Uk politics

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Who will rid us of George Galloway?

From our UK edition

Nothing George Galloway says or does should surprise anyone any longer. Even so, his latest musings on the situation in Ukraine - delivered on the Iranian propaganda channel Press TV - are quite something. Even by his lofty standards they may represent a new low. Just watch him go: Galloway excels even himself here. It's the tortuous creativity that really does it. If it weren't so typical and so typically revolting you'd almost be impressed by it. Is it too much to ask that the other parties agree next year to field but a single candidate against Galloway? As for the people of Bradford West, well, the best that can be said is that electing Galloway once might be a misfortune, doing so twice would be very much worse than careless.

Isabel Hardman

Nick vs Nigel: Clegg gets a little help from Farage’s mate Vlad

From our UK edition

Nick Clegg 'lost' last week's LBC debate with Nigel Farage, not for want of trying to sound reasonable or appear at ease and polished, but because there are simply fewer voters who are prepared to give someone from the establishment a hearing, or agree with him on Europe. The Lib Dem leader does plan to use fewer stat attacks and more emotion tonight when the two men meet again. But he also has a bit of help from Farage himself, who is either revealing a strong conviction about Vladimir Putin that he had hitherto kept buried or is stubbornly digging himself a hole over his comments about the EU and Ukraine. How Farage deals with an inevitable attack from Clegg on his comments about Putin will tell us a fair bit about what the Ukip leader is really like.

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Lutfur Rahman and Tower Hamlets — an example of why elected mayors don’t work?

From our UK edition

Is Eric Pickles about to send government troops into Tower Hamlets? Last night’s Panorama examined Lutfur Rahman, the borough’s independent directly elected mayor, who is accused (amongst other things) of mismanaging public funds to purchase influence within certain communities. The programme outlined how Rahman has allegedly ignored the advice of his own officials on distributing money and more than doubling funds to projects in Tower Hamlets’ Bengali community— of which more than two thirds were responsible for electing him in 2010. Rahman has denied all of the allegations against him, calling the BBC Islamophobic, a charge the BBC has in turn refuted in vigorous terms.

Isabel Hardman

People’s front against HS2 to unite

From our UK edition

Watch out for an increase in hostilities from anti-HS2 campaigners in the next few weeks. One of the more concerted backbench campaigners against the new route is planning to strengthen the cause by bringing together all the groups that are against HS2 under one umbrella. Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP who has a track record of causing serious problems for the government on issues such as Syria, tells me that he and Cheryl Gillan are setting up the group in May 'so we can speak as one voice'. Bridgen hopes the campaign will include organisations who have set their faces against high speed rail such as the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and the Woodland Trust, describing the current campaign as a 'bit like the People's Front of Judea'.

Fraser Nelson

Michael Gove is right — the Conservatives are the party of social justice

From our UK edition

Yesterday, George Osborne dedicated himself the mission of 'full employment'. Today, Michael Gove has given a speech declaring that the Conservatives are the 'party of social justice'. This is not positioning - it's simply stating the obvious. Thanks to Gove, the best hope a council estate kid has of dodging the local sink school is for a new school to open nearby. The Gove reforms don't help the rich - the education system works fine for them. The best state schools are filled with the state pupils from the richest backgrounds. Ed Balls was sent private, as his dad (who used to teach at Eton) had wisely saved money and rightly sought to invest this in his child. The same is true for Tristram Hunt's parents.

Isabel Hardman

New NHS boss warns that health service is facing its biggest challenge

From our UK edition

Simon Stevens is giving us the first glimpse of what he wants to do as the new chief executive of the NHS today. In a speech in Newcastle, he will warn that the service is facing its biggest challenge, and that a radical transformation of care is needed. Stevens will say: 'I know that for the NHS the stakes have never been higher. Service pressures are intensifying and longstanding problems are not going to disappear overnight.' So what are the radical changes that Stevens wants to set about working on? In this week's Spectator, former Labour adviser John McTernan profiles the new NHS boss, and explains what this radical reformer wants to do with the health service. He writes:- Stevens set out his vision for the NHS in an essay for a pamphlet published by the think-tank Reform.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

The Tories are repeatedly reminding voters of their achievements – finally

From our UK edition

It's no surprise that the Conservatives want to take the credit for the tax cuts in the Budget, or that the Lib Dems are rather peeved about this. The Chancellor will make a speech today in which he describes Britain as 'starting to walk tall in the world' and drive home what he sees as a series of key government achievements on 'reshoring' and the rise in the personal allowance of income tax, which comes into effect this week. Nick Clegg, meanwhile, is giving his monthly press conference where he will argue that the Conservatives are trying to 'steal' his own party's prize ideas. Those two men can tussle about in the Westminster bubble for credit (though to be fair to the Lib Dems, they do seem to be winning the battle).

