Politics

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

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Dominic Grieve heckled at conference event

They may no longer be Conservative MPs, but that did not hold back several members of the Gaukeward squad from heading to the Conservative party conference yesterday in Manchester. Former Tory MPs Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, and Alistair Burt took part in a fringe event outside the main conference area, organised by ‘Conservative group for Europe’. And although the audience which had gathered was generally supportive of the ‘rebel alliance’ (and replete with EU flag berets), some in the crowd were less than happy with Dominic Grieve’s plans to hold a second referendum. At several points the former Tory MP was interrupted as he gave his speech, with one member of

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why senior Conservatives are talking about a Brexit extension

Will the UK have left the EU by October 31st? At the Conservative party conference, ministers, MPs and activists are keen to repeat the event slogan: ‘Get Brexit done’. However, many are unsure as to when exactly Brexit will get done. Johnson has promised to take the UK out of the EU by 31 October “do or die” – he has repeatedly said “extension means extinction” for the Tories. But with parliament passing legislation to try to force him to seek an extension, and opposition MPs refusing him an election until that extension is secured, senior Conservatives are starting to contemplate a world in which Brexit isn’t done at the end

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s conference speech will be quickly overshadowed

In a lengthy interview on the Today programme this morning, Boris Johnson denied that the UK’s plans for the Irish border will require checks a few miles from the border. When asked if the UK was proposing a ‘hard border’ a few miles in from the border, he said ‘absolutely not’. But he did say that it is ‘just the reality’ that there will have to be checks somewhere.  Given that Ireland and the EU have made checks anywhere on the island of Ireland a red line, there is going to have to be movement from one side or the other if there is to be a deal. Boris Johnson

Will Heaven

The problem with ‘Islamophobia’ and the Tory party

On Sunday, Policy Exchange held three events at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester – one on the Irish backstop with Arlene Foster, Leader of the DUP; one with Michael Gove talking to Iain Martin on how to deliver Brexit; and one on the subject of Islamophobia. There were some fascinating moments throughout the afternoon. But the most memorable speech of the day was at the session on Islamophobia – an event which is now being horribly misrepresented on Twitter, including by the NUS president, Zamzam Ibrahim, who claims that it denied ‘the existence of anti-Muslim bigotry’. She could not be more wrong. The event was chaired by Trevor Phillips,

Steerpike Steerpike

Mark Francois: Why I won’t buy David Cameron’s book

It perhaps isn’t much of a surprise that Mark Francois won’t be buying David Cameron’s book. But his reason for not splashing out on ‘For the Record’ is somewhat unusual. The Brexiteer revealed that he won’t be putting it on his Christmas list for the simple reason that he doesn’t appear in it. Francois told a Tory conference fringe event: ‘I went to the index, i went down to F, and I looked for my name and it wasn’t there so he can keep his £25 quid.’ Mr S isn’t quite sure how Francois’s refusal to buy the book means that Dave gets to ‘keep’ his money works…

The Spectator

What’s on today at Conservative conference: The Spectator guide | 1 October 2019

Priti Patel is the big draw on the main stage at Tory conference today. But there is plenty happening on the fringes too. Here are the highlights on day three: Main agenda: 10.00 – 12.15: Forging Stronger Communities 14.00: Social Justice in Action 14.45: Shaun Bailey, Tory London Mayoral candidate 2020 15.00: Toughening Up Our Criminal Justice System Robert Buckland Brandon Lewis Lucy Frazer  15.45: Priti Patel, Home Secretary   Fringe events: 09.00: With one month to go until Brexit, how prepared are Britain’s key transport links? Chris Heaton-Harris; Doug Bannister (chief executive, Port of Dover); Manchester Central: Central 5 09.15: Moggcast Live Jacob Rees-Mogg; Paul Goodman; Manchester Central: Conservative

