Uk politics

The next time you see a Tory minister on television, count how long it is until they say that David Cameron is a leader with a long term plan for this country. This is the Tories’ new message. In a presentation to Cameron’s political Cabinet on Tuesday morning, Lynton Crosby told the ministers present that the Tories would probably lose the election if it was held today or tomorrow. But, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, he stressed that the election was still 16 months away so the Tories had time to turn things round. He emphasised that they should play up that Cameron is a man with a

For months now, Number 10 has been fretting about what to do about Romanian and Bulgarian immigration. From the end of this year, any Romanian and Bulgarian will be able to move here in search of work. Downing Street knows that if they come in large numbers it’ll negate everything that the government has done to try and get immigration under control. Fairly or not, it’ll be fatal to the Tories’ reputation for competence on this issue. David Cameron is, as today’s Times and Mail reveal, now planning a major intervention on this issue. He wants to achieve three things. First, show that his government is handling the issue better

The UK government knows that it plays into the SNP’s hands if it does anything which could be seen as trying to bully the Scots into voting no to independence. So, it has not said that the Scots would not be able to use sterling after independence but merely stated that this would be an issue for the rest of the UK too. The Welsh First Minister, though, has now come out and said that he would veto the creation of a sterling zone. This intervention by Carwyn Jones is one that the UK government had been waiting for, and expecting. It gets the message across without risking the accusation

Another outbreak of the Tory Modernising Wars! What larks! Nick Boles’s speech to Bright Blue, a newish think tank for metropolitan swells folk who think the Tory message needs rethinking, has, as it was designed to, caused a minor rumpus. Rod Liddle thinks Boles is off his head. Iain Martin is kinder but concludes the Cameroons are still obsessed with fighting the wrong battles. Other commentators are gentler still, conceding that Boles is asking the right question but that he’s searching for answers in the wrong places. Nick Denys and, to some extent, Paul Goodman fall into this camp. On the other hand, Ian Birrell and Matt d’Ancona essentially agree

Nick Boles has always been one of the most intellectually interesting Tory modernisers. Back in 2010, he caused controversy with his call for a formal electoral pact between the two coalition parties. But today, he has recanted that idea and instead proposed that the Tories create an internal coalition by reforming the National Liberal Party as their sister party. Boles concedes that his idea for an electoral pact was flawed because the Liberal Democrats aren’t a ‘Liberal’ party but instead a ‘statist party of the soft left’. In a sign of the loss of personal respect for Clegg even among liberal Tory ministers, Boles attacks the deputy Prime Minister as

The first thing to be said about the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ latest assessment of an independent Scotland’s long-term fiscal well-being is that the IFS’s assessments of the UK’s long-term vitality are also pretty gloomy. Neither is terribly pretty. Much the same, of course, could be said of France and, in fact, most other western countries. An Age of Plenty is being replaced by an Era of Making Do. Reality stings. So the difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK is one of degree not kind. Moreover, it would be wise to remember that these are projections, not predictions, and that they are largely based on present trends

It has long been suspected that there are tensions between Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. The pair fell out badly over the third runway at Heathrow in government and when Miliband was elected leader, he conspicuously didn’t offer Balls the job of shadow Chancellor. But since Balls became shadow Chancellor the pair has largely succeeded in keeping their differences under wraps. But the leaked emails revealed by Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday today, show what Miliband’s team privately thinks of Balls. Torsten Bell, one of Miliband’s most influential aides, calls Balls a ‘nightmare’ and complains about how complicated his message on the economy is. Tellingly, he isn’t rebuked

Somehow I managed to miss Iain Martin’s praise for the manner in which David Cameron has “handled” the referendum on Scottish independence. Happily, John Rentoul has prompted me to take a keek at Iain’s article which, somewhat uncharacteristically, concludes that the Prime Minister has “played a blinder”. This, as Mr Rentoul cautions, is premature praise. We are asked to believe that Cameron has pursued a policy of masterly inactivity. It is also suggested that securing a single-question referendum was a masterstroke rather than, well, the obvious outcome of a negotiating process between Edinburgh and London that was much less dramatic, and much less important, than everyone agreed at the time to

Voters in the North love Tory policies but hate the Tories. That’s the headline from some new YouGov polling on what voters in different parts of the country feel about the political parties and their policies. An overwhelming majority of voters in the North support cutting net immigration, same-sex marriage, the benefits cap, Help to Buy and raising the income tax allowance — all policies enacted by Conservatives in government. But, when asked which party they would consider voting for, 39 per cent of respondents in the North said that they would never consider voting Tory: Why do some many people in the North detest the Tories? Apparently, the Conservatives

Remember Cameron’s hug a husky speech? Or his lecture on ‘the need recast politics for the digital age?’ Well, good job you do because the Tory party has been trying to purge their online history, according to Computer Weekly. As Mark Ballard explains, someone at CCHQ has used a robots.txt file to block Google (and other search engines) from indexing the files: ‘…the Conservative Party has removed the archive from its public facing website, erasing records of speeches and press releases going back to the year 2000 and up until it was elected in May 2010. ‘It also struck the record of their past speeches off internet engines including Google,