James Forsyth

James Forsyth

James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

David Miliband back for a second lunge at the leadership cherry

David Miliband has given a provocative interview to the Evening Standard’s Anne McElvoy. Here’s how he replied when McElvoy asked him if he was up for another tilt at the leadership: “I really won't go there. I rule nothing in and nothing out and it's invidious, where we are now, to talk about it.” He's talking fast at this point: almost breathlessly. So he's not counting himself out? “I said what I meant.” This intervention is going to have a lot less impact than his infamous Guardian article did last year. The number of those who see Miliband as the next Labour leader has shrunk dramatically since then. Those who favour a change this side of the election view Alan Johnson as their best candidate.

James Forsyth

Tory backbenchers in deep water

The Tories have had a bad night. First a poll put them below the 40 percent mark and now the Telegraph’s revelations have caused serious embarrassment to the party without providing David Cameron with a case where he can expel an MP from the party without suffering the call to remove several others on the same grounds. Here’s the beef from the Telegraph’s story: “Douglas Hogg, the former agriculture secretary, submitted a claim form including more than £2,000 for the moat around his country estate to be cleared. The taxpayer also helped meet the cost of a full-time housekeeper, including her car. The public finances also helped pay for work to Mr Hogg’s stables and for his piano to be tuned.

Monday

James Forsyth

Polly Toynbee: Brown has failed totally and utterly, Labour must turn to Johnson

Polly Toynbee, once a great Brown cheerleader, pulls no punches in her column calling for Labour to get rid of the Prime Minister. Here’s the nub of her argument: “It's all over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits. As long as he remains leader, there is nothing that wretched Labour candidates can plausibly say on the doorstep at next month's European elections. They are struck dumb. Why should people vote for them? The horse manure bought on expenses is garnish for a decomposing government. The heart of the matter is the economy, and Brown's responsibility for the bubble years.

James Forsyth

Things I wouldn’t have expected: Poll says public more interested in Gurkhas than expenses

I would never have predicted this but a Politics Home poll says the public is more interested in the Gurkhas than the expenses issue: “Joanna Lumley’s meeting with Gordon Brown to discuss a Gurkha settlement and her heated public exchange with immigration minister Phil Woolas was the story that the public were most interested in last week. It surpassed the row over MP expenses, which continued to hit headlines after The Daily Telegraph published expenses claims of senior government ministers. That’s the result of the latest PoliticsHome Impact Tracker which assesses which news stories have most got through to the public every week. ...

James Forsyth

Why Brown apologised now

The question of the timing of Brown’s apology is one of those rare moments when I find myself disagreeing with Pete. The obvious political thing to do would have been for Brown to say sorry on Thursday night, framing the way that the rest of the media would follow up on the Telegraph’s mega-scoop. But Brown central thought the PM had been treated unfairly by the Telegraph and weren’t going to apologise because that could have been taken to imply that his own cleaning arrangements were something he should say sorry for. Now after the Sunday Telegraph’s leader yesterday and his sister-in-law’s piece in The Guardian today, Brown clearly feels he can apologise without being seen to admit any wrongdoing on his part.

James Forsyth

The Tory verdict on whose claims are defensible and whose aren’t

Paul Waugh reports that Michael Gove and Andrew Lansley will be doing interviews with the BBC about their expenses later on. This suggests a confidence on their part and that of Andy Coulson that their cases are explicable. Both seem to have genuinely changed which one was their first home for real life reasons rather than for financial ones; they're not flippers in the perojative sense of the term. Word is that Willetts, the man who can’t screw in a lightbulb, will also do the rounds. Alan Duncan has already done an appearance although sadly we didn’t get to see what one assumes must be his beautifully maintained garden. (One wag has suggested to me that Duncan should open it up to the public ,charging a couple of quid a time and repay the public purse that way).

James Forsyth

What’s next on expenses?

