Uk politics

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Lord Freud offers ‘full and unreserved apology’ for disability comments

From our UK edition

Lord Freud has apologised for suggesting that disabled people were not 'worth' the minimum wage. He said: 'I would like to offer a full and unreserved apology. I was foolish to accept the premise of the question. To be clear, all disabled people should be paid at least the minimum wage, without exception, and I accept that it is offensive to suggest anything else. I care passionately about disabled people. I am proud to have played a full part in a government that is fully committed to helping disabled people overcome the many barriers they face in finding employment.

James Forsyth

Miliband takes on Cameron over Freud; Ukip gets a dig on recall

From our UK edition

When Ed Miliband started speaking at PMQs today you could tell straight away that he had a foul sore throat. Combine that with the promising unemployment figures out today and Miliband forgetting two key chunks of his conference speech, and there was clear potential for the session to get very tricky for him. But Miliband had come to the Chamber armed with a series of hard questions for Cameron to answer about what Lord Freud, one of his welfare ministers had set at a fringe meeting at Tory conference. Freud apparently said that disabled people were not worth the minimum wage and that if they wanted to work for £2 an hour, that should be accommodated. listen to ‘PMQs: What is Cameron's ‘secret plan’ to pay for tax cuts?

Isabel Hardman

How the Greens are spooking Labour and the Lib Dems

From our UK edition

Being excluded from the TV debates has been the best thing that could possibly happen to the Greens, it seems. Already over 100,000 people have signed a petition calling for the party to be included, and their membership in England reached 21,000 this week. Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas have enjoyed more media exposure than they have done for a good long while. The idea that the Establishment is trying to silence the Greens is also really helpful for their insurgent party credentials, as nothing enthuses supporters more than the sense that they are pushing against a Westminster conspiracy.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs promised ‘big bang’ announcement on EU migration

From our UK edition

The Tories will announce a big new policy on freedom of movement in the European Union, David Cameron told his MPs tonight. At a meeting of the Parliamentary party, the Tory leader promised what one Eurosceptic attendee described as a 'big bang' announcement on freedom of movement. Apparently this pleased those there no end, even those usually critical of the Prime Minister. MPs were also told they are expected to visit Rochester to campaign at least three times, and the cabinet five times, which is clearly an intervention from Lynton Crosby as the whips had decided at the end of last week that they wouldn't bother. This was what one source close to the PM described as 'a call to arms for us all'.

Alex Massie

I vow to thee, my Scotland, a small number of earthly things

From our UK edition

Politics is a funny old game. I could have sworn the Yes campaign lost the Battle for Scotland in pretty decisive fashion last month. Scotland voted to remain a part of the United Kingdom. It did not vote for something that might be reckoned some kind of Independence Within the United Kingdom for the very good reason that was not the question asked. The country may not have rejected independence - and endorsed the Union - overwhelmingly but it did do so decisively. But to hear SNP and Yes supporters speak these days you'd think nothing of the sort had happened at all. They lost the war but think they have a mandate to dictate the terms of the peace. [Note to bone-headed literalists: it wasn't an actual war.

Harry Cole

Add to Miliband’s worries: Can Ukip go after Labour in Scotland?

From our UK edition

Scottish Ukip MEP David Coburn has been shouting off, as his way, about his party’s prospects north of the border in 2015. Mr Coburn is a curious character - and there is a certainly an element of bluster here: ‘We’re looking at the Scottish rust belt. Seats where there were serious industries that were ­allowed to run down, with no replacement. These are seats that Labour has treated like a feudal system. It’s the Central Belt of Scotland, where people have just been abandoned or given sops to keep them happy.’ Whilst it should not be forgotten that Ukip gained 10 per cent of the Scottish vote in European elections last May, a breakthrough on the scale pitched by Coburn remains ambitious.

Steerpike

What’s the opposite of a champagne socialist? Phillip Blond

From our UK edition

Phillip Blond, sporting tinted specs for this morning's devolution debate, is famed in the wonkier side of Westminster for his unique style. The self-styled 'Red Tory', who split with the Cameroons in favour of 'a new Tory economics that distributed property, market access and educational excellence to all', has his shirts and jackets handmade, adding a splash of colour to the somewhat drab think-tank world. There is even a musical tribute to the 'intellectual curio of the Conservative Party' and his clothes: Though Mr S thought it only kind to point out that you're meant to give those glasses back at the end of the film, Phillip.

Steerpike

Mrs Neil Hamilton for Ukip MP?

From our UK edition

Like a bad smell, Neil Hamilton continues to linger around Westminster. The disgraced MP, who came to embody Tory sleaze by the time he lost his seat in 1997, has reinvented himself as Mr Ukip, with first a seat on the party's powerful National Executive Committee before scaling the dizzy heights of Deputy Chairman. Despite numerous controversies, the Hamiltons have weathered on with their media appearances, but Mr S hears it is Christine Hamilton that might have the more sustainable career in politics. Neil Hamilton was shunned for a MEP seat when the selections were made earlier in the year, and informed party sources pour water on the prospects of him being awarded a Ukip-friendly target seat for 2015.

Isabel Hardman

The shadow of EVEL will still hover over the Commons

From our UK edition

Alex Salmond was on Today this morning, muttering darkly about a new betrayal of Scottish voters from Westminster leaders. He was looking ahead to this afternoon's debate on Scotland, where MPs will among other things, discuss the new plans for further devolution promised by leaders in their 'vow'.

Monday

Alex Massie

Boris Johnson asks voters to decide if he’s a fool or just a cynic. What a choice!

