Uk politics

Friday

Charles Moore

If a policeman stops you, accuse him of raping you and force him to arrest himself.

From our UK edition

Now that virtually any well-known male entertainer of a certain age is arrested for alleged sexual offences, it is becoming clear that this is more a culture war than a set of proper criminal investigations. This does not necessarily mean that all the allegations are false — look at Stuart Hall — but it does suggest that a new way has been found of ruining people’s reputations before anyone has established their guilt. The undeniable fact that so many of the men accused wore deplorable clothes in public all through the 1970s is not, in itself, proof of iniquity. Enraged by Leveson, the press argue that naming people being investigated for sex crimes is a brilliant way of smoking them out.

Isabel Hardman

Sarah Wollaston, the next ticking Tory timebomb

From our UK edition

MPs are having a party next week to celebrate the return of Nadine Dorries to the Tory fold. But as they pop champagne corks for the Prodigal Daughter, they might be wondering whether a similar drama could unfold with another of their number. Dr Sarah Wollaston appears to be growing increasingly angry with her party's leadership, and isn't afraid to say it in the press. She may be a very different Conservative to Dorries, but there's a risk that she moves into the same open stand-off territory that led to her colleague flying to the jungle. Many observers wrongly assume that the trouble began when Dorries told Giles Dilnot that David Cameron were 'two arrogant posh boys who show no remorse, no contrition and no passion to understand the lives of others and that's the crime'.

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Game-changing

From our UK edition

In the days when we had bottles of milk delivered, some tits discovered how to peck through the foil tops and consume the cream beneath. Suddenly all the tits were at it. This illustrated what the alternative scientist Rupert Sheldrake called morphic resonance. Something similar has happened over the past days with the phrase game-changing. Trevor Kavanagh, in the Sun, commented: ‘The local elections delivered a ground-breaking, game-changing, seismic political moment.’ In the Independent, Donald Macintyre compared ‘Ukip’s position to that of the game-changing SDP’. Except, in the days of the Gang of Four, the obligatory epithet was not game-changing but breaking the mould. That metaphor was used erroneously almost from the outset.

James Forsyth

If Cameron is going to win in 2015, he is going to need a lot of help from Boris

From our UK edition

One consequence of the local elections is that no Tory now denies that they need to win over UKIP voters to win the next election. How to do that, though, remains a subject of intense debate — last night’s 1922 Committee meeting with Grant Shapps discussed this point and ran massively over as a result. A large part of Nigel Farage’s appeal is stylistic. He is a technicolour character compared to the monochrome politicians of Westminster. He paints in primary colours rather than shades of grey. Now, Cameron can’t, and shouldn’t, ape this. He is not that kind of politician and would look inauthentic if he tried to be. But he needs someone to try and reach the voters that this approach appeals to. There is one obvious candidate for the job.

Isabel Hardman

EU referendum amendment is just first step in long battle

From our UK edition

As expected, the backbench Tory campaign for an EU referendum bill started as soon as the Queen's Speech proved not to contain one. The first battle is over an amendment expressing regret which John Baron, who is leading the charge on this, has tabled. The amendment, to the motion welcoming the Queen's Speech, simply reads: 'Respectfully regrets that an EU referendum bill was not included in the gracious speech.' This means that all Tory MPs who want a referendum, but in a different form, such as the mandate referendum that Bernard Jenkin and others have pushed for, can still sign the amendment. Baron tells me that he hasn't decided whether to push the amendment to a vote next week, but it seems there are plenty of Tory backbenchers who are expecting him to do so.

Isabel Hardman

The Tories failed to make the case for relaxing childcare ratios: no wonder the policy bombed

From our UK edition

Two ministers appeared in the Commons today to explain two different reforms. One is at the very start of its legislative life, appearing in yesterday's Queen's Speech, while the other one appears to be doddering about on its last legs after months of fanfare. Liz Truss found herself summoned to the despatch box to explain her plans to relax childcare ratios in order to drive costs down after it emerged Nick Clegg wanted to block them. This isn't a great surprise: the reform has excited strong opposition from the sector and parents. But what is strange is that the government never really made a great deal of effort to be aggressive about the idea in the first place.

Hugo Rifkind

Why do journalists think they’re not part of the ruling elite?

