Politics Archives

Tuesday

16 Oct 2018

Steerpike

Margaret Beckett puts her foot in it

It’s been a curious day in Parliament after Labour MPs en masse came to John Bercow’s defence amid a damning report into bullying in Parliament. Despite the report concluding that the Speaker is among those who should consider their position, numerous Labour MPs have said that he should stay in place. It seems that treating employees well pales in comparison to having a chair sympathetic to your party’s Brexit opposition. The majority of Labour MPs (see Steerpike’s full roll call of shame) have been vague when it comes to their real intentions. However, in an interview with the BBC, Margaret Beckett has broken rank and offered an honest explanation as

Isabel Hardman

John Bercow is avoiding taking responsibility with his ‘resignation’ plan

John Bercow has told friends he is to step down as Speaker, according to the BBC. This follows Dame Laura Cox’s report into bullying and sexual harassment of House of Commons staff which says the existing senior leadership team in the Commons – including the Speaker – are probably incapable of changing the current ‘toxic culture’. But this is not Bercow taking responsibility. In fact, he isn’t even announcing anything new. He will retire next June, which has been the plan since May of this year. James reported this in the Sun at the time, and it seems similar ‘friends of the Speaker’ have been speaking to the BBC again.

Brendan O’Neill

The problem with hate crime | 16 October 2018

It always amazes me that people think it is normal and acceptable to have hate-crime legislation. To have laws which allow for the harsher punishment of people who entertain prejudiced thoughts while committing an offence. To have it written into the actual statute books that the man who punches a Buddhist because he hates Buddhism can be punished more severely than the man who punches a Buddhist because he hates that individual Buddhist for some reason. When are we going to twig that this represents the punishment of thought, of ideology, of belief (warped belief, but still)? I don’t like that Britain has become a country in which people, especially the

Steerpike

Watch: Maria Miller tells John Bercow to go

John Bercow is under growing pressure to step down over the report into bullying in the Commons. But while the Speaker has been all too eager to take a stand in the past – saying, for instance, that Donald Trump was not welcome in Parliament – he isn’t taking the hint when it comes to his own future. In the Commons just now, Maria Miller told Bercow to his face that it was time for him to go: ‘The report is clear that there needs to be a complete change in leadership at the most senior level, including you, Mr Speaker, if we are…to press the reset button’ Will Bercow

Isabel Hardman

Labour chooses party political interest over tackling Commons bullying

Why has Labour decided to give John Bercow at least a stay of execution as Speaker? Emily Thornberry was asked about whether Bercow should go following Dame Laura Cox’s damning report on bullying and harassment in the House of Commons, and argued that she shouldn’t go. She told Sky News: ‘I think this is absolutely not the time to be changing Speaker. We don’t know for example with regard to Brexit as to what is going to happen, whether there’s going to be technically an amendable motion or not, whether it’ll be the Speaker’s discretion as to whether it is. We do need to have all hands to the deck

Ross Clark

Philip Hammond must not use rising wages as an excuse for hiking taxes

In two weeks’ time, Philip Hammond is expected to declare an ‘end to austerity’. Today’s figures on wage growth are a reminder of why he needs to tread extremely carefully on this. What he will mean is that austerity is over for the public finances – he is confident enough to start increasing government spending again. Many individuals and families, on the other hand, remain deep in personal austerity. There is very little room for tax rises without making people feel poorer. News that wages are growing at their highest rate – 3.1 per cent – since the economic crash of 2008/09 is, on the face of it, a cause

Matthew Lynn

The euro is the source of Macron’s troubles

A new interior minister. A new agriculture and culture minister. There wasn’t, despite some speculation, a new prime minister, but there will be lots of new fresh faces around the cabinet table. France’s dynamic young president Emmanuel Macron has finally re-launched his government after a wave of resignations in a bid to kick-start phase two of his term of office, restore some order to an increasingly chaotic administration, and, probably not co-incidentally, to rescue his tumbling poll ratings. The trouble is, his real problem is not the team around him. Nor is it his style, or resistance to his reforms, although both might cause controversy. In fact, it is becoming

