Uk politics

Monday

Steerpike

Paperless spin

With no man left behind the times, the Work and Pensions Select Committee are moving to ‘paperless working’. The pen-pushers are instructing members to get in touch with Parliament’s IT department for a free iPad — on the taxpayer, naturally. In theory, money will be saved on printing costs, though conscious of those members of the committee not quite prepared for modernity ‘alternative arrangements can be made if you do not wish to move to paperless working’, an email tells Committee members. The alternative presumably being printing stuff out, as per usual, thus rendering the whole operation nothing more than a nice spin job. Mr Steerpike’s eyes and ears say

Simon Hart

Are campaigners using the criminal justice system to pursue their political agendas?

Late last year a Judge in Oxford Magistrates’ court questioned the RSPCA for running up a legal bill of a third of a million pounds on a low-level case when the defendant’s costs were £35,000. This prompted me to ask some questions about private prosecutions and the RSPCA’s prolific use of them through the formal route of parliamentary questions and a debate in Westminster Hall. It has become worryingly clear that no-one, including the Government, has any idea what is going on. Private prosecutions might be funded privately (although even this comes with caveats), but they take place in the criminal courts so surely the Government would know how many

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s lurch to the backbenches

So the Conservative party’s refusal to lurch to the right has, in the past few days, resulted in stories about the European Court of Human Rights, EU referendum legislation, limiting access to benefits for migrants, and NHS tourism. All of these issues preoccupy the right wing of the Conservative party. David Cameron yesterday said the Tories would remain in the Common ground (and Fraser wondered whether the PM had realised that he wasn’t taking his own advice on this), but these briefings suggest Cameron is trying to find common ground with his own MPs as much as with the public. If these policies aren’t about a lurch to the right,

Alex Massie

What is the point of the modern Conservative party?

Who are the Conservatives? No, really, who are they and what do they stand for? Once upon a time – as James Kirkup points out in a typically astute post – we had a pretty decent idea about David Cameron. He was young. Polished. Presentable.  Dutiful. Unthreatening. Fiscally-conservative-but-socially-liberal. Modern (whatever, as Prince Charles might say, that means). Above all, he was neither Michael Howard nor Gordon Brown. Ah well. That was all a long time ago. Let sunshine win the day is the soundtrack to another era. Such are the trials of government. Time – and power – tarnish everything. What does David Cameron believe in now? He remains more popular

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

David Cameron vs the Middle Ground of politics

The Prime Minister’s article in today’s Sunday Telegraph is, like all of his major speeches, an uplifting read. It references Sir Keith Joseph, a giant of Conservative thought. Three years ago, I had the honour of delivering the Centre for Policy Studies annual Keith Joseph lecture, as did Cameron three years before that. Here is what Cameron has to say about Sir Keith in his piece today: ‘But the battle for Britain’s future will not be won in lurching to the Right, nor by some cynical attempt to calculate the middle distance between your political opponents and then planting yourself somewhere between them. That is lowest common denominator politics –

Sebastian Payne

The mighty Metis machine that could save Cameron’s bacon in 2015

What does David Cameron need to do to win the next general election? Following on from Eastleigh, several of the suggestions in today’s papers involve a significant personnel or policy shift, something Cameron is likely to ignore. Buried in the Sunday Times, an alternative is revealed (£) with the Metis project. Headed up by four of Westminster’s sharpest minds, Metis is destined to become the largest and most sophisticated voter database ever built in the UK. The power of a 20 million strong list of voters has the potential to revolutionise campaigning: ‘It will enable political parties to run highly targeted campaigns, focusing on individual voters whose support is vital

Isabel Hardman

How to be an anti-politics party in government: make the public sector accountable

