Politics Archives

Thursday

11 Oct 2018

Steerpike

People’s Vote celebrity ad: I voted Remain… and I still want to Remain

With Theresa May’s Brexit proposals looking increasingly difficult to get through Parliament, the so-called ‘People’s Vote’ campaign has stepped up its efforts to bring about a second referendum… sorry, ‘vote on the final deal’. The campaign group runs on the idea that the facts have changed so it’s only fair that there’s another vote. In that vein, they have released a new advert packed with on-message celebrities. https://twitter.com/peoplesvote_uk/status/1049985514324066304 Among those proclaiming the benefits of a second referendum are people’s champion Gary Lineker, thespian Dominic West and Steve Coogan. In it, blogger and writer Scarlett Curtis declares ‘this is not what we voted for’. Only while Mr S suspects that Scarlett

James Forsyth

The DUP is showing that its Brexit threats aren’t a bluff

Things are escalating fast in the row between the government and the DUP. Yesterday’s threat to vote against the Budget was followed by them abstaining on the agriculture bill. The message is clear: if we don’t like what you sign up to on the backstop, we’ll make it impossible for you to govern. So, what is going on here? Well, a large part of it — as Katy Balls says on Coffee House — is about trust. The DUP suspect Downing Street and the civil service, in particular, of being ready to sell them out, and so aren’t inclined to believe their assurances. One of the other problems, I am

Gavin Mortimer

Why Emmanuel Macron should fear a no-deal Brexit

Last month I made my annual pilgrimage to the battlefields of the Somme, something I’ve been doing for 27 years. In that time, the area has changed dramatically: Albert, the small, sleepy town in the heart of the world war one battlefields has been transformed from a decaying backwater into a bustling place with cafes, hotels, shops and a fine world war one museum; although this is nothing compared to the one adjacent to the Thiepval Memorial, opened in 2016. The latter pulls in tens of thousands of visitors each year, predominantly British, most of whom stay at the numerous B&Bs in the outlying villages. The one I stayed in

Steerpike

Tory MP: We could replace May in two weeks

The government was thrust into chaos last night as the DUP teamed up with the European Research Group and threatened to vote down key legislation if the PM did not propose a satisfactory Brexit deal. The moves have made the Prime Minister’s tenure at the top look increasingly risky. Theresa May can therefore be thankful for at least one ringing endorsement from a member of her Party this morning. Conservative MP for Wrekin, Mark Pritchard, started his day with this helpful message for his colleagues: Lots of wild and loose talk about leadership moves. There is no vacancy. However, on a technical point, if a vacancy did arise process need

Katy Balls

DUP give new meaning to ‘hell week’

From the offset, this week was described as one that would be hellish for Theresa May. However, the DUP have given fresh meaning to ‘hell week’ after embarking on a PR offensive to make their displeasure at the government’s Irish backstop proposals known. Today the Prime Minister meets with a select number of Cabinet ministers (those seen as supportive) to update them on the Brexit talks – but the people she desperately needs to win over are Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds. Foster and her colleagues have seen red after details have emerged of May’s backstop proposals. These proposals would see different regulatory systems for goods in Britain and Northern Ireland.

James Forsyth

How can Philip Hammond budget for Brexit?

Before every Budget, George Osborne would tell his aides to prepare for it as if it were their last. His thinking was that chancellors only have so many opportunities to tilt the country in the direction they want it to go. Osborne’s Budget record was far from perfect, but that mindset did at least mean that he achieved some lasting change. Philip Hammond is approaching this month’s Budget differently. Unlike Osborne or Gordon Brown, he is not a political strategist, and it shows. The Treasury is treating this month’s Budget like a holding exercise. To be fair to Hammond, one of the reasons the Treasury is taking such a cautious

Martin Vander Weyer

Unilever’s botched retreat from London leaves it more open to hostile bids

Unilever’s abandonment of plans to scrap its Anglo-Dutch corporate structure and leave London is a huge embarrassment for chief executive Paul Polman, whose days in post must surely be numbered. More significantly, it’s a rare demonstration of the power of UK institutional investors (the likes of Aviva, Legal & General, M&G and Schroders) to exercise collective influence in errant boardrooms. The institutions were unpersuaded that the proposed new Dutch-based structure would generate greater value for them from the Persil-to-Marmite conglomerate — and many disliked the idea that Unilever would drop out of the FTSE 100 index, obliging tracker funds to sell their holdings. Polman’s plan was painted by the media

