Politics

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

Thursday

16 Jun 2016

The Spectator’s Notes | 16 June 2016

The Remain campaign takes as its model the ‘No’ one in the 2014 Scottish referendum. First and last — hence the Osborne/Darling fantasy horror Budget on Wednesday — inspire fear. Second, late in the day, leave it all to Labour and get Gordon Brown to make a passionate speech (Mr Brown took this too literally and made almost exactly the same passionate speech). Finally, shortly before polling, get leaders of all stripes to make a solemn ‘vow’ to win over the doubters. I am trying to work out what that vow could be. All 27 other member states promising some guarantee of Britain’s independence within the EU? This device has

Andrew Marr

Diary – 16 June 2016

Flabby, vaguely disorientated and, more than three years on, still struggling with stroke recovery, I am on a radical diet. No booze, no caffeine of any kind, no lots of other things — sausages, bacon, roast meat, you name it. Not a lot of fun, but the revelation has been coffee: for well over 40 years I have believed that I can only function in the morning after pints of coal-black, extremely strong caffeine. And now, aged 57, I find that it was total horlicks all along — I feel perkier, less tired and less stressed (after a hard few days) without the stuff. This makes me a real oddity

Rod Liddle

RIP Jo Cox. Let’s call the referendum off as a mark of respect

RIP Jo Cox MP. A hugely talented young politician possessed of great clarity of thought and principle. Shot and stabbed by a piece of human filth, a piece of white human filth, while attending her surgery in West Yorkshire. God bless the woman and look after her family, please. This sort of savagery and vileness has been on the cards now for quite a while. We are drifting towards the febrile territory of a banana republic, or at best the USA. The claims on either side of the Brexit debate are hyperbolic, exaggerated, idiotic. And the mutual loathing spreads daily across social media, a shrieking absolutism divorced from reality on

Katy Balls

Politicians pay tribute to Labour MP Jo Cox – ‘a devastating blow to our democracy’

Following the news that the Labour MP Jo Cox has died after being shot and stabbed in a brutal street attack, her husband Brendan has called on the public to ‘unite to fight against the hatred that killed her’. A number of politicians have paid tribute to the MP for Batley and Spen — who won her seat in the 2015 election — describing her as a woman of ‘remarkable spirit and passion’. Gordon Brown says that both he and his wife Sarah — who worked closely with Cox on humanitarian issues — will be ‘forever scarred by this moment’: ‘Our memories will be for ever scarred by this moment. Our hearts will

Alex Massie

A Day of Infamy

Events have a multiplier effect. And when they come in bunches the effect can be overpowering. This was already a sad and demeaning day, even before we heard the ghastly news a Labour MP, Jo Cox, had been murdered outside her constituency surgery in Yorkshire. Politics is, figuratively speaking, a contact sport. It is a hard business because it is an important business. It matters and it matters even more when the stakes are so very high. But just as class will out at the highest level in sport, when the stakes are the very greatest and everything seems to be on the line, so character reveals itself in politics

Tom Goodenough

Labour MP Jo Cox dies after being attacked in the street

Labour MP Jo Cox has died after being shot and stabbed in a brutal street attack. The MP for Batley and Spen passed away on her way to hospital following the incident earlier today in Birstall, West Yorkshire. Chief Constable Dee Collins said: ‘I am now very sad to have to report that she has died as a result of her injuries.’ Mother-of-two Cox, 41, was attacked close to a library where she had been holding a weekly advice surgery. A 52-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident. Cox was elected as an MP in 2015. According to her website, Jo was co-chair of the Friends of

Brendan O’Neill

The Brexit debate has exposed the Establishment

Yesterday, on the Thames, in a bizarre battle of political flotillas, we got a glimpse of the elite rage that motors much of the Remain camp. On one of the pro-EU boats, Bob Geldof, a knight, superbly well-connected, who has earned millions, made wanker gestures and gave a two-fingered eff-you to the people on the anti-EU boats — who were mainly fishermen whose livelihoods have been wrecked by Brussels. One of these fishermen, his face ashen with desperation, shouted — almost cried, in fact — about earning £50 a week and not knowing where his next mortgage payment is going to come from, largely thanks to EU regulations on the