Monday

Alexander Pelling-Bruce Alexander Pelling-Bruce

The Oliver Letwin speech that first revealed the Benn Act game plan

On Coffee House last week, I wrote that the judgment of the Supreme Court shows that the Benn Act is unconstitutional. It is more than that: it constitutes a revolution in the way in which Britain is governed. Oliver Letwin, who helped draft the Act, made this abundantly clear when speaking in the House of Commons on 14 February. His speech came in the run up to the first time Parliament took control to direct Government policy by legislation. But it also reveals the game plan that ultimately led to the Benn Act and the topsy-turvy situation we now find ourselves in. Letwin describes it as “astonishing turn of events”

John Connolly John Connolly

Dominic Grieve’s strategy for a second referendum

The former Tory MP Dominic Grieve may have voted against the parliamentary recess for Conservative party conference, but that certainly hasn’t kept him away from the action this week. The now independent MP showed up in Manchester yesterday, and this afternoon attended a ‘Conservatives for a People’s Vote’ event at the aptly named (for a man with few allies inside the hall) ‘Friends House’ outside the conference area. As expected, the MP first used his platform to launch attacks on Boris Johnson’s government. Grieve said reports that he and his Remain allies had sought help from the French to draft the Benn bill were a serious piece of ‘defamation’ and that Number

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories aim to be the people’s party with minimum wage rise

Sajid Javid has just announced that the national minimum wage will rise to £10.50 by 2024. This is another big hike. It is currently £8.21 and was just £5.93 as recently as 2010. It will end up going to everyone over 21, not 25 as currently. The politics of this announcement are clear. The Tories want to position themselves as the people’s party, the party of the worker and delivering a big pay rise for the low paid is one way of doing that. It is also a way of promising to put more money in people’s pockets that doesn’t, directly, cost the government anything. This should help the Tories

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

In speaking Punjabi from Tory Party stage, Sajid Javid has made a small piece of history

Sajid Javid hates identity politics and has spent most of his political career avoiding it. But his speech today showed how effective he can be when he discusses his own life story. Having his mum in the hall was quite something: this is a woman who grew up in poverty in the Punjab and came to Britain with nothing. She now looks at her son as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is what Michael Howard referred to as the “British dream”. She thought it was a big deal when the first Asians moved into Coronation Street, he said: now they’re in Downing Street and still “living above the shop”. And

Robert Peston Robert Peston

It’s now or never for Boris Johnson if he wants a Brexit breakthrough

There is only one speech that matters this week, here in Manchester at Tory party conference. It will be Boris Johnson’s on Wednesday and it will be significant – potentially historic – for what he has to say about how and whether he hopes to break the impasse with Brussels on negotiating an alternative to the Northern Ireland backstop and therefore strike a new deal to leave the EU. Intriguingly, perhaps weirdly, cabinet ministers are ebullient with optimism that Johnson is on the verge of striking a deal with Juncker and Barnier that is sellable to most Tory MPs, Northern Ireland’s DUP and even enough Labour MPs to carry it across the

Matthew Lynn

Here’s the flaw in the Boris hedge fund conspiracy theory

It is one of the most diabolical plots of all time, a conspiracy so vast, so deep, and so wicked it could have come from the pen of Dan Brown. A small cabel of powerful hedge funds have installed Boris Johnson at Number 10, paying for his campaign and his advisers. Once there, his task is to crash the UK out of the European Union without a deal, plunging the economy into chaos, and sparking a rout of sterling and a collapse in the FTSE. In the background, those same hedge funds will have ‘shorted’ the pound and the London equity market. In the process, they will make a few

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

When staged Tory conference panels go rogue

The Tories have tried to jazz up their conference hall this year, after accusations that the whole thing was becoming a bit robotic and boring. It’s fair to say that this has had mixed results. One of the exciting developments is the use of panel discussions between ministers, which is supposed to encourage greater audience participation. Members in the hall can submit questions using the conference app, and the panel then answer the most popular ones. This morning’s session with Housing and Planning Minister Esther McVey, Business Minister Nadhim Zahawi and Northern Powerhouse Minister Jake Berry offered Tory activists a lively – and at times unintentionally unsettling – insight into

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Dominic Grieve and Philip Hammond booed at Brexit event