From our UK edition

Look, we’ve known each other a while, you and I, so I think it’s time for a confession. It’s a big one, this. I haven’t even told my parents yet. But I think I might be a member of the ruling elite. Granted, it doesn’t feel that way of a morning, when I’m using my thumbnail to scratch baby vomit off my shoulder on the bus to Finsbury Park. But then, maybe it never does. Columnist for The Spectator, leader writer for the Times, the public school- and Oxbridge-educated son of a Conservative former Cabinet minister; hmm, hard to fight it. There have been five prime ministers in my lifetime, and I’ve met three of them and been in the same room as the other two. So let’s be objective about this. What I think about it is neither here nor there.

Peter Lilley

Britain can’t afford to surrender to the greens on shale gas

From our UK edition

The scandal of official reluctance to develop Britain’s shale gas potential is at last beginning to surface. It may prove to be the dress rehearsal for the ultimate drama — the inexorable collapse of our whole energy strategy. Most of us have by now heard about the US shale gas revolution. In little more than six years, shale gas has reduced America’s gas prices to a third of what they are in Europe, increased huge tax revenues, rebalanced the economy, created tens of thousands of jobs, brought industry and manufacturing back to the country’s heartlands, and given rise to a real prospect of American energy self-sufficiency by 2030. Britain may well have comparable shale resources.

James Forsyth

Why the Tories need their own Nigel Farage

From our UK edition

There are two talking points in Westminster this week. One is about who is up and who is down following the local council elections. This finds the Cameroons privately pleased that the Tory party has largely kept its head despite the Ukip surge, the Labour side worried about whether they are doing well enough for mid-term and the Liberal Democrats relieved that their vote is holding up in their parliamentary seats if nowhere else. The other conversation is more profound. It is about why close to one in four of those who bothered to do their democratic duty last week voted Ukip. The rise of any new party is a statement of dissatisfaction with the existing establishment. But what is striking about Ukip is the diversity of its appeal.

Rory Sutherland

The Hitler guide to rigging a referendum

From our UK edition

In 1964 Harold Wilson was so afraid that a scheduled election-night broadcast of Steptoe & Son would cost him at least a dozen marginal seats that he successfully pressured the director-general of the BBC to postpone it. There are plenty of ways to manipulate an election, short of stuffing a ballot box. Another example is here, from 1938: This ballot paper crudely follows the advice of Dr Josef Goebbels, that ‘the most effective form of persuasion is when you are not aware you are being persuaded’. Translated, it reads: ‘Do you approve of the reunification of Austria with the German Reich that was enacted on 13 March 1938 and do you vote for the party of our leader, Adolf Hitler? Yes. No.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

MPs gear up for 2015 slugfest in Queen’s Speech debate

From our UK edition

The Queen’s Speech debate is always a mix of MPs patting each other on the back and political combat. This year, in a sign that the next election is looming ever larger in the minds of the party leaders, there was far more of the latter than the former. Ed Miliband in his speech majored on what he considers to be Cameron’s weaknesses. He claimed that the PM had lost control of his party, was trying to ape Ukip and went on about the ‘millionaires’ tax cut’ and the poshness of the government. Miliband brushed off a string of pointed Tory interventions and had one particularly good joke, ‘they used to call Ukip clowns, now they want to join the circus.

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Nadine Dorries reinstated as a Tory MP

From our UK edition

Nadine Dorries has been given the Conservative whip back by Sir George Young, Coffee House can exclusively reveal. Sources in the Tory party tell me that the MP, who was suspended in November for appearing on the reality TV show I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, has just been told she can now return from exile. This is a huge relief for many Conservative MPs, who have been growing increasingly worried that the continuing absence of the Tory whip was beginning to look vindictive and sexist, and risked pushing the Mid-Bedfordshire MP into the arms of UKIP. As David Davis argued this weekend, Nadine Dorries is a working class woman who grew up in council housing and has been treated badly by the Tory leadership, while Jesse Norman is an Old Etonian rebel who received a promotion.

Isabel Hardman

The bluffer’s guide to the Queen’s Speech

From our UK edition

Want to know (or at least pretend you know) what the Queen was talking about when she addressed the House of Lords this morning? Here are the bills that the government will bring into Parliament over the next 12 months, and what they'll do: National Insurance Contributions Bill - The £2,000 employment allowance for every business and charity announced in this year's Budget. - Measures to combat tax avoidance, including an extension of the General Anti-Abuse Rule, which targets aggressive tax avoidance schemes, to National Insurance Contributions. - Further attempts to stop companies avoiding paying NICs using offshore employment payroll companies.