Steerpike

Revealed: the truth about the People’s Vote’s Leave voter

Last week, Mr S pointed out that many (possibly all) of the celebrities who featured on a People’s Vote video pushing for a second Brexit referendum, had in fact not changed their minds’ about Brexit, but voted Remain all along. And it seems as though Mr Steerpike’s article has touched a nerve. In order to prove that they are not solely made up of malcontent Remainers, the People’s Vote released another video this morning, casting a light on those who had voted Leave in 2016 and have now switched sides. But while the last video featured dozens of celebrities, stars, and ordinary folk now saying they backed a second vote,

Monday

15 Oct 2018

Katy Balls

MPs from across the House turn on Theresa May

In the Prime Minister’s statement to the House, Theresa May did her best to insist that despite an impasse in the Brexit negotiations it was business as normal. However, for all May’s claims that the differences between the UK and the EU were solvable, the hostile questions that followed from MPs showed just how hard it would be to get any deal through Parliament. Jeremy Corbyn’s attempts to say that the government’s ‘Groundhog Day’ Brexit plans would fail Labour’s six Brexit tests were met with laughter and derision. The Leader of the Opposition’s shouty performance gave the beleaguered Prime Minister little reason for worry. However, the questions from the backbenchers

Katy Balls

Crisis, what crisis? Theresa May keeps calm and carries on

With the government on the brink of a full blown crisis, there was speculation that Theresa May would use today’s Brexit statement to the House to turn her ire on Brussels. In the end it wasn’t to be and the Prime Minister adopted a conciliatory tone – praising both sides – as she did her best to insist that it was business as normal. After Dominic Raab’s fruitless trip to Brussels marked an impasse in the Brexit negotiations, the Prime Minister insisted that she did not believe the UK and the EU were actually so ‘far apart’ on the remaining issues. She told the House that with the negotiations had stalled over

Steerpike

Watch: Theresa May is heckled about her Boris problem

Today, Theresa May stood before the Commons to update MPs on the state of the Brexit process. At this critical juncture in the negotiations and in her career, the Prime Minister tried to convey a solemn and statesmanlike appearance as she spoke about her dealings with the European Union. Unfortunately for her, the statesmanlike approach probably wasn’t helped by some rather on the nose heckling from the Labour benches. As May outlined the roadblocks she faced in Europe: ‘But Mr Speaker, two problems remain’ One cheeky Labour MP shouted: ‘Boris!’ Judging by the ashen faces on the Conservative front benches, it seems like May thinks the Boris joke is wearing

James Forsyth

Brexit is the only thing keeping John Bercow in the Speaker’s chair

John Bercow’s job is being saved by Brexit. Not just because the Brexit drama means that Dame Laura Cox QC’s damning report into the bullying and harassment of parliamentary staff is receiving less attention than it otherwise would, but also because many MPs are prepared to forgive Bercow’s failings because they think he is the Speaker who’ll give them the biggest chance to influence things if the government and the EU fail to reach a deal. The majority of MPs are opposed to no-deal. I suspect that even if the EU refused to budge an inch from its current unreasonable position, there would still be a Commons majority against it.

Ross Clark

The return of fracking is a victory for common sense

Now that fracking has resumed in Lancashire after a seven year hiatus, the green lobby which sought to frustrate it and delay it at every turn can reflect on what they have achieved: keeping the UK’s carbon emissions rather higher than they would have been, had our native fracking industry been allowed to develop more quickly. In the short term at least, the alternative to burning UK-produced shale gas is not, as the green lobby says, using more energy from wind and solar farms. We do not currently have anything close to the electricity storage capacity to cope with a supply which comes exclusively from intermittent sources, and is it

