Politics Archives

Friday

18 Nov 2016

What the papers say: ‘Bone headed’ Labour and why it’s right to reform the Lords

Labour’s confused stance on immigration riles the tabloids in today’s papers – with the party’s position described as ‘bone headed’ in the Daily Express. Meanwhile, prison reform is on the agenda elsewhere, as the Guardian says Liz Truss should release the thousands of prisoners still locked up despite serving more than their minimum sentences. But whatever is done to sort out the mess of Britain’s prisons, it’s no time to make them more comfortable for inmates, says the Daily Mail. Here are what the papers are saying this morning: The Sun hits out at Labour in its editorial this morning, saying the party’s policy on immigration shows what a mess the opposition

Thursday

17 Nov 2016

Gerard Baker

Diary – 17 November 2016

Nobody knows anything. William Goldman’s famous first law of the movie business — that no one can say before the fact what’s going to be a hit or a flop — is our new rule of political punditry. Pollsters, experts, markets tell us with scientific certainty what’s going to happen. Then the voters come along and ruin everything. Brexit. Trump. Ed Balls and Strictly Come Dancing. Who knew? As last Tuesday dawned in New York, the US election was deemed a formality. Newsrooms had lovingly compiled their historic ‘First Woman President’ editions. The final polls pointed to a clear Hillary win. And then the actual votes rolled in, uncannily like

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Boris’s ‘indiscreet’ way with words and Project Fear comes unstuck

In the run-up to the referendum, the Treasury warned that unemployment would rise by half-a-million. Today, this prophecy comes in for criticism in the papers following yesterday’s news that the number of Brits out of work had tumbled to an 11-year low. It’s not only Project Fear which gets a hard time in the editorials though. The moaning ‘anti-Brexit mob’ are also criticised – while the Guardian savages Boris Johnson for making a ‘fool of himself’. The Sun launches an attack on the moaning ‘anti-Brexit mob’ in its leader this morning, saying that it seems that the better the economic outlook since the referendum ‘the louder the caterwauling’ from those unhappy with the

Steerpike

Revealed: the Institute for Government’s Europhile links

This week the Times splashed on a report by the Institute for Government branding Theresa May’s Brexit plans ‘chaotic and dysfunctional’. The research group claimed that Whitehall is overwhelmed by the size of the task ahead and expressed concerns about its feasibility. However, while many Bremoaners have leapt on its findings as proof that the government’s Brexit approach is shambolic, Mr S suggests they take a close look at the group behind it. With a board composed of the likes of Neil Kinnock’s former Chief of Staff at the European Commission, Sir Andrew Cahn, and a range of Labour MPs and peers, it can’t be considered the most neutral outlet. What’s more, the

Evgeny Lebedev

London Notebook | 17 November 2016

The new government seems to be struggling with the logistical intricacies of removing Britain from the European Union. I can only assume they have never tried to put together a theatre awards. The Evening Standard Theatre Awards take a year to arrange, but it can sometimes feel like the whole thing is done in a week, which passes in a blur of seating plans, speeches, menus and other thespian miscellany. It is theatre within theatre. If the Prime Minister is reading this, I am available to consult on how to manage conflicting egos in a high-pressured environment. Between Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Joan Collins and Shirley Bassey, a

Nicholas Farrell

Italy’s Brexit moment

Though he is a big fan of the European Union, Barack Obama brings bad karma to it. So perhaps he should not have chosen Greece and Germany, the two countries which illustrate so poignantly why the euro is doomed, for his last foreign tour. His farewell visit is, if not a kiss of death, surely a bad omen for the EU and most immediately for one of those present in Berlin to bid him goodbye: Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, who has called an all–important referendum on constitutional reform for 4 December. If he loses, as looks ever more likely, it could cause a run on Italy’s sclerotic banks that could

James Forsyth

The economic consequences of Philip Hammond

What are now called ‘fiscal events’—the Budget and the Autumn Statement—have become the biggest dates in the Westminster calendar. The Chancellor lights up the landscape with political pyrotechnics. There are attempts to bribe prospective voters through tax and spending changes, a litany of pork-barrel projects designed to help individual MPs, and fiendishly complicated schemes no one expects. But with the Treasury under new management, this will all change on Wednesday. Philip Hammond is the least political Chancellor Britain has had for quite some time. The two longest-serving incumbents of recent times, George Osborne and Gordon Brown, doubled up as electoral strategists whose fiscal policies were informed, above all, by political

