Politics

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

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: Cameron’s ‘b— word’ sets off a Twitter-quake of offence

Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t changed his clothes since Christmas. He arrived at PMQs today in his dependable outfit of non-slip shoes, biscuit-coloured suit and minimum-wage tie. His white, flattened scalp and his mood of perplexed fatigue make him look like a dutiful pensioner inspecting a care-home for his beloved mum and wondering if he might check in as well, while he’s there. Today, however, mighty deeds summoned him to parliament. International monsters awaited his challenge. There were slavering dragons to tame. And famous victories to be won and celebrated. But he wasn’t up to it. As always. When Corbyn fails, it has to be said, he does so placidly and almost

Steerpike Steerpike

Did David Cameron adopt the ‘dead cat’ strategy at PMQs?

David Cameron has today come under fire after he used the phrase ‘a bunch of migrants’ to describe the refugees Jeremy Corbyn met on a recent trip to Calais. Various politicians and columnists have since claimed Cameron’s words were ‘divisive’ and ‘dehumanising’. Alex Salmond has gone one step further and accused him of making the controversial comment on purpose as part of a ‘dead cat strategy‘ to distract from the government’s ongoing Google tax row. However, Anna Soubry has leapt to Cameron’s defence claiming the phrasing was a slip in the heat of the moment — adding that anybody who says that it was scripted is ‘being silly and playing cheap politics’. Yet this wouldn’t

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs: Corbyn misses his chance over Google’s tax deal

Today’s PMQs was an opportunity for Jeremy Corbyn to embarrass the government and align himself with public anger over how little tax some multinationals pay. But he missed this opportunity. By going on HMRC’s deal with Google in isolation, he allowed Cameron to point the finger of blame at the last Labour government. Indeed, Cameron even dragged Corbyn into defending the record of the Blair and Brown governments on corporate taxation. A far more effective tactic would have been to contrast the British deal with the French and Italian ones. Why have these governments managed to get more tax out of Google than our own? Another problem with Corbyn at

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scotland’s free-speech opponents remain as hypocritical as they are illiberal. Shame on them.

Like an old friend you do not actually like very much, the Scottish government’s Offensive Behaviour at Football Act will not go away. It is five years since this offensive piece of legislation was passed and time has done nothing to lessen either its absurdity or its offensiveness. To recap for readers who, for doubtless honourable reasons, have not kept up with one of the more extraordinary speech-curbing measures passed by any UK legislature in recent years, the bill’s premise is that creating new kinds of thought and speech crime can eliminate thoughts and speech deemed offensive. (Some past reflections on this execrable bill can be found here, here and here.)

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Eurosceptics to push Cameron on EU renegotiation in Commons debate

It’s fair to say that David Cameron’s answer to John Baron at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, in which the Tory leader basically confirmed to his backbench colleague that he was ignoring him, hasn’t exactly helped relations with the eurosceptics in the Tory party. The row was splashed across the front page of the Sunday Telegraph this weekend, and I now understand that Baron has secured a Commons debate that will take up the issue he has been trying to raise with the Prime Minister. Baron’s debate will be in a backbench business session on 4 February, and has a rather spiky motion for discussion: ‘That this House believes in the

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch out Laura! Corbynistas strengthen ties with Robert Peston

Even though Robert Peston has only been in his new job as ITV’s political editor for little more than a week, he has already managed to slip-up. On top of experiencing difficulties getting into the ITV building, the former BBC economics editor — who Marr once described as a man ‘crippled by a sense of his own lack of self-worth’ — managed to refer to Liz Kendall as ‘Liz Corbyn’ during one of his first broadcast interviews. However, should any of his former BBC colleagues struggle to take him seriously, they may now need to reconsider. With relations between Labour and the BBC at an all-time low over accusations of anti-Corbyn bias, ITV look set

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Google tax row is convenient for Labour

