Uk politics

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Tory eurosceptics plot to use loss in Rochester to pressure Cameron

Labour might be mired in misery this week, but at least it can take comfort that around the corner is the Rochester by-election, which the Conservatives look set to lose. Not one MP returning from campaigning against their former colleague Mark Reckless honestly thinks they'll win, even if they tweet nice things and post aggressive videos. Let's just remind ourselves of why losing this constituency is particularly painful for the Conservatives. They spent their conference calling Reckless a 'dickhead' and saying they thought they could win the by-election because he was a liar, and he didn't have the same personal appeal as Douglas Carswell in a constituency considered far less Ukip-friendly.

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs react to Osborne’s ‘EU bill deal’

So are Tory backbenchers happy with what George Osborne claims to have brought back from Europe after his talks on that £1.7 billion bill? While the government argues with the European Commission about what it has and hasn't secured this afternoon, the Right of the Tory party have already been working out what they think. Some had set a very low limbo bar of £400 million, and Britain certainly will end up paying more than that. The first thing is that they're naturally not happy with the idea that Britain is paying anything. The basic view of those in the No Turning Back and Cornerstone groups is that Osborne should have turned around to the Commission and say 'sorry chaps, we'll see you in court about this', given the court action would take place after the election.

Anne Jolis

Smoke, mirrors, magic: how George Osborne “halved” the £1.7bn EU bill

George Osborne took a victory lap on Friday to declare that 'instead of footing the bill, we have halved the bill.' This would be the £1.7 billion EU budget invoice the European Commission handed to the UK government in October, with a pay-by date of 1 December. After meeting with his EU counterparts today, the UK finance minister announced a deal in which 'the bill instead of being £1.7 billion will be around £850 million'. Er...not quite, as it turns out. Here's what Osborne left out: the UK will still owe the full £1.7 billion, only not all in December, and would be able to quickly offset part of the cost with its usual rebate on EU contributions.

James Forsyth

Osborne gets Britain’s £1.7bn bill halved—and no payments before the election

Update: In the last few hours, there has been huge confusion and heated debate over whether the British bill has actually been halved. Click here for the verdict of Open Europe which concludes that ‘ Osborne [is] right on the amount but may be exaggerated the extent of the concession.’ A deal has been reached over the supplementary £1.7 billion bill that Britain was handed by the European Commission a fortnight ago. Britain will now pay no more than £850 million, a halving of the bill. George Osborne insisted that the Commission apply the ‘British advantage’ element of the rebate to the bill which led to this 50% reduction.

Alex Massie

Alex Salmond’s School of Denial

Alex Salmond is on his way out. The First Minister gives every impression of enjoying - or at least making the most of - his farewell tour. And why not? Far from weakening the SNP, defeat in September's referendum has - at least for now - strengthened the party. Its supremacy is unchallenged and while recent polls putting the Nationalists on 50 percent of the vote are unlikely - surely! - to last forever this is the kind of problem worth having. Nevertheless, the First Minister's final days in office have also reminded us that policy and, indeed, philosophy are not necessarily Salmond's strengths. Unusually, First Minister's Questions proved a useful exercise this week. Both Jackie Baillie, Labour's temporary head at Holyrood, and Ruth Davidson pressed Salmond on education.

Isabel Hardman

Why Labour unrest is getting so much attention

Labour types are in an aggressive mood this morning. Why are the newspapers and the BBC setting such store by just two MPs who apparently want their leader gone when the Tory party has around ten times that number of committed malcontents, they grumble? Peter Hain was particularly defensive this morning, suggesting that all Ed Miliband's supposed woes are actually part of a plot by the Daily Mail. First, here's an attempt to explain the media excitement about the threat to Miliband.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Are Zoe Williams and the fatuous Left mad or disingenuous?

Today I went on the Daily Politics, presented by Andrew Neil. Talked about a bunch of stuff and then debated the issue of political correctness with Zoe Williams, from The Guardian. Look, I like Zoe. She’s ok. But she tried to argue that all the recent revelations about the sexual abuse of young white girls by Muslim men in places such as Rotherham (and about sixty other towns) went undiscovered for reasons which had nothing to do with political correctness. This is either mad, or disingenuous. Even the local Labour MPs who at the very least turned a blind eye to what was going on have admitted that a reluctance to stir up trouble with the local Pakistani or Bangladeshi community lay behind their lack of interest in the stories of sexual abuse.

Ed West

There is no such thing as ‘immigrants’ – only Poles, Yanks, Somalis…

There was much glee about yesterday’s publication of a report into the economic impact of immigration, which concluded eastern Europeans had provided a net benefit of £4.4 billion to the UK economy. There was far less mention of the fact that immigrants from outside Europe in the same period cost the taxpayers £118 billion. But as Christopher Caldwell observed in Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, the immigration debate is not about economics, for ‘the social, spiritual, and political effects of immigration are huge and enduring, while the economic effects are puny and transitory. If, like certain Europeans, you are infuriated by polyglot markets and street signs written in Polish, Urdu, and Arabic, sacrificing 0.

Isabel Hardman

How serious is the threat to Ed Miliband?

There are apparently two Labour MPs who have called for Ed Miliband to step aside. That just two from Ed Miliband's party are openly moving against him while some estimates put the number of letters calling for a vote of no confidence in David Cameron at 22 shows the difference in personality and practice between the two parties. Labour is markedly unhappier than the Tories (who don't resemble sunbeams themselves at present), and Ed Miliband polls below his party, while the opposite is true for David Cameron. Labour is not a party that manages to pull off pre-election regicide that effectively. For the past few years in opposition, it hasn't even been a party where open dissent is that common.

