Uk politics

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

Labour aren’t capitalising on the government’s woes

Ipsos MORI’s latest monthly political monitor is just out, and it doesn’t bring much good news for either the government or the opposition. 63 per cent of respondents are dissatisfied with the government and 54 dissatisfied with David Cameron — both the highest proportions since the election. On the public’s number one issue — the economy — just 36 per cent say the government’s done a good job. And even wose, a whopping 77 per cent say they’ve done a bad job of keeping unemployment down — hardly surprising considering unemployment has risen by 100,000 since the election. But while all this presents a great opportunity for Labour, other numbers show how

Peter Hoskin

The government’s European tribulations continue

It has been a fraught and ill-tempered week in Westminster. And — whether it is the rumour that Tory backbencher Andrea Leadsom told George Osborne to “f**k off”, or David Cameron’s dismissal of Ed Miliband as a “complete mug” — most of it has had Europe at its root.  So it is, too, with the latest news of government strife. Iain Duncan Smith, it’s reported, had a ferocious row with the Tory chief whip, Patrick McLoughlin, over the EU referendum . Apparently, he warned that, “If you ever put me in this position again, that’s it”. As it happens, there is more on IDS’s disgruntlement in Charles Moore’s column for

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Ellwood returns as PPS to the Minister for Europe

Tobias Ellwood has been appointed as PPS to the Europe Minister David Lidington. The vacancy had been created when Adam Holloway decided to resign from the job so that he could vote for the EU referendum motion. This appointment is a nifty piece of party management. Ellwood was Liam Fox’s PPS but when Fox resigned, the new Defence Secretary Philip Hammond decided, to the resentment of some Tory backbenchers, not to keep him on. Instead, Hammond chose to appoint Clare Perry, a member of the 2010 intake who had worked for George Osborne and Hammond in opposition. Some Tory MPs, and particularly those who felt passed over, saw this as evidence that

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Miliband fails to connect

Easy-peasy at PMQs today. All Ed Miliband had to do was slice open the Coalition’s wounds on Europe and dibble his claws in the spouts of blood. But his attack had no sense of bite or surprise. And his phraseology was lumpen. He used all six questions gently stroking the issue of Europe rather than driving a nail through it.  He asked about growth. He asked about the ’22 committee. He asked about Nick Clegg’s “smash-and-grab” phrase to describe the repatriation of powers. He asked about the social chapter. He asked about everything he could think of, and it was clear he couldn’t think of the right thing to ask.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron battles it out

David Cameron came out swinging today at PMQs. Knowing that Ed Miliband would try and exploit the Tory rebellion over Europe on Monday night, Cameron went for the Labour leader. He called him a “complete mug” and mocked him as being detached from reality. At the end of the exchange, Osborne gripped Cameron’s shoulder in congratulation – a sign that the pair knew that they needed a strong performance today to calm their backbenches. The other notable aspect of PMQs was its emphasis on the new political battleground: women. The Labour MP Gloria Del Piero asked the PM why the government was more unpopular with women than men, which gave

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Testing the Coalition’s commitment to growth

The Beecroft report is an early test of the government’s willingness to put growth and jobs first. Replacing unfair dismissal with redundancy pay based on length on service would be a sensible step. The argument for it is two-fold. First, the more difficult it is to fire people, the more reluctant firms will be to hire people. Second, the current unfair dismissal culture not only makes firms reluctant to take people on but also swallows up a huge amount of time as firms try to jump through the legal hoops to avoid the threat of a legal challenge. Norman Lamb’s comments today that “to throw away employment protection for everyone

Peter Hoskin

Cable’s latest embarrassment

“None of this will stop me talking out against tax avoidance.” So says Vince Cable, rather hilariously, in response to being fined £500 for failing to pay £25,000 of VAT on his media work. You’ve got to hand it to the Business Secretary: it is an ingenious, if convoluted, way to top up the public finances. Although there are questions about whether other people would have got off quite so lightly.    You might say, as Vince’s people are this morning, that this is the sort of mistake that can befall anyone — particularly someone so busy as a Cabinet minister. But this isn’t just anyone. This is Vince Cable,

Tuesday

Jonathan Jones

Has the EU debacle hurt Cameron?

Leaving aside Cameron’s relationship with his own backbenchers for now, how has yesterday’s vote affected the public’s view of him? The first proper hint comes from today’s YouGov poll (conducted on Sunday and yesterday), which asks respondents to rate the qualities of each of the party leaders. Among the public as a whole, there is no significant change in views of the Prime Minister since last month. But there is a change in what Conservatives think of him, and not in the direction Cameron would like. Now just 40 per cent of Tory voters think Cameron is honest, down from 53 per cent last a month ago. And a mere

Sam Gyimah-Mp

Why this is not the time for an EU referendum

Having spent five hours in the debate last night, one thing was absolutely clear: we are all Eurosceptics now. So why did I choose to vote against the motion? It is because I believe that anger and frustration alone will not resolve our justifiable grievances towards the EU; we need a clear-eyed strategy to move forward.    We can all agree that Europe in its current form is not working for us. We have passed powers to Brussels at the cost of undermining the sovereignty of Parliament. Regulations that hinder our growth have not only been adopted but gold-plated, and with the Lisbon Treaty we are saddled with a constitution

