thought to put it in a memo. Labour's Tom Watson branded it 'deeply racist' before the papers had even been published.

Why should Lynton Crosby get a knighthood? The Sunday Times today reports that the Conservatives’ election chief is in line for an honour, which has provoked fury from democracy campaigners and, naturally, those aligned with the parties he helped to humiliate in May. The fury of the Labourites is quite easy to understand, and not just because it is miserable seeing the guy who was instrumental to a surprise election victory that many around Ed Miliband thought was theirs being honoured. It’s also because many of them will complain that he is a negative force in politics, someone who isn’t averse to flinging a dead cat on the table at a moment’s notice when the chips are down.

David Cameron’s Christmas message is being reported as one of his most Christian public statements yet, with the Prime Minister arguing - as he did at Prime Minister’s Questions recently - that ‘it is because of these important religious roots and Christian values that Britain has been such a successful home to people of all faiths and none’. Cameron has - with the occasional rather odd hiccup - become much more confident about talking about Christianity, both in terms of his own beliefs and the importance he thinks faith should have in wider society, since he described his personal faith as being ‘a bit like the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns - it sort of comes and goes’.

Should ministers have so many special advisers? Should a party that promised to cut the number of these SpAds if it came to government admit that it got this wrong, having increased their number? The arguments in favour of more of these political staffers in government are well-rehearsed: if they’re good, they add expertise and political nouse to a department and they make it easier for ministers to communicate what they’re up to. Some are hopeless at both these things, but the best ones - and there are many excellent ones in both main parties at the moment - often keep the show on the road and ensure reforms actually happen. Last week it emerged that the SpAd bill had risen from £8.4 million in 2013/14 to £9.2 million in 2014/15.

David Cameron is warming to the idea of making Boris Johnson Foreign Secretary. As I write in The Sun this morning, Cameron is drawn to the idea of sending Boris to the Foreign Office in a post-May reshuffle. But a Cabinet ally of the Prime Minister stresses that Boris will have to be ‘unequivocally yes’ come the EU referendum if he is to be Foreign Secretary. It is easy to see why the idea of doing what it take to bind Boris in before the referendum is gaining traction in Number 10. Polling shows that Cameron backing Britain staying part of the EU gives the In campaign a big boost. But if the next best know Tory, Boris, backs Out that effect is pretty much wiped out. Philip Hammond, the current Foreign Secretary, is regarded as expendable by many in Downing Street.

If the responses to last week’s Paris agreement on tackling climate change are anything to go by, you’d think politicians were warming to the issue. David Cameron said that ‘this generation has taken vital steps to ensure that our children and grandchildren will see that we did our duty in securing the future of our planet’. But the political excitement around the summit was not part of a trend, but a mere spike in interest. Politicians don’t talk very much about green issues at present. They barely discussed the environment at all during the election, and generally see it as being of such low salience that they needn’t talk too much about it. But there are some in the Tory party who don’t think that’s the right approach.

The Strathclyde Review into the power of peers to block legislation sent up by the Commons reports today, and it is expected to strip the House of Lords of its ability to kill off secondary legislation. And the way the government will bring in this reform, which will enshrine the primacy of the Commons, is by primary legislation, which means that if peers try any funny business, ministers can deploy the Parliament Act and force the change through.  Labour says this is a 'massive overreaction' to the tax credits row earlier in the autumn. But this reform, naturally, won't change two major problems with secondary legislation that have very little to do with peers.

Today at Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron quoted Gary Porter, the Tory chair of the Local Government Association, praising reforms in the spending review that will allow councils to raise money for the cost of social care using council tax. The Tory leader was using the quote to prove Jeremy Corbyn wrong in his warnings about the NHS and social care. He said: ‘If he wants to swap quotations, this is what the chairman of the Local Government Association says: “The LGA has long called for further flexibility in the setting of council tax… Today’s announcement on council tax will go some way to allowing a number of councils to raise the money needed…The £1.5 billion increase in the Better Care Fund announced today is good news”.

George Osborne has been busily signing more devolution deals today, with five pilot schemes moving power over health policy and spending from Whitehall to London boroughs. It’s part of the Chancellor’s devolution revolution that he is making a key part of his brand. It’s also - as is always the case with Osborne - a bit of clever politicking. Osborne caught Labour on the hop with his devolution deal for Greater Manchester earlier this year, with Andy Burnham struggling to work out what the party’s official line was on Labour councils happily signing up to a Tory deal. Many of his Labour colleagues were unimpressed with the then Shadow Health Secretary’s response to the deal.

The House of Lords has tonight rejected a Labour amendment that would have given 16 and 17 year olds the vote in the EU referendum. This removes the largest potential obstacle to getting the EU referendum legislation into law quickly. This means that, if the government can get a deal at the EU summit in February, a June referendum is still possible. The government’s victory in the Lords tonight was not expected. Most observers, including myself, thought that the opposition’s in-built majority would be enough to get the Labour amendment passed, and so start ping pong between the two Houses. But the Lords has backed down from a confrontation with the elected House on this matter.

Few really expected Jeremy Corbyn to pull out of the Stop the War fundraising dinner, which he attended last night. He used to chair the coalition, and hasn’t made any comment since becoming leader to suggest that he now disagrees with its aims and objectives. This, as Freddy wrote recently, simply shows that the new leader is sticking to what he believes, however wrong, rather than wobbling all over the place at the first sniff of power. Fewer people, perhaps, predicted that the Labour leader would release a defiant statement praising the organisation: ‘The Stop the War Coalition has been one of the most important democratic campaigns of modern times. It has brought hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets time and again.

What if David Cameron does win his fight - staged or otherwise - with European leaders to block benefits for EU migrants for four years? In terms of his pitch to the British public that voting to stay in the bloc is a good idea, this win would be very handy indeed. But would it actually materially change anything? Today, in an evidence session to the Treasury Select Committee, Office for Budget Responsibility Stephen Nickell rather undermined the importance of this row between leaders when he ended up telling MPs that it wouldn’t make much of a difference to immigration from other EU countries to Britain anyway. He said: 'I am prepared to say that any changes to benefit rules are unlikely to have a huge impact on migration flows.