Uk politics

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Are poor people really having to bury their loved ones in the back garden?

From our UK edition

One of the most striking stories in today’s papers - and on the front of one of them - is the claim made by Labour’s Emma Lewell-Buck that people on low-incomes are struggling so much with the cost of funerals that they are having to resort to burying them in their back gardens. Lewell-Buck was introducing a well-intentioned bill on the cost of funerals, which has been rising above inflation for a good long while. She told MPs: ‘People are also turning to alternatives to the traditional funeral. Some are holding do-it-yourself funerals, and even having to bury relatives in their back garden. A number of companies are offering cut-price funerals, including “direct” cremations that have no formal service attached to them.

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg’s PMQs challenge

From our UK edition

Nick Clegg is taking Prime Minister’s Questions today, which will at least force the Lib Dem leader to turn up to a major Commons session, rather than bunking off to Cornwall. It’s not just good timing in terms of sorting out Clegg’s truancy rate, but also because Coalition ministers have been taking public pot shots at one another for the past week. Labour will want to exploit those divisions, but Clegg is unlikely to find many Tory backbenchers rallying to his cause, either. The behaviour of the Lib Dems has reminded a lot of Conservatives of their desire to sack the Lib Dems from the Coalition - a desire they still haven’t worked out how to fulfil and that won’t be fulfilled either.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Revealed: the cringeworthy horror of Ukip chat-up lines

From our UK edition

The Roger Bird-Natasha Bolter saga continues. Text messages between the Ukip romantics have revealed by the Telegraph which paint Bolter in a less favourable than Bird. While the Ukip investigation is ongoing, Bird has told Guido that they demonstrate a 'gradual development of the relationship and make it clear that there was no impropriety involved'. That's as maybe, but is there anything proper about text flirting of this appalling calibre? Here are some more text messages from Botler to Bird: Nov 9, 17.26: "I am really missing u bird..." Nov 6, 19.05: "I have sang you praises to Nigel for 12 minutes" Nov 6, 00.24: "U r not coming back and accordingly my life will go back to a meaningless void and it was chance that I met u. But I didn't invent u - u were real...

Isabel Hardman

The Tory voters who are still vulnerable to Ukip

From our UK edition

Today’s conclusion from the British Election Study that Ukip will hurt the Tories far more than it will damage Labour at the General Election is unsurprising, but still important as its warning that the Conservative party could lose nearly two million voters to Nigel Farage’s party underlines the need for the Tories to find a decent solution to Ukip. Thus far the Tories have tended to capitulate to Ukip on policies, with Nigel Farage becoming a think tank for policy development by applying pressure on nervous MPs who eventually secure concessions from David Cameron in the form of policies he didn’t really want to announce.

Monday

Nick Cohen

The last days of the Cameron administration: Part 1 The Gove Delusion

From our UK edition

Faintly stunned Liberal Democrats report that Michael Gove is an absentee chief whip. He is simultaneously there at the coalition whips' meetings but not there: a ghostly presence; a bored, miserable figure who has not forgiven or forgotten David Cameron's decision to demote him from his beloved Education Department. It's dangerous to humiliate a man and then give him the power to humiliate you. Even in the fag end of a fixed-term parliament, which long ago ran out of useful business to conduct, a government needs a good whips office if it is to stay out of trouble. The Cameron government does not have one and is always tripping over its own feet. Defectors run off to Ukip without warning.

Isabel Hardman

Rachel Reeves goes for tribal politics over hard questioning on food banks

From our UK edition

Most people went into Work and Pensions Questions expecting Iain Duncan Smith to be in a tetchy fame of mind following this morning’s report on food banks. As a matter of fact, the Work and Pensions Secretary was very, very keen to tell us as often as he possibly could how ‘seriously’ he was taking that report. And the Opposition, which claims to care a lot more about these matters, completely failed to make productive use of its time grilling him. Some Tory ministers were worried that an impending Labour reshuffle at some point this term might see Rachel Reeves moved on to their patch, as she’s deemed very good in the Chamber.