Mary Wakefield

My husband’s ‘gay affair’ with Gove

A few weeks ago I discovered that while he should have been focused on the fight of his life during the referendum campaign, David Cameron was instead obsessing over whether or not his justice secretary, Michael Gove, had had an affair with my husband, Dom Cummings, campaign director of Vote Leave. The story was in the Mail on Sunday, who eked it out across two consecutive issues. On week one it kept Dom and Michael’s names under wraps (for ethical reasons, it said) but revealed the source of the thrilling bit of gossip to be an aide of Cameron’s called Gavin Williamson (now Chief Whip). Williamson had, said the MoS,

Wednesday

16 Nov 2016

Lloyd Evans

Jeremy Corbyn flops again at PMQs

People say Corbyn’s getting better. I wonder. He seemed out of touch today. Soaring employment, falling inflation, the booming stock-market, the Trump ascendancy, the implosion of Isis, the Aleppo siege? He ignored the lot. He brought up the exiled Chagos Islanders whose right to return has been denied for decades. Having mentioned them, and enjoyed a flush of reflected sanctity, he dropped the issue entirely. Poor old Chagos. Its scattered natives are used to being abandoned by false-friend statesmen but this seemed particularly cynical. Corbyn’s main brainwave today was to deploy all his rhetorical skill, all his mastery of the political arts, to lure Mrs May into accidentally disclosing her red-lines

James Forsyth

PMQs: Jeremy Corbyn’s failings give Theresa May a way out

At first it looked like Jeremy Corbyn was going to go on the rights of Chagos Islanders at PMQs, but then he shifted tack to Brexit. Corbyn’s questions were quite tightly honed — using Boris Johnson’s comments in a Czech newspaper interview about Britain probably leaving the customs union to needle May. But Corbyn’s own failings give May a way out each time, she just attacks him for not being up to the job. At the end of their exchanges today, you were left with the sense that a better opposition leader could have caused May real problems today, but Corbyn simply isn’t up to it. May received a rare

Steerpike

Watch: Theresa May on the SNP’s hypocrisy over Brexit

Oh dear. Although the SNP like to pride themselves on being the ‘real opposition’, they tend to struggle when on the receiving end of criticism. And so it was the case today at PMQs as Theresa May responded to a question from Angus Robertson over the government’s Brexit plans: AR: Will the Prime Minister confirm today to the country whether the UK is likely to leave the EU customs union post-Brexit, yes or no? TM: The right honourable gentleman doesn’t seem to understand that the customs union is not just a binary decision. But let’s put that aside, let’s look at what we need to do which is to get the

Tom Goodenough

Google’s commitment is good news for Britain. But it doesn’t have much to do with Brexit

Google’s decision to employ an extra 3,000 people in London is undoubtedly great news for Britain. But it’s nonsense to try and tangle the company’s plans as being all – or, indeed, anything – about Brexit. Of course, it was only a matter of time before Google’s announcement was glimpsed through the Brexit prism. Everything is these days. Some have said the new jobs promised by Google and the firm’s £1bn investment is ‘despite’ the outcome of the referendum. In their coverage of the announcement, Bloomberg said tech firms had been left wondering ‘whether they’ll still be able to hire workers from overseas…after the country leaves the bloc’. This suggested Google’s announcement was something of a

Ross Clark

Oxford Dictionaries is playing politics by picking ‘post-truth’ as its ‘word of the year’

The BBC was recently exposed for buying more copies of the Guardian than of any other paper. I imagine they must get through quote a pile of Guardians at Oxford Dictionaries, too. How else could they have come up with the idea of making ‘post-truth’ their word of the year? The trouble with the concept of ‘post-truth’ is that it is itself untrue. It implies that there was a golden age of scientific reason which has now passed. There wasn’t. People have always been prone to superstition, prejudice and to making emotional judgements. They still are, but if anything, scientific evidence is treated with far more reverence than it ever

