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Friday 21 May 2010
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In the many inquests into the Labour defeat, the one inside Unite will be specially worthwhile, more than £2m worthwile, roughly the amount they soent trying to help Labour in the campaign.
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Lib Dem and Conservative MEPs voted on opposing sides in the European parliament in Strasbourg. Photograph: Vincent Kessler/Reuters
The love affair was great while it lasted. Richard Curtis now has a script for his next upper middle class English rom com and a plaque can be placed in the Downing Street garden to show where Nick and Dave were hitched.
But the Lib-Con coalition is now facing its first tiff. MEPs from the two parties voted on opposing sides in the European parliament this week.
The odd vote in Strasbourg may appear relatively trivial, but this one was pretty important, because it related to the Lisbon treaty – a major source of tension between the Lib Dems and the Tories in recent years.
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Thursday 20 May 2010
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The claim for an ornamental duck house led to a wholescale review of the system for paying MPs' expenses. Photograph: PA
Today may mark a historic moment as David Cameron and Nick Clegg unveil their programme for the first British coalition government since the war.
But most MPs are not poring over the Lib-Con document which is open for consultation on the Cabinet Office website. Instead Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs are seething with anger after their first encounter with the new independent body responsible for handling their expenses and salaries.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) was established last year after a collective loss of confidence at the height of the expenses scandal. In an attempt to end the clubby atmosphere, in which MPs would often bully the Commons Fees Office, an outside body was given statutory powers to approve the payment of expenses.
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Wednesday 19 May 2010
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Theresa May, the new home secretary. Photograph: David Levene
The roar of a dinosaur is unmistakable. Flailing around in an unfamiliar world, the wretched beast lashes out as it struggles to understand how life will no longer be the same.
And so it was this morning on BBC Radio 4's Today programme when the veteran presenter, John Humphrys, showed how the older generation is struggling to come to terms with Britain's new political order.
In an interview with the home secretary, Theresa May, Humphrys expressed astonishment that the Conservatives could be giving ground on manifesto pledges as the price of agreeing a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
He seized on the Tories' agreement that the future of the Human Rights Act, of which they have been highly critical, would be decided by a commission. Continue reading...
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Tuesday 18 May 2010
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George Osborne is sending friendly noises to fellow EU finance ministers. Photograph: Geoff Caddick/AFP/Getty Images
George Osborne, the new chancellor, has decided to abandon a tradition established by Gordon Brown when he held the job.
On the eve of meetings of EU finance ministers, Brown's team would brief a friendly journalist about how the chancellor would lecture the Europeans on their mistaken economic ways. Brown would then turn up briefly in Brussels, mostly ignore the other ministers round the table and read out a script that bore no relation to the hostile press briefing.
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Monday 17 May 2010
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The chief Treasury secretary, David Laws, and the chancellor, George Osborne, sit together during today's press conference. Photograph: Andrew Winning/Reuters
Over the next week cabinet ministers can look forward to meeting David Laws, the super-brainy Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury. If ministers have not done their homework then their discussions will be, as the army saying goes, meetings without coffee.
That is probably an apt analogy. Laws said today that Liam Byrne, his predecessor who famously issued strict orders for coffee, had left him a handwritten note saying Britain had run out of money.
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Wednesday 12 May 2010
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Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretay, (right) looks mightily relieved as the Camerons arrive in Downing Street. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AP
The political world has naturally focused on the images of David and Samantha Cameron arriving in Downing Street and the handshake between the leaders of Britain's first peacetime coalition since the 1930s.
But it's worth taking a moment to consider three people who are mightily relieved by the coalition agreement but who will be overlooked in the excitement:
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Tuesday 11 May 2010
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David Cameron and George Osborne believe the Tory leader must be installed in No 10 to shore up his authority. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
Amid all the excitement at Westminster, one question has been rather overlooked. Why has David Cameron thrown everything at Nick Clegg to seal a deal with the Liberal Democrats?
The Tory leader regards the Lib Dems as something of a political joke on the grounds that they say one thing in one part of the country and something completely different elsewhere. And yet he has invited them to join the cabinet.
