Uk politics

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The right-wing case for Scottish independence

Chuckle not, it exists. Wealthy Nation, a new grouplet formed by the eminent historian Michael Fry, is making the case that Scotland can be an admirably prosperous little country after independence provided, that is, she casts off the soft-left Caledonian consensus that remains wearily orthodox thinking north of the Tweed and Solway. Fry, whose new history of Scotland from Waterloo to Mons I commend to you without reservation, set out his case in The Scotsman earlier this month. If Scotland is to be free, she must be rich and she will not be rich unless her politics moves to the right.

Isabel Hardman

Leaked memo suggests ministers could accept Raab deportation call

Though the PM and whips have been in a tizz about Nigel Mills' amendment to the Immigration Bill, it's Dominic Raab's call to narrow the grounds for appeal in the deportation of foreign criminals that could cause real problems in tomorrow afternoon's debate. There is a chance that it could pass, while the Mills amendment can just be notched up as an embarrassing rebellion. But do ministers really need to reject the amendment at all? In March, Theresa May told the Prime Minister that the same clause, originally tacked to the Crime and Courts Bill, 'would be incompatible with the ECHR and counter-productive' because the European Court of Human Rights would 'most probably issue a rule 39 injunction' that prevented deportation until the issue was resolved by the Court.

Alex Massie

Alex Salmond writes a cheque – in pounds sterling – he cannot honour

As I type this, Alex Salmond and Mark Carney are chowing over porridge at Bute House, the First Minister's official residence in Edinburgh. There is always the risk of exaggerating the importance of these things but this morning's meeting with the Governor of the Bank of England may be the most important encounter Alex Salmond has this year. The question is simple: will an independent Scotland be able to forge a currency union with the rump United Kingdom? The answers, for all the First Minister's bland assurances that such a union is in everyone's interests, are not so simple. Like poker players, politicians often have a "tell". When Salmond offers a kind of breezy emollience he's often holding weaker cards than he wants you to think.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Govt deal means UK will accept Syrian refugees

As expected, the government has changed its stance on Syrian refugees this evening ahead of what had looked to be a difficult vote in the House of Commons tomorrow. Nick Clegg has just announced that the UK will now offer refuge to vulnerable Syrians such as women and girls who have experienced or are at risk of sexual violence, the elderly, survivors of torture and disabled people. This will only likely equate to a few hundred, but there will be no quota for the number of refugees the UK takes. Clegg said this evening: 'The Coalition Government wants to play our part in helping to alleviate the immense suffering in Syria. The £600m we have provided makes us the second largest bilateral donor of humanitarian aid in the world.

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: David Cameron holds crisis talks with MPs over Immigration Bill

David Cameron has been summoning Tory backbenchers to Number 10 today to personally persuade them not to back an amendment to the Immigration Bill that would reintroduce controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. I have learned that a number of possible waverers who could be persuaded to change their mind and drop their support for Nigel Mills' amendment have been called to Downing Street as part of a serious whipping operation by the government. The whips and party leadership have also been trying out a number of unusual tactics to minimise Thursday's rebellion: 1.

Sebastian Payne

A. C. Grayling interview: being hated, the need for private universities and celebrity academics

Professor Anthony Clifford Grayling is on top of the world. Well, Bloomsbury. Sitting in his office overlooking Bedford Square, the Master of the New College of Humanities can barely contain his self-satisfaction. ‘We have been more successful than anybody could have guessed,’ he informs me. Two years ago, ‘one of the most hated men in academia’ was the target of eggs, smoke bombs and insults when he announced a new £18,000-a-year private university. His aim was to marry the tutorial teaching model with a challenging liberal arts course — with the help of some celebrity friends. Academics, foes and friends all rounded against Grayling and willed his experiment to fail.

Edwina Currie

Food banks aren’t solving problems — they can make things worse too

This article was corrected. Originally it stated that 'This tiny organisation doesn’t run a single food bank – it merely advises church and community groups on how to'. But the copy has been changed to reflect the reality of the Trust's work. The Trussell Trust has responded here. The Trussell Trust is having a field day. This tiny organisation which runs a food bank in Salisbury and advises and supports a network of over 400 food banks nationwide says there has been a 170% increase in people using food banks in the last 12 months. Of course; that’s because there are more food banks. As anyone with their wits about them can grasp, if you increase the free supply of something worth having, you’ll have takers queuing at the door.

