Uk politics

Sunday

James Forsyth

Can Ed Miliband save the Union?

When Ed Miliband goes to Scotland and declares that ‘It is Labour that’s got to win this referendum’ it is a statement of political reality as much as it is braggadocio. The Tories have only one MP north of the border and the Liberal Democrats are the fourth party in the Scottish parliament. If this vote is to be won, Labour—as by far the largest Unionist party—will have to get the No camp over the line. Ed Miliband’s decision to take the entire shadow Cabinet to Glasgow last week was meant to show that UK Labour is now engaging fully in this battle. Miliband himself thinks that he has come

Saturday

James Forsyth

How Nick Clegg missed his chance with Nigel Farage

At the start of the year, some of the air seemed to have gone out of the Ukip balloon. The party’s warnings about the scale of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration to Britain hadn’t been borne out by events. But the debates with Nick Clegg enabled Nigel Farage to get his momentum back. In those debates, Clegg was too passive in the first one and then over-compensated in the second with the result that he ended up losing both of them. Clegg’s decision to not engage with Farage in the first debate meant that he missed his best chance to get under the Ukip leader’s skin. Strikingly, Farage admits to Decca

Isabel Hardman

Is it fair that anti-HS2 ministers could disappear for key votes?

Where will the ministers whose constituencies will be affected by HS2 be when the legislation reaches its key votes in the Commons? As I said on Friday, the chances are that some of them might suddenly find they need to travel overseas quite urgently when MPs vote at second reading on Monday, and again at report stage and third reading later on. The ministers in question are as follows: David Lidington – Con – Aylesbury and Buckinghamshire. Minister of State for Europe. Dominic Grieve – Con – Beaconsfield. Attorney General. Jeremy Wright – Con – Kenilworth and Southam. Minister for Prisons and Rehabilitation. Nick Hurd – Con – Ruislip, Northwood

Friday

Sebastian Payne

The 2015 battleground: the UK’s top 10 most marginal seats

With the Tories trailing just behind Labour in the opinion polls, predictions are rife that the 2015 general election will be a bloody tough campaign. With a drop in the Lib Dem vote, the rise of Ukip and a potential swing towards Labour, it’s difficult to predict who will win. But like all general elections, a handful of marginal seats will decide who walks into No.10. Here are UK’s most marginal seats which will play a vital role next year. 1. Fermanagh & South Tyrone Held by: Michelle Gildernew — Sinn Fein Majority: 4 [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/b2hPv/index.html”] Easily the UK’s most marginal seat, Michelle Gildernew has held Fermanagh & South Tyrone

Isabel Hardman

Whips relaxed as HS2 bill faces small rebellion at second reading

The High-Speed Rail Bill pops up in the Commons on Monday – with two attempts to kill it off planned. Michael Fabricant and Cheryl Gillan – whose constituencies would both be affected by the proposed route – have both drawn up motions which call for the House of Commons to decline to give the Bill a second reading. Fabricant was sacked from his position as Vice Chair of the Conservative party for pushing ahead with his motion (and a number of other things, too) and has the support of Sir Edward Leigh, Jeremy Lefroy, David Davis, David Nuttall, William Cash, Caroline Spelman, Bob Blackman, Chris Kelly and Andrew Turner. Gillan,

Isabel Hardman

Why the local elections matter more to the Tories

Forget the European elections, which everyone (particularly those who fancy causing a bit of grief for David Cameron) expects to produce humiliating results for the Conservatives. The elections that have a longer-lasting impact that take place on the same day are the local elections. I look at the emphasis the Tories are putting on campaigning in the locals that goes over and above anything they’re doing for seats in Brussels, in my Telegraph column today. But even those areas that don’t have concurrent local and European polls on 22 May aren’t exhausting themselves on campaigning for the European elections. Last year, the Conservatives tried to manage expectations by suggesting at

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s unimpressive ‘zero hours’ announcement

Labour’s announcement on zero hours contracts today as the Shadow Cabinet visits Scotland is supposed to be a demonstration of how much better the UK can be by staying together. Ed Miliband’s reasoning is that a border between Scotland and rUK would mean a ‘race to the bottom’ between the two countries, who would come under pressure from ‘powerful interests’ to ‘worsen wages and conditions for everyone else’. It’s part of Labour’s ‘positive case’ for the union which the party wants to make today, and the reasoning does, if you’re a Labour type, make sense. The only spanner in the works is the policy that he’s announcing, which will hardly

Thursday

Charles Moore

Was I abused by Jimmy Savile?

