Uk politics

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Conservative party suspends whip from Sir Malcolm Rifkind

Even if the two MPs caught up in today's sting, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, are found to have done nothing wrong, their parties cannot be seen to be protecting them. Straw was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party last night and this morning Sir Malcolm Rifkind has had the Tory whip removed. Rifkind says he will not stand down as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee unless the Committee calls for him to stand aside. It's difficult to see how he can stay in the role while the investigation into his behaviour takes place. There will also be an immediate investigation carried out by the Tory party, given Rifkind is standing again at the election.

Sebastian Payne

Mini Election: Tim Montgomerie on his plan to fix British conservatism

Is conservatism in Britain broken beyond repair? Tim Montgomerie thinks it’s time for a reformation on the right. In the latest Mini Election video, I speak to the Times columnist and founder of ConservateHome about his new project The Good Right, which sets out his proposals for reuniting and reinvigorating the conservative movement. Given that the Conservative Party hasn’t won a majority since 1992, Montgomerie says the party needs to delve into its history pre-1979 and remember that the state can sometimes deliver the best answers — house building for example.

Isabel Hardman

Tories and Labour to make pledges knowing they are bad policy

This week, the two main parties plan to make iconic pledges that they hope will appeal to their core vote, but that are pretty poor policy. David Cameron will today pledge to keep ‘pensioner perks’ - universal benefits for older voters such as the free bus pass and the winter fuel payment - while Labour expects to announce its new tuition fees policy. The only thing that gives the Tories any sense of moral high ground in this is that they have at least worked out how to fund their pledge, while Labour is still scrapping over the money for and detail of its plan to cut tuition fees. Why are these bad policies?

Friday

Alex Massie

Ruth Davidson’s Blue-collar Conservatism subtly rebukes David Cameron

Today's Scottish Conservative conference in Edinburgh proved unexpectedly interesting. No, really. Or, rather, yes, really. Or whatever. David Cameron spoke, you see, and so did Ruth Davidson and they said very different things. For important Prime Ministerial timetabling reasons (ie, he needed to get back to London) Cameron spoke first and thus, unusually, served as the warm-up guy. Which merely helped emphasise the difference between what the Prime Minister said and what the Scottish Tory leader had to say. Some of this was a question of substance.Cameron declared that the national question is "settled" whereas Davidson warned that "This isn't over and it hasn't gone away". Only one of them can be right and it's not the Prime Minister.

Isabel Hardman

Politicians needn’t be so afraid of saying what they think

Politicians know they need to be more natural, less spun, and more honest about what they think. But most of them carry on sounding unnatural, spin-doctored and cagey because they’re worried about the media will do to them if they speak their minds. They fear being pounced upon by journalists keen to write up their latest ‘gaffe’. But this week we’ve seen two politicians saying what they think without any major repercussions. Example one comes from Boris Johnson in his interview with Tim Shipman. The Mayor was asked whether he watched Coronation Street or Eastenders: ‘Um. What a world we live in where you are felt to be out of touch if you don’t watch these things. Why should I? It’s ridiculous, totally ridiculous. Dirty Den, that was EastEnders.

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s tuition fees moment

Could Labour’s tuition fees policy be its own tuition fees moment, of the same order as the moment it endlessly needles the Lib Dems about? Well, the decision, when it’s made, won’t have the same dramatic effect as the Lib Dem about turn in 2010, because Labour candidates haven’t been posing with signed pledges and smiling students promising that they’ll do one thing while their party slowly realises that it really should do another. In any case, it does look as though the party will, in one way or another, maintain its promise to cap the fees at a lower level than the £9,000 that the Coalition raised them to, even if this is only for technical degrees or, as I reported recently, ‘useful’ subjects. The talks are still going on.

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Dodginess from Tacitus to Ed Miliband

‘I hate Jammie Dodgers,’ said my husband staring disdainfully at a biscuit kindly tucked into his coffee saucer at an after-church gathering. I’m glad only I heard. But the fact is that we British generally admire dodgers. Dickens came up with a fine sobriquet when he gave John Dawkins the nickname the Artful Dodger. As in real life, he was often referred to simply as the Artful. Artful of course meant ‘cunning’ or ‘deceitful’ — high praise. Earlier in the story, Mr Bumble had called Oliver Twist ‘artful and designing’, admittedly not in praise. And in The Pickwick Papers, the novel before Oliver Twist, Sam Weller calls a trick played on them by Job Trotter an ‘artful dodge’.

