Politics Archives

Thursday

2 Mar 2017

Back into battle

On 24 June last year, in the Georgian splendour of her official residence in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square, Scotland’s First Minister offered her reaction to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. Since Scottish voters endorsed Remain, it was now, Nicola Sturgeon said, ‘highly likely’ there would be another referendum on Scottish independence. Since then that promise — one viewed with dread by the two million Scots who voted to preserve the Union in 2014 — has been variously ‘on the table’, ‘more likely’ than ever and even ‘all but inevitable’. The clock is ticking. Later this month, Sturgeon will address her party’s annual conference. She is expected to outline the

Hugo Rifkind

The real reason Ukip are tearing each other apart

If the British establishment really wants to troll Ukip, then I suppose it ought to give Douglas Carswell a knighthood for blocking Nigel Farage’s knighthood. He says he didn’t, of course, and I don’t see how he could have done. Farage, though, clearly thinks he did, and his wrath about this is the most fun thing to have happened in British politics for ages. He’s furious. His little demons are furious. Too furious, really. ‘This must be about something else,’ I kept thinking. ‘Deep down, it must be. But what?’ According to the great smoked kipper himself, in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, Carswell has been a thorn in the

Martin Vander Weyer

London Stock Exchange picked a bad year to join a pan-European project

The marriage of the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse may not be stone dead but that’s the way to bet, as Damon Runyan would have said. This so-called ‘merger of equals’ — with the Germans holding the larger stake and the top job but with the head office in London, at least to begin with — has foundered over a demand from EU competition authorities that the LSE should sell its majority stake in MTS, an Italian bond-trading platform. Having had its alternative proposal (to sell a French clearing operation) rejected, the LSE refused to comply, allegedly without first consulting its German partners. When this deal was announced a

Wednesday

1 Mar 2017

Henry Newman

Berlusconi is back – and his eurozone idea isn’t completely barmy

A potentially significant moment in the travails of the EU was lost in the drama of John Major’s (re-)intervention into the Brexit debate on Monday. Over in Italy, another former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, also made an intervention. He called for Italy to introduce a separate currency alongside the euro which would allow it to ‘recover monetary sovereignty’. Berlusconi half floated a suggestion along these lines back in 2014. But now he says he is ‘completely convinced’ by it. He suggests that Italy should keep the euro for imports and exports, while using a different currency – a new domestic money supply – for state payments to ‘help the left behind’. Berlusconi’s

Isabel Hardman

Government suffers its first Article 50 bill defeat

In the past few minutes, the government has lost a vote in the House of Lords on a key aspect of Brexit: the status of EU nationals. Peers are at the Committee Stage of the bill that allows the government to trigger Article 50, and despite attempts by Home Secretary Amber Rudd to reassure them that this issue will be the priority once the negotiations for Britain to leave the European Union have begun, they backed Amendment 9b, which says the government should guarantee now that EU nationals living in the UK will have their rights protected. The House voted 358 to 256 for the cross-party amendment. Rudd was watching

Lloyd Evans

What’s next for Jeremy Corbyn?

Got a daff pinned to your lapel? I haven’t. St David’s Day caused a predictable outbreak of Taffy-fondling in the House. Little yellow flowers winked gamely from the suits of several MPs, though many seem to be about as Welsh as Bombay Duck. What good is served by this annual flashing of custard-coloured flora? A 24-hour act of genuflection simply reminds members of a minority that the other 364 days are dedicated to those with enough power and wealth not to need a ‘Day’ with a capital letter. The passing of Gerald Kaufman drew heart-felt tributes from all sides. His death turns Kenneth Clarke into the Father of the House.

