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Uk politics

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Labour stage a relentless attack on Cameron

A fascinating PMQs. Labour staged one of the most carefully orchestrated attacks on David Cameron they’ve ever mounted. It was relentless. Ed Miliband kicked off by asking the PM about the six fold rise in food-bank dependency. Cheekily, Cameron praised Miliband for applauding the volunteer spirit. ‘It’s what I call the Big Society.’ Miliband gave him the ‘withering disbelief’ look which he practises in the mirror. He then revealed that two out of every three teachers ‘know a colleague’ who has given food or cash to famished children. Cameron shrugged this aside and replied that he wanted to do the most for the poorest.

Alex Massie

Is this the nastiest Conservative MP in Britain? – Spectator Blogs

Despite strong competition, Alec Shelbrooke is the new front-runner for the coveted title of Nastiest, Most Stupid Tory MP 2012. Here's what he proposes: Mr Shelbrooke has drafted a Bill that would change the law to allow welfare payments to be made on a new “welfare cash card” whose use could be restricted by the Government. "Introducing a welfare cash card on which benefits will be paid, claimants will only be able to make priority payments such as food, clothing, energy, travel and housing. The purchase of luxury goods such as cigarettes, alcohol, Sky television and gambling will be prohibited,” Mr Shelbrooke told MPs. I wonder how many poor people, far less people on welfare, Mr Shelbrooke encounters. Some, presumably.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband might talk a good game on food banks, but he’s still wrong

David Cameron made a perfectly good stab at explaining what the government is doing to support families who are struggling at Prime Minister's Questions today. He said: 'I agree with the right hon. gentleman that we need to do more to help the poorest in our country. That is why we have lifted the personal tax allowance and taken 2 million of the lowest paid people out of tax altogether. Let us take someone who is on the minimum wage and works full time - because of the tax changes that we have made, their income tax bill has been cut in half. I would also make this point: because of the decisions that we made in this government to increase the child tax credit by £390 ahead of inflation, we have helped those families with their bills and we will continue to do more in the future.

James Forsyth

PMQs: Labour attacks Cameron as the leader of a ‘Dickensian Britain’

PMQs started off in a very consensual manner as Ed Miliband asked some worthy questions on Afghanistan. But this quickly changed when Miliband moved onto food banks. The Labour leader attempted to paint food banks as a consequence of the coalition’s policies. When Cameron mentioned the ‘Big Society’, Miliband shot back that ‘I never thought the Big Society was about feeding children here in Britain.’ A string of Labour MPs then made similar attacks on Cameron. One even waved a suicide note left by a constituent affected by changes to disability benefits. The question is whether the picture of, to quote one Labour MP, a Dickensian Britain with ‘grandeur for the few, the workhouse for the many’ rings true. I don’t think it does.

James Forsyth

Andrew Mitchell’s next step could be an international job

The Westminster grapevine is buzzing with the latest rumours about the truth of ‘pleb-gate’. There are legal limits to what we can say. But a few things seem certain. Andrew Mitchell’s friends believe he is on the cusp of vindication. On the Today Programme just now, David Davis called for him to be returned to high office as soon as possible. Davis also claimed that Mitchell had not been able to handle the matter in the way that he wanted to because of constraints imposed on him by people around the Prime Minister. One lesson of the Mitchell affair is that the only person who can really defend a politician when his integrity is under attack, is the politician himself.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Improve human rights by quitting Strasbourg court, Tory Bill of Rights advisers argue

As expected, today's report from the Commission on a Bill of Rights offered little. With a membership evenly split between Tory and Lib Dem nominees, it was set up to fail. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, who resigned from the Commission in March, tells me that this problem was exacerbated by the way in which it was run: it was barred from discussing either the European Court of Human Rights or the Convention. He says: 'The Commission was not able to have a productive discussion because of the determination of the civil service to produce an artificial argument'. Attention now moves to what the Conservatives will say about the matter in their manifesto.

