Politics

Labour’s Lisa Nandy has just been on the Daily Politics, where she suggested that Naz Shah should be suspended from the party. When asked about Bradford West MP Naz Shah’s comments about Israel,  Nandy told Jo Coburn that the Labour party should ‘suspend anybody who makes anti-Semitic comments in line with our policy and investigate it’. She said: ‘We have a policy that people who make anti-Semitic remarks are suspended and an investigation carried out…and the policy ought to be followed without any exception.’ ‘There has to be a suspension and an investigation when something like this occurs because it is so serious and it does have a knock-on effect

It was the largest debate in The Spectator’s history: we sold out the 2,200-seat London Palladium for our debate on whether Britain should leave the EU, sponsored by Rathbones. The lineup: Dan Hannan, Nigel Farage and Kate Hoey vs Nick Clegg, Liz Kendall and Chuka Umunna. Andrew Neil chaired. Here are summaries of all the speeches, as well as the full audio: Daniel Hannan for Out. https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/daniel-hannans-speech-in-spectator-brexit-debate Tonight, I’m inviting you to make me redundant – and, into the bargain, make Nigel redundant. And I wouldn’t be doing if I were not confident that there will be plenty of openings for newly-unemployed MEPs in the boom that would follow our exit from the European Union. Why do

Given that the last time Dennis Skinner criticised a Tory Cabinet member in the Chamber he was ejected from the Commons, the Beast of Bolsover was on remarkably mild form today. Following Jeremy Hunt’s statement on the planned junior doctors strike, Skinner told the Health Secretary that he ought to ‘wipe that smirk off his face’: ‘When the Secretary of State came into the chamber today I don’t know whether he realises it or not but there is a smirk and arrogance about him that almost portrays the fact that he’s delighted in taking part in this activity. He could start negotiations today. Wipe that smirk off his face. Get down to some

As Sadiq Khan continues to lead the polls in the mayoral race, the Labour candidate has managed to brush off much criticism over his links to unsavoury characters by putting it down to ‘dog whistle’ politics. However, the MP for Tooting may have greater difficulty fending off the latest line of attack to come his way. Writing in the Sunday Times, Lord Sugar — the former Labour peer who resigned from the party after the general election — has launched a blistering attack on Khan. Sugar accuses Khan of having ‘single-handedly wrecked the Labour Party’. The Apprentice star says he cut up his party membership card after Labour turned anti-business under Ed Miliband —

Ministers from 34 countries met in Brussels this week in the vain hope of a quick fix for the steel crisis that everyone blames on dumping by China — which responded, through a state news agency, by calling its critics ‘lame and lazy’. Our own Sajid Javid, desperate to avert the fallout from a closure of Tata’s Port Talbot steelworks before the referendum, claimed to have observed ‘a very positive step forward’ in Chinese attitudes, but perhaps someone had locked him in his hotel room. Meanwhile, Greybull Capital completed its purchase of Tata’s Scunthorpe plant and Liberty House took over two Tata mills in Lanarkshire — confirming my view that specialised

Barack Obama’s decision to visit Britain during an election campaign was controversial enough. His writing an article against Brexit in the Daily Telegraph was more controversial still. But to stand in Downing Street and threaten his host country with being dumped ‘at the back of the queue’ for trade talks should it choose to leave the EU is, I think, too much. It’s precisely the comment that could backfire, and spark indignation. And make people ask: who on earth is Obama to come to Britain and speak to us in this way? I’ve just recorded a podcast about this with James Forsyth. Here it is:- It wasn’t what Obama said, as such. Even the