Politics Archives

Monday

25 Apr 2016

Steerpike

Watch: Dennis Skinner tells Jeremy Hunt to ‘wipe that smirk off his face’

Given that the last time Dennis Skinner criticised a Tory Cabinet member in the Chamber he was ejected from the Commons, the Beast of Bolsover was on remarkably mild form today. Following Jeremy Hunt’s statement on the planned junior doctors strike, Skinner told the Health Secretary that he ought to ‘wipe that smirk off his face’: ‘When the Secretary of State came into the chamber today I don’t know whether he realises it or not but there is a smirk and arrogance about him that almost portrays the fact that he’s delighted in taking part in this activity. He could start negotiations today. Wipe that smirk off his face. Get down to some

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Jeremy Hunt stands firm ahead of junior doctors strike

Jeremy Hunt has been facing questions in the Commons ahead of tomorrow’s junior doctors strike. The Health Secretary said the industrial action was ‘wholly unjustified’ and said ‘we are proud of the NHS but we must turn that pride into actions’: His sentiment wasn’t enough to placate Dennis Skinner, however, with the MP for Bolsover telling Hunt to ‘wipe that smirk off your face’: Labour’s Heidi Alexander insisted tomorrow would be one of the saddest days in the NHS – and said that the Health Secretary was to blame: Nicky Morgan also faced a tough time in the Commons as she defended Tory plans for all schools to become academies

Ed West

Is it possible to be both pro-EU and patriotic?

It’s safe to say that last week was a good one for the Remain camp, thanks in large part to the endorsement from President Barack Obama. Despite what people in online conservative echo chambers may believe, Obama remains fairly popular in Britain and his opposition to Brexit may well count for something. His tactic was to play on our fear of what might happen if we leave. And while leaving the EU is seen as a largely small-c conservative idea, favoured by older and less educated voters, it is paradoxically fear (that most conservative of emotions) which is driving support for Remain. Most voting Remain are scared, according to a poll for the @thefabians

Isabel Hardman

Is the Leave campaign turning into Project Grouch?

Monday mornings are miserable enough as it is, but this morning the Leave campaign decided to treat us to the double whammy of a furious column from Boris Johnson in the Telegraph and an irritable Iain Duncan Smith on the Today programme. The Mayor is angry about Obama and the way the Remain campaign has patronised voters, while Iain Duncan Smith was annoyed not just about the accusations of racism that were hurled at Johnson for his ‘half-Kenyan’ comments last week, but also about the offer that David Cameron and his colleagues are setting out as part of the Remain case. The whole interview was rather grumpy, and the tone

James Forsyth

Theresa May has revealed she is a reluctant member of the In campaign

One of the worst kept secrets at Westminster is that Theresa May has a distinctly low opinion of Boris Johnson. As Home Secretary she has had more dealings with the Mayor of London than most Cabinet ministers, and there is clearly no love lost between the pair. When she decided to turn down his request to deploy water canons in London she didn’t do so via a discrete written ministerial statement, but by a statement in the Commons which Johnson himself had to sit through. So, there’s a certain irony that May has adopted the EU referendum position that many of Boris’s allies thought he would. She is for In,

Tom Goodenough

Coffee House shots: What’s next for the Brexit campaign?

The EU referendum rumbles ever closer but after a bad week for the leave campaign following Barack Obama’s controversial intervention can those calling for Brexit fight back? And is Nicky Morgan staging a climbdown over Tory plans for academies? Spectator editor Fraser Nelson speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman about what this week holds. Speaking on today’s Coffee House podcast, Isabel says those calling for Brexit must now find a way of calming peoples’ fears about what life outside the EU would look like. She says: ‘I think it was definitely a much better week for remain than for leave because you had the most powerful man in the

Steerpike

Seumas Milne fails to help Sadiq Khan’s cause

In recent weeks, Labour’s Sadiq Khan has faced flak over his decision to share platforms with extremists. In a recent Evening Standard article, Khan was criticised for sharing a ‘platform with five Islamic extremists’ at an event organised by Friends of Al-Aqsa. At the 2004 conference titled ‘Palestine — the suffering still goes on’, both Khan and Jeremy Corbyn spoke alongside the event organiser’s founder Ismail Patel — who once said ‘Hamas is no terrorist organisation’ — as well as the Imam Suliman Gani — who says women are subservient to men — and Dr Daud Abdullah, who led a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2005. Defending his decision to