Robert Hardman

Escape to victory

Breakfast is under way on 8 May 2015, and the party leaders have already started haggling. The possibility of a loveless Labour/SNP ‘anti-austerity’ pact has sent the markets tumbling. With the largest number of seats but no overall majority, the Tories are making eyes at the least un-attractive potential bedfellows. Assorted pressure groups are trying to rekindle the same ‘Purple Protest’ movement which sought to exploit the political void immediately after the 2010 election. Having spent all night telling the television cameras that all this voting stuff is, like, rubbish, an exhausted Russell Brand urges his followers to rise up and do, er, something. But the protestors find that the streets are already full of people.

James Forsyth

How bad are things for the Liberal Democrats?

One of the most remarkable things about this parliament is how the Liberal Democrats have continued to hold their nerve in the face of truly dire poll ratings. Now, partly this is because the Lib Dems are a cussed lot and don’t want to give the media the satisfaction of seeing them squeal. But it is also because their own extensive seat polling, they’ve spent £350 thousand on it in the last couple of years, makes them confident that they will do better than anyone thinks they will. Party figures familiar with the polling, present numbers that show them to be competitive in, for example, Cardiff Central; a seat that most people think they have no chance of holding on to.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband to Cameron: show us your EU renegotiation policy

Ed Miliband has sent an angry letter to David Cameron this afternoon, demanding that he ‘set out in detail a reform agenda for the EU and a strategy for building the alliances needed to deliver it’. Now, David Cameron is quite used to receiving angry letters about Europe, but mostly they come from members of his own party rather than the leader of the Opposition. But because Ed Miliband has decided that his party’s best business policy is actually the responsibility of his Shadow Foreign Office team, he wants to get in on the angry letter-writing act too. This letter is supposed to highlight that pro-business policy, which is Labour’s opposition to an EU referendum, as well as needling Cameron a bit about whether he really holds enough influence in Europe.

Sebastian Payne

Five things you need to know about the latest political donations report

£20 million — that’s how much money was donated to the political parties in the last quarter of 2014. The Electoral Commission has released their latest report on political donations and unsurprisingly given the election campaign, more money is being thrown about. Over £5 million more was donated in Q4 last year compared to Q3. Above you can see the top ten donors to all parties during that period. Here are five things you need to know about the report. 1. Labour is still bankrolled by the unions…and PWC [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/19oCf/index.html"] Labour’s reliance on donations from the big trade unions continues. Unison, Unite and GMB all donated over £1 million to Labour while USDAW put £417k into their coffers.

James Forsyth

Why the Lib Dems aren’t scared of this election (and why they should be)

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Viewfrom22-19Feb2015.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the disappearing Lib Dems" startat=937] Listen [/audioplayer]One of the most remarkable features of this parliament has been the sangfroid of the Liberal Democrats. Nothing seems to shake them. The mood of the two main parties is often dictated by the latest opinion polls, but the Liberal Democrats simply laugh off each record low. They weren’t even rattled by the British Election Study, which claimed that on its current performance the party will only win one seat. What explains this calmness under fire? First, the Lib Dems are determined not to give the media the pleasure of seeing them squeal.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Will Cameron’s new benefits policy ever take off?

Will the Tories really dock benefits from obese people and those with drug or alcohol addictions if they refuse treatment? Even though David Cameron reaffirmed his commitment to the policy in his speech in Hove yesterday, anyone who is getting rather over-excited about it could probably expend their energy on something else as this looks suspiciously like one of those policy kites that gets flown from time to time. In the Times today, I point out that the idea cropped up several times under Labour as well as the Tories. The reason that this latest incarnation of the ‘sick people, get treatment or lose benefits’ policy might not ever become a proper policy is that it’s just one of the proposals in the review that Dame Carol Black is conducting.