James Forsyth

Today’s PMQs only really got started when Corbyn sat down

The clash between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister used to be the main event at PMQs. But this is fast ceasing to be the case. The most interesting bit of today’s session came after Corbyn had finished asking May questions. In her exchanges with Angus Robertson, May refused to confirm that all powers in devolved areas, such as agriculture and fishing, would go to Holyrood post Brexit. Now, there is—obviously—a bit of Nationalist grievance hunting going on here and having multiple agricultural regimes within the UK would not be entirely sensible. But it would be a mistake if Brexit did not lead to a more powerful

James Forsyth

Francois Fillon limps on despite ‘fake job’ probe

Francois Fillon had previously said he would drop out of the French Presidential race if corruption allegations against him resulted in him being placed under formal investigation. But the candidate of the Republican party has just held a press conference to declare that yes, he is being placed under formal investigation over payments to his family but no, he is not dropping out of the race. He has accused the judiciary and the press of attempting a ‘political assassination’. Fillon’s decision to stay in the race increases the likelihood of a Macron/ Le Pen run off round. The latest polls show Le Pen in the lead in the first with

Steerpike

What Corbyn calls Lady Nugee

Last week Mr S revealed that Jeremy Corbyn and Seumas Milne had come up with affectionate nicknames for one another. The Labour leader refers to his director of strategy and communications as TGM, which stands for ‘The Great Milne’. Meanwhile, Milne in turn refers to his boss as TSL — ‘The Supreme Leader’, natch. So, what of the rest of their colleagues? Well, it turns out that Corbyn has a penchant for acronyms and abbreviations — referring to Emily Thornberry as ‘ET’. Only going to confirm Mr S’s suspicions that Team Corbyn really are living on another planet…

Isabel Hardman

How Corbyn failed to transform PMQs

Prime Minister’s Questions is now regarded in Westminster as being even more pointless than it used to be before. The general weakness of Jeremy Corbyn and his parliamentary party’s ongoing but powerless dissatisfaction with the Labour leader means that it is rarely a session where the Opposition lays a glove on the Prime Minister – and even more unusually a session which Labour MPs leave feeling proud of their party. It’s not just Labour that makes the session feel a bit miserable: even when Corbyn does score a hit, as he has done on social care in recent weeks, Tory backbenchers forget that their job as members of the legislature

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Sir Philip Green finally coughs up

Sir Philip Green has dug deep into his bulging pockets to plug the gap in BHS’s pension scheme. But the newspapers are in agreement: the tycoon’s £363m gesture counts for precious little. Even this huge payout won’t save Green’s reputation, says the Sun, which argues that while the former BHS boss has done the ‘right thing’, he should have done it eight months ago. Instead, the Sun says, Green had to be ‘strong-armed by politicians and an avalanche of bad publicity’ to make the right move. So while his decision to cough up will ease the worries of ex-BHS employees, it’s clear that Green has ‘become the poster boy for corporate

Freddy Gray

Donald Trump finally delivers the ‘unity speech’ America has been waiting for

Donald Trump’s first address to Congress last night was the best speech he has given since he won the election last year. A low bar, you might say, and the new Commander-in-Chief will never match the rhetorical skill of his predecessor. Yet before the joint session of Congress a few hours ago, President Trump at last delivered the ‘unity speech’ that so many Americans have been pining for. It was all the more successful for having been so long waited for: a CNN snap poll (hardly a friendly source) found a huge majority of his audience responded ‘very positively’ to the speech. The words were, in some ways, the words

Tuesday

28 Feb 2017

John Major

John Major’s Brexit speech, full transcript

Eight months ago a majority of voters opted to leave the European Union. I believed then – as I do now – that was an historic mistake, but it was one – once asked – that the British nation had every right to make. The Government cannot ignore the nation’s decision and must now shape a new future for our country. Some changes may be beneficial: others may not. A hard Brexit– which is where we seem to be headed – is high risk. Some will gain. Others – will lose. Many outcomes will be very different from present expectations. We will find, for example, that – for all the

Tom Goodenough

Will the Government’s Article 50 bill survive its big test in the Lords?