In the Google tax story, which continues to run in the papers today, Labour has found a theme that it can exploit in the Commons and in speeches over the next few weeks. Given so many Tories were prepared to criticise the ‘derisory’ amount the tech giant has agreed to pay back when the Commons discussed the matter on Monday, Jeremy Corbyn will feel he is on reasonably safe ground raising the issue at PMQs today.  Tax is always a handy issue, not just because it allows oppositions to promise to spend more using only the fruit of the magic money tree of cracking down on tax avoidance, but also

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Tuesday 26th January

Haven’t had a chance to follow the day’s political events and interviews? Then don’t worry: here, The Spectator, brings you the best of today’s audio clips in one place for you to listen to. Jesse Norman had an awkward time on the Victoria Derbyshire show after being taken to task by a furious Paula Radcliffe. Speaking on Today, Vote Leave’s Jon Moynihan accused the other side in the EU renegotiation debate of trying to create FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt. Although, it seems, he may not have known what that the term means north of the border… Labour’s Liz Kendall was on Daily Politics, speaking about the state of

Matt Warman

Google plays the global tax game – and charitable moves aren’t common

When George Osborne announced at the Conservative Party conference in 2014 that he would force companies such as Google, Facebook and others to pay more tax in the UK, some of those firms were privately incandescent. As a Daily Telegraph journalist covering the conference at the time, I was witness to a rare example of usually conciliatory American firms eager to critique government policy in robust Anglo-Saxon. Why, they asked, didn’t the UK see the wider benefits of having major digital employers based here, and didn’t ministers understand that they were paying their due taxes where they were founded, in America? In public, technology-friendly commentators suggested the announcement was all

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

A Trident debate could send chaos into the heart of Scottish Labour

When will ministers hold their vote on Trident renewal? The Sun reports today that the ‘main gate’ decision on the size of the fleet will take place by the end of March, throwing Labour into disarray ahead of elections in Scotland, Wales, London and local government. Cunning thinkers in the Tory party point out that for the vote to have maximum political effect, it needs to take place closer to the start of March. This is so that MSPs can also have a debate on Trident in the Scottish Parliament before Holyrood rises on 23 March for the election campaign. The SNP could decide to call a debate on the matter

David Patrikarakos David Patrikarakos

There’s one major lesson Labour should learn from Syriza’s anniversary

If a week is a long time in politics what’s a year? A century? A millennium? An Ice Age? If you’re Greek it can sometimes feel like all three. One year ago today, on 26 January 2015, Greece’s Syriza party formed the most left-wing government in the country’s history having (ludicrously) promised the Greek people to take on the European establishment and rid them of the austerity measures that had blighted their lives for close to a decade. If hubris and bombast characterised Syriza’s election campaign, then naivety and disaster characterised its first months in office. The new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had given the job of re-negotiating with Greece’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: David Lammy says a million Indians died in WWII fighting for the ‘European project’

Oh dear. It appears that it is time for David Lammy to brush up on his history knowledge. The pro-EU Labour MP appeared on the Daily Politics today to discuss the EU referendum with Ukip MEP Steven Woolfe. During the debate the pair discussed immigration, during which Lammy made the claim that one million Indians had died in the Second World War fighting for the ‘European Project’. Happily, Woolfe was on hand to query the claim — and mention Hitler. DL: One million Indians died fighting for us. They fought for the European project and they’re not now going to vote on the basis of whether Granny can come over for a wedding SW: Did you just

Steerpike Steerpike

Vote Leave reveal their secret weapon: FUD

It’s not turning out to be a great week for the In campaign. Yesterday Britain Stronger in Europe’s chairman Stuart Rose failed to remember the name of his own campaign group during a Sky News interview. Now they have been given an unfortunate new nickname by their opponents. Speaking on Today, Vote Leave’s Jon Moynihan put forward the argument for leaving the EU. To make his point, he claimed that the In campaign tactics show that the group are clutching at straws. Instead of making a positive case for remaining in the EU, he says they are ‘trying to create FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt’. Alas, for many north of the border

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Could ethnic minority voters swing it for the out campaign in the EU referendum?

