Politics Archives

Wednesday

2 Nov 2016

Theresa May offers a lame defence of Louis Smith

Neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Theresa May are PMQs naturals. The jokes and the ad-libs that have become such a feature of the session don’t come easily to them. In recent weeks, Corbyn has started with a parish notice to try and win the chamber over. Today, he congratulated Labour MP Conor McGinn on the birth of his daughter. But the PM got the wrong end of the stick and congratulated Corbyn on the birth of his grandchild, cue much hilarity. But it was all very in-joke. In many ways, this was the most memorable moment of a distinctly unmemorable PMQs. Corbyn and May clashed over universal credit, but the exchange

Steerpike

Watch: Theresa May’s embarrassment after PMQs grandad gaffe

Poor old Theresa May. The Prime Minister did her best to try and share some good feeling with those on the opposite benches by congratulating Jeremy Corbyn on the birth of his grandchild. Although it seemed like a rare moment of kindness at PMQs, there was a problem: Corbyn isn’t a granddad. Instead, it was Conor McGinn, the MP for St Helens North , who did have some happy news last week when his wife gave birth to a baby which the brave MP even helped to deliver. Still, Mr S is pleased to report that the PM did eventually manage to regain her composure and turn her gaffe into a jibe

Steerpike

Craig Oliver in the firing line at All Out War launch

To the Policy Exchange for the launch of All Out War, Tim Shipman’s tome on the EU referendum. As the Sunday Times political editor welcomed ‘Bremoaners, Brexiteers, esteemed guests and members of David Cameron’s honours list’ to the launch, he spoke of his relief that there were people present who hated each other more than they hated him. As guests including Michael Gove and Stronger In’s Will Straw sipped on Brexit themed cocktails (with Bloody Michael and Jean Claude Drunker among the drinks that didn’t make the cut), Arron Banks attempted to tout his own Brexit book — the Bad Boys of Brexit — to partygoers, including Gove. Looking back on the referendum,

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Labour’s ‘thunderous hypocrisy’ on press regulation

Press regulation – something of a political hot potato – is top of the agenda once again after Culture Secretary Karen Bradley announced the government was considering ditching plans for a follow-up Leveson inquiry. It’s no surprise that this morning’s newspapers have (almost all) welcomed the news. The Sun says David Cameron left behind a press regulation ‘dog’s dinner’ for Theresa May. But the paper praises the efforts of the government to try and clear it up. It says Bradley’s announcement of a consultation on Leveson 2 is an ideal opportunity for the media to make its voice heard and put forward the case against state interference. The Sun also uses the opportunity to

Tuesday

1 Nov 2016

Katy Balls

Labour goes to war with the government on press regulation

Today in Parliament, press regulation was top of the agenda. The government secured a Commons victory overturning a Lords amendment to effectively implement section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, a Leveson recommendation. The Lords passed the amendment — as part of the investigatory powers bill — last month for victims of hacking by newspapers to be protected from paying the costs of bringing their claims in the civil courts. This afternoon it was overturned — despite Labour’s best efforts to keep it — with a majority of 37, defeated by 298 votes to 261. The result comes after Bradley was accused of a ‘cover-up of a cover-up’ over Leveson this

Ross Clark

Amber Rudd is right, Orgreave is best consigned to the history books

So, there will be no public inquiry into the Battle of Orgreave in 1984, and no left-wing lawyers making a fortune. Maybe Andy Burnham, who seems to have appointed himself as Shadow Minister for Ancient Grievances, would have got further had he demanded an inquiry that was less overtly political, and looked at the violence of striking miners as well as misconduct by the police, but do we really have to trawl back through all of that? No-one died at Orgreave, unlike in South Wales where taxi driver David Wilkie was killed when a concrete block was dropped on his car while taking a ‘scab’ to work. The striking miners

