Politics

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

Thursday

16 May 2019

Letters | 16 May 2019

Labour’s fence-sitting Sir: James Forsyth writes that Mrs May and Mr Corbyn are ‘not, in fact, that far apart’ (‘May’s compromising position’, 11 May). To many, the Labour left is simply playing its very old game of sitting on the fence over the EU. The electorate have spotted it, and Labour paid for it in the local elections. Some of us are old enough to remember Harold Macmillan’s withering mockery of the Labour attitude to the then Common Market in the early 1960s. It recalls the words of the old song: ‘She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no; she didn’t say stay and she didn’t say go!’ The

Soutiam Goodarzi

Corbyn’s half-baked plan to raise the minimum wage for under 18s

My fellow sixteen year olds can’t vote, but that doesn’t stop us being the target of Jeremy Corbyn’s magnanimity. His latest idea: to make sure we are paid the same as adults. So he proposes raising the minimum wage for everyone, including those under the age of 18, to £10 an hour. You can see the superficial appeal. Gone are the days of £5 an hour work. Thanks to Corbyn, a £20 top will take two hours of work to buy, as opposed to four. Which 16 or 17 year old could complain at that? But in reality, the idea isn’t so good. When applying for work, we’re not just

James Kirkup

Theresa May’s successor should be careful what they wish for

Let’s assume this really is the start of the last act of Theresa May’s premiership. Let’s assume too that her Withdrawal Agreement dies a fourth and final death in the Commons in early June. The Conservatives will then go looking for a new leader and prime minister. There are already no end of candidates. But I have a question: why would anyone want the job in those circumstances? If the WA dies, there are only two options left for Britain: leave with no deal on October 31, or revoke Article 50. Anyone who tells you there is a third option is trying to sell you something. Yes, I know that

Robert Peston

Theresa May will be gone by August

Today’s joint statement by the 1922 Committee and the PM may seem opaque but it means something very simple and unambiguous: the Tories will have a new leader – and we will have a new prime minister – by August. That is what a majority of Tory MPs want. But for reasons of decorum, they have not spelled out the exact timetable ahead of the European Union parliamentary elections, which take place on Thursday, or before the fourth and final attempt to have the PM’s Brexit deal ratified, in the week beginning June 3rd. Theresa May is being allowed the flimsiest fig leaf of control over her destiny. But sources tell

Steerpike

Sajid Javid’s small-minded speech

As the unofficial Tory leadership contest moves up a gear, scores of Cabinet ministers, hoping to burnish their leadership credentials have been giving ‘wide-ranging’ speeches across London as they prepare for Theresa May’s inevitable departure. Home Secretary Sajid Javid became the latest contender to show off his policy platform this afternoon, as he gave a speech at the Centre for Policy Studies, to launch the think tank’s new report on UK business. Unfortunately for Javid, it appears the name of the event and the report didn’t quite match his grand ambitions. After all, the tagline ‘Think Small, a report on small businesses’ doesn’t quite remind you of a grand statesman.

James Forsyth

Theresa May is clinging on – but not for much longer

Theresa May’s promise to bring the withdrawal agreement bill to the Commons next month has proved enough for the 1922 Executive. A statement just released by its chairman Sir Graham Brady following their meeting with the Prime Minister says simply that he and her ‘will meet following the 2nd reading of the bill to agree a timetable for the election of a new leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party’. If second reading of the bill fails, Theresa May will be out of options. At that point, she will have little choice but to stand down. Some loyalist MPs fear that a desire to hasten her departure will lead to

Steerpike

Watch: Change UK MP’s David Brent moment

Change UK are faring dreadfully in the polls with the party’s support down to just one per cent, according to a recent survey. But Joan Ryan – the Labour MP who defected to the fledgling outfit earlier this year – has a new strategy to try and turn things around: firing voters up with a motivational pep talk. Speaking to activists at a rally in Bath, Ryan told those gathered to ‘look at your hands please’. Once they had done so she then said: ‘That’s it, it’s there, it’s in your hands. So take your hands and get out there.’ Mr S wonders whether Ryan is trying to channel David

