Politics Archives

Monday

18 Feb 2019

Will any Tory MPs join the Independent Group?

Is this a split in the Labour party or something more? At today’s launch, Chuka Umunna was clear that the Independent Group want to attract MPs from parties other than Labour. Tory party sources admit that they ‘would not be surprised’ if some Tory MPs were to join this new group. Right now, the values of this group seem fairly—for want of a better word—Blairite. The addition of any Tory MPs would make this group more ideological heterodox; and show if it can carve out a distinctive intellectual position. Politically, it would also mean that it was not just Labour who are split. But given the way that the Tory

Steerpike

The Independent Group’s website woes

Oh dear. When Chuka Umunna announced that he and six other Labour MPs were leaving their party and forming ‘The Independent Group’, as a new separate political faction, he said that the TIGs would have an extremely simple message: ‘Politics is broken. It doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s change it.’ But if politics is really broken as Chuka thinks, it appears that the party’s new website may be in an even worse state. It’s only been two hours since the site was unveiled for the first time, and it’s already falling apart. New visitors (perhaps hoping to sign up or find out new information about the party), have

Steerpike

Chuka Umunna identifies the Independent Group’s big flaws

Chuka Umunna has quit the Labour party and set up a new political party. Calling itself the Independent Group, Umunna said the party wants to go about ‘building a new politics’. But in a Q and A with journalists, Mr S couldn’t help but notice that Umunna also managed to spell out quite clearly the new group’s big problem. He told reporters: ‘The usual way things are often done in Westminster, is a little bit, you know, you have a podium, someone goes up and tells you how it is going to be.’ Perhaps this message might have been somewhat more compelling if Umunna had not just been addressing journalists in

Steerpike

Corbynistas go into meltdown over Labour splitters

Oh dear. After months and years of speculation, this morning seven Labour MPs announced that they are quitting the party over Jeremy Corbyn’s unsuitability to be prime minister. Chuka Umunna and Chris Leslie are among the MPs to say they are quitting the party and forming an independent group which is proud to be British and doesn’t blame the world’s problems on the West. Unsurprisingly the news hasn’t gone down all that well with the Corbynistas. Corbyn allies have been quick to accuse the splitters of ushering years of Tory rule. So, how are the socialists coping with the loss of seven MPs? Mr S will let readers decide: Though

Isabel Hardman

Seven MPs leave Labour and form ‘The Independent Group’

There are seven MPs leaving Labour: Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith, Chuka Umunna, Mike Gapes and Ann Coffey. They have revealed that they will call themselves ‘The Independent Group’. They will publish a full statement of what they stand for this morning. The MPs are setting out their reasons for leaving. Berger said she had become ’embarrassed and ashamed’ of the Labour Party, which she said was ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’. Leslie insisted that his values hadn’t changed, but said it would be ‘irresponsible’ to make Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister and accused the Labour leader of a ‘betrayal’ on Europe. Smith set out her family history and said the

Steerpike

Watch: Luciana Berger’s damning verdict on Labour

Luciana Berger and six other Labour MPs have just quit the Labour party. Explaining her reasons for quitting Corbyn’s party, Berger said she had come to the conclusion that Labour is ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’. She said she was ’embarrassed’ to stay put in Labour. Here is her damning verdict on the party: I have become embarrassed and ashamed to remain in the Labour party. I have not changed. The values which I hold really dear, and which led me to join the Labour party as a student almost 20 years ago, remain who I am. And yet these values have been consistently and constantly violated, undermined and attacked as the Labour

Isabel Hardman

Five questions for Labour’s ‘splitters’

A group of Labour MPs are expected to announce they are leaving the party this morning. While the numbers and names aren’t yet confirmed, this has been a very long time coming, with members planning their exit for months, and rumours about it swirling for almost as long. Finally, the question is now not whether some MPs will leave, or indeed when. But today’s announcement raises many more questions which are even more difficult to answer: 1. Are there more to come? It’s not expected that much more than half a dozen MPs will announce they are going today. These are the ones who’ve been considered almost a dead cert