Theo Hobson

Donald Trump’s victory shows why liberals must go back to basics

It is time to bother thinking about the tricky terms ‘liberal values’ and ‘liberalism’. ‘Liberal values’ is what unites us in Western democracies; it means a broad, vague belief in equality, human rights, the rule of law. Liberalism, on the other hand, is a political and cultural agenda. It claims to express liberal values in terms of a concrete political programme. Or let’s put it this way. There is a ‘basic liberalism’ that unites us (or almost all of us). It says that all human lives matter, that racism is bad, that people should be free to choose how to live, and so on. And there is a ‘sharp liberalism’

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Britain’s ‘dangerous’ prisons and Brexit ‘indecision’

The decision by prison staff to walkout yesterday before returning to their posts following a court ruling leads many of the newspaper editorials today. There is some sympathy for the difficult job being done by jail staff – but the papers say that officers leaving their posts isn’t the answer. Elsewhere, yesterday’s Brexit memo which suggested the government’s plan for leaving the EU is in a shambles is also a talking point in the newspapers. Here’s what the papers are saying today: The Sun says the action taken yesterday by prison staff to walkout was ‘shameful’. The paper says that it’s clear there is ‘dangerous chaos’ in Britain’s jails but ‘crippling prisons’

Katy Balls

Government on manoeuvres over Article 50 vote

Yesterday the BBC’s Norman Smith reported that the government have prepared a short three line bill to begin the process of leaving the EU. This is to be used in the event that they lose the Article 50 appeal and the Supreme Court insist on a Parliamentary Bill before Article 50 is triggered. I understand that the government have also been mooting the idea of holding a snap vote on an Article 50 motion ahead of the court case. Last week, the whips’ office sounded out figures in both their own party and opposition parties over how they would vote if they ran a snap vote on Article 50 — potentially as a ten minute rule. The

Tuesday

15 Nov 2016

Douglas Murray

Am I the victim of a homophobic SNP hate crime?

My editor has received a letter of complaint. The SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh writes: Dear Fraser, I read Douglas Murray’s blog on Friday “Where’s the proof that Donald Trump is homophobic?” with great interest. It’s fantastic to see the Spectator embracing the zeitgeist and embracing “post-truth” politics in its own right by now ignoring facts when publishing comment. I’m particularly happy to directly answer Douglas Murray’s questions, when he asked: “Where does this endlessly repeated claim that Donald Trump is so anti-gay as to make grown men cry actually originate? What is the source of the claim? Or the evidence?” The evidence is in an interview from Channel 4 News

Ross Clark

Falling inflation marks another nail in the coffin for Project Fear

So, another post-Brexit horror story fails to materialise. When the stock market failed to crash and the economy failed to slump, the continuing Remain campaign hit on another fear: inflation. When the CPI rose in September to one per cent, it was predicted to be merely the beginning of a trend which would see prices surge as a result of the fall in the pound. Instead, the CPI fell back slightly last month to 0.9 per cent. It may well rise again in the coming months, but it is already clear that it is going to be hard to maintain the narrative of a Brexit-inspired inflationary spiral. At 0.9 per

Katy Balls

Mark Carney takes issue with Theresa May at Treasury select committee

With Mark Carney stepping down from his role as governor of the Bank of England in 2019, it’s been widely reported that relations between Carney and Theresa May are strained. As James Forsyth writes in The Spectator, the Prime Minister managed to rub Carney up the wrong way with her Conservative conference speech when she appeared to criticise central banks and citizens of the world. At today’s Treasury select committee, Carney denied that May’s comments played a role in his decision to extend his contract by just 12 months. He did, however, appear to take a swipe at May over her choice words. When Andrew Tyrie — the committee chair — pointed out that May

Steerpike

Liam Fox throws the book at civil servants

Although Theresa May is adamant that she will trigger Article 50 come what March, today’s Times splash suggests otherwise. A ‘leaked’ memo from Deloitte to the paper claims that the government is behind schedule with Brexit preparations and is heavily short-staffed — requiring another 30,000 civil servants in order to get the job done. So, what are the current batch of civil servants getting up to? Well, over in the Department for International Trade, Mr S understands that reading is high on the agenda. Word reaches Steerpike that Liam Fox has instructed his civil servants to read Rising Tides: Facing the Challenges of a New Era — a book that aims to explain ‘how to