Uk politics

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Tories accidentally leak campaign database

The Conservatives have accidentally emailed a database of their activists’ details to other members, Coffee House has learned. The database, called ‘volunteer record NEWARK’ was accidentally attached to a generic thank you email for those campaigning in the by-election, and contained the email addresses of activists and MPs who had signed in at a certain station in the constituency. Sent from a generic email address belonging to the Tory chairman, the email thanked activists for visiting Newark, and asked them to continue campaigning by visiting the constituency again on polling day or making calls to voters from home or CCHQ. The database was attached at the bottom. This isn’t a

Sebastian Payne

Pensions, pubs, shale, slavery and recall — what to expect in tomorrow’s Queen Speech

The last Queen’s Speech of this Parliament is almost upon us. Will the final session prove right the claims that this is a ‘zombie parliament’? Or can we expect a packed and exciting legislative agenda? Here’s a guide to what to expect tomorrow. Freedom for pensioners Following on from George Osborne’s announcement in this year’s budget, two pension bills are expected in the Queen’s Speech. One will pave the way for Dutch-style ‘collective pension funds’, as opposed to purely individual funds at present. The notion behind these funds is to spread the risk and offer better value for pensioners. The second bill will allow people to withdraw their savings in

Steerpike

Coffee Shots (boozy edition): Nick and Vince’s lock-in

After a tricky few weeks, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have decided to thrash things out over a pint of ale. At 11am. The pair are hanging out in a pub (having locked the media outside in the rain, which is possibly one of the cruellest things you can do to a journalist) to promote the reforms to the pub industry that the Lib Dems want to claim as a win from tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech. Cable finished his pint. It’s strange that Clegg didn’t want to sink his too in celebration of the bitter end of Lord Oakeshott. Still, an awkward morning pint looks considerably more fun than other food-and-drink-related

Isabel Hardman

UK govt still confident of success in junking Juncker

Government sources are very keen to dispel the impression in Westminster that David Cameron’s tough guy act over the candidacy of Jean-Claude Juncker is a last-minute thing, insisting that the Prime Minister has been involved in behind-the-scenes negotiations for months. Interestingly, they’re still very bullish about the UK’s chances of getting its way, with one government source telling me: ‘We are confident we can stop him, we are confident we can stop this process.’ The expectation is that a package deal will be agreed that involves a figure other than Juncker being appointed president. If this is so, then it will be a big boost for the Prime Minister as

Alex Massie

Edible food: a triumph of immigration and globalisation

As usual I enjoyed Hugo Rifkind’s column in the Times today. His central point that fights, whether on Europe or Scotland or whatever, can’t be ducked forever and that complacency is fatal is all very sound. But that’s not what really caught my eye. No, I was taken by his reminder that Roger Helmer, Ukip’s sword-bearer in the Newark by-election, reckons that Indian restaurants are the only good thing to have come from immigration and I remembered that, gosh, Mr Helmer is hardly alone in thinking that. Pretty much anytime anyone writes about immigration commenters will chunter that it’s all very well for you swanky, hoity-toity media types to bore on about

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne vs eurocrats

Improving the supply of new housing, adjusting the Help to Buy scheme if necessary, revaluing council tax bands and accepting that universal credit won’t solve all of Britain’ welfare ills: all ideas batted around in domestic political debate in this country by politicians and commentators who manage to secure a reasonable hearing each time they suggest them. But the problem with this latest list is that it comes from the European Commission: poorly supported by last week’s European elections and not preaching from a position of runaway economic success. The EC has published recommendations for each EU member state which are ‘designed to strengthen their growth potential, increase competitiveness and

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Newark campaigning strategy cheers up Tory activists

One of the spin-offs of Grant Shapps’ cheesy-sounding yet quite impressive ‘Team 2015’ strategy for campaigning in the local elections and now in Newark is that the energetic campaigning atmosphere seems to be making activists and MPs very happy. This sounds like a minor consideration when by-election campaigns are for winning seats, not counselling party members. But given the rather fractious few years that the Tory party has had, this is rather important. Activists and MPs need to feel  they’re sailing with the wind behind them as they approach the election, and so gathering large numbers of campaigners together at once, rather than leaving them to canvass and deliver in