Sunday

24 Apr 2016

Steerpike

Lord Sugar savages Sadiq Khan: ‘he has single-handedly wrecked the Labour Party’

As Sadiq Khan continues to lead the polls in the mayoral race, the Labour candidate has managed to brush off much criticism over his links to unsavoury characters by putting it down to ‘dog whistle’ politics. However, the MP for Tooting may have greater difficulty fending off the latest line of attack to come his way. Writing in the Sunday Times, Lord Sugar — the former Labour peer who resigned from the party after the general election — has launched a blistering attack on Khan. Sugar accuses Khan of having ‘single-handedly wrecked the Labour Party’. The Apprentice star says he cut up his party membership card after Labour turned anti-business under Ed Miliband —

Saturday

23 Apr 2016

Martin Vander Weyer

The Tories are doing the unthinkable to save Port Talbot steel

Ministers from 34 countries met in Brussels this week in the vain hope of a quick fix for the steel crisis that everyone blames on dumping by China — which responded, through a state news agency, by calling its critics ‘lame and lazy’. Our own Sajid Javid, desperate to avert the fallout from a closure of Tata’s Port Talbot steelworks before the referendum, claimed to have observed ‘a very positive step forward’ in Chinese attitudes, but perhaps someone had locked him in his hotel room. Meanwhile, Greybull Capital completed its purchase of Tata’s Scunthorpe plant and Liberty House took over two Tata mills in Lanarkshire — confirming my view that specialised

Thierry Baudet

Will Dutch politicians choose to serve Brussels or their citizens?

The Netherlands was one of the six original founders of the European Union. We, the Dutch, have always been internationally orientated, progressive, tolerant and open, and as a nation and a people, we still are. But our attitude towards the centralistic, expansionist, and undemocratic EU has become increasingly sceptical. For us, the EU no longer represents a dynamic view of the future but – on the contrary – many feel that it has fallen victim to precisely the kind of static, special interests politics that it was meant to transcend. It has turned out to be a 1970s solution for a 1950s problem. It was hardly surprising, then, that two thirds

James Forsyth

Number 10 might be more confident than ever of EU referendum victory, but they’re still trying to load the debate dice

Downing Street is more confident than it has ever been that the EU referendum will be won. It is not just Barack Obama’s full-throated warning against Brexit that is responsible for this, but—as I say in my Sun column this morning—the sense that they have got the argument back onto their home turf of the economy. Indeed, it was striking how much Obama talked yesterday about the economic benefits to Britain of EU membership and the single market. The fact that this was his main message, rather than Western unity against Putin and Islamic State, shows which argument Number 10 thinks is working. The truth is that however spurious George

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Obama’s Brexit overreach

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. Is Barack Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate a welcome one or should he keep his nose out of our business? Tim Montgomerie says in his Spectator cover piece that such overreach is typical of the US President’s arrogance. But Anne Applebaum disagrees and says that Obama speaks on behalf of many Americans when he calls on Britain to stay engaged in European politics. So should we listen to Obama? Joining Isabel Hardman to discuss is Spectator deputy editor Freddy Gray and the

Friday

22 Apr 2016

Fraser Nelson

Will Barack Obama’s ‘back of the queue’ threat backfire?

