Politics

This week the Conservative Party quietly abandoned the promises made by Theresa May to the British people on the steps of Downing Street when becoming Prime Minister. As a then-new First Lord of the Treasury, May vowed to her fellow citizens that she would right the ‘burning injustices’ that confronted society’s worst-off and prevented them from meeting their fullest potential. The United Kingdom would, she said, ‘be a country that works for everyone’ and made reference to the disadvantages facing minorities in areas like the justice system. The speech had One Nation Tories like me on the edge of their seats, applauding what sounded like a new direction after years

Labour’s anti-Semitism row reached boiling point this week thanks to a leaked recording from a meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee. In it, Corbyn ally Peter Willsman suggests that Jewish ‘Trump fanatics’ are behind ‘duff’ accusations of Labour anti-Semitism and warned that ‘they can falsify social media very easily’. This comes at a particularly bad time for Jeremy Corbyn as Willsman is currently standing for re-election on to the NEC and is one of nine Momentum-backed candidates, known as the #JC9 (see Mr Steerpike’s guide to the candidates here). Moderate Labour MPs – including deputy leader Tom Watson – have been quick to condemn the comments along with a

Where’s the concern for Labour MP Sarah Champion? Where are the leftists demanding that this female MP stop being harassed merely for expressing her views? Where are the tweets drawing attention to Ms Champion’s plight — the fact that she now needs an actual security team because people who hate her political views want to physically harm her? In this post-Jo Cox era, I thought we were all meant to have the backs of elected politicians who are under threat from extremists. And yet when it comes to Champion — just such an elected politician — people seem to be looking the other way. It isn’t hard to work out

Here is quite a good trick question. Which current Member of Parliament has voted most often against pro-EU measures? I have not done the count, but I suppose it would be natural to guess Bill Cash, who entered Parliament in 1984. In fact, it is much more likely to be Jeremy Corbyn who came into the House in 1983 and has defied his party more often on the subject than has Sir William. It is fascinating how Mr Corbyn’s tenacious Bennite Euroscepticism has been glossed over by the media. The most likely candidate, however, must be Dennis Skinner, who entered Parliament in 1970 and must be the last person still sitting

Matthew Parris argues that the notice period for leaving the EU should be extended beyond March 2019 by agreement, as is legally possible. Is that not just prolonging the agony? One suspects that what Parris hopes is not that extending the negotiating period will produce better exit terms for Britain, but that it will prevent Brexit from happening at all. As a Remain voter in 2016, it took me 24 hours to come to terms with the fact that our side lost. Parris and co are still sulking after more than 24 months. If called on to vote in an entirely inappropriate second referendum, I would vote Brexit to preserve

With characteristic verve, former Vote Leave campaign chief Dominic Cummings has taken to his blog to brand the latest DCMS select committee report ‘fake news from the fake news committee.’ But has the high priest of fighting fake news being practising what he preaches when it comes to spreading false information? Mr S has cause for concern. Addressing the committee, he quotes the line ‘The truth? You can’t handle the truth!’ from the 90s film classic A Few Good Men, which he attributes to Tom Cruise. Clearly Cummings’ film knowledge is not up to scratch, while Cruise did star in the film, the quote itself was said by his co-star