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Douglas Alexander: Labour hasn’t fired Arnie Graf as election guru

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband tried to reassure his MPs this week that the party just needed to weather a temporary blip. But one question the Labour leader will be (or should be) contemplating which is quite separate from the squally polls is whether his top team can repair increasingly public tensions which are as much about personality as they are about strategy. The Mail on Sunday reports another fissure between Douglas Alexander and Michael Dugher, while Andrew Rawnsley has a useful guide to the major fault lines in the party. This morning on Marr, Douglas Alexander was asked to comment on reports that his party had fired Arnie Graf as community organising election supremo.

Alex Massie

From time to time it is necessary to execute a government minister to encourage the others. This is one such moment.

From our UK edition

Hanging. Shooting. Beheading. Defenestration. Take your pick. It doesn't matter which method you choose but the government minister who told The Guardian's Nick Watt that "of course" there would be a deal to be done creating a sterling zone shared by an independent Scotland and the remaining parts of the United Kingdom needs to be found, summarily tried, and executed. Game-changing moments, of course, are rarely anything of the sort. Political campaigns do not pivot on individual moments or blunders. Fundamentals matter more. And yet the fundamentals are in turn shaped by the accretion of a thousand impressions. At least in part. The campaigning matters too. Especially in a close race.

Saturday

Melanie McDonagh

Gay marriage is a triumph for our arrogant political class

From our UK edition

Well, Peter and David, John and Bernado, Sean and Sinclair are now married and the happy husbands have the further benefit of the unanimous blessing of our political class. David Cameron said the move sent a message that people were now equal 'whether gay or straight. It says we are a country that will continue to honour its proud traditions of respect, tolerance and equal worth.' For good measure, he added that the law change would encourage young people unsure of their sexuality. Really? You mean a few more teenagers hovering between being gay or straight might go for the gay option on the back of the prospect of a wedding? And that’s a good thing?

Isabel Hardman

Osborne and Alexander deny Scotland could keep the pound

From our UK edition

After Nick Watt's stunning scoop this morning on an unnamed minister saying that an independent Scotland could keep the pound after all, George Osborne and Danny Alexander have released this joint statement: 'A currency union will not work because it would not be in Scotland’s interests and would not be in the UK’s interests. Scotland would have no control over mortgage rates, and would be binding its hands on tax and funding for vital public services. The Scottish Government are proposing to divorce the rest of the UK but want to keep the joint bank account and credit card. The UK would not put its taxpayers at risk of bailing out a foreign country and its banks. Parliament wouldn’t pass it, and the people wouldn’t accept it.

Martin Vander Weyer

How the Budget failed to erode the North-South divide

From our UK edition

The Budget contained eye-catching measures to stimulate business investment, which has been lagging badly behind the current recovery, and to encourage exporters, whose performance has trailed off after a promising mid-recession uptick when the pound weakened. But there was little to address the scandalous unfairness of business rates about which I regularly hold forth. These punitive charges — ‘£26 billion for George Osborne that… he might otherwise have to take direct from you and me,’ I wrote last year — on which businesses have no vote and for which they get so few services in return, are still based on pre-recessionary 2008 valuations of commercial property.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Class warriors and unpaid mercenaries

From our UK edition

Class war. It's not very classy, is it? But it's Labour's big thing at the moment, the class-of-politicians-crisis, which it thinks works well with the other crisis facing hardworking families up and down the country that the party likes to talk about, and allows Ed Miliband to duck awkward things like responding to the Budget. He and his henchmen have spent the past week and a half talking as much about Etonians as they have pensioners. On Tuesday, Rachel Reeves had her go, banging on about rich Tories buying Lamborghinis. Ed Balls was the follow-up act on Wednesday (having already had a first shot last week with his jokes about the PM's friend 'Bingo'). He told the Commons that: 'When the hon.