Isabel Hardman

Tories try to derail plain packaging vote

Opponents of plain packaging for cigarettes are trying to work out how to derail the vote in the Commons introducing the law, Coffee House has learned. There is considerable frustration in the party that plain packaging is being introduced so close to the election, as MPs feel it is a distraction from the campaign. Other Tories still think it betrays their values as a party. I understand that MPs are considering tabling a motion that calls for the packaging policy to be extended to anything that is vaguely bad for health, including alcohol and sugar-rich food such as Frosties. This is of course to make a point rather than because the MPs have suddenly decided that Andy Burnham is right.

Sebastian Payne

Record employment figures create more problems for Labour

Britain has reached its highest ever level of employment. According to new figures from the ONS, the employment rate has risen to 73.2 per cent — or close to 31 million people in work. This stands as the joint highest rate since records began in 1971. Unemployment is down to 1.86 million. The short-term jobless rate is also at its lowest rate since 1992. Pay is also increasing, with private sector earnings (excluding bonuses) up 2.1 per cent year-on-year at the end of 2014. Youth unemployment has increased slightly, something Esther McVey has described as a 'tiny blip.' But never in British history have there been so many job vacancies. Never have there been so many workers. These are just two facts from today's job figures, loaded with good news for David Cameron.

Isabel Hardman

Tories and the Church: the 30-year war continues

Here are some observations from the ‘incendiary’ letter from the House of Bishops that has upset the Tories so much. ‘Our electoral system often means that the outcomes turn on a very small group of people within the overall electorate. Greater social mobility and the erosion of old loyalties to place or class mean that all the parties struggle to maintain their loyal core of voters whilst reaching out to those who might yet be swayed their way. The result is that any capacious political vision is stifled.’ ‘Instead, parties generate policies targeted at specific demographic groupings, fashioned by expediency rather than vision or even consistency.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Peter Oborne has performed a great public service today

Well, this is awkward. Peter Oborne is a friend and The Spectator shares a proprietor with The Daily Telegraph. So there is a danger that anything written in this space will seem craven or kowtowing. Nevertheless, Peter, late of this parish and now late of the Telegraph too, has performed a public service today by resigning his post as the Telegraph’s Chief Political Commentator. He is a man of great conviction and deep principle. Often mistaken, perhaps, but always magnificently worthwhile. His suggestion that the Telegraph has, shall we say, a rather too cosy relationship with some of its advertisers - and especially with HSBC - is not the kind of allegation made without good cause or serious consideration.

Isabel Hardman

Labour tries to resuscitate tax row

Presumably as a way of getting out of an endless debate about receipts, Ed Balls has issued a letter with some detailed questions about tax evasion and HSBC (as opposed to tax avoidance and window cleaners). The letter asks three questions: 1. Why has there only been one prosecution out of 1,100 names? Was the “selective prosecution policy” a decision made by Ministers? 2. When were you first made aware of these files, what action did you take and did you discuss it with the Prime Minister? 3. Why did you and David Cameron appoint Lord Green as a Conservative peer and Minister months after the government received these files? 4. Did you and David Cameron discuss tax evasion at HSBC with Lord Green, or did you turn a blind eye?

Sebastian Payne

Inflation sinks to a record low — and is set to fall even further

Inflation fell to 0.3 per cent in January, the lowest level since records began in 1989. As the above chart shows, the government’s target of two per cent CPI inflation is now a long way off. The ONS has attributed the slow down to falling fuel and food prices — the latter is thanks to the on-going supermarket price wars. As Citibank’s Michael Saunders explains in his invaluable economics briefing (pdf), the weakness is concentrated in food, fuel and energy. Excluding energy, tobacco and alcohol, the year-on-year inflation level was 1.4 per cent, up from 1.

Alex Massie

Bold new Tory election strategy: Tax cuts for our chums; welfare cuts for you

"There's a lot we need to do in this party of ours. Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies. You know what some people call us - the nasty party." Theresa May, October 8th 2002. February 17th 2015, David Cameron announces plans to make 50,000 youths spend 30 hours a week on community service schemes to keep their "Youth Allowance" benefits. The Youth Allowance, by the way, is £57 a week. And today's announcement follows suggestions that fat people should lose access to benefits unless they lose weight. Look, it's not the goal that's the problem here. When Cameron says there is a moral quality to reducing the benefits bill he is not wrong. When he says there are people who could work  - and with the right assistance can work - he is not wrong.