Uk politics

Tuesday

Mary Wakefield

The drones are coming!

Amazon is testing unmanned drones to deliver goods to customers — whatever next? Well, the Spec can tell you exactly what. Last year we ran a cover story on drones, predicting that: ‘Quite soon, it will be impossible to ignore the fact that a revolution is taking place. You’ll look up one day and the skies will be full of flying robots: pilotless drones or UAVS (Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles) — all programmed to carry out different tasks. There’ll be security drones circling shops, streaming video back to base, Royal Mail drones flying parcels to and fro. Even the birds and bees may not be what they seem. The tiniest drones on

Isabel Hardman

PM dodges ‘small island’ moment in China

David Cameron’s visit to China is rather different to some of his recent trips. Firstly, as Douglas Murray outlined yesterday, he’s not making as big a noise about human rights as he did when he was in Sri Lanka recently (and in Sri Lanka, it wasn’t just noise: it was the body language, with an awkward handshake summing up how he felt about Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa). Secondly, he’s not going to bother getting all Love, Actually about the country he represents. When he was in St Petersburg, the Prime Minister got rather overexcited about a comment from a Putin official about Britain being a ‘small island no-one listens

Chris Skidmore

PISA rankings are a shot in the arm for education reformers

Like measuring water by the handful, calculating the success of the education system at a time of rampant grade inflation is an impossible task. If exam results go up every year how can we know if are our children are actually getting a better education or if exams are just getting easier? Part of the answer is international comparisons – which is why the OECD PISA rankings published today do actually matter. The last time they were published, in 2009, they showed that as a country we slipped to 25th in reading, 28th in maths and 16th in science. Yet at the same time domestic UK exam results were getting better. If

Isabel Hardman

Fallon: green energy isn’t the government’s energy priority

Michael Fallon is the Spectator’s Minister of the Year, nicknamed the ‘Minister for Royal Shale’ for his dual role in the privatisation of the postal service and getting fracking going in this country. He’s also the minister whose thinking most closely mirrors Number 10’s stance on the energy market at present, and so his speech at the Spectator’s energy conference yesterday wasn’t just an important glimpse into current government policy, but also future Conservative policymaking on energy. listen to ‘Michael Fallon speaking at the Spectator’s Energy Conference’ on Audioboo Significantly, the Energy Minister told the conference that the most important issues were ‘security of supply, affordability, and playing our part

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Caroline Flint and Ed Davey clash over who cares most about consumers

One of the Conservatives’ great victories in government has been to portray the party as on the side of consumers against behemoth and sometimes inefficient producers. Take education, where Michael Gove has set to tackling the ‘Blob’ of the education establishment on behalf of parents who want real choice over their children’s education. Or the NHS, where Jeremy Hunt has styled himself as the patients’ champion, standing up to a resistant NHS establishment on standards of care. But this isn’t the case on every front. Today’s Commons statement on energy bills by Ed Davey underlined the struggle the Coalition faces in presenting a convincing case for being a consumer champion

Alex Massie

When oh when will we ever be able to talk about immigration (sensibly)?

I do wish we were never allowed to speak about immigration. That seems the only way to prevent folk from spouting – and writing – rubbish on the subject. But of course there is no conspiracy intent on stifling discussion on immigration. Not even a liberal, metropolitan or elitist conspiracy. Sorry. You can say all the things you think you can’t say. And we know this because many, even most, of them are said all the time. So often, in fact, that they lack novelty. And we also know that no-one really wants to have a conversation about immigration. Conversation would require some back and forth. It might even allow the possibility someone might

Isabel Hardman

Ed Davey focuses fire on Labour – for now

Of all the ministers involved in the Coalition negotiations over energy bills, Ed Davey has had quite the worst experience. He has had to water down his conference bullishness about standing up to the Tories to a sort of amiable plea that the Lib Dems really are keeping the Coalition green. When his departmental junior Michael Fallon won ‘Minister of the Year’ at the Spectator awards this year, one of the judges observed that he had ‘kneecapped Ed Davey’. In his interview on Today this morning, Davey went for Labour, and dodged suggestions that he and his party had lost out. As James reported yesterday, there has been a fair