Alex Massie

Anyone but Boris

If Boris Johnson is, once again, the answer it is worth asking what the question can be. The simplest response must be that he is, at least as far as some Conservative MPs are concerned, the man most likely to save their jobs at the next election. But a better question, for the country anyway, would be to ask if Boris Johnson is fit to be prime minister? And the answer to that is obvious. We are asked to believe that, despite being a conspicuous failure at the foreign office, Johnson could be a plausible prime minister. But what, precisely, in Johnson’s history gives anyone confidence he might be a

Robert Peston

How Nigel Farage could save the Tories

Is the Brexit Party the enemy or friend of the Tory Party? Is Nigel Farage its destroyer – or could he turn into its redeemer? This is not as crazy a question as it may sound, even though right now Farage’s new venture is set to humiliate the Conservatives in the forthcoming EU parliamentary elections. The answer is contingent on other events, and in particular who wins the power struggle within the Conservative Party after Theresa May stands down (which every Tory MP I ask believes will be before the June 15th extraordinary vote by Tory local association chairs and grassroots officials on whether she is fit to remain in office

Steerpike

Gavin Barwell’s new number

The switchboard operators at 10 Downing Street are well-known for their precision and professionalism, as they dutifully connect callers to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister to senior officials, dignitaries and foreign leaders around the world. But it appears that they had an uncharacteristic slip-up the other day. The Daily Mail’s Sebastian Shakespeare reports that when a senior civil servant in a major Whitehall department recently rang the line and asked for Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s chief of staff, they clearly were misheard by the Number 10 switchboard. After a short pause, the senior civil servant, no doubt expecting to discuss important matters of state, was instead connected to Take

Steerpike

Liz Truss’s numbers problem

With Theresa May on the way out, the Prime Minister’s Cabinet colleagues are gearing up for the upcoming Tory leadership contest. While several of the would-be candidates have openly declared their intention to run – Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart and Esther McVey – others prefer to run a covert campaign operation behind the scenes. Of the favourites to succeed May, both Jeremy Hunt and Dominic Raab are thought to have significant support when it comes to the number of MPs who will back them. Meanwhile, James Brokenshire has been stealing the headlines thanks to a paper interview in which it was revealed that he owns four ovens. Speaking on Wednesday

James Forsyth

Cometh the hour

The worse things are for the Tories, the better for Boris Johnson. If the Tories were ahead in the polls, he’d have little hope of becoming leader. MPs would choose someone more clubbable, less divisive, and more interested in them personally: who didn’t annoy so many of them so much. But Tory MPs are now contemplating an existential crisis. Tory voters are defecting en masse to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. The Conservative party’s survival may well turn on winning these voters back, and the former foreign secretary — the tribune of Leave, the buccaneering Brexiteer, the darling of the grassroots — is the most obvious person to do that. Suddenly,

Freddy Gray

His dark materials | 16 May 2019

If you have heard of Alexander Nix, you probably think he’s a villain. He is the former head of Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics company that helped Donald Trump win the presidential election. Nix and his colleagues have been accused of all sorts of other dastardly deeds: conniving with the Kremlin to hack democracy, ‘dark messaging’ people with racist ads on Facebook in the run-up to Brexit, and more and worse. Nix lost his job after a Channel 4 investigation into Cambridge Analytica in March last year — the exposé won a Bafta last weekend. By May, Cambridge Analytica and its parent company SCL had gone into administration, and Nix

David Butterfield

Pub names

An easy one: what links Jack Straw’s Castle, The Labouring Boys and The Jolly Taxpayer? No, not the parliamentary expenses scandal of yesteryear, but the weird and whimsical world of British pub names. It was in 1393 that Richard II ordered brewers to announce their beery business by a prominent sign. Colourful names quickly abounded, invented by publicans and patrons alike. The intervening six centuries have given ample scope for praise and play. The commonest names across the UK’s 50,000 or so pubs gesture to royal heraldry: The Red Lion, Crown, Royal Oak and White Hart make up the top four; Rose and Crown, Queen’s Head and King’s Arms come

