Politics

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

Wednesday

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Dawn Butler struggles with the new kinder politics

Dawn Butler was one of the Labour MPs who helped to get Jeremy Corbyn onto the ballot paper in the Labour leadership race. While Butler ultimately wanted Andy Burnham to be leader, she has been supportive of Corbyn since his election. Alas Butler now appears to be struggling when it comes to getting to grips with the new kinder, gentler politics. Today the Labour MP tweeted that a friend of hers had compared Cameron’s appearance to ‘a kid whose just done a poo’. To which Butler replied: ‘yes it does feel like he’s sh–ting all over the working class doesn’t it.’ Of course this is the same Butler who lost her

Tristram Hunt

I’m sure the Queen could cope with a new English national anthem

‘Thy choicest gifts in store / On her be pleased to pour.’ The prospect is upon Twickenham and Wembley regulars of the end of that second tricky verse. This week, Labour MPs packed into the Commons Chamber to support Toby Perkins’s English National Anthem Bill, which proposes replacing ‘God Save the Queen’ with an English anthem at English sporting events. Given that Wales has ‘Land of my Fathers’ and North Britain (sic) ‘Flower of Scotland’, then why not, say, Blake and Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’ for the English? The Express and the Mail say we shouldn’t be ‘rude’ to the Queen, but the modern elision of monarchy and nation is a relative

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Revealed: why Diane Abbott’s ‘thrilling’ and ‘insightful’ comments go unnoticed

Although it may have seemed as though the majority of MPs had enough on their plates over Christmas with floods, revenge reshuffles and the war on terror, it turns out that they also had time to edit a magazine. This week’s edition of the women’s weekly Stylist is ‘made by politicians’. The issue includes a recipe for cinnamon buns from environment secretary Liz Truss, as well as David Cameron giving a rundown of his ‘work life’. As for Labour, there is Jeremy Corbyn on his ideal bicycle — the £475 Raleigh Criterium, no less — and Gloria De Piero on the pros of buying Chardonnay from Aldi. Perhaps Mr S’s favourite section, however, is

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is Jeremy Corbyn really up for a fight with Len McCluskey over Trident?

Today’s report that Len McCluskey plans to warn Jeremy Corbyn against changing Labour policy on Trident is not a surprise after the GMB’s Sir Paul Kenny used pretty fruity language to do the same on Monday. But it is significant as it shows that the plan of those in the party who do not want the Labour leader to continue in post to the next election is progressing as they’d hope. That plan is pretty rough and ready, but it does involve the unions losing faith in Corbyn’s basic competence, and not just blocking his moves to mark Labour a unilateralist party. Whether or not that plan succeeds isn’t clear.

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Team Corbyn left red-faced over Berlin hostel Twitter ‘hack’

Over the weekend a number of strange tweets were emitted from Jeremy Corbyn’s Twitter account. The Labour leader appeared to be taking his call to attack the Tories — and not other members of Labour — to new heights when he tweeted ‘Davey Cameron is a pie‘ along with ‘Here we… here we… here we f—ing go!!!’. While the tweets were swiftly deleted and put down to the account being hacked, new information has now come to light surrounding the incident. The Times Red Box reports that the ‘hack’ occurred in a hostel in Germany. One of Corbyn’s staff was enjoying a break in Berlin when the orders came to tweet from

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Cameron has a fractious session at Liaison Committee

The Prime Minister was in a pretty ratty mood at the Liaison Committee today, taking exception especially to questions from the dry-as-sandpaper chair, Andrew Tyrie. At one point Cameron told Tyrie that ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’ if he was suggesting that there weren’t people in Raqqa who were plotting to damage Britain. Later, he spoke sarcastically of Tyrie’s ‘great ability and genius’. Why was he bristling so much? Well, Tyrie and his colleagues on the committee, which is made up of the chairs of all the parliamentary select committees, were giving Cameron a hard time on his figure of 70,000 moderate opposition forces in Syria. The Prime

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Government aide halts junior doctors interview: ‘where is Jeremy Hunt?’

As junior doctors exercise their right to strike today over government plans to change their contracts, Jeremy Hunt has been keeping a surprisingly low profile. In fact the Health Secretary has declined interview requests, instead sending his senior clinical advisor Norman Williams to field questions from the media. Alas, there are some questions that are not appropriate to ask Williams. One such question is ‘where is Jeremy Hunt?’. Sky‘s Darren McCaffrey found this out the hard way after he asked Williams why Hunt was refusing to take media requests. At which point an aide dived in to stop the interview: ‘Hang on a minute, we’re not doing any of this nonsense.’