Tom Goodenough

Labour MP Jo Cox critically injured in shooting

Labour MP Jo Cox is in a critical condition after being injured during a shooting in her constituency. Eyewitnesses said the MP for Batley and Spen was attacked close to a library in Birstall, near Leeds, where she has previously held advice surgeries. A 52-year-old man has been arrested. Reports, that have not been confirmed, suggest the attacker shouted ‘Britain First’ shortly before the incident. West Yorkshire Police said they were aware of an ‘ongoing incident’. A police spokesman said: ‘At 12.53 today, police were called to a report of an incident on Market Street, Birstall, where a woman in her 40s has duffered serious injuries and is in a

Isabel Hardman

Remain is now Project Grouch in the EU referendum

A couple of months ago, the Leave campaign seemed constantly grumpy, complaining about media coverage, colleagues and the use of the government machine in this referendum. But now, with just a week to go until polling day, this seems to have reversed. The Brexiteers’ continuing poll lead has spooked Remain, and Remain really isn’t dealing with it all that well. It wasn’t just the way that the pro-Remain politicians ganged up on Boris Johnson during their TV debate last week. And it isn’t just the way that government ministers including George Osborne seem to be resorting to increasingly desperate interventions such as a scary Brexit Budget that disgusted so many

Tom Goodenough

Mark Carney uses interest rate decision to put the boot in over Brexit again

The Bank of England’s decision to keep interest rates pegged at 0.5 per cent won’t surprise anyone. What is more interesting, after today’s row involving Mark Carney, is how much the Bank had to say about the EU referendum. Brexiteers hoping Mark Carney and the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee would keep quiet about next week’s vote will be disappointed. In its meeting minutes, the MPC gives it both barrels when warning about the dangers of Brexit. The MPC says a vote to leave would send sterling’s exchange rate tumbling. It goes on to add that: ‘As the Committee set out last month, the most significant risks to the MPC’s forecast

Tom Goodenough

Will the Tories manage an upset in today’s forgotten by-election in Tooting?

Amidst the fanfare surrounding the EU referendum, today’s Tooting by-election has come around virtually unnoticed. Triggered by Sadiq Khan stepping down after being elected Mayor of London, the contest does not look like it will herald much in the way of surprises. Barring a big upset, Labour’s Rosena Allin-Khan is set to win. Labour have held onto the seat since 1974, and it seems likely we won’t see a Tory win this time around either. But today’s by-election will be a closer race than it might have been a few years ago. At the last election, Labour’s majority was slashed from 15,000 in 1997 to 2,800. And Allin-Khan will be

Rem Korteweg

Don’t panic! Turkey won’t be joining the EU anytime soon

The Leave campaign sees the EU-Turkey accession talks as a reason to drum up fears about migration. In fact, it is a red herring. True, David Cameron may have previously been one of the most vocal champions for Turkish EU membership, even if during the referendum campaign he said that Turkey will not join ‘until the year 3000’. But despite his apparent contradiction, he is right about one thing: Turkish membership is a long way off. So what do the accession talks look like as they stand? They are made up of 35 chapters in all but so far only one chapter – on science and research co-operation – has

Charles Moore

Sir Mike Rake is Brexit’s best weapon

I keep telling myself that the polls showing Leave ahead are too good to be true. But then I see Remain’s latest efforts and feel reassured. One of its earliest campaigners was the self-important businessman Sir Mike Rake who, I wrote at the time, is pure gold for Leave. This week he pops up again, ordering his Rolls-Royce workers to vote to preserve his seat at the top table. Keep talking, Sir Mike: until 23 June, we need to see much more of these hard-faced men who have done well out of Brussels. This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes. The full article can be found here.