Isabel Hardman

Ken Clarke’s concession on secret courts fails to calm Lib Dem fears

Ken Clarke's announcement that the government will accept a major House of Lords amendment to the Justice and Security Bill might ease the legislation's passage through the Commons. The Lib Dems and several senior Conservative figures, including Andrew Tyrie, have been pressing the government to accept the amendment, which gives judges more discretion on whether a court should sit in secret. So those parliamentarians will be happy. But there is still a fight on the cards, albeit not in either chamber of Parliament. The Liberal Democrat grassroots remain horrified by the Bill's proposals for secret courts in general, even though they aren't currently getting much traction with their MPs when it comes to scrapping the legislation entirely.

James Forsyth

Was the deputy chief whip just doing his job by passing on Mitchell concerns?

The latest twist in the Andrew Mitchell story is particularly intriguing. The Guardian is reporting that news of the confrontation between the police and the chief whip was passed onto Downing Street by the deputy chief whip John Randall. Now, Randall and Mitchell were known not to get on and Randall played a key part in forcing Mitchell out by indicating that he was not comfortable working under him. This latest news threatens to inject yet more poison into the Tory bloodstream. If brother whips can treat each other like this, what hope party discipline? But one longstanding Conservative MP made the case to me just now that Randall’s behaviour is not as odd as it might seem.

James Forsyth

A pact wouldn’t solve the Tories’ UKIP problem

UKIP has seen a significant bump in support in the latest set of polls: it is up five points with Populus this morning. All of which makes Lord Ashcroft’s examination of why people are attracted to UKIP particularly timely. The Ashcroft polling confirms that the UKIP vote is only partly about Europe. It also reflects a wider anger with a political class that appears aloof from peoples’ concerns. Among those considering voting UKIP, the most frequently stated reason is to send a message to the big parties on Europe and immigration. It is also striking that any kind of Tory / UKIP pact seems unpopular. ‘The few voters who had heard the idea of a Conservative-UKIP pact thoroughly disapproved of the proposal.

Isabel Hardman

Chris Grayling wants a robust response to the European Court, but will he get his way?

It's a big day for Chris Grayling: the long awaited Commission on a British Bill of Rights reports today. But the Justice Secretary is already setting himself up for disappointment, with reports swirling in the press that the Commission has failed to reach a strong conclusion. In any case, as Grayling acknowledges in his op-ed in the Telegraph today, there isn't much he can do about reforming the rights landscape in this country while the Tories remain in Coalition with the Lib Dems. Grayling says he will 'read and digest the report of the Commission, and will see what help it gives me to deliver change in the short term'. But he adds that he will 'also be looking clearly towards the next election, and starting work on ensuring that we had a real plan for change then as well'.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Will the Lords really slay the gay marriage bill?

Think the Commons is in uproar at the moment over gay marriage? Just wait until the legislation makes its way into the House of Lords. The received wisdom is that equal marriage will go into the upper chamber, but never make it out alive after a savaging from socially conservative peers. But is that true? If it's uproar you're looking for, then you're unlikely to be disappointed, but the chances of angry words in the chamber translating into embarrassing defeats for the government aren't quite so high. Remember that after 13 years of Labour in power, the House has a large liberal-leaning majority. There are 224 Labour peers and 90 Lib Dems.

James Forsyth

Cameron prepares his European argument

If logistics had allowed, David Cameron would have given his long-awaited speech on Europe tomorrow. Instead, it’s been postponed until January and we had to make do with a statement on the European Council in the Commons today It’s quite clear that Cameron is thoroughly bored of these meetings: he complained that it was the seventh he’s attended this year and that he ‘wouldn’t describe it as a landmark council’. When Ed Miliband mocked the Eurozone countries for coming up with a timetable for having a timetable, Cameron chuckled and nodded. But Cameron does think that something big came out of this summit. As he put it, ‘the principle has been established that changes in the Eurozone, requires safeguards for those outside.

Isabel Hardman

The Tories mustn’t make another silly pledge on benefits in 2015

As the country approaches a general election, a party leader, desperate to reassure a key group of voters, makes a very silly pledge. He is as unequivocal as possible that, in spite of the big spending implications in a time of economic crisis, he will stick to this silly pledge to keep his target voters happy. Months later, a Coalition has formed, and those target voters are enraged because that promise turned out to be worth little more than the paper it was written on. We all know that this is what happened with the Lib Dems and their extraordinarily stupid pledge to block rises in tuition fees.

