Uk politics

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Powys County Council reaches dizzy new heights

This must count as the most bizarre government decision in a long time. But from 31 March, Powys County Council will take over the Office for Fair Trading’s role as the lead enforcement body for all UK estate agents. When I was first told this, I assumed it was a joke. Powys County Council might have many strengths but one struggles to see how they are qualified to be the lead enforcement agency for estate agents in London or Birmingham or, frankly, anywhere other than Powys. But when you check Hansard, it is confirmed by the relevant minister the Lib Dem Jenny Willott: ‘The Office of Fair Trading has a duty

Alex Massie

The British constitution has never made sense or been fair. Why expect it to do so now?

Well, yes, Hamish Macdonell is correct. A coherent devo-max option could win the referendum for Unionists. Some of us, ahem, have been arguing that for years. There were, of course, good reasons for insisting that the referendum vote be a simple Yes/No affair. A single question cuts to the heart of the issue and, notionally, should produce a clear outcome. Nevertheless it also greatly increased the risk – or prospect, if you prefer – of a Yes vote. A multi-option referendum would have killed a Yes vote. But if Hamish is correct I am not, alas, so sure the same can be said of Comrades Forsyth and Nelson. James writes

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Browne: Some bosses are a bit ‘control freakish’

What makes a good Secretary of State? Today Jeremy Browne was interviewed on the Daily Politics about what it’s like to be a junior minister, from his experience of working in both the Foreign Office and Home Office. Towards the end, Jo Coburn asked whether it was true that he’d been given more freedom at the Foreign Office than he had when working for Theresa May at the Home Office. He said: ‘Well that would be telling tales, but I think… anybody who’s ever been in any workplace will know that some bosses are willing to give you a little bit more freedom and discretion and others are a bit

Isabel Hardman

Number 10 tries to defend Brokenshire speech

What fortunate timing it is that Home Office questions falls this afternoon, during the aftermath of one of the worst debut speeches a minister has managed in this Parliament. Doubtless Labour will have a great deal of fun with James Brokenshire’s ‘metropolitan elite’ speech which appears to have been rather disowned by figures in Number 10 over the weekend. Today at the Number 10 lobby briefing, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘The speech was setting out the government’s approach to immigration policy, it’s a policy the Prime Minister very much supports. We want to attract the brightest and the best, people who want to work hard and get on,

Sunday

Rod Liddle

I’m not surprised at David Cameron’s Nepalese nanny

Why the surprise? Of course the Prime Minister would employ a nanny from somewhere like Nepal. David Cameron is simply taking part in the familiar upper-middle class game of ‘Exploited Third World Labour Top Trumps’. The more backward, far-flung and desolate the country of origin, the higher your nanny scores. And, incidentally, the cheaper she is likely to be. Nepal scores a very commendable fifty points. Right now I’ll bet Osborne is trying desperately to source a skivvy from Kyrgyzstan, or perhaps a member of the Melpa tribe from Papua New Guinea, with their strange binary counting system and facility for pig-rearing. Nick Clegg has gone for easy points with

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg loves Britain, and fighting Farage

Nick Clegg’s spring conference speech seems to have been written entirely with Nigel Farage in mind. The Lib Dem leader has decided to go after the Ukip chief, and today’s address was the latest example of the old party of protest directly engaging with the new one. Where Farage had a slogan about loving Britain and voting Ukip (which would have been better if it hadn’t been borrowed from the BNP), Clegg had a whole Love Actually-esque speech about it, ranging from affectionate asides about cups of tea and queues to this country’s love of freedom and its generosity. It was pretty difficult to disagree with anything that the Deputy

The Spectator

Nick Clegg’s ‘I love Britain’ speech: full text

Since I became the Deputy Prime Minister I have had the privilege of spending a bit of time representing Britain’s interests in other parts of the world. I have visited Latin America and Asia to boost exports. I have been to Africa, where we are building better education systems as well as helping fight corruption, poverty and disease. I have travelled to different parts of Europe and the United States to promote British trade. And while each trip varies from the last, there is a thread which runs through them all: you get to see Britain through other people’s eyes. Everywhere I have been – every nation around the planet

