Uk politics

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_23_January_2014_v4.mp3" title="Charlotte Leslie and James Forsyth join Sebastian Payne to discuss the NHS." startat=1410] Listen [/audioplayer] As someone who believes that a Labour government would be a calamity for Britain, I ought not to mind the recent fuss about NHS Wales. Yes, it is a disaster – as the Daily Mail has been cleverly highlighting. And it has been run by Labour for 15 years, so they're guilty as charged. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, makes this point powerfully today. But if the English NHS is much better by comparison to Wales, it’s not because of him, nor because of David Cameron. It’s because of Tony Blair.

With truly dreadful timing, the European Commission has sprung David Cameron with a demand for £1.7 billion in extra British budget payments to the EU. The commission says this amount is due because the British economy has performed better than forecast. But this unexpected demand is for serious money, an almost 20 per cent increase in the British contribution. If Britain pays up, Christmas will have come early for Nigel Farage and Ukip. This explains why all three Westminster parties have been so quick to denounce the demand as unacceptable. There are mutterings of legal challenges and the like. The money is due by December 1. But politically, I don’t think the government can afford to pay.

It’s that time of year again – sandwiched between conference season and the Autumn statement – when the nation’s political pooches (and their owners) descend on Westminster. Yes, yesterday saw the Westminster Dog of the Year show, 2014. [caption id="attachment_8903972" align="alignleft" width="250"] Noodle and Alan Duncan announce the winners[/caption] Last year’s winner, Noodle the cockerpoo (and her owner, Alan Duncan) had been promoted to the judging panel after her success, and seemed keen to be back on the podium. She wasn’t the only one, either. David Burrowes’ Cholmeley (who came third last year, and second in 2012), also seemed very attached to the winner’s platform, and posed nicely alongside it.

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.

If you're going to sell out to the establishment, you might as well do so on an industrial scale. As the PM told the Guido Fawkes blog's ten -ear anniversary party at the Institute of Directors last night, via video link, 'what better way' to celebrate 'rejecting' the cosy political classes than a posh dinner of caviar and champagne in the heart of Westminster. Guy Fawkes would have been turning in his grave, as cabinet ministers including Francis Maude and Liz Truss, and mysterious billionaires such as Michael Hintze and Lord Ashcroft, along with 200 of Westminster's finest, came to pay homage to a decade of sniping from waspish troublemakers. The Mayor of London, the star turn, was in usual form, conceding that eventually all politicians end up talking to terrorists.

One of the best arguments against European political integration is the people with whom British political parties end up allied in the European Parliament. For reasons of parliamentary influence and, let’s be frank, money, British parties don’t want to sit on their own, so instead sit as part of broader European groups. Now, all of these groups contain MEPs whose views would be considered distasteful in Britain. But even by this standard, Ukip’s latest recruit to its group seems pretty extreme — Robert Iwaszkiewicz comes from a party that even Marine Le Pen refused to do business with.