Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Hammond: the Tories really want an election to remove MPs like me 

Anyone looking at the glacial pace of this recent Parliament when it comes to Brexit, and its tortuous decision to extend Article 50 once again, will probably understand why Boris Johnson is so keen to call an election this Christmas – especially when he doesn’t currently have a majority in the House of Commons. For some though, it appears that the current push for an election is really, actually, all about them. Former Chancellor Philip Hammond certainly seemed to make that argument when he appeared on the Today programme this morning. The MP for Runnymede and Weybridge, who has since lost the Tory whip, said he feared Boris Johnson only

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Boris Johnson get the 2019 election he craves?

By the end of the day tomorrow, we will know if Boris Johnson is going to get the 2019 election he craves. Minutes ago he responded to the government’s failure to get the two thirds vote necessary for an election under tonight’s Fixed-term Parliament Act motion by saying that the government would present a bill legislating for an election on the 12 December. Now, this is not the date that the Lib Dems and the SNP wanted – they were pushing for the 9th – but he is acceding to one of their key demands: the government won’t try and bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill back if this legislation goes through.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Brace yourselves for a dismal election campaign

Would anyone want an election after witnessing this afternoon’s Commons debate on the matter? Both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have just produced rambling, slightly nonsensical speeches arguing their corner. The Prime Minister wants an election. The Leader of the Opposition does not. Neither offered much that was convincing to support those stances.  Johnson’s main theme was that ‘this Parliament has run its course’. This would have made more sense had the government not held a Queen’s Speech introducing its new legislative agenda just two weeks ago. He also seemed to think that the best way of persuading Jeremy Corbyn to back the government’s motion calling for a 12 December

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How Boris’s opponents are making this week much easier for him

The stronger the prospect of a general election, the easier it will be for Boris Johnson to get through the week that Britain was supposed to be leaving the European Union. He had said he would rather ‘be dead in a ditch’ than miss the deadline, but is now taking a two-pronged approach to distracting everyone from the fact that Thursday will come and go, and Brexit will still not have happened. The first part of this plan is to make sure that it is clear parliament is to blame for missing the 31 October deadline, rather than the Prime Minister who placed so much emphasis on it. So the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How Keith Vaz tried to avoid punishment by claiming male escorts were ‘decorators’

Keith Vaz is facing the longest suspension in history after the Commons Standards Committee found he had breached the MPs’ Code of Conduct by paying two male escorts for sex and offering to cover the cost of cocaine for a third man. The Committee – which is made up of MPs and lay members, said he had ’caused significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole’, and said it represented ‘a very serious breach of the Code’. This brings to an end a row which has gone on since August 2016, when Vaz met the two men in his flat. One of them

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The joy of the People’s Vote meltdown

Anyone else enjoying the falling apart of the People’s Vote campaign? It’s one of the funniest news stories I’ve read in months. It’s like a soap opera. EastEnders with posh people. And I’m not only chortling over it because I’m a Brexiteer who’s loving the Schadenfreude of seeing the kind of people who don’t respect my vote descend into bitching, backstabbing and Twitter turf wars. No, even more mirthful than that is the issue around which PV is pulling itself apart: the question of whether it should present itself as an openly pro-Remain group or as a neutral outfit that just wants another EU vote because it really, really likes

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Momentum builds behind a pre-Christmas election

Will an election be called this week? That’s the growing expectation among Conservative MPs. Later today the government will hold a vote on an early election for December 12 under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. To pass, Boris Johnson needs two thirds of MPs to back him. However, this is very unlikely – with Labour MPs planning to abstain and both the Lib Dems and SNP opposing on the grounds that Johnson’s plan would see his government bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the Commons before going to the polls. Instead, there is a sense that Tuesday could see a pre-Christmas election agreed upon. Over the weekend, the Liberal Democrats

Matthew Lynn

Five reasons why the Brexit extension is bad news

Some fiddly amendments from Sir Oliver Letwin that no one quite understands. A legal action against someone or other from Gina Miller. Lots of protest marches. A petition or two – and possibly even an unreadable novella from Ian McEwan/JK Rowling/John Le Carre (delete as applicable) ranting against Brexit. We don’t quite know yet how exactly we will fill up the latest three-month extension to the already protracted saga of our departure from the EU. It probably won’t be a great deal different from the last three months, or the three months before that. There is one thing we should know for sure by now, however. It will be very

Steerpike Steerpike

The People’s Vote turns on Roland Rudd

It’s all out chaos at the People’s Vote campaign today, after the outgoing chairman of Open Britain (one of the campaign’s five organisations) Roland Rudd attempted to fire the group’s head of communications, Tom Baldwin, and its director, James McGrory. In their place, Rudd wished to appoint Patrick Heneghan, the former head of campaigns for the Labour party. Unfortunately, the wheels quickly came off Rudd’s attempted coup. Baldwin took to the airwaves this morning to insist that Rudd couldn’t fire him, and said he would travel in to work this morning. While former New Labour spinner and Remain activist Alastair Campbell launched his own attack on Rudd’s move, which he said was

Steerpike Steerpike

People’s Vote campaign descends into chaos

Oh dear. As Boris Johnson attempts to call a general election, this could be the week that supporters of a second referendum get together and push for a so-called people’s vote before any snap poll. One of the big Tory worries is that a majority of MPs could coalesce around such a position. However, that currently looks unlikely. Instead, the People’s Vote campaign is consumed with infighting. On Sunday night, Roland Rudd – the outgoing chairman of Open Britain, one of the five groups that make up People’s Vote – emailed staff to announce that he had asked People’s Vote staff James McGrory, the director, and Tom Baldwin, the head of communications,