Steerpike

Watch: Will Straw – I don’t know why I got my gong either

What did Will Straw do to deserve his gong? It’s a mystery which has baffled many – including Mr. S – ever since Straw was handed a CBE for leading the ‘Stronger In’ campaign to a resounding defeat in the referendum. Straw’s inclusion on David Cameron’s resignation honours list was labelled a ‘joke’, while others said it was a clear reward for failure. So the appearance of the head honcho of the Remain campaign at a select committee today seemed like a perfect opportunity for Straw to finally shed some light on what he did to deserve those three letters after his name. Alas, even Straw himself isn’t sure why he got the gong. When asked by Labour’s

Steerpike

Tory MP compares unpaid internships to the slave trade

As the government considers a ban on unpaid internships, Theresa May has been accused of pursuing a ‘purge of the posh’. Today Alec Shelbrooke appeared on Daily Politics to put forward the case for the ban. Alas, things took a questionable turn when the Tory backbencher decided that there was an apt and fair comparison to be made between unpaid interns and… the victims of the slave trade. Yes, Shelbrooke suggested that doing a week or two’s unpaid work experience was comparable to being a victim of the slave trade. In response to arguments from the IEA’s Kate Andrews that small business and charities may not be able to afford to pay

Ed West

The new nostalgia for a pre-Brexit world

Among its many treasures, Brexit has spawned a new genre of think piece, the nostalgic ‘what has happened to the Britain I love’ lament in the Guardian. From an Irishwoman here; an Egyptian here; and a German, here. It is sad to see people on the Wrong Side of History clinging to a mythologised, imagined good old days. This must have been a very different Britain to the one I used to read about in the Guardian that was a hot-bed of racism and intolerance. Still, I’m not sure what has changed exactly; apart from the issue of hate crimes, which are hard to analyse because they are not broken down by

Steerpike

Michael Heseltine: I strangled my mother’s dog

Oh dear. It seems Michael Heseltine ought to prepare for a visit from the RSPCA in the next week or so. The former Deputy Prime Minister has admitted to a crime, in an interview in this month’s Tatler. The 83-year-old conservative makes the confession that he strangled his mother’s pet dog, by the name of Kim. The incident occurred after Kim, an Alsatian, started biting Heseltine when the politician attempted to stroke him: ‘I went to stroke him and he started biting me. If you have a dog that turns, you just cannot risk it. So I took Kim’s collar – a short of choker chain – and pulled it tight.

Monday

31 Oct 2016

Katy Balls

Mark Carney reveals his personal Brexit plan

After days of speculation – and months of simmering tensions – over the Governor of the Bank of England’s future, Mark Carney has finally revealed his exit plan. Following a meeting with the Prime Minister, Carney announced that he will stay on as Governor of the Bank of England only until June 2019 – three months after the UK is expected to leave the European Union. In a letter to the Chancellor, Carney expressed his wish to extend his current five-year term by one year in order to ‘help contribute to securing an orderly transition to the UK’s new relationship with Europe’. While some Brexiteers will no doubt be cheering

Britain doesn’t need to bluff about Brexit

The Government’s insistence that we should not give away our hand in negotiations with the EU has backfired. It is putting us in a weak position because the primary reason for not giving away your hand is when you are bluffing. We are not bluffing. We are in a strong position and should take maximum advantage of it. When negotiating with someone who may or may not be reasonable, there is unavoidable uncertainty. We should define the worst that can happen and prepare for it. We can’t control how our opponents behave, but we should define all the things we can control and make sure we control them. Whether or

Katy Balls

The left begins to eat itself

As the Parliamentary Labour Party manages to — uncharacteristically — stay out of the headlines for in-fighting, over on the left of Labour trouble is brewing. A bout of civil war has broken out in Momentum, the grassroots group set up to support Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The issue? A disagreement over just how democratic the organisation ought to be. The group’s head Jon Lansman — a former Bennite and the brains behind Momentum — has been accused of behaving in an ‘autocratic’ manner after he gave his support to a plan to allow every Momentum member to vote on motions on the future of the party, rather than be decided through a delegate

