Uk politics

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

The BNP responds with hate mail

On Thursday night, we will most likely see a restrained performance from Nick Griffin - one which, in itself, gives little clue as to some of the disgraceful tenets of his party.  But, as Sunder Katwala points out over at Next Left, Griffin's official response to the letter released by military figures today leaves no room for doubt.  Here's a passage from it: "Those Tory generals who today attacked the British National Party should remember that at the Nuremberg Trials, the politicians and generals accused of waging illegal aggressive wars were all charged — and hanged — together.

Peter Hoskin

Inscrutable polls

And so the strangeness continues: the latest Ipsos MORI poll has the Tories leaping a hefty 7 points to 43 percent, while Labour climb 2 to 26 percent, and the Lib Dems fall 6 points to 19 percent.  It's most likely a correction from their last poll – which had the Lib Dems above Labour for the first time since the 1980s – but the Tories' 17-point lead is still at odds with some of the other polls we've seen recently.  I'm sure CCHQ will be pleased, but, as I said yesterday, it's worth waiting a few weeks until the polls settle before drawing judgement. UPDATE: Guardian/ICM also gives the Tories a 17-point lead.

Peter Hoskin

Women only shortlists

Now this is going to stir up some trouble.  Addressing today's Speaker's conference, David Cameron has said that the Tories still don't have enough women candidates, and, as a result, he may impose women-only shortlists on those constituencies which are yet to pick a candidate for the next election.  Putting aside the many persuasive arguments against "positive discrimination", you imagine this will just fuel more questions about the amount of central control that the Tory leader wields.  Cameron & Co. clearly believe that those questions are a price worth paying for the modernisation of their party, but I have my doubts.  I'm sure CoffeeHousers do too, so your thoughts please...

David Blackburn

The BNP’s appropriation of British institutions must be resisted

Hardly a day passes without Nick Griffin cosying up to a poster of Churchill and the Few. Valour provides potent nationalist imagery, but Griffin has no right to it – as his distinctly ambiguous stance on the Ghurkhas’ residency rights makes clear. This morning, senior officers, in conjunction with Nothing British, condemned Griffin’s opportunism:   ‘We, the undersigned, are increasingly concerned that the reputation of Britain’s Armed Services is being tarnished by political extremists who are attempting to appropriate it for their own dubious ends. We deplore this trend for two reasons.

Peter Hoskin

Are we about to see a double-act?

It's Tuesday, so it's time to sift through Rachel Sylvester's column for juicy quotes.  In her latest, she saves the best for last: a Cabinet minister saying that "It’s up to the brotherhood now".  No, not that brotherhood – but the brothers Miliband, Ed and David.  The intimation being that they need to take over from Brown – and sharpish. There's been plenty of speculation about the Milibands recently, so this latest titbit shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.  But, to my mind, it's interesting how this minister packages Ed and David together – as the "brotherhood".  It has generally been assumed that one or the other wouldn't run for the leadership if the other one did.

Peter Hoskin

When will they learn?

Why argue your case when you can smear your opponent's name? According to this morning's Telegraph, that's the approach that a group of MPs are taking over the Sir Thomas Legg letters. The plan they're apparently considering is to use parliamentary questions to find out details such as Legg's pay, his team's expenses and how much they've spent on media advice. One Tory MP tells the paper that there are "legitimate questions" about these things.  Hm. It's not only a pernicious strategy, it's also stupid.  Even if MPs manage to uncover some sort of hypocrisy on Legg's part, do they really think it will divert public anger away from them?  And do they not see that they could end up with egg on their faces if Legg comes out squeaky clean?

Monday

David Blackburn

The political position in Kabul deteriorates

It seems that a second Afghan election is now probable after Hamid Karzai’s share of the vote fell below 50%. The BBC reports that the drop is the result of the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission ordering that ballots from 210 polling stations be discounted. The pro-Karsi Independent Electoral Commission will deliver its verdict shortly, but is bound by the ECC, so a run-off seems likely. This turn of events is no surprise – rumours of corruption circulated months before polling. But the coalition is now in a very awkward position. Mr Karzai’s state of mind is frenetic – he views these allegations as more evidence that there is an Anglo-American plot to unseat him - and he will block any attempt to initiate a second round of voting.

