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Red Box

Sunday, March 1

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Morning all,

Welcome to your Sunday politics briefing from Tim Shipman.

In this weekend's edition:

  • New terror crackdown
  • Operation Save Dave
  • Westminster wishes Nick Robinson a speedy recovery
  • Fallout over Farage’s US trip
  • Labour's Speaker sin bin power

Tweet us @TimesRedBox, visit our Facebook page or reply to this email to let us know your views or feedback.

Top News
UK security
Coalition splits over terror crackdown

For a day or so the unmasking of the Londoner Mohammed Emwazi as “Jihadi John”, the Isis executioner, led to the suspension of politics as usual. But old enmities die hard and as we wake this morning familiar battle lines are emerging in Westminster. The Sunday Times splashes on a pledge by David Cameron to “urgently” revive the so-called snooper’s charter if he wins a new term in Downing Street and details of a toxic new row between No 10 and Vince Cable, the business secretary, over their attempts to ban hate preachers from university campuses.

Cameron and his aides want to stop any “extremist” from addressing students. Cable says that only those who incite terrorism directly should be silenced, leaving those who support a caliphate or other extreme views to speak to students.

The government recently passed legislation imposing a statutory requirement on universities and other public bodies to prevent terrorism.

But Tory ministers complained last night that Cable is seeking to water down guidance drawn up for university bosses on how the new rules should be enacted. One said: “Vince is very vigorously trying to dilute the rules.”

In a second move, Cameron will accept the recommendations of a report into surveillance powers soon to be published by parliament’s intelligence watchdog. On March 12 the intelligence and security committee will call on the next government to introduce a single bill to replace the patchwork of “sometimes contradictory” legislation governing internet surveillance.

Theresa May tells the paper: “This capability is a matter of life and death. It is absolutely crucial that we legislate as soon as we possibly can to give ourselves the powers we need to keep the public safe.”

The Sunday papers have had 48 hours to get their teeth into the story and they don’t disappoint. The Mail on Sunday unveils details of emails Emwazi sent to their reporter Robert Verkaik in 2010 and 2011 declaring himself a “dead man walking” before he fled to Syria. Britain’s most wanted man threatened to kill himself with pills because he was under surveillance by the security services.

The Observer says Emwazi had links to the terror cell behind the failed 21/7 terror attacks in 2005. The Sunday Telegraph reveals that an al-Qaeda terrorism suspect closely connected to “Jihadi John” is living in London, having used the Human Rights Act to prevent the government from deporting him.

  • A data analysis for Red Box’s foreign policy week on Friday found that UK public support for military action against Isis has grown over the past six months.

In a short while, Yvette Cooper will be with Andrew Marr. Liam Fox, the senior Conservative MP who wrote about the defence budget for Red Box earlier this week, will be on the Sunday Politics from 11am.

WATCH: Isabel Hardman, Matthew Goodwin, Sean Kemp and Lindsay McIntosh debate the election
2015 Election Countdown
67 days to go
Tory election campaign
Save Dave plan to stop anti-Cameron coup

Tory MPs are a febrile bunch. It doesn’t usually take much to get them plotting. So it is a measure of the esteem (and fear) in which they hold Lynton Crosby, the party’s election campaign chief, that the failure of the Conservatives to take a consistent opinion poll lead (they’re tied with Labour at 34 per cent in today’s YouGov survey for The Sunday Times) despite two months of upbeat economic news has failed to dent their optimism about being the largest party after the election. Some (not many) even believe the Panglossian mantra of Michael Gove, the chief whip, who is telling his troops that not a single Conservative MP will lose their seat in May.

But last week we saw both Theresa May and Boris Johnson gently suggest that Crosby’s relentless focus on the economy and the defects of Ed Miliband could do with a third ingredient: optimism. When the phone starts going with unsolicited calls from MPs endorsing this desire for a splash of sunshine, you know something is up. More intriguingly, there is evidence that the nervousness is shared in Tory high command. Remember, they need a lead of around 4 per cent over Labour to be the largest party and 7 per cent to win a majority.

The Sunday Times reveals that George Osborne met the Tory whips last Monday to wargame options for the post election period. These are murky counsels at the best of times, but two senior figures contacted me last week to say that Osborne is taking soundings on a “Save Dave” strategy that would seek to keep David Cameron as party leader even if he fails to win the most seats. The argument would go like this: we have the most votes, it’s a moral victory, there might be a second election, don’t rock the boat.