From our UK edition

Boris is at it again this morning. Revealing, that is, why he cannot be trusted with office. To be charitable, I wouldn't trust many newspaper columnists with the keys to power.  But, of course, most Grub Street residents have no interest in being crowned Emperor. Boris does. Which is why his columns for the Daily Telegraph are so troublesome. You will remember the recent occasion when he suggested the burden of proof in criminal trials be reversed. That was revealing, but in a bad way. So is today's column in which he proposes setting quotas for immigrants from other EU countries. As is so often the case you are left to wonder which is worse: Boris meaning this or Boris not meaning this but writing it anyway. Neither answer is reassuring.

Sean O'Callaghan

Jonathan Powell is wrong – talks with the IRA prolonged the Troubles

From our UK edition

Jonathan Powell seems to be unavoidable at the moment. Having read his first two books a couple of times I felt a weary sense of resignation on news of the third. It wasn’t until I saw and heard him on channel 4 news that I felt serious irritation. We, whoever 'we' may be, should talk with everyone, everywhere, at any time, because we always do anyway - pretty much summed it up. Words are important - the more so when they are delivered by Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, who is much credited  with making a serious contribution to the Belfast Agreement. Jonathan Powell is a serious man, although one would be hard pushed to recognise that if you tuned into his Channel 4 performance.

Rod Liddle

To Nigel Farage in the wake of Heywood and Middleton: an apology

From our UK edition

Nigel Farage – an apology. My suspicion had been that Ukip would not frighten the horses terribly in Heywood and Middleton. It is not great territory for them, after all. Yet they came within a few hundred votes of ousting Labour – a remarkable result, far more indicative than that in Clacton. And a calamitous result for Ed Miliband. The weekend papers have majored on the problems which Ukip poses for the Tories. But Heywood suggests that the Ukip threat to Labour in the north has been considerably underestimated. It still seems the case that northern Tories will not vote Ukip – but a rather greater proportion of previous Labour voters than I had envisaged will do so. Heywood and Middleton is in the north-west – not good hunting ground for Ukip.

Sunday

Rod Liddle

If Brooks Newmark didn’t want these photos leaked, why did he email them?

From our UK edition

So it now seems pretty clear to me that we can no longer send women photographs of our genitals without worrying that we might be the subject of some horrible sting operation and consequently suffer public humiliation and possibly lose our jobs. One by one, the harmless little pleasures in life are being withdrawn from us. It is even being said that we would be wise not to photograph our own genitals at all, let alone send the snaps to anyone, because a third party might somehow acquire them and cause us mischief. If this is true, I am not sure how I am going to pass the long winter evenings ahead, when we become enveloped in darkness. Read a book, I suppose. But that is hardly the same sort of thrill, even if the book is by Will Hutton.

Mary Dejevsky

A Lab-Con coalition? It’s not as crazy as you think

From our UK edition

In the few days since Conservative defector Douglas Carswell gave Ukip its first Westminster MP and John Bickley scared the pants off Ed Miliband by almost snatching Heywood and Middleton from Labour, there has been much talk of a broken mould and a new age in British politics. listen to ‘John Bickley: ‘If there was an Olympic medal for hypocrisy, Labour would win gold’’ on audioBoom Election geeks have posited half-a-dozen or more governing permutations in the event that Ukip makes big gains next May.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Why the Tories must win Rochester – and how they plan to do it

From our UK edition

Why are the Conservatives so serene after losing the Clacton by-election and seeing their vote collapse in Heywood and Middleton? It is not that the party has finally decided endless fighting is no longer a good idea, but that it is holding its breath for the Rochester and Strood by-election. If Mark Reckless, the second Ukip defector, wins this, then the meltdown in David Cameron's party will make the Labour response this week look positively icy. The Tories had quickly accepted Douglas Carswell would win in Clacton and so there was little excuse for even their more febrile factions to panic.

Molly Guinness

Clacton to Ukip, Britain’s anti-politics were long in the making

From our UK edition

Talking to people in Clacton-on-Sea this week, there was a sense that, as much as they thought there were too many people in Britain, they felt politicians had it too easy. Over and over again people told me that MPs in Westminster didn’t understand working people. Politics is becoming less about policy and more about empathy; voters just don’t want to be ruled by aliens. In a famous article in 1955, Henry Fairlie described the chasm between the aliens and normal people: I have several times suggested that what I call the 'Establishment' in this country is today more powerful than ever before.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Syria or Scotland? Tory whips confuse MPs with mysterious message

From our UK edition

The Tory whips are busy today, but not necessarily with fallout from the Clacton by-election. They have sent a message round to MPs saying the following: 'There is a possibility that there will be a business statement on Monday which will also affect whipping next week.' Some MPs have read this as a suggestion that they may be asked to vote on military action against Isis in Syria, which Number 10 has so far been reluctant to do. The Lib Dems have said they can't see what benefit British troops would bring to the situation Syria. But chances are that Monday's statement will relate to another event that's taken place while MPs were away.

Steerpike

Nigel Farage takes inspiration from Al Gore

From our UK edition

Al Gore is an unlikely source of inspiration for Ukip - in fact the party once pledged to ban the former Vice President's controversial climate change documentary from schools, calling it dangerous global warming 'propaganda'. But might they have more in common than either of them would care to admit? During the count for the Heywood and Middleton by-election last night, Nigel Farage conceded defeat in the race early in the night, only to demand a recount hours later once it started looking very tight; just as Al Gore did in the 2000 US election. Not that it did either of them much good.

Isabel Hardman

Tories and Labour defiant after bruising by-elections

From our UK edition

Last night's by-election results were bad for both the main Westminster parties. The Tories did not manage to make significant inroads into Douglas Carswell's majority, and their vote collapsed in Heywood. Their main saving grace is that the Rochester by-election has united the party in fury and is a fight they think they can win. This means troublemakers will stay quiet for the time being. But the relative unity that is expected today will evaporate if they then fail to win a seat the party has briefed it is likely to win.