James Forsyth

We have a choice between competence and chaos, according to the Tories

From our UK edition

Competence versus chaos—that’s what the Tory leadership want to frame the next election as a choice between. Hence George Osborne’s repetition of this phrase five times in one brief interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson. The Tories want to make the voters think that they offer competence and everyone else chaos. As George Osborne puts it, ‘And it’s not just Liberal Democrats, it’s Labour, UKIP, you can put them all into the same mix. What they’re offering is a chaotic alternative of higher taxes, higher borrowing, a return to economic chaos.

Steerpike

Nigel Mills goes cold turkey on crushing candy

From our UK edition

When the Sun found Nigel Mills had spent most of a select committee session playing Candy Crush on his iPad, the MP's first response was to say he'd 'try not to do it in the future'. This sounded rather as though he couldn't promise that he couldn't resist the urge to line up jelly beans and lemon drops, feverishly inviting furious Facebook friends to join in all the while. Since then, the Tory MP has clearly faced up to his addiction and decided to go cold turkey, releasing a statement saying 'I guarantee it will not happen again'. Perhaps he's discovered that Bejeweled is even better...

Isabel Hardman

How long will the fragile consensus on food banks last?

From our UK edition

Frank Field just about managed to hold together a cross-party consensus on the need to tackle hunger in this country at the launch of the ‘Feeding Britain’ report. At the end of the launch, at which Justin Welby and all the politicians involved spoke, the Labour co-chair of the inquiry said brightly ‘there you have it, a range of views and yet we have a united report!’ It was a tricky job though. Baroness Jenkin didn’t help herself by telling the room in a rather garbled response that ‘poor people can’t cook’. Here, for the avoidance of misunderstanding, is her full quote: ‘There is some amazing best practice out there which we want to build on.

Sebastian Payne

Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage are pursuing the same electoral strategy

From our UK edition

What is the reasoning behind Nigel Farage’s recent spate of apparent gaffes? Following his breastfeeding comments last week, the Ukip leader blamed his lateness to an event in Wales on open-door immigration, as well as problems navigating the motorway: ‘It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here - it should have taken three-and-a-half to four. That is nothing to do with professionalism, what it does have to do with is a country in which the population that is going through the roof chiefly because of open-door immigration and the fact that the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be.

Isabel Hardman

Food bank report is a chance to end the toxic political stand-off

From our UK edition

It has been quite difficult for anyone following the growth food banks over the past few years to avoid growing dispirited. The debate in Parliament runs along the lines of the Tories pretending food banks and food bank demand don’t exist and Labour claiming that food banks and rising food bank demands are all the Tories’ fault. This makes for the unedifying spectacle of both parties throwing mud at one another about people going hungry in this country without appearing to make any progress on addressing the many different factors driving families to food banks.

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Ukip hires BBC’s Paul ‘Gobby’ Lambert as new Director of Communications

From our UK edition

Ukip has announced that BBC political producer Paul Lambert will be the party's new Director of Communications. Ukip has offered the job to various prominent figures but it has not been filled full-time since Patrick O'Flynn, another media defector, was elected as an MEP in May. Lambert is one of the most well-known journalists in Westminster, usually found outside Downing Street heckling ministers with awkward questions, hence his nickname of Gobby. Bringing in an experienced Westminster journalist like Lambert is another sign that Ukip are attempting to beef up and professionalise their media operation. It's unlikely Lambert would allow ill-conveived events like the Ukip Carnival to take place.

Isabel Hardman

Coalition wars: What are George Osborne and Nick Clegg up to?

From our UK edition

If the Coalition started cohabiting earlier this year, it has now moved into the phase where the two parties are posting mean things about each other on Facebook and trying to get the kids to take sides. George Osborne has a grump in today’s Sunday Times about the emphasis that the Lib Dems want to place on tax rises to plug the gap after the 2015 election. He writes: ‘The Liberal Democrats are now arguing with themselves, so it’s hard to work out exactly what they think. While they sign up to deficit reduction, they want more tax rises rather than spending cuts. But they shouldn’t pretend to people that the sums required can be achieved by their homes tax alone.

Saturday

Sebastian Payne

Tories attack Nigel Farage over breastfeeding remarks

From our UK edition

Ukip's crisis is the Conservatives' gain. Following Nigel Farage's comments about 'ostentatious' breastfeeding, Conservative HQ have been promoting this graphic online, with a title noting that Farage is 'making it up as he goes along': This kind of graphic is just another example of how the Tories have become more proactive in promoting their point of view on social media over last year, using Twitter as an opportunity to attack others while protecting their position. This Farage one is an example of both: it hits out at Ukip for their perceived flakiness — expect to see much more of this in the coming months — while reminding voters that Ukip also has a problem with female voters.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Should politicians grumble about awkward stories?

