Politics Archives

Thursday

11 May 2017

The economy isn’t all roses, but that’s no reason not to vote for Mrs May

As the election campaign goes into full swing, we hear surprisingly little about the state of the UK economy — because the Tories can’t (and probably don’t need to) promise that they can make it any better in the medium term than it is now, while almost no one takes seriously what Labour has to say about it. The truth is, against the odds and for the time being, that it’s ticking along nicely enough not to be a top concern for most voters. Are we right to be so complacent? After a slowdown in growth to just 0.3 per cent in January to March, most analysts expect a pick-up

A.N. Wilson

Mother Theresa

Tory activists last week were heard to refer to Mrs May as ‘Mummy’. No Corbynista calls their hero ‘Dad’. The human race is guided by myth as much as by logic, and mythology explains people to themselves more vividly than economics. The agony expressed in the liberal intelligent press is understandable. The sensible people who all voted Remain direct much of their fury against the Corbynistas who have taken over the Labour party. Fair enough. Interestingly, however, they attend so closely to what Tony Benn liked to call ‘the ish-oos’ that they ignore the bigger mythological picture. Last summer the country voted — very unwisely according to the sensible 48

Boris Johnson

Libya’s best hope

We were in a detention centre for migrants in Tripoli and we came to a big locked door. It was impressively bolted and padlocked. Someone murmured that we didn’t have time to look inside. But I felt somehow obliged to do so. Outside in the sun I had already said hello to about 100 migrants — almost all of them from West Africa: Guinea-Conakry and Nigeria. They were sitting on the concrete in rows, their heads in their hands; the men in one group, and about half a dozen women a little way off. They had been here for months, in some cases, and they wanted to go home. Kwasi

Wednesday

10 May 2017

Steerpike

Watch: Jack Dromey struggles to do his sums

Oh dear. Does anyone in the Labour party have a head for numbers? Mr S only asks after Jack Dromey became the third Labour politician in recent days to come up short on being asked about basic Labour policy figures. In an interview on the Daily Politics, Dromey came up short as he attempted to explain how much Labour’s corporation tax hike would bring in come 2021: AN: How much extra will corporation tax be bringing in under your scheme? JD: Under our scheme, it will raise in excess of £50bn AN: No, you’ve added up all the years, I’m asking you by 2021, how much extra that year will corporation

Rachel Springall

Make your spending money go further when travelling abroad

Anyone with a trip on the horizon is likely to make a checklist of essentials to pack, but what about spending money? Holiday cash is often last on the list even though leaving it to the last minute can be a costly mistake. Not only could you miss out on a decent exchange rate, but taking only a little cash abroad may mean having to resort to a debit or credit card when funds dry up – with all the fees that entails. Less cash to spend abroad due to exchange rates Holidaymakers could be in for a shock when they realise their travel cash will not go as far as

Rod Liddle

Jeremy Corbyn is starting to sound like a decent Labour leader

I didn’t see a ferret, reverse or otherwise, during Labour’s campaign launch or after. I heard some quite silly, grandstanding, questions from Laura Kuenssberg. And I heard a Labour leader who sounded a bit like…..well, a decent Labour leader. None of this is to deny the patent catastrophe of Corbyn’s leadership of the party hitherto, or to suggest that I agreed with everything he said. But he spoke from the heart, passionately, with a conviction I do not hear in Theresa May’s frankly automaton repetitiveness. And much of what Corbyn had to say about tax avoiders, inequalities and hardship will play very well with his core vote north of the

Steerpike

Listen: Angela Rayner’s disastrous turn on LBC – ‘you should have had that number!’