Sunday

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

For Remainers, Brexit is really about power | 27 October 2019

At the New Yorker Festival party in mid-October, my astute colleague hardly needed the caution. But you know how at a discombobulating bash you seize gratefully on something to talk about. So as Matthew Goodwin and I rubbed elbows with the East Coast elite at the Old Town Bar in Manhattan (‘Look! It’s Ronan Farrow!’), I warned him about the following afternoon’s audience for our panel on Brexit. They’ll be Democrats, I explained, and they’re hardwired to associate both the referendum and Boris personally with Trump. They’ve all been brainwashed by the New York Times, which portrays Brexiteers as a cross between the extras on The Walking Dead and the

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Jo Swinson’s election proposal

Jo Swinson: we want an election on 9 December Opposition parties are overcoming their opposition to an early general election, and are putting forward their own strategies for how to hold one. The Liberal Democrats and the SNP plan to submit a short amendment to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act tomorrow, which would set an election date for 9 December. Lib Dem Leader Jo Swinson told Andrew Marr about the bill and the conditions that would be attached to it: Lib Dems’ new bill will set the date for the next election and takes a no deal #Brexit off the table says leader Jo Swinson#Marr https://t.co/3gQzFoUXet pic.twitter.com/JMMkAMcrCX — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics)

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The moment that shames Theresa May

I’ve been surprisingly kind about Theresa May in many of the articles I’ve written here and elsewhere. Surprising, because I never thought much of her as a politician or a person before the spring of 2017. Politically, I found her approach to immigration while Home Secretary to be dreadful and borderline dishonest. That continued seamlessly into her handling of Brexit in 2016, when she made the biggest policy decision of the era – to leave the single market – solely because of the way it related to immigration. Personally, well, like other Lobby correspondents of a similar vintage I can attest that lunch with Theresa May is like crossing a

Saturday

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The question a second referendum must ask | 26 October 2019

Mostly I stay confident the Prime Minister’s team are playing a weak hand badly, but my confidence does occasionally falter. Then Downing Street does something really stupid (like expelling 21 of its own parliamentary party) and I’m reassured that these people aren’t clever at all. This happened last weekend when I opened my Sunday Times to find there a personal attack on Sir Oliver Letwin by ‘senior sources’. These sources had scoffed to journalists that when, before the Commons vote on his amendment, Letwin was at Downing Street to discuss it, he was taking ‘conspiratorial phone calls’ on his mobile phone, giving him ‘instructions’ from David Pannick. Lord Pannick is

Robert Peston Robert Peston

SNP and Lib Dems join forces to pursue 9 December election

The Scottish National Party and Lib Dems have joined forces to attempt to force a general election in early December, but on a different timetable from that wanted by Boris Johnson and without any further push to see Johnson’s Brexit deal approved by MPs. The Westminster leaders of the two parties, Ian Blackford and Jo Swinson, have adopted a twin track approach. They have written to the President of the European Union, Donald Tusk, asking for a Brexit delay to 31 January, in line with the terms of the Benn Act, with no provision for an earlier withdrawal from the EU. To provide confidence that this delay will lead to

Steerpike Steerpike

Rory Stewart’s gangster fail

When Rory Stewart declared his candidacy for the London mayor, there was some concern in CCHQ that the former Conservative MP could eat into Tory candidate Shaun Bailey’s vote share. Stewart has been keen to pitch himself as an outward looking politician in touch with modern Britain. While there’s still some way to go to polling night, the initial signs suggest that Stewart’s own efforts will be no walk in the park. Stewart has found himself under criticism after he described three East London men he met back when he was campaigning to be the next leader of the Conservatives as ‘minor gangsters’. Stewart attempted to speak to the group as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What is Boris Johnson’s plan?

As Boris Johnson laid out his plan at political Cabinet on Thursday, it quickly became apparent how much of it was dependent on factors outside of his control. I write in The Sun this morning that he said that he still hoped that the EU would offer only the shortest of extensions, forcing parliament to get on with it. But he admitted that the EU was inclined to offer an extension to the end of January and that Emmanuel Macron was fighting a lonely battle against this. Earlier in the day, the Elysée had told Number 10 that the French President was too isolated on the issue in the EU

Anthony Browne

Heidi Allen’s confusing political odyssey

Update: Heidi Allen has announced that she will no longer stand at the next election. This weekend, Anthony Browne wrote about her confusing political odyssey: As I pound the streets of South Cambridgeshire where I am the Conservative candidate, the most common reaction I get from voters is “How did that happen?”. (That, at least, is an edited version to keep things family-friendly for Spectator readers). It is usually accompanied by a liberal dosage of decidedly unparliamentary language and the sort of words that if I repeated would lead to me being accused of inflaming passions in politics. But the passions among the public are already inflamed and the issue

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Katharine Birbalsingh Edition

26 min listen

Katharine is the headmistress of Michaela Community School, dubbed by some as ‘Britain’s strictest school’. She talks to Katy about why she regrets speaking at Conservative Party Conference, her school’s ‘tiger teacher’ philosophy, and why she would ban smartphones for everyone under the age of 18. Presented by Katy Balls.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Number 10 drops its threat to go ‘on strike’

One of the defining themes of this week has been the government threatening to do something dramatic, before manifestly not carrying out that threat. We’ve had No. 10 sources claiming Boris Johnson would pull his Withdrawal Agreement Bill if MPs voted down the programme motion, only for the Prime Minister to announce he is ‘pausing’ it, before then making a bid to the Labour Party to resurrect the legislation with a longer timetable. We’ve also seen the demise of Johnson’s claim that he would rather be found ‘dead in a ditch’ than delay Brexit beyond 31 October. Though the Prime Minister hasn’t openly acknowledged that he’s missing the deadline, his