This strategising has been received by MPs with decided froidure. One frontbencher said: “Osborne and Cameron should spend their time working out how to save the party rather than how to save themselves.” A former minister added: “No government equals no survival. If Cameron can’t beat the worst prime minister in history [Gordon Brown] and he can’t beat the worst leader of the opposition in history, you have to ask what we’re doing.”

Ministers close to Downing Street say that even if Cameron does win the most seats, he is drawing up plans to run a minority government rather than seek another coalition. Senior figures believe he could keep his MPs on side because going it alone would free up 23 ministerial posts currently held by Lib Dems.

Osborne’s next moves will be unveiled in the budget on March 18. The Sun on Sunday says he will resist the temptation to offer immediate giveaways to voters, but will instead outline “jam tomorrow” in the form of tax cuts that will see the light of day only if the Tories get back into government. The good news for Osborne is that his deficit reduction plans get a warm endorsement from Ken Clarke in the Sunday Telegraph.

James Forsyth says in his column this morning that the election campaign is not the one Cameron dreamed of, even though he knows the Big Society project on which he ran last time proved a damp squib with voters. I’ve also heard that the PM is not 100 per cent enthusiastic about Crosby’s limited message but accepts that he needs to maintain the discipline of a focused offering. (Though today he daringly offers Sun readers ten reasons to vote Tory). James says that after the next term Cameron will defer to his wife Samantha, who wants to launch new projects once he has left No 10. But the evidence of the post election planning is that the PM wants as many options as possible to hold on to power for a good while longer yet.

Grant Shapps, the Tory chairman, will be on Murnaghan on Sky News from 10am.

Exclusive YouGov polling for Red Box
SW1
Westminster wishes Robinson a speedy recovery

Nick Robinson, the BBC's popular political editor, will take a break from our screens and radios over the coming weeks. Yesterday his agent announced that he was having treatment for a tumour on his lung.

I’m told he texted friends and colleagues to say that it would be “my contribution to cutting the canker from the body politic”. Robinson is a fan of A Man for All Seasons, the play and film about Sir Thomas More’s clashes with Henry VIII that features the king’s oft-quoted line: “It is a deadly canker in the body politic, and I will have it out!”

With less than 70 days to go before polling day, Robinson’s characteristically pithy summary of the situation was: “Timing lousy. Prognosis good.” In his absence James Landale, the BBC's deputy political editor who battled a different type of cancer back in 2008, will fill in over the next few weeks.

Few things will unite the prime minister and the leader of the opposition in the immediate future. Yesterday, however, both wished Robinson a speedy recovery.

Get well soon, Nick.

Follow the comings and goings of SW1 throughout the week on the Red Box website
Cash-for-access
Watchdog: Candidates should declare second job plans before election

The chairman of Whitehall’s ethics watchdog today comes forward with a suggestion after the “cash for access” scandal this week marred the impressive parliamentary careers of grandees Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind.

The Sunday Times reports this morning that Lord Bew, chairman of the committee on standards in public life, is calling on parliamentary candidates to declare any second jobs they wish to hold if they win their seat. Voters "should be in a position to make up their minds", he said.

A reminder: Rifkind was caught on camera saying that he plans his schedule "so that around 75 per cent of my time is spent on parliamentary business". He and Straw, both former foreign secretaries, were individually filmed discussing lucrative roles with a fictitious Chinese company. The pair insist that they have broken no rules and have referred themselves to parliament’s standards watchdog.

Prominent members with second jobs include:

  • Former energy minister Charles Hendry, who earns £48,000 a year at Forewind, an offshore wind farm consortium. His services also earn him £5,000 a month from the Vitol Group and £1,500 a month at Atlantic Supergrid Corporation, two firms in the energy sector.

  • Former foreign office minister Henry Bellingham earns £2,500 a month from Developing Markets Associates, plus £4,000 from Pathfinder Mineral, and has earned more than £7,000 from his work with Pontus Marine. He had meetings or other deals with these firms while in office.

  • Former food minister Sir Jim Paice earns more than £85,000 a year as chairman of First Milk, a dairy company, and up to £10,000 as non-executive director of Camgrain, an agricultural storage collective.

None of these MPs have broken any rules. All their jobs were approved by Acoba, Whitehall’s advisory committee on business appointments, and they have not breached rules that bar them from lobbying the government for two years after leaving office or using privileged information picked up while ministers.

The battlegrounds: Explore Red Box's interactive guide to the seats where Election 2015 will be won or lost
Rise of Ukip
Fallout over Farage’s US trip

My colleague James Lyons faced the delight of spending some time in Margate this weekend, at the Ukip spring conference.