From our UK edition

A lot of political types are very cross with the ‘biased media’ today. Ukip is currently the most aerated because some journalists ‘fabricated’ (which is today synonymous with ‘transcribed’) some remarks Nigel Farage made about whether or not restaurants are right to tell women to put napkins over themselves when breastfeeding. Number 10 is very angry with the BBC’s Norman Smith because he talked about the Road to Wigan Pier which is not an OK way of describing the public spending cuts still to come (but the IFS describing them as ‘grotesque’ and ‘colossal’ apparently is). Labour has been annoyed for months that journalists keep pointing out mistakes that Ed Miliband makes.

Isabel Hardman

Nigel Farage: Women should avoid ‘ostentatious’ breastfeeding

From our UK edition

Nigel Farage has waded into the row about a mother being asked to cover up while breastfeeding her baby by suggesting that women should avoid ‘openly ostentatious’ behaviour. The Ukip leader told LBC: ‘I’m not particularly bothered by it but I know that a lot of people do feel very uncomfortable and look, this is just a matter of common sense, isn’t it?’ Nick Ferrari then asked what was common sense. Farage replied: ‘Well, I think that given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isn’t too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that isn’t openly ostentatious.’ He then suggested that breastfeeding women could ‘perhaps sit in the corner’.

Thursday

Steerpike

Tony Blair reaches out to Gove

From our UK edition

Tony Blair has taken some time out from posing awkwardly with his wife in order to pen a piece for the New York Times. While he tries to avoid getting drawn on talking about UK domestic politics explicitly, his feeling are poorly hidden: '...there have grown up powerful interest groups that can stand in the way of substantial and necessary reform. Anyone who has ever tried to reform an education system, for example, knows how tough and bitter a struggle it is. The bureaucracy fights change. The teachers’ unions fight change. The public gets whipped up to defeat change even when it is in the public’s own interest. The nearest I came to losing my job as prime minister was not over policies of war and peace, but over education reforms.

Sebastian Payne

Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe dies, aged 85

From our UK edition

Jeremy Thorpe, the former leader of the Liberal Party, has passed away aged 85, after suffering from Parkinson's disease for many years. Thorpe will unfortunately be best remembered for the affair that ended his career, involving a former male model and a shot dog. The Spectator's Guide to Political Scandals explained what happened: 'Thorpe was a dashing young Liberal MP, elected in 1959 aged 30. A former president of the Oxford Union, everything was falling into place for him. But in 1961 he met Norman Scott, a troubled individual who would plague Thorpe for the rest of his life. Scott claimed that Thorpe had sex with him, an act that would have been illegal at the time. 'In 1962 Thorpe helped Scott avoid a charge of theft.

Sebastian Payne

Revealed: where George Osborne’s axe will fall hardest

From our UK edition

If you think George Osborne has been a mad axe man, just wait to see the cuts he has planned for the next Parliament. To return a budget surplus by the end of the decade, government spending will have to be slashed — but which departments will bear the brunt of his axe? The answer (shown in the above chart) is buried in the OBR's report on the Autumn Statement. Assuming ring fences on health, education and overseas aid spending, 'other' departmental government spending stands to be slashed by 42 per cent, or £61.3 billion over the next five years. The Home Office, Ministry of Defence and Business Department would all be vulnerable.

Fraser Nelson

Breaking: Tory MP Mark Pritchard arrested on rape allegations

From our UK edition

Mark Pritchard, MP for the Wrekin in Shropshire, was arrested on Tuesday following an allegation of rape. The Metropolitan Police said in a statement: 'We can confirm that a 48-year-old man voluntarily attended a north London police station on Tuesday, 2 December where he was arrested, following an allegation of rape in central London. He has been bailed to a date in early January 2015 pending further enquiries.' It wrote said the following in a letter sent to the Speaker's Office: 'I write to inform you that on 2nd December 2014, Mark Pritchard MP was arrested at 6.14pm at Holborn Police Station in London by MPS officers. Mr Pritchard was questioned by police and released on bail later the same evening at 10.16pm.