Politics

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

Sunday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The Brexit bellwether will be the health of our car industry

As I’ve said before, the bellwether of post-Brexit prosperity will be the health of the UK car industry, rather than that of the far larger financial sector. The City is nimble enough to look after itself come what may; it requires little more than plug sockets and clever lawyers to outmanoeuvre barriers to its trade. Car-makers, by contrast, require massive investment in research, robotics and logistics to keep them at the cutting edge of a globalised manufacturing system operating on the tightest of margins. So every indicator is worth tracking. Peugeot-Vauxhall was a mixed signal, and a cloud hangs over the Ford engine plant at Bridgend. But there’s positive news

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Why is Nicola Sturgeon so cagey about Scotland’s EU future?

It’s important to keep an ear out for the rhetoric of Britain’s remaining Remain parties, because they are changing, too. Having announced plans for a second Scottish referendum entirely because of Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon is now incredibly cagey about whether her independent nation would even be part of the EU, or perhaps more like Norway. The same is true of the Lib Dems. Last weekend, Tim Farron managed to give a whole speech to his party’s spring conference railing against only a ‘hard Brexit’ and thus never quite saying whether a Lib Dem government (humour me) would leave the EU or not. These people need to get off the fence. Mind

Saturday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

It’s mission accomplished for Douglas Carswell as Ukip’s only MP quits

Today Ukip went from a political party with one MP, to a political party with no MPs. Douglas Carswell has quit the party to sit as an independent. In a statement on his website, the MP for Clacton said he left Ukip on amicable terms ‘in the knowledge that we won’: ‘Like many of you, I switched to UKIP because I desperately wanted us to leave the EU. Now we can be certain that that is going to happen, I have decided that I will be leaving UKIP. I will not be switching parties, nor crossing the floor to the Conservatives, so do not need to call a by election,

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

No, M Juncker, David Cameron did not “destroy” the United Kingdom.

Jean-Claude Juncker could have been invented by Nigel Farage’s spin doctors. He is sneering one-man advert for Brexit, Frexit and any other kind of EU-exit. As Hugo Rifkind argues in this week’s magazine, he is a caricature of the arrogant Eurocrat: “smug, lazy, unelected and utterly impervious to anything.” He is a notorious boozer, and managed ‘head of state’ by running Luxembourg, which a country with a population about the size of Sheffield. His ascension to President of the European Commission embodied everything that was wrong with the EU, a huge signal that it was time to abandon ship. When Michael Gove was once at a party and asked to make

Steerpike Steerpike

Liam Fox’s ungentlemanly conduct

Ever since the 56 SNP MPs descended on Westminster following the 2015 general election, they have been criticised for failing to master Westminster etiquette — from clapping in the Chamber to taking shortcuts through the Chancellor’s office. However, is it really the Conservative MPs that are the ones in need of a lesson in good manners? Mr S only asks after Lord Bell — the Tory grandee — let slip, at his Glass Half Full party, what Liam Fox told him Nicola Sturgeon’s nickname was when she was a student at the University of Glasgow. The Evening Standard reports that Bell revealed that the International Trade secretary said they called the First Minister ‘seaweed’. The reason?

Sarah Sands

George Osborne’s Evening Standard job is good news for London

George Osborne has been a good friend to London. He sees the point of infrastructure and I hope he’ll fight hard for Crossrail 2, which has been shunted into the sidings by this government. London business rates are a huge issue, close to Osborne’s heart. He’s a supporter of the arts, with a streak of romanticism missing in David Cameron and Theresa May. It’s good news for Sir Simon Rattle’s concert hall, and Thomas Heatherwick’s Garden Bridge. The mayor Sadiq Khan, who is more than a match for Osborne as a political strategist, will understand what they can jointly achieve as champions of an open, liberal city. The Prime Minister

Friday

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

Labour can only survive by pretending Corbyn has gone

In spite of everything against them, the Labour party scored an historic victory last night in the City of London. Five Labour councillors were elected in wards that are traditionally contested by ‘independents’ (usually retiree residents who are inclined towards the pomp and ceremony). It was their highest ever total. People will, of course, be quick to point out that the City of London is the 325th smallest authority in England, out of a total of 326. It has 25 wards covering the area that would, in most authorities, be designated to a single ward. Labour also only has 5 Commoners (the antiquated term the City uses in favour of

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: How can we prevent a repeat of the Westminster attack?