Mark Francois, Arlene Foster and John Redwood have just taken part in a panel discussion on Brexit at Manchester’s Comedy Club (where else?). Francois quoted Robert Frost’s poetry as he made his plea to the audience that he wanted ‘to live in a free country’ outside the EU. It won’t come as much of a surprise that there was no love lost for Brussels’ bureaucrats at the event, but there was a bigger bogeyman in the audience: Francois’s former Tory party colleagues. The Tory Brexiteer and self-declared ‘Spartan’ reeled off a list of names of those who he said would never support Britain leaving the EU. Among a group of

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

How Brexit is winning over ‘never kissed a Tory’ voters for the Conservatives

Brexit is seen by some as the Conservative curse. The theory goes that David Cameron called the referendum to resolve the EU problem once and for all, only for this to blow up in his – and his party’s – face. Where this was once a Tory issue, now it is everyone’s problem. But might that view be wrong? And might Brexit actually be a big opportunity, rather than a hindrance, for the Conservatives to win over supporters who would never in their wildest dreams have even thought about voting Tory? That’s the view put forward by Esther McVey, who spoke of her experiences on the doorstep, and how she

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The genius of Boris’s Brexit slogan

I can’t say I like it much, but the slogan for the Conservative Party conference in Manchester is a work of political genius: ‘Get Brexit done: invest in our NHS, schools and police’. In ten words, it offers a simplicity and clarity of intent that none of those who stand opposed to Boris Johnson have yet summoned up. Arguably, that slogan captures something that could even be described as the missing centre-ground in British politics: socially conservative (Brexit as reassertion of the nation state and the rejection of liberal internationalism) and economically liberal (Spend! Spend! Spend on the strong state!). If – big if – the Conservatives fight a general

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs on ‘red standby’ to leave snoozy conference for Brexit vote

The Tory MPs who’ve bothered to turn up to conference this week are torn between two places. They’re on a three-line whip in case anything kicks off in Westminster, where parliament will continue sitting this afternoon. Solicitor General Michael Ellis joked this morning that he was on ‘red standby’ to return to the House of Commons if there is a vote. The Labour party is on a two-line instruction, though many of its MPs are attending the sitting to try to make a point about holding the government to account while the government is away. It’s not yet clear whether they will hold any votes, though there is a need

Steerpike Steerpike

Ben Bradley: Tories are locked in Corbyn’s car

Ben Bradley is full of optimism about the Tory party’s future. ‘This could be the best thing since Mrs T’, he said at a Blue Collar Conservatism fringe event last night. Bradley said the government’s plans to splash the cash on police officers and hospitals would go down particularly well with voters. But he was somewhat less rosy about the current situation: ‘Unfortunately we find ourselves in the parliamentary situation where we are locked in the boot of Jeremy Corbyn’s car. We were in handcuffs, we were unconscious. But we’re figuring it out. We’re going to pick the lock. We’ll break free and post the 31 October, we’ve got some

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Has Rishi Sunak revealed the government’s plan for HS2?

One of Boris Johnson’s first acts as Prime Minister was to announce a review of HS2. With a panel of critics and supporters, the review has so far conducted its work quietly, with little sign of what its final assessment will be. But at a Conservative party fringe event last night, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rishi Sunak gave a hint to where the government’s own sympathies may lie. Tackling a question on HS2, he made a clear distinction between phase 1 from London to Birmingham – ‘the bit that’s causing all the controversy at the moment’ – and phase 2b – which would take the route from Birmingham into

Steerpike Steerpike

Hall of Shame: The worst jokes at Tory conference

Dying is easy, comedy is hard. It seems it’s even harder when you’re a Tory politician. Mr Steerpike has barely had time to pick himself up from the floor after this afternoon’s humorous offerings from the Conservative party conference stage, with dreadful jokes infiltrating both the speeches and the awkward panel discussions between ministers. Here are some of the worst. Please do let us know if you’ve come across any more howlers. Jake Berry: The only homes we are not going to build in the North of England is Sherlock Holmes! *** Esther McVey: While the Conservative party is building homes for the future, the only thing the Labour Party is building