Politics

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

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Nigel Farage: Boris had me worried after his ‘shambolic’ press conference

To the Conrad hotel in St James where Nigel Farage went head to head with former Labour spinner John McTernan in a Ladbrokes’ Brexit debate. Although the EU was the number one topic on the agenda, the panel chair Isabel Oakeshott — who is the co-author of Call Me Dave — managed to get pig on the menu as she recalled an email McTernan had sent about a journalist — during his time advising Julia Gillard in Australia: ‘This was an order as to how this journalist was to be treated: dead — not ever, no transcripts, no returned calls, dead, forever — that’s an order.’ She said that the email summed

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can Boris do as effective a job for Out as Cameron is doing for In?

Pro-Brexit Tory Cabinet Minister would, I suspect, not be complaining about the government’s referendum campaign tactics if they didn’t fear that they were effective. Whatever you think about how he has done it, David Cameron has driven the risks of leaving the EU up the agenda this week. He has pushed the Out campaign onto the back foot. This is what makes Boris Johnson’s appearance on Marr tomorrow morning so important, I argue in my Sun column this week. Out need Boris to drive their agenda as successfully as Cameron is pushing IN’s. The interview is a big moment for Boris too. It will be the biggest test yet of

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris tries to drag David Cameron back to talking about his EU deal

Boris Johnson’s attack on David Cameron’s EU deal as achieving ‘no real change’ is part of the very high-profile campaign that the senior Tories campaigning for Brexit are waging. They have covered the media over the past week with interviews, quotes and rebuttals to every claim that the Prime Minister and his allies have offered. What is interesting about Boris’ comments is that he is trying to take the debate back to the question of whether Cameron actually got anything in the renegotiation. The Prime Minister has rather pointedly moved on from talking about that, focusing now on the dangers posed by a ‘leap into the dark’, which requires a

Steerpike Steerpike

Zac Goldsmith promises to be ‘pansexual’ for London

As Zac Goldsmith fights to be the next Mayor of London against Labour’s Sadiq Khan, he is striving to appeal to all Londoners. Alas, somewhere in the process of doing this, he appears to have got a bit confused. In an interview with Pink News — the news website aimed at the LGBT community, Goldsmith said that he wanted to be a mayor for everyone, employing the term ‘pansexual’ to try and make his point: Pink News: Would you like to be the mayor for everyone? ZG: I would use the term pansexual here, if my understanding is correct. https://vine.co/v/iXa9lEB5Jrx While Mr S suspects that Goldsmith means that he wants to appeal

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Nick Clegg visited dogging site during his time as deputy PM

With Nick Clegg now a mere backbencher, his former staff appear to no longer feel the need to protect the Liberal Democrat from negative publicity. Today Clegg’s former campaign manager Ben Rathe has written a blog in which he reveals what happened when his search for a location for Clegg to give a speech — at the Liberal Democrat conference in 2013 — went spectacularly wrong: ‘It was the Liberal Democrat Conference 2013, and my role back then was planning all of the visits that Nick Clegg was doing over the course of the 5 days in Glasgow. This included finding somewhere suitable to announce a new 5p charge on plastic bags,

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Labour MEP stuck in lift in European parliament

Brexit campaigners make the argument that the European Union just isn’t working when it comes to Britain’s interests. While some are yet to be convinced, it’s safe to say that some parts of  the EU parliament just don’t work full stop. Last night Paul Brannen, the Labour MEP, found himself stuck in a lift in parliament, in Brussels. When door of the lift opened, a steel wall appeared. After waiting for 20 minutes, Brannen decided the only thing to do was to film himself in case he didn’t made it out of the lift alive: ‘I’m somewhere between the 13th floor of parliament and the 3rd floor of parliament, and I’ve been here for about

