Politics

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

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Jacob Rees-Mogg – We must be stronger in our Brexit negotiations

Andrew Marr returned to our screens this week after recovering from his kidney operation. His first interview was with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Chairman of the European Research Group and currently the bookies’ favourite to be the next Prime Minister. Marr inquired as to how Rees-Mogg felt the government’s negotiations with the EU were progressing, particularly regarding the present stalemate over potential customs arrangements post-Brexit and the knock-on impact for the Irish border: AM: [The Prime Minister] thinks this idea of ‘We’re not putting up a hard border, let someone else do it if they dare’… is irresponsible, and she’s said so much to you. JRM: …I think that is a

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Who is the only cabinet minister who never stops thinking?

‘Onward’ is the name of the latest movement — ‘think-tank’ is not quite the right phrase — to try to revitalise Conservatism. It is led by some of the most able of the new political generation, such as Neil O’Brien and Tom Tugendhat, and under the patronage of the only current cabinet minister who never stops thinking — Michael Gove. It will perform the necessary healing work of linking metropolitans and provincials currently at loggerheads — Camerons and Mays, you might say — in a creative alliance. But there is an annoying convention of party political thinking that one always has to be gooey about the future. Words like ‘modern’,

Saturday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Ireland’s referendum shows that some people only like democracy when it gives them what they want

So referendums are good now? The turnaround has been astonishing. The very people who have spent the best part of two years in moral meltdown at the fact that Britons were given a referendum on membership of the EU are now beside themselves with joy over the abortion referendum in Ireland. ‘You know who loved referendums? HITLER’, they said endlessly about the EU referendum, seeming to suffer from a bad bout of the Ken Livingstone Hitler Tourette’s. Yet now they’ve magically forgotten that all referendums are basically acts of fascism and are hailing the Irish people’s mass vote for the right of women to secure an abortion as a wonderful

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

What really happened in Ireland’s abortion referendum

The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, had declared that there would not be celebrations if and when the Yes side won in yesterday’s referendum on liberalising the abortion laws. But there’s a decidedly celebratory aspect to his side, now it turns out that nearly 70 per cent of voters voted for change. ‘Democracy in action,’ is what he now says. ‘It’s looking like we will make history.’ Or as Miriam Lord, the Irish Times’ sketchwriter, says with the unconcealed partisanship that characterised that paper’s approach to the poll, and incidentally channelling When Harry Met Sally: ‘Yes, Yes, Yes; a resounding, emphatic Yes. Suffocating old certainties, unrepresentative lobby groups and celibate

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The problem taxing the Tories

Political Cabinet on Tuesday was treated to a polling presentation that highlighted the dilemma the Tories are facing. When voters are asked what the most important issue facing the country is, they reply Brexit and the NHS. But when they are asked what the most pressing issue for them personally is, they say the cost of living. And what’s the most popular Tory policy since the election? The stamp duty cut for first time buyers. As I write in the Sun this morning, the political implications of all this is clear: Voters, who are most worried about the cost of living, won’t thank politicians who hike their taxes. Several of

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Liz Truss talks Instagram at Cabinet

Although Conservative MPs were recently given training to brush up their Instagram skills, there’s one Cabinet minister who requires no such help. Step forward Liz Truss. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has carved out a niche on social media thanks to her hashtags and puns. One of my favourite things from tonight's event is that @ruthamos has launched a #Girlswithdrills campaign. I enjoy a nice bit of drilling myself. #girljobs #IWD2018 pic.twitter.com/ktYJUIOm08 — Liz Truss (@trussliz) March 8, 2018 Now that enthusiasm has reached the Cabinet table. Mr S understands that Truss raised Instagram at this week’s Cabinet. The Conservative MP told her colleagues that it had ‘never been

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Anna Soubry speaks for the nation on Question Time… for once

These days Mr S rarely – if ever – finds himself agreeing with Anna Soubry on politics. The arch-Remainer has made it her mission to keep Britain in the customs union, the single market and ideally – Steerpike suspects – the EU. Yet, on Question Time this week, the Conservative MP managed to briefly strike a chord with many Brexiteers and Remainers alike: ‘Good Lord, no.’ That said, if Soubry does go ahead with her customs union rebellion on the EU withdrawal bill, things may get very fraught indeed…

