Politics

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

Friday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why I’m delighted for Darren Grimes

Darren Grimes has won his appeal against a £20,000 fine imposed by the Electoral Commission. Grimes, the 25-year-old who ran the BeLeave campaign group, was accused by the watchdog of breaching expenditure rules during the EU referendum. Following proceedings which saw Grimes crowdfund his legal campaign, Judge Marc Dight has ruled that the fine be withdrawn. The Guardian reports: ‘Dight agreed with Grimes’ counsel that the campaigner had not intended to mislead and had been confused by the Electoral Commission’s registration form. He further concluded that the commission had failed to satisfy itself beyond reasonable doubt that BeLeave was not a genuine unincorporated association, and therefore was not able to

Robert Peston Robert Peston

We’re heading for an autumn election

Interviewing Boris Johnson is like staring long and hard into an expressionist painting: there are pyrotechnics, the shape of commitments and policies, but it might all be mirage. After I spoke with him on Wednesday for my show, my abiding sense was that he would dearly love a root-and-branch renegotiation of Theresa May’s Brexit deal, but that his famous optimism is not the same as naïveté. He knows replacing the Withdrawal Agreement at this late juncture is a million-to-one chance – and so leaving without a deal may be the only way to meet his deadline of Brexit by 31 October. That is why, for example, he was so gung-ho

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Boris’s critics are only making him stronger

If, as expected, Boris Johnson heads off to Buckingham Palace next Wednesday to become Prime Minister, I fear that a fleet of ambulances may be required at the Guardian’s headquarters in King’s Cross – as the newspaper’s collective Boris Derangement Syndrome moves into its final, and possibly terminal, phase. All week the Guardian has been running ever-more desperate stuff in its final attempt to dissuade Tory members from voting for Boris – which looks like being as successful as its appeal for readers to write heartfelt letters to US citizens, imploring them not to vote for George W Bush in the 2004 US Presidential election. Among it all there’s inevitably

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: the latest plot to oust Corbyn

When Labour moderates tried to oust Jeremy Corbyn in 2016, their attempt only made him stronger, protected by swathes of loyal members. But this year, is the tide turning for Corbyn, as even supporters begin to doubt him? First, there were the abysmal European Election results, which for many Corbynites were particularly painful because they disagree with the leadership’s ambiguous stance on Brexit. Then, last week’s BBC Panorama brought out a dark side to the leadership – the press team’s defensive response to the programme, accusing whistleblowers of being ‘disaffected’, disheartened many most loyal to the project. One high profile Corbynite I spoke to told me that they were disappointed

Thursday

Peter Jones

Rome’s lesson for Labour

Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to take serious action against Labour’s anti-Semitic members is no surprise: Marxists know who their friends are. The Roman plebs showed how to deal with such cabals. In 509 bc, Rome’s last tyrant king was thrown out, and the very nobles who had advised him at once took over the new republic as senators and annually appointed leaders (‘magistrates’ such as praetors, consuls, etc). And the plebs? Desperate for change, they found none: poverty, debt and landlessness persisted. So they took action —rioting and withdrawing their labour, especially on the battlefield. An early breakthrough was made in 494 bc, when the senate had to accept a plebeian

The Spectator

Wasted lives

Twenty years ago, the Scottish parliament was reconvened after a lapse of almost three centuries. The logic for devolution was clear enough: that Scotland has discrete issues, and ones that were not always solved by London government. Devolution would allow ‘Scottish solutions for Scottish problems’. There was, in Westminster, a feeling that MPs could worry less about these problems. Public health in Glasgow, previously one of the biggest problems in the UK, would be someone else’s problem. Let the MSPs see if they could do any better. The news this week should shock people on both sides of the border. Scotland has the worst rate of deaths from drugs in

