Uk politics

Sunday

James Forsyth

Labour’s confusion is the Tories’ advantage

Today’s polls make grim reading for Labour. Even three months ago senior Labour or Tory people wouldn’t have thought that the Tories would be five points ahead at this point in the cycle. Part of Labour’s problem is that its positions require too much explanation. As one Number 10 source jokes, ‘Ed Miliband can do a Rubik's cube in less time than it takes him to explain his position on the cuts.’ A prime example of these overly complicated policy positions is Labour’s approach to the benefit cap. The leadership says that it is in favour of a cap in principle but against this one in practice.

Peter Hoskin

Lib-Dem-a-rama

There are Lib Dems everywhere today, CoffeeHousers, and they're differentiating like crazy. We had Nick Clegg himself on the Andrew Marr show earlier, waxing lukewarm about Boris Island, and there have been moments of assertiveness from his party colleagues as well. Here's a quick round-up: 1) Chris Huhne. The embattled energy minister hasn't taken to the airwaves today, but he is omnipresent nonetheless. A good portion of Clegg's Marr appearance was devoted to him, with the Deputy Prime Minister stressing that ‘he has been crystal clear that he denies any wrong doing’ — but not quashing the idea that Huhne would lose his job if those denials turn out to be false.

Peter Hoskin

Lansley’s headache becomes a migraine

Now that the three party leaders have each pronounced on capitalism, domestic politics is returning to its familiar battlegrounds. And there are few more familiar battlegrounds, for this government, than the NHS. Earlier this week a couple of unions came out completely against Andrew Lansley's health reforms, despite his previous efforts to accommodate their concerns. And now we learn that the Commons health select committee, chaired by the former Tory Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell, is set to criticise those reforms as well. According to the Observer, a report that they're publishing this week will raise a common complaint: that it's tricky for the NHS to both reorganise and find efficiencies at the same time.

Saturday

James Forsyth

What does it say about our society that abortion will now be advertised on TV?

The news that for-profit abortion providers are soon to be allowed to advertise on television suggests there is something very wrong with our society. Abortion may well at times be the least worst option. But even those of us who accept this should feel deeply uncomfortable with it being actively promoted on television. The fact that these providers want to advertise on television is revealing of a certain lack of moral seriousness about the work they do. This news is also revealing of how far we have come since the Abortion Act 1967. I doubt that the parliamentarians who voted that legislation through envisaged that 45 years later, what are euphemistically called, ‘post-conception advisory services’ would be being promoted during the commercial break.

Friday

James Forsyth

 Reshuffle chatter

Today’s Huhne news, which Pete blogged earllier, has set off all sorts of reshuffle chatter. At the moment, the expectation is that if a reshuffle was required it would be a limited, Lib Dem only one—their version of the one that followed Liam Fox’s departure. The current favourite to replace Huhne is Ed Davey, Vince Cable’s Lib Dem junior minister in the business department. In terms of a more general reshuffle, I’m hearing that we might have to wait until after Olympics. There is a growing view among those close to the Prime Minister, I’m told, that it would be better to leave ministers in place until then and then do a wide-ranging reshuffle.

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: Brown, the opera

Perfect for Friday evening is this: the Gordon Brown-themed version of Ko-Ko's ‘little list’ from The Mikado that Jeff Randall wrote for us back in 2007. The chorus should be sung, according to Jeff, by three people who have been quite prominent this week: Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper... The clunking fist, Jeff Randall, The Spectator, 3 March 2007 Britain doesn’t do Lord High Executioners, but if it did, Gordon Brown would probably be the best in the world. The prospect of the Chancellor in this role occurred to me while listening again to Gilbert & Sullivan’s masterful satire, The Mikado. Ko-Ko makes his entrance with ‘a little list’ of those who are for the chop. Among the joys of W.S.

Douglas Murray

Push off now, Press TV, and take your conspiracy theories with you

A week that began with an insane decision from the European Court of Human Rights has come to an end with a sensible decision from Ofcom. The Iranian government’s propaganda channel in London, Press TV, has just had its license to broadcast revoked. Insomniac Islamists will no longer be able to enjoy their weekly dose of programmes presented by the likes of Lauren Booth, Tariq Ramadan or Derek Conway. And of course they will now forever miss The Real Deal with George Galloway. On that show you could see such treats as Galloway interviewing ‘President’ Ahmadinejad.

