Uk politics

It didn’t work. But it was a good idea. David Cameron prepared an ambush for Ed Miliband at PMQs today. The trouble was he attacked the Labour leader for a vice he himself has mastered with conspicuous aplomb: question dodging. Miliband is clearly in trouble. He’s using his only remaining strength, the NHS, to prop up his burgeoning weaknesses. Expect this to continue till next May. There’s always a calamity somewhere in the NHS and for Miliband, ill tidings are like gold dust. He painted a picture of a basket-case health system that would have shamed a failed state in the Middle Ages. Cameron, he said, wasted billions on a massive inter-departmental rejig when he came to power.

It is a bold approach but, who knows, perhaps it is just crazy enough to work. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a strategy on immigration best summarised like this: UKIP ARE RIGHT. DON'T VOTE FOR THEM. Thank heavens for Ed Miliband, eh? He's the Tories' last, best, weapon. What a cheery thought that is.

Everyone's favourite unelected European was doing the broadcasting rounds this morning, popping up on the BBC's Andrew Marr show to tell David Cameron that he can forget any plans to cap the number of EU immigrants in Britain. Here's what José Manuel Barroso had to say:- "Any kind of arbitrary cap seems to be not in conformity with Europeans laws. For us it is very important – the principle of non-discrimination. The freedom of movement is a very important principle in the internal market: movement of goods, of capital, of services and of people. By the way, I remember when prime minister Cameron called me to ask the commission to be tough ensuring the freedom of movement between Gibraltar and Spain.

One of the bits of their Parliamentary party meeting this week that cheered Conservative MPs the most was a speech by Tracey Crouch on why the Tories could win the Rochester and Strood by-election. Many of her colleagues who like to spend their spare time staring at spreadsheets are sincerely worried that the party could lose the seat, leading to all hell breaking loose in the party. Crouch, who represents the neighbouring constituency and will act as the campaign aide to the candidate once she is selected (the shortlist in the postal primary is a choice between two women), told the room that the demographic of Rochester favours the Conservatives far more than that in Clacton: it has fewer pensioners, more professionals and the voters are on higher incomes.

Is Number 10 really preparing for a U-turn on the European Arrest Warrant? After Coffee House reported some odd manoeuvres by chief whip Michael Gove involving him suggesting to Tory MPs that it might be better for the government not to opt back into the EAW, the topic came up at this afternoon's lobby briefing. The Number 10 spokesperson told journalists that: 'The government has set out the areas where it is, in principle, seeking to opt back in. We want to secure European agreement on that and then we will take a final view on which ones we opt back into.' That sounds rather like there is room for a shift. But a Number 10 source is insisting to me that 'there is no change'.