Politics

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

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Britain is selling less to Europe but the EU is still hugely important

Britain’s trade deficit – the gap between what the UK imports and exports – is now at its biggest since the financial crash in 2008. The latest figures out today show that the difference between the two is now £13.3bn for the first four months of 2016. That’s a jump from £12.2bn at the end of 2015. So what do the figures actually mean? City analysts have described the trade deficit as ‘truly horrible’. The British Chambers of Commerce said the gap between imports and exports was ‘unacceptably large’. It’s not only those from the business world having their say on the latest figures though. As ever, these statistics are

Steerpike Steerpike

David Cameron to the Queen: ‘the leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries will attend my anti-corruption summit!’

Oh dear. David Cameron’s done it again. It seems the Prime Minister can’t quite master the art of checking whether there are any cameras recording before he makes an indiscreet comment. Reuters report that Cameron has been caught on camera telling the Queen that the leaders of some ‘fantastically corrupt’ like Nigeria and Afghanistan will attend his anti-corruption summit. ‘We had a very successful cabinet meeting this morning, talking about our anti-corruption summit,’ Cameron tells the Queen. ‘We have got the Nigerians – actually we have got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain.’ When Cameron went on to describe Nigeria and Afghanistan as ‘possibly two of the most corrupt countries

Steerpike Steerpike

Revealed: Emma Watson named in latest Panama Papers leak

Of late, Emma Watson has been taking a more active role in both UK and American politics. The Harry Potter actress recently attended the White House correspondents’ dinner, and just yesterday called on London’s new mayor Sadiq Khan to put a statue of a suffragette outside Parliament. However, should she wish to continue to move in political circles, Watson may face questions about her use of an offshore company. Yesterday, more details of the now infamous Panama Papers were released online in a searchable database. The database provides information regarding the many offshore companies named in the confidential documents which were first leaked earlier this year. On looking through the database, Mr S has come across Emma

Steerpike Steerpike

Yes, Minister! Sir Humphrey Appleby writes to Theresa May over Investigatory Powers Bill

Theresa May’s Investigatory Powers Bill is proving to be one of the most unpopular pieces of proposed legislation in this Parliament. While the Home Secretary has described the bill — which is currently in the committee stage — as ‘world leading’, a new campaign against it claims that all it will do is inspire dictators. But Mr S has word that a big name in politics has now offered his support for the Home Secretary’s bill. Yes, Minister writer Jonathan Lynn has passed onto Steerpike a letter dictated to him by none other than Sir Humphrey Appleby: A letter from Sir Humphrey Appleby to the Home Secretary Dear Home Secretary You are fortunate

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Little Englanders, it’s time to give Sadiq Khan a break

Hell, I wait so long to be right about something and then two bits of stuff come along at once. Nine months ago I said Sadiq Khan would become London’s mayor – partly because he was a very good candidate and a likeable bloke – but more because London is one of the world’s most leftie liberal constituencies. Which should tell you about Boris’s campaigning abilities, no? I also suggested that Labour would do better in the local elections than commentators – and desperate PLP recusants – were predicting. They did. In London, Corbyn is an actual asset to Labour. Beyond the vile metropolis, he is no more of a yoke

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

IDS’s claim about Germany’s hidden EU renegotiation role is hugely damaging for ‘Remain’

Yesterday, David Cameron was all talk of ensuring peace in our time and preventing world war three by staying in the EU. But today, as the EU debate rumbles on, he’ll have come crashing back to earth after reading the front page of The Sun. The paper quotes Iain Duncan Smith as saying that Germany was secretly in control of David Cameron’s EU renegotiation throughout. The former Work and Pensions secretary, who quit the cabinet in February, is set to add in a speech this morning that: “There was a spare chair for them – called the German Chair. They have had a de facto veto over everything.” IDS goes

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Andrew Tyrie takes ‘Lord Elliott of loserville’ to task for mucking Parliament around

