Politics

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

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Chuka Umunna: I still won’t serve under Corbyn, despite EU u-turn

Chuka Umunna proved the Labour moderates still have a fan base at his first fringe appearance in Brighton. At a packed out Demos event, the former shadow business secretary and one-time leadership contender, said that a difference of opinion over the EU referendum was not the only reason he didn’t take a job in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. Despite the Labour leader’s new position of campaigning to remain In come what may — outlined in this op-ed — Umunna suggested he still wouldn’t take a position: ‘We had a good discussion and quite of that actually was really thinking about things in this reshuffle, but there were a number of issues and the EU was one of them. I

Steerpike Steerpike

John Prescott: how I hopped before the Queen

Given the criticism that Jeremy Corbyn received when he failed to sing God Save the Queen at a Battle of Britain memorial service, the Labour leader faces a new dilemma when he is sworn into the Privy council. Although it is custom to get on bended knee and kiss the Queen’s hand, the republican politician is said to be undecided over whether to adhere to this. However, according to John Prescott he may already be spared from one part of the ceremony. Speaking on the Sunday Politics,the former deputy Prime Minister told Andrew Neil that the ceremony does not actually require any kneeling, instead it consists of a fair amount of hopping: ‘When I was first asked

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn’s new look Labour leadership means he’s happy not to lead

Jeremy Corbyn had a very good interview on Marr this morning. For anyone in the wider, non-Westminster world tuning in (and they do), the new Labour leader would have come across as reasonable, mild, and normal. When Marr pressed him on certain issues, Corbyn looked as though he was an academic having a good debate in his study over a glass of port (or marrow juice, maybe), rather than a politician panicking as he tried to remember the next line that he’d memorised from the spin doctor’s briefing. He even managed to get some quips about internal Labour democracy in, joking that the programme should film ‘compositing in action’. What

Sebastian Payne

Labour conference 2015: Sunday fringe guide

Good morning comrades! Labour’s annual conference kicks off in sunny Brighton today and it’s set to be one of the most exciting gatherings in years. We usually comb through the fringe listings to point you towards the most interesting events. However, the conference programme was printed before Jeremy Corbyn rose to leader and the majority of notable speakers have either quit or been sacked from the shadow cabinet. This makes picking out the best fringes a little more difficult than in previous years. Plus, in the brave new world of Corbyn’s leadership, the people to watch have changed. We’ve gathered a list below of events today featuring speakers both in and outside the new leadership team.

Saturday

Sebastian Payne

Revealed: Arron Banks told campaigners ‘I have Nigel by the short and curlies financially’

Nigel Farage claimed at Ukip’s conference yesterday that all Eurosceptic groups were being brought together under the Leave.EU umbrella organisation, headed up by Ukip donor Arron Banks. However, the other Leave campaign, run by Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings, was notably absent and its representatives did not appear at the conference yesterday. Elliott’s Business for Britain group, which aims to give a voice to Eurosceptic businesses, was also not mentioned as part of the umbrella group. When I asked Farage about this, he said ‘they don’t want to leave, they want to wait and see what the Prime Minister has come back with’. Banks also told Coffee House he had approached the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ukip snubs London Mayoral favourite Suzanne Evans

Ukip has announced its candidate for the 2016 London Mayor elections – and it’s a surprise. Peter Whittle, the party’s Culture Spokesman, is the candidate, not the favourite, Suzanne Evans. This isn’t as much of a surprise to Coffee House readers as it might be to others. In August we reported rumblings that Nigel Farage might be trying to stitch up the race to exclude Evans, who he regards as a threat (she was Ukip leader for a few days in between him resigning and un-resigning). The party’s London MEP Gerard Batten also told Coffee House that the process was ‘undemocratic’ and that he wasn’t getting involved in it. Whittle is

Friday

Sebastian Payne

Arron Banks apologises for saying Douglas Carswell is ‘borderline autistic with mental illness wrapped in’