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Naked politicians and the Emperor’s New Clothes: Labour’s Autumn Statement challenge

The Autumn Statement isn’t until Thursday, but already it’s clear what the attack lines will be from both sides. As James explained earlier, the Tories and Lib Dems will want to focus on the ‘responsible recovery’, which means fewer giveaways than a Chancellor might be tempted to make at this stage in a parliament and which feeds into the Conservative narrative that voters should let them finish the job by re-electing them in 2015. From Labour’s part, it’s that this Autumn Statement was written by Ed Miliband at his party’s conference in Brighton. Labour MPs are now very keen to talk about Coalition politicians dancing to Labour’s tune. Meanwhile, Ed

James Forsyth

Osborne wants to talk about ‘the responsible recovery’ but energy bills are still Topic A

In the minds of government strategists, the autumn statement is the moment when the coalition gets to turn the conversation back to the broader economy and away from Ed Miliband’s focus on the cost of living. But the first five minutes of George Osborne’s pre-statement interview with Andrew Marr were dominated by the action the government is taking in response to Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy bills. The problem for the coalition on energy bills is that the £50 it is taking off bills now might well not be enough to stop bills rising next year. If household bills go up again in 2014, Miliband’s price freeze is going to

Saturday

Kate Maltby

Michael Gove and Boris Johnson: partners in power?

Boris Johnson’s speech at the Centre for Policy Studies, much misrepresented, is still grabbing headlines. Boris gave the Margaret Thatcher memorial lecture, so it’s no surprise it has been interpreted as a bid to succeed her. But another relationship is just as intriguing: was Boris also stealing Michael Gove’s clothes? The Mayor said much about the significance of the Conservatives’ past, but the Govian aspects of his speech offer a glimpse of what the party’s immediate future might look like, particularly when it comes to a future leadership contest. Boris’ ‘cornflake packet’ argument about meritocracy is a classic piece of Govian thinking. Posing the question ‘what would Maggie do?’, Boris

Isabel Hardman

Tim Yeo deselected by local Conservative association

Tim Yeo’s local Conservative association in South Suffolk have deselected the 68-year-old MP via secret ballot last night, the BBC reports. Yeo was only recently reinstated as chair of the Energy and Climate Change select committee after the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards ruled he had not broken rules on lobbying. As Yeo has previously said he wants to stand again in 2015, he can now either appeal or apply to be the new candidate for South Suffolk. His majority is 8,689. There is some theorising this morning about whether this is about the ‘green crap’ row over green levies and taxes on energy bills. Yeo is an outspoken supporter of renewable energy

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Teaching union talks dissolve into farce over guest list

How kind of the teaching unions to get us all in the mood for Christmas with a nice big pantomime. The latest amusing drama from the NUT and NASUWT is over a meeting that they’re supposed to be having with Michael Gove about their ongoing industrial dispute. This dispute, if you will remember, nearly led to the unions holding nationwide strikes over performance-related pay. But those strikes were called off on the offer of more talks with Gove. Now the talks themselves are mired in a row over who has been invited: the NASUWT and NUT do not want representatives from other unions coming along because they feel the dispute

Isabel Hardman

Commons decides to #LetBritainDecide

After hours of really insightful discussions about bacon butties, MPs have finally approved the third reading of the #LetBritainDecide Bill in the Commons. The legislation will now pass to the House of Lords, where the fun really begins. I’ve already written that the Bill has served its purpose in uniting the Conservative party. But it is worth noting that Labour’s position has not moved one jot during this process. Douglas Alexander might have been right when he told the Chamber that ‘this is not a bill about the Conservatives trusting the public but about Conservative backbenchers not trusting a Conservative Prime Minister’, but that scarcely excuses the Labour position, which