Alex Massie

To fix the north-south divide, revive the Council of the North!

These, ranked from first to tenth, are the urban areas in Britain with the highest average weekly earnings in 2012: London, Reading, Crawley, Aldershot, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Aberdeen, Southend, Brighton. That's from the latest, fascinating, report (pdf here) published by the Centre for Cities. It can be summarised easily: if you want to make it, head to London or the south-east of England. Or to Scotland. London, as Jeremy Warner observed this morning, is still driving the British economy. Financial services remain vital both to economic recovery and the country's long-term future. Strengthening other sectors remains important; so does the City. But strengthening Britain's other cities is - or should - also be at the top of the agenda.

Isabel Hardman

Tories demand immigration investigation into Labour campaign guru

Gurus are dangerous beasts in politics mainly because they tend to say awkward things (something Ed Miliband, who has Lord Glasman as his on-off guru, can attest to more than others). But the row over Arnie Graf's immigration status, sparked by the Sun's front page today, shows that gurus are dangerous in many, many ways. Like the Church of England discovering it was investing in Wonga while also crusading against it, it's surprising that the Labour party didn't think to make sure all was tickety-boo on the immigration status front before launching a tougher strategy in this area. Still, it has given the Conservative attack machine something to do, with Priti Patel writing to the UK Border Agency to demand an investigation into whether Graf is working here illegally.

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne: Labour is ‘anti-the British people’

Quite naturally, there were rather more Conservative than Labour MPs in the House of Commons for Treasury Questions this morning. And quite naturally, George Osborne and colleagues on the Treasury front bench spent most of the session goading their Labour opponents about this morning's growth figures. Deputy Chief Whip Greg Hands and Ed Balls had a wonderful extended session of heckling one another across the Chamber as the exchanges went on, with Hands mocking Balls' flatlining gesture. Other MPs, though, were kept waiting rather longer to do what they'd turned up to do: jeer the Shadow Chancellor when he eventually stood up. But when he eventually stood up, 50 minutes into the session, the Conservative benches went wild with roars.

Isabel Hardman

Strong sympathy for Tory rebel deportation call

How will the row over the Immigration Bill pan out? Number 10 was trying to be as emollient as possible yesterday, saying it would look at all amendments, while I understand that Dominic Raab's deportation amendment has strong private support at Cabinet level. Ministers do, though, understand that Theresa May is starting to worry that she won't get her Bill through the House of Commons and House of Lords in time for it to become an Act, and so are leaving her be on the deportation side of things, but there could still be a scenario where PPSs demand to be able to support it, as they did last time. It is difficult to find anyone in the Conservative party who doesn't support it (although Ken Clarke is keeping quiet).

Monday

Hamish Macdonell

Poll shows Yes camp are within striking distance of victory

'It has given us a good, old-fashioned kick up the backside,' said one member of the 'No' camp yesterday. He was being charitable. It could end up being an awful lot worse than that. The ‘it’ in question was the new ICM poll which, suddenly and unexpectedly, has put the Yes campaign right back in the hunt for Scottish independence. At a stroke, all those complacent certainties about the No camp wiping the floor with the Nationalists have been discarded and, this morning at Holyrood, the talk is of little else. 'It is game on,' said one Nationalist with a smile. Just to emphasise how important this new poll for The Scotsman newspapers is, here are the figures: Yes 37 per cent (up from 32 per cent in September) No 44 per cent, down from 49 per cent in September.

Isabel Hardman

May promises response on Syrian refugees in next couple of days

Yvette Cooper chose to focus her attack at Home Office questions on the government's position on Syrian refugees. She continually pushed Theresa May on whether the the Home office would change its position and sign up to the UN's refugee programme. May replied that the United Kingdom has a 'fine record' when it comes to the amount of money it is providing in aid, and has accepted several thousand asylum seekers from Syria. But added that 'I am indeed working with the Foreign Secretary to look at what further support can be provided by this government and further announcements will be made on that in due course.' Cooper pressed further, telling her that a minority of refugees did need extra help.