Last week it was Diane Abbott who was caught on the hoof by Nick Ferrari when she took to the airwaves to unveil Labour’s policing policy. Unable to give the correct figures regarding how much her party’s plan to put more police on the beat would cost, the shadow home secretary seemed woefully unprepared for office. Today it was the turn of Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary. Speaking on LBC, she said a Labour government would put £5.6billion into schools in the next Parliament. While Rayner ought to be congratulated for getting the funding figure right (a feat beyond Diane Abbott), she went on to exhibit a dismaying lack of knowledge regarding the

Gavin Mortimer

The National Front loses its golden girl

The golden girl of the National Front has gone and with her go the grassroot hopes for an alternative to Marine Le Pen. The decision of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen to withdraw from political life wasn’t entirely unexpected, rumours first emerged earlier in the year, but it is nonetheless a heavy blow for the party rank and file just days after their disappointing presidential election result. And it was a disappointment, no matter how Marine Le Pen tries to dress up her 34 per cent share of the vote in Sunday’s second round against Emmanuel Macron. The truth is that she was trounced by a political novice with a manifesto that

Lloyd Evans

Theresa and Philip bored the nation with their strong and stable relationship

How was last night’s TV squirm-athon? The sacrificial victims handled it pretty well, at first. Theresa May and her unknown husband, Philip, were roasted live on a BBC sofa. The idea, presumably, was to make them seem relaxed, normal, unexciting, not too posh, at ease with themselves and, above all, genuine. Dull Phil sported a bland shirt, no tie, and a forgettable jacket. With his gnomish pallor and his thick-rimmed spectacles he resembled Sir Ian McKellen entering a Woody Allen lookalike contest. Mrs May was in headmistress mode. Her wandering lips – each has a life of its own – were painted in hard-Brexit scarlet. She wore a black-and-white tunic

Katy Balls

Labour’s approach to Brexit: the greatest upset of the greatest number

The day of a party’s election campaign launch ought to generate some pretty straightforward policy coverage. Instead, Labour yesterday managed to cause confusion once again as Jeremy Corbyn tried to set out Labour’s position on Europe. In a speech in Manchester, the Labour leader asserted that the question of whether the UK would leave the EU had been ‘settled’ – before going on to argue that the task ahead was to stop the wealthy elites, who are trying to ‘hijack’ Brexit. Given that Labour have been accused of sitting on the fence over Brexit, this appeared to clear up their position (even if he did leave out any specifics of what

Matthew Taylor

2017 General Election – List of Candidates

Listed below are the notable parliamentary contests that we can look forward to in the 2017 general election: England Conservatives: Returning: Richmond Park – Zac Goldsmith, who lost this seat in a by-election he triggered in opposition to the government’s stance on building a third runway at Heathrow, has rejoined the fold to try and win it back. Lib Dem Sarah Olney took the seat from Goldsmith with a majority of 1,872 votes last December. Tatton – Esther McVey, formerly MP for Wirral West and Minister for the Disabled, has won selection for the seat that is being vacated by George Osborne. McVey is likely to be returned comfortably, with Osborne achieving an

Tuesday

9 May 2017

Roger Scully

The rise and fall of Ukip in Wales

Once upon a time the Welsh didn’t much care for the Kippers. In successive European elections (1999, 2004 and 2009), Scotland always produced Ukip’s worst result and Wales was the second or third worst. It was a similar story in Welsh Assembly elections: in 2003, 2007 and 2011, Ukip talked up their chances of winning seats on the regional list, only to fall well short in the end. Wales seemed barren territory for what looked like a very English party. Then things started to change. In the 2014 European election, Ukip came within a whisker of actually topping the poll in Wales. This was followed in the 2015 general election by the

Camilla Swift

How the hunting community could boost Theresa May’s campaign

Out on the campaign trail in Leeds today, Theresa May stated that she supports fox hunting. ‘As it happens personally I have always been in favour of fox hunting and we maintain our commitment – we have had a commitment previously as a Conservative Party – to allow a free vote,’ she said. The Prime Minister has consistently voted against the ban on hunting, and the general consensus has been that although she doesn’t necessarily think of it as a particularly important issue, she is supportive of the hunting community. But it is perhaps something of a surprise that May has today come out and publicly said that she is

Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn dodges Brexit question seven times

