Politics Archives

Wednesday

20 Apr 2016

Leave campaigners brace themselves for ‘In’ onslaught

If the number of foreign politicians and international organisations that the government is enlisting in the campaign to stay in the EU is anything to go by, David Cameron and George Osborne are a bit nervous about the outcome of the referendum. This week in particular has seen the Chancellor using not just the might of the Treasury to scare voters about Brexit, or just the might of the President of the United States, but also eight former US Treasury secretaries. In their letter today, the former ministers write that Britain leaving the EU would threaten the Special Relationship. They argue: ‘It would reduce Britain’s very positive influence as an

Steerpike

What ‘stinking cesspit of corporate corruption’? Steve Hilton refuses to say he backs Brexit

In More Human, Steve Hilton describes the EU as ‘a stinking cesspit of corporate corruption gussied up in the garb of idealistic internationalism’. So given his strong words on the issue, in theory it would seem that David Cameron’s former director of strategy — who is also one of the Prime Minister’s closest friends — has all the makings of a Brexiteer. However, speaking on Today to launch his new website Crowdpac — which aims to show which candidates match your priorities — Hilton appeared to get cold feet on the issue. When Sarah Montague asked him if he was backing Out, Hilton attempted to avoid the question several times: SH: Well Sarah,

Luke de Pulford

A genocide is underway in Iraq and Syria. Why won’t the government recognise this?

Later today the House of Commons will vote upon a motion expressing belief that a genocide is underway against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria. The motion, proposed by Fiona Bruce MP, is supported by a large number of MPs from all parties. The Government is expected to oppose, as they did when a similar measure was debated in the Lords. At the time of writing, party enforcers are rumoured to be whipping MPs on the payroll to abstain from the vote. This is an old parliamentary tactic intended to undermine the legitimacy and clout of the measure under consideration by reducing the number of

Tuesday

19 Apr 2016

Isabel Hardman

Can filibustering be filleted out of Private Members’ Bills?

‘The Commons at its best’ is a bit of a pompous phrase that people apply to all sorts of sessions in Parliament that aren’t really the Commons at its best at all. But the Commons at its worst is surely easy to find: it’s when MPs meet on a Friday to discuss Private Members’ Bills. These sessions have turned into a circus of MPs proposing slightly rubbish legislation, and Philip Davies or one of his colleagues talking that legislation out so that there cannot be a vote on its second reading, thereby killing it. This then leads to fury from the backbencher who proposed the Free Unicorns Bill and any

Mathieu Vaillancourt

Jeremy Corbyn’s McDonald’s boycott shows he’s a terrible snob

What has Jeremy Corbyn got against McDonald’s? He wants to block the fast-food chain from having an outlet at the Labour party conference, a position which has been blasted by quite a few MPs in his party, who presumably enjoy a Big Mac every now and then. It raises a more serious question though. According to their website, McDonald’s employ about 85,000 people in the UK. Most of these workers are voters. Add to that the number of British people who dine at McDonald’s – which must be in the millions – and you start to see why Corbyn’s McBoycott has gone down badly. Is snobbism behind it? Possibly. McDonald’s working conditions may not be the best in the labour market, but are they really

Tom Goodenough

Mark Carney wades into Brexit debate again

Whatever might be said about the Governor of the Bank of England, it’s hard to fault his persistence. Mark Carney has made a habit of wading into the debate surrounding the EU referendum. And based on his appearance in front of the Lords Economic Affairs Committee this afternoon, he isn’t planning on stopping any time soon. Carney repeated the MPC’s warnings about the ‘threats’ from the forthcoming referendum being ‘the most significant near-term domestic risk to financial stability’. He also suggested that the effects of the vote on 23rd June might be materialising already: He spoke carefully and was clearly mindful of criticism he has faced before for appearing to

Steerpike

Brexit wars: Leave.EU goad Michael Gove

After Vote Leave were awarded the official designation to campaign for Brexit in the EU referendum, there was much disappointment from Grassroots Out and Leave.EU. So much so that the campaigns’ main funder Arron Banks toyed with the idea of launching a judicial review. However, in the end the Brexit backer decided to be the bigger man and support Vote Leave for the sake of national interests: ‘It is time to turn our collective guns on the real opponents in this campaign: those who are repeatedly trying to scare the British public into thinking that Britain is too small and insignificant to be an independent nation engaged with the whole