Isabel Hardman

The gumming up of Whitehall

Tony Blair is paying a visit to journalists in the Commons this week for a festive lunch. Last week, David Cameron complained to lunching hacks about the 'gumming up' of government; perhaps the former Prime Minister will wish to add his own thoughts today on the ingredients of that sticky gum that makes the progress of the Whitehall machine so glutinous. One of the gummy bits in Whitehall at the moment is the way permanent secretaries are appointed. Last week the Civil Service Commission blocked plans by Francis Maude to allow ministers to pick the most senior civil servants in their departments from a list of approved candidates, opting instead for an independent panel to recommend candidates.

James Forsyth

The Liberal Democrat paradox

Labour under a more left-wing leader, the Tories bearing right. These are circumstances in which you would expect the Liberal Democrats to flourish. But they are in government and haven’t benefitted from this moment. Instead, they are struggling in the polls, coming fourth too often for comfort. Part of the problem is that the public simply aren’t listening to Nick Clegg at the moment. As one Conservative Cabinet Minister sympathetic to the Liberal Democrats’ political strategy observes, ‘Clegg can say anything, he’s just not being heard.’ Those close to Clegg believe that this will turn round in time.

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg wants gory government: so should the Tories

There's nothing wrong with Nick Clegg putting some distance between his party and the Conservatives. Today the Liberal Democrat leader is going to open up about the gory details of government, explaining where his party has held the Tories back, and heralding a new era where he and colleagues are honest about what they actually think of policies. On Friday, I argued that this sort of honesty about the workings of coalition government was a good thing. But there is one caveat to this. Conservative MPs are pretty unhappy at present, and it's not just that they are overtired before the Christmas break.

Sunday

James Mumford

A blank cheque to the baby boomers

After more than a decade of wrangling, it seems that a deal is finally about to be struck on long-term care of the elderly, by adopting the package proposed by economist Andrew Dilnot.  George Osborne has apparently agreed to a proposal, to be announced as early as next month, to make sure no one pays more than £75,000 towards their care costs however wealthy they are. The threshold below which their equity is exempt will also be jacked up. The estimated cost of all this is £700 million - money that this government simply does not have. To offer this at a time of cuts to further education, aircraft carriers, local authorities and welfare would be extraordinary.

James Forsyth

Shapps’ campaign skirmish

There’s long been a sense on the Tory side that the party’s campaigning isn’t as sharp as it should be, that CCHQ isn’t up to the job. The Ashcroft target seats campaign was so valued not just because of the money but because of the organisational and management muscle behind it. The new Tory Chairman Grant Shapps was sent to CCHQ in the reshuffle with instructions to address the place’s institutionalised incompetence. The early signs are encouraging. When Labour announced that it was launching a campaign in the 60 seats where the number of people on working tax credits, which are only going up by 1%, was larger than the Tory majority, Shapps had a Tory response in place in each of those seats by the time Labour’s campaign actually launched.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Tensions in the tearoom on gay marriage

This week's developments over gay marriage have left a febrile atmosphere in the Conservative party. As Fraser wrote yesterday, David Cameron seems to have driven his party 'quite mad' by pursuing the policy, and the mood in the tearoom after Maria Miller's statement on Tuesday certainly seems to have underlined that. I understand from a number of MPs that there was an 'excitable' confrontation between a member of the 2010 intake and one of the members of the Freedom to Marry group. The new MP was irritated by the position that his colleague had taken and was jabbing his finger angrily as he spoke.

Friday

Jonathan Jones

Ed Miliband vs the working class

Who's on the side of the strivers? Is it George Osborne, who's cutting benefits in real terms for the next three years, which he defends as 'being fair to the person who leaves home every morning to go out to work and sees their neighbour still asleep, living a life on benefits'? Or is it Ed Balls, who's opposing the move as Osborne 'making striving working families pay the price for his economic failure'? Both men are convinced that their stance will help win the votes of low- and middle-income workers. At least one of them is wrong. Isabel has explained the sources of Labour's confidence. One is a YouGov poll released on Sunday, showing 42 per cent of 'C2DEs' (working class and lower) think benefits should rise at least in line with inflation.