Ukip’s autumn conference has turned into yet another war between Douglas Carswell and other parts of the party. Speaking to a huddle of journalists this afternoon, the Ukip donor and founder of Leave.EU campaign described Carswell as ‘borderline autistic with mental illness wrapped in’. Banks appears to be disgruntled at Carswell’s comments to Coffee House that he is more likely to back the Matthew Elliott-Dominic Cummings Leave campaign. In response, Carswell told BuzzFeed News ‘I think it’s best if I decline to comment. I think the comments are best not dignified with a response.’ Banks has since released an apology but has noted Carswell was provocative towards him: ‘Douglas Carswell was appallingly rude and provocative towards me today which does

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Yanis Varoufakis is right about George Osborne’s fauxsterity

Not often that I’d be inclined to agree with Syriza, but Yanis Varoufakis had a point last night when he questioned the degree of austerity that has happened in Britain. The Conservatives talk a good game, he said, but George Osborne’s cuts pretty much stopped after year one. I’m going to give a compliment to George Osborne and the Tory government. It’s going to create some consternation in the Tory part. He hasn’t really practiced austerity, he has talked about austerity and it didn’t work. He killed of the nascent recovery after 2009 with the little bit of austerity he did, but he stopped it.” The below figures, drawn from

Sebastian Payne

Arron Banks interview: ‘Nigel is part of it but he’s not the only game in town’

Arron Banks is the man of the moment in Doncaster: Nigel Farage said in his speech he was ‘massively impressed’ with his efforts to bring the different Eurosceptic camps together. I caught up with the Ukip donor and founder of the Leave.EU campaign to chat about the referendum and what he hopes his new group will achieve — you can watch the interview above. Banks explained what his umbrella group is about: ‘We’ve been out to all the leading Eurosceptic campaigns – they haven’t always been the best of friends. There’s seven of them, including Ukip, Bruges Group, Democracy Movement, all different groupings and effectively we’re trying to bring them together

Sebastian Payne

Exclusive: Ukip split widens as Douglas Carswell refuses to back ‘Leave.EU’ campaign

Doncaster Racecourse has been aflutter with rumours of an altercation between Ukip’s sole MP Douglas Carswell and Arron Banks, a Ukip donor who founded the leave.EU campaign – which is distinct from the Business for Britain campaign group. In an interview with Coffee House, Banks acknowledged that the pair encountered each other in a corridor today. He said:- ‘Douglas had a few strong words with me, not the other way around. I wished him well and went on my way. He took an exception to something written in the Guardian’. This seems to have been a quote from Banks in the Guardian to the effect that Carswell will have to endorse his Leave.Eu

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Shaker Aamer to be released: Jeremy Corbyn and the Daily Mail can rejoice together

Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held in Guantanamo Bay, is to be released, the White House has announced. Aamer is alleged to have led a unit of Taliban fighters and have plotted with Osama Bin Laden, but he has never been charged or been on trial. His case is one that David Cameron has raised in discussions with President Obama, and one the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday have been pressing for a good while too, on the grounds that it is indefensible to lock someone up since 2002 without charge or trial (the Mail’s argument has always been that he may be a ‘very bad man’ but that

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Jeremy Corbyn isn’t a man of the people. He’s a man against the people

Corbynistas are always banging on about how we need fewer posh politicians and more politicians who look and sound like ‘ordinary people’. So who has Corbyn appointed as his shadow secretary for environment, food and rural affairs? Kerry McCarthy — a vegan! A member of the snootiest tribe of all, who sustain themselves by nuts and self-righteousness alone and look upon the rest of us as a bloodthirsty, carnivorous blob. When it comes to naked elitism, vegans outdo Etonians every single time. When I addressed the Political Society at Eton in 2013 — the first time I’d ever set my London-Irish foot inside a public school — I was struck

Steerpike Steerpike

Ukip conference venue received £1 million of EU funding

Nigel Farage has kicked off the first day of Ukip party conference at Doncaster Racecourse with a speech claiming that anti-EU groups are united and ready to push for a UK exit from the European Union: ‘We are together, we are united, and we believe that the tide has turned. I believe that we are on course to win the most historic and the most important political victory in any of our lifetimes.’ United as they may be, perhaps one of the brains at Ukip ought to have done a bit more research regarding their conference venue before going ahead with the booking. For all their preaching about the need to