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Gove’s case for Brexit

Michael Gove has been making his case for Brexit and doing his best to knock the stuffing out of the ‘remain’ campaign. He started the day on the Today programme, spelling out why he thought Britain was best off outside the EU. In his pitch to the nation, he said: ‘I want us to vote to leave the European Union before it’s too late, because that’s the safer choice for Britain. If we vote to stay, we’re not settling for a secure status quo, we’re voting to be hostages, locked in the back of the car, driven headlong towards deeper EU integration.’ The Justice Secretary then gave a speech later

Steerpike

Watch: Paul Mason is reunited with a fellow ‘revolutionary Marxist’

Earlier this year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer used Treasury Questions to take a swipe at Paul Mason. Osborne described the former Channel 4 economics editor as a ‘revolutionary Marxist’. Mason responded by denying the claim in a blog post, even though he is a former member of the Trotskyist Workers’ Power group. Happily Mason had a chance to take a trip down memory lane on today’s Daily Politics. Producers dug up an old video of Mason from his revolutionary Marxist days. They then brought on his former hard-left comrade Peter Taaffe, the general secretary of the Socialist party. Mason explained why he is now a reformed revolutionary: PM: I’m not one

Isabel Hardman

Government avoids defeat on banking bill

Today’s Treasury questions was a pretty tame affair. Labour produced a pretty mild set of questions on tax avoidance and solar energy, while Tory eurosceptics only caused trouble in the opening questions by complaining about the Treasury’s analysis of the economic consequences of Brexit – and at the very end when Sir Edward Leigh and Stewart Jackson challenged the Chancellor again on the matter. But there wasn’t much heat in either line of inquiry. What was more interesting was the way George Osborne managed to avoid a growing rebellion on the Bank of England and Financial Services Bill when he took a topical question from Tory MP Charles Walker. Walker

Michael Gove

Did Stephen King write the In campaign’s script?

One of the most striking things about the debate on Britain’s future relationship with Europe is that the case for staying is couched overwhelmingly in negative and pessimistic terms, while the case for leaving is positive and optimistic. Those of us who want to Leave believe Britain’s best days lie ahead, that our country has tremendous untapped potential which independence would unleash and our institutions, values and people would make an even more positive difference to the world if we’re unshackled from the past. In contrast, the In campaign want us to believe that Britain is beaten and broken, that it can’t survive without the help of Jean-Claude Juncker and his

Tom Goodenough

The danger of Michael Gove’s vague optimism

After yesterday’s furore over Treasury warnings about exactly what Brexit will cost British families, today it’s Michael Gove’s turn to hit back. The Justice Secretary is set to accuse the Government of ‘treating voters like children who can be frightened into obedience’. It’s extraordinary just how quickly the war of words seems to be intensifying, given that there are still more than nine weeks to go until the actual referendum. But is there a danger that all this noise is just going to switch off voters to the actual arguments being made? Michael Gove did his best this morning to make a clear-cut case for ditching the EU after being

Steerpike

Did Zac Goldsmith pick up some tips on tackling extremism from Yvette Cooper?

During last night’s BBC mayoral debate, Zac Goldsmith was asked whether he had run a racist campaign against Sadiq Khan — following negative press surrounding the Labour candidate’s links to extremists. After Khan found himself under fire for sharing platforms with characters like Suliman Gani, as well as for his work for Louis Farrakhan — the man who claimed Hitler was a ‘very great man’ — Labour’s Yvette Cooper complained that the Tories’ mayoral campaign amounts to racism: ‘It’s time to call it out for what it really is before it gets worse. What started as a subtle dog-whistle is becoming a full-blown racist scream.’ However, Cooper hasn’t always appeared to hold such strong views when it comes

Monday

18 Apr 2016

Katy Balls

BBC mayoral debate: Sadiq and Zac try to set the record straight over ‘extremism’ allegations

