Uk politics

Saturday

James Forsyth

Justin Welby, a very political Archbishop

From our UK edition

In this increasingly secular age, you would expect the Archbishop of Canterbury to be a figure of diminishing importance. But Justin Welby is fast becoming the most politically influential Archbishop since the war. Part of Welby’s influence stems from the fact that both the Conservatives and Labour think that he is, secretly, one of them. I remember within days of his appointment being approacedh by a Tory minister and then by one of those closest to Ed Miliband. They both wanted to explain how Welby was going to help move public debate in their direction. One never had this kind of conversation about Rowan Williams whose views were thought not to be of this world.

Friday

Sebastian Payne

Parents vs. the system: which side is Labour on?

From our UK edition

Should Labour support private schools joining the state sector? Yes, is probably your immediate response but in reality, Labour’s position is unfathomable. A case in point is the battle for The King’s School, which I've written about in this week’s Spectator. The King's School is due to move into the state sector this September and merge with the local Priory Primary School to create the all-new King's Priory Academy. North Tyneside, where both schools reside, is one of the poorest boroughs in the country. Opening up an excellent fee-paying school to parents who (like mine) can't afford a £10,000 per-year education should be welcomed by all. But Labour, locally and nationally, have failed to back the merger.

Brian Swift

Why the plan for Heathrow Hub is bananas

From our UK edition

Heathrow wants to expand. Originally this was to be done by building a third or even fourth runway north of, and parallel to, the existing runways. The fourth runway would be fitted in by reducing slightly the horizontal separation between runways. The separation at Heathrow is generous, or very generous compared to Los Angeles or San Francisco. Now, apparently, Heathrow wants to expand by building one or two runways facing southwest. When LHR was built it had not only the two remaining west facing runways, but also two facing south west (and indeed also two facing north west). These other runways have been consumed by taxiways and terminals, but one southwest facing runway called 23L was in use until fairly recently.

Isabel Hardman

Sarah Wollaston: Tories are ‘pandering to election strategists’ on plain packaging

From our UK edition

Sarah Wollaston is angry. Again. This time it's about plain packaging on cigarettes. She told the World at One that the decision to stall introducing plain packaging was 'pandering to election strategists' and that this was a 'very sad day for public health'. You can listen to the full interview below:- Now, this is obviously deeply annoying for the Tory leadership as it hardly helps them tackle the narrative that they're always caving into their friends in big business. Even more annoying, perhaps, for Anna Soubry, who unlike Wollaston had to back the decision in the Commons this morning even though she personally supports plain packaging.

Alex Massie

The War on Drugs kills another seven Britons. How many more must die for a bankrupt idea?

From our UK edition

Another summer, another reminder of the consequences of our drug laws: A man has been arrested in connection with the death of an 18-year-old who had taken fake ecstasy tablets. The woman died in Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire, on Tuesday. She and three friends had taken green tablets with a Rolex Crown logo on them. Similar tablets have been linked to the deaths of six other people in the west of Scotland in the past two months. Of course, no-one needs to purchase ecstasy and primary responsibility for these horrid deaths lies with the people who manufactured these pills. Nevertheless, unscrupulous (and stupid) suppliers are not the only culpable actors in this sorry tragedy. Parliamentarians share some blame too.

Charles Moore

We know Andrew Mitchell was framed. Now, give him his old job back

From our UK edition

Andrew Mitchell was forced to resign as the Tory Chief Whip last autumn because he called policemen at the Downing Street gates ‘plebs’. Then it turned out, as I suggested at the time, that he had not done so. It emerged that there was a conspiracy — quite how deep has not yet been made public — by police and accomplices to attribute to Mr Mitchell words which he did not speak. People pretending to be by-standing members of the public said how shocked they were by Mr Mitchell’s remarks, and then it turned out that no bystanders had been within earshot of whatever it was that Mr Mitchell had said. Eventually, there was an investigation.

Isabel Hardman

Reshuffle gossip points to ‘innocents’ and women

From our UK edition

There's just a week left of the Parliamentary term to go before MPs go back to their constituencies to mull that awkward pay rise over the summer. But one thing that's keeping Tory MPs from relaxing is the possibility of a ministerial reshuffle next week. The word from reliable sources is that it will take place next Thursday with a sign-off meeting this Monday. This is a minister-of-state-level reshuffle. The names of supposedly vulnerable ministers are circulating. They include housing minister Mark Prisk, energy minister Greg Barker, universities minister David Willetts, and employment minister Mark Hoban. They're known as the 'innocents': ministers who are all thought to be doing a good job and who have not messed up but who are not considered likely to move up into the cabinet.