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

IDS’ furious attack on the ‘In’ campaign threatens Tory unity post-referendum

Iain Duncan Smith’s attack on the ‘In’ campaign today doesn’t just show us how febrile the referendum campaign is going to be for the next few months. It also shows us that ministers like the Work and Pensions Secretary are so peeved with the way the Prime Minister and others are conducting the campaign that they want to threaten Tory party unity after the referendum, whatever the result. IDS writes in the Mail today: ‘The acrimonious manner in which all this has been conducted is troubling, and will I fear have consequences long beyond June 23. After all, such desperate and unsubstantiated claims are now being made that they begin

Maria Wilczek

When the EU is no longer able to bribe Turkey, the blackmail will begin

As James Forsyth mentioned earlier this week, things could get much worse in Turkey. Indeed, they will. Europe’s hope that Turkey will continue to soak up migrants is at best naive; at worst, irresponsible. Europe desperately needs Turkey to serve as a migrant waiting room on its borders. In exchange, it has offered an acceleration of the EU admission process. In November, Turkey was promised visa-free travel to the Schengen zone by 2016. In December, after five years of standstill, negotiations concerning economic and monetary policies linked to Turkey’s EU membership were reopened. This entire deal rests on the peculiar idea that, if given the chance, Turkey would be a Europhile with the zeal of

Thursday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 3 March 2016

The government, or at least David Cameron’s bit of it, seems to think that trade is something that takes place because of a trade agreement. The order is the other way round. People trade, and have done for several thousand years, because it is to their mutual advantage. After a bit, governments come along and try to direct and often impede it, but in the modern world of instant communications, ready transfers of money and container shipping, this has become blessedly difficult. A friend, Edward Atkin, who has made a large fortune out of Avent baby bottles and like products, tells me: ‘I have never known or asked whether any

The Spectator

The prying game

One of the marks of a good Home Secretary is a healthy wariness of those in authority who come begging for ever-greater powers. The former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke failed on that score. Just over a decade ago, the police persuaded him that they needed the freedom to lock up terror suspects for 90 days without trial. The rebels who defeated the Labour plan were right: ten years later no one has presented a case of a suspect who committed an act of terror because they had to be released before the 90 days were up. Theresa May, who has confronted the police unions with such admirable fortitude, is

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron plays the Jungle drums again

This is from tonight’s Evening Blend email, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political events. Subscribe here. Today in brief François Hollande warned that there would be ‘consequences’ for the British-French border deal that keeps migrants at Calais. Boris Johnson responded to the warnings that Brexit could lead to a ‘Jungle’ on UK soil with ‘Donnez-moi un break’. Jeremy Corbyn rejected the ‘failed economic orthodoxy’ espoused by the previous Labour government and called for a ‘new settlement with the corporate sector’. Caroline Lucas attacked Labour for its ‘silence’ in the EU referendum. Sajid Javid said he was still a ‘Brussels basher’ despite backing the campaign to stay in.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour shadow ministers told to emulate Will Smith in EU campaign

Even if Jeremy Corbyn isn’t making waves in Labour’s EU campaign, the rest of the party is trying to knuckle down and get on with what is essentially an enthusiastic get out the vote operation. The party knows that the bulk of its voters are in favour of Britain staying in the European Union, and that it just needs to enthuse them enough to bother to vote – which is the problem I set out in this earlier post. If Corbyn can’t do the enthusing, then other frontbenchers need to do it in his stead. Those involved in the Labour for In campaign are trying to ensure that the party

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Richard Burgon struggles with the deficit (again)

When Richard Burgon appeared on Channel 4 News last year to defend John McDonnell over his fiscal charter U-turn, the shadow City Minister struggled to make a good impression. On top of not knowing what the deficit was expected to be for 2015, he appeared to concede that he was yet to meet with anyone in the City. So, it was a marked improvement on today’s Daily Politics when Burgon actually managed to name the current deficit amount. He then went on to say that his party was committed to getting the deficit down. So, how would they go about doing this? RB: Through investment for long term growth AN: But doesn’t that cost

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs unnerved by party’s low-key referendum campaign