Steerpike

Blue on blue warfare: Anna Soubry vs Andrea Jenkyns

With only weeks to go until a Brexit deal is put to parliament, the Conservative party is showing no signs of coming together over Theresa May’s Brexit plan. In fact, if tensions online are anything to go by, the party’s internal war between Remainers and Brexiteers may even be getting worse. The latest spat occurred last night, when arch-Remainer Anna Soubry called out Andrea Jenkyns, revealing that she has been blocked by her Brexiteer colleague on Twitter: At least you can read her tweets for some reason my colleague @andreajenkyns has blocked me! https://t.co/aZPIbVBNze — Anna Soubry 🖤🤍🇺🇦 🇪🇺 🇬🇧 (@Anna_Soubry) October 14, 2018 Readers will be glad to know

Steerpike

Caption contest: Jeremy Hunt and the Brexit maze

Will Theresa May’s government find a way out of the Brexit maze? As the Prime Minister’s backstop plans are deemed a dead end by her colleagues, it looks as though Downing Street are fast running out of options. But could inspiration be found in Jeremy Hunt? The Foreign Secretary took to social media to boast that he and his fellow European foreign ministers had managed to navigate Chevening maze in the rain – making the Brexit negotiations seem comparatively straightforward: Challenged a few of my fellow foreign ministers to navigate the Chevening maze in the rain…by comparison to which Brexit discussions seem more straightforward pic.twitter.com/J43lTDKUvb — Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) October

James Kirkup

Even our MPs are afraid of the transgender mob | 15 October 2018

What are MPs thinking? It’s easy to assume, in the age of Twitter, that we know more about the positions our politicians take than ever before: quite a few of them, after all, spend rather too much time online telling us what they think about stuff. That has changed political journalism, but not always to the improvement of public understanding of politics. Journalism-by-Twitter, after all, runs the risk of missing the thoughts and opinions that MPs don’t put online. One of the issues that most MPs don’t tweet about is trangenderism and the laws and rules around gender. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons I write so much about those

Sunday

14 Oct 2018

James Forsyth

What can break the Brexit impasse?

The Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab travelled to Brussels this afternoon, but not to shake on a deal. Rather, he was there to tell Michel Barnier that there are bits of the Irish protocol that the UK cannot accept. If the two sides can’t come to an agreement on this, then there will be ‘no deal’—an outcome that neither the UK or the EU 27 wants but is now more likely than it has been at any point since the UK triggered Article 50. So, what happens next? Well, there’ll be many on the EU side—particularly, in the Commission—who think that if they just sit tight, the UK will come to

Steerpike

The Chief Whip can’t take your call right now, please leave a message after the tone

No one has their finger on the pulse in the House of Commons like the government’s chief whip. To make sure every bill gets through parliament unscathed, the whip has to understand exactly how every MP in the party plans to vote, what they’re thinking about the government – and work out how they can get rebellious MPs to change their minds. But it looks like Theresa May’s chief whip Julian Smith has drawn up the drawbridge tonight. The man in charge of relations with backbenchers might just have had enough of talking with his own MPs. The government enforcer posted this picture (without caption) on social media at 9

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Emily Thornberry defends Labour’s Brexit tests

Iain Duncan Smith – The PM should put £2-3 billion of extra funding back into Universal Credit Sophy Ridge was joined this morning by the former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith. Duncan Smith resigned from the coalition government two years ago in protest at a lack of funding for his Universal Credit reforms. With Labour now calling for the policy to be scrapped, Duncan Smith outlined how he felt Universal Credit could be saved ahead of the 2018 budget: IDS: The government has a really really transformative policy on its hands… If you [underfund it] you lose the great benefit of it and then end up starving people

Katy Balls

Hell week 2.0: can Theresa May cling on?

If last week was ‘hell week’ for Theresa May, the next few days could be classed as the Prime Minister’s trip to the ninth circle. With problems over the Irish border backstop unsolved, No 10 are fighting fire on multiple fronts ahead of a crucial EU Council meeting on Wednesday. The papers are filled with Cabinet resignation threats, rumoured leadership bids and a warning from the DUP that ‘no deal’ is now the most likely outcome. The Sunday Times puts the number of no confidence letters with 1922 chair Graham Brady at 44 – if four more go in a confidence vote will follow. Should that come to be and