Author Archives: Mark Pack

How close did the Conservative Party come to backing Gordon Brown over extending detention without trial to 42 days?

From the voting figures (only one Conservative MP backed Labour, Ann Widdecombe) you might think that the party was pretty united and firm in its opposition. But that would overlook the disputes within the Conservative Party on their line, which even caused David Davis to talk about quitting the Shadow Cabinet:

David Davis is said to have told Mr Cameron that he would rather resign than support the Government’s efforts to extend the period of pre-charge detention beyond 28 days. George Osborne and

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From the BBC:

The number of children living in poverty has risen for a second year, a government report says.

The government called the rise in poverty levels “disappointing” and the increase may threaten its target of halving child poverty by 2010.

The number of children living in poverty rose by 100,000 in 2006-2007 to 2.9 million before housing costs.

Pensioner poverty increased for the first time since 1998, rising by 300,000 to a total of 2.5 million.

The number of children and pensioners in poverty is greater once costs such as rent and mortgages are taken into account.

The GMB trade union has started cutting its direct financial support for Labour MPs. It plans to withdraw funds from a maximum of 35 MPs and yesterday announced the first six. Probably of most interest to Liberal Democrat members and supporters is the inclusion of Durham MP Roberta Blackman-Woods on the list as she is sitting on a majority of only 3,274 over the Liberal Democrats.

The Sunday Times has a round of various issues for Conservative Parliamentarians, including questions over yet another Conservative MEP’s expenses (though the case presented by the paper leaves some questions up in the air which might be sufficient to clear him) and also this intriguing snippet:

Alan Duncan, the shadow business secretary, also faces questions over a donation of almost £160,000 from Ian Taylor, an oil magnate whose company was fined for trading in Iraq in defiance of sanctions.

The company, Vitol, also has an interesting record regarding Serbia:

Bob Finch, Director of Vitol, a British oil company, paid $1

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The Scotsman reports:

In the midst of the meltdown, the Prime Minister has not, apparently, relinquished his authoritarianism. He has admonished the “freelancing” attempts by John Hutton, the Business Secretary and Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, for hinting to voters that there would be a retreat on fuel and vehicle excise duty taxes.

It is reminiscent of his recent behaviour, when according to a No10 mole, he phoned Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, at 7am to ask him why the Today programme had flagged up an interview with him when it had not been “cleared” with the PM. A weary Mr

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That’s the leader of the Conservative MEPs, Giles Chichester. The BBC has more on how an expenses scandal has engulfed him.

Well, that’s the headline the Daily Mail could have used if you read the quotes in their article carefully, along with a subhead of “Action to tackle knife crime amongst immigrants has been a success says top cop”. But their actual headline is rather different… (and also wrong because the ‘spikes’ comment wasn’t made by a police officer, as again a careful reading of the quotes in the piece shows).

Hat tip: Five Chinese Crackers, which has more on the story too.

Following Julia Wassell’s switch to the Liberal Democrats, the one remaining Labour councillor on Buckingham County Council, Chaudhary Ditta, has now also switched. Steve Guy of Wycombe Liberal Democrats said:

I am delighted to welcome Councillor Ditta to the Liberal Democrat team in Wycombe. He is a highly respected councillor and has considerable standing in the community. I know that we are all looking forward to working with him and gaining from his experience.

You’d have thought that having splits in the Henley Conservatives over the selection of their by-election candidate, or having a Shadow Cabinet member flatly contradict what the Conservatives are claiming in their leaflets would be enough bad news to be going on with for the Conservative by-election campaign.

But oh no. Now Mark Stevenson, the Green Party candidate in the Henley Parliamentary by-election, has attacked Conservative candidate John Howell and his campaign for the content of its leaflets: “It’s interesting that the Conservatives should already feel so insecure about their candidate that they appear to have resorted to deliberate …

With the writ for the Henley Parliamentary by-election widely expected to be moved this week, Sunday’s BBC1 Politics Show broadcast another report on the state of the campaign so far.