Harry Mount

Uncommon knowledge

So farewell, then, to the Common Entrance Exam, bane of a million schoolchildren’s lives since it was introduced in 1904. Three of the biggest public schools — St Paul’s, Wellington College and Westminster — are giving up the exam. From 2021, they will do the pre-test: verbal and non-verbal reasoning, maths and English, taken at the age of ten and 11. Common Entrance was a more gruelling thing, involving up to 14 exams over three days. It’s under-standable that schools want to ease the strain on over-examined children. But all the same, it’s the latest blow to the Great British Eccentric Exam Question. I still cherish the eccentric questions from

Wednesday

10 Oct 2018

James Forsyth

Will Theresa May call the DUP’s bluff on Brexit?

The threat that the DUP might vote against the Budget if it isn’t happy with where the Irish border backstop is after the October European Council all fits with their effort to persuade Number 10 that they really are serious. As I say in tomorrow’s Spectator, some in government believe that, ultimately, May is going to have to call the DUP’s bluff on extra regulatory checks in the Irish Sea. They argue that the DUP will never risk putting Jeremy Corbyn, a man who favours a united Ireland and was deeply sympathetic to the IRA, in Downing Street. But I understand that the DUP have privately emphasised to several Cabinet Ministers

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn makes May pay the price for her austerity pledge

Jeremy Corbyn had the easiest lead into Prime Minister’s Questions today, and he didn’t squander it. He’d had a week to prepare, too, as Theresa May had offered him the lead last Wednesday when she told the Tory conference that austerity is over. So Corbyn took her line and applied it to mental health, policing, schools, local government and the treatment of disabled people. His questions were long but good: they started with a retort to May’s answer on the previous topic before moving onto a new area and asking: ‘when will austerity end for’ this service. It was effective, not just because it highlighted the number of areas where

Steerpike

Watch: Labour shadow minister’s numbers gaffe

Labour frontbenchers are no strangers to getting their numbers in a muddle, but Mr S. would still expect better from the shadow treasury minister. Anneliese Dodds has just popped up on Politics Live to talk about today’s GDP figures. But when she was asked how much Britain’s economy grew by in the last three months, she didn’t know: Andrew Neil: How much did GDP grow in the 3 months to the end of September? Anneliese Dodds: Erm, I don’t know that off the top of my head AN: Well you were just talking about it, you should know that. Well I’ll tell you what it grew by 0.7 per cent.

Steerpike

Watch: Ken Clarke calls Brexiteers ‘right wing nationalists’

Oh dear. In a sure sign that tensions are flaring as the Brexit deal is finalised, Tory MP Ken Clarke has taken a leaf out of Ken Livingstone’s book when it comes to making Nazi comparisons. Speaking today at Prime Minister’s Questions, the ardent Remainer struck a hysteric note as he asked Theresa May how she would get her Brexit vote through the House of Commons. Arguing that May needed the support of pro-EU backbenchers on both sides of the political spectrum for her bill to succeed, he exclaimed to a chorus of boos: Which would reveal that the hard-line Eurosceptic views of the Bennites on the Labour front bench and

Charles Moore

Is Scotland getting bored with Nicola Sturgeon’s nationalism?

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, is not stupid, and there are signs in her annual party conference this week that she realises she pushed things too hard. Instead of clamouring for a second Scottish independence referendum, she has now switched to calling for a second Brexit referendum first. Nationalism within a wider nation, such as Scotland’s or Catalonia’s, does well when it expresses revolt, but hits a ceiling when it tries to take full independence. The classic example is Quebec, which has flirted with independence for nearly half a century. Now, as Ms Sturgeon will be uneasily aware, Quebec has become bored with its nationalists. The Parti Québécois won only