Thursday

Matthew Parris

Why partisan columnists (like me) are doomed

From our UK edition

An email exchange with a Conservative-leaning friend this week left me feeling sheepish. But if shameful my behaviour be, I’m not alone in the shame. I thought it worth sharing the conversation. We were corresponding about Ed Miliband’s stand-off with the Unite trade union. In a message to my friend, I remarked: ‘It’s reaching the point where (paradoxically) EM’s tendency to take the line of least resistance may actually push him into confronting Unite.’ And that’s true: worms turn and it’s not always good politics to corner people. But it is the next part of the message that I’m hard-put to defend.

Peter Jones

Ancient and modern: Socrates on TV election debates

From our UK edition

Lord Hennessy has been arguing that, as a result of TV debates between party leaders prior to elections, ‘the plausible tart bit will play too powerfully in [parties’] choice of leader and therefore rule out the decent but non-tarty people.’ It is good to see the modern world finally catching up with Socrates on the question of rhetoric and persuasion. Socrates is in conversation with Gorgias, the famous teacher of rhetoric, about what he thinks he is teaching. The skill of persuasive speech, Gorgias replies, whose purpose is to produce conviction. But, Socrates asks, conviction about what? Right, or wrong? Right, obviously, says Gorgias, which the orator will be able to teach. Socrates demurs: why should an orator, simply by being an orator, know the difference?

James Forsyth

David Cameron and Nick Clegg move like sharks to keep the coalition going

From our UK edition

If a shark stops moving it dies. In the Prime Minister and deputy Prime Minister’s office, they believe that the same applies to the coalition. Their view is that if it is going to make it to 2015, it needs to be doing things right up until parliament is dissolved and the election called. To this end, as I reveal in the column this week, they’ve commissioned Oliver Letwin, David Laws and Jo Johnson to sit down and see what else the coalition can do between now and 2015. One of those involved in the talks says ‘we’re pretty confident we can still do deals on various things.’ The hope is that a few more big policy initiatives will act as a counterweight to the temptation for the coalition parties to pull apart as the election approaches.

Isabel Hardman

Why Universal Credit delay is a good thing, not a political failure

From our UK edition

'Iain Duncan Smith must now ask himself if he is fit for purpose.' That's what Liam Byrne thinks of the Work and Pensions Secretary's admission that the roll-out of Universal Credit is being delayed. The original plan was for all new claims for out-of-work support to go into the universal credit rather than the current benefits system from October 2013. But a written ministerial statement yesterday said the pilots of the new benefit will be extended to six hub JobCentres instead. Labour says the 'we have final confirmation that the welfare revolution we were promised has collapsed'. If deep down you don't want universal credit to succeed, then you must be quite chuffed with the slowing of the timetable. But its supporters should be happy, too. Why?

Charles Moore

The unpleasant truth about shale gas: it’s in my back yard

From our UK edition

One great advance for the environment is shale gas, though for some reason Greens do not see it that way. It will make us — and has already made America — far less dependent on high carbon-emitting sources of energy. It is lucky for those trying to extract it in this country that it is in places like Ellesmere Port and Blackpool where there are not many spoilt, rich people to complain about damage to the landscape. The problem is that successful extraction requires quite a lot of ‘frack pads’ each covering an area larger than a football pitch. These attract little attention in enormous, dull, empty areas of the United States, and will probably be accepted in our impoverished north-west.

Sebastian Payne

Five things you need to know about the MPs’ pay rise

From our UK edition

Today’s recommendations from IPSA on MPs pay have been with met the condemnation we've come to expect regarding our politicians — snouts in troughs, out of touch political class, etc. But it's not simply MPs giving themselves more money. Here are the key five points of what the independent recommendations are actually proposing: 1. Overall cost of politics will increase Despite the reshuffling of MPs’ remuneration (see point 4 for details), IPSA estimates the overall spend will increase £0.5 million by 2015. The headline figure that the cost of politics is going up is just the sort of story MPs like Conor Burns are keen to avoid.

