Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Saturday

Robert Hardman

Should Donald Trump be invited to the Royal Wedding?

Two golden rules of royal weddings. First, it’s always wonderful on the day. Second, there is always an almighty official spat beforehand which no one saw coming. When Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, there was a Spanish boycott because the honeymoon included Gibraltar. In 2011, Prince William’s marriage plans had a crisis moment when it turned out the guest list had included the Syrian ambassador but not ex-PMs Blair and Brown. We can already spot one sensitive issue. Should Donald Trump be invited? For: the bride is American. Against: she backed Hillary. In fact, Mr Trump is unlikely to be invited because he is not a friend and this

Friday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Come back David Cameron

We don’t hear much from David Cameron these days. He’s generally too busy. He fills his time in many ways: writing a book; making bundles of cash; playing tennis; not taking the blame for Brexit. But he’s given an interview to the Financial Times about Alzheimer’s disease and the search for a cure. It’s worth a read, and not just because it’s an important subject. It’s also a reminder of what was lost when Cameron fled Parliament last summer (I know – it seems much longer). To my mind, it is both shameful and a shame that Cameron has left the Commons, and did it in such a manner. It shames him

Steerpike Steerpike

Damian Green’s security problems

Spare a thought for Damian Green. As the Cabinet Office investigation into whether or not he broke the ministerial code over allegations of inappropriate behaviour continues, the Secretary of State is in the news once again. This time, a former Scotland Yard detective has told BBC News that he was ‘shocked’ by the amount of pornography viewed on a computer seized from Green’s Commons office, during a 2008 inquiry. However, Green has made clear that he himself never watched or downloaded pornography on the computer. This isn’t the first time someone in Parliament appears to have caused havoc in Green’s name online. Back in 2015, Green had to deny involvement with the

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Damian Green’s private life is not a police matter

So, a former Met detective, Neil Lewis, professes himself ‘shocked’ – yes ‘shocked’ – by the amount of pornography allegedly found on the computer of the Deputy Prime Minister, Damian Green, in 2008. He had analysed the way the computer in question had been used and declared he had ‘no doubt whatever’ that it was Mr Green, then opposition Home Affairs spokesman, who had used it. ‘The computer was in Mr Green’s office…logged in, his account, his name’, said Mr Lewis (at the time working as a computer forensics examiner for counter terrorism operations). ‘It was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it,’ he added. Well, I like

Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn: I’m a centrist dad

Jeremy Corbyn caused a social media flurry on Thursday after it was revealed that he is the cover star of the new issue of GQ magazine. Sticking to his socialist values, the Labour leader managed not to fall in the trap of other comrades (like Owen Jones) who put on designer gear for the glossy magazine shoot – opting to wear an M&S suit. So, what did Corbyn have to say? Well, the Labour leader discusses Corbynista slang – and specifically the term ‘centrist dad’ which is used to describe someone stuffy and out of touch – often a Blairite. However, Corbyn claims that he is a ‘centrist dad’ just one

The Spectator

The one issue economists and politicians agree on: Britain’s productivity problem

‘Productivity’ is one of those ‘economicky words’ (as Philip Hammond described them in the budget last week) that economists and politicians get excited about but leaves many people cold. Yet since last week’s downgraded forecasts from the Office of Budget Responsibility, it is a word we keep hearing in the news. And rightly so. As Tom Danker from the Productivity Leadership Group told a Spectator event in the City on Thursday, ‘productivity is about prosperity’. The wisdom of economists and politicians isn’t always held in high regard these days. And little wonder. Ten years on, we’re still suffering the effects of the financial crisis that most of them didn’t see