Sebastian Payne

Nigel Farage attempts to make himself the leader of the Leave campaign

Nigel Farage’s keynote speech to the Ukip conference was duly lapped up the 1,500 attendees in Doncaster. The Ukip leader was keen to give himself a new job: the de facto leader of the Leave campaign. In the absence of someone heading up the Leave campaign, the Ukip leader said it’s time for the party to prioritise the referendum over its own future: ‘I want us to summon every resource of energy we can find in our bodies and our minds. I want to dedicate us wholly to winning that referendum. This is the moment to put country before party.’ Farage stated the Eurosceptic movement has ‘very often been fractured, it has very often

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs like Jeremy Corbyn’s PMQs style

Jeremy Corbyn knows he has a lot to prove at his party’s conference, which starts on Sunday. The highlight of his leadership so far has been his new tone at PMQs, which did catch attention, even if the questions he asked rather turned the session into an opportunity for David Cameron to look Prime Ministerial. The Labour leader knows he needs to make changes from that first attempt (his first ever stint at the dispatch box), but he’s not the only one mulling how to manage the session. A number of Tory MPs have told me that they have received a good load of letters and emails since that PMQs

Sebastian Payne

Watch: Ukip supporter Katie Hopkins advocates gassing the House of Lords

Katie Hopkins is not the first person who comes to mind when thinking about electoral reform, but she spoke at an Electoral Reform Society fringe event at Ukip conference to discuss the party’s performance in May’s general election. The former former Apprentice star and Mail Online columnist advocated gassing the House of Lords: ‘People like me, people I represent, the things I articulate for the nation, actually don’t really give a shit about the House of Lords because we think they’re actually a bunch of plonkers. They’ve just put Michelle Mone in there and frankly once you’ve got Michelle Mone in anywhere you really don’t really care about it. Frankly, I don’t

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Ed Miliband’s train clash with Ukip

Since Ed Miliband stepped down as the leader of the Labour party, the Labour MP for Doncaster North has vowed to keep a low profile as a hard-working backbencher. So Mr S suspects that the former Labour leader was disappointed to discover that half of the lobby have joined him this morning on his train journey to his constituency. Several political journalists travelling up to Doncaster for the Ukip conference have reported that Miliband is also on the train: https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/647310773430157312 However, it’s not all bad news for the backbencher, who was snapped buying breakfast ahead of the journey, with staff in Pret a Manger claiming they once voted for him: Ed Miliband

Sebastian Payne

Which party is now more irrelevant, Ukip or the Lib Dems?

Ukip is gathering for its autumn conference in Doncaster, with Nigel Farage delivering the keynote speech later today. Unlike last year’s shindig, which saw the defection of Mark Reckless from the Tories, this year’s conference is likely to be less eventful — for one thing, the party has failed to grow its presence in Westminster. Even its members appear to be demotivated — the Telegraph reports that attendance is ‘significantly low’ and has offered cut-price tickets to entice Kippers to come along. A party spokesman acknowledged: ‘Last year conference was straight after a big election victory for Ukip so it’s not wildly surprising that numbers are down’ Now that an In-Out referendum is on

Thursday

Tom Holland

Diary – 24 September 2015

Jeremy Corbyn has been compared to plenty of people over the past few months — a geography teacher, Michael Foot, Brian from the Monty Python film — but my favourite comparison was to a horse. Steve Fielding, professor of politics at Nottingham, declared Corbyn’s election ‘an act of political stupidity unparalleled since Caligula appointed his horse to the Roman senate’. As someone with a book just published on Rome’s first imperial dynasty, I was doubly thrilled. First, Professor Fielding had confirmed the conviction in which I had written my history of the first Caesars: that two millennia on, the West’s primal examples of political excess continue to instruct and appal.

The Spectator

Barometer | 24 September 2015

Available for parties Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said that leaving his party to join the Liberal Democrats would be like ‘leaving the Beatles to join a Bananarama tribute band’. Is there such a thing? Bananaruma is a Leicester-based band led by the head of arts at a local secondary school. They advertise an hour-long show, for which they bring their own professional PA system with full lighting show. So far they have had one booking, at the Stamford Arms in Groby on 25 July. Tickets cost £20, including a three-course meal, with a bottle of bubbly thrown in for tables of six who booked before 1 July. Sporting chances