Nick Robinson

Diary – 18 July 2019

By this time next week the Johnson era will surely have begun. ‘We can, we will, we must now escape the giant hamster wheel of doom,’ our new Dear Leader will have declared in Downing Street. Or something like it. He will be rewarded with headlines such as ‘BoJo gives us back our mojo’. We will all have been urged to believe in Britain again. Then the questions will begin. With the same deadlocked parliament, the same deeply divided party and country and the same intransigence, what will the new prime minister be able to achieve that Theresa May hasn’t? I’ve been examining the past three years of failed Brexit

Non Morris

Cottage gardens

The confusion is understandable. You arrive at Anne Hathaway’s Cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon, keen to experience the quintessential cottage garden — only to be told that Shakespeare’s garden was, in fact, designed in the 1920s. The space in front of an Elizabethan cottage would have been used for keeping pigs or hens, with a patch for cabbages or onions. Any flowers or herbs would have had medicinal or practical uses, not least for strewing on the cottage floor to disguise the stench. By the 19th century, the garden at Hathaway’s Cottage had become more decorative, but it was the Edwardian plantswoman Ellen Willmott who filled the front with flowers and introduced

Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Hunt slips up

As parliament voted today on an amendment which would make suspending parliament to prevent a no-deal Brexit more difficult, one MP was conspicuously absent from the events. After the vote it was noted that Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has ruled out proroguing parliament if he becomes the next leader of the Tory party, was listed as having abstained on the key amendment. It’s unusual enough for such a vital figure to miss an important vote, but most assumed the head of the Foreign Office had at least ‘paired’ himself with a Labour MP, so the result wasn’t affected. Apparently not though. Hunt explained on Twitter this afternoon that although he thought

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The prorogation vote shows how strong the anti-no deal coalition is

In a much heavier than expected defeat, the government lost by 41 votes in its attempt to take an anti-prorogation amendment out of the Northern Ireland bill. The vote was essentially a proxy for whether the Commons would accept no deal, and the size of the government’s loss is a reminder of how difficult any Prime Minister would find it to stay in office with this parliament if they went for no deal. It is worth noting that the amendment doesn’t stop no deal; and doesn’t even create an obvious vehicle to do so. But with this size of majority, the anti-no deal faction will be confident of finding a

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Leo Varadkar climbing down over Brexit?

Leo Varadkar certainly talks tough when it comes to Brexit, but is the Irish PM preparing to back down? Mr S. only asks because the Taoiseach conceded this morning that he is ‘willing to compromise’ over Brexit. This marks something of a change from his earlier comments in which he has repeatedly dismissed alternatives to the backstop, or regulatory alignment across the Irish border. Here is what Varadkar said on RTE today:  ‘The objective is to avoid the emergence of a hard border between north and south as a result of Brexit. What I care about is achieving those objectives and I am willing to compromise providing those objectives are

Matthew Lynn

Is the OBR right about a no-deal Brexit recession?

Sajid Javid. Liz Truss. Dominic Raab, or perhaps even his old City Hall colleague Kit Malthouse. There are plenty of well-qualified candidates to move into the house next door when Boris Johnson becomes prime minister next week. But one thing is surely now certain. The incumbent will have to be removed. In the dying days of a dismal Chancellorship, Philip Hammond seems intent on doing nothing more than stoking the dying embers of Project Fear. At a moment when the country needs a Chancellor working out how to cope with a potentially major economic shock, it is stuck with one paralysed by an irrational fear of what might be around

Steerpike Steerpike

Seven of the best moments from This Week

It’s the end of an era tonight as This Week goes out for the very last time. The BBC’s late-night politics show has built up a cult following since it first aired in 2003. A host of politicians, from Diane Abbott and Jacob Rees-Mogg, to Charles Kennedy and Ken Livingstone have all appeared. Singer Pete Doherty, Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and comedian Stewart Lee have also all popped up. The show’s presenter Andrew Neil has been there from the beginning. Here is Mr S’s pick of the seven most memorable moments from the show: Red Ken comes unstuck: Ken Livingstone is well known for talking about Hitler. But it was on the subject