Melanie McDonagh

What today’s immigration numbers tell us

During the leaders debates before the last general election, David Cameron declared that he wanted to make immigration a non-issue and he would go about it by reducing immigration numbers from hundreds of thousands a year to tens of thousands a year. He hasn’t succeeded in the second objective — more than half a million people arrived here in 2010, only 30 per cent of whom were from the EU — and he most certainly hasn’t succeeded in the first. At least if the reaction to today’s revelations about immigrants on benefits is anything to go by.

Peter Hoskin

Will Huhne survive this?

What odds, this morning, on Chris Huhne retaining his ‘Survivor of the Year’ crown at this year's Spectator Parliamentarian Awards? I only ask because The Sunday Times has dropped its challenge to hang on to its emails with his former wife, Vicky Pryce, about those speeding points. They'll now be handed over to the police, and shuffled into their evidence folders for this case. The Prime Minister's spokesman has said that Cameron still ‘has confidence’ in Huhne — but all this does at least raise the prospect of a reshuffle. If the Energy Secretary is found guilty, and had to depart his ministership, then he's likely to be replaced by another Lib Dem. The Evening Standard mentioned Ed Davey, Jeremy Browne and David Laws earlier this week.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s capitalism

Ever since Ed Miliband’s ‘predatory capitalism’ speech at the Labour Party conference, the future of capitalism has been a subject that has much occupied our MPs. Clegg made his speech on Monday, and Cameron delivered his yesterday. I have had plenty to say about the coalition government’s inadequate economic policy, and its inability to stoke growth. But Cameron’s speech was impressive, and it’s worth going into in some detail. I look at it in my Telegraph column today. Much rot is spoken about capitalism. It is not an ideology, there is no rule book you can tweak: it is simply the name given to the system where people trade with each other the world over.

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Off with their Eds! Yvette’s in town

This week's Spectator cover has achieved a rare distinction: it's going to be hung up on the wall chez Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. Or at least that's what the shadow chancellor told Sky's Jon Craig when quizzed about it earlier. You can see the cover image itself, by Stephen Collins, to the left. And below are a few extracts from the article by Melissa Kite that it illustrates. ‘Can Cooper save the Labour party?’ it asks. ‘Is she Labour's Iron Lady?’ And the answer… well, you'll have to read the full thing for that. In the meantime, here are those extracts to whet your appetite: 1) Office space. ‘In Yvette Cooper’s home, an entire room is given over to memorabilia of her husband’s life in politics.

Matt Cavanagh

The Home Office still hasn’t cleared up its border issues

Remember Theresa May's border skirmish against Brodie Clark back in November? This morning the Home Affairs Select Committee published their report into the whole affair. Ideally it would have cleared up some of the confusions over who was responsible for waiving various security checks at our borders last summer, and whether they were right to do so — but it doesn't really manage it. This is not really the fault of the committee: some of the crucial questions they put to the Home Office remain unanswered, and key documents have not been released to them.

James Forsyth

How Cameron sees the economy

Today’s speech by David Cameron is one of those ones that give you a real insight into how he sees the world. Cameron said that he wanted to see an ‘insurgent economy, where we support the new, the innovative and the bold’. He talked about the need to ‘encourage the adventurous spirits who challenge the status quo and declared that he admires ‘more than almost anything the bravery of those who turn their back on the security of a regular wage to follow their dreams and start a company’. This reveals something important both about Cameron personally and how he sees the economy. The people that Cameron respects are not the CEOs of established companies but the entrepreneurs who are creating dynamic, new companies.

Jonathan Jones

Boris’ poll lead evaporates

It looks like the May's election for Mayor of London will be a close run thing. A new poll today from YouGov has Ken Livingstone two points ahead of Boris Johnson – a big turnaround from the eight point lead Boris had in June: Ken shouldn't be popping any champagne corks yet, of course. His lead is well within the poll's margin of error, and there's three and a half months to go before election day. But he's certainly looking more likely to topple Boris than he did seven months ago. So why the change? YouGov's Peter Kellner has a good article on the poll's details here, but two key points jump out from the numbers: 1. Labour voters are getting behind Ken.

