Uk politics

Monday

James Forsyth

Boris keeps on charming his party

Not since Michael Heseltine has there been a politician who is so adept at finding the g-spot of the Tory faithful as Boris Johnson. His column today in the Telegraph is a classic example of this. There’s some witty and perceptive BBC bashing, mockery of the Lib Dems and their priorities, and a demand that the Tories get what they need out of the coalition. His line ‘If we are really going ahead with Lords reform (why?)’ sums up Tory feelings on the subject far better than more earnest tracts have done. ConservativeHome is certainly impressed, saying that the Mayor of London is ‘real and raw in an age when

Matt Cavanagh

Another voice: How ministers are gaming the net migration target

International students are currently the largest single category of immigrants who count in the net migration figures, which cover all those intending to stay more than a year. In the most recent figures (the year to June 2011) there were 242,000 such students — making up 40 per cent of so-called ‘long term’ immigration. However, as a new report by IPPR sets out, international students are not really ‘long term’ immigrants at all. They are far more likely to return home after a few years than the other main immigration categories of work and family: the evidence suggests only around 15 per cent stay permanently. Clearly, it would be wrong

Sunday

James Forsyth

Cameron looks to his early leadership period for inspiration

David Cameron’s big parenting push this week is a reminder of what the Prime Minister would have liked to have been before the economic crisis intervened. Cameron believes that encouraging stable, loving families is the best way to prevent social failure. Doing that reduces the demand for government and, so the logic goes, shrinking the state then becomes a lot easier.   How the government can try and help people be better parents without falling into the nanny state is undoubtedly tricky. But Cameron’s emphasis so far has, rightly, been on simply giving people more information to help them make their own decisions. Part of this approach is a series

Sebastian Payne

Pickles struggles for an answer on growth

The government is desperate for economic growth but where can it find it? This was the question posed to Eric Pickles on the Sunday Politics today, but sadly he was unable to provide much of an answer. The Communities and Local Government secretary gave a blustering interview, where he reaffirmed William Hague’s view that ‘growth will come from government creating conditions for us to work a little bit harder.’ But when pushed by Andrew Neil on what this (slightly condescending) idea actually means, Pickles jumped on the chance to blame Labour for the ‘something for nothing culture’. Pickles did add that the government’s chosen sources of prosperity are business investment

Peter Hoskin

Hammond speaks out

Generally speaking, Philip Hammond is one of the Cabinet’s quieter members; a sort of human calculator designed to run a department efficiently and with the minimum of fuss. Which is why his interview with the Sunday Times this morning (£) is so eye-catching. There’s very little that’s understated about it at all. ConservativeHome’s Matthew Barrett has already put together a useful summary of the main points, so suffice to say that Hammond is dismissive about both Lords reform… ‘He believes the upper chamber “works rather well” as it is and that voters are “probably largely indifferent” on the subject.’ …and gay marriage: ‘He believes gay marriage is too controversial for

Saturday

Sebastian Payne

Friends in north?

For the Tories to have any hope of winning a majority, they have to face up to reclaiming seats in the North, but can they do so under Cameron? David Skelton from Policy Exchange suggests not in an interview with the Northern Echo today, where he outlines the ‘Cameron problem’: ‘You can’t get away from the fact that the Tory party looks pretty public school, pretty Southern and quite gilded. The fact is that the Tories can’t win an election if they can’t appeal to aspirational working-class voters in the North and the Midlands…If the Tories can’t find a way to get across the fact that voting Tory has become countercultural in

Friday

James Forsyth

Embarrassment for Cameron, trouble for Hunt

Rebekah Brooks’s testimony at Leveson was embarrassing for the Prime Minister — but no worse than that. I suspect that tomorrow’s papers will have much fun with the fact that Cameron used to end his texts to her with the letters ‘LOL’ in the mistaken belief that it meant ‘lots of love’. But, as one friend of the PM’s pointed out to me, No.10 would have definitely settled for that being the headline story this morning. Jeremy Hunt, though, again finds himself in some difficulty thanks to a Fred Michel email which indicates that the Culture Secretary was seeking News Corps’ guidance on how to deal with hacking. As with

Jonathan Jones

The coalition: two years in

As the coalition celebrates its second birthday, it seems as good a time as any to take a look at how it’s doing in the eyes of the public. First, here’s how the government’s approval rating — as measured by YouGov — has changed since its formation: As you can see, the coalition took office with reasonably good ratings, but the first ten months or so — which included the Comprehensive Spending Review and the tuition fees vote — saw public opinion turn against it. For the rest of 2011, the ratings stayed fairly flat, with the government neither regaining ground with the public nor losing any more — and

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The folly of Cameron’s gay marriage culture war

For some time now, a growing number of Tory MPs have been quietly informing the whips that they will not be voting to support gay marriage. They’ve been getting letters from their constituents, and even those in favour of the idea know that they can’t afford to support it. When a cabinet member spoke to the whips office recently, he was given a startling reply: don’t worry, it will never come to a vote. The consultation is ongoing, but the agenda is being dropped. The effect it’s having on the morale of the Tory grassroots is calamitous. I look at this fiasco in my Daily Telegraph column today, and here

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Gove takes on private school dominance and trade union opposition