Isabel Hardman

European Arrest Warrant rebels predict only 30 will defy government

In the Commons this morning, William Hague confirmed Coffee House's story that the government will hold its vote on opting back into the European Arrest Warrant on Monday. He said the joint committee working on the relevant statutory instrument hadn't finished working, but that the House of Commons would vote on it on Monday. But the troublesome pre-Rochester rebellion is apparently shrinking, MPs tell me. Those on both sides expect only around 30 rebels against the government now, where previously up to 100 had been expected. There are a number of reasons for the fall in numbers.

Jane Kelly

Old, vulnerable and hungry – the shocking view from inside the NHS

I am leaving London soon, coming to the end of my time as a voluntary hospital visitor working from a chaplaincy in a London teaching hospital. I have been roaming around a variety of wards for the last three years, only one day a week, but in those few hours I have seen quite a lot. The most disturbing things have been the poor quality food, which cannot aid anyone’s recovery, and the neglect of the very old and vulnerable, the patients rather ominously labelled ‘bed blockers’. On my last visit, the Anglican chaplain was not in the hospital, so instead of attending a morning service with him in the hospital chapel, I went up onto the wards early, at breakfast time. In one ward there is a neighbour of mine, an old man I’ve known for years.

Christopher Caldwell

What Angela Merkel really wants (it’s not good news for Dave)

Angela Merkel is misunderstood. Last winter, when Russia moved to annex Crimea after the overthrow of Ukraine’s government, American officials put it about that the German Chancellor had described Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin as ‘living in another world’ and ‘out of touch with reality’. No evidence has emerged that she ever said any such thing. Europhiles in the press and in Westminster have now pulled the same trick on David Cameron. The Prime Minister has lately been ruminating about quotas for migrants from certain European Union countries. He complained last month when an unannounced £1.7 billion upward adjustment in Britain’s EU payment turned out to be triple the levy on anyone else.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Miliband promotes allies in post-Murphy Shadow Cabinet reshuffle

The post-Jim Murphy Labour reshuffle has arrived, and while it's not particularly seismic, it still tells us some interesting things about Ed Miliband's thinking. The Labour leader has replaced the former Shadow International Development Secretary with Mary Creagh, which means it can't be described as a consolation prize (something development campaigners were wary of as they'd rather someone who wanted the job, thank you). Creagh has a reputation in her party for being formidably well-briefed (although she managed to disappoint regional newspapers recently), and was particularly impressive in her last role but one as Shadow Environment Secretary when the horse meat scandal broke.

Isabel Hardman

The cruel kernel of truth in Jean-Claude Juncker’s huffing and puffing

David Cameron's desire to renegotiate Britain's relationship with Europe means we'll hear plenty of huffing and puffing from various bigwigs on the continent over the next few years. The trick for Cameron, as James said on Monday, is to work out when this huffing is just bluffing and when it's actually an expression of a serious intention. Today's grouching from Jean-Claude Juncker, in which the new president of the European Commission complained about 'certain Prime Ministers' objecting to the extra bills foisted upon them two weeks ago, probably doesn't tell us a great deal about the outcome of the Prime Minister's renegotiation.

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: No poppy for Harman, Miliband on the attack, Cameron in transcendental-parrot mode

Was that a pop at Hattie? Ed Miliband began PMQs by evoking the centenary of the Great War. ‘We will all be wearing our poppies with particular pride this year,’ he said. And every eye ran along Labour’s front bench to count off the crimson blooms. Balls, poppy. Miliband poppy. Harman, poppy. No, wait. As you were. Harman, no poppy! Her chic, double-breasted grey jacket bore no tribute to the fallen. But I expect it’s a CND thing. All the same, Miliband should send her out to buy one. Tuppence ought to do it. The Labour leader needed a win today. Badly. His poll ratings have dipped to the same level as Gordon Brown’s in 2010, but at least Brown had the excuse of being in a fag-end administration led by a scowling narcissistic tax-junkie.

James Forsyth

Miliband corners Cameron on immigration at listless PMQs

The Commons has a rather listless feel to it at the moment. Today’s PMQs will not live long in the memory. Ed Miliband’s strategy was to get David Cameron to say as often as possible that he wants to stay in the EU, with the hope that this would drive a wedge between Cameron and his backbenchers. This tactic was, as far as it went, quite effective. Cameron repeatedly said that he wanted to stay in a reformed EU, and wasn’t prepared to say explicitly that he would be prepared to campaign for an exit if he didn’t get what he wanted out of the renegotiation.

Isabel Hardman

Tories to lose nine seats to Labour in latest Ashcroft poll

Lord Ashcroft's polls are, as a rule, very rarely good news for the Tories these days - the peer clearly hopes that he's at least warned the party before it goes over the top - and his latest tranche of surveys in marginal seats proves that rule. The peer examined 12 marginal seats where the Conservatives lead Labour with majorities as low as 1,936 and as high as 3,744. Here's what you need to know: 1. Across the 12 seats, Labour led the Tories by 36 per cent to 33 per cent, with just three seats remaining with the Tories: Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) and Blackpool North & Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). But the Labour leads are very slim. The biggest was a 9 per cent lead on a 7 per cent swing in Bury North. 2.

Isabel Hardman

Sajid Javid tries to cool mobile phone row with Theresa May

If Theresa May wants to have a public row with Sajid Javid, the Culture Secretary doesn't seem particularly keen on continuing it. He tried his best to avoid jumping into a war of words with the Home Secretary, whose leaked correspondence warning that his plan to make mobile phone companies fill in 'not-spots' (areas with no coverage) could make it more difficult for intelligence agencies to thwart terrorist attacks are splashed over the front of the Times. Javid said: 'The Home Secretary, like every other member of the Government, fully supports this strategy that we’re setting out today. Well, the reason this is a consultation is because this stage we want to look carefully at each solution.