Senior figures within the party have been speaking to him about their dear leader’s recent travels. They’re unhappy that Nigel Farage travelled to America last week to speak at CPAC – an annual conference for US right-wingers – suggesting it was a “mad” waste of time that risks alienating voters.

Senior sources accused the party secretary, Matthew Richardson, and Farage’s new aide, Raheem Kassam, of creating a “risky” distraction just ten weeks before polling day. There are, however, some figures within Ukip who believe that the trip helped Farage to woo British traders on Wall Street whom the party hopes will speak out against the European Union.

In Britain the main story about Farage’s visit was that he was forced to address a pretty empty hall as the crowds headed to other events or went home. Across the Atlantic, however, his performance itself seems not to have gone down well.

In an interview with Christopher Hope for this morning’s Telegraph, the Ukip leader claims there is "one conversation we are still having" with a potential Tory defector, but adds: "Do you know what – it is not very relevant now."

Farage raised eyebrows on Friday when using his conference speech to dispel rumours that he was seriously ill – rumours that it’s safe to assume many outside Westminster would have heard for the first time when he denied them. Speculation “reached the level this week where those stories are being targeted at the kind of people who I really don’t want to have doubts in me – our backers, our supporters,” he explains. The Observer says he spoke out because party donors had begun to ask him questions about his health.

One man who wouldn’t have been spotted at the opening of the conference was Kassam. Guido Fawkes reveals in The Sun that he missed his flight back from Maryland.

In another blow, the Mail on Sunday says that at least six Ukip election candidates have circulated or endorsed material from the far right British National Party.

Douglas Carswell will be on Murnaghan later.

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Labour election campaign
Speaker sin bin power under Labour

Perched above the baying benches of the House of Commons at noon every Wednesday, I have long wanted to be able to issue a red or yellow card to some of the less appetising antics below. The Speaker, John Bercow, is another who believes that parliamentary debate, and prime minister’s questions in particular, is in need of reform. Argument still rages about whether one MP referred to the leader of the opposition as a “sanctimonious c***” recently.

So a cautious round of applause for Labour, who will unveil new policies designed to make such events in the chamber a thing of the past. Angela Eagle, shadow leader of the Commons who was once urged to “calm down, dear” by David Cameron, will propose handing the Speaker new powers to issue MPs with "yellow cards" – and to put particularly disorderly members in a "sin bin".

Marie Woolf reveals in The Sunday Times that a first warning would see an MP banned for an hour, and a second would lead to exclusion for up to three sessions.

Hansard society research shows that voters find PMQs “noisy”, “childish” and “over the top”.

Emily Ashton recently listed for BuzzFeed some of the language deemed to be unparliamentary – Red Box would advise honourable members to steer clear of "ignoramus" and "guttersnipe". And, as Marie points out, MPs are not allowed to be drunk in the chamber or to accuse each other of lying.

My only concern about all this is that the saintly Speaker will use these powers like the power-mad referee who once sent off 19 of the 22 players in a football match. And if I was sin binning MPs, I’d start with any buffoon (also a banned word) who asked a planted whips question rather than those who spice up the action by diving into debate with the studs showing.

Catch up: Foreign Policy Week on Red Box
Poll
Public reaction to Labour’s new tuition fees policy
Exclusive YouGov polling
Two-thirds back Labour fees policy

Using YouGov's First Verdict, we have a strong “thumbs up” for Ed Miliband's tuition fees policy (Stephan Shakespeare writes). The sample of 617 who answered after the announcement of the policy split 64 per cent to 20 in support on Friday.

Also on Friday, exclusively for Red Box, we ran a survey asking whether the fees policy had shown a positive or negative effect in four areas:

  • the universities themselves (positive net score, +20 per cent),
  • the government's finances (+11),
  • students from poor background (-44)
  • students from well-off backgrounds (0)

Meanwhile, in our “what have you noticed in politics lately” daily tracker (in which we ask people to comment on anything that's caught their attention, a project conducted in partnership with Polis at the University of Cambridge), we find that the two biggest stories of the week were “cash for access”, which was mentioned by 21 per cent of respondents on Tuesday, and the interview with the Green party leader Natalie Bennett, mentioned on Wednesday by 14 per cent.

  • Not everyone supports the tuition fees policy, however. The Mail on Sunday says that Miliband is facing a Labour civil war over the issue, with the Blair era aide Huw Evans quoted against it and opposition too from the Royal College of Nursing, which believes the plan will hit nurses’ pensions.
YouGov

This weekend's briefing was edited by Callum Jones.

