Uk politics

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Can William Shakespeare save the union, plus Maria Miller’s resignation

Did William Shakespeare invent Britain and can he save it? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson debates this week’s Spectator cover feature with the SNP’s Westminster leader Angus Robertson. Do the English and Scots have many cultural values in common? Are there any other countries contemplating splitting up who are so similar? Is there a political disconnect between the two countries, or is the ‘No’ campaign simply losing the debate? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also discuss Maria Miller’s resignation and what it means for David Cameron. Was she pushed out of her job or did she jump? Has the Prime Minister’s reputation and judgment been damaged

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Michael Fabricant sacked: what about other HS2 opponents?

It’s difficult to know what astonished people more about Michael Fabricant’s sacking: that he has lost his job or that he was still in a role that required some semblance of collective responsibility. Shortly after assuming the role of Vice Chair of the Conservative Party, he called for a pact with Ukip. Some of his tweets have raised eyebrows. He said it was ‘about time’ that Maria Miller resigned. But the final straw that led party chairman Grant Shapps to ask him to think about resigning from his job was that Fabricant had tabled this wrecking amendment to the HS2 Bill: That this House, while recognising the ever-increasing need for

Isabel Hardman

Andrea Leadsom joins the Treasury

After excited rumours flew around the Conservative party that she was finally getting a promotion, Andrea Leadsom has been confirmed as the new Economic Secretary to the Treasury. She was on the Number 10 policy board, but should have risen much sooner – had she not offended George Osborne by suggesting that he should apologise to Ed Balls for these comments to the Spectator about the Libor scandal. Offending the Chancellor is the political equivalent of getting a black spot from a pirate. But now Leadsom has the promotion she deserves, having impressed in a number of roles. She co-founded the Fresh Start Project, which visits European capitals making the

Alex Massie

Scottish independence: an exemplary or cautionary foreign policy Rorschach Test?

The eyes of the world are upon us. Or so Scottish Nationalists like to say. Whae’s like us? There is some truth to this even if you think unseemly all the boasting we heard about the number of foreign journalists attending, say, the launch of the Scottish Government’s White Paper on independence. It’s all a bit Sally Field for me. A kind of cringe, if you will. What’s less frequently said is that almost all foreign governments would prefer Scotland to vote No. “We all prefer the status quo” one western diplomat told me recently. “That’s just the way states operate.” Known things are preferable to unknown things, even if the

Sajid Javid

Sajid Javid: How I became a Conservative

Although I joined the Conservative Party during my time at Exeter University, it was my upbringing and early life that shaped my political consciousness. Abdul-Ghani Javid (or, as he was known to me, Dad) arrived in the UK in 1961 at 23 years of age. His family lost everything during the partition of India and their move to Pakistan, so my father’s motivation was quite simple – he wanted to work in Britain and provide the means for his brothers back in Pakistan to be educated. Disembarking at Heathrow with a £1 note in his pocket (which his father, touchingly but mistakenly, had said would see him through his first

James Forsyth

Sajid Javid is the new Culture Secretary

Sajid Javid is the new Culture Secretary. Javid has impressed as a junior minister at the Treasury. He has learnt the political ropes fast despite only becoming an MP in 2010 and having done very little in politics before that. Javid’s appointment will please modernisers and the right alike. The right will be pleased that this Eurosceptic, Thatcherite has made Cabinet. Modernisers will be pleased that the Tories have their first Muslim male Cabinet Minister. Javid comes with a back-story that is all too rare in British politics. He is the son of a bus driver and was the first person in his family to go to university. His father,

Isabel Hardman

Maria Miller: Who could replace her?

