Politics Archives

Wednesday

26 Jun 2019

Why neither Boris nor Hunt can stop a no-deal Brexit

There is a lot of confusion about Boris Johnson’s approach to Brexit. And that is deliberate because the candidate has yet to make a big call about the nature of the modifications he is seeking to the Brexit plan negotiated by Theresa May. The ultra Brexiters among his supporters, the hard core of the European Research Group led by Steve Baker and Jacob Rees-Mogg, want him to ditch her Withdrawal Agreement completely – and replace that with a “GATT 24” temporary free trade arrangement for the years that would be necessary for the negotiation of a permanent new trade deal with the EU. This they regard as true liberation from the EU.

Ross Clark

The flaw in Jeremy Hunt’s Brexit plan

Jeremy Hunt’s case to be Conservative leader is that he is the sensible, low-risk option. While Boris is now committed – thanks to his interview on Talkradio yesterday to leave the EU on 31st October, come what may, ‘do or die’, Hunt is holding out the prospect of some flexibility. The last day of October, he said this morning, is a ‘fake deadline’. Trying to force Brexit on that date, he said, could lead to a general election, a Corbyn government, followed by no Brexit at all. If the government were close to cutting a deal, he has said, then we should extend the deadline. If there were no deal

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategy is to play chicken with the EU

Theresa May’s Brexit strategy was to play chicken with parliament. Boris Johnson’s is to play chicken with the EU. Theresa May believed that if she pressed on with her deal, parliament would – ultimately – blink and pass it. Her thinking was that MPs’ scared of no deal would vote for her deal to avoid that outcome. While Brexiteer MPs who didn’t like the deal, would back it in the end to be sure Britain did leave the EU. May’s approach failed because she was trying to squeeze two groups simultaneously with two different messages. Crucially, she also blinked – she didn’t resist the Cooper, Letwin, Boles attempt to force

Tuesday

25 Jun 2019

Miranda Levy

How Jeremy Corbyn made me Jewish again

On Sunday night, I went to the local synagogue to listen to a talk by Louise Ellman, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside. This was surprising on several levels. I hadn’t set foot inside a synagogue for over 30 years (apart from weddings and bar mitzvahs) and had even gone as far as marrying a non-Jew. Also, before the past couple of weeks, I had no interest whatsoever in seeing a politician, of any stripe, speak. A few minutes into Ellman’s speech, I was horrified to hear of the abuse that had been meted out to this charismatic, grandmotherly politician by members of her own party. ‘She has no human

Camilla Swift

Why aren’t the Tory leadership contenders courting rural voters?

Around nine million people – over 17 per cent of the population – live in an area classed as ‘rural’. That number is set to grow; by 2025, it has been estimated that the population of the English countryside will have increased by half a million. So surely, when a politician is bidding to become the next prime minister, it would make sense to consider what the rural population’s priorities might be. A national survey of rural opinion on the leadership contest, organised by the Countryside Alliance, would indicate that this isn’t happening. It’s far from new to say that farming communities are worried about Brexit, and concerned that their

Nick Cohen

Why Tories are hooked on Boris Johnson

Modern politicians are like drug dealers intent on keeping their clients’ hooked. They sell fixes to their core voters: upping the strength and deepening the addiction. The punters know at some level they are being played. But a temporary high is better than no high, and infinitely preferable to the sweats and shakes the cold turkey of reality brings. Boris Johnson is the British right’s pusher. He feeds its addiction, taking Conservatives from drug to drug. Higher and higher they go. Further and further from the straight world of the normies with their tedious facts and nagging doubts. Thomas De Quincey said in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater:

Steerpike

Watch: Boris Johnson’s model buses

Boris Johnson has had a tricky time being quizzed by journalists over the past few days, as he’s been grilled about his Brexit position, his negotiating stratgey, his late-night row with Carrie Symonds and his history of consuming (or not quite consuming) Class-A drugs. But it seems as if the former Foreign Secretary was floored by the simplest question of them all today. Appearing on TalkRadio this afternoon, Boris was simply asked by presenter Ross Kempsell what he did to relax? Johnson appeared to be stumped: ‘I like to paint, or I make things… I have a thing where I make models of… I make buses.’ Kempsell asked the potential prime