One of the lessons from last week’s Eastleigh by-election – and indeed the Italian elections – is that voters don’t like politicians at the moment. It’s easy for those like Nigel Farage to mop up this anti-politics sentiment in the same way as Nick Clegg could say before the 2010 election ‘the more they attack each other, the more they sound the same’. But how does the Conservative party try to appeal to those voters fed up with the Establishment of which it is so clearly a part? David Cameron can hardly start attacking himself, after all. There is one thing that the Tories could do – and which their

James Forsyth

Vince Cable tells Philip Hammond, cut Trident not welfare

On The Sunday Politics today, Vince Cable told Andrew Neil that he disliked ring fencing particular departments. But he accepted that the NHS and DFID budgets would remain protected for the rest of this parliament Cable, who joked that he was being fingered as a shop steward of the National Union of Ministers, made clear that he opposed any further welfare cuts. When asked about Philip Hammond’s comments that welfare should be cut not defence, Cable responded by saying that the Ministry of Defence should scrap Trident. Interestingly, Cable conceded that capital spending was still too low and that he would push for further increases in it in the Budget.

Camilla Swift

Bookbenchers: Nick de Bois

Conservative MP Nick De Bois is over on the books blog now sharing some of his favourite reads for the new year. He reveals the sinister political masterpiece he would most like to study, the surprising three books he would save from a burning British Library and the Presidential memoir he reads before bed.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Theresa May and Chris Grayling signal bold new Tory direction on the ECHR

Tonight brings two major developments in terms of Tory policy on the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Courts of Human Rights. The Mail on Sunday reports that Theresa May is close to announcing that under a post 2015, majority Tory government Britain would leave the Convention. All the articles of the Convention would be incorporated into a British Bill of Rights. But no one would be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. This would end stand-offs such as the one over prisoner voting where the Strasbourg Court is telling parliament it has to enfranchise convicted inmates. Under this system, the Supreme Court in

Rupert Myers

‘We called quite a few dead people’: How the Tories’ lack of data let them down in Eastleigh

At 9.15pm, with 45 minutes until polls closed in the Eastleigh by-election, the ‘get out the vote’ telephone operation at Conservative Central Headquarters stopped. As one fellow volunteer put it, it was so late in the day that we were just ‘pissing people off’. Having been there all day, I’d had that feeling for several hours, as voter after voter spoke of the harassment they had received during the Eastleigh campaign from all of the major parties. By the early evening we were calling people who not only had received several calls already that day to remind them to vote, as well as one or two visits to their doorstep,

James Forsyth

The Tory branch of the National Union of Ministers says cut welfare, not our budgets

Philip Hammond is a cautious and loyal politician. He is not a boat rocker. This is what makes his interviews in the Telegraph and The Sun today so noteworthy. He would not have started conducting spending negotiations in public unless he felt he had to and that he had a chance of success. Hammond tells The Sun his case is this, ‘You take half a percent out of the welfare budget, you’ve solved the problem in defence — HALF a percent. There is a body of opinion within Cabinet that believes we have to look at the welfare budget again.’ In truth, the argument about the 2015-16 spending round is

James Forsyth

Is David Cameron about to drop minimum alcohol pricing?

James Chapman reports today that plans for a minimum unit price for alcohol are set to be dropped. This is welcome news. The policy always promised to simply drive up the price of drink, penalising all drinkers, while doing little about public drunkenness or binge drinking. The Mail says that the plan has fallen out of favour because of the government’s new emphasis on the cost of living. It is dawning on everyone that that hugely increasing the price of people’s pleasures at a time of falling real incomes is not a sensible political move. Although, the question remains of whether David Cameron will be prepared to fully abandon a

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Eastleigh result: the Tories aren’t panicking, but that doesn’t mean they won’t

Don’t panic, don’t panic! But are the Tories actually panicking about the Eastleigh result? Coffee House readers will have seen Stewart Jackson’s call on the government to get more robust on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants, and Gavin Barwell’s plea to his colleagues to stay calm. But backbenchers aren’t really flapping their arms in terror today, other than taking positions we’ve already heard them take. Even backbenchers who really don’t like David Cameron are clear that even though coming third is ‘deeply disappointing’, it’s not a catalyst for disaster right now. But that doesn’t mean Cameron’s opponents don’t have some sort of vision of how the next few months could pan