Isabel Hardman

Knives out for Warsi in reshuffle

From our UK edition

After a few weeks of Boris vs George, Conservatives are now starting to gossip about something a little more immediate: a post-European elections reshuffle. I understand that the Prime Minister is currently experiencing concerted lobbying from many ministers and backbenchers to remove Baroness Warsi from her post as 'senior minister of state' after her decision to wave about a front page on the 'Eton Mess' in Number 10 on ITV's The Agenda a few weeks ago. There was fury at a senior level in the Conservative party about Warsi's behaviour: she was punching her party's bruise on class. One minister says: 'She should be dropped down a hole and a lid put on the top. She knew what she was doing, she's not naive.

Isabel Hardman

Peers launch bid to neuter controversial ‘stateless’ plan in Immigration Bill

From our UK edition

Remember that rather curious change to the Immigration Bill that would render foreign-born terror suspects 'stateless' that ministers managed to sneak through while most MPs were in a tizz about Dominic Raab? Well, it's facing its first major battle in the House of Lords soon, with a group of peers tabling an amendment which would in effect neuter it or spark a row in the Commons. The new clause, tabled by crossbenchers Lord Pannick and Lord Brown, Lib Dem former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Macdonald and Labour's Baroness Smith, proposes setting up a committee of MPs and peers to consider whether the stateless policy should go ahead.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron’s slow mission to convince sceptics at home and in Europe

From our UK edition

Today's joint FT article by George Osborne and Wolfgang Schäuble is yet another exhibit for David Cameron to wave at critics of his EU policy. While Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg fight over In or Out with no chance of leading the government that presents that choice to the British people (read Fraser's Telegraph column on this), David Cameron can say that he is inching closer to winning debates, point by point, with European leaders. Today's article contains the important acceptance that non-eurozone countries should be protected rather than disadvantaged by treaty change: 'A stable euro is good for the global economy, and especially for Europe. The crisis has shown that the eurozone needs a common fiscal and economic policy with corresponding improved governance.

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Will Nick and Nigel be sidelined from the 2015 TV debates?

From our UK edition

Has last night’s debate affected Nigel Farage’s chances of being involved in the general election TV debates? Although the broadcasters and political parties have yet to agree any dates or formats, the precedent has been set and the public will be expecting them. With weasel words from No.10 and a bullish attitude from some broadcasters, there’s a long way to go before an agreement is made. The public already have a clear idea of what they expect. According to the last YouGov polling on the subject, nearly half believe there should be a four-way debate between Cameron, Miliband, Clegg and Farage: [datawrapper chart="http://charts.spectator.co.uk/chart/noqHV/"] It’ll be interesting to see whether the public have changed their minds following Nick vs.

Charles Moore

Boris should call a referendum

From our UK edition

Everyone can see that the West has no idea what to do about Russian power in the Ukraine. Britain, in particular, is at the margins. It is time for the Mayor of London to fulfil his historic role of stealing a march on more conventional politicians. Boris should take a leaf out of President Putin’s book and call a referendum of Londoners. He should ask them whether they would like all Russian housing in London to be seized, and be inhabited, instead, by British families. I predict a Yes vote whose percentage would exceed even that of the recent Crimean plebiscite. Obviously the Mayor, unlike Putin, has no military forces to implement such a measure (which is just as well), but the vote would make us feel a bit better.

Isabel Hardman

Clegg and Farage’s real mission: getting their voters to turn up

From our UK edition

'You guys always love the zero sum game, you know, politics as Premier League football,' Paddy Ashdown said this morning when asked whether he accepted whether his leader had lost last night's LBC debate on Europe. This sounded ridiculous initially: of course politics is like Premier League football. The party that comes second in a general election doesn't skip away arguing that it was the taking part that counts, it retreats to lick its wounds.

Isabel Hardman

Atos leaves disability test contract early: but will it change anything?

From our UK edition

The Work and Pensions department has this morning announced that Atos, the provider of the Work Capability Assessments which determine whether a benefit claimant is fit for work, is leaving its contract early. The company, which had been underperforming on the contract for a while, was supposed to carry out the WCA until August 2015, but has made a 'substantial financial settlement' to DWP. Mike Penning has emphasised this in his reaction to the announcement, saying: 'I am pleased to confirm that Atos will not receive a single penny of compensation from the taxpayer for the early termination of their contract, quite the contrary, Atos has made a substantial financial settlement to the Department.