Robert Peston

A Labour split may make a second referendum less likely

It looks as though the longest rumoured split in a major British political party since the creation of the SDP almost 40 years ago will happen this morning. The reason I think this is because last light I texted the Labour MPs Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie, Luciana Berger and Gavin Shuker asking them if they were holding a press conference this morning to announce the split, and none replied. For what it is worth, I could also have texted Mike Gapes, Angela Smith or Ann Coffey among other critics of the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. The mystery is not why they are leaving Labour: they are all alienated from a

Katy Balls

Labour splitters expected to quit party in morning press conference

Here we go. After over a year of speculation about a Labour party split, the departure of Labour moderates appears imminent. Over the weekend, speculation mounted that this will be the week a number of Labour MPs quit the party. Now a press conference has been scheduled for this morning on the ‘future of British politics’. Labour sources are adamant that things are about to move and the expectation is that the press conference will see those MPs present announce that they are quitting the party. Those thought to be on the verge of quitting – Chris Leslie and Chuka Umunna – are refusing to comment. Other Labour MPs thought to

Sunday

17 Feb 2019

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: John McDonnell reveals Labour’s anti-Semitism response

John McDonnell – We’ve got to be ruthless on anti-Semitism The Shadow Chancellor sat down with Andrew Marr this morning and they broached the topic of anti-Semitism within the Labour party. Figures were released earlier this week showing that the party had received 673 official complaints since April, with 96 individuals having been suspended for their conduct. Marr asked McDonnell if the party was doing enough: Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell on anti-Semitism: “We’re not fast enough… We’ve got to be ruthless”#Marr https://t.co/B79UtjJbrz pic.twitter.com/2y8sZOzZRO — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) February 17, 2019 AM: Has Labour got a ‘no tolerance’ for anti-Semitism policy? JMD: Yes we have… Where it’s intolerable, where it’s

Saturday

16 Feb 2019

Fraser Nelson

Is Emmanuel Macron about to call Theresa May’s bluff on the Brexit backstop?

The EU has agreed a standard exit clause on almost every treaty it has ever negotiated – so why not the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement? Olly Robbins made a grave error in failing to have such a clause inserted, and Theresa May made a worse one in signing up to a deal that Parliament was never going to accept. But it’s easily fixed: just make it temporary, something that can be done in one sentence adding an exit clause, and Parliament would (probably) agree the deal. So what’s the problem? It seems that other EU leaders are beginning to wonder. The Times today reports that they are willing to compromise on

James Forsyth

What can May now get on the backstop?

When Theresa May goes to Brussels next week to bat for changes to the backstop, she’ll do so with a large crack in her bat—I say in The Sun this morning. The symbolic defeat that MPs inflicted on her Brexit plan on Thursday night has significantly weakened her negotiating position. The EU doesn’t want to make significant changes to the backstop. When the Brady amendment passed the House of Commons, saying parliament would accept the deal if the backstop was replaced, the EU responded by saying that they didn’t think this parliament majority was ‘stable’. Thursday night’s vote helps them make that argument. I understand that when the Brexit Secretary

Christopher Caldwell

The clash between Italy and France is a battle for Europe’s soul

Two weeks ago Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s vice-premier and Labour Minister and the top politician of the Five Star Movement (M5S), appointed a new commissioner for the UN cultural organisation Unesco. He chose the dog–whistling, bum-slapping sex–comedy actor Lino Banfi, star of How to Seduce Your Teacher, Policewoman on the Porno Squad and other films. The M5S was launched online by the 1980s comedian Beppe Grillo. It is run on the basis of a private computer operating system called Rousseau. Most Italians look at the M5S as either a breath of fresh air, a necessary gesture of defiance, or a ridiculous episode that will pass. But you need a sense

Friday

15 Feb 2019

Steerpike

Was Jacob Rees-Mogg telling the whole truth about HS2?

