Uk politics

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Labour goes after Cameron over TV debates

A smart move by Ed Miliband today to put pressure on David Cameron over the televised leaders' debates next year. Every time the Prime Minister is asked about these debates, he makes supportive noises while muttering about the 'right formula', but doesn't commit to anything. He has also said that he felt the debates 'dominated' the coverage of the 2010 election, which is as close as he'll come to saying that Nick Clegg's shiny new qualities at the time rather detracted from Cameron's own appeal which his strategists had been setting so much store by. But as the Prime Minister hasn't agreed to anything, Labour's trying to get ahead of the game and appear to drag Cameron into a studio.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

50 MPs make biggest rebellion on HS2 Bill

As expected, the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill 2013-14 has passed its second reading in the House of Commons by 452 votes to 41. Cheryl Gillan's amendment calling on the House to decline to give the legislation its second reading failed 451 votes to 50. The breakdown of who voted (and, more interestingly in this vote when some ministers have opted for a disappearing act, who didn't vote) will take a little while to come through. What will prevent ministerial resignations will be how the Bill progresses in the Committee stage, which will chug slower than a toy steam train. David Lidington wants further mitigation for his constituents, including the longer Chiltern tunnel that Cheryl Gillan has worked on.

Sebastian Payne

Brothers in arms — Ukip and the SNP are singing the same song

You don't mean a thing if your seat ain't a swing. As this saying goes, political campaigning in safe seats is usually a thankless task — unless you are Nigel Farage. Last week, he managed to pack out The Sage concert hall in ultra-safe Labour Gateshead for Ukip’s biggest ever-public meeting. By going back to the simple idea of touring the country (even the sceptical parts) and giving speeches, Farage is appealing directly to the voters left behind by the other parties. He told the 1,200-odd assembled crowd of my fellow Geordies: ‘We are here to say that Labour used to stand up for the people in this region, but they have turned their backs on you in favour of the European project. Well, UKIP will stand up for you now.

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Common Sense driving

All aboard Ukip's Common Sense battle bus! Today Nigel Farage's party took the fight to Portsmouth - or more precisely, Portsmouth and Southsea Station. It's not entirely clear what the station did to offend Ukip, but the party's battle bus accidentally collided with it while trying to execute a U-turn. Hopefully it's not an omen for what will happen when the party drives back over previous commitments made in its 2010 manifesto.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s mile-high fight

How does a Prime Minister get a recalcitrant minister to agree to something? Well, if it's not going to make any difference to whether some legislation passes and the minister isn't directly responsible for the policy, then he can always let them avoid a vote, as he seems to be doing on HS2 today. But what if the minister is the one who needs to sign off on a policy change? I hear that David Cameron found himself in this situation late last year when trying to make some changes to the government's counter-extremism strategy. Baroness Warsi (not his favourite minister) was refusing to accept the changes, which the Prime Minister ambushed her over.

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Under-fire minister explains to local party why he’s missing HS2 vote

While some ministers have mysteriously disappeared today so that they don't have to vote in favour of the high-speed rail line that will cut through their constituencies, Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd is busy explaining to his disgruntled local party why he isn't turning up to vote on legislation which affects his constituency of Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner but which he supports. I understand that Hurd has told local party members that though he thinks HS2 may be in the national interest, he understands their concerns about the link, and wants to try to get the very best deal for his constituents on compensation and the environmental impact of the line.

Alex Massie

If Ed Miliband is the Union’s saviour then the Union is doomed

With apologies to John Rentoul, Can Ed Miliband save the Union? is a question to which the answer is God help us all. I admit to a blind spot vis a vis the Labour leader: Looks like Gussie Fink-Nottle, thinks like a Marxist Madeline Bassett. Clever enough in a droopy kind of way but, ultimately, a gawd-help-us kind of fellow. I wasn't very impressed last time Mr Miliband came to Scotland and so I wasn't inclined to be impressed by his most recent trip to Glasgow. Which is dandy because I wasn't. I dare say Miliband's belief that Scottish independence would be a bad idea - for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom - is sincere. That this belief is in his own narrow, strategic, sectarian interest is beside the point.

Nick Cohen

Are you fit to be British? Take the Ukip test

If you believe that Ukip supporters love Britain and cannot abide Europe, look at the report by the pollster Peter Kellner in the current issue of Prospect. Ukip fears Britain has: 'gone off the rails. Hence the fact that 57 per cent of Ukip supporters would prefer to migrate to mainland Europe if they could.' To put it another way, no one hates his country more that the bawling patriot. The reasons for Ukip’s loathing are many, and in some instances understandable: falling living standards, politically correct double-standards, mass immigration, poor public services, political corruption and the timeless complaint of the old and disappointed that ‘things ain’t what they used to be'.

Isabel Hardman

Tory HS2 rebel: We need a plan in case Labour drops support

Whether or not key ministers whose constituencies are affected by HS2 turn out to vote at today's second reading of the legislation introducing it, the bill will pass this stage with a big majority thanks to cross-party support. Between 20 and 30 MPs are expected to defy the whip and either vote for a motion declining to give the Bill a second reading, or against the second reading itself. What will be interesting over the next few months is how many concessions critics of the Bill are able to eke out of the government, and whether this buys them off or not. When I spoke to Cheryl Gillan about her proposals for a longer tunnel under the Chiltern area of outstanding natural beauty, she told me that 'I'm not changing my position on the basis of that in any way, shape or form.

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Ukip on course to come first in the Euro elections

Despite a week of rather bruising media coverage, Ukip has moved into first place for next month’s European elections. For the second time this year, Nigel Farage’s party has overtaken Labour. According to poll by YouGov for the Sunday Times, just three points currently separate Labour and Ukip — still touching the margin of error: [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/aVjwf/index.html"] Although Labour and Ukip may continue to swap places over the next few weeks, today’s poll also suggests Ukip voters are more likely to turn out on polling day.

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 up with an argument for the Union that is distinctly Labour.

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.

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 and Pinner. Minister for Civil Society. Andrea Leadsom – Con – South Northamptonshire.

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 since 2001.

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.

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 one point that they would lose up to 750 seats - in the end they lost 335.

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 set the soul on fire if you're a Labour type who has been expounding on the evils of these contracts.

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, like most of us, want work.

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 of us define ourselves as ‘Christian’.

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.