Here is a quick take on some of the questions being discussed in Westminster right now: Are the Telegraph done when it comes to Labour and Tory frontbenchers? The Tories seem confident that there is no more to come out about their top team. The situation on the Labour side is less clear. How will the Lib Dems come out of this? One Tory MP I spoke to on Saturday viewed the Lib Dems as key to how much damage these revelations would inflict on the two main parties. If the Lib Dems can play the clean card, then they could cause real problems for all incumbents who have been implicated. Who will be the fall guys? On the Labour side, Hazel Blears is clearly—and for obvious reasons—being set up as the sacrificial lamb.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Tories tainted by expenses revelations

There is a danger with these expenses stories that we get inured to them, that nothing shocks us any more. For this reason the shadow Cabinet is benefiting from being featured fourth not first in the Telegraph’s series. The revelations are bad. The actions of Francis Maude and Chris Grayling strike me as most serious. If there are going to be no sackings from the shadow Cabinet over this, and word is that there won’t be, the Tories should at least rethink Grayling’s role as their attack dog, they need someone who is purer than pure for that role. Alan Duncan’s gardening claims were clearly excessive, as even the Fees Office pointed out, and show a shamefully cavalier attitude to spending the public’s money.

James Forsyth

Gove didn’t flip, he moved

I know defending MPs is a hard sell right now, but Michael Gove seems to be getting an unfair rap in the coverage. He is under fire for having flipped his second home designation but he did so because he moved homes. In other words, the property that was his second home genuinely changed. Gove discussed this in an interview with Fraser (he’ll have more on this soon) how he initially tried to live in his constituency full time and then found that simply was not possible with his work and family commitments so moved back to London. He has not sold any properties he brought with taxpayer-supported loans or anything like that so this strikes me as quite different from most of the other cases of flipping.

James Forsyth

The Telegraph on the Tories

The Telegraph has posted a preview of its coverage of the shadow cabinet’s claims, which will feature in tomorrow’s paper. Here are the key points: "Tomorrow the Telegraph will disclose instances where Conservative MPs have gone to great lengths to ensure their country properties are maintained at taxpayers’ cost. One shadow minister has had piping repaired that stretches under his tennis court. Another leading front bench Tory has claimed thousands of pounds for the upkeep of his garden. A senior member of the shadow cabinet claimed for 25 light bulbs to be replaced in his second home in West London. Another has used his designated second home allowance to upgrade a property just prior to selling it.

James Forsyth

Another blow to the Budget’s credibility

The expenses scandal is becoming more depressing all the time. There are no apologies forthcoming and too many politicians want to circle the wagons against any kind of scrutiny. As Jonathan Isaby notes, Theresa May is refusing to say any MP has behaved immorally and is instead “blaming the culture that has grown up in Parliament.” This is a quite shocking denial of the moral agency of the individual, the worst kind of crime is all society’s fault claptrap. As for James Gray, words fail me.     There are, though, other stories developing that are worth keeping an eye on.

James Forsyth

Labour spent £1.2 million on the election that never was

Unsurprisingly, expenses stories dominate the Sunday papers. But an interview with Peter Watt, the Labour Secretary General during the Blair-Brown handover who had to resign over the Abrahams affair, caught my eye. Watt's main point is that he was left hanging in the wind by Brown but his comment about the election that never was strikes me as important: “No matter what anyone says, the election had been called and was then cancelled. We had been working on it for weeks. We spent £1.2m in immediate preparations” Brown’s bottling of that election and his inability to concede and move on from that proved that Brown couldn’t change, that he couldn’t grow into being Prime Minister.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Poll: 68 percent think less of Brown because of expenses scandal

Anthony Wells has news of a snap ICM poll for the News of the World on expenses. It does seem that Gordon Brown has been hurt by Friday’s headlines as much as we thought he would be; 68 percent say their opinion of him has been damaged. (I’m not sure if the poll contains this information but it would be fascinating to see the party ID breakdown on this). The general standing of MPs has taken an even worse beating that Brown, 89 percent now think less of them. There is more than 90 percent support for publishing expenses in full and for having an independent body run the system. Only 29 percent think MPs should be able to claim for a second home. One finding in the survey surprised me: one in five people think that MPs should be able to claim for food.

