Politics

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

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Boris was right to u-turn over Freedom of Movement

For all its ferocious momentum, Boris Johnson’s government is capable of making pretty bad mistakes – as we saw with Priti Patel’s announcement that free movement of people will end with Brexit on 31 October. A problem, when it hasn’t worked out let alone revealed what regime will replace it. As I say in this week’s cover story, this decision saw millions of EU nationals plunged into uncertainty – and by a Prime Minister who had promised them security. The Sunday Times today reveals that the decision has been revoked. The Home Office has only managed to process one million of the three million EU nationals living in the country, giving

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

What does Totnes think of Sarah Wollaston, its defecting MP? | 1 September 2019

‘Totnes? It’s hippie central.’ A friend warned me what to expect when I visited the affluent, left-leaning town in south-east Devon to assess public opinion about the local MP, Dr Sarah Wollaston. In March she left the Tories to join Change UK and she now sits as a Liberal Democrat. I equipped myself with a photo of her and wandered the streets last Monday. A chap in the Wild Fig Deli told me that her disloyalty would terminate her career. ‘You can change party, all right, but you hold a by-election. She’s lost her credibility.’ In 2011 Wollaston backed a private members’ bill requiring MPs who change parties to stand

Saturday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

A guide to the different sorts of chaos looming over Westminster

What is going to happen next week in parliament? Most anti-no-deal rebels see it as their last opportunity to block Britain leaving the European Union without a deal, but what they haven’t yet agreed on is how best to do it. There are a number of likely scenarios, some of which intertwine with one another, and to show how chaotic the next few days are likely to be, I’ve drawn up a flowchart of how things might pan out (you can click on the image to view a larger version of the chaos): The most likely parliamentary route is through an emergency debate under Standing Order 24, which the rebels

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tory MPs who vote for the extension legislation will be barred from standing for the party at the next election

Parliament returns on Tuesday and it is expected that anti no-deal MPs will – with John Bercow’s help – quickly seize control of the order paper. They will then try and rush through a bill designed to stop the UK from leaving the EU without a deal. I report in the Sun this morning that Number 10 will treat these votes as they would a confidence vote with anyone who doesn’t back the government being immediately disqualified from standing for the Tories again. They hope that this will keep some waverers in the government lobby next week. It would mean that if former Cabinet Ministers such as Philip Hammond voted

Charles Moore Charles Moore

It makes sense for the over-75s to pay the licence fee

Dorothy Byrne, Channel 4’s head of news, last week told the Edinburgh television festival: ‘Here is what we all need to decide: what do we do when a known liar becomes our prime minister?’ Yet she is surprised when Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn — both of whom she calls ‘cowards’ — do not come on her programmes. She regards it as their democratic duty to be interrogated by her journalists. If you watch her deliver her lecture, you can see she is positively proud of her character assassination of both men. It does not seem to cross her mind that she is breaking her public service obligation of fairness,

David Skelton

The forgotten towns that will decide Boris Johnson’s fate

If Boris Johnson does call a snap election this year, his fortune will be decided in the same places that swung the referendum for Brexit. Britain’s forgotten towns, places like my home town of Consett, perched high in the hills of north-west Durham, will determine the Prime Minister’s fate. In Consett, there is little sign now that this was a place once home to one of the world’s biggest steelworks. Steel from here was used to build great structures, bridges and battleships for the whole Empire, from Blackpool Tower and bridges in far-flung places to Britain’s fleet of nuclear submarines. But Consett went from being a symbol of industrial might to an emblem

Friday

Gabriel Radonich

The Spectator Podcast: what kind of Brexit does Boris want?