The Education Secretary gave a very pugnacious speech this morning on the need to improve the country’s state schools. ‘It is remarkable,’ Michael Gove said at independent school Brighton College, ‘how many of the positions of wealth, influence, celebrity and power in our society are held by individuals who were privately educated’. He cited the various professions — politics, law, medicine — where private schools are ‘handsomely represented’. That’s certainly not a new observation. Gove could have, if he’d wanted to, cited the Sutton Trust’s statistics (below) showing the proportion of judges, Lords and CEOs who come from independent schools. Instead, he chose a more novel — and effective — way

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Coulson easily handles his Leveson test

Andy Coulson’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry was a reminder of why he rose so quickly. He never said more than he had to and never let his ego interfere with his judgment. It is a testament to his skill that we essentially learnt nothing new from his evidence this afternoon. But it should be remembered that Coulson wasn’t on that bad a wicket today. The Leveson Inquiry isn’t going to overlap with the criminal investigations going on and so there wasn’t much time spent on hacking or on payments to the police. Instead, the questions focused on his relations with politicians and Cameron and Osborne in particular. Helped by

Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Let’s talk about this

What a strange place Britain has become. You sometimes need some time away to realise quite how strange. Take yesterday’s main story: the latest paedophile rape-gang case from the north of England. The judge in the trial told the men, during sentencing, that they had selected their victims ‘because they were not part of your community or religion’. But that is the sort of fact which causes the most terrible contortions in modern Britain. The perpetrators were all Muslim men of Pakistani origin and the victims all underage, white girls. We know exactly how we should think, how loud would be our proclamations and our desire to analyse the ‘root-causes’

Sebastian Payne

The View from 22: Will the riots return?

We haven’t done enough to prevent the riots of last summer happening again, says Simon Marcus in this week’s cover feature. And in the latest episode of our The View From 22 podcast he expands on this, discussing his personal experiences with the Boxing Academy in Tottenham and Hackney: ‘What enabled us to engage in strong debate during the whole process was what I saw on the front line at the Boxing Academy for many years. But what I was being asked, in many ways, to accept was wrong. When you’re being told that your eyes and ears have deceived you for five years, that’s something I can’t accept.’ James

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why the Tories are shaping up for an EU referendum

An EU referendum pledge in the next Tory manifesto is ‘basically, a certainty’ according to one of those most closely involved in the party’s electoral strategy for 2015. The current plan is for the manifesto to declare that a Conservative government would renegotiate Britain’s membership of the European Union and then put the new terms to the people in a referendum within 18 months of the general election. I understand that the Tory line would be that they would urge staying in the EU if Britain’s concerns could be met through this process. But if the rest of the European Union refused to play ball, they would be prepared to

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Jokes and jibes follow the ‘gracious speech’

The Queen’s Speech debate is a unique mix of parliamentary variety show and proper politics. The debate was opened by Nadhim Zahawi — who combined humour with some serious points to good effect — and Malcolm Bruce, who gave a rather worthy speech. Ed Miliband then kicked off the more political part of proceedings. Miliband, who no longer has a kick-me sign attached to him when he gets up to the despatch box, is clearly still exulting in the local election results. He scored the best hit of the debate when he complimented Zahawi on his speech. Noting that the Tory MP was the co-founder of YouGov, Miliband joked ‘I’ve

James Forsyth James Forsyth

First blood to the sceptics on Lords reform

The Queen’s Speech commitment that ‘A Bill will be brought forward to reform the composition of the House of Lords’ is a lot vaguer than theLiberal Democrats were hoping for, or expected just a month or two ago. Crucially, there is no mention of the second chamber being elected. If this was not enough, the bill’s place in the speech — it was the 16th piece of legislation mentioned — sent out the signal that it is not a government priority. It appears that the Tory sceptics of Lords reform have won the opening battle. This impression is bolstered by the fact that leading Tory opponents of Lords reform are content

Peter Hoskin

The Queen’s Speech: full text | 9 May 2012

My Government’s legislative programme will focus on economic growth, justice and constitutional reform.   My Ministers’ first priority will be to reduce the deficit and restore economic stability. Legislation will be introduced to reduce burdens on business by repealing unnecessary legislation and to limit state inspection of businesses. My Government will introduce legislation to reform competition law to promote enterprise and fair markets. My Government will introduce legislation to establish a Green Investment Bank. Measures will be brought forward to further strengthen regulation of the financial services sector and implement the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Banking. My Government will introduce legislation to establish an independent adjudicator to ensure

Peter Hoskin

Cameron tries to reassure his backbenchers ahead of the Queen’s Speech

The newspapers are awash with articles previewing today’s Queen’s Speech, but few stand out as much as James Chapman’s interview with David Cameron in the Daily Mail. Here, Cameron does something that he rarely does: complain about life with the Lib Dems. There was that one time when he claimed the Tories would be ‘making further steps’ on welfare and immigration were they in a majority government, of course — but this goes further than that. He tells the paper, ‘There is a growing list of things that I want to do but can’t.’ As for the specific items on that list, Cameron mentions ECHR reform, employment regulation and the

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Today’s theatrics will soon be overshadowed by Leveson

Today’s Cameron-Clegg event was meant to be very different from the one in the Downing Street garden two years ago: grittier, more real. Watching it, one was struck by the fact that the two leaders still seem comfortable in each other’s company. The dynamics between them are better than those between Blair and Brown two years in. But, thanks to the compromises of coalition, they lack a compelling growth message for the here and now — as opposed to the long term — at the moment. One of their other problems is that coalition makes everyone focus that much more on the political process. The ears of every journalist pricked