Uk politics

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Why have the Tories purged their website?

From our UK edition

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".

Sebastian Payne

Why can’t Labour talk sensibly about immigration?

From our UK edition

The public still doesn’t trust Labour and Ed Miliband on immigration. His speech last year — admitting 'the last Labour government made mistakes’ — was aimed to draw a line under the past and start afresh. How helpful for him to have two key figures of the New Labour era popping up again to remind Britain of where Labour went wrong. First, David Blunkett told the BBC yesterday that an influx of Roma migrants could potentially lead to riots, akin to Oldham and Bradford in 2001: ‘We have got to change the behaviour and the culture of the incoming Roma community – because there’s going to be an explosion otherwise…if everything exploded, if things went wrong, the community would obviously be devastated.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

When 50,000 Irishmen gathered to commemorate the First World War

From our UK edition

As I wrote last week, I had not thought commemorating the centenary of the First World War need be a matter of controversy. But one of the reasons why it is worth doing - and worth doing properly and on a large scale - is that the First World War is complicated. Consider the photograph at the top of this post. It was taken on Armistice Day in 1924. In Dublin. Yes, Dublin. The Union Flag is flown. The National Anthem - ie, God Save the King - is sung. A Celtic Cross is erected on College Green prior to its transportation to France where it would serve as a memorial to the 16th Irish Division. Some reports estimate as many as 50,000 Irishmen attended the commemoration. (There is British Pathe footage of it here).

Sebastian Payne

Michael Heseltine: HS2 is about more than mumbo-jumbo economics

From our UK edition

The government is trying to pick up steam on High Speed 2 (again) by wheeling out Michael Heseltine to make the case for the project. Tonight at the Royal Town Planning Institute, the former Transport Secretary will argue that the new line is about spreading prosperity and doing 'the right thing' for our country: 'HS2 is about our country’s competitiveness for a half century or more. It is about so many more people sharing growth that has, for too long, been concentrated on London and the South East. It’s all about drawing together our economy as a whole as well as improving our access to the enlarged, and enlarging, home market of Europe. It is not about 30 minutes off London to Birmingham.

Alex Massie

Sir John Major is right about education and privilege in modern Britain

From our UK edition

Sir John Major is, of course, correct. It is depressing, though perhaps not surprising, that the British upper-middle-classes - that is, those educated privately - still dominate what he termed the "upper echelons" of "every sphere of British influence". Depressing because no serious person can sensibly believe that talent is restricted to the minority of people educated in Britain's excellent private schools. But unsurprising because elites - I use the word dispassionately - have a natural tendency to do whatever it takes to maintain their elite status. Ed West is right about this. Still, Major's remarks were hardly, as has been claimed in some right-of-centre quarters, "an attack" on private education.

Monday

James Forsyth

Can the Tories become a mass membership party again?

From our UK edition

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.

Sebastian Payne

Rebutting #govevreality — a video of untruths and lazy thinking

From our UK edition

The blob strikes again. A video called Gove vs Reality is doing the rounds, taking pot shots at Michael Gove’s education policies, or ‘challenging his assumptions and the evidence he advances to support his approach’ as the producers put it. It’s had nearly 50,000 views so far, but is there any truth in it? With absurdly dramatic music, handpicked headlines and sound bites from the likes of Tom Watson, one might think that Michael Gove has been a complete disaster. Well, not surprisingly, there are a few untruths in the video: Gove has taken too many 'urgency pills' — shock, a minister who wants to get something done!

Sunday

James Forsyth

How ‘Help to Buy’ helps the Tories

From our UK edition

Few images are more seared in the Tory consciousness than that of Margaret Thatcher handing over the keys to people who had brought their council house under ‘right to buy’. The image seemed to sum up the aspirational appeal of Thatcherism. I suspect that there’ll be a slight homage to these images when Cameron meets some of those that the government’s ‘Help to Buy’ scheme is helping onto the housing ladder tomorrow. Number 10 wants to show that the full scheme, which has only been running for a month, is already being used by a large number of people. The economics behind ‘Help to Buy’ might make many on the right nervous; even some Cabinet ministers are worried about it stoking another housing bubble.

Saturday

James Forsyth

There mustn’t be a north / south divide when it comes to fracking

From our UK edition

Michael Fallon, who among his many roles is the minister in charge of fracking, has told the Telegraph’s Jame Kirkup that ‘right across the South’ people should prepare for fracking coming to a neighbourhood near them. Considering that fracking will bring with it jobs, growth and cheaper energy this is good news. But it is also good news because it should prevent a north / south fracking divide. There was a danger that fracking would appear to be something that the Tories were happy to have happen in the north but not in their own southern backyards. The former Tory Cabinet Minister Lord Howell’s call for fracking to be concentrated in the ‘desolate’ north was particularly damaging in this regard.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Friday fury in the lobbies

From our UK edition

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.