Jacob Rees-Mogg often describes himself as a straight-talker who gives honest answers, no matter how unpopular they might be. But did his performance on Question Time last night live up to this billing? It was held in leafy Aylesbury, which lies on the proposed HS2 path thereby hitting house prices in the area – which explains why only a single member of the audience admitted to supporting it last night. The Moggster got perhaps the loudest cheer of the night when he was asked what he thought of the project and replied: ‘Oh, it’s a complete waste of money. And the costs and costs go up’. Perish the thought that he was

Steerpike

Andrew Neil on Winston Churchill: when this country needed a hero, he was there

What would Winston Churchill have made of the hysterical debate yesterday, which tried to boil his legacy down to whether he was a ‘villain’ or a ‘hero’? Mr S wonders if the man who liberated Europe might have been amused at the situation, not least by being called a ‘villain’ by a shadow chancellor who thought it fit to wave Mao’s little red book at the dispatch box. More clear, is that after all the rubbish talked about Churchill’s life on the airwaves yesterday, including some awful Question Time responses, one man seemed to get the tone just right. Andrew Neil, introducing the political show This Week, gave this monologue on Churchill’s

Thursday

14 Feb 2019

The Spectator

Barometer | 14 February 2019

Places in Hell President Donald Tusk said there must be a ‘special place in Hell reserved for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it out safely’. Yet there are a number of places, as defined by Dante, where many on either side of the Brexit debate could be accommodated. Some groups who have space reserved in the Inferno, in descending order: Opportunists; Hoarders and wasters; Wrathful and sullen; Fortune Tellers; Hypocrites; Evil Counsellors; Sowers of Discord; Falsifiers. Lost planes The wreckage of a plane was discovered off the Channel Islands and the body of the footballer Emiliano Sala recovered. How many

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 14 February 2019

On Tuesday, Le Monde published a piece it had commissioned from me to explain why, from a British point of view, Brexit is not mad. (I was told that all the paper’s readers think it is.) I enjoyed doing this for two reasons. The first was seeing how my English came out in French. Le Monde sent me its translation. I was delighted to sound so much brainier and statelier, though French feels less flexible than English. The second was that writing for an intelligent audience which knows little of the background is an interesting exercise. It forces one to distil. I no longer had to analyse, say, the intricacies of

Henry Newman

John McDonnell’s mask is slipping

One of the more interesting developments over the last year is the attempted transformation of John McDonnell from a hard-left activist who joked about “lynching” a female Conservative MP, towards a softer, more jovial, chancellor-in-waiting. It seemed to be going quite well. I appeared with McDonnell on Politics Live last year and he laughed heartily as I teased him about coveting the Labour leadership. SW1’s water-cooler chat is that McDonnell is a far more effective advocate of a Corbynite Labour position than Jeremy Corbyn himself, particularly because the Labour leader often looks so irritated at being asked relatively normal questions on television. But could that be about to change? The sheep’s

Ben Sixsmith

Winston Churchill was no angel, but he wasn’t a demon either

Winston Churchill can be blamed for many things. He was an essential figure behind the disastrous landings at Gallipoli. It was on his word that the thuggish ‘Black and Tans’ were sent into Ireland. His racial animus towards Indian people did not help Britain to formulate an effective response to the Bengal Famine. He was insultingly quick to abandon our Polish allies to the Soviet Union. Yes, Churchill can be blamed for many things. Many British writers and politicians, in an effort to retain their national pride as Britain declined on the world stage, have tended to deify the old bulldog. As Peter Hitchens wrote: ‘As a child, I studied

Richard Ekins

Why Brexit won’t lead to a bonfire of human rights

Faced with the prospect of the UK’s departure from the EU, some Britons are contemplating urgent measures, whether applying for an Irish passport or migrating to New Zealand. Nothing wrong with either, of course, but the latter is an odd reaction. After all, one of the implications of Brexit is that it restores the fundamental similarity between the structure of government in the UK and New Zealand, the last two bastions of the Westminster constitution. In both countries, parliamentary sovereignty is fundamental and judges do not reign supreme. EU membership has long complicated this picture, with the UK subject to binding European law, enforced by the confident and inscrutable –