‘Twenty-six million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose jobs are they after?’ asks the Ukip poster for the euro-elections, beside a Lord Kitchener-style pointing finger. Obviously, Ukip thinks the answer is ‘Ours’. But this isn’t true. Twenty-six million people are not looking for British jobs, but for jobs in general. And even those who do want jobs in Britain are not trying to take jobs from people who have them (though this might sometimes be the effect): they just want jobs. If Ukip is opposed to unrestricted EU immigration, it should direct its anger at the politicians who support this policy, not at the blameless people who,

Toby Young

Yes, Britain is a Christian country

I can’t say it was a great surprise to read a letter from a group of well-known authors, academics, comedians and politicians in the Telegraph earlier this week complaining about David Cameron’s description of Britain as a ‘Christian country’. As a general rule, any acknowledgment of Britain’s Christian heritage has members of the liberal intelligentsia reaching for their keyboards and angrily typing out words like ‘sectarian’, ‘alienation’ and ‘division’. As Harry Cole argued in a blog post for The Spectator, the evidence that Britain is a Christian country is overwhelming. We have an established church, our head of state is also the defender of the faith and 59 per cent

Steerpike

Ukip suspend candidate featured in party political broadcast for tweets

Ukip have suspended a member and Merton council candidate who appeared in their party political broadest, Andre Lampitt, for a series of ‘repellent’ tweets. Here are those offensive tweets, which have now been deleted, in full: Nigel Farage has said he is ‘deeply shocked’ by the tweets and has pledged to root out ‘real extremism and nastiness’ from his party.

Isabel Hardman

Doing God works well for Cameron

David Cameron’s decision to hug-a-Christian seems to have worked pretty well, judging by the political response he’s provoked. For starters, his comments about Britain being ‘evangelical’ about its status as a Christian country managed to enrage the sort of people who also might annoy the churchgoing conservatives he needs to win back after the row over gay marriage. Today, he – and the secularists – got a response from the Archbishop of Canterbury who wrote on his blog: ‘It’s all quite baffling and at the same time quite encouraging. Christian faith is much more vulnerable to comfortable indifference than to hatred and opposition. It’s also a variation on the normal

Isabel Hardman

What does new Number 10 hire mean for stop-and-search reform?

As James revealed on Coffee House earlier, Max Chambers will take over from Patrick Rock on the home affairs brief in the Number 10 policy unit. One thing that will be particularly interesting to watch is whether Chambers’ appointment leads to a shift in Number 10’s stance on stop-and-search. Rock had been one of the key figures blocking Theresa May’s reforms to the power for the police, for fear that it would make the Tories appear soft on crime. So will the new adviser be more amenable to change? I am told that Chambers is open to ideas on reform of stop-and-search and is keen to see more evidence of

Isabel Hardman

Who tells Ed Miliband when he’s made a mistake?