Isabel Hardman

No 10: the government has not asked for a price freeze

If today’s energy bills confusion is an example of how the government plants stories, it really is a poor gardener of news. Number 10 this morning denied that ministers had asked the energy companies for a price freeze, with the Prime Minister’s spokesman saying: ‘The government has not asked for a price freeze’ and added that ‘people should wait for the Autumn Statement when we will spell out our plans to roll back the impact of levies on people’s energy bills’. The spokesman explained that the government will be focusing on the need for more competition through the annual competition review and rolling back the levies and charges on energy

Isabel Hardman

Latest Tory energy stance gives ground to Labour

One of the techniques that horror writers employ to make their novels as frightening as possible is to avoid describing their monster in any great detail. Read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and by and large it will be your own imagination filling in the details of Victor Frankenstein’s creation as the creature lumbers out of its inventor’s room and into the streets of Ingolstadt. Our imaginations frighten us far more than authors can. The same elision is at work in politics, except the authors aren’t doing themselves any favours. The Tories have a habit of staying very quiet indeed on a social problem, whether it be payday loans or something else

Thursday

James Forsyth

Will George Osborne play Santa next week?

When George Osborne stands up next week to deliver the autumn statement, he’ll have some good news to deliver. Not only is autumn, the dreariest of the British seasons over, but borrowing has come in lower than expected and the OBR will upgrade the growth forecasts. But the return of growth, as I say in the magazine this week, poses a strategic dilemma for Osborne. If he declares the economic emergency over, the public might conclude it was safe to turn back to Labour. But equally he has to show voters that he’s sharing the proceeds of growth. I suspect that Osborne will steer clear of too many sweetners. They’ll

Isabel Hardman

Tory agitators choose their stalking horses carefully

Labour is enjoying some success with its narrative that the government is running scared of all sorts of awkward votes and campaigns at the moment, from plain packaging to payday loans. Yesterday Miliband’s spinners were briefing that this included the Immigration Bill amendment tabled by Nigel Mills and supported by influential backbenchers such as 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady. It now has 49 signatures. It’s worth noting that Mills’ amendment is the latest example of how Tory Eurosceptics now work together to get what they want from the Prime Minister. I explained this unity between the factions in a recent Telegraph column: ‘Now all these factions have united into a

Sebastian Payne

South Thanet polling highlights the Ukip threat in 2015

It appears Laura Sandys has made the right decision to stand down at the next election. A new poll from Survation targeting her South Thanet constituency suggests that if a general election took place tomorrow, the Tories would fail to hold onto the seat. In the constituency once represented by Jonathan Aitken, the Conservatives have dropped 20 points since the last general election, pushing them into third place. Labour would take the seat with 35 per cent of the vote but most worryingly for some, Ukip’s vote has risen hugely, shooting into second place with 30 per cent: Constituency level polling is quite rare, so it’s always interesting to see

The Spectator

Boris Johnson falls foul of the ‘you can’t say that’ rule

Last night, Sebastian Payne described Boris Johnson as being a politician who ‘prides himself on being one of the few politicians who gets away with saying the unsayable’. He was covering the Mayor of London’s lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, where Boris said the following: ‘Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130. The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top.

Alex Massie

Scotland and the EU: Mariano Rajoy should just jog on.

It’s bad enough being lectured by politicians from Edinburgh or even London. That, I suppose, is to be expected however. Irritating but normal. It’s rather different when foreigners – real foreigners – decide to interfere in our own constitutional rammy. It smacks of impertinence. When that intervention comes from the leader – to put it in Sun-speak – of a nation of donkey-slaying, rock-coveting bankrupts it’s even less respectable. So the suggestion made yesterday by Mariano Rajoy, Prime Minister of what we still call Spain, that an independent Scotland would, by creating a new country, need to reapply for EU membership is hackle-raising stuff. You’re tempted to reply jog on, pal. Of course