As the Treasury Committee looks into the economic costs of the UK’s EU membership, several leading Brexit figures have been summoned to speak before the panel. However, Vote Leave’s Matthew Elliott’s continual absence has cast a shadow on proceedings. The Vote Leave chief executive has turned down an invitation to speak before the committee not one, not two, but three times. His absence has repeatedly been mentioned during the EU sessions, with Andrew Tyrie, the committee chair at one point repeating Arron Banks’s description of Elliott as ‘Lord Elliott of loserville’. As a result of these difficulties Tyrie had to summon Elliott to attend yesterday’s session under parliamentary order. Unsurprisingly he received a hostile reception

Monday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Sadiq Khan boosts party morale as Corbyn forgets his lines at PLP meeting

Although Labour MPs have been encouraged not to brief what happens at meetings of the PLP to lurking journalists, Jeremy Corbyn’s team have no issue briefing out what the leader will say at the meeting before it even occurs. Today hacks were told that Corbyn would use the meeting to clampdown on party in-fighting as members are sick of MPs ‘parading on the media to give a running commentary’. However, what he actually said is another story. The Labour leader toned down his prose considerably — presumably in the quest for party unity — even though his harsher warning was already readable online. Despite this slip-up, the meeting was one of

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Yes, there really has been a Tory revival in Scotland. Only a fool can deny that.

For people who profess to be utterly uninterested in the fortunes of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, SNP parliamentarians and the usual ragbag collection of independence supporters seem terribly keen to demonstrate that the so-called Tory revival witnessed on Thursday is no such thing. Hence this entertaining poster that’s been doing the rounds on social media today. And it is true what it says: Margaret Thatcher was much more popular in Scotland than popular imagination – especially in Scotland – cares to remember. She and her party were certainly always more popular than the Scottish National Party. Why, even after eight years of her government  – after Linwood, after

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Sadiq Khan’s victory has caused a Great Smug to settle over London

London is going through one of its periodic fits of smugness right now, for which the only real parallel is the US after the election of Barack Obama first time round. I refer, obviously, to the election of Sadiq Khan as the first Muslim mayor of a major European capital. ‘Doesn’t it do us proud?’ one of my friends observed. A nice young colleague told us she had wept – wept – twice in the course of the weekend. ‘He took a bus to City Hall,’ she marvelled. ‘It was a victory over bigotry,’ another friend observed, the bigotry obviously being Zac Goldsmith’s campaign, for raising the whole Islamic extremism

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How much of a threat will Sadiq Khan be to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership?

Sadiq Khan starts his first day as Mayor today, and has spent more of his weekend distancing himself from Jeremy Corbyn than he has been talking about London. He made a series of pointed references to the need for his party to win elections and that ‘we only do that by speaking to those people who previously haven’t voted Labour’. And the Labour leader didn’t attend Khan’s swearing-in ceremony at Southwark Cathedral due to ‘capacity problems’, which is probably an excuse those in charge of seating in the Cathedral don’t hear that often. It is clear that Khan doesn’t think there is much merit in appearing close to Corbyn in

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Boris vs Dave

With the May elections over, the EU referendum campaign is now in full swing. David Cameron started the day warning that Brexit could put peace in Europe at risk. In his speech at the British Museum this morning, the PM also asked whether leaving the EU was a risk worth taking. Here’s what he said: Boris hit back by making his case for voting out, saying that negotiating on behalf of the EU is like ‘trying to ride a vast 28-man pantomime horse’: He also sung ‘Ode to Joy’ in German: And Boris even appeared to forget the name of the city which, until a few days ago, he was

Mark Nayler

Was Spain’s ‘new political era’ just a mirage?

More than four months on from Spain’s December general election, optimism has given way to fatigue and cynicism among the electorate. Coalition negotiations between leading parties have failed, and a repeat election will now be held in Spain on 26 June, a few days after Britain’s EU referendum. But there is little enthusiasm for this second-take. Many Spaniards are now saying they will register disappointment with their politicians by abstaining. And what of the supposed new breed of Spanish politician represented by Albert Rivera, the leader of Ciudadanos (‘Citizens’) and Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos (‘We Can’)? They were meant to have ushered in a ‘new political era’ but the farcical, self-centred nature of the