David Bergman

Tulip Siddiq’s shameful silence on Bangladesh’s missing people

‘Just heartbreaking’, wrote the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq this week as she shared a picture of the daughter of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian mum who is currently imprisoned in Iran on trumped-up charges of espionage. Tulip has, quite rightly, dedicated much time to trying to free Zaghari-Ratcliffe. It’s a pity though that she doesn’t go to the same lengths to lobby Bangladesh, another repressive country, over the hundreds of people that have been secretly detained there in recent years. Unlike Iran, Bangladesh also happens to be a place where the Labour MP appears to have considerable clout: her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, is the prime minister; her uncle, Tarique Siddique, is Hasina’s security adviser; and her first cousin,

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 30 November 2017

Proven lawyers Sir: Andrew Watts says that for ‘lawyers in politics, the elimination of risk becomes the highest aim of government. It is not, and should not be’ (Legal challenge, 25 November). Well, up to a point. The last two British prime ministers who were lawyers were Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, both barristers. Mrs Thatcher’s despatch of the task force to the south Atlantic in 1982 was fraught with risk, as were other defining steps of her time in office. Blair’s premiership will largely be remembered for the invasion of Iraq, a move that could not be described as one from which all risk had been eliminated. Mr Watts

The Spectator

Barometer | 30 November 2017

Pit stopped After complaints from the Durham Miners’ Association, a rugby club at Durham University cancelled a pub crawl in which members were to dress as coal miners or ministers from Mrs Thatcher’s government. — Attitudes towards the 1984-85 miners’ strike were not always so censorious. In 2001, the conceptual artist Jeremy Deller staged a re-enactment of the Battle of Orgreave, involving 800 re-enactment enthusiasts as well as 200 miners who had been there on the day. Staged at Orgreave itself, it was filmed and shown on Channel 4 with few complaints. Ups and downs Which industries saw the biggest rises and falls in real-terms productivity (i.e., greater than inflation)

The Spectator

A price worth paying

There will be howls of outrage in some quarters if it is confirmed that the government has offered the EU a ‘divorce’ bill of up to £50 billion (over several years). Some on the leave side of the debate insist that the bill should be zero. They ask: does the EU not owe us some money for our share of all the bridges we have helped build in Spain and railway lines in Poland? But it was never realistic to think we could leave the EU and maintain good relations with the bloc without paying a penny — even if a House of Lords report did seem to suggest that

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 30 November 2017

We are congratulating ourselves and the royal family on overcoming prejudice by welcoming Meghan Markle’s engagement to Prince Harry. But in fact this welcome is cost-free: Ms Markle’s combination of Hollywood, mixed ethnicity, divorced parents, being divorced herself and being older than her fiancé ticks almost every modern box. It was harder, surely, for Kate Middleton. She was simply middle-class, Home Counties, white, and with no marital past — all media negatives. Her mother was a former flight assistant. People made snobby jokes about ‘cabin doors to manual’. There was nothing ‘edgy’ about Kate that could be romanticised. Luckily, she is also beautiful, sensible and cheerful, and politely concealed her successful

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Immigration figures show that ‘Brexodus’ is still a myth

Government figures today show a sharp fall in net migration – 230,000 over the year to June, compared with 336,000 in the previous 12 months. If it keeps falling at that rate for another 18 months, Theresa May will have fulfilled David Cameron’s rash promise to reduce net migration to tens of thousands – if that, indeed, is an achievement worth trumpeting. For many it isn’t. The fall has reignited claims that the NHS, business and other employers are suffering a Brexit-induced drought of qualified staff, as EU workers desert ‘xenophobic’ Britain and are not replaced. Certainly, the bulk of the reduction in net migration – 80,000 of it –

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How No. 10 plans to change the narrative

There was a rare sight in No. 10 this week: backbench MPs being given direction. With the government beginning to function again after shambolic few weeks, the Tories are slowly regaining their confidence – as evidenced when Gavin Barwell gave Tories a lesson on Tuesday in changing the narrative. Barwell – the prime minister’s chief of staff – sat down Tory MPs over tea and coffee and said that they needed to re-establish what Conservative values are. This involved a seven-point lesson in what the Tories can offer voters, a handy print out to take home and revise from – and an emphasis that these instructions need not be taken as gospel

