Politics

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

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

It’s been a year, Nicola Sturgeon. Where are your refugees?

This time last year, as images of refugees fleeing Syria dominated the news, a host of charitable figures offered to do their bit and take refugees into their home. Exasperated that David Cameron was not allowing enough refugees into Britain, Sir Bob Geldof, Yvette Cooper and Nicola Sturgeon were among those who publicly vowed to lead by example. Since then, things appear to have hit a few stumbling blocks. For one, Yvette Cooper claimed — in an interview with Nick Ferrari — that we should listen to the Tory government as they have said that ‘they don’t want people to take them into their home’. Happily times may now be a’changing. The Local Government Association, which represents more than 370

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn’s CCTV concerns are put to bed

As the internet goes into meltdown over the news that Jeremy Corbyn may have had a seat after all when he filmed a video claiming he did not, it appears that the Labour leader hasn’t done much to help his cause. While his campaign team claim that Virgin Train’s CCTV footage is a ‘lie’, Corbyn can at least take heart that the cameras appear to have been working. Back in 2012, he complained in Parliament about ‘inoperative’ CCTV cameras on the rail network, during a debate on funding for Transport for London: ‘We also do it from the point of view of station safety, because, in the days when not enough staff were at

Steerpike Steerpike

Virgin accuses Corbyn of telling porkies in train video

Last week, a video of Jeremy Corbyn sitting in the hallway of a crowded train on the his way to a leadership debate went viral. The footage appeared to show the Labour leader sat on the floor for an entire three-hour train journey after he valiantly declared that it would be unfair for him to upgrade his ticket to first class — where there were seats — when others ‘might not be able to afford such a luxury’. He went on to conclude that ‘this is a problem that many passengers face every day, commuters and long-distance travellers’. However, not all passengers appear to face the problem every day —

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Nicola Sturgeon resurrects Project Fear by claiming Brexit will cost Scotland billions

If you thought the Brexit vote marked the end of ‘Project Fear’, you’ll be saddened to know it’s back. This time it takes the form of a warning from Nicola Sturgeon about what leaving the EU might cost Scotland. The Scottish Government report into the ‘economic risk’ to the country of Brexit, on which Sturgeon’s prediction is based, doesn’t appear to be worth the paper its written on however. It puts the bill as between £1.7bn and £11.2bn – a range so huge as to render it virtually meaningless. The report also suggests a similar, although thankfully, slightly smaller chasm in possible tax revenue, this time between £1.7bn and £3.7bn down after Brexit. It’s

Steerpike Steerpike

David Cameron’s larynx comes to his defence on childhood obesity

Theresa May was once seen as the continuity candidate to succeed David Cameron. However, since becoming Prime Minister she has gone on to sideline or backtrack many of Cameron and George Osborne’s pet projects. As well as delaying Hinkley Point and leaving the Northern Powerhouse’s future up in the air, she has provoked anger this week over the Government’s childhood obesity strategy. While Cameron made clear that childhood obesity would be a flagship issue for his government — with Jeremy Hunt even promising to take draconian measures — May appears to take a different approach. In the report — pushed out in recess — May has scrapped plans to curb junk food

James MacMillan

The SNP has played Scotland’s Catholic Church for a fool

In England and other places there can still be surprise when discussion of football in Scotland segues too smoothly into the discussion of religion. And vice versa. It can also get entangled with toxic politics too. The sectarian divide between Celtic and Rangers doesn’t need to be rehearsed, but the tribal hinterlands behind this ancient sporting rivalry point to the sad opposition between Loyalist and Republican, Royalist and Nationalist, Britain and Ireland, Catholic and Protestant. Some say it’s fading away, some say it isn’t, but there was a manifestation last week that it may be evolving – into something worse. Celtic played the Israeli team Hapoel Beer Sheva in Glasgow

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Brexit won’t finish the EU, insist Merkel, Hollande and Renzi

