Politics

While observing reactions this week to allegations against America’s President-elect my mind has been ineluctably returning to 2015 and the story so inventively known as ‘pig-gate’. In case anyone has forgotten, this was a story which was pumped into the British press and then into the world’s media about the then Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron. A former Conservative party donor – Lord Ashcroft – had fallen out with David Cameron years before because Cameron would not give Ashcroft a position in the British cabinet. Being a man of means and owning a publishing house, among other things, Ashcroft had his revenge in an inventive and thoroughly modern

Like the past, Scotland is a different country. Things are done differently here. What might be thought eyebrow-raisingly inappropriate in a larger polity is considered normal here. Consider these three examples: In 2015, Scottish Television decided it was a good idea to make Nicola Sturgeon, together with her sister and her mother, the star of its Hogmanay broadcast. New Year with the Sturgeon’s was in turn hosted by Elaine C Smith, the comedienne who was, conveniently, also a member of Yes Scotland’s advisory board during the 2014 independence referendum. Earlier this month, the SNP rolled-out the first ‘baby boxes’ that will be delivered to every new-born infant in Scotland. The

How much detail does Theresa May need to give in her much-anticipated Brexit speech on Tuesday? The Prime Minister will presumably have to say more than ‘Brexit means Brexit’, and odd phrases about what colour Brexit should be (red, white and blue) won’t pass muster either. But remember that the original big Brexit speech at the start of a year was the Bloomberg speech that David Cameron gave in 2013 – and he gave so much detail about what he wanted from a renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the European Union that he was inevitably going to disappoint, which he then did, taking Britain out of the EU as a

This week John Bercow suggested a Labour MP was in need of an ASBO after she jeered Theresa May a little too enthusiastically during PMQs. Now, the Speaker has encountered another issue with unruly Labour MPs in the Chamber. Today Chris Bryant left the Speaker lost for words when he wished Bercow a ‘happy kiss a ginger day’. Bercow had to take a break to discover what this day was about — before letting Byrant down gently: ‘This kiss a ginger activity is probably perfectly lawful but I’ve got no plans to partake in it myself. I have not the slightest idea what the honourable gentleman was suggesting so the matter had

With the Home Secretary’s conference speech officially recorded as a ‘hate incident’ after an Oxford University physics professor complained to the police, the academic today appeared on the Daily Politics to explain just why he had spoken out. In an interview with Andrew Neil, Joshua Silver said Amber Rudd’s speech — in which she spoke of her wish to ensure foreign workers ‘were not taking jobs British workers could do’ — was ‘picking on foreigners’: AN: Why’s it picking on foreigners to suggest that British people should need to get on in life? JS: Well, she did say… there were briefings that she was going to keep lists of foreigners. AN: No actually

At last October’s Conservative party conference, Amber Rudd revealed a rather silly proposal that companies operating in the UK should be obliged to publish data on the number of foreign workers they employ. It was rightly condemned and Rudd later said that the information would not be published, only used by the government to identify areas of skills shortages among British workers. But a ‘hate incident’? That is exactly how, it transpires, the police recorded it. When you read the inevitable headline in a few months’ time that ‘hate incidents have soared’, you may just want to reflect that one of them was a speech by the Home Secretary. It turns