Steerpike Steerpike

Dr Éoin Clarke’s Shadow Cabinet reshuffle fails to materialise

Of all of Labour’s dubious cheerleaders, none is more prolific on Twitter than Dr Éoin Clarke. The clip art-loving activist — who has a PhD in Irish feminism — managed to spend the majority of the general election campaign, and subsequent Labour leadership election, creating photoshops. While both Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham’s team were at first amused by the doodles, Burnham later took steps to distance himself  — clarifying that the photoshops were not ‘official campaign material’. Now it appears that Clarke is out in the cold when it comes to the Labour party. Back in December when reports of Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘revenge reshuffle’ were doing the rounds, Clarke declared online that

Douglas Murray

Does anybody actually think the EU guarantees ‘peace and stability’?

According to David Cameron this morning, if Britain votes to ‘Leave’ the EU on 23 June, the Germans will invade Belgium, the Russians will invade Crimea (again), and we’ll all have to spend the coming years re-learning the finer details of the Schleswig-Holstein question. The Prime Minister’s latest attempt to warn of apocalypse in the case of Brexit has one huge flaw.  In his latest scare-speech this morning he said: ‘Can we be so sure that peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt? Is that a risk worth taking? I would never be so rash as to make that assumption.’ Well nothing is ever

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

David Cameron is now in full ‘Project Fear’ mode

David Cameron’s speech this morning about the EU referendum will succeed in doing one thing: infuriating the hell out of Eurosceptics. The Prime Minister is set to warn that peace and stability could be at risk if Britain walks away from Europe. He’ll also go on to say that the European Union has brought together countries previously ‘at each others’ throats for decades’. In the Project Fear brand, it’s certainly a classic in the genre. But will it work? One of the interesting aspects of his line of argument is the appeal it is likely to have to younger people. Those under the age of 34 are generally much more

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour party relations hit a new low

After Labour’s local election results proved to be less catastrophic than many pundits predicted, John McDonnell told party naysayers it was time to ‘put up or shut up’. The comments went on to anger disgruntled Blairites in Labour who argue the party ought to strive for greater success. Speaking on the Sunday Politics, Caroline Flint appeared to reinforce this point as she said it wasn’t enough for the shadow chancellor to say Labour was looking to ‘hang on’: ‘We need to make a hell of a lot more progress. It’s not enough. We have to show we are a party that is competitively challenging for government. We have to reach out beyond.’ Alas the

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Do our spies really depend on the EU?

Sir John Sawers, an ex-MI6 chief, insisted to Andrew Marr earlier that No10 did not put him up writing today’s article in the Sunday Times saying that Britain needs the EU to ensure its security. I can quite believe it. No10 abandoned this line of argument after the Belgian Airport atrocity, and the subsequent debate which exposed how EU-wide security does not work. We saw, then, that geographical proximity is terrifyingly unrelated to the quality of intelligence collaboration. The French and Belgians were unable to exchange information about terror suspects, in spite of having a common border and common language. If you rely on institutions that don’t work, you put lives

Robert Colville

George Galloway was humiliated in London. Hooray!

It’s rare that an election result leaves you with a sense of giddy, disbelieving glee, but there it was in black and white. Galloway, George, Respect (George Galloway) Party, 37,007 votes. Walker, Sophie, Women’s Equality Party, 53,055 votes. Once you took second preferences into account, Walker and her newly formed feminist movement beat Galloway and his band of Islamists by almost 100,000 votes. This result is so striking, and so perfect, because Galloway is one of those old-fashioned socialists whose attitudes towards gender equality are distinctly retrograde: it is the man’s job to further the revolutionary cause and the woman’s to provide dutiful comradely support. Indeed, while he may not be

Charles Moore Charles Moore

We didn’t have a real choice in the 1975 referendum. We do now

The comparison between the referendum questions — that asked in 1975 and the one which we shall be asked on 23 June — is interesting. In 1975, the question was ‘Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain part of the European Community (Common Market)?’ (Answer: Yes/No). Today, the question will be ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of European Union or leave the European Union?’ (Answer: Remain/Leave). The modern question is the fairer, and it also brings out how things have changed. In 1975, it seemed almost obvious that the answer was ‘yes’: even many who did not like EEC entry could see it was strange to leave only