Their previous report highlighted the splits in the Henley Conservative Party over the selection of their candidate (now John Howell), whilst yesterday’s featured the strong start to Stephen Kearney’s campaign, the slow start to the Conservative campaign and how Labour “haven’t get a chance in hell” (Cllr Terry Buckett, Henley Residents Group).

You can watch the full piece here, though one story that broke …

From today’s Financial Times:

When Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, made a plea for Labour to discover a new vision and strategy last month it appeared to mark a watershed in heightened tensions between the party and the unions.

Mr Barber, the figurehead of the union movement, is well-known as a party loyalist who rarely speaks out of turn…

Derek Simpson, joint head of Unite, is another voice in the union movement now ramping up the pressure by demanding a clear sense of purpose from the Labour leadership.

There is agreement across the ideological spectrum within Labour that the

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The Independent has a Q+A with Nick Clegg today. The questions (and hence the answers) get more interesting the further through the piece you get, and they cover a very wide range of topics including Nick’s attitude to tax, what to do if offered PR in return for a coalition, the importance (or not) of Iraq, and much more.

Oh dear. Not really the best of starts to the Henley Conservative campaign. First there was David Cameron having to tell the local party what to do regarding selections after the pleas of John Maples were rebuffed. Then the BBC reported how the local Conservative Party was split over their Henley selection.

And now: Conservative Shadow Business Secretary Alan Duncan has contradicated what the Conservatives are telling people locally.

You see, one of their local messages is, “Local Conservatives have called for Gordon Brown to perform another Budget U-turn, by ditching his planned road tax increases” (source: Henley Conservatives website), but …

There’s some interesting online discussion from Labour perspectives about how they got their relatively good local election results in Oxford this May. Not all of the points really stand up to close scrutiny (e.g. Nick Clegg has repeatedly talked about childcare issues, as for example here) but some interesting food for thought nonetheless.

I missed this story before May’s local elections, but it is not exactly every day that someone gets accused by both a radio station and a local newspaper of making up quotes from them. The person in question is Labour Councillor Alan Graves from Derby. This is what the media have had to say about Alan Graves:

2,000 leaflets are to be reprinted because they include a made-up quote from a Ram FM journalist (Ram FM)

and

A Labour councillor is reprinting leaflets which contained comments purporting to be from an Evening Telegraph reporter.

Councillor Alan Graves, a candidate in the May 1

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As David Laws and his team have spotted:

In 2005, Ruth Kelly promised to ensure that at least 50p would be spent on healthy ingredients in primary schools, and 60p in secondary schools, but current Schools Minister, Kevin Brennan has since denied that such a minimum spend exists.

David Laws commented:

Ministers seem to have quietly dropped their commitment to a minimum basic level of funding for school meals.  With food prices surging, this is going to mean a massive squeeze on the quality of meal which schools can afford.

The Government made that promise in 2005, before the huge increases we

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From today’s Times:

Thousands of middle managers in local councils are being authorised to spy on people suspected of petty offences using powers designed to prevent crime and terrorism.

Even junior council officials are being allowed to initiate surveillance operations in what privacy campaigners likened to Eastern bloc police tactics.

The Home Office is expected to be urged by the Commons Home Affairs select committee to issue guidelines to councils on the type of operations in which surveillance can be used.

Amid increasing concern in Parliament that the UK is slowly becoming a surveillance society, the committee has looked at the operation of

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Earlier tonight, John Howell was selected by the Conservatives to be their candidate in the Henley by-election. His selection has been welcomed by Stephen Kearney from the Liberal Democrats, who has already been hard at work on the Henley by-election campaign trail for several weeks:

After a difficult selection process , the Conservatives have settled on County Councillor John Howell as their candidate in the forthcoming by-election.

The Liberal Democrats have welcomed the news of the selection of John Howell. Liberal Democrat candidate and charity boss Stephen Kearney said: “I am looking forward

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