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne braces himself for economic Ofsted inspection

From our UK edition

It is probably unfair to say that the Queen's Speech will have nothing to do with the economy: we are, after all, expecting a deregulation bill among others, which the Treasury hopes will speed things up for small businesses. But if George Osborne looks a little distracted today, it's probably because his mind is on events outside Parliament. The International Monetary Fund's team arrives in London today for the start of a fortnight's inspection of the UK economy. The Chancellor must feel sympathy with teachers who fear the approach of their school's Ofsted inspection. Like teachers who suspect their Ofsted visit won't go their way, Osborne's allies have recently started to question the wisdom of the IMF, an organisation he has previously set great store by.

Andrea Leadsom

Lord Lawson is wrong that change in the EU is impossible

From our UK edition

In its present form, the EU serves British interests very poorly. The time has come for us to finally take matters into our own hands. But I don't agree with the idea that we should simply withdraw now. That day may come, but surely not before we have given fundamental reform our best shot.  Everything we do has to be to promote the UK's interests, and then the referendum will finally settle the matter. Those who advocate withdrawal ignore the risk that the actual process of leaving, potentially taking years to negotiate out of the complex web of EU agreements and treaties, would have a damaging impact on our economy.

Isabel Hardman

Ministers hope to reassure backbenchers with Immigration Bill

From our UK edition

One of the key bills to be announced in today's Queen's Speech is an immigration bill. This serves two key purposes: the first is to bring into legislation all those additional restrictions on access to public services for migrants that was briefed out following the Eastleigh by-election. The second is to answer Tory backbench concerns about deportation of foreign criminals.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

What was Clegg’s priority in the last few hours of the coalition talks? Stopping a European renegotiation

From our UK edition

The latest extracts of the Andrew Adonis’ book on the 2010 coalition negotiations couldn’t have been better designed to stir up Tory backbench bad feeling to Nick Clegg. Adonis claims that in the final phone calls between Clegg and Brown, the Lib Dem leader kept stressing—you’ve guessed it—Europe. Adonis reports that Clegg told Brown:  'Following our conversation this afternoon I’m basically finding out how far I can push the Conservatives on Europe. I genuinely take to heart what you said about that. We need some sanity on Europe. We can’t seek to renegotiate. I’m trying my best...' I think this illustrates two things. First, how ideologically committed Clegg is to the European project.

Ollie Lewis

Why David Cameron can’t copy Harold Wilson on EU renegotiation

From our UK edition

It’s at times like this I’m glad I’m not a Europhile. I imagine that Lord Lawson’s article in today's Times is causing Brussels-lovers up and down the land a number of headaches this afternoon, not least because it is incredibly detailed and hard to find fault with: The EU’s desire for 'ever-closer union' is undiminished? Accurate. British businesses are being hindered by the EU’s daft regulations? Very true. We need to start looking beyond Europe for growth opportunities? Another tick. From a purely economic perspective, Lord Lawson’s argument is spot on. However, there is a political problem with Lawson’s article which I can’t seem to get my head around - why can’t we try to renegotiate our way of these meddlesome directives?

Isabel Hardman

European debate returns to Tory MP vs Tory MP

From our UK edition

One of the inevitable consequences of Lord Lawson's announcement that he'd vote 'No' in an EU referendum is that the ideological divides over Europe in the Tory party are starting to open up again. This lunchtime, two Conservative MPs debated one another on the issue, which must be confusing for the electorate, and also shows that it will be very difficult for any Tory leader to unite the party on the issue, even once the referendum has taken place. Margot James, a member of the new Number 10 policy board who also speaks for the pro-European Mainstream Conservatives on trade and investment, sparred with Bernard Jenkin, who isn't just a eurosceptic: he's a eurosceptic who wants a referendum now, rather than a few years' time, and who wants to leave the EU.

Alex Massie

Who is allowed to speak for, and to, Scotland?

From our UK edition

I shall be on hiatus for the next week as I'm getting married on Saturday and I have an inkling that this is no time to be concerned that people are wrong on the internet. I leave you with my latest  Think Scotland column in which I consider some of the topics raised by Douglas Alexander in the Judith Hart Memorial Lecture he delivered last week. Douglas Alexander, probably the most thoughtful Scottish Labour MP (though I accept you may consider that only a minor accomplishment), delivered a typically interesting lecture last week. In it he suggested Scotland needs “a politics of opponents. Not enemies. We need a discourse of political difference, not a politics that descends into personal destruction.” Indeed.