Uk politics

Friday

Matthew Pennycook

Universal uncertainty

From our UK edition

Brushing aside recent criticism of his universal credit scheme, Iain Duncan Smith claimed that nothing now 'demoralised' him. After surviving two years of gruelling denigration as Conservative Party leader, he can perhaps be taken at his word. Yet the line between a thick skin and complacency is a thin one. For all the sniping from opponents, the Work and Pensions Secretary would be wrong to ignore the very real threats that confront his flagship scheme. One of the more striking aspects of Universal Credit which has so far failed to make the headlines is that from April 2014, financial support for people already in work will become conditional rather than automatic, just as it is for jobseekers today.

James Forsyth

The real story of the 2007 ‘election that never was’

From our UK edition

‘The election that never was’ is one of the most important events, or non-events, in recent British political history; if it had gone ahead, David Cameron might never have become Prime Minister and there might not have been a coalition at all. Equally, Gordon Brown could have seen Labour’s majority slashed and had to quit long before the financial crisis hit. The story of what happened that day has been told several times. But I don’t think I’ve read a more gripping account than Damian McBride’s. McBride did disgrace himself but he can sure as hell write. If you like the political game, you really sure read it.

Isabel Hardman

Senior Tories pile pressure on Cameron to chase core vote

From our UK edition

David Cameron has a tough task ahead of him for this week's Conservative conference - a task that got a little harder when Ed Miliband surprised almost everyone by producing a cracking speech this week. The Prime Minister has a number of problems to tackle when he arrives in Birmingham. These include a rowdy party growing increasingly agitated about a number of issues including Europe, a chief whip sent in to control said rowdy party whose authority has been undermined before he has even started twisting arms, a chancellor struggling with his own authority on economic policy, and a Mayor determined to steal the show with his own conference speech and his building campaign against Heathrow expansion.

Julian Huppert Mp

Why the ‘snooping’ Communications Data Bill will not pass through Parliament

From our UK edition

I believe in evidence-based policy, and if the Home Office or anyone else claims that they need new powers over the people of this country, the onus is on them to demonstrate what they need and why. They should never assume that they will always get what they want, simply because they ask for it. Politicians owe it to the people to question the needs, not just roll over and concede our hard-earned freedoms on request. Obviously there is always a balance to be struck when deciding how many powers to give the state. We benefit from having an effective police force - but give the police too many powers, and we put too many restrictions on people's freedoms. Orwell's 1984 is the terrible consequence.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Five lessons from the Labour party conference

From our UK edition

Believe it or not, Labour's party conference has finally ground to a halt. Here are the key lessons from the past six days in Manchester: 1. Ed Miliband is no longer a joke leader of the opposition. The Labour leader's speech showed that he can now talk a good game, and even though much of that performance was no more than a good game, Miliband gave his party and voters a glimpse of the more authoritative figure that he has grown into over the past two years. It's worth watching his speech to the 2010 autumn conference where he appeared completely floored by bursts of applause to see quite how far he has come. 2.

Jonathan Jones

Labour conference: Ed Miliband’s speech boosts his ratings

From our UK edition

Labour leave Manchester today with a 14-point poll lead over the Conservatives, according to YouGov. That's their biggest lead in a YouGov poll since June, although one last week showed them 13 points ahead, so we shouldn't rush into declaring a big conference bounce for them. It does seem, though, that Ed Miliband himself did get a decent boost out of his hour-long speech on Tuesday. 10 per cent of people say they watched or listened to the whole thing, and a further 49 per cent say they've seen or heard reports about it. And it seems Ed did manage to change at least a few of their minds about him. 31 per cent now say he 'would be up to the job of Prime Minister' — still not a great number, but an improvement on the 25 per cent who said so last week.

