Politics Archives

Tuesday

8 Mar 2016

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Whitto reveals Seumas Milne’s Maoist manifesto

Today’s lobby lunch was the cause of much amusement among hacks. John Whittingdale used his speech to cast a light on Labour spinner Seumas Milne’s school days. The Culture Secretary recounted his time at Winchester College with Milne. He said that during this time, Milne co-authored a manifesto supporting Chinese communist dictator Chairman Mao. What’s more he even posed for a photo with the election poster in question: John Whittingdale went to school w/ Seumas Milne and all he got was a lousy poster of Seumas supporting Chairman Mao pic.twitter.com/JdMuB5jn8c — Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) March 8, 2016 Of course this isn’t the first time someone in Labour has been associated with the communist

Steerpike

Question Time’s Brexit poster girl joins Women for Britain campaign

When Lexie Hill appeared on Question Time last month, she left Cabinet minister Liz Truss speechless when she offered up her argument for leaving the EU. The Brexit youth dismissed the Environment Secretary’s claim that the Prime Minister’s EU negotiation deal will reduce the ‘pull factors’ attracting migrants — arguing that a rise in the living wage would actually do the opposite: ‘I’m sorry but I can’t accept Liz’s arguments. What is increasing the living wage to £9-per-hour in 2020 going to do? Especially Eastern Europeans who have a minimum wage that’s already one tenth of what ours is’ With the clip going viral and Lexie championed as a new

Isabel Hardman

EU campaigns aim for women voters

One of the striking things about the European Union referendum debate so far – apart from how cross everyone is with each other – is how blokey the whole thing has been. There are high-profile women on either side of the debate – Theresa May (who has been rather quiet since her announcement that she was backing ‘In’), Nicky Morgan, Nicola Sturgeon and Caroline Lucas for ‘In’, and Priti Patel, Andrea Leadsom and Theresa Villiers for ‘Out’ – but most of the big interviews and rows about who is backing which side have featured men. Yet women are the key swing voters in this referendum. They are twice as likely

Nick Cohen

Eurosceptics are finally having to emerge from their safe space

I accept it may take an effort to imagine Charles Moore dressed in a recyclable hemp skirt and organic cotton kimono, his body adorned with the bangles, tattoos and piercings of a genderqueer National Union of Students diversity officer. But you should try. No, really, you should. Students are not the only ones who lock themselves in safe spaces and no-platform all who disturb their doltish peace with argument. The poor dears of the Eurosceptic right are every bit as precious. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Moore, of this parish, found the courage to overcome the subaltern status a hierarchical society has imposed on him, and bring us a survivor’s testimony

Monday

7 Mar 2016

Isabel Hardman

How Jeremy Corbyn ‘faced down’ his MP critics: by not answering their questions

There is no small irony in the fact that Labour MPs were this evening reminded by their colleagues not to brief details of tonight’s parliamentary Labour party meeting before a spokesman for Corbyn went out into the Committee Corridor to, er, brief journalists about what happened at the meeting. The official account is that there was a ‘sea change in the atmosphere’ and that ‘Jeremy faced down his critics’. MPs coming out did say that the meeting wasn’t as shouty as previous encounters, but one moderate suggested that this was because there is a greater sense of resignation and that ‘people just can’t be bothered to get angry any more’.

Brendan O’Neill

The ‘anti-racist’ crowd have resorted to the old politics of racism

The self-important slayers of ‘cultural appropriation’ have gone too far this time. Clearly they didn’t get a big-enough moral kick from chastising white people who do yoga (on the basis that yoga has ‘roots in Indian culture’), moaning about Beyonce donning a sari (‘how is this different from white folks wearing cornrows?’, the racial police demanded), and fuming about middle-class indie kids who wear Native American headdresses at music festivals (apparently this‘perpetuates damaging, archaic and racist stereotypes’). So now they’re turning their fire on a black actress who, in their view, is not black enough to play Nina Simone. Yes, even black people can now be accused of being insufficiently black for certain cultural

