Uk politics

Thursday

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.

Isabel Hardman

Miliband’s challenge is an opportunity for the Tories to reach out to union members

From our UK edition

The warm reception to Ed Miliband's speech yesterday was so eerily positive that it could never have lasted. Today we get the first taste of the real battle to come, with the GMB warning that they'd be 'lucky if 10% of our current affiliation levels say yes, they want to be members of the Labour party' and that as a result the union could disaffiliate from the party. This is a challenge for Ed Miliband to show that he is determined to force these changes, even if it means calling a party-wide ballot to overrule the union bosses But this is also an opportunity for the Conservatives. If the unions accept that few of their members would choose to join Labour too, then there is a reasonable argument to make for giving members an option to join the Tory party too.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

What do the Tories think about zero hours contracts? They don’t seem very keen to tell us…

From our UK edition

MPs held a debate in Westminster Hall today about zero hours contracts. Actually, to be specific, Labour MPs held a Westminster Hall debate today, which Jo Swinson replied to as the employment minister. Adjournment debates aren't often that newsworthy, but what made this debate noteworthy was that it marks another example of the Conservatives failing to respond to a social phenomenon, instead leaving a vacuum for Labour to stamp their own argument on it. What do the Conservatives think about these contracts, under which workers are not guaranteed a set number of hours per week? You could probably guess that MPs on the right would say there is a compelling argument for labour market flexibility in a country with a comparatively generous welfare safety net.

Isabel Hardman

Wot, no bad news? The bigger problem for Labour

From our UK edition

Journalists in the Westminster bubble like to point out on Big Speech Days like this that the public couldn't care a jot about whether Ed Miliband is having a Clause IV moment. They're right, but that doesn't stop everyone in the bubble getting rather overexcited about a speech in a sweaty room off Fleet Street as they did today. Miliband might be wiping his brow with relief this afternoon given his unions speech has gone down rather well with a surprising range of grandees, but he'll know only too well that the more awkward news has nothing to do with Len McCluskey. The International Monetary Fund announced this afternoon that, as expected, it was raising the UK's 2013 growth forecast from 0.7 per cent to 0.9 per cent.

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband’s Surprisingly Bold Plan for A New Model Labour Party

From our UK edition

Tony Blair has welcomed Ed Miliband's "big speech" on reforming Labour's relationship with its Trade Union backers. And so has Len McCluskey, chief potentate at Unite, the Union whose allegedly nefarious activities in Falkirk have prodded Miliband towards reform. Blair expects Miliband's proposals to change everything; McCluskey, presumably, is confident any changes will prove largely cosmetic. They can't both be right. But, actually, it is a little unfair to put "big speech" in inverted commas. This was, or at least has the potential to be, a transforming moment for the Labour party. Granted, no-one is quite sure how this will happen  - and the detail matters - but everyone agrees something is afoot.

Mark Wickham-Jones

If Labour is to be democratised, Ed Miliband must reform how his party chooses its leader

From our UK edition

By insisting that trade unionists must opt-in to party membership, Ed Miliband has taken a bold and brave first step in reforming Labour’s troublesome relationship with its affiliated trade unions. At a stroke, he has gone far beyond the achievements of his modernising predecessors, John Smith and Tony Blair. Considerable fanfare accompanied the introduction of one member one vote for party elections in 1993 but John Smith’s initiative proved to be flawed – an outcome demonstrated by the role that trade union leaderships were able to play in the 2010 Labour leadership contest. The abolition of Clause IV in 1995 was little more than a symbolic reform.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband is back on the front foot, for now at least

From our UK edition

There was a point in Ed Miliband's speech on a 'better politics' where it became clear that for the rest of our lives we're all going to be trapped in an endless cycle of opposition politicians announcing that they are going to forge a 'new politics', as though some other chap hadn't said the same thing only a few years before. There really is nothing new under the sun. But it would be unfair to dismiss the Labour leader's speech as meaningless simply for saying what others have said before him: perhaps he was hoping that the goldfish bowl of the Westminster Village would turn out to contain a bunch of people with goldfish memories, too. His speech was in many ways impressive politically.

The Spectator

Ed Miliband’s speech on reforming Labour’s relationship with trade unions: full text

From our UK edition

Let me start by saying how pleased I am to be here at the St Bride’s Foundation. Only a few hundred yards from where the Labour Party was founded over a century ago. And especially to be here with so many community organisers and Labour Party members from right across the country. I am here today to talk about how we can build a different kind of politics. A politics which is truly rooted in every community of the country. And reaches out to people across every walk of life. That is what I mean by One Nation. A country where everyone plays their part. And a politics where they can. It is about a politics that is open. Transparent. And trusted. Exactly the opposite of the politics we’ve recently seen in Falkirk. A politics that was closed.

Alex Massie

Abandon all hope: the average voter thinks one in four Britons is a muslim

From our UK edition

Last month I wrote a post arguing that an awful lot of opinion polling is worthless. The public mood matters - and measuring it is important - but when it comes to the detail of actual government policy the public is, generally speaking, clueless. Well, whaddyaknow, but here's a new Ipsos-Mori survey which confirms my suspicions. The Great British Public may have many virtues and they may be able to tell you that poor Mr Clegg is a wrong 'un but when you peak beneath the bonnet you begin to fear that newspaper comment threads may not be quite as unrepresentative of the general public as you'd like to think they must be.

Isabel Hardman

Who owns Labour? Unite turns on the Right

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband's speech today isn't an attempt to close down the row over Falkirk, but to get back on top of the issue, rather than appearing to be bounced along by events. What it will do is open a huge row with the union bosses: one the Labour leader needs to be seen to have won at the end of it all. Here is a briefing on what to expect from Miliband. The Tories are pleased this morning that Len McCluskey has written in this morning's Guardian that 'switching to an "opt-in" for the political levy wouldn't work… would debilitate unions' ability to speak for our members and would further undermine unions' status as voluntary, and self-governing, organisations'.