Violet Hudson

Mark Carney, car manufacturing and house prices

A new day, a new Brexit consequence. Several papers lead with the possible stepping down of Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, who is reported to be considering quitting in 2018, five years into an eight year term. The Guardian discusses the criticism that Carney has faced due to his opposition to ‘leave’ during the Referendum campaign. Eurosceptic MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lord Lawson, as well as arch-leaver Daniel Hannon MEP (who this morning scornfully described Carney as ‘a rockstar’), have been vocal in their denunciations of the governor. The week before last Michael Gove even went so far as to write an article comparing Carney to the

Tom Goodenough

Raheem Kassam quits Ukip’s leadership race

In a contest already offering plenty of thrills and spills, the race to become the next Ukip leader has kicked up some fresh drama this morning. Raheem Kassam, Nigel Farage’s preferred successor, has announced his decision to end his leadership bid. The former press officer has blamed press intrusion. In a statement, he said: ‘After much consideration, I have decided not to pursue my campaign to be UKIP leader any further. This was a very difficult decision, and I want to thank everyone who supported me in the process. It is a decision I have not taken lightly, but following meetings this weekend I realised the path to victory is too

Sam Leith

Books podcast: Andrew Solomon’s Far & Away

In this week’s Spectator podcast I talk to Andrew Solomon. Though he’s best known for his work on depression (The Noonday Demon) and identity (Far From the Tree, which I reviewed here), his new book looks not inward but out. Far & Away: How Travel Can Change The World collects essays from three decades of extreme globetrotting. Here he talks about Trumpism, Brexit, needing somewhere to go — and how he found himself in Senegal “naked, covered in ram’s blood, drinking a coke and feeling pretty good”. You can listen to my interview with Andrew here: And if you enjoyed that, please subscribe on iTunes for a fresh episode every

Sunday

30 Oct 2016

Hugo Rifkind

Brexit has ruined my case against Scottish independence

I can feel my views on Scottish independence changing. Not enough to write a column about it, perhaps, but enough to sneak in a mention here. Scotland voted to stay in the EU, and England didn’t, and this somehow changes everything. People who argue that Scotland also voted to stay in the UK, and so should lump it, miss that point, probably on purpose. Every aspect of Scotland’s settlement with the wider UK, from devolution to the Barnett formula, accepts that the effect of straightforward majority UK rule needs to be mitigated for the Union to survive. Brexit is a deviation from this. Independence still seems like a bad idea.

Theo Hobson

Christianity is at the heart of the secular left’s response to refugees

Say what you want about Owen Jones – and I might well agree with you – but he is admirably big-picture. He dares to link current affairs to the largest moral questions. In a piece about refugees on Friday he supplied a sketch of his form of humanist idealism. Empathy, he explains, is a natural human faculty. We naturally desire the good of all our fellow humans – unless some nasty form of politics interferes with this and teaches us to view some group as less than fully human. This is what colonialism did, and what Nazism did, and what Balkan nationalism did, and what Islamic fanaticism is still doing.

Danny Kruger

History won’t look kindly on David Cameron for more reasons than the referendum

‘Bad policy.’ ‘No discernible impact on the key outcomes it was supposed to improve.’ ‘Deliberate misrepresentation of the data… a funding model that could have been designed to waste money’. ‘A waste of £1.3 billion’. ‘Failed’. The media’s treatment of the troubled families programme, whose evaluation has recently been made public, cannot have cheered David Cameron in his last week as an MP. History does not look likely to be kind to his great social policy. We should, however, be grateful to the former prime minister for his quixotic attempt to do the right thing on a massive scale. Because in doing so he exposed the fallacy which has dominated

Saturday

29 Oct 2016

James Forsyth

What does Philip Hammond have planned for the autumn statement?

The City and Westminster are waiting to see what Philip Hammond does in the autumn statement next month. I write in The Sun this morning, that they are looking to see what the new Chancellor’s strategy is for guiding the economy through the uncertainty that will exist until we know what the Brexit deal is. In a private meeting with Tory MPs this week, Hammond gave some indications as to what he plans to do on November 23rd. He was clear that it won’t be a give-away statement. He warned that the deficit remains ‘eye wateringly large’, that the debt to GDP ratio is getting close to the level at