Uk politics

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Ministers to introduce plain-packaging for cigarettes

The government has finally decided to bring in plain packaging laws for cigarettes. This U-turn is a sort of U-turn because MPs will get a free vote on it, after David Cameron recognised the depth of feeling in his party on the issue, so the government has decided to bring in plain packaging, but in as gentle a way as possible. In fact, it is a rotation through 360 degrees, as the original position had been in favour of plain packaging, which was then reversed in 2013. There will be a sizeable chunk of Conservative MPs who oppose the measure, which public health minister Jane Ellison says is a ‘proportionate

James Forsyth

Tory MPs split over how far to push English votes for English laws

Tory backbenchers have just finished a long meeting about English Votes for English Laws. The 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers have just spent the last hour and a bit debating the matter with William Hague in attendance. The question at issue was whether the Tories should bar all MPs other than English ones from voting on English-only issues. Or, whether they should limit their plans to only allowing English MPs to vote on English laws at committee stage and giving them a veto before third reading. The leadership is thought to favour the latter option and Malcolm Rifkind and Ken Clarke both spoke up for it. But there was considerable

Isabel Hardman

Could Britain cope with a minority Coalition government?

For all the obsessing about whether Nick Clegg would prefer to be in government with the Tories or Labour after the next election, there is very little discussion of what happens if that just isn’t enough. On 8 May 2015 we could find ourselves with a parliament made up both of a largest party too small for a majority government and a third party too small to form a stable two-party coalition government. If the Tories fail to gain seats, or lose a few, and the Lib Dems have a terrible night too, then they will still need MPs from another party to prop them up. So who do they

James Forsyth

PMQs: Cameron canters home

David Cameron cantered home at PMQs today. Armed with both good employment numbers, praise from Obama and the IMF for the UK economy and the delay in publication to the Chilcot Report, he held off Miliband with ease. The Labour leader, so feisty last week, seemed oddly listless today, getting animated only when he accused Cameron of running scared of TV debates. Cameron, by contrast, seemed to be enjoying himself. He even found time to mock Miliband’s disastrous stint as a house guest in Doncaster, as chronicled in the Mail on Sunday at the weekend. Perhaps, though, the most significant moment of the session came right at the end when

Alex Massie

Delaying publication of the Chilcot report is the right thing to do

I don’t know about you but I tend to think Sir John Chilcot’s report into the Iraq war should not be published before it is finished. Actually, I do know about you and I know I hold to the minority view on this matter. So be it. Fashionable opinion is not on my side. Then again, fashionable opinion thinks Tony Blair is a war criminal so we may safely treat fashionable opinion with the contempt it has earned. It can go hang. Nevertheless, as Isabel says this new delay will feed a perception the report is crooked. That is, zoomers zoom and morons gonna moron and there’s nothing anyone else can do

Isabel Hardman

Chilcot delay will feed suspicions about politics, not just the inquiry

Even though publication of the Chilcot report in the weeks before a General Election would have hardly been ideal, it would have been better than it being delayed until after voters make their decision in May. Patrick Wintour’s story in today’s Guardian confirms that the report is being held up while those named in it respond to the allegations against them. Politicians are furious, partly because they know the public will be unimpressed. Nick Clegg aptly summed it up in his letter to Sir John Chilcot last night, saying ‘there is a real danger the public will assume the report is being ‘sexed down’ by individuals rebutting criticisms put to

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Are the Blairites sitting comfortably for Labour’s election campaign?

Lord Mandelson likes to think he knows a thing or two about Labour winning elections. So it’s odd that the man so keen on message discipline should start sticking his oar into the debate about Labour’s policies with just weeks to go before the General Election. Is it that the Labour peer doesn’t think Labour will win and so was throwing caution to the wind by popping up on Newsnight to call the Mansion Tax crude and say the Lib Dems had a better-designed policy? To make matters more bizarre, he found himself being congratulated by Diane Abbott of all people, with the leftwing hopeful for Labour’s mayoral candidacy saying

Isabel Hardman

Could Labour limit its tuition fee cap to ‘useful’ subjects?