William Cook

British Europhiles should welcome Brexit. Here’s why

In the historic heart of Luxembourg, around the corner from the Grand Ducal Palace, there is a site which demonstrates why Britons will never be good Europeans. The Maison de l’Union Européenne houses the information centre for the various European institutions here in Luxembourg, and even British Remainers will find its attitudes entirely different from their own. The vision it presents is pan European, an entire continent without borders. These are the ‘citizens of nowhere’ that Mrs May warned us about. Since the referendum, British attitudes towards the EU have polarised. Either it’s a great force for good, and leaving will be a disaster (say some Remainers) or it’s a

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The cracks could soon show in the EU’s Brexit stance

‘At last’, says the FT, Britain has ‘accepted it must pay its dues to Europe’. ‘It has been a tortuous journey’ to get to this stage and ‘months have been wasted’ along the way. Yet while progress has been made at last, the government has still failed ‘to explain to the public the…cost of leaving’. It’s also the case that while the Brexit divorce offer is now more acceptable to the EU, the bill is ‘only one of three areas in which agreement is needed to unlock talks on the future relationship’. Avoiding a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland remains the trickiest of these problems to find a

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Tim Farron is wrong about liberalism

Tim Farron is not the ideal person to explain Christianity’s relationship to liberalism. When he resigned as leader of his party, after a poor election result, he complained about the culture’s anti-Christian bias. It’s a complicated enough issue, without sour grapes being added to the brew. He now says that British liberalism has become empty because it has departed from its Christian roots. Despite outward conformity to liberal principles, there is now ‘no unifying set of British values.’ Look under the surface and people are selfish, tribal and intolerant of difference. True liberalism is rare, and, he implies, it is part of a deeper commitment than secular people are capable

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories’ fate is in their hands

How will the Tory party remember 2017? Will it be the year it lost its majority, alienated key sections of the electorate and paved the way for a Jeremy Corbyn premiership? Or the year when uncertainty about Britain’s future relationship with the European Union peaked, when debt finally began to fall and the Tory party resisted the temptation of a Corn Laws-style split? We won’t know for several years. What we can say with confidence is that Brexit will prove key to determining which view of 2017 wins out. On Monday, Theresa May heads to Brussels for a meeting with the European Commission. Over lunch, she will set out what

David Trimble

Crossing the line

When I negotiated the Good Friday Agreement nearly 20 years ago, no one foresaw a day when the -United Kingdom would be leaving the European Union. It was impossible to imagine how the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, from which the barriers were removed as part of the agreement, would again become an issue of such political importance. We have the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, threatening to veto the Brexit negotiations unless Theresa May gives a formal written guarantee that there will be no hard -border, and we keep hearing the argument that a departure of the UK from the single market and the customs

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Jeremy Corbyn could learn a lot from Emily Thornberry’s PMQs performance

Today was a reminder of the lost art of how to construct a series of questions at PMQs. Emily Thornberry started off by asking Damian Green if he was prepared to be held to the same standard as he held government ministers when he was in opposition. Sensing a bear trap, a clearly wary Green rose to answer—and you could see he was dreading the prospect of five questions on the Cabinet Office’s investigation into his personal conduct. But Thornberry’s follow-up was cleverer than that. She instead asked him a question about retention rates among nurses that he had asked John Prescott 17 years ago. Predictably, Green had no answer.

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

How did Damian Green ever reach the Cabinet?

The PM is in the middle-east on her ‘strong and stable leadership’ tour. Replacing her at PMQs stood Damian Green, a hesitant, avuncular figure who seems ill-suited to front-line politics. He’s uncomfortably tall, and he dips his chin as he speaks to make his troubled, slender jowls less conspicuous. His hair has quit the fray and left a dignified grassless dome as its memorial. His demeanour is all antiquarian gentleness. He might be the head of parchments at a museum of medical history. How he reached the cabinet is a mystery. His opponent, Emily Thornberry, is a resourceful court-room performer who started the session by getting the jury (that is,