Blog Posts by Ian Dunt

In a day or two, Tory MPs will vote against their own Queen's Speech in order to attach a symbolic statement reiterating what their leader has already promised them. It's all very baffling. What exactly are they trying to achieve and how much damage will it cause David Cameron?

What are Tory backbenchers doing?

Leading Conservative eurosceptics have tabled an amendment to the motion welcoming the Queen's Speech. At the end of line five, they want to add the statement: "But respectfully regret that an EU referendum bill was not included in the Gracious Speech".

The effort is led by one of parliament's most die-hard eurosceptics, John Baron, with able assistance by fellow right-wing troublemaker Peter Bone. Most of the other signatories are the usual suspects: bad tempered Tory backbenchers who are now quite used to rocking the boat. In fact, it's almost second nature. They include: Philip Hollobone, Philip Davies, Douglas Carswell, David Davis, Nick de Bois, Adam Afriyie, Zac Goldsmith,

What do you do with a public service which is enjoying considerable success and just won the British Quality Foundation Gold Award for Excellence? The answer is very simple: you scrap it and open it up to private competition.

Justice secretary Chris Grayling is implementing the wholesale privatisation of the probation service.

Quite why is anyone's guess. The probation service has managed to get reoffending rates down to 34.2% after a decade of steady year-on-year decline. It is a minor success story in a difficult area of public policy.

Grayling has blamed the service for the persistently high reoffending rates of those in jail less than a year. The only trouble with this argument is that the probation service has no responsibility for this area and hasn't done for nearly three decades. The part of the system which isn't working is precisely the bit which the probation service does not control.

To his credit, Grayling has been fairly explicit about his plans. The probation service

Keith Vaz isn't often right, but he's right today. "An in/out referendum before the next election would clear the air," he tweeted. "We could actually hold it on the day of the next general election."

His view is presumably less influenced by his desire to "clear the air" than it is by basic political strategy, but his basic political strategy is a very good one.

Labour's shadow Europe minister, Emma Reynolds, is in Vienna today outlining the party's policy on Europe. Miliband's in a bit of a bind. The Labour leader does actually believe he will be prime minister come 2015, and he doesn't intend to spend the entire time bickering over Europe. But nor does he want to end up on the wrong side of voters' opinions on the EU by opposing a referendum come election time. Tricky. Luckily for Miliband, Vaz has provided the least bad option: demand a vote in 2015.

Today's intervention by Nigel Lawson shows quite how damaging David Cameron's EU referendum pledge will prove to be. No matter what

Ukip's performance in the local elections is extraordinary. Even at this early stage, the party has already beaten the (admittedly problematic) benchmark set by respected polling experts Rallings and Thrasher. It is doing very well indeed.

First, a caveat: they are still not winning anything. Their South Shields by-election result is impressive, but nowhere near enough to get them an MP. They are not taking control of councils. Ukip suffer from the traditional problem of small parties in British politics: the first-past-the-post system means groups with spread-out support have a hard time breaking through. Come in second place and it just doesn't matter how many votes you got.

But whichever way you look at it, Ukip's tally is undeniably impressive.


                                   [Live blog: All the latest from the remaining counts]

They continue to take votes from their natural home – irritated Tory voters. Three quarters of the party's gains so far have come at the cost of the

Photo: Getty Images"When I met Nigel Farage we both had our dicks out. Mind you, it was the gents' toilet. Here, that would make a bloody good headline."

I'm talking to John, Ukip's organiser in Kingston, in a creaky and well-trodden watering hole in central London. It's the start of a self-imposed, masochistic mission of meeting Ukip foot soldiers face-to-face, in their natural environment (mostly the pub), and finding out if the party's as insane as it looks from the outside.

I decided on the mission after meeting Diane James during the by-election in Eastleigh. As Ukip candidate, she narrowly lost out to the Lib Dems, but she was easily the most impressive figure on the ballot paper: eloquent, professional and oozing competent. For the first time, you could see a workable party machine starting to form under the purple blazers and beer goggles. The eurosceptic party was rolling out an impressive pavement operation, as if they'd learned a few lessons about local campaigning from the Lib Dems. It seemed

As I've mentioned before, multiculturalism is not an ideology, it is merely a statement of fact. The most recent Lord Ashcroft poll suggests it is a particularly successful one.

The survey of 1,035 minority voters completed earlier this week found nine in ten believed the UK was now multicultural and about that many believe it's a good thing. A representative poll of the general public conducted at the same time found 70% of voters believed it was a good thing. The only group with a majority opposing multiculturalism were Ukip voters. Seventy-one per cent of Tories support multiculturalism, as do 76% of Labour voters and 89% of Lib Dems.

Ethnic minorities themselves believe the various groups in the UK get on very well with each other. The general population, probably under the influence of persistent tabloid headlines about the mythical breakdown of the British social fabric, tend to overestimate problems between minority groups.

Particularly pertinent is the optimism with which

You can usually dismiss Labour's hype pretty easily. If opposition is conducted in poetry and government in prose, then Ed Miliband's is of the sixth-form variety. But there is one area in which it is not exaggerating: The NHS is genuinely being privatised. Under our noses, it is effectively being dismantled.

The NHS reforms enacted by Andrew Lansley and carried through by his teenage successor, Jeremy Hunt, will soon be fully enshrined in law following a Lords vote in six days time.

The reforms enjoy no democratic legitimacy. They will be financially ruinous, create an atomised health service and embed perverse incentives in the NHS.

They have been implemented in a cloak and dagger way which suggests ministers are well aware they would spark public outrage if they were properly understood. Lansley only announced them after the general election. Then he published the legislation without any of the secondary rules which would give them meaning. The entire two-year debate on NHS reform

The political left responded to the news of Margaret Thatcher's death yesterday in a mostly subdued manner, although there were some isolated incidences of celebration.

Some delegates at the National Union of Teachers (NUT) cheered the news, although they were told to desist by organisers.

Respect MP George Galloway tweeted the Elvis Costello song title 'Tramp the Dirt Down', for which he was attacked by fellow Twitter users.

He later wrote: "Thatcher described Nelson Mandela as a 'terrorist'. I was there. I saw her lips move. May she burn in the hellfires."

High street wine merchant Oddbins in Crouch End tweeted: "If for any reason anyone feels like celebrating anything we have Tattinger available at £10 less than usual at 329. Just saying."

A spokesperson for the company later said: "The tweet in question was made by a member of branch staff without the approval or knowledge of the company's management. The tweet was completely inappropriate and in the worst possible taste.

"We would