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Eurosceptic plotters mull Queen’s Speech revolt

David Cameron managed to extract promises from some of the more troublesome backbench MPs that they wouldn’t get up to any monkey business around this year’s Queen’s Speech. Last year’s motion of regret tabled by John Baron and Peter Bone caused all sorts of trouble, but it did lead to the Conservatives publishing their own EU referendum bill, which was taken up by James Wharton and provoked #LetBritainDecide fever. I have learned that the thinking in some Eurosceptic circles is that someone should table another similar amendment to the vote on this year’s Speech which similarly expresses regret for the absence of an EU referendum bill. But this time the

Isabel Hardman

European Commission president row is example of PM’s ‘essay crisis’ strategy, MPs grumble

David Cameron might be hoping that the eurosceptics in his party are chuffed with his tough guy stance on Jean-Claude Juncker. And by and large, they are. But they’re not wholly impressed. One eurosceptic remarks that this intervention is simply about the Newark by-election, given its timing. Another, who is minded to at least believe that the Prime Minister is thinking about European reform, rather than Patrick Mercer’s old seat, says: ‘This is no way to do diplomacy. Cameron has left this to the last minute yet again and it could be too late to do anything. He has had months to express a view yet is only engaging now.’

Alex Massie

Are we witnessing the strange rebirth of Conservative Scotland?

Perhaps. Because when you cross the Rubicon you obliterate a line in the sand. Or something like that, anyway. Ruth Davidson was elected leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party on a platform promising no more concessions to the SNP. She was the candidate favoured by the party establishment, the candidate for continuity not change. By contrast, Murdo Fraser’s tilt for the leadership argued that the party should dissolve itself and start again. Four in ten Tory members voted for euthanasia. The publication today of the Strathclyde Commission’s report on further devolution of powers to the Scottish parliament is perhaps best understood as a synthesis of the Davidson and

Isabel Hardman

Campaign to junk Juncker continues

The campaign against Jean-Claude Juncker becoming President of the European Commission continues, with Martin Callanan (who might hope to benefit from another campaign against someone getting a job, namely Andrew Lansley becoming the UK’s European Commissioner), telling the Today programme that the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg is the ‘business-as-usual candidate’ who is not the ‘reformer who will institute bold and radical change’. Callanan argues that members of the European People’s Party are not bound to support Juncker, because ‘less than 10 per cent of the electorate in any of the countries that the EPP are now saying they have the votes from actually knew they were voting for anybody

Sunday

Heather Tomlinson

On the campaign trail with Ukip in Newark

A battle cry has gone out for more troops, and the UKIP faithful have responded. Newark, packed with Tory spinners and regularly visited by David Cameron and assorted Tory grandees, has now attracted hundreds of purple campaigners for this week’s by-election. From all corners of the UK – from Scotland to Cornwall, the Eastern counties to Wales, the most fervent UKIP believers gathered yesterday for a public meeting near Newark, and a chance to see their chief protagonist, Nigel Farage. ‘After the European elections, we can smell blood,’ said a cheerful UKIP activist, Scott Cross, from Hampshire. Former Tory activist Steve Stanbury, who defected to UKIP a few years ago,

Isabel Hardman

Osborne admits net migration target is impossible without EU reform

George Osborne’s interview today with the Sun on Sunday does show the Conservatives are starting to see a little bit of sense about their net migration target. They’re starting to realise that they aren’t going to meet it when they can only control non-EU migration. It’s surprising, really, that it’s taken them so long to realise that the target was going to be a bit tricky to meet. In this week’s magazine, Douglas Murray argues that Cameron will need to listen – really listen – to voters’ concerns about immigration if he is to have a hope of winning next year: ‘Because the deep, underlying story of last week is

James Forsyth

David Cameron is doing what Eurosceptics want him to do

Tory Eurosceptics from the Cabinet down have long made clear that David Cameron will only be able to get a sufficiently different deal from the EU if he’s prepared to threaten that Britain will leave if it can’t get what it needs. Many have assumed that Cameron, who has been clear that he would prefer Britain to keep in the EU, would not be prepared to do this. But it seems that he is. The German magazine Spiegel reports that Cameron told his fellow EU leaders that if Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg federalist, became president of the Euroopean Commission he could not guarantee that Britain would stay in the EU.