In these fractious times, a public compliment from the President of the United States can be a mixed blessing for a British politician. On the one hand, Boris Johnson must be delighted to hear the leader of the free world dub him “exactly what the U.K. has been looking for”, especially after the relentless criticism that Donald Trump showered upon his predecessor. On the other hand though, an endorsement from the president also has the potential to embarrass a PM who has long battled his critics’ characterisation of him as a ‘mini-Trump’. For someone who styles himself as a standard-bearer for liberal conservatism and has spoken of delivering a ‘global

Andrew Willshire

Ruth Davidson’s departure doesn’t mean the end of the Union

The departure yesterday of Ruth Davidson as leader of the Scottish Conservatives has prompted much discomfort among some pro-Union commentators. There is no doubt that she was a stunningly effective campaigner but it is an exaggeration to claim that the revival in the fortunes of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party was solely down to her. Davidson received a substantial boost from the fact that the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 redrew the Scottish political map, creating a binary division between pro-independence and pro-union forces. In the aftermath of the vote, Davidson was by far the canniest operator, ensuring the Tories were the most staunchly pro-union party. But whoever her successor

Anna Bailey

Boris Johnson’s Parliament shutdown isn’t unconstitutional

Has Boris Johnson done a Charles I and shut down Parliament indefinitely? The headlines this week might lead you to think so. ‘Uproar as Boris Johnson shuts down parliament to protect Brexit plan’, reported the FT. John Bercow called it ‘a constitutional outrage’. ‘It’s tantamount to a coup against Parliament,’ raged former attorney general Dominic Grieve. Nicola Sturgeon called it ‘a dictatorship’. Yet the reality hardly lives up to the rhetoric. These are the facts: Parliament will return from summer recess on 3 September as planned. Parliament will not sit from mid-September to early October during the three-week party conference season – also as planned and as happens every year. What has

Alexander Pelling-Bruce Alexander Pelling-Bruce

How Boris Johnson boxed his Brexit opponents in

As a Leave voter, it is satisfying to watch Boris’s Johnson’s bold Brexit plan unfold. The predictable backlash to it – what Jacob Rees-Mogg called the ‘candyfloss of outrage’ – is also an entertaining spectacle, with some of those most determined to stop Brexit resorting to ever lurid analogies to describe the Prime Minister. But why are the Government’s opponents now wailing so loudly? The answer is simple: because they know this week’s prorogation move has boxed them in. First, let’s be clear: whatever some of Boris Johnson’s supporters might say, the plan to suspend Parliament is a deliberate attempt to decrease the parliamentary time MPs have to act to pass

Steerpike Steerpike

John Major offers his prorogation advice

It’s all out war in the Conservative party this morning, after the former Tory Prime Minister John Major announced that he was joining a legal action (started by the Remain campaigner Gina Miller) which will argue that Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was unlawful. In his statement Major grandly stated that: ‘I promised to that, if the Prime Minister prorogued parliament in order to prevent Members from opposing his Brexit plans, I would seek judicial review of his action.’ And went on to add that his experience of having ‘served in government as a minister and prime minister’ would allow him to assist the legal action. That’s certainly one way

Thursday

Toby Young Toby Young

Must try harder: education is still a vote loser for the Tories

The reluctance of the Conservative party to take credit for the success of its education reforms is a source of increasing bewilderment to me. With each passing year, the A-level and GCSE results of free schools and academies provide yet more evidence that liberating state schools from the dead hand of local authority control has had a transformational effect — and 2019 is no exception. Free schools such as the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford and Michaela Community School in Wembley have chalked up some of the best results in the country, while academy chains such as the Harris Federation and the City of London Academies Trust have cemented

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Amazon fires are as much a political story as an environmental one

We do not yet know which 100 citizens will make it to the ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ to be chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, which will look at ways of preventing a no-deal Brexit. So we cannot yet judge whether the organisers have come up with a system of selection which improves on the representative powers of parliament. But really we do not need to, because we know already that they will not be able to bring the ‘reconciliation at a time of national emergency’ which the Archbishop seeks. This is because the idea that a no-deal Brexit must be prevented is not an irenic proposition around which people can unite,