Theresa May told MPs yesterday that Britain will not waver in the face of terrorism. She is widely praised for her emotional address in the Commons, in which she said simply: ‘We are not afraid’. But still the question lingers: what can we do to prevent a repeat of Wednesday’s attack? Theresa May hit precisely the right note in her address to MPs, says the Daily Telegraph, which compares the Prime Minister’s response to that of Margaret Thatcher’s after the Brighton bombing in 1984. Yet while her message is an important one, there are ‘inevitable questions’. The Telegraph says that already we’re following the ‘gloomy familiar aftermath’ to an attack,

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 23 March 2017

Speaking for Scotland Sir: I wonder if it is wise of Charles Moore (Notes, 18 March) to assume — as so many do — that because they lost the independence referendum back in 2014, the Nationalists do not speak for Scotland? In the following general election Scottish voting virtually wiped out every political party north of the border, other than the SNP. Might it not be wiser to assume that the Scots had thought again? Ian Olson Aberdeen Birds, gangs and economics Sir: Simon Barnes is correct in his implication that the trapping and harvesting of small birds by criminal gangs in Cyprus is enough to make the average Briton

The Spectator

Saving the children

When a humanitarian tragedy disappears from our newspapers, there are two possibilities: that the crisis is over and life for survivors is gradually returning to normal — or that the human toll has become so routine as to no longer be considered newsworthy. Sadly, the deaths of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean to seek a new life in Europe fall into the latter category. Eighteen months after the photographs of little Alan Kurdi’s body on a Turkish beach generated a huge swell of public emotion, entire families are still dying on a regular basis. In the first ten weeks of

Sarah Sands

Diary – 23 March 2017

So I am feeling a bit better about my lack of radio experience. These are exciting times for free movement of labour and with Westminster under the control of Tory and Labour cabals, lovely jobs outside Parliament are tempting. George Osborne is no more qualified to edit the London Evening Standard than Tristram Hunt to run the V&A, but now art and antiquities scholars have dried their tears, that is turning out splendidly. The late Nick Tomalin pointed out that success in journalism requires only ‘ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability’. The trade is temperament as much as technical skill and Osborne has a journalistic love

Will Heaven

Was there a gap in Parliament’s defences?

Yesterday’s appalling Islamist attack in Westminster was not just an attack on Parliament. It began on Westminster bridge, where foreign tourists and members of the public were indiscriminately targeted as they made their way over the Thames. But the attack ended at the Palace of Westminster itself, when the assailant was shot dead by police in New Palace Yard, after he had stabbed to death an unarmed police officer. Parliament’s defences are designed to resist this kind of attack, even if there is a gate that is necessarily open at times for MPs’ cars. But as Theresa May told the House of Commons this morning, ‘the whole country will want to know… the measures that

Ed West Ed West

Around the world, Westminster is a byword for political moderation

As many people have remarked, a terror attack in the centre of London was expected at some point, although it is no less shocking for that. Aside from St Peter’s Basilica or perhaps the Eiffel Tower, there is probably no other European building as recognisable to Europe’s enemies as the Palace of Westminster. Theresa May wasn’t quite correct when she referred to it as the oldest Parliament – both Iceland and the Isle of Man have more ancient bodies, being descended from those egalitarian Vikings – but it’s certainly fair to call Westminster the Mother of Parliaments, a powerful symbol of representative government. Just west of the city of London