Jeremy Corbyn said this morning that Brexit was ‘settled’. Now, it seems, he isn’t quite so sure. The Labour leader was quizzed repeatedly on whether the UK would definitely leave the EU behind if he becomes Prime Minister on June 9th. Seven times, Corbyn refused to answer. Instead, Corbyn insisted that he would ‘get a good deal from Europe’ – but wouldn’t say what would happen if he didn’t. Here’s what he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: LK: …My question is if you’re prime minister we will leave come hell or high water whatever is on the table at the end of the negotiations? JC: We win the election we’ll get

George Osborne

George Osborne: diary of an editor

Watching the general election from my newsroom is an out-of-body experience. I’ve been involved in the last five general elections variously as photocopy boy, parliamentary candidate, shadow minister, campaign manager and chancellor. This time I’m reporting on the election as editor of the Evening Standard. I have a lot to learn; but I have a great team to help me. There is something remarkable, magical even, about the way every day tens of thousands of words are written on everything from the implications of the French election to Arsène Wenger, to this summer’s trendiest cocktails; then laid out on pages with striking pictures and adverts; printed on a million copies;

Steerpike

Listen: Labour MP squirms over Corbyn election leaflet photo

Labour MP Sarah Champion was ‘giddy with excitement’ ahead of Jeremy Corbyn’s launch of the party’s election campaign this morning. Afterwards, she tweeted to say that the event was ‘stunning’. So it might be a fair bet to assume she’ll be proudly urging voters to back Jeremy Corbyn all the way to Downing Street? Not so. In an awkward interview on the World at One, Champion – who ‘unresigned’ back to her job on the shadow cabinet after quitting last year – was asked whether Corbyn would be appearing on her election leaflets. Champion’s response was to say that she was planning to but didn’t know whether it would actually happen.

Alex Massie

The SNP’s muddled education policy is failing Scottish kids

I am afraid that whenever a politician asks to be judged on their record, it is sensible to assume this reflects a confidence they won’t be. At the very least such promises are hostages to future headlines. Take, for instance, Nicola Sturgeon’s boast that education – and specifically closing the gap between the best and worst schools in Scotland – is her top priority. Judge me on this, she said. Well, OK. Today the SNP government published the results of the latest Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy and, as has become annually predictable, they make for depressing reading. While standards of reading have remained relatively constant amongst both primary and

Matthew Lynn

The four major flaws with Theresa May’s energy cap

Better access to education. Tax cuts for anyone in the struggling middle. More affordable homes, and more money for the National Heath Service. There is nothing wrong with Theresa May seeking to stake out the centre ground of British politics and stop Brexit turning into a right-wing campaign to turn back the clock. But one might have imagined she’d use conservative means to achieve this, rather than raiding Ed Miliband’s last manifesto for ideas. The proposed price cap on energy companies is an alarming example of Mrs May’s left turn. There are so many ways in which the price cap is a genuinely terrible idea that it is hard to

The Spectator

Jeremy Corbyn launches Labour’s election campaign, full text

It’s great to be launching our campaign in Greater Manchester where you showed the way for the rest of the country by electing a Labour mayor, Andy Burnham.Andy will be a great mayor – but just think how much more he will be able to achieve if he is working with a Labour Government committed to the many not the few. We have four weeks. Four weeks to take our message to voters to convince them Britain can be better. It can be transformed. It doesn’t have to be like this. We can transform Britain into a country that – instead of being run for the rich – is a one

Katy Balls

It will take more than a defeat to shift Jeremy Corbyn

Last night, Jeremy Corbyn confirmed many Labour moderates’ worst fears when he declared that he would not quit as leader — even if the party loses come June. Now it’s not uncommon for politicians to say this on the election campaign trail and then act differently in the light of defeat — Gordon Brown did exactly this. But the issue is that no-one really believes Corbyn is bluffing. It’s widely accepted in Labour circles that Corbyn won’t go without a fight following the election. Even in the face of disastrous election results, he is expected to try and cling on. The biggest factor in whether he can pull this off, will be the scale