James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
The debate in Tory circles about strategy earlier in the year was overly polarised. Some argued that the party should run a purely positive campaign, that going negative at all would just make voters see the Tories as the ‘nasty party’ again. Others thought that all the Tories needed to do to win, was to
The prospect of Ed Balls as Chancellor is politically toxic. James Purnell resigned last summer because he was sounded out about taking the schools’ job that Balls held, which Purnell took as a sign that Brown was planning to make Balls Chancellor. Mandelson saved Brown’s skin that night only by reassuring the rest of the
Bloody civil war lies in store for the Labour party if it loses the election, says James Forsyth. Brown’s henchmen are hoping to keep power, with Ed Balls as the next leader. The Blairite resolve to play nice will be tested The public gallery of the House of Commons was unusually full on Monday afternoon.
Never before has there been an election campaign in Britain with quite so many polls. The differences in the polls, which are quite considerable at the moment, also make it difficult to get a clear picture of what is going on. To further complicate things, the view from the ground seems slightly different from the
At lunchtime, the press headed off to hear the referee’s verdict on the Budget. The Institute for Fiscal Studies is now so respected that its view of the Budget largely determines the news agenda. Its briefings are now so popular that they can no longer be held in their basement. So, journalists, economists and accountants
A YouGov poll tonight has the Tory lead down to two points. The Tories are on 36, Labour 34 and the Lib Dems 17. Before we all get too excited about this narrowing of the Tory lead, we should note that the poll’s fieldwork was nearly all done before people were fully aware of what
This year’s Budget was never going to win the election for Labour but it could have lost it. If the markets had reacted really badly to it, warnings about how Britain is in danger of going Greek would have suddenly gained traction. But Darling avoided that fate with a Budget that did little. Listening to
It is good to see the Tories calling fiscal drag what it is, a tax rise by another name. Fiscal drag is a result of holding income tax thresholds steady while both prices and earnings are increasing. This means that more people have to pay more of their income in tax. Gordon Brown indulging in
This government’s love of quangos reached new heights in today’s Budget when Darling announced the creation of a ‘credit adjudicator service’. This will allow companies who feel they have been unfairly denied credit by their bank to appeal the decision to the credit adjudicator service which will have the legal power to order the bank
David Cameron’s press conference this morning was ticking along rather uneventfully until James Landale asked Cameron a question that set the Tory leader off on one about, what he called, “Labour’s complete and utter lies.” Cameron had started off by talking about how pleased he was that we going to be a father again, letting
The BBC is reporting that the chief whip and the chief executive of the party took the decision after seeing the full Channel 4 programme tonight. There’s also a BBC story tonight about MPs breaching the rule surrounding foreign trips. PS The YouGov tracker tonight has the Tory lead down to four. The Tories are
There was something particularly depressing about Harriet Harman’s statement to the House today on this lobbying scandal. The MPs involved have damned themselves more effectively than anybody else could and so the anger of the Commons lacked bite. Though, it was noticeable that the personal attacks on those involved tended to come from their own
It looks almost certain now that Barack Obama will get a healthcare bill to sign. The House appears set to vote in favour tonight and then the Democrats will only need 51 votes in the Senate to send it to the president’s desk. There are a couple of things that jump out at me about
At Tory conference last year, I asked a senior Tory adviser where the party would deliver substantive change and he replied ‘where we take on the vested interests.’ This analysis is correct. You can’t change things if you aren’t prepared to take on the status quo. So, it is encouraging to hear David Cameron defining
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics Alistair Darling will stand at the Dispatch box on Wednesday and say that there is a plan to halve the Budget deficit in the next four years. His quiet delivery and demeanour of an Edinburgh lawyer will make this sound like a reassuring return to fiscal sanity. It
It is rare that a political party is handed an issue that enables it to rally its base, appeal to swing voters and put the other side on the back foot. But that is how much of a gift to the Tories these strikes are. There has been a bit of an enthusiasm deficit amongst
It is worth pointing out, because it is so different from what was happening a few weeks back, that the Tories are having another good day today. Gordon Brown has been forced to admit at PMQs that he had got his defence statistics wrong when addressing both the Commons and the Chilcot inquiry, the Unite
So, we have a date for the Chancellor’s debate. Channel 4 News will host Darling, Cable and Osborne on Monday the 29th of March at 8pm. I have a suspicion that George Osborne will come out of this debate rather well. He doesn’t have an expectations problem, unlike Cable, and is quick on his
Whisper it quietly, but there is a sense that the Tory campaign is getting back on track. The Tories have had three good days in a row, have Labour on the back foot over Unite and the polls appear to be moving in their favour. Certainly, Tory morale is better than at any point since
David Cameron held, what he called, his ‘first election rally’ this evening. In a trendy venue in Shoreditch—lots of exposed brick and video screens, Cameron—tieless and noteless—debuted his stump speech. It is a speech that strikes the right balance between attacking Labour’s record and promoting the Conservatives’ own policies. The economic message still needs to