James Forsyth

The DNA debate

Do read Alasdair Palmer’s provocative and tightly argued case for a DNA database. The nub of his argument is that there’s no the difference between the state having a photo of your face courtesy of your passport and one of your DNA.  He writes: “Most people react to the state's photo database with a shrug: they have my photo? Big deal. And yet many of the same people also feel profoundly threatened by the Government's DNA database, asserting that it really is an assault on privacy, liberty and the presumption of innocence. This is deeply puzzling. A record of your DNA is simply the equivalent of a photo of the inside of one of your cells. Why get worried about that – but not about a picture of your face?

James Forsyth

Alastair Campbell: Brown should have taken Cameron up on his offer of talks over expenses

Interesting post from Alastair Campbell on this scandal: “A few weeks ago, when the expenses row was simmering not boiling, David Cameron suggested to Gordon Brown that he and Nick Clegg (the leader of the Liberal Democrats) get together and try to work out a new system. Of course there may have been politics in there. He is the Leader of the Opposition after all. But in hindsight, it might have been a good move.” Brown has got the politics of this whole issue horribly wrong. He waited way too long to address it then did so in a way that was bound to alienate the opposition parties and his own backbenchers.

James Forsyth

The Iran problem hasn’t gone away

It has been pushed down the news agenda by the economic crisis and by the focus on ‘AfPak’ but I still think Iran is going to be the biggest test of Obama’s presidential leadership. There are no good options when it comes to how to deal with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. But letting Iran go nuclear would have even worse consequences than the mooted alternatives. What is crucial is that the United States appreciates that the clock is ticking and that there is the same risk that the intelligence over-estimates how far Iran is from a bomb as there it is that it under-estimates it. Washington should remember just how cleverly Tehran used the time won by its negotiations with the Eu-3 to make progress on its nuclear programme.

James Forsyth

Until all the expenses are out, it will be the only story in town

The Guardian’s superb scoop revealing the Bank of England’s worries about a coming third wave of the financial crisis would normally be big news but in the current circumstances it is gaining little traction. No other political news story is going to have cut through until all the expenses stories are out there. The Westminster rumour-mill is buzzing about who will be the next in the expenses firing line and whether anyone will attempt a pre-emptive defence.

James Forsyth

Now, the Telegraph shines a light on junior Ministers’ claims

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry reading the Telegraph’s latest piece on MPs’ expenses. The paper reports that: “Phil Woolas, the Home Office Minister, claimed for items of women's clothing, tampons and nappies. The parliamentary rules only allow expenses which are "exclusively" for MPs' own use so it is not clear these items were justified.” It should be noted, however, that Woolas denies this. He says that he didn’t claim for these items and that they were just on the same receipts as things he did request reimbursement for.

Friday

James Forsyth

The Demos Party

 You know a Prime Minister’s authority is shot when at an event a Cabinet Minister is speaking at, all the jokes from the platform are at the Prime Minister’s expense. James Purnell smiled wryly as they were cracked, but there was uproarious—not nervous—laughter. There was none of the frisson that would have accompanied such a moment a few months ago. No one now believes Brown is strong enough to respond.  Last night’s Demos party was revealing of the new contours of British politics. From the Labour side, the potential leadership dream ticket of Jon Cruddas and James Purnell were having, what Allegra Stratton aptly calls, a “very public date.

James Forsyth

Telegraph reportedly planning to do the shadow Cabinet on Monday

The word doing the round amongst us hacks is that the Telegraph series on expenses will cover the shadow Cabinet on Monday. This, though, is subject to change. Apparently, the Telegraph's own journalists aren’t even sure what is running when.  There is, apparently, some really bad stuff in there about certain members of the shadow Cabinet. It is also expected that a couple of Tory backbenchers will be named and shamed tomorrow for being among the very worst abusers of the system. I think there is a strong case for Cameron being prepared to take the Whip away from those who have behaved particularly egregiously. But the really big question is what will the Telegraph do on Sunday. Everyone expects their Sunday coverage to be as juicy as today’s.