James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
In The Times today, Danny Finkelstein eloquently sums up why it would be so wrong for any of the soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday to be prosecuted given all that has happened in the peace process: “To stop the killing, we sacrificed principles that should stand above everything. We sacrificed the rule of law and
As David says, the conclusions of the Saville Inquiry make for grim reading. One person with close links to the services who served in Northern Ireland just told me, ‘it is far worse than we expected.’ In the House, David Cameron’s statement on it was heard in subdued silence. It would be remiss not to
I wish that every time Martin McGuinness offered commentary on the Saville Inquiry, it was pointed out that he admitted to the inquiry that he was the IRA’s second in command in Derry. We should never forget that the IRA has more to apologise and atone for than any other group that played a role
The announcement that Lord Trimble will join the Israeli review into the flotilla incident is a reminder that he has no role in the current government. Trimble takes the Tory whip and given that the party is not overly supplied with Nobel Prize winners, it is a bit of a surprise that no role has
In an article in the Telegraph tomorrow, Ed Balls demands that Labour oppose any increase in the rate of VAT by the Coalition. Balls confirms that he had wanted Labour to rule out raising VAT before the election and claims that doing so would have changed the ‘course of the election.’ Balls is, in effect,
The first Sunday of the World Cup is predictably quiet on the political front. But Simon Hughes’ comments this morning about tuition fees are worth noting. Hughes said “So to me the big task is to make sure the moment that Lord Browne publishes his report in the Autumn the Liberal Democrat case is entered
The news from today’s Labour leadership hustings was Ed Balls saying that he thought the last Labour’s government plan to halve the deficit over the next four years was too ambitious. But the thing that struck me most about today’s event was how the entry of Diane Abbott into the race has changed its dynamic. Her
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics It is a sign of how well things are going with the coalition that the civil servants left the room towards the end of the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday and let the politicians get on with it. The first ‘political Cabinet’ — when its members talk about party
On the table outside Phillip Hammond’s office is a red box with the words ‘Secretary of State for Transport’ embossed in gold. Realising it has caught my eye, Hammond opens it up — it’s empty, as befits a diligent minister. I ask if he follows the ‘Yes Minister rule’ — starting at the bottom to
Now that the World Cup is under way, there’ll be a definite lull in the pace of government announcements. There’s no point in putting a good news story out only for it to end up on page seven behind six pages of World Cup coverage. I suspect though that the BP story will keep rumbling on.
In this new world of Coalition politics, there is a difference between Conservative party policy and government policy. There are things that the Conservatives would like to do but can’t do because they didn’t win a majority. As Tim wrote this morning, this provides an opportunity for the Conservative parliamentary party to fill this gap.
The PMQs attack No 10 was expecting from Labour on the Coalition’s planned spending cuts did not materialise and today’s was another relatively quiet affair. It started with a minute’s silence in memory of those who died in the shootings in Cumbria. Harman asked one question on gun laws before moving on to the electoral
John McDonnell’s decision to pull out of the Labour leadership contest should help Diane Abbott get the number of nominations required. But it is worth pointing out why so many Labour people at Westminster are not thrilled about this prospect despite the fact she would stop the contest from being between four embarrassingly similar figures.
The Scottish and Welsh Nationalists have managed to prompt the first Commons vote where one of the governing parties has to vote against its own manifesto. They have put down an amendment calling for Trident to be included in the SDR, which will be voted on at 10pm tonight. The Lib Dem manifesto commits the
There’s been a lot said about Ed Balls’ Observer piece on immigration. But the most striking thing about it to my mind is that it shows that Balls has made the transition to an opposition mindset. Take his proposal that ‘Europe’s leaders need to revisit the Free Movement Directive’. This is classic opposition politics;
David Cameron’s speech today was about preparing people for the cuts to come, persuading them that Labour’s mismanagement of the public finances had made this ‘unavoidable’ and reassuring them that he had no ideological desire to make cuts and so would do them in the most sensitive way possible. Cameron managed to pull this off
The most significant political news today is that David Cameron won’t play an active role in the save first past the post campaign. When Cameron told Conservative MPs that he was going to offer the Lib Dems a referendum on AV in exchange for them going into coalition with him, he told them he would
George Osborne’s Asia trip has now been rounded off with a meeting of the G20 finance ministers in South Korea and he is now heading back to Britain and his Budget preparations. The trip must be marked up as a success for Osborne. In its communiqué, the meeting implicitly endorsed Osborne’s two major moves since
Ed Balls makes an interesting definitional point in his interview with The Times. He says that to him “new Labour was 1994 to 1997, us translating from being a party of opposition to a party of government, understanding that our radicalism had to be based on credible foundations, that no one would trust you on
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics Straight after David Cameron had announced his final offer to the Liberal Democrats — a referendum on Westminster’s voting system in exchange for entering into coalition — I bumped into a member of the Tory Cabinet. I asked him if he thought that the offer was unnecessary seeing