It’s no surprise that Italy’s prime minister Matteo Renzi chose to host a press conference with Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande on an aircraft carrier; this was a piece of theatre designed to show the EU is fighting back. ‘Many thought the EU was finished after Brexit,’ said Renzi. Not so, he claimed. Instead, Britain’s decision to leave the EU was the chance to ‘write a future chapter’ and ‘relaunch the powerful ideas of unity and peace, freedom and dreams’, the Italian PM insisted. All very well, you might think, but what does that mean? Defending the continent against the threat of Islamic terrorism was a key topic. Angela Merkel

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Clarkson’s half-hearted apology to Gordon Brown

Although Jeremy Clarkson had to leave the Beeb last year following a ‘fracas’ with a producer over a cold meat platter, in his time there he had already developed a reputation for getting himself into tight scrapes. In one such incident, the former Top Gear presenter caused a furore after he called the then prime minister Gordon Brown a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’ — among other things — at a press conference in Australia. Recalling the fallout at the time, Mark Thompson, then BBC director-general, says he received a call from Clarkson before he even heard about the row. ‘Jeremy Clarkson phoned up out of the blue when I was on a day off,’ the

Steerpike Steerpike

Sorry, what? European Parliament claims the EU topped Olympic medal table

After Britain ended the Rio Olympics in an impressive second place in the olympic medal table, many Brexiteers claimed the result was a good omen for the country as it prepares to branch out alone. However, not everyone appears to have got the memo. Today the European Parliament Twitter account has released a graphic showing that it was actually the European Union that was the top medal winner! This meant that the United States came a distant second, and China in third. Happily by Tokyo 2020 they should be unable to try and lay claim to any British medals in their subsequent EU propaganda.

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Liz Truss confirms there will be a British bill of rights. But we still don’t know when

It’s been over a month since Theresa May stood on the steps of Downing Street. And yet the process of finding out what will define her government is moving slowly. We’ve had snippets of the direction in which it won’t be heading: her decision to put the brakes on Hinkley Point, at least for the time being, shows she won’t be pursuing the Osborne agenda. This has, too, been backed up by reports today that she won’t press ahead with plans for regional mayors with the same fervour as the former chancellor. Yet we’ve had only limited glimpses of what May will be aiming to implement. The catchphrase ‘Brexit means

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Liam Fox boasts of Foreign Office land grab

For weeks there have been reports of simmering tensions between Theresa May’s three Brexiteers. After the Prime Minister appointed David Davis as the Brexit Secretary, Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary and Liam Fox as the International Trade Secretary, the group have developed a rivalry over who does what. In particular, Fox is thought to be butting heads with Johnson. After he sent a letter to Johnson demanding that the Foreign Office be broken up and hand certain responsibilities to his department he was accused of attempting a ‘land grab’. While that bid failed, another land grab appears to have found greater success. In an interview with a US radio show last month, Fox

Steerpike Steerpike

Sadiq Khan booed by Corbynistas at rally

After Sadiq Khan declared that he would not get involved in the Labour leadership contest, the Mayor of London had a change of heart over the weekend and penned a piece for the Observer endorsing Owen Smith. Corbyn’s supporters have not taken this well — even re-circulating Mr S’s story about Khan attending Rupert Murdoch’s summer drinks party to suggest that he is a wrong’un. Meanwhile at a pro-Corbyn rally in London last night, thousands of supporters took things up a gear as they let their new-found feelings on the Muslim son of a bus driver be known. Despite Khan’s recent election as mayor, attendees started booing at the very mention of his name: Sadiq Khan –

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Kezia Dugdale backs Owen Smith. Here’s why it won’t help him beat Corbyn

It won’t come as much as a surprise to many that Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, has backed Owen Smith in the party’s leadership contest. In July, Dugdale said that with Jeremy Corbyn in charge Labour faced being wiped out at the ballot box. As if that wasn’t a clear enough indicator of who she would back, today she’s confirmed it. Dugdale had this to say: ‘Owen Smith gets my vote. I believe Owen can unite our party, and move us on from the divisions that exist under the current UK leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.’ The sentiment is clear and Dugdale is one of the highest-profile elected female figures

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How useful is Sadiq Khan’s endorsement of Owen Smith?