Top News

Sunday comment


1. Dave and Ed can’t worry about our security now, there’s an election to win
- Adam Boulton, The Sunday Times

2. Why should Boris have to know about football?
- Lord Coe, The Sunday Telegraph

3. Dave wants just one more win – then it's Samantha's turn
- James Forsyth, The Mail on Sunday

4. Descent into cash-and-carry politics will make us all feel cheap
- Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer

5. Why so much fuss over the colour of Harriet Harman's battle bus?
- Jane Merrick, The Independent on Sunday
What The Papers Said

The Sunday Times
  • The Tory manifesto is set to propose that all teenagers study maths until they are 18. A report to released by Policy Exchange on Friday will recommend that all A-level students study a maths qualification that would be the equivalent of an AS level. “We want to see people doing that by 2020,” Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, says. Allies of her predecessor, Michael Gove, say he backs the policy.

  • People from poor backgrounds will get similar protection from discrimination as those from ethnic minorities if Labour wins power. The measure in the Equality Act – called “Harman’s law” because it was championed by the deputy Labour leader, Harriet Harman – was scrapped after the 2010 election when Theresa May, the home secretary, branded it a bureaucratic box-ticking exercise. The opposition plans to bring it back.

  • Owen Paterson, the former environment secretary just back from the Kruger national park in South Africa, has penned a piece calling on Britain to cut off aid money to countries that trade in rhino horn.


The Sunday Telegraph
  • Lord Saatchi's plan to allow doctors to test cutting-edge drugs and treatments on seriously ill patients without fear of being sued has been killed off by the Liberal Democrats, the Telegraph reveals. Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem health minister, has told Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative health secretary, that his party will not support it.

  • A Telegraph analysis of George Osborne's pension reforms finds that more than 80,000 people could be hit by tax deductions on withdrawals over the coming 12 months.


The Mail on Sunday
  • Rona Fairhead, chairman of the BBC Trust, is revealed to have been paid £10,000 a day by HSBC, the bank accused of helping millionaires to avoid paying tax. She pocketed more than £500,000 last year for non-executive roles for working the equivalent of just one day a week.

  • Nick Clegg is planning to recommend the decriminalisation of “skunk” cannabis in the Lib Dem election manifesto, despite research linking it to mental illness.

  • Police are investigating claims that a fox was killed in a hunt hosted by David Cameron’s father in law.


The Observer
  • The Green Party has asked broadcasters if their leader Natalie Bennett - she of that car-crash interview on LBC, could drop out of one of the televised leaders’ debates in favour of her predecessor Caroline Lucas, who wants the exposure to hold her seat in Brighton. The broadcasters said no. If the debates happen it will be Bennett in both of the seven-way tussles. The Indy has a brilliant long read on what comes next for the Greens.

  • The first UK demonstration by the far-right group Pegida was overshadowed by its opponents in Newcastle yesterday.


The Sun
  • The paper has been looking at the shadow chancellor's tax plans. In a piece entitled "Balls out for your £30bn”, it points to a claim from the Tories that if Labour are elected they would need to raise taxes by this amount to fund their plans.

  • One of the government's economic advisors has been filmed smoking crack in a drug den. Douglas McWilliams, who attends summits with George Osborne, also makes the front page of the Mirror.

  • Many newsagents and corner shops may have to close over coming years if cigarette plain packaging plans make it through the Commons, according to a government report. If you like the look of what you’ve read this morning, please head to your local store and pick up a paper.

Agenda
Monday
  • Alloa: Scottish cabinet meeting
  • 6pm: John Bercow speaks at Hansard society event
  • Brussels: EU industry ministers convene

Tuesday
  • 10am: Mark Carney appears before Treasury select committee
  • London: Jeremy Hunt, Andy Burnham and Paul Burstow speak at Health and Social Care Conference
  • 12.30pm: Gloria De Piero appears on Loose Women
  • Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto visits UK

Wednesday
  • 3pm: Jack Straw, Andrew Lansley and Sir George Young give evidence to the procedure committee
  • 7pm: Jeremy Hunt takes part in LBC phone-in
  • London: Francis Maude speaks at Public Services 2030 Conference

Thursday
  • Nigel Farage releases book
  • Frans Timmermans, European Commission First Vice President, visits UK

Friday
  • Liverpool: Green party spring conference
  • Caernarfon: Plaid Cymru spring conference
  • Brussels EU environment ministers convene
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