Caroline Lucas is speaking for a number of Labour MPs with her warning about the weakness of the Labour party in the EU referendum debate. They are worried that their party is not going to be able to deliver the voters needed to keep Britain in the European Union. ‘Labour voters will not be turned out by a load of Tories,’ says one MP, though when Labourites start moaning about a lack of leadership from Jeremy Corbyn on the Labour for In side of things, they then end up accepting that actually a very involved Labour leader might not be a good thing, either, given his lack of appeal to

Caroline Lucas

If the left doesn’t wake up soon, it could be responsible for Brexit

It’s only been a week and a half since the starting gun was fired, yet for people outside of the Westminster bubble, the debate over the EU referendum is no doubt already beginning to tire. On the one hand we have the ‘outers’ banging on almost exclusively about sovereignty and immigration. And on the other side we hear the same economic mantra repeated over and over again. I’m a convinced ‘remainer’ and of course I know that these arguments matter enormously – but I fear that this debate over the future direction of our country could be lost to the ‘outers’ unless my side make a more visceral argument for

Steerpike Steerpike

Yanis Varoufakis distances himself from Jeremy Corbyn

Oh dear. This week Jeremy Corbyn claimed that Yanis Varoufakis would advise Labour in ‘some capacity’. However, whatever capacity that will be, the message doesn’t appear to have got through to Varoufakis. After a week in which the former Syriza MP and Greek finance minister has been made fun of by senior Tories over the arrangement, Varoufakis seems to be at pains to play down any such role. In an interview with CNBC, Varoufakis states that he is not advising Corbyn — ‘I’m a full time active politician. As such, I could not be advising another politician’. Instead he says he is just talking to ‘anyone who wants to talk to me’. ‘So, I am talking to

Matthew Lynn

The debt monster

Just after last year’s general election, George Osborne delivered a budget that he hailed as proof that his policies were working. ‘The British economy I report on today is fundamentally stronger than it was five years ago,’ he crowed, as he started to detail the record number of jobs created and a growth rate that had accelerated past our neighbours. ‘Our long-term economic plan is working. But the greatest mistake this country could make would be to think all our problems are solved.’ As it turns out, this final sentence summed things up the best. There was growth but a whole lot of debt as well. The national debt today

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will Cameron pull his punches to help the Tories reunite?

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/donaldtrumpsangryamerica/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson & Isabel Hardman discuss the opening skirmishes of the EU referendum campaign” startat=540] Listen [/audioplayer] If Downing Street’s calculations are correct, next week will see politics begin to return to normal. We’ll all move on from talking about Boris Johnson and Brexit and instead start fretting about the budget and pensions: the first phase of this four-month referendum campaign will be over. The two sides will regroup and try to work out what they can take from these initial skirmishes. One lesson from the first weeks of the campaign is that the ‘in’ side have the advantage when the debate is on the economy.

Timothy Garton Ash

A conservative case for staying in

I open a dusty binder and look at my yellowing Spectator articles from Poland, Germany and Russia in the dramatic 1980s. And here’s one from Brussels in 1986, suggesting that Britain was edging towards finding its role in the European Community. Ho ho. Back then, Charles Moore was the editor and I was the foreign editor of this magazine. He shared my passion for the liberation of eastern Europe, while becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the western European Community, but he let me make the case for it. Now, 30 years on, Charles and I stand on different sides of a historic national argument. This makes for a curious role reversal.

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Of course the old Tory hatreds are back. That’s referendums for you

Of course it’s vicious. It was always going to be. Sure, they’ve spent decades living peacefully side by side, but so did the Hutu and Tutsi. So did the Alawites and Sunnis, and so did every manner of former Yugoslavian. In politics, old hatreds do not die. They merely keep mum, so as to get selected and maybe become a junior minister. You will not find me dwelling upon the row in cabinet, this week, about whether pro-Brexit ministers are allowed to see government papers related to the EU referendum. Personally, I’d pay good money not to see government papers related to the EU referendum. I consider it a very