Uk politics

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Major coup for Osborne as Lord Adonis resigns Labour whip to chair infrastructure commission

A key theme of this Tory conference will be the party running its tanks all over Labour’s lawn while the party indulges in splendid in-fighting. And George Osborne’s speech tomorrow will contain another big tank rumbling over another part of the party’s lawn. He has persuaded Lord Adonis to resign the party whip in order to become a cross bench peer and chair an independent National Infrastructure Commission. Adonis has issued this statement: ‘Without big improvements to its transport and energy systems, Britain will grind to a halt. I am pleased to accept the Chancellor’s invitation to establish the National Infrastructure Commission as an independent body able to advise Government

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove sets out the Tory plan to occupy the centre ground

Michael Gove is the Justice Secretary, but his speech to the Tory conference this afternoon showed that he is so much more than that – or at least that he’s interested in so much more than just his brief. The most striking thing about it was that it was a challenging speech for those sitting in the hall, rather than one where he repeatedly challenged Labour on the party’s new direction under Jeremy Corbyn. It wasn’t just that he prompted the conference to applaud his line that it was a Conservative, not a Lib Dem, who ensured equal marriage for gay and lesbian people – which they did, with a

Isabel Hardman

The Tories are finally facing up to what makes Parliament too posh: but will their solution work?

Lord Feldman’s announcement of a £250,000 bursary scheme for Conservative candidates shows that the Tory party is starting to face up to some of the little-discussed factors behind Parliament containing so few MPs from working class backgrounds. The cost of standing for Parliament in a seat that is considered winnable is obscene: candidates can lose £34,000 of their own money on average (that figure comes from this ConHome survey of 2005 candidates, but my own research which I am conducting currently suggests that it is roughly similar for those who stood in 2015: more on this soon). And this means that it’s impossible for some people to ever consider running.

Isabel Hardman

Justine Greening shows new enthusiasm for her job and her own story

Justine Greening’s brief as International Development Secretary is really quite specific. It certainly doesn’t require wide-ranging speeches about social mobility or domestic policy. And while Greening didn’t give a wide-ranging speech in her address to the Tory conference today, she did insert little snippets about her own life in a way that suggested she isn’t keen to remain International Development Secretary for ever. For instance, she said: ‘Wherever you are in the world, young people tell me they want the same thing, a job and the dignity of work. I know that the toughest year of my childhood in Rotherham was the year my dad was unemployed.’ And she also

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: Tories won’t alter tax credit cuts

One of the rows that the Tories are starting their conference with is over tax credits. A growing number of MPs, including Boris Johnson, have expressed concern about the changes, which lower the threshold for withdrawing tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and speed up the rate of withdrawal as pay rises. But today on the Andrew Marr Show, David Cameron made clear that there wouldn’t be a review of these cuts. He was asked if George Osborne might change the plans in the Autumn Statement: ‘No. We think the changes we put forward are right and they come with higher pay and lower taxes.’ They do come with higher

Thursday

James Forsyth

Will Nicky Morgan be the next Prime Minister?

When David Cameron announced that he wouldn’t serve a third term, he made it inevitable that Westminster would spend much of his second term wondering about who would succeed him. Well, in the new Spectator, Nicky Morgan becomes the first Cabinet Minister to make clear that she is interested in standing when Cameron steps down. She says that ‘A lot of it will depend on family’ but makes clear that she believes there needs to be a female candidate in the race and hopes ‘that, in the not too distant future, there will be another female leader of a main Westminster political party’. What I was most struck about when

Isabel Hardman

Owen Paterson interview: My plan to find the next Tory leader

One evening early in this autumn term in Parliament, Tory MPs crowded excitedly into a parliamentary office for drinks and nibbles. It wasn’t a particularly unusual event: there were many more people than could fit in the room, though MPs surged in and out like the tide as the division bell rang. But in between votes, the host gave a speech that marked this out from all the other drinks events that MPs throw for one another. That host was Owen Paterson, and he told the room, which was made up mainly of right-leaning eurosceptic Conservatives, that he would be writing a set of policy papers for a future leadership

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn’s Trident comments spark end-of-conference row in Labour

Jeremy Corbyn has really pushed the button on the tensions in his party over Trident renewal. The Labour leader insists that he is just being honest when he says that he would never use nuclear weapons. But what he has done is to put his party in an impossible position. Either it respects his huge mandate and makes scrapping Britain’s nuclear deterrent official policy. Or else it votes to force the resignation of the leader. At first glance, this sounds rather confusing, and Corbyn’s team and John McDonnell have been spinning that Jeremy is just being honest about a long-held personal position. Why is this the implication of a man

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn: I wouldn’t use nuclear weapons anyway

Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t want nuclear weapons. We all know that. We also know that because he has a huge mandate (a phrase bandied about so much at this conference that it’s starting to feel like a refrain in Are You Being Served?), he’s keen to turn his views into official party policy on this area at least. But we now also know that if his party determined that it would remain committed to Trident, and if Jeremy Corbyn were Prime Minister, he wouldn’t ever use his weapons anyway. Which makes it entirely pointless to fund them at all. On the Today programme, the new Labour leader was asked if he

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn’s tougher line on nuclear weapons could become a resigning issue for Shadow Cabinet

Jeremy Corbyn’s aim at this conference has been to keep the Labour party on an even keel. But there was one line in his speech that has unsettled some frontbenchers. He said this about Trident: ‘Today we face very different threats from the time of the Cold War which ended thirty years ago. That’s why I have asked our Shadow Defence Secretary, Maria Eagle, to lead a debate and review about how we deliver that strong, modern effective protection for the people of Britain. I’ve made my own position on one issue clear. And I believe I have a mandate from my election on it. I don’t believe £100 billion

Isabel Hardman

Labour activists loved Jeremy Corbyn’s speech. But will voters?