Alex Massie

Commemorating the First World War is not a festival of British Nationalism

From our UK edition

You should never, these days, under-estimate peoples' ability to be outraged - outraged, I tells you - by the most innocuous event. Never. There are, after all, a depressing number of chippy morons in this country. Even so, I confess to being surprised by the hostility with which plans to commemorate the First World War have been met. At least in some quarters. I had thought, naively it is now clear, this commemoration would be uncontroversial, what with the First World War being, by any reckoning, an episode of some seriousness and consequence. That's hardly to say that the war's arguments have been settled. Far from it. Interpreting or understanding the First World War remains a complicated, delicate, business.

Sebastian Payne

Is Nigel Farage losing his touch?

From our UK edition

Is Nigel Farage’s magic disappearing? On Question Time last night (his 15th appearance in four years) the Ukip leader was taken to task by an audience member who asked him to 'stop scaremongering the majority of people' — followed by the kind of rousing cheer that Farage himself used to draw. The Tory defence minister (and former TV anchor) Anna Soubry finished off the attack with an impassioned defence of immigration, in language that Farage usually uses to attack it. This left him flummoxed. Here’s what she had to say: 'You do not talk facts, you talk prejudice. You scaremonger, you put fear in people's hearts. Times are tough, we know that.

Isabel Hardman

How Tory Euroscepticism has changed

From our UK edition

In just over half an hour, MPs will flock to the Chamber to watch the report stage and third reading of the Wharton Bill. I explained yesterday that there will be a chunk of Tories  who find themselves forced to support Adam Afriyie's call for an early referendum because it is a UKIP 'red line', but there is little good feeling about it. One MP, who was going to back the amendment for those reasons, told me this morning that he'd decided to abstain because the amendment does not help the eurosceptic cause at all. Before #LetBritainDecide reaches fever pitch in the Commons, though, it's worth considering how that eurosceptic cause has changed recently.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs flee dreaded ‘Europhile’ tag to Adam Afriyie referendum bill bid

From our UK edition

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.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Why Cameron’s NHS lines didn’t quite work at PMQs today

From our UK edition

Though the NHS made a welcome change from endless bickering about energy bills at today's PMQs, the exchanges were just as unedifying. There is very little gain in the sort of fact war that David Cameron and Ed Miliband tried to indulge in, as there is no killer fact that can silence an opponent on the NHS. Instead, the exchanges descended very quickly into 'let me give the right honourable gentleman the facts about the NHS under this government', 'we have a Prime Minister too clueless to know the facts' and 'once again, the right honourable gentleman is just wrong on the facts'. Each man used his own 'simple facts' that he claimed either showed the NHS was safe in the Tories' hands or that it was being killed by the Tories.

Isabel Hardman

Pritchard row refreshes second jobs debate

From our UK edition

Mark Pritchard is vigorously denying the Telegraph splash this morning, which alleges that he boasted of being able to use his political contacts to set up meetings. He says he is consulting his lawyers. But aside from the eventual outcome of this row, it has allowed Labour to reignite the debate about whether MPs should have second jobs anyway, with a Labour party spokesman saying last night that 'every passing scandal and further investigation only goes to reinforce why Ed Miliband was right earlier this year to call for new rules and new limits on MPs' outside earnings'. Miliband made that call in the middle of the Falkirk row as a way of turning the debate about influence on to the Tories, who were very much enjoying attacking the Labour party at the time.

Alex Massie

Russell Brand is right about one thing: he is a twerp.

From our UK edition

Oh for the love of God, he's back. Russell Brand, Britain's sophomoric revolutionary-in-chief, has written another call-to-something. At least this one is shorter than his previous manifesto. Alas it makes no more sense. What is interesting about Brand is not novel and what is novel is not interesting. Tom Chivers is right to note that: But those of you who are bothered, the Russell Brands and Occupy Wherevers of the world, don't pretend that the political system doesn't offer anything for you. It does. It offers lots and lots of things. The trouble is, most people don't want it.

Alex Massie

I see no ships (on the Clyde)

From our UK edition

The sorry truth of the matter is that Glasgow has been in decline for a century. 1913 was the city's greatest year. Then it produced a third of the railway locomotives and a fifth of the steel manufactured anywhere in Britain. Most of all, it built ships. Big ships and many of them. A ship was launched, on average,  every day that year. In 1913, 23% of the entire world's production of ships (by tonnage) was built and launched on the river Clyde. It was an astonishing achievement and the high-water mark of Scottish industrial prowess. Ship-building, more than any other industry, became part of Glasgow's essence. The locomotives and the steel and the cars and the sewing machines might all disappear but so long as ships were still built on the Clyde something would remain.

Isabel Hardman

Another rotten culture, another political risk on the NHS

From our UK edition

The allegations of a cover-up at Colchester General Hospital suggest something rotten in a culture, once again. The police have been called in by the Care Quality Commission to investigate claims that documents about patients' care were falsified and that managers bullied staff into doing this so that cancer care at CGH could meet its targets. Bernard Jenkin, the local MP, placed great emphasis in his interview on Today on the problems with culture in the NHS, which Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is trying to resolve with a series of reforms to NHS leadership. But there will inevitably be a row about the role of targets in this scandal as well, given the allegations centre around falsified documents to give the impression CGH cancer care was meeting its targets.