James Forsyth

Leave six points ahead in latest phone poll

Fraser Nelson and Nick Cohen discuss The Spectator’s decision to back Brexit: The Ipsos MORI phone poll released this morning shows a dramatic turnaround since its last poll which had a double digit advantage for Remain. Leave is now six points ahead amongst those likely to vote. This means that Leave has been ahead in 7 out of the last 10 polls and 2 of the last 4 phone polls. Almost as worrying for the Remain campaign as the headline number is what the internals of the Ipsos MORI poll show. In a change from last month, immigration is now the top issue for people in this referendum, overtaking the

Tom Goodenough

Bank of England Brexit bust-up shows the referendum campaign is getting nastier

With a week to go until the referendum, nerves are running high in both the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ campaigns. This morning, we’ve seen that nervousness manifest itself in a spat between senior Tories and the Treasury and the Bank of England. Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, Lord Lamont and Lord Lawson have signed a letter saying both the BoE and Treasury have been ‘peddling phoney forecasts’ to scare people into backing ‘Remain’. In their letter to the Daily Telegraph, they go on to say that: ‘There has been startling dishonesty in the economic debate, with a woeful failure on the part of the Bank of England, the Treasury, and other

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The Spectator backs Brexit

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. In the magazine this week, The Spectator has urged its readers to back Brexit. In our leading article, The Spectator says that the European Union is making the people of our continent poorer, and less free and that the EU has started to deform our Government. When the country last held a referendum on Europe, ever newspaper in the country advocated a ‘Yes’ vote, apart from two: the Morning Star and The Spectator. And since then, our leader says this week, the EU

Daisy Dunn

Gatton Park

Gatton Park is probably Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s least famous landscape. It is tucked away near Reigate Hill, just beyond the M25, and even in the 300th anniversary year of Brown’s birth it is an unlikely place to visit. Because it shares its plot with a school and stables, you can only go on the first Sunday of the month or if you arrange a tour in advance. A bother, I grant you, when there are so many glorious landscapes to explore elsewhere. But Gatton Park has other attractions, too. For more than 50 years, from 1888, this was the estate of the ‘Mustard King’, Sir Jeremiah Colman. An hour or

James Forsyth

Cameron’s appointment with fear

The best thing that can be said for David Cameron’s current predicament is that he has been here before. His career has been punctuated by moments when the polls and the pundits have said he was done for. In 2007, with the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown enjoying a honey-moon and considering a snap election, this magazine pictured him on the cover with a noose and the headline ‘Get out of this, Dave’. He did. At times, even he has thought his leadership was over. On election day last year, he spent the early evening rehearsing his resignation speech to his closest aides. Hours later, he was hailing the ‘sweetest

Nick Cohen

Brexit’s bitter harvest

Nick Cohen and Fraser Nelson discuss The Spectator’s decision to back Brexit: We British flatter ourselves that common sense is a national personality trait. Giddy Europeans may follow the abstract notions of dangerous leaders, but we could not be more different. We are a practical, moderate breed — if we do say so ourselves — who act according to the evidence, not fantastical theories. Let me see how this dear delusion is bearing up. It feels as if the Leave campaign will win the EU referendum. But even if Leave loses, it seems certain that it will perform so well as to produce an existential crisis in both our main

James Delingpole

I’ve seen the future – and it’s beautiful

Berne, Switzerland Before we vote Brexit I thought I’d pop over to Switzerland — courtesy of Die Weltwoche, the nearest local equivalent to The Spectator — to see how life will be once we escape the EU. Can confirm: it’s going to be great. We’ll be richer, freer and the views are fantastic: lakes and mountains so stupidly gorgeous that each time you look at them you think: ‘This is ridiculous. Nowhere could possibly be this ludicrously pretty.’ Then you go under a tunnel to the next valley where it’s just as lovely. It’s like gorging on a giant bar of hazelnut Lindt. And — in their understated Swiss way