Liam Halligan

Varadkar’s gamble

‘The government has relished wearing the green jersey on Brexit and standing up to the British with the help of the European Union — and been aware of the political benefits of doing so,’ thundered Pat Leahy in the Irish Times last week. ‘But now the pitfalls begin to emerge from the fog.’ Leo Varadkar gambled on the British government either cancelling Brexit or getting roped in by the backstop to accept Brexit in name only. The Taoiseach lost that gamble — and his strategy now lies in tatters. Since mid-2017, when Varadkar took office, teaming up with Brussels to take a maximalist, ultra-legalistic approach to the Irish border, his

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Watson’s new plot

Ever since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour party, many of his MPs have dreamed of deposing him. They’ve tried mass shadow ministerial resignations, a no-confidence motion, even a formal leadership contest — but to no avail. Some, like Chuka Umunna, left the party, hoping (in vain) that others would join their breakaway group. Other MPs gave up hope, resigned and found jobs outside of politics — concluding no plot would ever work. But that might now be changing. The Corbynites, who have stuck together for so long, are fighting with each other. Party members, once the human shield who protected their leader, are beginning to doubt

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Boris revive cabinet government?

It has become something of a tradition in British politics: an incoming prime minister promises to restore proper cabinet government. They vow to go back to the good old days of NHS policy being run by the health secretary, schools policy by the education secretary — and decisions taken in open discussion with a prime minister who is first among equals. The reality, however, is that a small clique in No. 10 ends up controlling the government. Gordon Brown made a fuss about bringing back cabinet government to try to differentiate himself from Tony Blair. In a rare admission of error, Brown says in his memoirs that he failed to

Trevor Kavanagh

Penned in

Cynical old hacks like me have been amused by the chorus of establishment applause for the Mail on Sunday’s great Kim Darroch scoop. Our elected masters were outraged, rightly, by threats from the Met’s Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu to criminalise editors who publish leaked memos. Politicians left, right and centre condemned an assault on press freedom. Alan Rusbridger, saintly ex-editor of the Guardian, demanded to know what they taught budding bobbies in police college these days. ‘I would like to suggest a new and compulsory course,’ he said. ‘Let’s call it “The Basics Of Free Speech”. Lesson number one. The police do not tell newspaper editors what to write.’ Others

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Hatred is in the eye of the beholder

There’s a broad mainstream consensus on both sides of the Atlantic: Trump’s tweet telling four hard-left minority Congresswomen to ‘go home’ to the crime-ridden countries they’re from, when three of the four were born in the US, was racially inflammatory and staggeringly ill-judged.  But the first question that would be raised in the UK if a British politician committed such a gaffe is the last question raised in the US: was that post ‘hate speech’? The First Amendment to the American constitution guarantees five basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, and these principles ought rightly to pertain in other democracies such as Britain. (I’m sorry, but we’ve one-upped the Brits

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Are Boris’s pro-business promises the defibrillator we’ve been waiting for?

Back when Boris Johnson was editor of this magazine and MP for Henley, I was with him at a Tory party conference in Bournemouth. He was about to speak at a meeting on transport policy. An intern rushed up with some random downloaded pages, having evidently been told to Google ‘transport policy’. Boris grasped the papers, ran his hands through his hair, revved the rhetorical engine, launched into an old gag about how many times his bicycle had been stolen — and brought the house down. His improvisations swooped, soared, hit and missed for a hilarious quarter-hour before the big finish: ‘Jogging along your lovely seafront here in… ah, err,

Wednesday

Nicole Lampert

The only way to solve Labour’s anti-Semitism problem

‘The Labour Party welcomes everyone* irrespective of race, creed, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (except, it seems, Jews)’. So says an unprecedented advert in the Guardian today, which is signed by more than 60 Labour peers. It could hardly be more damning. Yet while the advert is shocking, it stops short of pointing out the only way that Labour can solve its anti-Semitism crisis for good: by getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn. Labour peers who backed the statement aren’t the only ones to fail to state the obvious. Deputy leader Tom Watson, who says he favours the introduction of an independent complaints procedure, has also fallen short. So, too, has