Sebastian Payne

Iain Duncan Smith ties himself into universal knots over welfare reform

Will Universal Credit ever become universal and will the lowest paid still face an effective tax rate of a sometimes outrageous 76 per cent? Iain Duncan Smith took a grilling over his plans for welfare reform on the Sunday Politics today, but didn’t give a clear answer to either of these questions regarding his reforms. Firstly, on the progress of implementing Universal Credit, the Work and Pensions Secretary claimed that ‘Universal Credit is already rolling out and the IT is working’, despite just 6,000 people currently on the ‘Pathfinder’ stage. In his initial plans, a million people claiming six existing working-age benefits were due to be on the Pathfinder stage by

James Forsyth

David Cameron pays the price for another lazy shuffle

The Tory leadership is not best pleased with James Brokenshire, the Immigration Minister whose ill-judged speech turned a media spotlight onto the Cameron’s nanny. There are mutterings in Downing Street about the speech having being submitted for clearance very late. But Number 10 can’t escape its share of the blame for this fiasco. First, the speech should never have been cleared. The problems it would cause were obvious, which is why one Lib Dem tells me ‘we all fell out about laughing when we read it.’ Second, Brokenshire should never have been appointed to this job. When Mark Harper resigned as immigration minister because his clearner was working in the

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Number 10 to clarify Cameron nanny row

Great excitement in Westminster today over David Cameron’s Nepalese nanny (as a member of James Brokenshire’s metropolitan elite) and whether the Prime Minister had a role in Gita Lima obtaining British citizenship. At this morning’s lobby briefing, a Number 10 spokesperson was asked whether Cameron had played a role in getting Lima a British passport. The spokesperson replied that they were ‘not aware’ of any involvement from the PM. Now I understand that Number 10 have checked the relevant documents and are shortly to release a statement confirming that the Camerons did not write a letter in support of their nanny’s passport application. Samantha Cameron was simply named as the

James Forsyth

Will Howard Davies recommend the Heathrow Hub after the next election?

As Patrick McLoughlin makes clear in his interview with The Spectator, Sir Howard Davies’s report on where in the south east new runways should be built will be published soon after the next election. The plan is that the new runways will then be approved and construction under way by 2020; meaning that there’ll be no chance for people to vote against them at a general election. Strikingly, the Heathrow Hub option — which would extend the northern runway and then turn it into two runways — is rapidly gaining support in Westminster. Part of its attraction of is that the scheme would also enable you to extend the southern

Sebastian Payne

The end of High Speed 2?

Haters of HS2 rejoice: the project has an even better chance of failing now. Following James’ revelation that the Transport Secretary doesn’t believe the Hybrid Bill will pass through Parliament before the next election, there are several scenarios on how the parties may change their stance on the project. If a cross-party consensus falls apart, HS2 will run into severe difficulties. Nearly all of the possibilities pose a threat to the line actually being built: 1. David Cameron remains Prime Minister James played out this scenario in his blog yesterday, explaining why it matters that HS2 will be a big issue at the next general election. HS2 has always been a difficult sell to Tory

Isabel Hardman

Bickering about bickering

Lib Dems are excitedly travelling to their Spring conference in York, which kicks off this evening with the traditional rally (hopefully a stand-up free one, though). Vince Cable and Tim Farron will be cheering the troops at tonight’s event, with Nick Clegg offering a Q&A tomorrow and his main speech on Sunday afternoon. Party figures expect the conference to be reasonably serene: there are no party rows this year, and the only real bickering is manufactured Coalition stuff, rather than a genuine crisis. As I explain in my Telegraph column today, one of the things the Lib Dems are increasingly keen to do is to argue that key policies and

Charles Moore

Why are links with violence-justifying Republicans something to be proud of?

