Westminster Blog

The Tories’ recent shift to the right has been attributed to the influence of Lynton Crosby, their new elections adviser, in response to the rise of Ukip. The anti-Brussels party won more than a fifth of the votes in last Friday’s local elections.

There is a certain irony here. I can reveal that Ukip wanted to hire Mr Crosby about a year ago to become their elections supremo. But the asking price, supposedly £350,000 a year – or the equivalent – would have been outside the reach of Mr Farage’s chequebook. (UPDATE: My mole now says it was £750,000, suggesting that one of us can’t read our own notes.) Read more

There is one statistic that stands out ahead of next week’s local elections: the number of candidates being fielded by the UK Independence Party.

In the wake of Ukip’s big surge in the Eastleigh by-election – where it picked up 28 per cent of the votes – several respected psephologists believe the fringe party is in line for further gains among some of the 2,409 seats being contested across the country.

What is striking is that Nigel Farage has found something like 1,700 candidates for the contest on May 2.

Last time these seats were fielded, in 2009, Ukip put up people in 24 per cent of seats. Now the figure is 72 per cent.

By contrast the Lib Dems have gone from contesting 90 per cent of the seats to 73 per cent.

It’s not hard to see why Ukip might perform well: mid-term blues; the Lib Dems no longer being a “protest vote” party; the popularity of their immigration-EU policies with much of the public.

As others have written repeatedly, many naturally Tory-leaning voters are prepared to use their local or European vote to back Ukip – before returning to the Conservatives Read more

Ukip is winning thousands of votes from the Tories because of the coalition’s controversial plan for a new high-speed rail route: so says Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-Brussels party.

In a recent debate with Tory former cabinet minister Cheryl Gillan – who has fought HS2, which cuts through her constituency – Farage said: “We’re against HS2, which your party’s not, and that’s why we’re getting so many votes in your constituency.”

But this belies the fact that the Ukip manifesto for 2010 called not only for more high-speed rail but no fewer than “three new 200mph-plus high-seed rail lines”.

Where would they be? “This would include a new line between London and Newcastle with a spur to Manchester, a London-Bristol-Exeter line and a linking route via Birmingham”.

In addition, a Ukip government would produce a Hong Kong-style Thames Estuary airport with another “high-speed rail service to London, the UK and the Continent”.

But by 2012 the party appeared to have a change of heart. Its local government manifesto Read more

Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union, is urging other unions to join forces to stage a 24-hour general strike in what it privately admits would be an “explicitly political” attack against the government.

Leaders from across the movement will discuss the idea of a general strike later this month at a meeting of the Trades Union Congress’s general council, with members divided over how to respond to the government’s attempts to curb public spending.

Insider say that the preparatory discussions are “incredibly sensitive”. But Unite, which has 1.5m members, has put forward a paper urging the TUC to “prepare for such mass industrial action”.

The document, seen by the Financial Times, suggests that more public sector cuts could “bring public opinion to the boil” and open up a chance for the unions to “give decisive leadership”.

I wouldn’t be surprised if our story from this morning will have wider pick-up in Read more

Countryside campaigners on Wednesday have warned about the “truly irreversible damage” taking place because of an overhaul of the planning system which took effect at midnight last night, urging the coalition to reverse its “charter for builders”.

But senior ministers agreed at yesterday’s weekly cabinet meeting to press ahead with the plans, under which all “sustainable development” must be waved through by any council that has not drawn up new local plans.

A third of local authorities have still not had their plans approved, leaving them open to unwanted building.

Eric Pickles, communities secretary, wants to go further and allow more liberalisation of the planning system as part of the coalition’s attempt to generate economic growth.

Last week’s Budget opened the way for a new “permitted development right” for people to convert retail properties into homes without planning permission – following a similar move to allow office-to-flats conversions.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England warns on Wednesday that the system, called the Read more

With Andrew Marr off sick, his stand-in this morning was Eddie Mair, who proceeded to put Boris Johnson through the most relentless interview the London mayor has ever faced.

Questions from Mair included:

“Aren’t you in fact, making up quotes, lying to your party leader, wanting to be part of someone being physically assaulted? You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?”

and

“But even Conrad Black, your friend. Convicted fraudster, even he says he doesn’t trust you completely.”

Plenty has been said about this skewering on the Twittersphere this morning. Fans of Johnson suggest he came out of it in one piece, given the lack of new accusations. The vast majority of the public will not have seen the programme, although they may see clips elsewhere. Others believe this may mark the point where the wheels start to come off the Boris band-waggon.

Either way, here is a transcript of the key passages for those who missed the event:

EDDIE MAIR: Let me ask you about some of the things that came up in the documentary.

BORIS JOHNSON: Right. I haven’t seen it, so you know …

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Mervyn (now Sir Mervyn) King did not cover himself with glory during the credit crunch, preferring to lecture on moral hazard while others were scrambling to prevent financial catastrophe.

Even so, the governor of the Bank of England’s words of warning about government mortgage guarantees, made in August 2008, are fascinating – in the context of Osborne now setting up a new entity to do just that. (Bear in mind that the chancellor and the governor are close allies.)

At the time Gordon Brown was pushing a UK-style Freddie/Fannie through the Crosby mortgage review. (Fannie and Freddie collapsed into US nationalisation only a month later): hat-tip Hannah Kuchler

“On the question of guarantees all I can say is the Federal Reserve, for the last 30 years have been pointing to the great dangers of offering government guarantees to mortgages.

They pointed out that if you offer a government guarantee to a mortgage, remember they spent a very long time trying to press the argument that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not guaranteed by the Federal Government, they could see the risk that if people believed it then they would be able to attract funds more cheaply than any other source, mortgage funding would go through that

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