Uk politics

Ukip’s treasurer will be beaming this morning, thanks to Paul Sykes. The Yorkshire millionaire — whose wealth is estimated to be over £600 million — has, according to Philip Johnson in today’s Telegraph, promised to ‘do whatever it takes’ to ensure that the party tops the polls at the 2014 European elections. The Tories won’t be thrilled at the news; but Sykes is not a new problem, more of a recurring headache. He supported the Tories for many years; but left the party following the Maastrict Treaty, and campaigned instead for James Goldsmith. He rejoined the Tories in 2001 under William Hague before being expelled. Sykes donated £1.5 million to Ukip in 2004, and looks set to make another substantial contribution.

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 for his tone by the other Miliband advisers on the email.

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 pretend it was.

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?

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, which had been a role model for Cameron and Osborne's "open source politics".

In the average Tory seat, only around 0.5% of Tory voters are Tory members. Grants Shapps, the Tory chairman, wants to change this. He’s written to every Tory MP asking them to take charge of a push in their seat to raise this percentage to 3. If this drive succeeds, Tory membership would rise to 800,000 plus. Opinion among Tory MPs on this move is divided. Some think that the era of the mass membership political party is over. Others, though, argue that increasing membership is doable—even if Shapps target is a tad too ambitious. There is also the issue of how the Tories can increase their presence in areas which they have been absent from for t0o long. At the moment, only two Tory members have associations which pass the Shapps’ size test.

MPs have just voted on the first set of amendments to James Wharton's #LetBritainDecide bill. There is still a great deal more debate to be had in the Chamber, but based on this morning's offering, it's not worth clearing your diary for this report stage, unless you enjoy filibustering and mischievous use of obscure parliamentary procedure to delay a bill. This morning we had a geography lesson from Mike Gapes about the populations of each of the overseas territories, an account of the 'grilling, gruelling' debate that Martin Horwood enjoyed at a school in his constituency, and a debate about what it is that the people of Gibraltar take joy in.

In case you've been wondering what that strange feeling of tension in the air across the country is, the #LetBritainDecide bill returns to the Commons tomorrow for its report stage and third reading. There is, actually, rather a lot of valid tension - in as much as a backbench bill that will never become law can create valid tension - over the legislation this time around. The first reason is that Labour's Mike Gapes has tabled a fantastic series of amendments to try to wreck the bill, which join his fantastic series of amendments that he tabled at committee stage. The second is that there are many more Tories planning to vote for Adam Afriyie's beleaguered amendment than the whips had initially assumed.