Isabel Hardman

Former ministers, 1922 chair and Labour grandees back rebel deportation call

The list of MPs supporting Dominic Raab's amendment on deportation to the Immigration Bill has now been published, and as predicted, it contains some very big names indeed. Andrew Mitchell has signed, along with 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady, former policing minister Nick Herbert, former justice minister Crispin Blunt, and Labour grandees such as David Blunkett and Hazel Blears. There are currently 104 MPs signed up to support the amendment: the majority of them Conservative. It calls for foreign criminals to only avoid deportation if they risk being killed or tortured on their return. The last time this amendment was due to be debated as part of the Crime and Courts Bill, PPSs demanded to be able to support it without getting into trouble.

Alex Massie

Labour and the Conservatives are both wrong about income tax

Never interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake. On the other hand, when your opponent has made a mistake try not to match him by making an equal blunder of your own. That's not how Westminster politics works, of course. For reasons that presumably make sense to the respective parties, Labour and the Conservatives have each managed to cock-up their tax policies. Specifically, they are both wrong on the politics of the 50% rate of income tax. That is, the Tories should never have cut the rate of tax paid by those few Britons earning over £150,000 and Labour should not be promising to restore the 50% rate. This is not an argument about finances but about signalling.

Isabel Hardman

PM optimistic about Immigration Bill as rebels stay stubborn

David Cameron was very upbeat for a Monday morning when he popped up on the Today programme a few minutes ago. Perhaps it was partly down to a not-particularly aggressive interview, or perhaps it was because the Prime Minister wants to continue the theme of his New Year's message and be upbeat about the prospects for the economy and living standards where Labour continues to be pessimistic (that optimism, of course, is easier to find when you decide to release figures showing take home pay improving that do not take into account the effect of benefit cuts or tax rises, but there we go). He repeatedly said he was an optimist, particularly when confronted with Nicky Morgan's comments about the Conservative message.

Nick De Bois

How the Conservatives should respond to Ed Balls’ 50p tax pledge

This weekend Ed Balls made it clear he wants to tax Britain more.It won't stop at 50%, and it wont be confined to the highest earners over 150,000. In that sense low tax Comservatives have much to thank Ed Balls for as he really has set out clear blue water between Labour and the Conservatives for the next election. Nevertheless, let's not celebrate too quickly. Labour will know, and as Ed Balls all but acknowledged on the Marr show this weekend, that this tax commitment is little to do with economic policy and more to do with their own electoral strategy. A 50% top rate of income tax will raise little extra money if any at all. The HMRC calculates that at best 100 million, at worse it produced a negative effect on tax receipts. So why do it? Simple.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Taking offence and freedom of speech

The row about Lib Dem candidate Maajid Nawaz continues, with some confusion over whether or not one of his critics has a meeting with the party leadership to discuss the matter. While that unravels a little more, it's worth thinking very briefly about the implications of this row. The protagonists want Nawaz removed as a candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn because he has done something that offends other members of his religion. In doing so, they are arguing that freedom of speech comes with responsibility. Yet oddly, those who make these arguments for curbs on freedom of speech so that no-one gets upset never do so when it comes to their own beliefs. All religious groups benefit from freedom of speech, because their beliefs have the power to offend others.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls: Labour’s public spending was not a problem before the crisis

Ed Balls and Ed Miliband have a funny old approach to convincing voters that they should be handed back the keys to the car. They pen pieces about how tough Labour is on welfare spending and make careful (and carefully-worded) references at every opportunity to their promise not to borrow more for day-to-day spending. The Shadow Chancellor prevaricates over HS2 to give the impression that he's fiscally responsible. He did that again today when he appeared on the Andrew Marr Show, but he also said this: 'But do I think the level of public spending going into the crisis was a problem for Britain? No, I don’t, nor our deficit, nor our national debt – what happened was a global financial crisis which pushed up the deficit. The question then was ‘who can get the deficit down?

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Immigration Bill set for two serious rows

The row over the past few weeks over the Immigration Bill has been rather ironic given it was introduced in part to calm Tory backbench nerves. Those nerves were over two issues: Bulgarian and Romanian migrants, and deportation, and while the Mills amendment which addresses the former remains on the order paper, albeit with some rival amendments aimed at siphoning off support, there is another big revolt on the way on the latter. Dominic Raab has tabled another amendment which has the support of more than 100 MPs on deportation. It is essentially a repeat of the amendment he tabled to the Crime and Courts Bill, and means that foreign criminals can only avoid deportation if they risk being killed or tortured on their return.