Ruth Porter

We need better schools, not more spending

More money, better services? You might have thought that Gordon Brown had already tested that theory to destruction, but here it is again in the coverage of today’s Institute for Fiscal Studies report on education and schools spending. The IFS highlights that education is facing the biggest cuts over a four year period since the 1950s. And the coalition’s opponents are gleefully seizing on this as a problem in and of itself. But it isn’t, really. As CoffeeHousers will know, education funding increased massively during the past decade. The IFS admit this themselves: “Over the decade between 1999–2000 and 2009–10, it grew by 5.1% per year in real terms, the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron needs a new management style

There seem to be three schools of thought among those close to the leadership about last night’s rebellion. One even now maintains that the issue was handled as well as it could have been and blames the rebels for all the trouble. These people don’t seem to realise that what they are saying is effectively that the Conservative parliamentary party is unmanageable. The second group says that the issue of Europe sends the Conservative party loopy. But they also concede that Number 10 got caught up in the madness too. The third lot are the ones who have grasped the significance of last night’s events. Despite being loyalists, they are

Peter Hoskin

The coalition bares its tensions over Europe

Here’s an irony: last night’s EU fandango was the fifth largest vote in favour of the government this year. And yet there is little about the situation that is favourable to the government this morning, as the story moves on from Tory splits to coalition ones.  It started with Michael Gove’s appearance on the Today Programme earlier. The Secretary of State for Education put in a much more conciliatory performance than William Hague managed yesterday; praising the “cordiality” of the Tory rebels, and reassuring them that the Tory leadership would like to see specific powers returned from Europe “in this Parliament”. As he put it: “We need to win more

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

When will MPs wake up to Shale?

It’s just baffling. The House of Commons committee on energy has today published a report entitled “UK Energy Supply: Security or Independence?” with hardly a mention of the 200 trillion cubic feet of Shale gas recently found outside Blackpool. As Matt Ridley wrote recently in his definitive Spectator piece, these reserves – if exploited – are “enough to keep the entire British economy going for many decades. And it’s just the first field to have been drilled.” It may well be that just a fifth of this are exploitable, but there is no mention of this potentially game-changing discovery in the committee’s report today. Instead, we are told that “is

Monday

James Forsyth

43 percent of Tory backbenchers vote for an EU referendum in defiance of David Cameron

The scale of tonight’s rebellion is quite remarkable, 43 percent of Tory backbenchers have defied a three line whip—and we are only 18 months into the parliament. Indeed, if you factor in the abstentions more than half of Tory backbenchers rebelled. This should be a wake-up call to David Cameron. He needs to develop a proper policy for repatriating powers from Brussels, change his style of party management, and reform the Whips office.  This rebellion will encourage the hard-line Euro-sceptics to try again and again. They will reckon, rightly, that as the parliament goes on the number of potential rebels will grow. If they can get this number of rebels

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Europe Minister’s PPS quits over referendum vote

Adam Holloway, PPS to the Europe Minister David Lidington, has just effectively quit his job by giving a speech setting out his intention to vote for the motion. That the Europe Minister’s PPS is walking over this issue is an embarrassment for the government and a sign of how strongly opinion on this issue is running. The most striking thing about William Hague’s speech was the near silence in which it was listened to on the Tory benches. When Hague mocked the motion, he didn’t draw laughs from even the most sycophantic backbenchers. Whatever happens tonight, this debate has widened divisions on the Tory side. There is a real danger

John Rentoul

Another voice: Why Cameron had no choice but to fight

Fraser performed a valuable service to the MPs currently debating a motion proposing a referendum on membership of the European Union by imagining what he thought David Cameron ought to have said: “Sure, guys, have your vote. It’s a backbench motion, so the government won’t take part and as you know I’ve booked a trip abroad next Thursday anyway so I won’t be here. But I was serious when I said those petitions are a way to ‘rebuild trust in politics’. If this reached the threshold I set — 100,000 votes — then I’m happy for this to be debated, with a free vote. If you ask me, it’s an

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s warm up act

David Cameron’s statement on the European Council served as the warm up act for this afternoon’s debate on the EU referendum motion. Cameron attempted to show his backbenchers that he is serious about bringing back powers from Brussels. He stressed that he had already prevented the transfer of further authority to the European Union without a referendum and that he “remained committed” to repatriating powers. In an attempt to flash a bit of leg to his own side, he said that when the debate about treaty change starts “every country can wield a veto until its needs are met.” But Cameron remained vague about what powers he would like to

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Are Brits more likely to riot?

One of the reasons I wanted an inquiry into the riots was to try to avoid headlines like today’s. Information will out — what matters is how it’s presented. The Daily Mail’s front page today (followed up by its rivals) says that those imprisoned for the riots hail from 44 different countries. The most striking line comes from the story: “Prison statistics revealed that 14 per cent — about one in seven — of those jailed for burglary, robbery, theft, criminal damage and disorder during the riots were born abroad.” So, 14 per cent of the imprisoned rioters were foreign-born. But given that 34 per cent of Londoners were born

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Whipping up a storm | 24 October 2011

It looks like about a third of Tory backbenchers will rebel in tonight’s vote on an EU referendum. 18 months into government, this is a massive rebellion and one that should make the Prime Minister think again about his style of party management. Those in Number 10 who claim that many of the rebels will ‘never be happy’ are missing the point that, while there may be a hardcore of MPs keen to rebel, many more are reluctant rebels who feel they have been pushed into it by Cameron’s failure to engage with the party on the whole issue of Europe. One reluctant rebel said to me over the weekend: