Politics

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

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory MPs turn on Steve Hilton over resignation honours row – ‘pompous arse’

As David Cameron continues to receive flak over his resignation honours list, yesterday his old pal Steve Hilton stuck his head above the parapet to make his criticism be known. Not content with going against his old boss on the EU, Hilton — who is Cameron’s former director of strategy — says the honours system is ‘corrupt’. Alas it turns out not everyone on the Tory benches is so happy about Hilton sharing his views from across the pond. Richard Benyon, the former environment minister, took to Twitter to call Hilton a ‘pompous arse’: Oh joy. I thought we had heard last of @SteveHiltonx but he's back from his Californian

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Owen Smith looks to 1945 to inspire Labour

Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith have faced off in their first hustings of what has already proved to be a bitter leadership campaign. That disunity and turmoil was on display on stage in Cardiff last night. The Labour leader hit back at Smith’s dig about the ‘fractured’ state of the party by saying it was hard to preach about unity when Smith and others had ‘resigned from the shadow cabinet’. This was business as usual then. So whilst Corbyn and Smith made it clear they will never see eye to eye, what did they have to say on what they actually stand for? Whilst their clashes on stage only reveal the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Corbyn’s gong for Chakrabarti is his biggest own goal yet

It is beginning to look like a bit of a trend this year: the Conservatives get themselves into a tight spot, only for Labour to trump them quickly. Just as the Tories seemed to be descending into a bitter leadership crisis on the weekend after the referendum, half the shadow cabinet resigned. Now, just as David Cameron was being mauled from all quarters over the cronies in his resignation honours list (including from the presumably not soon-to-be Lord Hilton), Jeremy Corbyn has directed attention to himself by ennobling Shami Chakrabarti, formerly of human rights group Liberty. The appointment is embarrassing three times over. Firstly, because he said last year: ‘Labour

Thursday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 4 August 2016

The Daily Telegraph revealed on Tuesday that Michael Spencer, the chief executive of Icap, has been blocked for a peerage by the House of Lords Appointments Commission (Holac). All the indignation just now is against David Cameron’s resignation honours list, packed with his ‘cronies’, who allegedly include Mr Spencer. It is misdirected. The real anger should go against the pharisaical bureaucracy which has been imposed upon patronage. No one is allowed to know why Mr Spencer has been blocked, yet the world knows that he has been because, supposedly, he has ‘the wrong sniff’ about him. His company was fined by regulators for transgressions in relation to Libor, but he

Viv Groskop

Brexit Britain needs a large dose of proper political satire

After Brexit, satire is well and truly dead. Now we have Boris Johnson answering questions at press conferences about how he’ll explain to Hillary’s face that he once said she looks like a nurse in a mental institution. We have an unelected prime minister who got the job largely because another woman baited her about not having children. We have Andrea Leadsom: a non-entity who is swiftly revealed to be exceedingly stupid and tactless and is then rewarded with a serious cabinet role. And we have no opposition, except Jeremy Corbyn with a leadership style entirely lacking in leadership or style. This stuff just writes itself. How can you be funny

Steerpike Steerpike

Corbyn gives chair of Labour’s anti-Semitism inquiry a peerage

Although Jeremy Corbyn has previously suggested that he is against the creation of new peers, the Labour leader appears to take a different approach when it comes to the chair of his anti-Semitism inquiry. After weeks of speculation that Corbyn was poised to give Shami Chakrabarti — who recently found that the party was not overrun with anti-Semitism — a peerage, today the news has been confirmed in the official resignation honours list: In a statement on the decision, Labour say they are ‘delighted’ to confirm Chakrabarti’s appointment to the House of Lords. They refrain, however, from addressing concerns that this suggests a conflict of interest. It’s particularly awkward timing given that

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Corbyn joins Cameron in giving peerages to pals

David Cameron’s resignation honours have now been published—and it is an extensive list. Cameron has nominated 13 people for peerages including his former chief of staff Ed Llewellyn, the former head of his policy unit Camilla Cavendish and his former head of operations Liz Sugg. The current treasurer of the Tory party Andrew Farmer is another heading to the red benches. But Michael Spencer, the former Tory treasurer and head of ICAP, is not on the list. As the Sunday Times revealed last week, there will be honours for many of Cameron’s closest allies and those who worked with him at Number 10. George Osborne becomes a Companion of Honour.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Labour’s problems go far beyond Jeremy Corbyn

Owen Smith takes on Jeremy Corbyn in the first Labour leadership hustings this evening. The moderates are desperately hoping that these head to heads can change enough minds among the Labour electorate to give Smith a chance of beating Corbyn, hence their eagerness to have them televised and the Corbynite desire to keep them off air. But as I argue in the magazine this week, Labour’s problems go far beyond Jeremy Corbyn. He is a symptom of what ails the party, not the sole cause of it. Even if he announced tonight that he was off to spend more time on his allotment, Labour would still have big, existential questions

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Can Labour be trusted with Britain’s security when it can’t manage its own?

During the Blair years the security guards at Labour party conferences had a reputation for over-zealous intervention – remember the sight of octogenarian Walter Wolfgang being manhandled out of his seat and ejected from the chamber for daring to heckle Jack Straw over the Iraq War? Appropriately enough, under Corbyn, Labour’s conference security has the opposite problem – it seems to have been unilaterally-disarmed. As Guido Fawkes reveals this morning there is a serious possibility that this year’s event, scheduled to take place in Liverpool next month, will have to be cancelled owing to the party’s inability to organise security for the event. The problem goes back to last year

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The real hate crime scandal

Since the vote for Brexit, the media has fallen over itself to cover the apparently large upswing in the number of ‘hate crimes’ being reported. One of the trends noted is a particularly high occurrence of such incidents in areas that voted ‘Leave’. In his Spectator cover piece, Brendan O’Neill argues that there is an ‘unhinged subjectivity’ to hate crime reporting, which has skewed statistics in favour of self-critical moralisation. So, has there really been a post-Brexit surge in hostility towards minority groups or is our metric for recording these crimes simply off-kilter? Brendan O’Neill joins Kevin O’Sullivan, who was recently cleared after spending 20 months defending himself from a

Claudia Massie

Skye

Glamour. It’s Marcello Mastroianni drinking negronis on the Via Veneto; it’s Audrey Hepburn, George Clooney, Sinatra on the Vegas Strip in ’59… and a composting toilet on the west coast of Scotland. The latter was the only one available when I went glamping in Skye. Glamping is a neologism, an awkward portmanteau word that seeks to persuade us there really can be a satisfactory crossover between glamour and camping, even though most reasonable people have these two concepts pegged in different stratospheres. You can ‘glamp’ all over the place these days, in everything from yurts to airstream caravans, but to do it in Skye you must head to Skye Eco

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who can lead Labour?

Westminster prefers to concentrate on one drama at a time. That is why the old rule of thumb was that only one party leader could be under pressure at any given moment. Recent events have upended that convention. The Brexit vote precipitated leadership crises for more than one party. But the spectacle of the Tory leadership election has rather overshadowed the fact that Labour is having its own leadership contest. The contest between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith, the party’s former work and pensions spokesman, will run all summer. In Labour circles, Corbyn is regarded as the clear favourite. Once again, the hard left appears to have succeeded in getting

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Top tips for UK-China trade: grab the cheque and sup with a long spoon

There are reasons why Theresa May might harbour doubts about the Hinkley Point nuclear project — chiefly its unproven French technology and the high probability of time and cost overruns — but the fear expressed by her aide Nick Timothy that ‘the Chinese could use their role to build weaknesses into computer systems which will allow them to shut down Britain’s energy production at will’ sounds — even to a Sino-cynic like me — far-fetched. As I wrote here during President Xi Jinping’s visit last year, ‘The least sinister thing about the Chinese is their money. A ten-digit cheque… even from China National Nuclear Corporation… does not carry a ‘backdoor’ listening

Daniel Hannan

Brexit means sovereignty

We know what people voted against,’ say half-clever ­pundits, ‘but it’s far from clear what they voted for.’ Actually, it’s very clear: the ­British voted to leave the EU and take back control of their own laws. They didn’t ­dictate precisely what kind of deal we should have with our neighbours after leaving: that is for ministers to negotiate. But when Leave campaigners invited people to ‘take back ­control’, voters understood what that meant: legal supremacy should return from Brussels to Westminster. Remainers spent the campaign trying to suggest that the EU was just one among several international associations in which Britain participated. It was, they wanted us to believe,

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Scottish Labour ask entire mailing list to stand in local elections

With Scottish Labour now the third biggest party in Scotland following disastrous election results in May, it’s safe to say that its members have seen better times. However, there does appear to be one positive to the beleaguered party’s lagging popularity: it’s never been easier to get involved. Today Scottish Labour have sent out an email to their full distribution list — including members of the press — asking recipients to stand in the local elections: Alas it turns out the party have now got cold feet about asking members of the media to stand. A second email has been sent out, explaining that it was sent ‘in error’: However, given that the party

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Ukip’s civil war deepens following Steven Woolfe’s exclusion

Following the ruling from Ukip’s national executive committee that Steven Woolfe is not eligible to run for leader, a fresh bout of civil war has broken out in the party. The party’s top financier Arron Banks has — as James predicted — suggested that the party could now split. Meanwhile three Ukip councillors have immediately resigned from the NEC, declaring the committee ‘not fit for purpose’. This is the same sentiment expressed by Nigel Farage in a Breitbart article this week when he described its officials as ‘total amateurs’. Woolfe has released a statement in which he expresses his deep disappointment at the decision. In this, he too says that the NEC is not fit for

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Steven Woolfe excluded from Ukip leadership race

Steven Woolfe has been barred from standing for Ukip leader. The party’s national executive committee has ruled that he didn’t submit his nomination papers in time and so is ineligible.   Woolfe’s exclusion from the race is a major blow for Ukip donor, and Leave.EU founder, Arron Banks who had thrown his weight behind Woolfe. Woolfe also had the support of several of those closest to Nigel Farage. This group will not take Woolfe’s exclusion lying down, and will try and find a way to stop the contest or somehow get his name onto the ballot. I wouldn’t even rule out a split if the NEC won’t back down; Banks

Henry Williams

Old is the new young, which is great news for idlers like me

While many have seen Theresa May’s accession to Prime Minister as striking a blow for feminism, she has also struck a mighty blow for indolence. With George Osborne and David Cameron pushed towards the exit, those of us in our mid-30’s who are still at the thinking-about-doing-something-at-some-point stage of our lives can rest easy a while longer. This has always been a difficult age. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I will never be a rockstar, given that I am well past the maximum age for the 27 club, (at my age Keith Richards was firmly in the Swiss blood transfusion clinic). I also know that even

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Ukip’s leadership race kicks off. Who are the candidates hoping to replace Nigel Farage?

The final shortlist for who will replace Nigel Farage has been unveiled – and the frontrunner Steven Woolfe has been excluded. Ukip’s NEC said Woolfe was left off the list after being deemed ‘ineligible as a result of a late submission’, having missed the party’s nomination deadline by seventeen minutes. It’s a decision which is sure to cause ruptures within the party. So who are the candidates who have made it on to the list? Diane James is the new favourite to replace Nigel Farage after Steven Woolfe was kept off the ballot paper. The party’s justice and home affairs spokeswoman has capitalised on the various blunders which afflicted Woolfe to find

Steerpike Steerpike

Paul Mason’s Brexit Bulletin fails to make the cut

It’s not a good time to be a member of the MSM, aka mainstream media. A quick look at alternative news outlets like the Corbynista Canary will tell you that reports from the MSM are frequently inaccurate. What’s more, the Guardian now appear to have joined the cause. On Monday, the paper published an article by Piers Robinson suggesting Russia Today, al-Jazeera and Press TV should not be off-limits as while they may be biased so is much western media. So, what are the alternatives? Mr S was intrigued last month when Paul Mason — the former Channel 4 economics editor turned revolutionary — announced to much fanfare that he would be launching a public service ‘Brexit Bulletin’. The daily