Isabel Hardman

He’s behind you! Michael Gove is the pantomime villain who inspires Labour

From our UK edition

There was plenty of panto on the conference floor this week in Manchester. Ed Miliband encouraged delegates to boo several villains in his speech, and one of them was Michael Gove. In fact, Michael Gove popped up as the villain on Tuesday and in the Labour leader's question-and-answer session yesterday, too, and again when Stephen Twigg spoke just before the close of the conference today. This is odd: of all the reforms that the coalition government has introduced so far, Gove's have been the least surprising to Labour members given he's pushing ahead with what Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis started. There was one baffling moment when a delegate started heckling a year 11 academy pupil who was delivering quite a lovely speech about her own schooling.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Labour conference: Stephen Twigg to launch New Deal for teachers

From our UK edition

It doesn't seem entirely fair that Stephen Twigg's speech has been left to the final day of the Labour conference, when many have packed up and left Manchester already. But today Labour's Shadow Education Secretary is to announce more reforms to education as part of the party's new One Nation project. The idea is to make teaching an 'elite profession for top graduates', and Twigg plans to achieve that by offering incentives for high-flyers to work in tough schools such as paying off some of their student debt, funding for teachers to do master's degrees and a National College for Teaching Excellence to develop new teaching standards. The centrepiece of this New Deal for teachers is a doubling in size of the popular and successful Teach First programme to 2,000 placements.

James Forsyth

Why the Cameroons have grounds for optimism

From our UK edition

With Labour conference winding down, attention shifts to the Tories. They will head to Birmingham facing several challenges. First, the loss of the boundary changes means that winning a majority requires them to be on, at least, forty two per cent — six points up on where they were in 2010. Second, Ed Miliband has shown this week that he has more political life in him than many Tories appreciated. Third, the government’s reputation for competence has taken a beating over the past few months. But despite all this, one finds a renewed sense of confidence among the Cameroons. The listlessness of a few months ago has gone to be replaced by a sense of determined optimism. To my mind, things do look better for them than they did before the Olympics.

Isabel Hardman

Labour conference: Ed Miliband will attend TUC anti-austerity demo

From our UK edition

If we learnt nothing else from this afternoon's question-and-answer session that Ed Miliband held with delegates, it's that Labour delegates are quite as eccentric as Liberal Democrat members, if not more so. The junior coalition partner has long enjoyed the reputation of having an eclectic following, but those gathered in Labour's hall had bought an equally surreal selection of props with them today. They were waving Welsh flags, builder's helmets, sparkly bags, light-up handheld fans, light-up pens, scarves, crutches, something that looked strangely like a strip light, flashing lights, and open umbrellas. The idea, as well as making the conference hall look rather like a bazaar, was to catch Ed Miliband's attention by vigorously waving said strange object.

The Spectator

Jeremy Hunt: no promises on the NHS ringfence

From our UK edition

In this week's Spectator James Forsyth interviews new Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt about how he will continue Andrew Lansley's legacy on NHS reform. He says his 'burning mission' is to 'demonstrate that we have as much to offer the NHS as Labour ever did'. But while Hunt is keen to praise the work of his predecessor, he takes a strikingly different line on the health budget. James writes: Another striking difference between them is their views on the future of the NHS budget. When The Spectator interviewed Andrew Lansley at Christmas, he was clear that he believed that the health budget would have to carry on rising in real terms until, well, kingdom come — and that the next spending round and Tory manifesto would have to commit to that. Hunt is not prepared to guarantee this.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband’s next big test as Labour leader

From our UK edition

The good thing for Labour about Ed Miliband's speech yesterday was that he didn't talk about the deficit, or welfare or other thorny issues which make certain sections of the party very grumpy indeed. The Labour leader made only fleeting references to cuts to public services, too. So there was little to disagree on. It is when he comes to tackle issues such as these that Miliband will see his party mood sour considerably from its cheery response yesterday. The problem is that on these issues, the party is still struggling to work out how far it should go to meet voters' demands without betraying what it sees as its core values.

