Kiran Stacey | Westminster blog

How campaigning against a coalition could benefit Labour

May 22, 2013 11:44 am by Kiran Stacey

Nick Clegg this morning insisted he would stay in government until 2015, and would not need to create any “breathing space” for his party by pulling his ministers out before the general election. This is what he said in a speech in London:

The public will see me [campaigning] as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Constitutionally the government still ticks over. Ministers are slightly more “absentee landlords” in Whitehall offices during that six week period.

Of course, Clegg is right that the public is used to ministers leaving their day jobs and hitting the campaign trail during the weeks leading up to a general election. And he may also be right that voters would think it very odd if the Lib Dems pulled out of the coalition just before an election in order to assert their own identity more clearly. Read more

Posted in Coalition, Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, UK politics | Permalink

Cameron lets Labour take credit for gay marriage

May 21, 2013 11:00 am by Kiran Stacey

At around 8pm last night, someone in Sir George Young’s office phoned someone in Ed Miliband’s office. Not enough Tories are going to vote against the amendment from Tim Loughton intended to wreck the gay marriage bill, the person explained. Labour would have to vote against or risk the bill being derailed.

Ed Miliband agreed, and encouraged his MPs to do the same. In the end, the amendment was defeated, but only thanks to Labour’s action. So it was no surprise to see headlines such as that in the Guardian this morning, which read: Read more

Tags: Gay marriage
Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, UK politics | Permalink

Canadian warns Brits: you’ve given too much to the SNP

May 16, 2013 3:54 pm by Kiran Stacey

Last night, politicians, government officials and a smattering of journalists gathered in the ornate surrounds of the Scotland Office to hear Jean Chrétien, the former Canadian PM, give his view on referendums.

Chrétien knows more than most world leaders about what it is like to try and stop nationalists in one part of the country from seceding – he won two referendums against Quebec separatists.

And in case coalition officials were beginning to feel comfortable with the convincing lead held by the pro-union side in the Scottish independence debate, Chrétien had a rather ominous message. Read more

Tags: Jean Chretien, Scottish referendum
Posted in Coalition, UK politics | Permalink

PMQs: Clegg shows some leg on Europe

May 15, 2013 1:40 pm by Kiran Stacey

As a fellow hack remarked to me on the way out of the Commons chamber after PMQs this week, imagine if it had been the other way round.

Imagine that David Cameron had not been in New York and had been taking prime minister’s questions instead of Nick Clegg, his deputy. And imagine that Lib Dem after Lib Dem – five in total – had stood up to attack the prime minister over their pet project – let’s say the mansion tax, for example. What would have happened?

Almost undoubtedly, there would have been fury on the Tory benches. Cameron would probably have told Clegg to get his troops in line and Conservative backbenchers would have complained quite fairly that the government agenda was being derailed by something that only one side really cared about. Read more

Tags: pmqs
Posted in Europe, Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, UK politics | Permalink

Are the Tories trying to rig the EU referendum question?

May 14, 2013 4:44 pm by Kiran Stacey

The Tories have just published their draft EU referendum bill. Most of it is fairly meaningless technicalities. But the proposed wording is interesting. The party plans to ask voters:

Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union?

Referendum questions are usually a source of tense, if technical political debate. The two things do watch out for are: Read more

Tags: EU referendum
Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, Europe, UK politics | Permalink

Company wins £150m govt contract despite tax avoidance

May 13, 2013 4:09 pm by Kiran Stacey

Earlier this year, Danny Alexander told the FT he was going to use the levers of government to get companies to pay their fair share of tax. Specifically, he was going to stop companies from winning big Whitehall contracts if they haven’t complied with tax rules. He told us at the time:

If you work for the government, whether you’re an individual employee or a company that has got a contract with the government, you need to be behaving properly with regard to tax rules.