Neil Obrien

Boris’s secret weapon in the fight against Corbyn

After nine years cleaning up Labour’s mess, things are looking up. Government debt as a share of the economy is starting to fall. For Theresa May’s successor, this means there is an opportunity to spend some desperately-needed money on public services: the police, prisons, schools and local government. But it’s also vital – and a key Tory weapon in the fight against Corbyn – to cut taxes, putting more money in people’s pockets. Boris Johnson has already made such a pledge, floating the idea of increasing the point at which people pay the higher rate of tax. In the long-term, that would be good to do. Yet given the limited

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson doubles down on his Brexit position

The Boris Johnson campaign has today responded to accusations that Johnson has been avoiding scrutiny by sending their candidate on a mini-media blitz. In the past 24 hours, Johnson has given interviews to the BBC, LBC and Talk Radio. There’s even a promise of more media interaction to come. In all of the interviews, the former mayor of London refused to answer questions on his private life – on the issue of why police were called on Friday night to the apartment he shares with his partner Carrie Symonds. He did, however, send social media into a frenzy when he was asked how he liked to relax and replied that

Ross Clark

Boris and Carrie’s staged picture is a PR masterstroke

Whatever you think of Boris Johnson’s ability to be Prime Minister you have to admire the PR skills of Carrie Symonds. Last Thursday evening an event occurred which could seriously damage Boris’ chances of winning the Tory party leadership contest – a domestic row between the couple in which the police were called to her flat. Unsurprisingly, it dominated the news agenda over the weekend. In a sense it still is way up the news agenda. But over the past 36 hours the focus has subtly changed. The ‘scandal’ is no longer what was said, and thrown, in an upstairs flat in Camberwell last Thursday, but the provenance of a

Robert Peston

‘Preposterous rubbish’: The EU’s verdict on Boris’s Brexit plan

I asked important EU and UK people involved in Brexit talks what they made of Boris Johnson’s claim on BBC that: 1: The EU would be prepared to cancel the Northern Ireland backstop. 2: Continue free and frictionless trade with UK for an “implementation period” after Brexit on 31st October. 3: Negotiate a new package of measures to keep an open border on the island of Ireland during the implementation period, and; 4: Would break all their own red lines because they won’t like Nigel Farage’s 29 MEPs turning up at the European Parliament, and will panic when Johnson says he won’t necessarily pay all the £39bn Theresa May agreed that the UK owes

Steerpike

Watch: Boris dodges Carrie Symonds question 26 times

Boris Johnson has come out of hiding but it seems he is still doing his best to dodge scrutiny. On LBC this morning, Boris was quizzed repeatedly about how a picture of him in the Sussex countryside with his girlfriend Carrie Symonds found its way into the media. And 26 times, he refused to answer. Here is how the exchange unfolded: NF: Why the picture today? BJ: Newspapers will print whatever they are going to print. NF: Where did the picture come from? Boris Johnson, where did the picture come from? BJ: The longer we spend… NF: Where did the picture come from? BJ: The longer we spend on things extraneous…

Steerpike

Jon Snow makes another race gaffe

Can veteran Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow stop putting his foot in his mouth when it comes to race? The channel has already been forced to apologise this year after the presenter observed live on television that he had ‘never seen so many white people in one place’ when covering a Brexit rally in London. Now it seems he’s at it again. When interviewing the Tory MP Nusrat Ghani, who is supporting Jeremy Hunt in the leadership race earlier this week, Snow brought up the topic of the Tory members who would be voting in the upcoming leadership contest, remarking that: ‘There’s not an entirely flattering picture of the