One of the really big policy areas that Labour has yet to resolve before the General Election is how it can lower the cap on tuition fees to £6,000. University Vice-Chancellors have been in talks with the party for a very long time, and have been urging Ed Balls and Ed Miliband to get on with making a decision about their future funding arrangements. One of the things delaying this decision is that there isn’t really enough money to get the cap down to £6,000 for all degrees. A couple of the papers have suggested in the past few days that the party may only lower the cap for technical

Isabel Hardman

PM and Education Secretary at odds over Page 3

The ministers covering women and equalities do have a view on the disappearance of topless Page 3 models, but the Prime Minister apparently doesn’t. Today Nicky Morgan called the decision of The Sun to put something over at least a portion of the breasts of the women in its paper ‘a long overdue decision and marks a small but significant step towards improving media portrayal of women and girls. I very much hope it remains permanent’. Her Lib Dem colleague Jo Swinson said she was delighted that the old fashioned sexism of Page 3 could soon be a thing of the past’ and called on the newspaper’s editors ‘to consider whether

Isabel Hardman

Ukip is sticking to the mainstream line on the NHS

One  reason that Ukip seems rather quiet at the moment is that it doesn’t have very much policy to talk about. And one reason for that is that there’s a row going on over the slow progress of the party’s manifesto. The Times today says Ukip has sacked Tim Aker from writing the manifesto – as Seb pointed out recently, he did have rather a lot to do, what with being a Ukip councillor, fighting for the party in a marginal seat and writing the manifesto – because he was running behind deadline. But one thing we can be certain of is that Ukip’s manifesto, when it does come out, will play

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Team Boris are catching ‘interesting fish’

Who are the latest contenders in the Tory leadership battle and how much support do they have? That’s the question that Tory MPs and pundits love to chew over, even though there is no contest. The latest fixation is whether George Osborne has rowed behind the Boris campaign. James looked at this yesterday, revealing that Boris might quite fancy taking over from David Cameron after an EU referendum in 2017. Of course, the funny thing is that there isn’t a leadership contest because David Cameron is currently secure as Prime Minister. And as I explain in today’s Evening Standard, he could be secure for a while longer – where Tory

Isabel Hardman

Chuka Umunna shouldn’t have lost his temper on TV. But he was right to refuse to comment on something he hadn’t read

Chuka Umunna’s fit of pique at the end of his Sky interview was unnecessary. One of the skills of a politician who fancies being a leader is to look calm and reasonable in the face of unreasonable questions. But to be fair to Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, there is nothing wrong with refusing to comment on something you don’t know enough about. There’s something very off-putting and insincere about a politician who blags their way through an interview or panel session like an English student pontificating their way through a seminar on a book they never bothered to read. He could have read those detailed media briefings that Labour sends

Sebastian Payne

Green Party up to 11 per cent in latest Ashcroft poll

After overtaking Ukip in membership stakes, the Greens are now snapping at its heels in the polls. According to Lord Ashcroft’s latest poll, 11 per cent are now intending to vote Green — up from eight per cent last week. As the chart above shows, this puts them four points behind Ukip. The party has come a long way since the last election, where they gained just 0.9 per cent of the vote. As Natalie Bennett acknowledged this morning, the Green Party is getting more help from David Cameron than it ever imagined. The natural assumption is that the Green vote is primarily coming from Labour — but its vote has remained steady from last week’s poll.

Toby Young

Archbishop John Sentamu is wrong about free schools on every count

John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, has never been shy about courting publicity. He frequently churns out controversial opinion pieces for the red-tops and, just in case they don’t receive enough attention, he’s in the habit of re-issuing them as ‘press releases’. (You can see a list of the most recent here). He has opinions on almost everything, from same-sex marriage (against) to William and Kate’s decision to live together before their wedding (in favour). But with his latest outburst about free schools, the tabloid bishop has jumped the shark. Free schools, according to Sentamu, only benefit the well-off and divert millions of pounds from more deserving neighbouring state schools.