His comments came after an FT investigation showed some of the world’s biggest IT companies that provide services to the government, use ingenious and somewhat aggressive tactics to avoid paying UK corporation tax. Read more

Tags: Arqiva, Danny Alexander
Posted in Tax, Treasury, UK economy, UK politics | Permalink

IDS in trouble again over stats

May 9, 2013 4:25 pm by Kiran Stacey

Last year I got a call from someone at DWP. The call went roughly as follows:

DWP: We’ve got a story for you. Figures show that the benefit cap is working and it hasn’t even been brought in yet.

Me: Really? How do they do that?

DWP: Well the number of people who have come off benefits since we announced the policy is XXX thousand. [I forget the actual number the person used.]

Tags: Andrew Dilnot, DWP, Iain Duncan Smith
Posted in Conservatives, UK politics | Permalink

Senior Tories distance themselves from Crosby

May 8, 2013 5:25 pm by Kiran Stacey

It was an interesting tactic from Stephen Williams to use his “humble address” before the Queen’s Speech to make a remark about lobbyists in helping form the government’s programme. Talking about dropped plans to introduce a register of lobbyists and plain cigarette packaging, Williams said:

Some will conclude that the tobacco lobbyists will celebrate this as a double victory.

One lobbyist the Lib Dem MP may have been referring to is Lynton Crosby, Cameron’s election strategist, whose lobbying firm, as we reported this morning, has worked for British American Tobacco. Read more

Tags: Lynton Crosby, Queen's Speech
Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, UK politics | Permalink

Rare good news for Cameron from Brussels

May 7, 2013 11:32 am by Kiran Stacey

The news this morning has been dominated by the piece written in today’s Times by Nigel Lawson, the former chancellor, who has said he would vote to leave the EU.

He repeated criticisms first made to the FT back in January, when he attacked David Cameron’s strategy of renegotiating powers from Brussels. He told us at the time:

It would be politically very difficult, if not impossible, for Cameron to agree to give up our budget rebate and that’s a precondition of any change.

Tags: Benefits, Europe
Posted in UK politics | Permalink

Is Number 10 trying to undermine the coalition?

May 3, 2013 3:03 pm by Kiran Stacey

One of the most interesting aspects of the Ukip successes today is watching how the Tories respond. We are getting signs that David Cameron is going for a placatory tone, backing away from previous characterisations of the party as “loonies and fruitcakes”.

But one of the more telling interventions came this morning from John Baron, who has led a campaign of eurosceptic Tory backbenchers trying to force the prime minister to legislate in this parliament for an EU referendum in the next.

Baron told the Today programme: Read more

Tags: Nigel Farage, UKIP
Posted in Coalition, Conservatives, David Cameron, UK politics | Permalink

On the campaign trail with the forgotten party

May 2, 2013 11:37 am by Kiran Stacey

Of all the campaigns in this local election, the Lib Dem one has probably been the lowest-key. As Westminster has focused on the steady rise of Ukip, and what that means for both the Tory and Labour vote, the Lib Dems have plugged away beneath the radar.

That suits Nick Clegg. His party is predicted to lose over 100 seats from today’s vote, and the less attention the media pays to Lib Dem failures, the better, from his point of view.

That was summed up by Clegg’s final day of campaigning, which was spent on a whistle-stop trip to the Harvey’s brewery in Lewes, where he met a maximum of 15 members of staff during a tour of the brewery, before conducting a few interviews and dashing back to London on government business. Read more

Tags: local elections
Posted in Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, UK politics | Permalink

Pub Companies’ fury at Vince Cable

April 29, 2013 4:36 pm by Kiran Stacey

Today sees a fresh spat in the running war between Vince Cable and some of Britain’s biggest pub owners.

Last week, the business secretary launched a new statutory code of conduct which larger pub companies will have to sign up to. Cable said at the time:

In too many cases tenants are being exploited and squeezed, through a combination of unfair practices, lack of transparency and a focus on short-termism at the expense of the long-term sustainability of the sector.

Posted in UK politics | Permalink