Politics

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

Friday

Douglas Murray

At least Martin McGuinness made old age. Many others didn’t

When Martin McGuinness said he was retiring from politics due to serious illness it gave vent, almost immediately, to the sort of ‘How McGuinness became a man of peace’ stories. Personally I have always thought the salient point about the man is not that he became a man of peace but that he was ever a man of violence. Over recent years a narrative has developed around the Troubles, that the people who ‘became men of peace’ are much to be admired. This narrative overlooks the fact that the real people to be admired are those from all sides who – despite sharing many or all of the same grievances as the ‘men

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Emily Thornberry’s opposition blues on Question Time

On Thursday, Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet found themselves in disarray after the Labour leader suggested he would issue a three-line whip for MPs to vote to trigger Article 50. This upset many in his party as they had hoped he would make Labour’s consent — at the very least — conditional upon certain details being revealed or caveats regarding Britain’s possible future as a tax haven. So, with that in mind, brains at Labour decided the best plan of action was to send Emily Thornberry on Question Time to field questions on the matter. Alas the shadow foreign secretary soon found herself under fire from all sides as Chris Grayling took issue with

Steerpike Steerpike

Will George Galloway come to Corbyn’s rescue in Stoke-on-Trent?

After Labour party members in Copeland rejected Jeremy Corbyn’s preferred choice as candidate for the upcoming by-election in favour of former doctor Gillian Troughton, the hunt is on to find a suitable candidate for the upcoming Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election — to be held on the same day. With Tristram Hunt quitting to take a job with the V&A, Labour MPs are worried the seat could be lost to Ukip or the Tories. But fear not. Help is at hand. Could George Galloway be about to come to comrade Corbyn’s rescue? Speaking on his Talk Radio show, the Respect party leader — who was expelled from Labour in 2003 — claims that he is the only

Thursday

The Spectator

Doing Brexit right

From the start of the European Union referendum campaign, competing visions of Brexit have been advocated. To Nigel Farage, the case for leaving the European Union was all about what we did not like (the diktats, the immigration, etc). This played into the caricature cleverly presented by the Remain campaign: the shaking fist of Little England, a country that had had enough of foreigners and the tolerance that the European project represented. Then came the vision put to Britain by the Vote Leave campaign, articulated by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. It was of a globally minded Britain, fed up with the EU’s parochialism. A country itching to go out

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 19 January 2017

It is hard to be shocked by anything in these tumultuous times, but I was brought up short by the ‘attic’ headline of Tuesday’s Times, advertising the paper’s T2 section: ‘Up close and personal with Donald Trump — Michael Gove’ , it said, and continued, ‘Sex after 50: it’s fabulous’.. The earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous offered their famous Twelve Steps, which the drunkard must take in order to recover, born of their own experience. The Twelve Steps are still the foundation of AA. They work because they are taken by people who have hit rock bottom and realise it. The first step says, ‘We admitted we were powerless over

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The irony of Corbyn’s three-line whip

Jeremy Corbyn is a famous rebel, so famous that when he was elected, many in his party wondered how he might tell MPs to vote the way he wanted them to when he himself had refused to listen to the whips throughout his backbench career. When he was still a backbencher, he enjoyed telling a tale about Sadiq Khan, then his whip, ringing him up to check he would definitely be rebelling on a certain vote, and not bothering to waste his energy trying to get him to abstain instead. Now the Labour leader is faced with one of those awkward moments that involve him telling his MPs to vote

Steerpike Steerpike

Seumas Milne exits the Guardian for good

When Seumas Milne first announced that he was joining Labour as Jeremy Corbyn’s director of communications in 2015, it was made clear that he would not be exiting the Guardian for good. Instead — in an arrangement that raised eyebrows in Westminster — Milne would merely work for Corbyn while taking leave from his role as the paper’s associate editor. Since then, there has been much talk about Milne’s wish to return to the Grauniad. However, subsequent discussions on the topic failed to come to fruition over concerns from officials that a return as associate editor could cause issues with regards to the paper’s editorial line. Now Milne has decided to quit the

Steerpike Steerpike

Nicholas Soames gives Boris a telling off

On Wednesday, No 10 was forced to clarify that the Foreign Secretary had not compared the French President to a Nazi after Boris Johnson warned Francois Hollande against trying to ‘administer punishment beatings’ in the manner of some ‘world war two movie’. Alas not everyone in Johnson’s party has proved so helpful in coming to his defence. An ill-timed press release from the Holocaust Educational Trust yesterday saw Sajid Javid criticise those who make ‘glib comparisons’ with the Nazis. Now, Nicholas Soames has added to Johnson’s woes. Mr S was present at Bright Blue’s Drink Tank last night where Winston Churchill’s grandson had some choice words for the Foreign Secretary: ‘Much as I worship and revere the

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Voting ‘leave’ meant leaving the single market – and most voters knew it

The angrier, snootier sections of the Remain camp have done many bad things since 23 June. Some have suggested Brexit should be overthrown. Others have issued terrible libels against Leave voters, branding them ‘low information’ and xenophobic. Witness Nick Clegg in this Guardian video published this week having a good old laugh at Sheffield people who voted for Brexit after apparently falling for the ‘emotionally pungent’ claims of Leave leaders. But worst of all has been their sly rewriting of history. They’re engaged in a campaign to misremember the referendum, to depict it as a time of lies and idiocy, of racism unleashed. They’ve cranked up the memory holes, sharpened

Theresa May

Theresa May’s Davos speech – full text

This is an organisation that is, as it says in the very first line of your Mission Statement, committed to “improving the state of the world”. Those of us who meet here are all – by instinct and outlook – optimists who believe in the power of public and private cooperation to make the world of tomorrow better than the world of today. And we are all united in our belief that that world will be built on the foundations of free trade, partnership and globalisation. Yet beyond the confines of this hall, those forces for good that we so often take for granted are being called into question. The

Liam Halligan

Ireland will have the hardest Brexit of all

Irish eyes aren’t smiling – when it comes to Brexit. As one who hails from the Emerald Isle, I’ve taken plenty of ‘schtick’ from Irish diplomats, relatives and pundits after publicly voting to leave. For the Republic of Ireland, European Union membership carries deep political significance. Joining in 1973, along with the UK but on equal terms, was hugely symbolic. A country then less than 30 years old was finally able to represent itself on the world stage. It is this escape from British dominance, more than Brussels-funded motorways, that makes EU membership central to modern Ireland’s identity.  Liam Halligan and James Forsyth discuss Theresa May’s Brexit plans: That’s why

Ben Clatworthy

Late-season skiing

There’s trouble brewing in the Alps. Skiers arriving in the mountains over Christmas were greeted, not by snow-clad chalets and oodles of fresh powder, but by thin ribbons of artificial snow snaking down green mountainsides. For the fourth time in as many years, the ‘white gold’ had failed to materialise. Whether climate change is to blame is anyone’s guess (I’m no scientist), but it’s certainly a worrying pattern. Parts of the Alps experienced their driest December in 150 years, and in many French resorts the only snow for Christmas was artificial. Initially it looked as though holidaymakers had learnt their lesson. Until this year’s unseasonably early November snowfalls, tour operators

James Forsyth James Forsyth

May has taken back control

‘No negotiation without notification’ has been the EU’s mantra since 24 June last year. Its leaders have been determined that there’ll be no talks before Britain has formally submitted its Article 50 letter, starting the two-year countdown to this country leaving the union. Even now, after Theresa May has set out her Brexit plans with a decent amount of detail, the EU is sticking to this line. Why? Because it wants Britain to be negotiating against the clock. Despite this, there have been informal conversations over the past six months that have helped forge the Brexit strategy that May set out on Tuesday. EU leaders’ insistence that they won’t compromise