Isabel Hardman

Nicky Morgan uses departmental questions to attack Vote Leave

Education Questions in the Commons is a chance for MPs to ask questions about Education – or at least to suck up to ministers by asking them questions about what a good job they are doing. But today Nicky Morgan seemed to be talking about something that wasn’t so much tenuously related to her department as completely irrelevant. In her exchanges with Lucy Powell, the Education Secretary managed to end up talking about Europe. She said: ‘Isn’t it typical, Mr Speaker, that on that side of the House, they need to learn the lesson that the Vote Leave campaign needs to learn as well, which is that if you talk about

Isabel Hardman

Row about BCC boss shows how careful Cameron must be with his party

Conservative eurosceptics are trying to hammer Number 10 on the suspension and resignation of British Chambers of Commerce Director General John Longworth over his comments about the EU referendum. David Davis has announced that he is putting in FOI requests to Number 10, Number 11 and the Business Department for details of conversations between ministers, officials or advisers and the BCC. It is unlikely that these requests will yield very much, but Davis is presumably sending them in order to make a statement about Longworth’s resignation and to keep up the pressure on a story that has been running for a few days now. The reason Tory MPs are so

Steerpike

Morrissey is ‘considering’ standing for Mayor of London

For those uninspired by the current London mayoral race, there is still hope that things will get more interesting. Morrissey, the Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now singer, is said to be pondering entering the running. The Animal Welfare Party have asked The Smiths frontman to consider standing as their candidate in the election, while his fan website claims he is ‘considering the contest very seriously’. If elected, the singer’s number one concern would be animal welfare: ‘There must be a governmental voice against the hellish and archaic social injustice allotted to animals in the United Kingdom simply because those animals do not speak English, otherwise millions of very caring citizens are greatly concerned about

Isabel Hardman

Why the Budget won’t be a welcome rest from Europe for George Osborne

After a few weeks of banging on about Europe, Downing Street hopes that there will be more of a domestic focus in Westminster for a little while at least. The Budget is approaching, and George Osborne is already coming to terms with what he can and can’t do. It turns out that now is not the time to be politically radical, as Tory MPs are already in a rather bad mood about Europe, and trying to change the subject won’t really make enough of a difference. So the Chancellor has already had to retreat on reforms he was considering to pension tax relief after it was made clear to him

Helen Nugent

Pensions: George Osborne loses his nerve

Some have compared it to a farce worthy of Alan Ayckbourn, others have condemned it as a missed opportunity. Whatever your opinion, the Chancellor’s U-turn on pensions reform is a blow for low income workers and a boost for middle-class savers. Under proposals mooted by the government (and let’s not forget that they were no more than that – proposals), a radical shake-up of pensions was due to be unveiled in the Budget later this month. A raft of measures were under consideration but the one grabbing the headlines focused on a change to tax relief on pensions contributions. Britain’s unwieldy pensions system has long been the subject of much

Sunday

6 Mar 2016

Isabel Hardman

In campaign seizes on Boris Johnson’s Brexit jobs comments

Boris Johnson’s admission to Andrew Marr that Brexit ‘might’ cost people their jobs has quite inevitably been seized upon by the ‘In’ campaign as a sign that a vote to leave would put people’s livelihoods at risk. The Mayor of London came on the show to make the positive case for Britain leaving the European Union. It was his first big challenge as one of the key figures in the Out campaign, and as James argued yesterday, he needs to match David Cameron’s efficacy in putting his side’s case across. He did give an entertaining interview in which he scrapped with Andrew Marr over who had ‘sovereignty’ over the programme,

Steerpike

Andrew Marr accused of EU bias over Boris Johnson interview

This week Nigel Farage revealed that he had been left ‘worried’ about Boris Johnson’s ability to campaign for Brexit after his ‘slightly shambolic’ North London press conference. While the Ukip leader insists he has since come round to Johnson’s involvement, Mr S wonders what he will make of the Mayor of London’s turn on The Andrew Marr show. Johnson appeared on the BBC show to put forward the case for leaving the EU. However, what followed was a tense exchange between Johnson and Marr as each tried to set the interview agenda. With Boris keen to speak about the single market and sovereignty, he clashed with Marr when the presenter attempted to change topic: AM:

Saturday

5 Mar 2016

Fraser Nelson

Is it too late for George Osborne to be a Conservative hero?

