Good morning and welcome to your daily political briefing from Philip Webster.
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In today's edition
- Britons love Obama – poll
- Cameron waits on president over airstrikes
- Tory support grows for ending coalition
- Eurosceptics get a free lunch
- Miliband to share platform with Brown
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Essential political news and exclusive daily polling from YouGov direct to your inbox, with expert analysis from our leading columnists David Aaronovitch, Adam Boulton, Camilla Cavendish, Phil Collins, Danny Finkelstein, Tim Montgomerie, Matthew Parris, Hugo Rifkind, Jenni Russell, Rachel Sylvester and more.
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Do you think Barack Obama has done a good or bad job as president of the United States?
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Leadership ratings
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Exclusive: Unpopular at home, but Britons back Obama
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In America, President Obama has been under heavy criticism for having no strategy on the Islamic State crisis and for being out of touch on the economy, writes YouGov chief Stephan Shakespeare. The latest YouGov / Economist poll of American registered voters gives him a minus-13 per cent approval rating.
But our exclusive poll for Red Box shows that here in Britain his reputation is very high: 68 per cent think he is doing a good job and only 19 per cent think he's doing a bad job, giving him a +49 per cent rating that most former American presidents could never have dreamed of. It has given him a status in the world that he can use to great effect.
That said, today's +49 per cent is down from +56 per cent at the start of June, and +64 per cent two years ago. Still, 77 per cent think he's “highly intelligent” (versus 7 per cent who say he's not), 71 per cent say he's “sincere” (versus 12 per cent), 67 per cent that he's “very well-informed about the world” (17 per cent disagree), 53 per cent “a good friend to Britain” (versus 15 per cent), 68 per cent “a good advertisement for America” (12 per cent against), and 59 per cent consider him “wise” – with only 11 per cent saying he's “foolish”.
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YouGov
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Iraq and Syria crisis
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Airstrikes within weeks but Cameron waits on Obama
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The whips are trawling Conservative MPs to gauge their mood on Britain joining American airstrikes against Islamic State. And it is far more supportive than when they were asked a similar question last year about military action against Syria, informed sources have suggested.
The papers this morning agree that British action is just weeks away. But they are equally clear that Barack Obama has not yet formally asked for help, and that there is a timetable that would have to be followed before the Tornados take off.
David Cameron himself believes that UK military involvement is the right thing to do.
But an order to join the airstrikes will depend on:
Obama deciding that he wants wider action.
The formation next Thursday of a stable and representative government in Baghdad.
A request from that government and other regional powers for a sustained bombing campaign from the US and UK. Obama and Cameron are meeting the leaders of Jordan and Turkey as they seek to create a “coalition of the willing”.
The general sense from the Nato summit in Wales is that Obama remains more cautious than Cameron at this stage. But the consensus appears to be that his incremental approach is designed to put all the building blocks in place before he launches a mission aimed, in his own words, at destroying Isis.
Cameron took the opportunity at a dinner last night to rebuke fellow leaders whose countries have paid ransom payments to free hostages in breach of an international agreement.
The Times is among the papers that supports his stance. In a leading article it says that Nato allies must agree not to pay ransoms, but instead the terrorists should be hunted down and punished. The Times also concludes that “this is not the moment to flinch from action”.
Also in The Times Tom Coghlan has a good exclusive. He says that dozens of young British jihadists have become so disillusioned with fighting in Syria that they are begging to come home.
A ceasefire between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels could begin at lunchtime, the Ukrainian President has confirmed. An apparent breakthrough in the five-month-long conflict comes as Russia is accused of trying to seize the key port of Mariupol. Nato leaders are still expected to press ahead with sanctions against Russia.
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Coalition future
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Will the partners stay together till the end?
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Nick Clegg and his Lib Dem ministers in the government have always opposed any idea of breaking up the coalition before the due date. For a start, they enjoy being ministers and all that goes with it, including the money.
But the main reason has been that as the third party in British politics they have had to show that coalitions work. Calls from within to cut loose and clearly differentiate themselves from the Conservatives are rebuffed, even though all the polls suggest that the Lib Dems rather than the Conservatives get the blame for unpopular policies.
Some on the Tory right have long wanted to push the hated Lib Dems adrift but they have been well outnumbered by those who want the government to run its full five years.
After the worst Tory fortnight since the 2010 election, culminating in the defection of Douglas Carswell, the mood appears to be changing. In this week's Spectator James Forsyth says that the idea of ending the coalition early has strong backing all the way up to the cabinet. I wonder who he means.
The argument runs that without their awkward partners the Tories could show what they would do with a majority. More saliently, it would give the Lib Dems a chance to regain their lost left-wing support, a move that would help the Conservatives in their marginal battles with Labour.
The stumbling block? Cameron. He hates the idea, an insider tells Forsyth.
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Miliband, saviour of the Union?
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Hugo Rifkind
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Something unforeseen is happening in Scotland. Countries are misty, intangible things, so both sides have long sought to recast the referendum debate as about things more immediate.