Robert Peston

Theresa May’s Brexit backstop breakthrough

I am hearing that the PM’s Brexit advisor Olly Robbins has made meaningful progress in talks with the EU’s negotiator Michel Barnier on that contentious “backstop”, or insurance policy to keep open the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland pending agreement on a permanent long-term trading relationship that achieves the same. Depending on who I talk with, there’s either been a breakthrough or things are moving in the right direction. My sense therefore is that it would be premature to crack open the champagne bottles, but maybe a half-bottle should be on ice. The most important development would be that the EU seems close to agreeing that the backstop

Tuesday

9 Oct 2018

Andrew Willshire

The price of the SNP’s Brexit strategy

Nicola Sturgeon’s indication that SNP MPs will back a second vote on Brexit might be clever politics but it is likely to stir up further animosity among English voters towards the Scots. Consider the Future of England survey, which shows that 88 per cent of English Leave voters (and 52 per cent of all English voters) would accept the break-up of the UK so long as England leaves the EU. Some might suggest that the poll is further evidence of the Little Englander mentality that will ineluctably drive the Scots to secede from the Union. But does it instead reveal something else? Perhaps, it would seem, English voters are getting as tired

Isabel Hardman

Why Chris Williamson really is happy about facing deselection

Oh, what a delicious twist in the internal bickering of the Labour party. Chris Williamson, an MP who has spent the past few months touring the country campaigning for the mandatory reselection of his colleagues – or, as he prefers to brand it, a ‘democracy roadshow’ campaigning for all MPs to go through an ‘open selection’ from their local party every electoral cycle – is being threatened with deselection himself. Williamson finds himself a target after launching into a row with the trade unions at last month’s Labour conference. The unions blocked plans for open selections, and instead went for a change in the party’s rules that makes trigger ballots

Katy Balls

Dominic Raab’s tricky first day back in the office

When Dominic Raab took up the post of Brexit Secretary in the wake of David Davis’s resignation over Chequers, a number of Tory MPs were surprised by his decision (see Geoffrey Cox for reasons to take Cabinet jobs). Some Brexiteers thought that Raab ought to have proved his Leave credentials and said no given the terms of Theresa May’s soft Brexit blueprint. Others couldn’t work out why the job appealed to an ambitious rising star given that it was by all accounts a hospital pass. Today’s Brexit statement in the Commons went some way to providing evidence for the latter point. With Theresa May lukewarm on the idea of giving

Isabel Hardman

Who can Philip Hammond blame for a tight Budget?

Cabinet ministers toddled up Downing Street this morning in a largely good mood. Most of them were relieved that last week’s Conservative conference hadn’t been the catastrophe that everyone had expected, and many were even happier that the conference had closed with Theresa May declaring that austerity is over. Of course, one of their number will be feeling rather less comfortable with that: Philip Hammond will now have to sift through even more bids from his ministerial colleagues for more funding, now that they believe they could be in line for the dividends of the end of austerity. The Chancellor now needs to work out a way of fobbing off

Steerpike

Where’s the outrage over Shaun Bailey’s slur on ‘cheeky’ boys?

Much outrage this afternoon over the Tories’ mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey. In a pamphlet for the Centre for Policy Studies think tank in 2005 on his experiences as a youth worker in West London, Bailey wrote that ‘good looking’ girls in the area ‘tend to have been around’. Since those quotes were published by Buzzfeed, critics have been quick to call out Bailey over his sexist comments. But the question that’s bugging Mr S is: why no similar outrage about what Bailey said about boys? In that same pamphlet, Bailey wrote that the ‘cheeky’ boys are those who are the most likely to have ‘been around’: ‘I say to the

Brendan O’Neill

The staggering hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton | 9 October 2018

Today Hillary Clinton slammed the Tories for failing to join the recent pile-on against Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. In a speech described by the Guardian as ‘stinging’, Clinton said it was ‘disheartening’ that Conservative MEPs in Brussels voted to ‘shield Viktor Orban from censure’. She was referring to the 18 Tories in the European Parliament who last month rejected the invoking of the punishing Article 7 of the Lisbon Treaty against Orban’s Hungary for being a prejudiced and illiberal state. Hungary is no longer a real democracy but an ‘illiberal’ one, said Clinton — and it’s shameful that Tories are cosying up with such a regime. It’s hard to