Who are the ministers who could replace Maria Miller? Some of the muttering over the past few days has been about the Prime Minister’s desire to keep women in the Cabinet, and Miller herself boasted of being the only mother in the Cabinet. [audioboo url=”https://audioboo.fm/boos/2059892-maria-miller-on-her-resignation”]Maria Miller: Resigning is ‘the right thing to do’[/audioboo] There are many mothers, fathers, men and women in the Tory party who have bright careers ahead of them. If the PM feels he needs a woman, he could promote Nicky Morgan, currently shining at the Treasury. Or plain-speaking Esther McVey (if her comments on ITV’s The Agenda on Monday were a little too plainly-spoken, then they

James Forsyth

Maria Miller had no choice but to resign

Listen: Fraser Nelson, James Forysth and Isabel Hardman discuss Miller’s resignation listen to ‘Podcast special: Maria Miller resigns’ on Audioboo Maria Miller has bowed to the inevitable and resigned. For days now, it has been clear that Miller’s Cabinet career was essentially over and the question was when, not if she went. By quitting this morning, she has resolved the issue before PMQs today. Yesterday showed the political price the government was paying for keeping Miller in place. The IMF’s prediction that Britain would grow faster than any other G7 economy was totally overshadowed by Miller’s expenses. I suspect that if last Thursday, Miller had bent the knee and thrown

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Miliband’s moment of decision, does he call for Maria Miller to go?

Ed Miliband faces a big decision tonight, does he use PMQs tomorrow to call for Maria Miller’s resignation. So far, he has limited himself to saying that Cameron has questions to answer about how this whole business has been handled. But if Miliband went for it at PMQs, it would keep this story going for yet another day. It would also fit Miliband’s argument that Cameron is a Prime Minister who ‘stands up for the wrong people’. Set against this, though, is the question of whether it is in the interests of any party to get into a row over expenses. Tory MPs are quick to point out that five

Isabel Hardman

Miller and Macleod ‘flag up’ row that could have flagged

Maria Miller’s PPS Mary Macleod seems to have been trying to emulate what Jeremy Hunt’s former aide Rob Wilson (now PPS to the Chancellor) did for his boss as Culture Secretary in trying to round up support for the minister. The problem is that while Wilson operated below the radar, with his work only surfacing when he got a bit over-enthusiastic and asked them to tweet nice things about Hunt as Health Secretary when his real troubles were long gone, Macleod was rather less subtle and her text messages soliciting support and alleging a witch hunt ended up on Guido’s blog quicker than a 32 second Miller apology. The really

Sebastian Payne

Briefing: Maria Miller’s marginal critics

Day five into the Maria Miller debacle and the calls for her resignation keep on coming. As Isabel reported earlier, more MPs are starting to break cover. Many of the critical Tories are speaking to the press anonymously, but some have been more vocal, especially the younger MPs who sit in marginal seats – who are more conscious of the slings and arrows of outraged voters. Here’s a breakdown of some MPs who have criticised Miller publicly and what their motivations might be: Esther McVey ‘I can honestly say it wouldn’t be how I would have made an apology’ The Employment Minister is widely tipped for promotion in the near

Isabel Hardman

Immigration Bill row looms closer to Commons

The Commons is in legislative limbo at the moment, waiting for the Queen’s Speech, which has just been delayed another day to 4 June. But one thing that could well keep MPs rather well occupied before then is the Immigration Bill, which suffered a defeat in the House of Lords last night – as predicted on Coffee House. The defeat was on Lord Pannick’s amendment which proposes setting up a committee of MPs and peers to consider whether plans to render foreign-born terror suspects ‘stateless’ should go ahead. Peers clearly did think it reasonable, as they backed it 242 votes to 180. The Bill will have its third reading on

Isabel Hardman

More Tory MPs break cover on Miller

Tory MPs now feel it’s acceptable to pile in on the Maria Miller row and offer their views. Mark Field has just told the World at One that her apology to the Commons was regarded as ‘unacceptably perfunctory’. listen to ‘Mark Field on the ‘toxic issue’ of MPs expenses’ on Audioboo

Isabel Hardman

Curious lack of support for Miller in Cabinet

Senior 1922 Committee members are quite surprised by the suggestion that tomorrow’s end-of-term meeting with the Prime Minister represents the deadline for the Maria Miller problem to be resolved. But while you won’t find a Tory backbencher who thinks the impact on the public of this story is negligible – one tells me that ‘whatever happens now, we are losers’ – there’s an interesting attitude among Miller’s own Cabinet colleagues. They had long suspected that she was vulnerable in any forthcoming reshuffle anyway, with one describing her as ‘a bit quiet’ in meetings and another suspecting that she was ‘damaged goods’ after Leveson and with the media after her anyway.

