Uk politics

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Breaking: Parliament will be recalled for a vote on Syria

David Cameron has just confirmed that Parliament will be recalled on Thursday for MPs to vote on a government motion regarding the response to the chemical attacks in Syria. In reality, it would have been very difficult for the government to do anything else. But the question now is whether the statement that is offered to MPs is enough firstly to convince wavering coalition MPs of the case for intervention (and the case for the specific intervention chosen) and secondly to convince the Labour party not to whip its MPs against the vote: something Douglas Alexander this morning warned could happen. listen to ‘Douglas Alexander on intervention in Syria’ on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Graeme Wilson of The Sun to be new Downing Street press secretary

The Cameron operation’s effort to move onto an election footing continues with a set of new appointments to the Number 10 political operation. Gabby Bertin, who has been with Cameron since he became Tory leader, will return from maternity leave to become director of external relations. Bertin, who was previously Cameron’s political spokeswoman, will be responsible for forging – and maintaining Downing Street’s – relations with business, pressure groups and charities. The appointment of one of his most trusted aides to this role is a sign of how imperative Cameron believes it is to prevent Labour from securing business support at the next election. Bertin’s return will be greeted with

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How will Cameron consult Parliament on Syria?

It would be a surprise if, when the Prime Minister and colleagues make their decision on consulting Parliament on intervening in Syria, they don’t settle for some form of debate. An early day motion by Graham Allen demanding a recall of Parliament has swiftly accrued signatures from MPs of all parties, including Douglas Carswell, Stewart Jackson, David Davies, Graham Stuart, Philip Davies, Martin Vickers, James Gray, and Adam Holloway. But the question is how Parliament will be consulted. A vote on action would still be dangerous. A statement from the Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary followed by a debate would satisfy the calls from MPs like Andrew Bridgen to hear

Monday

Isabel Hardman

William Hague: We can act without UN security council unity

William Hague is keeping his options open on Syria: not just on what the response will be to last week’s chemical weapons attack, but on whether (and how) Parliament will be consulted on any intervention. What is clear is that there will be some form of response, regardless of whether the United Nations Security Council unites over what that response is. Hague said: ‘So, is it possible to act on chemical weapons, is it possible to respond to chemical weapons without complete unity on the UN Security Council? I would argue, yes it is. Otherwise, of course, it might be impossible to respond to such outrages, such crimes and I

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Pressure grows for recall of Parliament on Syria

David Cameron and his colleagues have made fairly carefully-worded pledges on whether or not Parliament should be consulted if the government starts planning for a military intervention in Syria. They could feasibly stick to the precise wording of those pledges this week without recalling MPs for a debate, but this will be a very difficult position to maintain as pressure is growing on all sides for a recall. Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander said this evening: ‘If, in reality, the Prime Minister is now considering military options involving UK personnel then of course I would expect him to seek a recall of Parliament and to come to the House

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron and Obama warn Assad of ‘serious response’

David Cameron spoke to Barack Obama yesterday about the situation in Syria. A Number 10 spokesman gave the following read-out of the call: ‘They are both gravely concerned by the attack that took place in Damascus on Wednesday and the increasing signs that this was a significant chemical weapons attack carried out by the Syrian regime against its own people. The UN Security Council has called for immediate access for UN investigators on the ground in Damascus. The fact that President Assad has failed to co-operate with the UN suggests that the regime has something to hide. ‘They reiterated that significant use of chemical weapons would merit a serious response

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls: ‘There is no blank cheque for HS2’

Labour could use HS2 as an opportunity to show voters that it is fiscally responsible by announcing that as the project’s costs have spiralled out of control, it cannot back it. So runs the argument in favour of Ed Miliband dropping his party’s support for the project. The party’s transport shadow Maria Eagle has insisted today that high-speed rail remains a manifesto commitment for Labour, but Ed Balls has appeared on BBC News to drop what many are reading as some fairly heavy hints that his own support isn’t quite so rock-solid. listen to ‘Ed Balls on the growing economy and HS2’ on Audioboo

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

It’s time to end slavery in Britain – again

Today is the United Nations day for he Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition – and the school packs have been readied to tell pupils about Britain’s part in this great evil. But the way we tend to remember (and, occasionally, apologise for) slavery has two main problems.  Yes, British traders played a full and shameful part in the slave trade. But what marks Britain out is out objection to it. As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years – yet nowhere in the world was slavery controversial until the 1780s when some Brits started kicking up a fuss about it. White

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Now is the perfect time for George Osborne to stop wasting money on HS2

It’s not just Ed Miliband who’s facing pressure over HS2. George Osborne’s famous political antennae must be twitching furiously by now  — does he really want to be the last man in England backing this? Alistair Darling’s case (£) reeks of cold logic: he has become the latest public figure to withdraw support for HS2 because the costs now outweigh the benefits. The facts changed; he changed his mind. This is what rational people do. Unless you’re ideologically wedded to the idea of HS2, then there’s now not much grounds for supporting it – as a glance at the latest the Institute for Economic Affairs report attests. Ross Clark writes

Ed West Ed West

For the middle classes, things can only get worse

In this week’s magazine Fraser Nelson and I look at the breaking of the English middle class, a subject so scary you’ll want to hold someone’s hand when reading it. The frightening thing is that in Britain, as in the United States, the middle class is not just squeezed but shrinking and sinking. Even before the Great Recession began, middle-class jobs in the law, media and accounting have been melting away, outsourced, unprofitable or obsolete, while salaries are falling behind prices. This is not a product of the credit crunch, and it will not be going away. Median hourly income in London is now below 2002 levels, real wages in Britain have

Sebastian Payne

How much would Labour cost you?