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

The Tories are the masters of ‘vice signalling’

If you want to get on in right-wing politics, it is essential you master the art of vice signalling. You must show you are tough, hard-headed, a dealer in uncomfortable truths, and, above all, that you live in ‘the real world’ – as if any of us had the option of living anywhere else. In a Spectator piece entitled ‘the awful rise of virtue signalling’, James Bartholomew staked a fair claim to have invented or at least fleshed out vice signalling’s antithesis in 2015. It’s noticeable how often virtue signalling consists of saying you hate things. It is camouflage. The emphasis on hate distracts from the fact you are really saying how

Pádraig Belton

The abortion referendum is Ireland’s Brexit moment

Is the abortion referendum going to be Ireland’s Brexit moment? Despite the financial crisis, a clerical scandal and a vote on gay marriage, the country had managed to steer itself relatively harmoniously along. Yet just as the EU referendum brought to the surface deep tensions across Britain, this week’s vote is in danger of doing the same to Ireland. From the outside, a decisive vote in favour of repealing the clause in Ireland’s constitution that gives the unborn equal rights with the already born might have been just another chapter in Ireland’s journey towards European secular modernity. But a fiercely-fought referendum battle has instead weaponised every single divide that was lurking

Thursday

The Spectator

Carney’s errors

Soon after he became his party’s leader, David Cameron spoke dismissively of Conservatives who ‘bang on about Europe’. He had a point. The subject has a peculiar ability to turn intelligent people into crashing bores who obsess over Europe to the exclusion of all else. Often, the subject warps good judgment. Since the referendum, this phenomenon has become much worse. Take the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney. Twice this week, he has claimed that households are £900 worse off as a result of the referendum. Why? Because his officials had overestimated salary growth, and he sees the Brexit vote as an explanation for their error. This is odd. Given

Edward Condon

Jacob Rees-Mogg and the liberal inquisition

Trying to make Christian politicians squirm is a favourite occasional sport among political broadcasters in Westminster. The former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron was, for a season, the preferred quarry as he writhed for the cameras most obligingly under increasingly forensic questioning of his views on gay marriage. More recently, the attention has turned to Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has now endured several rounds of on-air questioning about his Catholic faith. Refreshingly, Rees-Mogg has proven to be both unapologetic and unflappable when quizzed about his faith.  On Tuesday, he appeared on the Daily Politics, where Jo Coburn invited him to praise the many worthy qualities of Ruth Davidson, as a politician and

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Changing Ireland’s abortion laws would be a backward step

It will, as one pro-life campaigner told me, take an act of God to swing the Irish referendum for the No side tomorrow. I’m all for referendums but this one has been so wildly unbalanced as to make the Brexit campaign look almost effete in its regard for impartiality and fair play. The polls suggest a win for the Yes side, on repealing the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution which protects the right to life of the unborn – something around the 44-32 per cent margin, according to the last Irish Times poll. It’s a big deal, abortion. But there is not one political party that represents the No

Dominic Cummings

Why I’m calling parliament’s bluff

Vote Leave director Dominic Cummings has been warned he could find himself in contempt of parliament for refusing to appear before a select committee on fake news. Here is an edited version of his response to Damian Collins, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee chair: You talk of ‘contempt of Parliament’. You seem unaware that most of the country feels contempt for Parliament and this contempt is growing. You have failed miserably over Brexit. You have not even bothered to educate yourselves on the basics of ‘what the Single Market is’, as Ivan Rogers explained in detail yesterday. We want £350 million a week for the NHS plus long-term consistent

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Boris Johnson targeted by Russian pranksters

Boris Johnson has been caught in a prank call by a pair of Russian comedians posing as the Armenian prime minister. The Foreign Secretary is recorded discussing Russia’s involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and offering tips to the pranksters on how to deal with Vladimir Putin. In a recording of the phone conversation posted on YouTube, Boris tells one of the duo: ‘We don’t want a cold war but we do want to see an improvement in the way Russia behaves’ After an 18-minute discussion, the call ends abruptly. The Foreign Office has confirmed that the recording is of Boris Johnson. So, how did this security breach come