Peter Hoskin

Miliband’s proximity problem

Ed Miliband is on unusually assertive form this morning. His observation in the FT that ‘my speech to Labour’s annual conference was not — I think it is fair to say — universally well-received’ is not, I think, intended self-deprecatingly, but rather self-congratulatory, as though he were the only politician calling for a ‘responsible capitalism’ at the time. And he's repeated that suggestion elsewhere: in a short statement for Which?, and in a Labour briefing document — entitled Who is he trying to kid? — that has been filtered around the crowd at David Cameron's speech. Ed is trying to crash Dave's party, and bring it crashing down. Like I say, he's being unusually assertive.

Peter Hoskin

Lansley’s health problems return

Another day, another exercise in obstructionism from the unions. Only this time it's not Ed Miliband that they're complaining about. It's Andrew Lansley and the government's health reforms. The Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives have said that the entire Health Bill should be dropped. They have shifted, as they put it rather dramatically, to ‘outright opposition’. Which must be annoying for Lansley, given how he took time to ‘pause, listen and engage’ last summer, and adjusted his Bill accordingly. That whole process was meant to anaethetise this sort of disagreement, but the tensions clearly persist and could indeed get worse from here.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Boris puts on a performance for the 1922 Committee

Boris Johnson was very well behaved this evening when he appeared before the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs. He stayed off the topics of Europe and tax and instead confined his remarks to London, saying that he wanted the capital to be an example of ‘cost-cutting, one nation Conservatism’. Those MPs inside the room say the performance was classic Boris, as one put it ‘he left no erogenous zone unstroked’.   Afterwards, Mark Reckless, a north Kent MP, asked the Mayor a sceptical question about his plan for a new airport in Kent. In the questions, I understand that Boris also took the chance to express his support for Rebecca Harris’s daylight saving times bill.   Interestingly, the turn-out for Boris was decent but not massive.

Camilla Swift

Cameron’s fight over the Falklands

Thirty years on from the Falklands War, and the hostility between Britain and Argentina persists. And it was that hostility that delivered the most striking moment of PMQs earlier. Not only did David Cameron, at the insistence of Andrew Rosindell, describe the Argentinian attitude towards the Islands as ‘far more like colonialism’ than that of the British, but he also confirmed that the National Security Council yesterday discussed the simmering situation in the south Atlantic. As he put it himself, he wants to send out a ‘strong message’ to Argentina, after the recent sabre-rattling actions of their President, Cristina Kirchner — which Daniel has blogged about here.

Jonathan Jones

Why the government shouldn’t be confident that employment’s rising

No two ways about it: today’s employment figures are difficult for the coalition. The unemployment figure’s up for the seventh month in a row, and now stands at 2.68 million — the highest since 1994. And the unemployment rate — up to 8.4 per cent — is at its highest since 1995. It doesn't look like getting better anytime soon, either: unemployment's predicted to carry on rising at least until the end of the year, possibly matching the three million peak of the early ‘90s. In its defence, the government claims that employment is rising too. Today's figure of 29.1 million in employment is about 150,000 higher than it was at the general election. That may seem odd — how come unemployment's up when more people are employed?

Lloyd Evans

The lesson from today’s PMQs? Unemployment makes Cameron uncomfortable

What’s the point of Ed Miliband? Does the Opposition leader have any purpose in life other than to provide ritual entertainment for the Tory wrecking crew at PMQs? Having spent the New Year listening to lethal attacks from his dearest supporters, Mr Miliband has now seen his leadership shrivel to a pair of policy statements which rival each other in desperation and barminess. The first, outlined by Liam Byrne this morning, is a fantasy tax on banking, ‘to create 100,000 jobs’. The second is Labour’s new position on the government’s austerity programme. This would baffle the dippiest and trippiest resident of Alice in Wonderland. We hate the cuts. We back the cuts. We oppose the cuts. We endorse the cuts. We accept the cuts.