Alex Massie

Alas poor Jeremy Browne, the man who loved this government not wisely but all too well

Poor Jeremy Browne. Sacked for believing in the government in which he served*. Then again, no-one claims politics, or life, is fair. So it is good to see Mr Browne taking his revenge. He has written a book and been speaking to the papers, telling the Telegraph that: “Our lack of self confidence and our willingness to be defined as being a party of timid centrists rather than bold liberals means people look at us and may be reassured that we will be a brake on the other two, but that’s hardly a reason to vote for us. “Nick Clegg took a risk to take us from being party of protest to

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson: Maria Miller is being hounded

As backbenchers apparently gang up on Maria Miller, she’s seen Conservative and Lib Dem colleagues trying to defend her – and dampen down Esther McVey’s comments – on the airwaves this morning. Boris Johnson told the Today programme that he felt Miller was being hounded (although he didn’t give a view on whether she should go): ‘I don’t know the facts of the case in great detail, but it seems to me she is being hounded quite a lot and my natural sympathies go out to people in hounded situations – how about that. I feel, there she is, she’s being hounded, I think what you need is [to] sort

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Esther McVey breaks cover on Miller: ‘It wouldn’t be how I would have made an apology’

Esther McVey is known as a plain-speaking Tory. That ability to avoid mincing her words might propel her into the Cabinet one day – possibly as a replacement for Maria Miller, the way things are looking. But tonight her plain-speaking nature hasn’t been that helpful to her ministerial colleague. McVey has told ITV’s The Agenda: ‘I can honestly say it wouldn’t be how I would have made an apology. But different people have different styles and do things in different ways.’ Asked whether Miller should go, McVey said: ‘David Cameron has the final say on this. He’s standing by her.’ On the programme, to be broadcast at 10.35 tonight, the

Isabel Hardman

Even Iain Duncan Smith’s critics can’t reject his welfare reforms

Iain Duncan Smith’s speech today setting out the moral mission behind his welfare reforms (his series of interventions doing this was previewed in the Spectator at the start of this year) has attracted the usual criticism from Labour for having ‘nothing to say about the cost-of-living crisis’ and a programme ‘in complete disarray’. The opposition has a point about the delivery of the reforms and the detail in some cases – it would be a fib to say Universal Credit has enjoyed a smooth ride, although some of its most nervous critics in government currently seem a little more optimistic – but what Labour does struggle to do is give any

Isabel Hardman

Court of public opinion hands down awkward judgement on Miller case

There are always all sorts of bizarre petitions calling on politicians to do this, that and the other. By and large, politicians tend to ignore them. But the petition calling for Maria Miller to pay back £45,000 in expenses claims or resign has managed to garner 70,131 signatures since it was set up on 4 April. Again, politicians could ignore this. It’s just a bit more difficult to do so when it was David Cameron himself who said that his chief whip should use a ‘smell test’ to see whether the expenses claims were justifiable in the court of public opinion, as well as to the letter of the rules.

Isabel Hardman

Will reforms to self-regulation of MPs be enough to distract from Miller row?

The Prime Minister’s position on Maria Miller has shifted a little in the past few days – but only on the wider issue of self-regulation. At this afternoon’s lobby briefing, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘There are I’m sure a number of ways in which Parliament can consider this, I’m not going to try and pre-empt what they may be but as you’ve heard the PM himself say in the clip earlier, he is, he’s very open to considering changes that Parliament may consider. ‘He’s very much open to looking at particularly sort of how Parliament may want, what changes Parliament may want to make, how that may happen,