Jonathan Jones

Eastleigh by-election: Four points from Ashcroft’s exit poll

The result might be in, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing useful polls can tell us about the Eastleigh by-election. What swayed the voters? Why did they vote as they did? And — perhaps of most interest — how might they vote next time? Yesterday, Lord Ashcroft’s polling operation phoned 760 Eastleigh residents, 654 of whom had voted in the by-election. All sorts of warning labels need slapping across the figures: they aren’t weighted, so are subject to a much higher risk of selection bias than other polls, and even if the sample were representative and random, the margin of error would be 3.5 points (and higher for subsets of

Gavin Barwell

Don’t panic: the Tories can do better than Eastleigh

There’s no disguising the fact that last night’s result was a very disappointing one for Conservatives. There were three small crumbs of comfort. First, the poor performance of Labour, our only realistic rivals in terms of winning the next Election. The opinion polls say Labour are doing 12 or 13 percentage points better than they did at the last Election, but on the ground in Eastleigh they increased their share of the vote by just 0.22 per cent. In the 1994 Eastleigh by-election, held before Tony Blair was elected Leader, Labour came second with 27.6% of the vote.  Yesterday, they managed fourth place with just 9.8% of the vote, suggesting – as

Sebastian Payne

Eastleigh by-election: a bad day for Labour too

While the Tories are taking a public beating for their performance in Eastleigh, Labour also have little to be proud of. Despite the party currently floating around 11 points ahead of the Tories in the national polls, they only managed to add 0.2 points to their 2010 general election result and came in fourth place. Their candidate John O’Farrell blames voters being anti-politics, not anti-Labour. Either way, the result is disappointing for Ed Miliband. Although it was unlikely Labour would ever take the seat, the party still threw its weight behind a full campaign. Lord Ashcroft’s latest polling suggests Labour were putting in similar effort to the main contenders. 89

Charlotte Leslie

Why David Nicholson must go

As the Mid-Staffs tragedy unfurls, it becomes more and more apparent that contrary to the insistence of former Labour Ministers and Prime Ministers, this was not an isolated case, but an appalling example of problems evident throughout the NHS. Indeed, back in 2008, the then Labour Government received reports from respected international health consultants warning of a culture of fear and compliance within the NHS; a place where the emphasis was on ‘hitting the targets, but missing the point’ and patient safety came second to presenting a set of statistics suitable for dispatch-box delivery. Ironically, these reports had been commissioned to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the NHS, but far

Alex Massie

If David Cameron is serious about losing the next election he’ll cuddle-up to UKIP

OK. Remember this: by-elections are always liable to be interpreted too keenly. Elections often fought on local issues then have their results scrutinised as though the election was a miniature general election. It isn’t. People who should know better this morning are forgetting that. You know what else matters? The candidate. They matter much more at a by-election than they do in a general election. The Tory candidate Maria Hutchings might have won Eastleigh in a general election. But a by-election brings greater scrutiny. A good number of voters are minded to pick the best candidate. I suspect few of those voters endorsed Ms Hutchings. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems chose

Jonathan Jones

Fag break Britain: four answers to Britain’s productivity puzzle

Jobs are being created in Britain, but the economy isn’t growing. In the last year, the number of people in work rose by 2 per cent, but economic output rose by just 0.3 per cent. As the below graph shows, employment is now 0.7 per cent above its pre-recession peak, whereas GDP is still 3 per cent below it. This adds up to a big drop in productivity. Output per worker is now 3.8 per cent below its 2008 Q1 level, and 13.3 per cent lower than it would be if the pre-recession trend had continued. In a piece for this week’s issue, The Spectator’s business editor Martin Vander Weyer