Uk politics

At last it happened. Benn led Labour. Hilary Benn, grandson of a hereditary peer, stood up at PMQs on behalf of the dispossessed. Gravitas was his chosen register. Radicalisation was his chosen theme. His policy: more cash for cops and teacher to discourage Muslims from joining the death-cult. Let’s hope it works. The SNP’s Angus Robertson asked how Sir John Chilcot is proceeding with his slim volume of research into the Iraq war. Who knows? It’s said that Lord Lloyd Webber has already abandoned his ‘Chilcot the Musical’ project because investors couldn’t agree how many years each performance should last. His spokesman, pressed this morning for a deadline, confirmed that the report will appear, ‘before the decade is out.

On Wednesday at Noon, George Osborne will rise to respond for the government at Prime Minister’s Questions. The symbolism of this moment won’t be lost on anyone on the Tory benches. It will be the start of Osborne’s audition for the top job. A few years ago, the idea of Osborne as Prime Minister was—as one of his backers puts it—‘a minority taste’. But now, he continues, ‘it is a mainstream assumption’. What has changed things is the economic recovery and the Tories’ surprise election victory, which has vindicated Osborne’s political strategy. Osborne, I argue in the Mail on Sunday, has also become a better politician in recent years; more comfortable in his own skin and in public.

David Cameron is now facing the biggest challenge of his leadership: how to renegotiate Britain’s membership of the EU without destroying his party. His dilemma mirrors the situation of Harold Wilson 40 years ago this month. So far, the old Labour man looks the better strategist. Wilson, who had a majority of three, avoided mass resignations from his cabinet by suspending the convention that members of the government must back its entire programme in public. Of his 23 cabinet ministers, seven joined the campaign for Britain to leave the EU. They didn’t win the argument — but they ensured that the question was properly debated, and settled for many years afterwards. David Cameron need only have followed that example.

It is probably reasonably cold comfort to him, given he’s already lost his Cabinet job, but Grant Shapps has today seen a Wikipedia administrator who accused him of editing his own page and those of other ministers reprimanded. Wikipedia conducted an investigation, which concluded there was no evidence Shapps was connected to an account called Contribsx which made edits to his profile. It said the administrator in question, who operated under the name ‘Chase me ladies, I’m the Cavalry’ (but whose real name was Richard Symonds), ‘struggled to provide an accurate timeline’ on blocking the account and coverage of the account in the Guardian.

Over the last few weeks, a string of senior Tories have urged Zac Goldsmith to run for Mayor of London. Goldsmith is, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, regarded by the Tory hierarchy as giving the party the best chance of keeping City Hall blue. In a contest that it will be very difficult for the Tories to win, Goldsmith scrambles the race—what other Tory would get Green second preferences? The attraction of Goldsmith is particularly strong as Nick Ferrari, as Daniel Boffey writes in the Observer, is unlikely to throw his hat in the ring.

Nigel Farage’s latest intervention—declaring that Ukip is ‘going to take the lead making the case for voting to leave the EU in the referendum—neatly sums up the dilemma facing the Out campaign. On the one hand, there’s a danger that if it doesn’t get moving now then the In campaign will have a massive, and possibly insurmountable, advantage by the time the vote is actually called. On the other, if Out is too closely associated with Ukip then it won’t be able to get the 50.1 percent of the vote that it needs to win the referendum. For while Farage might be quite brilliant at motivating the 13 percent who voted Ukip, he also alienates a lot of people too.