Peter Jones

For a solution to the backstop, team up like Rome and Carthage

The EU is demanding that, in return for a new deal, the UK must come up with a solution to the Irish backstop problem. But since the UK will happily leave with no deal, the EU will have to find a solution anyway. Let the Romans help out. Latin foedus (cf. ‘federal’) meant a treaty that guaranteed peace and friendship between Rome and another state, in perpetuity. There were two standard models. A foedus aequum (‘equal’) put both parties on an equal footing. The first we hear of between Rome and the local cities of Latium agreed eternal peace, mutual assistance against enemies, equal sharing of spoils and speedy settlements

Ruth Davidson

Ruth Davidson: why I had to resign as Scottish Tory leader

It has been the privilege of my life to serve as the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party. The almost eight years I’ve spent at the helm have coincided with one of the most remarkable and important periods of recent Scottish political history. I am proud of the teams we have built in Holyrood, Westminster and in council chambers across the country and proud of our electoral successes in recent years. All of that pales in significance compared to the vital role our party undertook in the Scottish independence referendum of 2014. I will always consider that the most important contribution of my working life and my commitment

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The treatment of EU nationals will be a litmus test of Boris Johnson’s Brexit

What makes Boris Johnson an improvement on Theresa May? Those of us who cheered him on into 10 Downing Street have a long list. He backed Brexit, so would stand a far greater chance of getting it done. He’d hire better people, who could outwit and outmanoeuvre his parliamentary enemies (as we have seen this week). He is acting with a pace and with a daring that is extraordinary – and commensurate with the challenge he faces over Brexit. But the real point of Boris as leader is that he promised to give his party a better chance of healing the divisions of the referendum and uniting the country. This

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

What does Totnes think of Sarah Wollaston, its defecting MP?

‘Totnes? It’s hippie central.’ A friend warned me what to expect when I visited the affluent, left-leaning town in south-east Devon to assess public opinion about the local MP, Dr Sarah Wollaston. In March she left the Tories to join Change UK and she now sits as a Liberal Democrat. I equipped myself with a photo of her and wandered the streets last Monday. A chap in the Wild Fig Deli told me that her disloyalty would terminate her career. ‘You can change party, all right, but you hold a by-election. She’s lost her credibility.’ In 2011 Wollaston backed a private members’ bill requiring MPs who change parties to stand

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What will the Tory and Labour election campaigns look like?

We know that the Conservatives are gearing up for an election in the next few months. Their official line is that they don’t want one, largely because it will appear better if they are apparently pushed into a poll, but that doesn’t mean that preparations aren’t well underway. One of the main benefits of proroguing parliament is that it allows the Tories to produce an election manifesto before there is an election, using the Queen’s Speech. In today’s Guardian, I’ve written about what’s going to be in that manifesto/Queen’s Speech: the focus will be on education and crime. The latter is largely there because Team Boris feel Theresa May left

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The rage against Boris

This morning, a petition demanding ‘Do not prorogue Parliament’ is doing the rounds. At the time of writing, more than 1.4 million people have signed it. Remainers are very excited. They’re holding the petition up as proof of a mass outpouring of democratic disdain for Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament for a few more days than is normal. It is no such thing. It looks more like yet another middle-class hissy fit against Brexit and the people who voted for it.  As the petition map demonstrates, the signatories are strikingly concentrated in certain parts of the country, especially the leafy, super-middle-class bits of southern England. There are very high

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ruth Davidson takes a pop at David Cameron in her resignation speech

Ruth Davidson’s departure is a blow to the Tory party and the Union. Without her, the Tories will find it even more of a struggle to keep hold of their Scottish seats at the coming Westminster election. At the same time, the removal of such a formidable campaigner will make it that bit easier for the pro-independence parties as they try and win a majority at Holyrood in 2021—something that would almost certainly lead to a second independence referendum. Davidson’s press conference this morning was an understated affair: this was not an emotional goodbye, more a matter-of-fact resignation. I suspect that Number 10 will have been relieved by the fact