Uk politics

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

George Osborne appears to have delivered a successful Autumn Statement, but are there some dark secrets in the details? In this week's View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and I discuss the Chancellor's last major economic speech of this Parliament, the political consequences of the new measures announced and what it means for the next election.