Sebastian Payne

Watch: Green leader Natalie Bennett backs Cameron on TV debates

What are you afraid of boys? The Green Party posed this question on Westminster’s College Green this morning as they launched a new poster campaign (driven around on pedal bikes, natch) calling for the Greens to be involved in the TV leaders debates. Leader Natalie Bennett also announced that the party’s membership is up to 44,175 today — 52,000 including Scotland. I asked Bennett how she feels about being used by the Prime Minister for his own political gains. She doesn’t seem to mind too much: ‘Mr Cameron is certainly speaking for his own political advantage – but he’s only able to do that because it’s a fair and responsible thing to

Isabel Hardman

Parties stick in comfort zones for another Monday of campaigning

It’s another election Monday and the three parties are still hanging about in their comfort zones, even though they appear to have moved on to other topics. David Cameron is talking about the economy, but with a softer, nicer-sounding edge that has riled some on the Left because it involves him talking about full employment, which is something Beveridge was a fan of, and pay rises, which is something Labour says it wants more (while backing the public sector pay freeze).The Prime Minister will give a speech promising to expand the start-up loans to help 50,000 more entrepreneurs set up business using a £300 million pot. The Prime Minister wants

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Why is Nick Clegg so happy?

Nick Clegg always seems oddly upbeat when he’s doing interviews about just how badly his party could do in the General Election. Today when Andrew Marr asked him about Iain Dale’s prediction the Lib Dems will lose at least half their seats, Clegg said ‘I really don’t think thats going to happen’ and that ‘we will do so much better than the pundits are predicting’. The Lib Dems currently have 56 seats (the 57th, Mike Hancock, had the whip withdrawn last year), and this election forecast suggests they’ll end up with 27. The sense in the party is that this will be just about OK, but go much lower than 25 and

Bill Morgan

The coalition government is not blame for the latest NHS ‘crisis’

Of all the accusations thrust at the Conservatives by Labour over the NHS in recent weeks, their weakest has been the attempt to blame the Government’s reforms to the NHS for the pressures it is facing. Some will recall that we have been here before. In winter 2010, waiting times lengthened as the NHS was shaken by a serious flu outbreak. On that occasion, a shortage of critical care beds in the [pre-reform] NHS inherited from Labour meant that huge numbers of operations had to be cancelled. Though the problem was rapidly rectified, that did not stop Labour calling out a ‘crisis’ on the NHS, and blaming the reforms even

James Forsyth

Why Boris and the Tory leadership are playing nicely

For most of this parliament, Downing Street has been thoroughly paranoid about Boris Johnson and his intentions. Any attempt by the Mayor to reach out to Tory MPs was met with deep suspicion. But now, the Tory leadership is actively pushing Boris to see Tory MPs — he was even invited to join the Whips for a Whips Supper at Boisdale last week. This is all evidence of the unspoken deal between Boris and the Tory leadership. He will be loyal and campaign hard for Cameron. In exchange, it will allow him to cultivate Tory MPs; helping him to rectify his biggest weakness ahead of any Tory leadership contest. These

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron and Obama: Friends4eva

David Cameron and Barack Obama have just finished giving a rather cutesy and extremely verbose press conference following the reinvigorating of their bromance/serious talks on the economy and counter-terrorism. The pair structured their opening statements to mirror one another, with each opening with a little tribute to the other. Obama said Cameron was a ‘great friend’ and ‘one of my closest and trusted partners in the world, while Cameron said Obama was a ‘great friend to Britain and to me personally’. A good friend indeed: Obama is basically doing everything he can to help Cameron be re-elected in this country. One of the most useful quotes is the one from the