Laura Freeman

Snog a Tory

Ew! Are you squeamish? Are you grossed out by meat, by fish, by eggs, by scales and suckers and shells and bones? We live in fastidious times. Now we pick, we prod, we send dietary requirements by return of post. ‘Super excited to see you guys! Btw I’m vegan, non-gluten, non-soy, no-nuts. Sorry to be a pain!’ Last year, Sainsbury’s launched chicken pieces in ‘no touch’ pouches for millennials who won’t handle raw meat unless it’s sans teeth, eyes, taste, everything. And at Somerville College, Oxford, students were served octopus terrine at a matriculation dinner, and a fresher complained that they had been ‘surprised’ by the dish. The college conceded

Rod Liddle

The Brexit party delusion

The echo chamber is the defining characteristic of this berserk and entertaining political age: squadrons of foam-flecked absolutists ranting to people who agree with them about everything and thus come to believe that their ludicrous view of the world is shared by everybody. It is true, for example, of the Stalinist liberal Remainers — that tranche of about one third of the remain vote who will tell you proudly that they have never met anyone who voted leave and that therefore either nobody did vote leave — or they voted leave but we shouldn’t take any notice of them because they are worthless. The BBC, civil service and academia share

Wednesday

15 May 2019

Richard Ekins

Do our Supreme Court judges have too much power?

In our tradition, courts do not and should not stand in judgment over parliament. It is for parliament, in conversation with the people, to choose what the law should be and the duty of courts is to uphold those choices. In the years before the UK decided to leave the EU, some judges reasoned that the constitution had evolved to the point where parliamentary sovereignty was redundant. They suggested it was time for judges to assert a power to quash laws they thought were unjust or unprincipled. Their view was always legal nonsense, and it is very unlikely that a British court will attempt to strike down a statute anytime soon.

Lloyd Evans

Jeremy Corbyn’s hypocritical appetite for bad news

It’s that time of year. The Sunday Times Rich-List is out. To most of us it’s a negligible frivolity. To the hard left it’s hard porn. Their trembling fingers swipe through its glossy pages. Their ravening eyes gaze with confused adoration at the wrinkled oligarchs and their marmalade-coloured wives. At PMQs today Jeremy Corbyn captured this covetous ardour by deriding Theresa May for accepting donations from ‘hedge-fund tycoons’. She replied that income inequality has fallen since 2010. ‘Labour,’ she said, ‘want to bring people down. Conservatives want to raise people up.’ Corbyn moved to the issue of starvation among poor children. The Labour leader revealed that the Department for Business,

Steerpike

Full text: Geoffrey Cox’s Onward speech – ‘if I can raise any humour tonight it’s going to be gallows humour’

When Geoffrey Cox stood on stage at Conservative conference and gave a speech to introduce Theresa May, the newly appointed Attorney General managed to steal the show. Cox managed to bring the house down with his Mufasa-inspired routine – quoting poetry as he called on members to get behind the Prime Minister. At Tuesday night’s Onward event – to celebrate the Conservative think tank’s first year – Cox cut a more sombre figure. The Cabinet minister used his speech to address the problems the party finds itself in – deploying some gallows humour along the way: ‘This is the first time I’ve ever addressed a think tank and I’m a

Steerpike

Peter Bone: Tory members want May to resign before the EU elections

Oh dear. With Theresa May’s government seemingly on its last legs, it appears that party discipline has all but disappeared on the Conservative benches. The signs of discontent were clear at PMQs today when Tory MP and Brexiteer Peter Bone was given the chance to ask a question, but instead used the opportunity to pass on the views of his local Conservative members to the Prime Minister. Noting how they had been committed to the party for over twenty years and had been knocking on doors for the party ‘week in, week out’, Bone said that they now wanted a no-deal Brexit, and: ‘More importantly, they’ve lost confidence in the Prime