As the European referendum campaign gains momentum, the London mayoral election has had to take a backseat in recent weeks when it comes to setting the news agenda. Tonight the mayoral candidates had a chance to turn this around as part of the BBC’s London’s Mayor debate. While Respect candidate George Galloway was left out of the line-up, the five main candidates — Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan, Caroline Pidgeon, Sian Berry and Peter Whittle — joined Andrew Neil for the biggest debate of the campaign. With the election widely seen to be a two-horse race between Khan and Goldsmith, the pair dominated the evening as their campaign feuds bubbled to the surface. The first topic on the agenda was

Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs fry Corbyn over McDonald’s ban

Although the weekly meeting of the parliamentary Labour party is a private affair, Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman offers journalists lurking in the committee corridor outside a briefing as soon as it has concluded. Today he had to take questions from hacks on whether or not his boss goes to McDonald’s – prompted by the news that the Labour party is banning the fast food outlet from having a stall at its party conference. Both the staff and the burger ban came up at the meeting. It started with an observation from Baroness Armstrong that the Labour leader now has a phalanx of staff with him when he attends these sessions, as opposed

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Osborne slammed over ‘absurd’ Brexit warning

George Osborne’s warning over what Brexit will cost the UK economy has dominated the headlines for much of the day. But how have the Treasury figures gone down in Westminster? Based on the number of Tory MPs queuing up to slam the Chancellor’s claims, it would seem not very well at all: Kwasi Kwarteng said he thought the figures were ‘absurd’. He attacked the Treasury as an organisation not qualified to make predictions about economic outcomes following its failure to predict the 2008 credit crunch: John Redwood also used the same word to describe his disdain for the warning that Brexit would cost British families £4,300. He said the predictions

Isabel Hardman

Labour backbenchers focus fire on Emily Thornberry again at Defence Questions

Departmental questions in the House of Commons are generally an opportunity for backbenchers of all parties to hold the government to account. But a strange pattern is emerging at Defence Questions, whereby the backbenchers of each of the two main parties pour their efforts into making life uncomfortable for their own frontbenchers, even though Labour’s team isn’t actually in government. So today Michael Fallon and his ministers had to contend with complaints from Sir Edward Leigh about the suggestion that Britain leaving the European Union would harm Britain’s national security. But Emily Thornberry, who is supposed to focus her fire and that of her party on ministers, had to deal

Steerpike

Leave.EU hit back at Osborne over Brexit comments: ‘if this is our economic team, we are in deep s–t’

George Osborne’s claim that the Treasury thinks Brexit would make you £4,300 worse off has gone down like a cup of cold sick with the Leave camp. While many Brexiteers have hit back in less than polite terms, it’s Leave.EU who win the award for ‘most blunt response’. In light of the claims, Arron Bank’s Brexit group have added a new picture to their Facebook group. The banner reads: ‘If this is our key economic team we are in deep s–t’. It seems that now Leave.EU are out of the race in terms of winning the official designation, they are able to speak freely.

Melanie McDonagh

Has Boris finally realised why Turkey shouldn’t join the EU?

So good to see Boris Johnson making the obvious case for Brexit, namely that the Turks are at the door. And it’s not just the imminent prospect of visa-free travel for 75 million of them as part of the deal that Angela Merkel struck with that problematic individual, Recep Erdogan, that we’ve got to worry about. The other, longer-term threat of Turkey actually joining the EU should also be cause for concern. That process has been expedited, too, as part of the Greek migrant exchange which the Pope was so cross about. As ever, Mr Johnson put his finger on the nub of the problem, in an interview with the Sunday

James Forsyth

Government reserves the right to take military action without parliamentary approval

One of the more significant constitutional innovations of recent times is the assumption that the government must get parliament’s permission before committing British forces to military action. This precedent, set with the 2003 Iraq vote, has been upheld by this government; it famously resulted in Britain not bombing Syria in 2013 following the use of chemical weapons in the civil war. There had been pressure on the government to formalise this new constitutional convention, to legislate that the government needs parliament’s permission before military action can be taken. But in a written ministerial statement today, the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon rejects that option. He makes clear that while the government