Barack Obama’s decision to visit Britain during an election campaign was controversial enough. His writing an article against Brexit in the Daily Telegraph was more controversial still. But to stand in Downing Street and threaten his host country with being dumped ‘at the back of the queue’ for trade talks should it choose to leave the EU is, I think, too much. It’s precisely the comment that could backfire, and spark indignation. And make people ask: who on earth is Obama to come to Britain and speak to us in this way? I’ve just recorded a podcast about this with James Forsyth. Here it is:- It wasn’t what Obama said, as such. Even the

Isabel Hardman

Obama’s threat: vote for Brexit and the USA will put you at the ‘back of the queue’

David Cameron and Barack Obama arrived at the Foreign Office for their press conference today with two clear aims. The first was to impress upon everyone how well they get on, and in a rather cringeworthy manner. Cameron in particular was desperate to mention in almost every sentence the jolly good friendship that he had with his friend Barack. His friend who he is so close to that he doesn’t even need to mention his last name. But still needs to set out all the examples of how they are good friends, just in case anyone is in any doubt. That friend Barack spent a lot of time talking, not

Toby Young

There’s nothing ‘racist’ about Boris Johnson’s Obama comments

Nick Cohen is predictably over-the-top in his response to Boris Johnson’s piece about President Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate in today’s Sun. He begins by claiming he’s approaching this subject ‘with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey’. He then goes on to reprimand Boris for suggesting Obama has an ‘ancestral dislike of the British empire’ on account of his ‘part-Kenyan’ heritage and links this to his support for the Remain campaign. We’ll come to that comment in a minute, but Cohen goes on to conflate these remarks with the worst excesses of the birther movement: I’m not someone who throws accusations of racism around

Alex Massie

A vote for Brexit is a vote against Toryism

It’s the rage I struggle to comprehend. There is, I am sure, an entirely reasonable case to be made for leaving the European Union, it’s just that, for the most part, we’ve not heard it. Instead, the dominant feature of the Out campaign has been its anger. Many of these people really do seem to think this is some kind of struggle for national liberation. If they didn’t they wouldn’t talk about Britain regaining its ‘independence’. Nor would they suggest that being a member of the EU is somehow incompatible with being a ‘free’ country. This, I am prepared to venture, will be news to the Poles, the Lithuanians, the

John Mills

The Government is running an unfair referendum – and I’ve seen it all before

The Government spent over £9m on a pro-EU leaflet to be distributed to every household before the official campaign began, backed up by a major social media campaign. This is deeply unfair. But it’s no surprise to me. I’ve seen it all before, running up to the 1975 referendum, when I was the National Agent for the campaign for leaving what was then the Common Market. In 1975 there were three leaflets delivered to all households. One was from the National Referendum Campaign, who wanted the UK to come out. One was from Britain in Europe, who wanted us to stay in. The third was from the government, backing up the

The Spectator

The future belongs to entrepreneurs

‘Who thinks the UK is the best place in Europe to start a business?’ asked Spectator editor Fraser Nelson. Almost everyone at the table raised a hand. ‘So that’s a pretty good start…’ In the dining room of Drummonds Bank — a fine example of 18th Century entrepreneurship — The Spectator and NatWest brought together an eclectic group of entrepreneurs, investors and Labour’s shadow business secretary Angela Eagle MP, to discuss opportunities and obstacles for start-ups and scale-ups. The question for the table was what government and banks can do better to help turn great ideas into growing businesses? Alison Rose, NatWest’s Chief Executive of Commercial & Private Banking, set

Tom Goodenough

Coffee House Podcast: Barack Obama’s Brexit intervention

Barack Obama has waded into the Brexit debate but should he be lecturing us about the EU referendum? On this special edition of the Coffee House podcast, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson is joined by Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth to discuss whether the President’s intervention is a welcome one and whether it will actually work. On the podcast, Isabel Hardman says: ‘I think the out campaign is certainly hoping that Barack Obama will be seen to be patronising British voters and patronising Britain suggesting that it is a sort of weak nation. And I think also the idea of foreign governments lecturing voters on what they should do in their

Tom Goodenough

Obama tells Britain: EU membership makes you stand taller on the world stage

In agreeing to visit the UK midway through an election campaign, Barack Obama guaranteed controversy. As Tim Montgomerie makes clear in his Spectator cover piece this week, many Eurosceptics are angry at the thought of listening to a President with a clear track record of foreign policy failures. Boris Johnson, writing in The Sun this morning, was brimming with the zeal of a convert to the Brexit cause and borrowing from Obama’s trademark. He wrote: ‘Can we take back control of our borders and our money and our system of Government? Yes we can.’ But now Obama has arrived, what is his actual argument for urging Brits to remain in the EU?