Peter Hoskin

Those strange post-conference polls

So what's the deal with the opinion polls we've been seeing in the newspapers recently?  There was some hubbub in Tory circles yesterday over the fact that two weekend polls – YouGov for the Sunday Times and ComRes for the Indy on Sunday – had Labour either gaining ground on the Tories or a maintaining boosted level of support around the 30 percent mark.  What had happened to the 19 percent lead that the Tories enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of their conference?  Had the Labour conference really been more successful than the Tory one, despite all appearances?  I've heard these, and similar questions, doing the rounds over the past couple of days. I rather suspect that there's some volatility involved in all this.

James Forsyth

Using legal measures to keep Griffin off-air will only benefit their target

Any attempt to use legal measures to keep the BNP off Question Time will only have one winner: the BNP. The more of a fuss that is made about the BNP appearing on Question Time, the better for the BNP—it means that Griffin will get more publicity and if he is clever enough to disguise his vile views when on the programme then he could make some progress. Using the law is particularly foolish as it plays right into the BNP’s narrative that there is an establishment conspiracy to prevent any debate about immigration. The BBC, the political parties and the media have handled the BNP’s appearance on Question Time appallingly. The actions of all three groups have combined to create huge amounts of pre-publicity for this edition of Question Time.

Peter Hoskin

A few honest men

Right, wrong, or somewhere in between?  I imagine that a few people who were fervently behind the Legg letters started having second thoughts when Frank Field announced his opposition to them over weekend.  After all, it's one thing when the usual, venal suspects start whining, but quite another when Field – one of the decent men* of Westminster – starts to murmur.  If you haven't read his blog post on the subject, then I'd suggest you do so here.   And it's also worth reading through Bruce Anderson's related article in the Independent today.

Peter Hoskin

Sheerman on the offensive

Just what was in Barry Sheerman's coffee this morning?  So far today, the schools committee chairman has used a couple of media appearances to a) call Ed Balls a "bully", and b) criticise all three party leaders – including Brown – for their "cowardly party leadership" over the Legg review.  Punchy stuff, which makes you wonder whether he'll be the de facto "Get Gordon Out" candidate for PLP chairman, after all.

David Blackburn

5 Labour ‘refusenik’ MPs threaten to resign over Legg letters

Paul Waugh reports that 5 ‘refusenik’ Labour MPs are threatening to trigger by-elections over Brown’s reluctance to curb Sir Thomas Legg’s retrospective cap. Clearly, Brown is in an invidious position – it is conceivable that Labour will lose these by-elections in any event, but Brown would be committing very protracted and very painful electoral suicide if he demanded that Sir Thomas retract his demands. Brown is indecisive when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing in his favour, so God knows what agonies the Hamlet of Kirkcaldy is wrestling with at the moment, and I suspect most of us would have died of old age if the refuseniks were not going to make the decision for him.

David Blackburn

Lost in the post | 19 October 2009

It is much to my regret, but I do not know the postman’s name. In fact, I have never met him or her because the post is delivered after I have left for work. I suspect that a large majority of people are in the same boat. That so few of us have any contact with our postman undoes Jackie Ashley’s ‘Support your local postie’ argument in today’s Guardian. She writes: ‘After the shock of the credit crunch, I thought we were pulling back from the age of neoliberal market worship and rethinking the value of reassuring institutions. With the disappearance of the milkman, the postie has a vital role in the community.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Welcome to London

Visitors to London are now given an extra special welcome when they arrive at our stations, thanks to the Metropolitan Police’s latest advert (pictured). It is advising commuters that, if they hide a gun for someone else, they will go to prison too. That’s told ‘em.   But when I walked past, I did wonder what effect this has on our capital’s image. Sure, the homicide rate is now statistically worse in Lambeth, where there have been 12 homicides so far this year, than it is in the Bronx's notorious 52nd precinct, where there have been 6. And gun crime continues to rise sharply in the capital.