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The love Labour’s losing

Stoke-on-Trent is an unsettled place, figuratively and literally. The ground under the city is riddled with shafts from coal and ironstone mining. Some of its most beautiful buildings are propped up by metal supports to prevent subsidence and the council once worried that homes earmarked for demolition would instead demolish themselves, collapsing into the mines below. The ceramics industry has retreated, leaving a moonscape where pottery kilns used to fill the city with smoke and glow. When I visited Stoke as a housing reporter in 2011, shortly after the demise of the housing market renewal programme, it was clear that the city felt abandoned by all politicians. There were families

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Sajid Javid’s warning over ‘Nazi smears’ catches up with Boris

Although Theresa May used her Brexit speech on Tuesday to emphasise to European leaders that she hoped for a close and mutually beneficial relationship between the UK and the EU, not everyone appears to have got the memo. Today Boris Johnson found himself in hot water after he warned Francois Hollande against trying to ‘administer punishment beatings’ in the manner of some ‘world war two movie’. While Downing Street insist that the Foreign Secretary wasn’t comparing the French President to a Nazi, several EU officials have since let their outrage over the WW2 jibe be known. While Labour’s Wes Streeting has accused the Foreign Secretary of being crass, Johnson is also facing criticism from his own party.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Corbyn’s confusion over the single market

Jeremy Corbyn’s attack line on Theresa May at Prime Minister’s Questions today might have been more effective had the Labour leader not appeared confused about what he was asking. He had no option but to talk about Brexit, something he has tried to avoid in his year and a half in the job because of his own ambivalence over Europe and his disagreements with his party about what is particularly bad about the European Union. May teased the Labour leader about his apparent confusion yesterday over whether membership of the single market was the same as access to the single market, telling him that ‘I’ve got a plan, he doesn’t

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Theresa May’s Twelve Steps for EU recovery

The earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous offered their famous Twelve Steps, which the drunkard must take in order to recover, born of their own experience. The Twelve Steps are still the foundation of AA. They work because they are taken by people who have hit rock bottom and realise it. The first step says, ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.’ Theresa May’s Twelve Objectives, announced in her outstanding speech at Lancaster House of Tuesday, play a similar role for national recovery, substituting the words ‘European Union’ for ‘alcohol’. Until the June referendum, Mrs May, like millions of others, barely even admitted there

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP MP’s fake news

Although Theresa May’s speech revealing her plan for a global Britain was well-received by her party and much of the media yesterday, the SNP found much cause for concern. While Nicola Sturgeon has said May’s announcement that the UK will leave the single market makes a second independence referendum more likely, Paul Monaghan has a different interpretation. The SNP MP has tweeted out what Theresa May has said ‘in her own words’ a hard Brexit would mean. It comes with a quote — attributed to May — claiming: ‘Yes, things will cost more. Yes, you’ll have to retire later. Yes, our standing in the world will decline.’ Only May said

Tuesday

Stephen Booth

Theresa May prepares to play tough

Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech sought to answer the question: does the Government have a plan for Brexit? Open Europe’s judgement is that she succeeded. And she also started to set out a wider vision for the UK’s relationship with the EU, linking it both to Britain’s place in the world, and to her own domestic vision – for the sort of country ‘we want to be’. At first sight the Prime Minister’s 12-point plan for a global Britain seems to be a masterclass in common sense. We welcome her clarity on various points, including that – inevitably – both Houses of Parliament will vote on the UK’s final deal

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A full English Brexit is on the menu

Kipling wrote about Brexit first, you know: “It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: Though we know we should defeat you, We have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away.” That, in essence, was David Cameron’s approach to the eurosceptics within his own party. Promise to pay just enough to keep them satisfied in the hope they would not then be emboldened to come back for more. But, as Kipling knew: “And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we’ve proved it again and again, That if once you have