In the general election of 1964, Peter Griffiths, a “Tory nonentity”, shot to victory with a racist slogan; ‘Skin-Deep Democracy: How race, religion and ethnicity continue to affect Westminster politics’ (pdf), a new report published today by Quilliam, shows that a lot has changed since then – but also warns that the parties could do more to promote integration through equal involvement in Westminster politics.
In what are becoming frequent bursts of candour about the government’s deeply-flawed regional policy, business secretary Vince Cable told the annual dinner of Birmingham’s Lunar Society that his plans to scrap regional development agencies and replace them with local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) have been “a little Maoist and chaotic”.
The Financial Times reports today that home secretary Teresa May was forced to “water down” her first major speech on immigration last week, after an intervention from Downing Street and business secretary Vince Cable. Unnamed sources within the government told the FT that May’s original speech was “over the top” – with particular objections to passages which attacked the level of Tier 1 visas.
David Cameron has made the bizarre claim his vanity photographer will actually save the taxpayer lots of money. Former Tory party staffer Andrew Parsons and WebCameron filmmaker Nicky Woodhouse are being paid £35,000 each by the Cabinet Office, for jobs that were not advertised and didn’t exist under the Labour government.
DWP is under investigation from the Statistics Authority. In today’s Daily Mail, IDS makes erroneous claims about the proportion of “net jobs” goings to “people from overseas”.
The chair of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Michael Scholar has ordered an investigation into the way the Department of Work and Pensions uses statistics, following a string of concerns over the nature and presentation of stats by the department – often in secret lobby briefings, with press releases and tables not made publically available on the DWP’s website for scrutiny – despite the coalition’s commitment to ‘throw open the doors’ of public bodies.
Andy Burnham says “It would be a recipe for chaos and confusion if Labour candidates were also supporting AV in their literature.” He’s wrong – the party should campaign for AV.
At an International Policy Network seminar this week, Lord Giddens and Lord Lawson, chairman of the climate change-sceptics Global Warming Policy Foundation, once more rolled out the familiar climate change sceptic argument that there has been no global warming so far this century.
When government ministers resort to briefing what purports to be new statistical evidence on important policy issues to selected lobby journalists rather than making it available to the public, it is clear indication that they are unsure of their ground. The Department for Work and Pensions has been a hotbed of this sort of quasi-official briefing for several months, as has been pointed out here and by FullFact.
The Woolas case raise an interesting question for the Labour party: if the electorate become hostile to civil liberties, should we? Michael Harris examines the issue.