James Forsyth

The coalition take on Ed Miliband’s speech

From our UK edition

Talking to senior Liberal Democrats and Conservatives about Ed Miliband’s speech, it is striking how similar their analyses of it are. Despite coalition, we’re entering into a period of stark government, opposition dividing lines. Pretty much everyone admits that Miliband has put to bed the question of his leadership of the Labour party and moved himself out of the IDS category. But they argue that he’s not dealt with Labour’s biggest weakness, the public’s belief that it spent and borrowed too much. One influential Liberal Democrat accused Miliband of ducking the generational challenge that is the deficit likening his speech to one in 1942 that didn't mention there was a war on.

Isabel Hardman

Richard Branson forces government into a great train U-turn

From our UK edition

Sir Richard Branson is not a man who takes kindly to failing to get his own way. That was why few people were surprised by the Virgin boss' furious response to the government's decision to award the West Coast Mainline to his rivals First Group. It wasn't fair, he protested, and thousands of people seemed to agree, signing a petition criticising the decision. This morning it transpires that Branson's frenzied campaign against the contract actually led to the discovery of an enormous mistake at the heart of the bidding process. Civil servants checking their sums before a court case questioning the decision realise that they had in fact got those sums wrong. They had made mistakes in calculating the effect of inflation and passenger numbers.

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22 – Labour conference special

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband's speech to the Labour conference this afternoon was undoubtably his best speech yet and has revitalised the Labour cause.The Spectator team have gathered this evening in Manchester for a special podcast to discuss both Miliband's speech and the Labour conference overall: The View from 22 - 2 October 2012.

Jonathan Jones

Labour conference: Great (Harvard) minds think alike

From our UK edition

Listening to Ed Miliband's conference speech, I was stuck by the similarity of one section of it to that of another speech given by someone else who's taught at Harvard: law professor Elizabeth Warren. Today, in Manchester, Miliband spoke of ‘the system’ not working in much the same way as Warren — now running for the United States Senate — spoke of ‘the system’ being rigged in her speech at the Democratic National Convention last month.

Isabel Hardman

Labour conference: Miliband and Balls talk inheritances

From our UK edition

One of the more sombre passages in Ed Miliband's barnstorming speech this afternoon was when he tackled the thorny issue of what a Labour government would actually do about the cuts. While both the Labour leader and Ed Balls are keen to regain the trust of the British public on the economy, they are also trying to introduce a counter-narrative to the 'are you ready to trust Labour with your money again?' line that Nick Clegg produced last week. Just as George Osborne and colleagues have spent the first two and a half years selling the line that they are 'clearing up the mess' of the last Labour government, Miliband and Balls are now increasingly talking about the economic inheritance that a Labour government might receive in 2015.

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband Makes a Pitch for One Nation Progressivism – Spectator Blogs

From our UK edition

The first thing to remember about Ed Miliband's speech to the Labour conference today is that it's not about you, it's about us. That is, it was designed to persuade the media to give Miliband a fresh look more than it was an attempt to impress the general public, far less the Labour members gathered in Manchester. Initial impressions are that he succeeded in this aim. See Tim Shipman and Fraser Nelson, neither of whom are normally considered much of a Milibander, for good examples of this reappraisal. (John Rentoul is, of course, an exception.) Indeed, I can't recall when the British half of my twitter timeline was last quite so impressed by any speech given by any British politician, far less any intervention made by Edward Miliband Esq.

Sebastian Payne

Labour conference: Polling suggests Ed Miliband is still not seen as PM material

From our UK edition

As Ed Miliband prepares to present a carefully crafted image of 'Ed the human' to the Labour conference this afternoon, polling out today suggests the nation still does not see him as a future Prime Minister. In a ComRes poll for the Independent, just 22 per cent of voters said they agree that Ed Miliband has what it takes to be Prime Minister, compared to 33 per cent for David Cameron: On the economy, Balls and Miliband continue to rank below the public's view of Cameron and Osborne.