"Do you trust Alex Salmond?" asked No, hoping, for a No. "Would you like to get shot of people like David Cameron?" asked Yes, nodding furiously.
Suddenly, though, the Yes campaign has started picking up votes, not from the middle, but from Labour. And the great question of the referendum has turned into "do you have the remotest faith in Ed Miliband winning the next election?" As a geekish North Londoner, his appeal in Strathclyde estates is not obvious. Yet if people don't say "yes" to him, then there's a growing chance they'll say "yes" to independence.
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Scottish referendum
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Miliband to share platform with Gordon Brown
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Ed Miliband will appear on a platform with Gordon Brown for the first time since the 2010 election next week as Labour accepts its responsibility for saving the Union.
Alarmed by this week’s YouGov poll showing a sharp rise in backing for independence among Labour voters, the party is planning a big push over the final two weeks with events involving Miliband, John Prescott, Ed Balls and Brown.
Balls will be in Scotland on Monday to talk about the economic threats of independence, before Labour MEPs head to Scotland next day to discuss Scotland’s role in Europe. Prescott, a veteran campaigner, will show up on Wednesday, before a rally on Friday featuring Brown, Miliband and the Scottish Labour leader, Johann Lamont.
Miliband said yesterday: ”All of us feel a huge sense of responsibility.”
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Morten Morland
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20,000
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Regular personnel being cut under Army 2020 plans, described as “bungled” by Margaret Hodge
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Tory turmoil
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Don’t be reckless, Reckless
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Eurosceptic Tories need not go short of lunch these days. Stuart Wheeler, Ukip’s spread betting tycoon, has taken out any number of potential converts to try to lure them to the other side.
Now, Laura Pitel reveals in The Times, Michael Gove, the chief whip, has embarked on a lunch offensive to keep them where they are.
Yesterday it was the turn of the wonderfully named Mark Reckless, a close friend of the defector Douglas Carswell, to be given the charm treatment.
Reckless has said he won’t go, but the bookies have him at 3-1 to be the next Conservative to defect. So Gove, often hailed as the politest of ministers when he wants to be, was trying to make sure.
In the Spectator Coffee House blog Isabel Hardman reveals that Ukip have been approaching potential defectors and offering to pay for a poll in their constituency that shows how well they would do as a Ukip candidate.
They approached one with what the MP describes as a “carrot-and-stick” approach. “The pitch was, you’re a great guy and we’ll pay for a poll with you as hypothetical Ukip candidate if you defect,” said the MP, who didn’t want to be named. “The stick was, we’ll soon select a good Ukip candidate who might cost you the seat.”
The party also approached another Eurosceptic backbencher, Gordon Henderson, on Monday. A Ukip candidate has already been selected in his Sittingbourne seat, but the Tory MP said that he was “born a Conservative and will die a Conservative and I wouldn’t want to take the Ukip candidate’s job away from him”. Meanwhile, the Gravesham MP Adam Holloway told The Telegraph that he has been approached by an unnamed Ukip MEP four times in the past week alone.
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The Independent
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Kidnappings will continue “without a united, global approach” to ransoms”, the Indy says, suggesting that the PM “struck his most hawkish note” on the threat from Islamic State yesterday.
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The Times
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The paper reports on potential Conservative plans for all pupils to be separated by ability. Setting “can… be better for less academic pupils too”, its leader says.
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Daily Mail
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The Mail has splashed on what it describes as “anarchy” in Calais, where hundreds of migrants are trying to head for Dover, declaring in its leader: “It’s hard to feel much sympathy for the French.”
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The Daily Telegraph
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Looking at the “Milibandwagon” north of the border, the paper says: “The UK will be saved not by partisan appeals but by reason and national pride.”
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The Sun
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Army redundancies were “ill judged” by the government, the Sun says, but points the finger at Labour: “The cuts were only an emergency because of the multibillion-pound black hole they left in the defence budget.”
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Canada can show Cameron how to rescue our United Kingdom
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Fraser Nelson
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Quebec’s 1995 independence referendum offers many lessons to the prime minister: it was long assumed to be an easy win for the “no” campaign, but in the final weeks it emerged that it would be painfully close. The “yes” vote ended up at 49.4 per cent. Last-ditch appeals by ordinary Canadians to “stay with us” may have rescued the union. The future of Britain may rest with a similar effort - and if it fails, the consequences could be dire.
Read the full article.
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In the Commons
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- Private members' bill on the spare room subsidy is set to be debated in the Commons, with the coalition parties split over the policy
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Elsewhere
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- Uxbridge: Local Conservative association announces its shortlist of candidates to fight the 2015 election, after Boris Johnson and former Olympian James Cracknell applied
- Birmingham, 2:00: Green party's leader Natalie Bennett gives opening speech at her party's autumn conference begins
- Stoke-on-Trent, 4:30: Labour's shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt speaks at local trade council and pensioners' convention meeting on education
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