Wednesday

Conor Burns

The public would find an eye watering £10,000 pay increase for MPs unacceptable

From our UK edition

It has often been said that there is no perfect time for an increase in MPs’ pay. If that is true then surely now would be the most imperfect time. All MPs who are doing their job to any percentage of excellence know that our constituents are feeling very concerned for the future. Any spare money they have is going into repairing domestic debt and yet with rising petrol prices, food costs and utility bills not that many have much spare money at all. So this week with the backdrop of Conservative tearing lumps out of Labour on cash and influence and Labour responding by attacking the Conservatives on funding from business we may see the independent body responsible for setting MPs pay recommend a £10,000 pay increase.

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Hunt turns on Labour over union policy influence

From our UK edition

One of David Cameron's better lines at Prime Minister's Questions was that the trade unions 'buy the candidates, they buy the policies and they buy the leader'. In his final response to Ed Miliband, he said: 'What is Labour's policy on Royal Mail? It is determined by the Communication Workers Union. What is its policy on health? It is determined by Unison. What is its policy on party funding? It is determined by Unite.' To underline that point, Jeremy Hunt has sent a letter to Andy Burnham this afternoon asking for 'clarification about union influence over Labour health policy'. The letter, which you can read in full here, says Burnham altered Government policy 'in response to union demands'.

James Forsyth

Miliband shores up his leadership at noisy PMQs

From our UK edition

That was as loud as the Prime Minister’s Questions that immediately preceded the last election. The Labour benches were clearly determined to ensure that there was no repeat of last week’s mauling of Ed Miliband. They barracked David Cameron from the off, even chanting ‘weak, weak, weak’ during his answers and almost every Labour question was on the propriety of the Tories’ relations with their donors. This, combined with a far stronger performance from Ed Miliband, ensured that the session ended with Cameron, not Miliband, on the back foot. Cameron’s problem is that Miliband is turning this from a debate about union influence on Labour selections into one about money — and when it comes to money, no party looks good.

Ed West

The British people are not wrong about everything

From our UK edition

Imagine that you’re a passenger in a car driving down a country road at 20mph. All of a sudden the driver hits the accelerator and you’re now zinging away at 60mph. If asked what speed you were going at, what would you say? I’d imagine probably something like 80mph, at least until you became accustomed to your new situation. Yesterday it was revealed that the British public have some quite wildly inaccurate perceptions about the true level of crime, teenage pregnancy and immigration. Presumably this was seen as evidence that, although the public have conservative views on these subjects, they are misinformed and therefore cool policy reasoning should be left to the experts, who after all have done such a great job at running the country.

James Forsyth

Can Theresa May avoid a Tory row on the European Arrest Warrant?

From our UK edition

Walk down a corridor in the Palace of Westminster today and you’ll likely be taken aside by a Tory backbencher who wants to vent their frustration about Britain opting back into the European Arrest Warrant. At the moment, the mood is of concern rather than rebellion — a reflection of the fact that Tory MPs are in a fairly positive frame of mind after a good couple of political weeks for the party. But what should alarm Downing Street is that it isn’t just the usual Eurosceptic crowd expressing concern. Indeed, some of those who are most concerned are those who David Cameron has relied on recently to defend his European policy. Off the record, Number 10’s view is that with Theresa May’s help they can avoid a full-on row.

Isabel Hardman

Labour MP makes amusing attempt to wreck Tory EU referendum bill

From our UK edition

The Conservatives are a happy bunch at the moment. But for how much longer? They might be riding on the crest of a wave after the second reading of James Wharton's Private Member's Bill for an EU referendum. But already forces are at work to disrupt the happy harmony. Labour MP Mike Gapes has this week tabled a rather amusing series of amendments to the legislation which are almost certainly an attempt to sow division in the Tory ranks. They call for: - A referendum on the terms of Britain's membership of the EU rather than just on whether Britain should be a member. - A referendum on a date to be determined. - A referendum on a date to be decided by a Royal Commission on the future of the UK in Europe. - A referendum on 22 May 2014. - A referendum on 6 May 2015.

Isabel Hardman

Politicians are finally being grown-up about government

From our UK edition

One of the promises from the last round of 'new politics' pledges when the Tories were in opposition was a cut in the number of special advisers in a government, on the grounds that SpAds are evil beasts who cost a lot of money. Like many 'new politics' pledges, though, this sounded superbly pious in opposition and turned out to be a real pain in the backside in government. It turns out that SpAds are actually really useful if you want to get things done as a minister, if you want to know what other ministers are trying to do to stop you getting things done, and if you want to have a hope of the public reading about you getting things done in the newspapers.