Could ethnic minority voters swing it for the out campaign in the EU referendum? That’s the hope of UKIP’s Steven Woolfe at least, who in a speech this morning at British Future will be urging ‘Leave’ to reach out to black and minority communities. Speaking on the Today programme this morning, he said such groups would be crucial to the campaign’s success. He said: ‘There has always been this kind of assumption that, for example, minorities are more likely to vote for the Labour party rather than the Conservative party and we now know that’s not the case. What the research is saying is that the community don’t see the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Top Tories form social justice caucus to plot ‘all-out assault on poverty’

David Cameron has decided that social justice will be his key legacy theme as Prime Minister, with his autumn conference speech and most of the announcements so far this year focusing on an ‘all-out assault on poverty’. At times, this has appeared a little vague, while other announcements, like the plan for Muslim women to learn English, have been a little confused. But Cameron has clearly decided that the Conservatives must tackle injustices in society, not just because it is right for the country, but also because it is right for the party, which is still seen by too many voters as for the rich. I understand that a private

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Memo to Outers: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Honesty and consistency; two qualities everyone agrees to value but that are easily jettisoned as soon as maintaining them proves too inconvenient. It turns out they’re not so valuable as all that. So it is with all things Euro-referendum-related. If we are to believe the rival tribunes competing for your affections later this year, negotiating the terms of a British exit from the European Union will either be a doddle or a disaster, with little room for hope in between those twin imposters. Well, perhaps. Sometimes, however, it helps to imagine an alternative but comparable scenario in which, as it happens, you may be less invested. Doing so might make

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

MPs hammer Treasury ministers on ‘completely unacceptable’ sweetheart deal for Google

Even though, as Fraser argued last week, Google has done nothing wrong in agreeing to pay £130 million to settle its UK tax claims, MPs were in a furious mood about the agreement when they discussed it in the Commons this afternoon. John McDonnell asked an urgent question on the deal, and found, unusually, that he had support from across the House. It wasn’t just Labour MPs who stood up to condemn what they saw as one standard for their constituents, who are hounded by the taxman over relatively small claims, and another for big powerful multinationals like Google. Tory MPs joined in, too, with Steve Baker telling David Gauke

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ministers tease Labour frontbenchers about party’s predicament

Ministers appear largely to have given up on taking scrutiny from the Labour party seriously, if today’s Education Questions was anything to go by. Both Nicky Morgan and Sam Gyimah had come armed with jokes and jibes about the Opposition’s predicament, which were designed to deflect from a rare co-ordinated Labour attack over the implementation – or lack of – of the Conservatives’ flagship manifesto promise to double free childcare for three and four-year-olds, and questions about the attainment gap. Jenny Chapman asked about that promise – and whether one in three families who were told they would get free childcare would in fact receive no additional care at all.

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Monday 25th January

Haven’t had a chance to follow the day’s political events and interviews? Then don’t worry: here, in the first of a daily feature, we bring you the best of today’s audio clips in one place for you to listen to. Stuart Rose has been giving a series of interviews as the In campaign steps up its efforts to encourage the public to vote to stay in the EU in the upcoming referendum. On the Today programme this morning, he admitted to being a eurosceptic but said it was a ‘risk’ to leave the EU because the British public did not know what they would be getting: He had less success

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Cecil Parkinson: A man to remember

Lord Cecil Parkinson, former Conservative Party chairman under Margaret Thatcher, has died at the age of 84. Parkinson was one of Thatcher’s most trusted allies and served for 30 years in the Conservative front ranks. He was famously forced to resign in October 1983 when it emerged his secretary was pregnant with his child. Here, in an article written in August 1984 in the Spectator, Charles Moore pays tribute to Parkinson. Why not bring back Cecil Parkinson? it is asked. He may have been an erratic actor with a turbulent private life, but he brought a certain dash and glamour to the show which it now badly lacks. Constitutional experts