Fraser Nelson

Current Tory health plans are backward-looking and reactionary

I have long been depressed about Tory health policy, or lack thereof. The News of the World today does a head-to-head about whether Andy Burnham or Andrew Lansley would be better to run the NHS – and I give my verdict.  The answer, I say, is neither of them. The patient should become the consumer, as is the case in the healthcare system of every developed country. But this would require taking on the NHS establishment, which no party is committed to doing. Or, rather, Alan Milburn was committed to – and had actually started to enact. But that reform agenda came under attack from the Brownites and Andrew Lansley. The Tory health policy, as it stands, defies understanding.

David Blackburn

Scotland the Brave

Everyone knows that Martin Luther King had a dream. It featured eloquent, high-minded ambitions about little white girls and little black girls playing together in harmony. Alex Salmond has dreams too. In an utterance that should have resulted in immediate committal, he compared Kenny MacAskill to Mahatma Gandhi, and then, with the rhetorical panache of a Scottish Judge Jeffries, told the SNP conference that he wanted to see “Westminster dangling from a Scottish rope”. As visions of the future go, capital punishment is not as appealing as Dr Luther King’s evocation of Christian brotherhood; but, in the event of a hung parliament, Salmond’s dream might be realised.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The end of a convenient fiction

No one really thought that Vaclav Klaus would hold out against the Lisbon treaty until the British general election, but it was a convenient fiction for the Conservative party. It enabled both the leadeship and Eurosceptics to pretend that the current policy remained operative and that any questions about what would happen if the Lisbon treaty was ratified by the time of the next election were hypotheticals. So, as David notes, to hear Klaus conceding that he can't hold out until the election is a blow. The question now is what happens next. Domestically, I doubt that the party will have a big row about Europe—it is too disciplined, too eager for power for that. In European terms, the question is always put as does Cameron have the stomach for a battle with Brussels.

David Blackburn

Vaclav Klaus caves into the “train carrying Lisbon”

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has developed cult status among Eurosceptics in Britain - a latter day Mons Angel. But it would have been nothing short of miraculous if Klaus had been able to derail the Lisbon Treaty. The Telegraph reports that Klaus can delay signing the treaty no longer. He said:  "The train carrying the treaty is going so fast and it's so far that it can't be stopped or returned, no matter how much some of us would want that. I cannot and will not wait for British elections, unless they hold them in the next few days or weeks." The Czech Courts will rule on compatibility on the 27th October, soon after which the treaty will become law.

Fraser Nelson

The horror story of the BNP’s success is not over

Up to now, MEPs can use Westminster’s facilities; but, yesterday, Nick Brown tabled a deplorable motion in the House of Commons - to ban Nick Griffin from parliament. Just in case there were any doubt, Andrew Dismore spelled it out, saying Brown's motion would "mean that the newly elected British National Party members would not be allowed to get into this place. Most Members are of the view that that should be the case." I bet they are. But why? Whose fault is it that Griffin was elected in the first place? As I argued in the News of the World a while ago: if I had my way, I'd base Griffin in Westminster so MPs would see his smug face walking past them every day.

Peter Hoskin

Brown the Reformer: er, good luck with that

Brace yourselves. According to the Guardian, Brown is about to sell himself as a Great Reformer: "Brown, the cabinet sources say, decided in the past few weeks to adopt a tougher pro-public sector reform stance, in order that his defence of the state in the face of recent attacks on big government by David Cameron does not become confused with complacency about the current performance of the public sector." Despite the sensibleness of the reform argument, I can't imagine that Brown will make much headway with this. For starters, he has that "Roadblock to Reform" label, and Labour's patchy record on public service reform, hovering over him like the proverbial albatross.