Alex Massie

Boris’s backers have a lot to answer for

In today’s Times, a “long-standing friend” of Boris Johnson complains that “there’s a tendency to infantilise Boris”. Putting the man who still looks likely to be the next leader of the Conservative and Unionist party and prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland under a form of, well, house-arrest must have seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, the race is his to lose and can only be lost by him. “Clearly”, the chum adds, “there was a need to protect him but it went too far”. This seems revealing. A number of questions arise. First, *why* do people feel inclined to

James Kirkup

Why David Gauke is key to the survival of the Tory party

Everyone knows the story of how a small number of Conservatives will cast a vote that decides something of great and lasting importance. But the group of Tories is much smaller than you think, and they vote much sooner than you imagine: on Friday, in fact. I am not referring to the 160,000 members of the national Conservative party. I am talking about the 600 who belong to the South West Hertfordshire Conservative Association. On Friday 28th June, those members will be invited to a special meeting to vote on a motion of no confidence in the Conservative MP for South West Herts, David Gauke. According to the motion, Gauke

Monday

24 Jun 2019

Katy Balls

Could Boris Johnson command the confidence of the Commons?

Could Boris Johnson command the confidence of the Commons? That’s the question being asked in Westminster this week as various ‘Stop Boris’ factions emerge. The Standard reports that Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill has told Theresa May that she ought to only advise the Queen to appoint Johnson or Jeremy Hunt as her successor if she is confident that they can command a majority in the Commons. With hostility growing over Johnson’s Brexit plan – which could lead to no deal – it’s BoJo who this appears to be aimed at. Over the weekend, the Sunday Times reported that the Johnson campaign had been warned by the Chief Whip that there was

Isabel Hardman

Is the Tory party trying to tear itself apart?

The Conservative party seems to have viewed the demise of the Jeremy Kyle Show as a gap in the market which it needs to fill, with a series of bizarre stories about the behaviour of some of its leading figures over the past few days. Just to top off Mark Field grabbing a female protester at a dinner by the neck and Boris Johnson’s relationship troubles, there is also the start of a by-election triggered by a Conservative MP being convicted of expenses fraud. In keeping with its apparently constant need for drama and attention, the party has decided that the best way to deal with Chris Davies being booted

James Forsyth

Hunt preys on Boris’s wobble

Jeremy Hunt is proving to be a more aggressive rival than many in the Boris Johnson campaign expected. Shortly before the last round of parliamentary voting, Hunt talked about putting ‘Boris through his paces’ which made him sound more like a personal trainer than a political opponent. But since making the final two, Hunt has been far punchier. His attacks on Boris Johnson this morning for ducking various TV debates are properly aggressive. Hunt’s attacks are garnering more attention because, after a relatively smooth parliamentary stage, Boris Johnson is having a wobble. The fallout from the Thursday night incident at his partner’s flat isn’t helping and his Brexit answer is

Steerpike

Boris Johnson’s other woman

There are few stranger relationships in Westminster than the close alliance of Boris Johnson and the campaigner, author, and self-described ‘Chief Fanny defender’ Nimco Ali. According to Ali, she first met Boris Johnson in Putney eight years ago when they bumped into each other on the high street, as she was campaigning about FGM. She asked him for a meeting and the rest, as they say, is history. The pair went on to take part in several anti-FGM campaigns and, as Ali put it: ‘he and his team at City Hall went on to work with me over several years.’ Johnson and Ali seem to have become particularly close since he officially

Robert Peston

Why Tory members don’t care about the Carrie Symonds row

This is what a senior member of the cabinet told me this morning about whether Boris Johnson’s prospects of becoming Tory leader and our PM have been seriously harmed by the disclosure that neighbours summoned police to his home after they heard his girlfriend Carrie Symonds shouting at him to ‘get off me’. Minister: ‘It will take a really gross transgression for Boris Johnson to deflect the faithful, but it’s not beyond him.’ And another minister said: ‘I don’t think it [the leadership contest] has changed one inch.’ For the avoidance of doubt, neither minister is invested in a Johnson victory, and one of them would passionately prefer him to