Cameron is a passionate believer in the first-past-the-post electoral system. Yet he has offered the Lib Dems a referendum on introducing the alternative vote system in which voters rank candidates in order of preference.
Amid that background you might think that Cameron would be tempted simply to face down the Lib Dems and try to form a minority government with no outside support. Instead he has made a "big, open and comprehensive offer" that has gone far further than he imagined when he first started wooing Clegg on Friday.
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John Reid is not the only Labour figure who is critical of a deal with the Lib Dems. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA
Twenty four hour news wants instant resolutions, but senior Liberal Democrats are now saying the deal may not be secured today, and any final deal will have to go to a party conference at the weekend. The Queen may be kept on hold.
But the balance is now tilting back to the Liberal Democrats striking a deal with the Conservatives, partly because there is a sense that some Labour negotiators are less keen on a deal than the Conservatives.
Senior Liberal Democrats are also picking up signals that Labour is too divided to strike a deal. John Reid and David Blunkett, the two former home secretaries, speak for more than themselves when they criticise the idea of a deal altogether.
The official line is that the cabinet backed the deal unanimously, but I am not sure that this represents a true account of opinion In a bid to shore up the Labour coalition, Alan Johnson, the current home secretary and Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, came out in favour of the deal.
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Friday 7 May 2010
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George Osborne at the Conservative headquarters in central London. Photograph: Linda Nylind
As the director of the Tories' general election campaign, George Osborne is facing a bumpy ride. Conservatives on the right and left of the party are united in thinking that Osborne must share much of the blame for a disappointing result.
Tories on the right are annoyed because they believe the campaign should have focused more on traditional Tory issues such as immigration. They say this was a major concern on the doorstep but was barely mentioned until David Cameron tore into Nick Clegg's plan to offer "earned citizenship" to long term illegal immigrants in the final television debate. The right say Cameron is too sensitive about undermining the party's moderate image.
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A council worker sweeps the road in front of No 10 Downing Street the morning after the election Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
It is not often that Gordon Brown is accused of being asleep on the job, but he was sleeping this morning as the final results were coming in
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Gordon Brown arrives back at 10 Downing Street as the country looked set for a hung parliament. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Can Labour cobble together enough support to form a government?
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The Queen will attend the State Opening Of Parliament on 25 May. But who will be prime minister? Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
As the night wore on, it became curiouser and curiouser.
A Tory asteroid hit Montgomeryshire and the Liberal Democrat Lembit Opik was taken out by the Tories on a swing of 13.2%. Roll on David Cameron you're in Downing Street for an age because Opik's seat is 210th on your target list.
But what's this? It's just gone 5.00am, it's lighting up and a grinning Gisela Stuart is on television. Yes, the woman whose victory in the once rock solid Tory seat of Birmingham Edgbaston heralded Tony Blair's victory in 1997 has held on. Stuart won with a majority of 1,274.
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Wednesday 5 May 2010
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The "dreary steeples" of Fermanagh and Tyrone, mocked by Winston Churchill (above), could take centre stage in a hung parliament. Photograph: Rex Features
Are the "dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone" about to take centre stage in British politics?
Winston Churchill famously dreamt up this disparaging remark to say that little had changed in Northern Ireland after Europe had been shaken to its core by the first world war.
But the rest of the United Kingdom may be looking to those steeples in the coming days if voters elect the first hung parliament since February 1974. Continue reading...
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George Osborne, the man most likely to be chancellor in the next 48 hours, yesterday said the Treasury forecasts are "largely a work of a fiction".
He said this in the Financial Times in order to justify his plans for an independent Office of Budget Responsibility.
Call me naive, but that sounds like you are impugning the integrity of a lot of civil servants. This is not what I would do if I was just about to go and work with some of Britain's best brains – possibly not "we are all in this together" politics.
I assume he is saying civil servants have been bullied by Labour politicians to lie, or else conventions are being used to force civil servants into being less than honest over issues such as PFI liabilities. Either way, it is quite a thing to say that the growth forecasts are a work of fiction, as Osborne says.
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