Sadiq Khan’s endorsement of Owen Smith is rather handy for the ailing Labour leadership contender, given Khan is one of the few Labour politicians who has actually won something: that something being the largest personal mandate of any politician. This enormous mandate is rather handy when Jeremy Corbyn starts waving his own huge mandate about, but it may not be attractive enough for Labour members, who largely seem besotted by the idea of Corbyn as leader. Yesterday Labour moderates were infuriated by the Corbyn camp’s email telling Labour members that ‘they’ (a wonderful pronoun that British people use to refer variously to someone in authority who is making things difficult,

Andrew Marr

Team GB is a near-perfect post-Brexit ideal

Throughout our holiday, reports from Rio rippled in — last thing at night, first thing in the morning — a regular golden swoosh of heartwarming news. We are only an averagely sporty family, but these Olympics made us all happier. Across the media, there’s been a mild controversy about whether the remarkable achievements of Team GB say anything bigger about Britain — ‘We always punch above our weight’ — or very little; ‘Sport is sport and only sport, and that’s why we like it.’ But of course there are wider lessons. First, there was real, big long-term investment provided by the National Lottery and the foresight of Sir John Major.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Revealed: the bureaucrat who advised Theresa May to use EU nationals as bargaining chips

The biggest puzzle of Theresa May’s premiership so far is why someone who pioneered laws against modern slavery and was so tough on stop-and-search should take such an extreme and heartless position on EU migrants. Her declaration – that she’d use them as bargaining chips in Brexit talks – struck many who would otherwise support her as bizarre and repugnant. The Times reveals today that this idea was dummed up, as you’d expect, by the Whitehall machine. Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s ambassador to the EU, advised all candidates for the Tory leadership to use Britain’s three million EU nationals as bargaining chips in Brexit talks because he thought it would be the

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

What should we call Theresa May’s acolytes?

What, though, are we to call the followers or policies of Theresa May? Assuming, obviously, that there one day are some. At least one columnist last week used ‘Mayist’, which seems to me a terrible, boring waste. Surely we can do better than that? On Twitter, I idly suggested ‘Mayan’ which I still feel is sure to come into its own in the coming economic apocalypse. Thereafter, others weighed in. ‘Mayite’ is no better than ‘Mayist’ and makes you sound like a Geordie when you say it, anyway. ‘Mayflowers’ could work. What with Brexit, ‘Maypoles’ might confuse people. ‘Mayonnaise’, as in ‘the Mayonnaise Government’ is perhaps a bit too weird.

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The 17.4 Million Committee must be launched, urgently

When it was reported that Liam Fox and Boris Johnson are already squabbling about who should be in charge of what in relation to Brexit, this was taken by some to be a feather in Theresa May’s cap. Isn’t she clever to have set Leavers against one another, was the thought. Downing Street sources were quoted as saying that she took a dim view of these silly games. But if it is true that Cabinet ministers are already at loggerheads about their roles, might that not suggest that the Prime Minister who invented these roles — and entire new government departments — has not properly defined them? Certainly the short-term

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Boris Johnson’s diplomatic limericks

The latest challenge called for limericks that might have been written by Boris Johnson in an attempt to smooth ruffled feathers on the international stage. Boris himself has said that ‘it would really take me too long to engage in a fully global itinerary of apology’ to all those who have taken offence at comments he’s made over the past 30 years. But that’s OK because you were on hand to do it for him. Olive branches were proffered to, among others, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hillary Clinton, the Chinese people and the citizens of Papua New Guinea, though I was dis-appointed that nobody felt moved to pen an emollient rhyme

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour’s security headache shows no sign of letting up

With just over a month to go until Labour party conference in Liverpool, the party ought to be turning its attention to setting the agenda for the year ahead. Instead, there are doubts over whether the event will even take place. Earlier this month, a leaked memo to Guido revealed that the party was facing a conference crisis. Following a decision to boycott G4S after over 20 years working together, the party had approached five firms but only one – Showsec – was willing to provide security for the event. As Iain McNicol — the general secretary — pointed out, this was an unsatisfactory option as the Liverpool-based firm do