Dan Hodges’ piece in this week’s Spectator on the team around Ed Miliband is a must-read (and we’ve posted an even longer version online here). As he runs through those working with the Labour leader, a clear pattern emerges. There doesn’t seem to be a Lynton Crosby equivalent working with Miliband. One of the many things that make Crosby so important to the Conservative party is his ability to swear at them and tell them they’re doing something wrong. Miliband doesn’t have a Crosby-esque character in that respect. Instead, all those around him seem keen to either demonstrate that they are the most loyal, in a Uriah Heep-esque display of

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Ed Miliband’s radical Old Labour agenda and Clinton vs Bush round two

Where has Ed Miliband found the policies to form the basis of his potential government? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, The Telegraph’s Dan Hodges and Marcus Roberts from the Fabian Society debate the current state of Milibandism and whether the Labour leader is successfully crafting an intellectually coherent set of policies for government. Will Miliband limp over the finish line into No.10 with a strategy to win 35 per cent of the vote, or go for a broader One Nation approach? And does he still have any chance of becoming Prime Minister? Harpers’ Magazine John Rick MacArthur also joins to discuss Clinton vs Bush, again, with Freddy Gray.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove’s campaigning job

Who will go where in the forthcoming reshuffle? Guido suggests that Michael Gove could be in for a move to party chairman, given all his major reforms have either been implemented or blocked by the Lib Dems. Number 10 has certainly told Gove that he will be playing an increasing role in the general election campaign: I understand this was made clear to him in the winter of last year, which would explain why David Cameron was quite so cross about the Education Secretary’s comments to the FT about Etonians. Cameron recognises that Gove is a smooth media performer who doesn’t wilt under the heat of the studio lights, or

Isabel Hardman

Can Labour really resist class war?

There’s something quite amusing about a party that majored on the number of Etonians in the Cabinet as the substantive part of its response to the Budget briefing the Independent that it won’t stoop to ‘class war’ in its 2015 election campaign. Labour, apparently, will occupy the moral high ground next year, which suggests the party will have to change its messaging quite significantly from this: ‘What do this lot now call themselves? They call themselves the workers’ party. Who is writing the manifesto for this workers’ party? We have a helpful answer from one Conservative MP: “There are six people writing the manifesto…five…went to Eton”. ‘By my count, more

Alex Massie

As the Yes side rises in the polls, Scotland prepares for a Neverendum

I suspect I might be one of the Scottish journalists Iain Martin considers keen to make a melodrama from the independence referendum. Ten weeks ago I warned in this magazine that Alex Salmond could well lead Scotland to independence. Stuff and nonsense some folk said then. Well, perhaps. But nothing that has happened since has persuaded me I was wrong.  Sure, the polls still show the No side leading but the general picture is clear: the Yes side are closing the gap. Of course there’s no law demanding that current trends continue indefinitely but, nevertheless, these are nervous times for the Unionist cause. And for good reason. Consider the poster at

James Forsyth

Don’t do it Boris!

Is Boris Johnson about to announce his intention to stand at the next general election? The well-connected Jason Groves reports today that Boris will make clear his plans before the Tory conference and that his friends expect him to run for parliament but stay as Mayor of London. I think this would be a mistake for Boris, a move that would make him less likely to end up as Tory leader and Prime Minister one day. First, Boris was clear in the campaign that he wouldn’t try to return to the Commons before 2016: ‘If I am fortunate enough to win I will need four years to deliver what I

Isabel Hardman

Alex Salmond’s reassuring St George’s Day address

St George’s Day is one of those festivals that politicians are particularly earnest about, for fear someone accuse them of being ashamed of England. But today’s most interesting pointed St George’s Day celebration comes from a man more accustomed to suggesting that Englishness is something he is quite separate from. Alex Salmond is hopping across the border to give a speech in Carlisle. The SNP leader wants to reassure English people on St George’s Day that they can still be chums with the Scots. They’re not going to become surly dragons after independence. Instead, Salmond will say Scots and English people will still cross that border to work and to

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

What Cameron and Osborne’s rare joint appearance tells us about their relationship

David Cameron and George Osborne managed to garner more attention for their infrastructure announcement (or re-announcement) today by organising their first joint appearance alone together in four years – and making sure the media were aware that this was the case. The pair haven’t appeared together in public for a while partly because they fear doing so would suggest to voters that the government was run by two chaps from very similar backgrounds; better to dilute it by pitching up with other ministers, hopefully with vaguely different backstories. But it is also quite impressive that the two men haven’t felt the need to do these joint appearances after questions about