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech was excellent. It was passionate, full of campaigning zeal, focused on issues that the MP has campaigned on for years, and well-received in the hall. The new Labour leader came across as warm, principled, personable, fun. He was introduced in a lovely, low key fashion by a member of his own constituency party, whose own life story summed up his own values. He opened with jokes about the media claiming that he was keen for an asteroid to destroy the earth (more on this and his opposition to PIGEON BOMBS here), and these went down well – both amongst the activists and the media sitting in the

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech challenge

Jeremy Corbyn has, so far, had a reasonably good conference. Nothing has gone noticeably wrong. There have been no stand-up rows, no fights in the fringes, no heckling in the hall. And the atmosphere has been far better than Labour’s awful autumn conference last year, where everyone was full of gloom when the party was a few points ahead in the polls. But the Labour conference was still going to plan at this point last year, albeit in a moribund way. Ed Miliband hadn’t delivered his speech yet, and he therefore hadn’t forgotten to mention the deficit (the speech was poor, too, but the overall quality was quickly eclipsed by

Isabel Hardman

Maria Eagle: I wouldn’t have resigned over Trident vote

The Labour party may have avoided a divisive vote on Trident this week, but that doesn’t mean that it can always avoid working out whether it should have a new position. Last night Maria Eagle, the Shadow Defence Secretary, told a fringe that though she had made her mind in 2007 that she was in favour of the renewal of the nuclear deterrent, she wouldn’t have resigned had there been a vote that called for Trident to be scrapped at this conference. She said she’d reminded Corbyn when he offered her the job that she was pro-Trident, saying ‘I thought I need to make sure he remembers what my position

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn: I love this country

A set of headlines about a political party leader declaring that he loves his country might, in less unsettled times, be considered a sign that news desks have given up and are going to report all instances of dogs biting men. But in the man-bites-dog-world in which Jeremy Corbyn has just been elected Labour leader and John McDonnell appointed his Shadow Chancellor, it’s news. It’s also the first set of reasonably good headlines for the new leader, which is in part because his media team is working much better with the media now. (though you can’t win ’em all) Corbyn is expected to say: ‘These values are what I was

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Labour conference is surprisingly even-tempered. Why?

Why does Labour conference feel so even-tempered so far? In previous years the answer would be that it has been stage-managed to the hilt and all frontbenchers programmed with the lines to take. But this year the party’s conference strapline is ‘Straight talking. Honest politics’ and frontbenchers aren’t being sent daily lines to take, so even if they wanted to be on message, they couldn’t be. Of course, those frontbenchers are enjoying telling fringes that they take one view while their leader takes another, but what’s still remarkable about this conference is how good natured all the fringe meetings have been after a vicious leadership contest. Those running were abused

Isabel Hardman

Len McCluskey uses Tory rebel David Davis to attack trade union bill

The Labour conference is currently debating a motion on the Trade Union Bill, which Shadow Business Secretary Angela Eagle made clear in her speech that the party will oppose. It gave Len McCluskey a chance to give his traditional pre-Shadow Chancellor conference speech, though this year the Unite leader didn’t need to include any pleas to the Labour leadership to listen to him. Instead, he focused all the fire of his typically impassioned and forceful speech on the Tories. He suggested that the legislation curbing the powers of trade unions and their abilities to strike was more fitting for a fascist government. The Tories will be quite used to his

Isabel Hardman

McDonnell: I can both oppose and support Heathrow expansion

Is the Labour party right to be so worried that Jeremy Corbyn is its leader and John McDonnell is its Shadow Chancellor? Neither of them seem to be putting much effort into pushing the policies that have upset their colleagues the most. The Labour party will maintain its position on Trident after constituency party delegates decided not to debate the matter this week. Jeremy Corbyn is quite happy for his colleagues to take a different view on this issue, too. Similarly, on Heathrow, both Corbyn and McDonnell are opposed to expansion of the airport, but today the Shadow Chancellor told the Press Association that he might take one position as

Isabel Hardman

Labour conference: John McDonnell sticks to boring

The most remarkable thing about John McDonnell’s Labour conference speech was that he was delivering it at all. The new Shadow Chancellor was clearly trying to assuage fears about him by being as boring (something he’d promised) and mild as possible, announcing reviews headed by big names such as Bob Kerslake of the operation of the Treasury and and an Economic Advisory Committee that includes Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stigltiz. Reviews and committees mean you don’t have to announce as many policies, which is handy if you’re trying not to rock the boat too much early on. But to be fair to McDonnell, it’s also what all mainstream politicians do

Isabel Hardman

Shadow Cabinet keeps business as usual at Labour conference

So far at this Labour conference, most of the fireworks have been on the Blairite side of the party, with figures such as Chuka Umunna, Ivan Lewis, Liz Kendall and John Woodcock making their displeasure known at events last night. But when it comes to Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench, and some of the issues on which Corbyn himself has strong and controversial views, the conference has seemed surprisingly well-behaved: so far, at least. The party’s frontbenchers are almost continuing as though nothing has changed: last night at a schools fringe Lucy Powell set out an education policy that sounded roughly familiar to the one the last party leadership pursued: no support

Isabel Hardman

John McDonnell tries to get voters to trust him and his party on the economy

The Shadow Chancellor’s speech at Labour conference has always been the second biggest slot after the leader. But in a sense John McDonnell’s speech today, just before lunch, is the most important slot of the whole conference because he is talking about the policy area that did the most to put voters off Labour in May. A review by Jon Cruddas found that voters were well-aware of Labour’s anti-austerity message, and that they didn’t like it, even though all the retail offers on energy bills and so on were popular. But McDonnell believes that voters need to be told of the dangers of austerity, which they haven’t, and then they