The Spectator

Westminster terror attack: Theresa May’s statement to the Commons

Mr Speaker, yesterday an act of terrorism tried to silence our democracy. But today we meet as normal – as generations have done before us, and as future generations will continue to do – to deliver a simple message: we are not afraid. And our resolve will never waiver in the face of terrorism. And we meet here, in the oldest of all Parliaments, because we know that democracy, and the values it entails, will always prevail. Those values – free speech, liberty, human rights and the rule of law – are embodied here in this place, but they are shared by free people around the world. A terrorist came

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Westminster attack: Terrorist named by police

A terrorist who killed four people and injured forty others in yesterday’s ‘depraved’ attack in Westminster has been named by police. Khalid Masood, 52, who was born in Kent and is believed to have been living in the West Midlands, was a career criminal with a series of previous convictions. Scotland Yard named the Westminster attacker hours after Theresa May told MPs that the man responsible had previously been investigated by MI5. In her statement to the Commons, the PM also paid tribute to the dead police officer, PC Keith Palmer, who she said was ‘every inch a hero’. Aysha Frade, 43, who worked at a college in Westminster, Kurt Cochran, an American tourist,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A way for both sides to claim Brexit victory

Theresa May doesn’t do drama. She regards order as both a political and personal virtue. And this goes a long way towards explaining why she is Prime Minister. After the Brexit vote last June and David Cameron’s resignation, the Tories had had enough excitement. They turned to the leadership contender who was best able to project a reassuring sense of calm. It is in keeping with May’s approach that she has drained the drama from the triggering of Article 50, the start of the two-year process for leaving the EU. Other prime ministers might have been tempted to do it with a flourish — to feel the hand of history

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The real BBC shocker: occasionally it isn’t biased

There’s one thing that bothers me a lot about the letter sent by ‘more than 70’ MPs to the director-general of the BBC complaining about bias in its coverage of the Brexit debate. There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons, of whom 330 are Conservative. So does this mean that more than 570 of our elected representatives, including the vast majority of Tories, think the BBC is doing a bloody good job and is an exemplar of impartial reporting? If so, I suspect they have been secretly lobotomised — perhaps by members of the BBC’s impeccably fair and impartial editorial board. In the dead of night. Silently, without

Will Heaven

Cherry blossom

In what I like to think of as The Spectator’s back garden — most people call it St James’s Park — the cherry trees are in blossom. There’s a group of six or seven of them, clouds of bright pink, in the corner nearest 22 Old Queen Street. They’re worth a look, even if you think blossom’s a bit of a girlie interest. There are more dotted around. A little grove of white cherries on the south side of the lake is ranked among the best in London, according to one website: ‘A simple point-and-shoot photo of these trees somehow transforms itself into an impressionist painting.’ But we shouldn’t rank

Stephen Robinson

Cameron adrift

It can be cruel, the way politics plays out. At the very moment George Osborne was telling the bemused staff of the London Evening Standard last week that his working life in politics had obscured a passionate desire to become a newspaper editor, a familiar figure could be seen in the fresh meat department of the Whole Foods supermarket almost directly underneath the paper’s Kensington newsroom. That man was David Cameron, and inevitably someone with journalistic instincts spotted him, snapped him on her phone, and tweeted it. Stephen Robinson and James Forsyth discuss Cameron and Osborne’s diverging retirement plans: We congratulate ourselves on the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ nature of

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Google still needs to try a lot harder to do the right thing

Shortly before agreeing, early last year, to pay token back taxes on a decade’s worth of UK-generated profits, Google also abolished its global slogan ‘Don’t be evil’. Instead it adopted a code of conduct that urged employees to ‘do the right thing’ — but at least in one important respect, they didn’t. Marks & Spencer, HSBC, Audi and numerous other top brands found their banner adverts displayed alongside a variety of YouTube hate videos which Google had failed to exclude, apparently because it did not have sufficient resources to monitor all the video content that was being uploaded at the rate of 400 hours per minute. For fear of losing