Uk politics

Nigel Farage briefly grabbed the moral high ground on the Calais migrant crisis this morning. He told the Today programme, rather loftily, that he wouldn’t use the word ‘swarm’ as David Cameron has done to describe those crossing the Mediterranean. ‘I’m not seeking to use language like that,’ he said. It’s understandable, given ‘swarm’ does depersonalise a group that already has the rather inhuman-sounding tag of ‘migrants’. But what a change of heart from his earlier interview on Good Morning Britain in which, according to the PoliticsHome transcript, the Ukip leader said: ‘A couple of times I’ve been stuck on the motorway and surrounded by swarms of potential migrants to Britain and

The momentum just keeps building behind Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for Labour leader. This afternoon, Unison has announced it is backing the veteran socialist’s candidacy, with General Secretary Dave Prentis saying: ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s message has resonated with public sector workers who have suffered years of pay freezes, redundancies with too many having to work more for less.’ Prentis points out that ‘today’s decision is a recommendation and our members are of course free to cast their vote as to who they think should lead the Labour Party’. And indeed the view of the union does not translate to all of its members who are affiliated supporters of the Labour party putting

The Lord Sewel scandal makes me feel proud to be British. For here, thanks to some glorious John Wilkes-style dirt-digging by the Sun — in your face, Leveson! — we have a proper political scandal. This ain’t no yawn-fest about MPs claiming the cost of a Kit-Kat or accidentally favouriting a gay-porn tweet: sad little pseudo-scandals which in recent years have tainted the good name of ignominy. No, the fall of Sewel is a full-on, drugged-up, peer-and-prostitutes scandal, of the kind Britain used to be pretty good at before the square Blairites and cautious Cameroons took over. The disgracing of Sewel is a reminder of British politics at its saucy

‘Lobbying,’ writes William Waldegrave in this extraordinary memoir, ‘takes many forms.’ But he has surely reported a variant hitherto unrecorded in the annals of politics. The Cardinal Archbishop of Cardiff (‘splendidly robed and well supported by priests and other attendants’) had come to lobby him (then an education minister) against the closure of a Catholic teacher-training college. After discussion the archbishop suggested their respective entourages leave the room. Face to face and alone with Waldegrave, the archbishop told him he had a distinguished 16th-century ancestor, who was a candidate for beatification. The unspoken implication was left hanging. ‘The Roman Catholic college duly closed,’ adds Waldegrave, ‘and I heard no more

What does John Major have in common with Nancy Dell’Olio? Click on the image to read in full. Clearly, a love of speech-writer-style paragraphing, sans-serif fonts, and free drinks. (I’m sure Major’s a lot of fun – he’s always been my favourite prime minister – but would he really have put those words in bold?) The best thing about no longer being a parliamentary candidate is that my inbox has been liberated from its endless national campaign spam. ‘Support us!’ they cried, ‘Then, support us some more!’ Even though I already was. It was inexhaustible briefcase verbiage – written either by someone who hadn’t thought about it all, or, sadly,

Some Labour MPs have been expressing their regret at the fun and games they indulged in to get Jeremy Corbyn onto the leadership contest ballot paper back in the heady days when this was about ‘broadening the debate’, rather than the guy actually having a chance of winning. Now that another poll suggests he could be in with a shot, the fun and games looks rather less fun. That’s why Tony Blair was so forceful this morning, and that’s why MPs such as Tristram Hunt and Chuka Umunna have been so agitated in public about the matter. But those in the party who are horrified that Corbyn is gaining so

Tory MPs are currently hearing from Lynton Crosby at a special meeting of the 1922 Committee on his election victory. Many of them are wryly amused that they are having to applaud a campaign that they found restrictive, uninspiring and negative – and which they think relied on Alex Salmond as a bogeyman, not the Tories’ own appeal in order to win the election. But they will be applauding the Wizard of Oz nonetheless today because whether or not he did, as he claims, know all along that the party would win the election outright, he did run a campaign that led to an election win, and there’s not much point

In the past few minutes, Ipsa has confirmed that it will give MPs a 10 per cent pay rise that means they’ll get £74,000 a year, backdated to 8 May 2015. This, for those who are shouting at their individual MP for giving himself or herself a pay rise, is a decision that MPs cannot resist, although a number of them spoke out in favour of or against the move. David Cameron had pleaded with the independent body to drop plans for the pay hike, but today Ipsa Chair Sir Ian Kennedy said: ‘Parliament gave IPSA the power to deal with the vexed issue of MPs’ pay – independent of

Labour is in an almighty mess at the moment. Those involved in the leadership campaigns are surprised by how the mood in the party has changed from quite open acceptance of a need to change in the days after the election defeat to angry dissent when change is suggested, as evidenced by the reaction to Harriet Harman’s welfare policies this week. The party isn’t quite having a row about what it should stand for at the next election, preferring instead to argue about how it does opposition for the next eight weeks, most of which are in Parliamentary recess. Here are the various options for what Labour does, both in