Politics

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

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Theresa May was right to withdraw the whip from Tory MP over racist comment

Theresa May has withdrawn the whip from the Tory MP Anne Marie Morris after Morris talked about ‘the n—– in the woodpile’ at a think tank meeting. May has made the right decision. Morris claims that her use of the phrase was unintentional, but it is hard to see how that could be the case. There are certain phrases—such as call a spade, spade—that have racist connotations that most people are unaware of. But this phrase is not one of them; the first word in it rather gives the game away. Morris’ behaviour feels far short of what we should expect from our MPs, so the withdrawal of the whip

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why do gay lefties hate Tories but ignore Corbyn’s ugly record?

Gay lefties have hated gay Tories ever since learning of their existence. The concept baffles them, like pro-life women or alcohol-free wine. Those with long memories are aware of the Conservative Party’s ugly record on gay equality. This is the party of Section 28, of differential consent laws, of fretting about children ‘being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay’. But gay Tories, having largely rehabilitated their party and with many of the major gay rights battles settled favourably, hoped the rainbow flag might finally have space for a stripe of blue.  At London Pride over the weekend, it was clear this is a forlorn hope, for

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Tory MP caught on tape using the N-word

Is Theresa May’s working majority about to get even smaller? After the Prime Minister called out unacceptable abuse directed at MPs, Theresa May is having to contend with bad behaviour from one of her own. The Huff Post UK has obtained a recording of Anne Marie Morris, the MP for Newton Abbot, using the N-word during an appearance on a Brexit panel – where she discussed what Britain’s exit from the EU meant for financial services: ‘Now I’m sure there will be many people who’ll challenge that, but my response and my request is look at the detail, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Now we get to the real n—-r in the woodpile

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Damian Green calls for a new ‘grown-up way of doing politics’. Will it work?

Even before the election delivered a hammer blow to the Tories, their ‘strong and stable’ mantra was coming back to bite. Now, their warning of a Labour-led ‘coalition of chaos’ is also rearing its head once again. Fresh from wrapping up their deal with the DUP, the Government is calling on the opposition to come together on Brexit and lend a helping hand. Theresa May will say the other parties should offer up their ideas and be prepared to ‘debate and discuss’ with the Government – not only on leaving the EU but on a host of other areas of policy as well. Damian Green used his Today interview this morning

Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn plays it safe in Hastings

With a recent YouGov poll giving Labour a six-point-lead over the Conservatives, it’s little wonder that Jeremy Corbyn is keen to pitch his party as a government-in-waiting. In this vein, the Labour leader has been visiting Tory marginals on weekends. On Saturday, Corbyn was in Hastings & Rye, where the Home Secretary clung onto her seat by the smallest of margins in the snap election: ‘Once a ‘safe Tory seat’, now a marginal, we will win Hastings & Rye at the next election.’ We took our campaign to Amber Rudd’s constituency. Once a “safe Tory seat”, now a marginal, we will win Hastings & Rye at the next election. pic.twitter.com/aIjLrmtDEd

Sunday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Theresa May’s opposition plea looks weak – but it could expose Labour’s Brexit position

What a difference three months can make. In April, Theresa May stood on the steps of Downing Street and announced that she was calling a snap election to increase her majority and stop opposition parties from ‘political game-playing’ during the Brexit process. Having lost that majority in the subsequent election, the Prime Minister will this week mark her one-year anniversary in No 10 with a plea to said parties asking them to ‘contribute, not just criticise’. May will ask the other parties to ‘come forward’ with their views and ideas on everything from domestic policies to Brexit ‘at this critical time in our history’: ‘So I say to the other parties in the

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Vince Cable says Brexit may never happen

Sir Vince Cable – ‘Brexit may never happen’ Sir Vince Cable, who remains the only candidate in the running for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats, has once again hit the headlines due to his firm standpoint against the UK leaving the European Union. On this occasion, Sir Vince has opined to Andrew Marr that Brexit may not actually happen and that the Liberal Democrat policy of a second referendum could still be on the cards: Marr: On Brexit, do you want Britain to fail economically? Cable: I do not want it to fail economically. I don’t think the public voted to have cuts in their standard of living… Marr:

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Kensington MP’s bad turn on Sunday Politics

This week, Emma Dent Coad, the Labour MP for Kensington, called for Sir Martin Moore-Bick to be replaced as head of the Grenfell Tower inquiry. The reason? He does not ‘understand human beings’. Happily, her appearance on the Sunday Politics this morning presented an opportunity for Dent Coad to elaborate on her comments. Yet aside from the well reported ruling Moore-Bick made in a housing case in 2014, Dent Coad did not seem to have that much evidence for her claim. In fact, in the interview with Andrew Neil, it soon transpired that she hadn’t actually met the judge: AN: This judge leading the Grenfell inquiry, have you met him? EDC: I

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Priti Patel is wrong about overseas aid and immigration

The Empire for International Development has a tough job justifying its deeply unpopular budget. In recent years, it has made out that development aid will stem the flow of migration. The following line appears in a piece that Priti Patel, the DFID Secretary, writes for the Sunday Telegraph today. We are taking immediate steps to protect our borders and tackle people smuggling. But the only way to resolve this crisis in the long term is to address the root causes. We need to create jobs across Africa and provide its growing population with a route out of poverty where they are. Her overall point – about how Africa needs more capitalism – is brave and

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why Theresa May isn’t ‘dead in the water’ just yet

It’s two weeks until the summer recess and judging by today’s papers, that’s two weeks too late. Despite Theresa May’s positive trip to the G20 summit, the Sundays are filled with tales of leadership plotting and planned Conservative rebellions. Although Philip Hammond was heralded as a caretaker PM a few weeks ago, it’s now David Davis who is being talked up to take the reins from May. The Mail on Sunday reports that Davis’s ally Andrew Mitchell denounced the PM as ‘dead in the water’ at a Tory dinner (though bear in mind his comment is two weeks old – a long, long time in politics – and the Sunday Times quotes him as

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Fishing could be the scales on which Brexit success is measured

I voted Remain last year for two reasons. First, however irritating I found some aspects of the EU, I could not vote for the chaos I believed would follow a Leave victory. From the accession of Theresa May to the night of the general election, that looked like an excess of pessimism; now it looks like wise foresight. The second prong was an analysis of my own and my neighbours’ economic circumstances: in what sense was EU membership actually making us worse off? In my own case, not at all; local shops, hospitality outlets and tourist attractions, likewise. Subsidised hill farmers and fatter farming cats on the flatlands? Not really,

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What Theresa May should say on her anniversary

Thursday marks the first anniversary of Theresa May becoming Prime Minister. As I say in The Sun this morning, several of her closest allies regard this as an opportunity to start trying to win back voters’ trust and respect. May has, by necessity, got rather good at apologising post-election. Her it’s my mess and I’ll get us out of it line to the 1922 Committee staved off an immediate leadership challenge. While her humility at the Tory donors ball at the Hurlingham Club went down well with the party’s money men. But what May hasn’t had is a moment of contrition with the public. She hasn’t yet come up with a

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Spectator readers’ tea party, in pictures

We host a lot of events at The Spectator but we’ve just held our favourite: the readers’ tea party. About 200 subscribers come to the back garden for tea and cakes to meet our writers, our editors and each other. T-Sticks supplied the tea, H. Forman & Son the food and Taki brought along a bottle of Lagavulin for those in the mood for something stronger. The thrill, for us in 22 Old Queen St, is meeting the people that we spend our working lives thinking about. It’s difficult to imagine a typical Spectator reader because they don’t really exist: this afternoon, for example, I met a policeman, a mathematician, a specialist in Chinese antiquities, a joiner and

Steerpike Steerpike

Caption contest: why doesn’t he hold my hand anymore?