The Government is getting worried. So far, the passage of the Article 50 bill through Parliament has been relatively smooth. Tomorrow, there’s a chance that could change: peers will debate the issue of what happens to EU citizens in the UK after Brexit. This topic has been something of a political hot potato for the Government ever since Theresa May made it clear she wouldn’t guarantee the rights of the 3.3m EU citizens living in Britain to stay put. The PM’s position is that she doesn’t want to give away a useful bargaining chip, fearing that by doing so, Brits living on the continent will remain in limbo. In the

Stephen Daisley

Gerald Kaufman: Labour hero, Jewish villain

Gerald Kaufman, who has died aged 86, was instrumental in saving the Labour Party, back when the Labour Party was something that could still be saved. It was Kaufman who pithily pegged the 1983 manifesto as ‘the longest suicide note in history’. He knew the phrase would hang around the far-left and dog any attempt to dodge responsibility for the calamity. In his heart, he was a radical, but he parted ways with the 1980s Labour left in its mush-headed confusion of ends and means. The mush is now party policy but Kaufman expended considerable wit keeping it at bay during the Kinnock years. A multilateralist, the former Daily Mirror journalist

Steerpike

Keir Starmer takes a swipe at the Corbynites

Although Keir Starmer refuses to say whether he harbours ambitions to be Labour leader, the shadow Brexit secretary did do his best to dazzle hacks this afternoon as the guest of honour at today’s press gallery lunch. Alas while Starmer was full of charm for the hacks, he was less willing to wax lyrical about the current Labour leadership. Referring to the Copeland by-election defeat, he said the loss was ‘really serious’ and could not just be blames on bad weather and New Labour: ‘The timing of this lunch could not be better from my point of view and you’re probably thinking that’s because it’s five days after Copeland and

Ed West

Across the West, working-class voters are abandoning the Left

Imagine going back twenty years in a time machine, when a young Tony Blair was about to be swept to power on a wave of optimism, and telling someone* that in 2017, Labour would be on just 16 per cent among working-class voters – and this despite having a leader several octaves to the left of Blair. Not only this, but that a number of Labour seats in the north and the midlands were ‘now in Tory sights’. Imagine then telling them that this was happening while the Conservatives were making spending cuts in areas like education, and that there was an ongoing crisis in health and social care. You then let them

Steerpike

Angus Robertson’s celebrity endorsement fails to ring true

Oh dear. With the SNP thought to be on manoeuvres over a second independence referendum, today the party have been at pains to stress that any future vote would be down to the actions of Theresa May’s government. So, Angus Robertson must have thought he was in luck when ‘Tony Robinson OBE’ retweeted him saying exactly this. The deputy leader of the SNP took to Twitter to say he was ‘genuinely starstruck’. Only it was the wrong Tony Robinson. Rather than the Blackadder actor, this ‘Tony Robinson OBE’ is a ‘Speaker & Author on “Freedom from Bosses Forever”‘. As for the other Robinson? Well, during the last independence referendum, the Labour

Katy Balls

Ukip’s troubles descend into farce

Although last week’s by-elections exposed cracks in Labour, it’s Ukip that has gone into free fall as a result. After Paul Nuttall failed to win in Stoke-on-Trent Central, both Nigel Farage and chief donor Arron Banks were quick to go on the attack. Over the weekend, Banks called for Nuttall to make him party chairman or else. Now both Farage and Banks are gunning for Douglas Carswell to be expelled from the party over reports that Ukip’s only MP frustrated Farage’s chances of being awarded a knighthood (it turns out that the anti-establishment politician is okay with some aspects of the establishment after all). Banks has since promised to run against Carswell in

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: ‘Moaning’ Major’s unwelcome Brexit intervention

The ghosts of Prime Ministers past aren’t making life easy for Theresa May. John Major has now followed in the haunted footsteps of Tony Blair by criticising his successor’s approach to Brexit. Major used a speech yesterday to say people are being offered an ‘unreal’ vision of Brexit by the Government. Unsurprisingly, Major’s intervention has won him few friends in the newspaper editorials this morning. The Sun says it’s good news that Theresa May – and not John Major is in charge. After all, if the former PM was involved in Brexit talks, his ‘defeatist gloom’ would inevitably mean that things ‘would end as badly as he predicts’. Of course, Major does

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