Nicholas Farrell

Italy’s new prime minister is a Latin version of Jacob Rees-Mogg

The people of the Eurozone’s third largest economy  – Italy –  yesterday evening became the first in western Europe to get what is popularly known as a ‘populist’ government. The imperial eurocracy will not – cannot – allow such a mortal threat to the EU from the patriotic people to survive – not in Italy. The markets are getting decidedly agitated. Game on. Giuseppe Conte, a 53-year-old law professor at the University of Florence, who has never been involved in politics let alone been elected to the Italian Parliament, is Italian Prime Minister. More than two months after inconclusive elections on 4th March, the Italian President Sergio Mattarella was compelled

Jamie Bartlett

Ireland’s abortion vote and the wild west of online adverts

It’s sometimes hard to know who’s really behind decisions at big tech firms. It could have been the PR team (‘we don’t want more negative press’), the policy team (‘the luddites in parliament want to regulate us’) or the engineers (‘we can’t stop it’). Whoever it was, a couple of weeks back both Google and Facebook announced measures to prevent foreign interference in tomorrow’s Irish referendum on the eighth amendment, which effectively outlaws abortion. Facebook is only allowing organisations based in Ireland to run ads about the subject; Google’s gone one further and banned them all.   I suspect it was a rare instance of everyone agreeing. After relentless stories about Cambridge

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MP vs Owen Jones: Would Corbyn have supported a government led by Attlee?

It’s safe to say that the uneasy peace formed in the Labour party after the snap election is coming to an end. Labour MP Ian Austin has today penned an article for PoliticsHome which is titled: ‘The current Labour leadership is completely outside Labour’s mainstream tradition’. And he doesn’t mean that as a compliment. In the article, the MP for Dudley North takes issue with both his leader and his leader’s chief cheerleader Owen Jones, the Guardian columnist. Austin says Corbyn and the hard left have ‘taken over the Labour Party and want to turn it from a mainstream social democratic party into something very different’. The Labour MP says

Steerpike Steerpike

Scottish Conservative MP comes out for Gove

On Monday night, Michael Gove set tongues wagging in Westminster by joining forces with Ruth Davidson to launch new Conservative think tank Onward. With down-hearted Conservatives hoping the duo could form a future dream ticket in a Tory leadership election, the Defra Secretary dampened enthusiasm slightly by comparing himself and the leader of the Scottish Conservatives to Ike and Tina Turner –  a couple in which one side has been accused of violent spousal abuse. Not that this has put everybody off. Last night Ross Thomson spoke at the Two Chairman as part of a Conservatives for Liberty event. Mr S’s mole at the event reports that the Scottish Conservative

Dominic Cummings

Theresa May’s Brexit ‘strategy’ is a shambles

Dear Tory MPs and donors, I’ve avoided writing about the substance of Brexit and the negotiations since the anniversary last year but a few of you have been in touch recently asking ‘what do you think?’ so… Vote Leave said during the referendum that: 1) promising to use the Article 50 process would be stupid and the UK should maintain the possibility of making real preparations to leave while NOT triggering Article 50 2) triggering Article 50 quickly without discussions with our EU friends and without a plan ‘would be like putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger’. Following this advice would have maintained the number of positive branching histories of the

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

12 times Labour failed to give Red Ken the boot

There are few sights more pitiful than Labour ‘moderates’ – I prefer to call them what they are: Corbyn-enablers – plating up meagre scraps as a feast of optimism for the party’s future. Last week, it was the routing of Momentum – and Unite-backed candidates for the Lewisham East by-election. That didn’t last long. Now, it’s Ken Livingstone, allowed to resign rather than risk possible expulsion. In its ‘all out war’ on anti-Semitism, Labour sued for peace on the enemy’s terms without firing a single shot.  Expelling Livingstone would not have undone the bias and abuse the party has inflicted on British Jews. It would have been a hollow gesture in