Theresa May is spending the day flying the flag for Cool Britannia at the G20 summit in Hamburg. The Prime Minister promised to use the trip to show that Britain remains a global player. But with May also planning to bring up the Paris climate change agreement with President Trump, how will the special relationship cope under the strain? Captions in the comments. Update: … and the winner is Voices of Reason with ‘Why doesn’t he hold my hand anymore’

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The government can’t do its job properly with Theresa May in charge

Time was when Theresa May ran such a tight ship as Prime Minister that even so much as talking off the record to journalists was seen as a bit of a risk for a Cabinet minister to take. But post-election, the Prime Minister has so little authority that a number of things that previously seemed impossible are now quite safe. The first is that it’s pretty much fine for a Cabinet minister to take a different stance to his or her colleagues. The main risk is not to the minister themselves but to the Prime Minister as her government appears to have five different stances on every important matter, with

Steerpike Steerpike

David Dimbleby stays up past his bedtime

On last night’s episode of Question Time, David Dimbleby made his way to Burton upon Trent to chair a panel made up of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Richard Burgon, Caroline Lucas, Susie Boniface and (Sir) Craig Oliver. Unlike last week, the BBC anchor did not have to eject any audience members for rowdy behaviour. However, that’s not to say the programme was without interruption. Halfway through the episode, a phone went off. On closer inspection, it transpired out that it was Dimbleby’s phone: ‘This is my stopwatch saying it’s bedtime!’ At 78, are the late nights beginning to get to Dimbleby?

Thursday

Peter Jones

Age need not weary them

Prime Minister May is aged 60, the Labour cult-personality Jeremy Corbyn 68, and putative Lib-Dem leader Sir Vince Cable 74. All too old? The biographer and philosopher Plutarch (2nd century ad) wrote an essay entitled ‘Whether the Older Man Should Serve in Government’, and came to the view that he should — on certain conditions. First, he said, there was no greater honour (and therefore, to an ancient Greek, no greater reward) than serving both the community and the state in a legal and democratic government. If one had been doing that all one’s life, it was disgraceful to abandon it, allowing one’s hard-earned standing to wither away in favour of

The Spectator

Letters | 6 July 2017

The wrong choice Sir: Sebastian Vella’s new-found interest in politics is to be commended, but he has made the wrong choice (‘Letter from a Corbynista’, 1 July). He praises Jeremy Corbyn for being ‘politically consistent and transparent’ but believes that Corbyn and John McDonnell do not ‘aspire to a one-party socialism or a communist state’. If you check their record, that is exactly what Corbyn and McDonnell do aspire to. He also trusts the democrats in Labour to rein in its leaders. Corbyn and McDonnell’s record over the decades includes extra-parliamentary activities such as demonstrations and marches, support for strikes, and even (as Charles Moore reminded us) for terrorist bombers. It

The Spectator

The beginning is nigh

Just a few weeks ago, the Conservatives triumphed in the local government elections and Theresa May was hailed as an all-conquering Brexit Boudicca who could do no wrong. Now, after her general election humiliation, an opposite view has taken hold: that the government is a disaster, the country is in an irredeemable mess, Brexit has been derailed and nothing can go right. This is a sign that parliamentary recess is overdue; a great many people are -exhausted and a little emotional. But the facts, for those with an eye to see them, do not give grounds for such pessimism. The Tories have lost their majority and deserved to do so

Lauren Mcevatt

The devolution settlement has been bypassed once. Will it happen again?

The Government’s eleventh-hour political solution to Stella Creasy’s abortion amendment to the Queen’s Speech could create an unhelpful precedent within the delicate balance of the devolution settlements. I have long opposed the abhorrent abortion policies both north and south of the Irish border, so my concerns about last Thursday’s funding fudge to allow women from Northern Ireland to receive funding for abortions in England via the Government Equalities Office are purely technical. While the decision will address one form of inequality, it will also highlight the many other inequalities across the borders. The lack of understanding of our system of devolution is staggering. Devolved governments of every political persuasion, will, at some point, enact policies distasteful