The Chancellor has today declared a ceasefire on Middle Britain: he will not go ahead with his planned pensions raid, where he was intending to erode the relief due to upper-rate taxpayers. The Times splashes on the news, and says that “pressing ahead with the plans may well have dented his popularity within the party as a leadership battle approaches.” If this was his motive, it was not without foundation: the tax credits debacle, his Google gaffe and, most recently, his positioning himself as a EU cheerleader has not endeared him to the Tory members who will decide who succeeds David Cameron. The bookmakers show his odds plunging (below) and have today

Steerpike

Nigel Farage: Boris had me worried after his ‘shambolic’ press conference

To the Conrad hotel in St James where Nigel Farage went head to head with former Labour spinner John McTernan in a Ladbrokes’ Brexit debate. Although the EU was the number one topic on the agenda, the panel chair Isabel Oakeshott — who is the co-author of Call Me Dave — managed to get pig on the menu as she recalled an email McTernan had sent about a journalist — during his time advising Julia Gillard in Australia: ‘This was an order as to how this journalist was to be treated: dead — not ever, no transcripts, no returned calls, dead, forever — that’s an order.’ She said that the email summed

James Forsyth

Can Boris do as effective a job for Out as Cameron is doing for In?

Pro-Brexit Tory Cabinet Minister would, I suspect, not be complaining about the government’s referendum campaign tactics if they didn’t fear that they were effective. Whatever you think about how he has done it, David Cameron has driven the risks of leaving the EU up the agenda this week. He has pushed the Out campaign onto the back foot. This is what makes Boris Johnson’s appearance on Marr tomorrow morning so important, I argue in my Sun column this week. Out need Boris to drive their agenda as successfully as Cameron is pushing IN’s. The interview is a big moment for Boris too. It will be the biggest test yet of

Friday

4 Mar 2016

Isabel Hardman

Boris tries to drag David Cameron back to talking about his EU deal

Boris Johnson’s attack on David Cameron’s EU deal as achieving ‘no real change’ is part of the very high-profile campaign that the senior Tories campaigning for Brexit are waging. They have covered the media over the past week with interviews, quotes and rebuttals to every claim that the Prime Minister and his allies have offered. What is interesting about Boris’ comments is that he is trying to take the debate back to the question of whether Cameron actually got anything in the renegotiation. The Prime Minister has rather pointedly moved on from talking about that, focusing now on the dangers posed by a ‘leap into the dark’, which requires a

Steerpike

Zac Goldsmith promises to be ‘pansexual’ for London

As Zac Goldsmith fights to be the next Mayor of London against Labour’s Sadiq Khan, he is striving to appeal to all Londoners. Alas, somewhere in the process of doing this, he appears to have got a bit confused. In an interview with Pink News — the news website aimed at the LGBT community, Goldsmith said that he wanted to be a mayor for everyone, employing the term ‘pansexual’ to try and make his point: Pink News: Would you like to be the mayor for everyone? ZG: I would use the term pansexual here, if my understanding is correct. https://vine.co/v/iXa9lEB5Jrx While Mr S suspects that Goldsmith means that he wants to appeal

Steerpike

Nick Clegg visited dogging site during his time as deputy PM

With Nick Clegg now a mere backbencher, his former staff appear to no longer feel the need to protect the Liberal Democrat from negative publicity. Today Clegg’s former campaign manager Ben Rathe has written a blog in which he reveals what happened when his search for a location for Clegg to give a speech — at the Liberal Democrat conference in 2013 — went spectacularly wrong: ‘It was the Liberal Democrat Conference 2013, and my role back then was planning all of the visits that Nick Clegg was doing over the course of the 5 days in Glasgow. This included finding somewhere suitable to announce a new 5p charge on plastic bags,

Steerpike

Watch: Labour MEP stuck in lift in European parliament

Brexit campaigners make the argument that the European Union just isn’t working when it comes to Britain’s interests. While some are yet to be convinced, it’s safe to say that some parts of the EU parliament just don’t work full stop. Last night Paul Brannen, the Labour MEP, found himself stuck in a lift in parliament, in Brussels. When door of the lift opened, a steel wall appeared. After waiting for 20 minutes, Brannen decided the only thing to do was to film himself in case he didn’t made it out of the lift alive: ‘I’m somewhere between the 13th floor of parliament and the 3rd floor of parliament, and I’ve been here for about