Friday

The Spectator

Video: Newark state of mind

Ukip candidate Roger Helmer reckons that Farage would do a better job in the by-election campaign and defends employing an Italian citizen as his assistant Tory Robert Jenrick denies being a ‘carpetbagger’ and says he wants the UK to remain in Europe Yesterday our contributing editor Harry Cole interviewed the next MP for Newark. If the polls are to be believed that will be the Tories’ safe if dull candidate Robert Jenrick. But Ukip’s Roger Helmer is confident of causing an upset. Robert Jenrick denied being a ‘carpetbagger’ or a ‘career politician’ ,claiming he had ‘has never worked in politics’, despite having stood in Newcastle-Under-Lyme in 2010 and attempting to get selected to a

Sebastian Payne

The Newark by-election might not be a disaster for Labour

Will Labour do well in the Newark by-election? While all the focus has been on the fight between the Tories and Ukip (watch our exclusive interview with the candidates here), Labour has been mostly forgotten. Yet in this morning’s poll of the seat from The Sun, Labour are on 27 per cent — four points ahead of their result in 2010 and one point ahead of Ukip: [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/4CGHl/index.html”] This is a rather good showing for a party with a pretty basic ground operation. During my visit to Newark-on-Trent yesterday, I did not spot a single Labour canvasser in the town centre. Their election HQ was smaller than any of

Alex Massie

Oh Scotland! You’ve really let yourself down. You should be ashamed.

Lord, grant me strength. And serenity. Further evidence emerges that supporters of Scottish independence are losing their minds. Yesterday Iain Macwhirter was in full Can we no do anything right? mode; today it’s the turn of Joyce Macmillan to wallow in self-pity. Again, you see, the problem with Scotland is that it is full of Scottish people and, golly, some of them hold nasty, inconvenient, dismal views. They are the enemy within. That may sound nastily conspiratorial but, hell, it’s not my view. To wit: On Monday morning, as the final Euro elections results were being confirmed, I made my way up to the NHS outpost in Lauriston Place in Edinburgh for

Steerpike

Europe Minister keeps close eye on Commissioner race

What do Foreign Office ministers think about the possibility that Andrew Lansley could be the next European Commissioner? David Lidington was clearly intrigued by Isabel’s column in the Telegraph this morning which says that Tory backbenchers are not fans at all. The Europe Minister, who would have to work closely with Lansley, retweeted the article with the headline ‘the mysterious Mr Lansley will hardly set Brussels alight’. He then realised that this might not look very good, and tweeted: ‘Apologies. Was trying to read last article not retweet it. Retweet def not my view.’ Presumably he doesn’t mean that he does think Lansley will set Brussels on fire? Of course,

Isabel Hardman

Sir John Major: EU election results make renegotiation easier

Sir John Major isn’t a fan of Ukip and thinks it will fade away from its current position on the political scene. He’s not the only one who thinks that: one of the problems that all three main parties have face is that they have continually assumed that Ukip is about to lose its head of steam, and have therefore made precious few preparations for the party getting bigger and stealing more of their voters. But there was one very interesting remark that Major made in his interview on the Today programme. He said: ‘The circumstances between the 1990s and now are very different in many ways, and in a

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband must be careful when he talks about suicide

Jim Waterson’s BuzzFeed interview with Ed Miliband is well worth a read. But the opening paragraph stands out in particular: ‘Ed Miliband was in Nottingham last Tuesday when a man approached him to say that his part-time job at a petrol station wasn’t paying enough to take care of two children. This is an anecdote of the sort Miliband is always telling in his campaign to lower Britain’s cost of living, but what the man said next was “chilling.” ‘“He was really, really desperate because he felt couldn’t properly provide for his family,” Miliband recalls. “He was thinking of ending it all because he just couldn’t make ends meet.” ‘“Suddenly