Politics

Oh dear. Barry Gardiner’s bad day has gone from bad to worse. After a recording emerged of the shadow international trade secretary describing the Good Friday Agreement as ‘a shibboleth’ in the Brexit negotiations, Gardiner issued an apology. Now it seems as though he may be required to apologise for the second time in the space of two hours. The BBC have obtained a recording of Gardiner – speaking at the same event to Labour MEPs – as describing his party’s Brexit tests as ‘bollocks’. ‘Well let’s just take one test – the exact same benefits. Bollocks. Always has been bollocks and it remains it. We know very well that we

Sweet baby Jesus, is there nobody in the Department for Exiting the European Union who can give David Davis a briefing on Irish politics? Not a full, in-depth, Donegal-to-Kerry briefing; just the basics will do. And if there isn’t anyone at DEXEU who could do this, perhaps some kind soul at the Northern Ireland office could pop over to give Davis a quick tutorial? The Times reports this morning that this kind of briefing is urgently needed. Of course the paper doesn’t quite put it like that but this is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from Davis’s own remarks at a conference in London yesterday. According to our gallant bulldog, the question of Brexit and

Although Labour MPs have much to disagree with their leader on of late, one thing many have been buoyed by is the fact that Jeremy Corbyn appears to be softening the party’s Brexit position. The Labour leader’s big Brexit speech in February voicing support for some form of permanent customs union was widely seen as a step forward in uniting the two sides – and the result of lobbying from Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary. Since then an uneasy truce has formed within the party over Brexit. Owen Smith was the first to break it – using an article to diverge from Labour policy and call for a referendum

Oh my goodness. Quentin Letts is ‘a racist’ apparently . It says so on Twitter. In his review of the RSC’s The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich he referred to the quality of Leo Wringer’s performance and asked, ‘Was Mr Wringer cast because he is black?’ The RSC’s top brass assembled in full muster and denounced Letts for his ‘blatantly racist attitude to a member of the cast.’ I haven’t seen the production, only the reaction to Letts’s reaction to the production, but that’s enough. What’s striking is that the RSC’s accusation is false. Letts did not say the actor was bad because he was black. That would have been

As shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott has earned a reputation for getting her numbers in a muddle. Now it seems that there is also an issue on the government side. Appearing on LBC, Victoria Atkins came up short when asked how many police offices are in the country. The Home Office minister responded by telling Nick Ferrari how many there are in London – before having to admit she didn’t have the figure he was looking for: NF: But the whole of the country. You’ll be aware of the figure, won’t you Minister? VA: You’re testing me, Nick. I’m not going to hazard a guess, I’m just going to front

Historically the Conservative party has been known as the party of law and order. It is now in the process of losing that reputation and Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s recent remarks show why. Stung by complaints that cutting the number of police officers by over 20,000 since 2010 has contributed to the rise in violent crime, she said: ‘In the early Noughties, when serious violent crimes were at their highest, police numbers were rising. In 2008, when knife crime was far greater than the lows we saw in 2013/14, police numbers were close to the highest we’d seen in decades.’ Reduced resources were not, therefore, to blame for rising violence.

Not this again. How many new parties have been proposed now? Andrew Rawnsley says 34 have registered with the Electoral Commission since January. A political party is for life, not just for a twitterstorm. Still, the Tories’ annexation by Ukip and Labour’s transformation into some hideous fusion of CND and the BNP has left those of us who mosey around the centre ground electorally homeless. Why shouldn’t we have a party that articulates our worldview? That seems to be the thinking behind a new group touted on the front page of the Observer. In the works since 2016 (and still there, since there are no plans beyond a few meetings and some WhatsApp

Earlier on this morning, Andrew Marr tried his hand at Urdu. Or was it Punjabi? In any case, he made a point of introducing Lancashire-born and bred Minister Sajid Javid as ‘Sajeed Javeed’. The Communities Secretary didn’t flinch – as you’d expect, given that this is definitely not the first time his name has been mispronounced. He’s probably given up correcting people, or even noticing mispronunciations. But his name is hardly a tongue twister: he’s a northerner, his name rhymes with avid. As all schoolchildren know, words ending in –id are pronounced with a short ‘i’. Lid, kid, hid, quid. So where did Sajeed Javeed come from? As a member

The former director of research at Cambridge Analytica, the data-mining firm notoriously suspended by Facebook for harvesting details of up to 87 million Facebook accounts without their consent, has told Andrew Marr that the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU should be re-contested. Wylie’s suggestion comes after it was highlighted that Vote Leave – the official Leave campaign – had employed the services of AggregateIQ (AIQ), a company which Wylie claims to have founded in order to support Cambridge Analytica. AIQ was also suspended from Facebook on Saturday for improperly receiving users’ data, charges which AIQ denies. Wylie argued that Vote Leave’s connections to alleged misconduct by