Last week, John Downey, the former IRA man, avoided trial for the Hyde Park bombings of 1982. One who stood bail for him was Roy Greenslade, the media pundit of the Guardian. Since Mr Downey has not been proved guilty, we must presume him innocent, but isn’t it extraordinary that Greenslade can cosy up to such a man without suffering in reputation? Suppose I were to stand bail for, say, Nick Griffin of the BNP (who, so far as I know, has never been accused of a terrorist crime), or for some loyalist oaf. I would rightly be shunned in my trade. Yet a link with extreme, violence-justifying, anti-British republicans

Thursday

Sebastian Payne

Five things you need to know about the ‘suppressed’ immigration report

With a mere whimper, the government has released its controversial report (pdf) on the effects of immigration on ‘native UK employment’. Following Newsnight’s revelations that the report was being ‘held back’, Labour demanded its release. 24 hours later, it was put online while Theresa May was informing MPs of an inquiry into undercover policing after revelations about the treatment of Stephen Lawrence’s family. Here are the top five things you need to know from the paper: 1. There’s minimal evidence of migrants taking British jobs The Home Office report titled ‘Impacts of migration on UK native employment‘ reveals there is ‘relatively little evidence’ of British workers being displaced — i.e. migrants taking

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg: Vince Cable never intended to offend teachers

Nick Clegg spent this morning singing the Lib Dem equivalent of Take That’s Back for Good, telling his target voters from the teaching profession that whatever one of his colleagues had said or did, they didn’t mean it. The Deputy Prime Minister was trying to apologise for comments by Vince Cable, who had rather clumsily underlined a valid point he was trying to make about the need for better careers advice in schools by suggesting that teachers ‘know absolutely nothing about the world of work’. ‘I know that Vince did not intend to offend teachers,’ pleaded the Deputy Prime Minister on his LBC radio show. He then described the profession

James Forsyth

Will HS2 become an election issue?

In an interview with The Spectator this week, the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin admits that HS2 will not have been approved by parliament before the next election. This invites the question, will HS2 become an election issue? Both Ed Balls and Andy Burnham have made forays against HS2 in recent months. But both have been slapped down by Ed Miliband’s office. His allies believe that Labour can’t run on a platform of rebuilding Britain while simultaneously promising to put a stop to the biggest infrastructure project in decades. But one wonders if this Labour position will hold. The Tory election campaign will claim repeatedly that Labour’s sums don’t add up,

Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business: Britain’s chaotic energy policy puts us in Putin’s hands

To have written last month that the headline ‘Kiev in flames’ looked like a black swan on the economic horizon hardly makes me Nostradamus — but sure enough, the tension between Russia and Ukraine have caused stock markets to quiver and the price of UK gas for one-month delivery on the ICE Europe futures exchange in London to rise 10 per cent on Monday. But it was more impressively far-sighted that way back in the winter of 2005/6 we commissioned a Spectator cover showing wicked Vladimir Putin sitting astride a knotted gas pipeline: one sixth of all gas consumed in Europe arrives from Russia across the Ukraine, and another sixth

Wednesday

The Spectator

Patrick Rock arrest: Sir Jeremy Heywood’s reply to Labour letter

Dear Mr Ashworth, Thank you for your letter. I will try to respond to your specific questions but, as you recognise, in doing so my overriding concern must be to avoid doing anything to prejudice or undermine an on-going police investigation. Downing Street became aware of a potential offence relating to child abuse imagery on the evening of 12 February.  I was immediately informed of the allegation and the Prime Minister was also briefed.  Officials then contacted the NCA to seek advice on how to report suspected criminality. Our subsequent actions were driven by the overriding importance of not jeopardising either their investigation or the possibility of a prosecution. Patrick

The Spectator

Exclusive: HS2 Bill won’t be passed by the next election, Transport Secretary admits

In this week’s Spectator magazine, James Forsyth interviews the Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin. McLoughlin admits that the government is unlikely legislation to get the HS2 Bill through Parliament before the next election — which could leave a major threat over the project in 2015. ‘There are a bevy of Tory MPs opposed to having HS2 run through their patch or a new runway built in their backyard. But McLoughlin has agreed to tolerate dissent. ‘You have to accept that certain people, certain constituencies are heavily impacted by a piece of national infrastructure,’ he says. ‘Those MPs have got a duty to stand up for their constituents and make the case for their