Labour has decided that the cost of living is the best way to attack the Tories while it tries to fathom what its own policies are. This is a rich seam to mine, and the party wants to ask voters whether they are really any better off than they were five years ago. But Ed Miliband and his team may be reckoning without the energetic attack dog mood that the Tories are in at the moment. They are keen to fight Labour on this turf, too, rather than giving any ground. So confident are the Conservatives that rather than defend their record, they are also going on the defensive, launching

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The answer to the West Lothian Question is to stop asking it

Here we go again. It’s time for an English parliament! Actually, it’s time for a new Act of Union! Says who? Says Michael Fabricant in today’s Telegraph. Mark Wallace at ConservativeHome agrees.  English votes for English laws!  Well, fine. It’s a respectable, even laudable, view. But, as we shall see, it is not a very conservative view at all. It may be rational but that alone should be make Tories sceptical of its merits. At best the creation of an “English parliament” within Westminster solves one small anomaly at the cost of creating another, much larger, one. In any case, Fabricant has his history wrong. For instance, he writes that: My constituents see their health and education services voted

Alex Massie Alex Massie

George Galloway blames Israel for the use of chemical weapons in Syria

Say this for George Galloway: every time you think he cannot sink any lower he finds new ways to surprise you. His latest contribution to Press TV, Iran’s propaganda station, speaks for itself. Parody is pointless. Given his history and his paymasters, we would expect him to defend the Assad regime in Syria. Even so, under-estimating his ability to sniff out the true villains is never sensible. Here’s his “analysis” of the use of chemical weapons in Syria: “If there’s been any use of nerve gas it’s the rebels that used it. […] If there has been a use of chemical weapons it was al-Qaeda who used chemical weapons. Who

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Advice for Ed Miliband, part 567

There is now so much advice coming in for Ed Miliband that it needs classifying. There’s the Miliband-must-behave-like-this advice from all and sundry: he should talk more about the economy, talk less about the economy, shout a lot about things, talk more about policy, complain more about this and that and so on. The advice is so diverse that Miliband would end up looking like Francis Henshall in One Man, Two Guvnors if he tried to fulfil it all. But there’s a second species of advice, which is on what big policy issue Miliband should back or oppose, partly out of principle and partly to make life very difficult for

Thursday

Ross Clark

As high speed rail is being dropped in California and France, it’s time for Britain to take the hint

In June last year I predicted in these pages that the government would allow High Speed 2 to die a quiet death. Although the government has since reaffirmed its commitment to the proposed railway line, I am sticking to my prediction. Indeed, if the line is ever built I will book a ticket on the first train out of Euston and consume my hat in the dining car. How can I be so sure? Because the projected costs of the project are now so ridiculous that it cannot possibly go ahead. Even before George Osborne, in his spending review in June, added another £8 billion to the estimate cost of

Sebastian Payne

No need to fret Stephen Twigg, Gove is already tackling multiple exam entries

At last, something Michael Gove and Stephen Twigg agree on. Both the Education Secretary and his opposite number agree that efforts need to be made to tackle pupils entering the same exams multiple times, sometimes even through multiple exam boards. There are often legitimate reasons but the practice has become more c used to boost grades. In light of today’s GCSEs results, the shadow Education Secretary has urged Gove to target schools that are gaming the system; to ensure ‘the system is robust, so students only need to take the exam once.’ Good idea, except the Education Secretary has already recognised the issue and taken steps to address it. In

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The silly season that never stops: the weird demands from constituents to their MPs

MPs are currently in hiding in their constituencies from the silly season. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t encountering some rather silly behaviour themselves as they hold surgeries. Constituency surgeries are normally quite doleful affairs, with local people in dire straits turning to their MP for help with an impossible housing situation, a tangled immigration case, or a row with social services. Depending on the sort of MP you are, you either love your constituency casework so much that it’s the main reason you’re in Parliament, or you secretly think it a bit of a bore and long to return from a lengthy discussion about the bad smell from the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How fracking could be sent packing by a poor offer for locals

After the noisy protests over oil drilling in Balcombe, you might be forgiven for thinking that there are just two groups in the fracking debate: the Caroline Lucases, who oppose the technique outright, and then those who think shale gas is the best thing we ever discovered, better even than sliced bread. But there is a third group, which is quieter than the others, yet yields a great deal of power over how impressive this country’s shale gas revolution will really turn out to be. I introduce this group of worried locals, still unconvinced by the incentives currently on offer from the government, in my Telegraph column today. MPs whose

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Is Ed Miliband a) hopeless, b) on course to become Prime Minister or c) both?

I have never quite understood Ed Miliband’s appeal. He always reminds me of Cuthbert Cringeworthy from The Bash Street Kids. I find it hard to imagine him becoming Prime Minister. Something just feels wrong about that. I’m not alone in wondering about this. Brian Wilson, the former energy minister, wrote yesterday that Miliband still has a kind of credibility problem. People just don’t think he’s quite ready for the top job. They may not be able to say exactly why they’re unimpressed by Miliband; they just know they are. Not so fast my friend, responds John McTernan today. Ignore all the chattering and blethering about Labour’s slide in the polls and

Wednesday

Liam Byrne

Welfare failures that are costing us dear

I’m told there’s a joke that does the round in Whitehall, that to err is human, but if you really want to foul things up you need Iain Duncan Smith. I’m afraid a casual glance at DWP’s delivery record explains why. On every single one of DWP’s five big reforms things are going badly wrong. The human cost of this colossal bodge job is impossible to calculate. But the fiscal cost could be as high as £1.4 billion. Let’s start with reform of disability benefits. A vital reform that needs tremendous care. The test itself needs fast and fundamental reform (my speech on the subject is here). But the government’s