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The anti-Corbyn plan to undermine the Labour leader

Have Labour MPs who oppose Jeremy Corbyn just given up? Given many of them have chosen to stay on the frontbench after the reshuffle in which the Labour leader made clear that it was his way or the highway, and also that he does want to change party policy on Trident after all, it looks as though many have just resigned themselves to a miserable few years in which they struggle to mount any meaningful resistance to the Labour leader. It’s certainly true that Corbyn’s opponents don’t have a clear plan for removing him. Some of them have concluded that the best option is for the unions to turn against

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How will the Tories recover their relations with junior doctors?

Junior doctors are now on strike over their new contract, with recriminations between the two sides continuing as the picket lines fill up. It is clear that there has been a fundamental breakdown of trust between the BMA and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, to the extent that both sides seem to be talking about completely different contracts. Many Tories think the BMA is going too far and is not serving the cause of its members well by provoking the public with cancelled operations. It is striking that Sarah Wollaston, who has criticised the government’s approach to the matter, is now attacking doctors’ decision to strike as counterproductive, too. But what’s

Monday

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Listen: newsreader announces death of Cameron instead of Bowie

As the nation goes into mourning over the death of David Bowie today, one radio presenter appeared to be having trouble even taking the news in this morning. In fact when the newsreader Fiona Winchester’s read the news for Heart FM in Scotland during a morning bulletin, she seemed to have a world exclusive on her hands. https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/newsreader-accidentally-announces-death-of-david-cameron-instead-of-david-bowie ‘David Cameron has died,’ the Scottish presenter declared. However, the penny soon began to drop that she had not actually meant to say the Prime Minister’s name. Instead it was another David who had passed away: ‘David Bowie has died after a secret 18-month battle with cancer’ Knowing David Cameron’s reputation north of the border, Mr S

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Two more Labour frontbenchers step down as reshuffle row drags on

Labour’s reshuffle isn’t, as some foolishly alleged, over. It may never end, as frontbenchers decide to resign over the internal warfare in the party. This morning Catherine McKinnell, who was Shadow Attorney General, has resigned, citing family reasons, the struggle to balance frontbench and constituency life, and ‘the situation in which the Labour Party now finds itself’, which the Newcastle North MP says has ‘amplified’ the first two issues. She writes: ‘However, as events have unfolded over recent weeks, my concerns about the direction and internal conflict within the Labour Party have only grown, and I fear this is taking us down an increasingly negative path. I feel that I

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is this feminist porn ‘artist’ really the best advert for western values?

There was something inevitable about Milo Moire’s naked protest in response to the New Year’s Eve sex attacks in Cologne in the name of feminism. Moire stood in the square outside Cologne’s Cathedral, utterly clothesless except for a pair of red trainers. She held a placard that said ‘Respect us! We are not fair game even when we are naked!’ Moire is of course just another attention-craving narcissist, although in her defence it should be said that she does have an impressive pair of (fake?) breasts. According to her Wikipedia entry, Moire places ‘herself at the interface of art and pornography’. Judging from her saucy Twitter account, I would say she tends

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn says he’s not going to war with his critics. But are they going to war with him?

Jeremy Corbyn’s Today interview was a reasonably good stint for the leader after a bad week. He had clearly worked out better ways of talking about terrorism that make him sound reasonable – although he deliberately left in tell-tale references to what he thinks of the West. While he refused to say whether or not he would back a drone strike against the new British jihadi militant revealed in an Isis video last week, he also told the programme that France was no more responsible than any other Western government for terror attacks: ‘Of course the French government are not responsible for the attacks on the streets of Paris any

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

No, Prime Minister, we don’t need state parenting lessons. Just ask Scotland

David Cameron has strong views about the family; often ones that ought to remain inside his head. He quite is keen on marriage and good parenting, but how to make this into a government policy? He offers some thoughts in his speech today. His words: ‘In the end, getting parenting and the early years right isn’t just about the hardest-to-reach families; it’s about everyone. We all have to work at it. And if you don’t have a strong support network – if you don’t know other mums or dads – having your first child can be enormously isolating… Of course [kids] don’t come with a manual, but is it right

Sunday

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Jeremy Corbyn has his Twitter hacked: ‘Davey Cameron is a pie’

Oh dear. It’s safe to say that last week was not a great week for Jeremy Corbyn after the Labour leader found members of his party on the verge of revolt following his so-called ‘revenge reshuffle’. His decision to sack members of his Shadow Cabinet led to resignations from Shadow Ministers as party members criticised his decision to move Emily Thornberry — who is anti-Trident — into the role of Shadow Defence Secretary. However despite this the Labour leader appears to be on fighting form. A series of rather strange expletive-ridden messages have been emitted from his Twitter account this evening: While Mr S suspects it is a hacker — rather than Corbyn — behind the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Squeeze are wrong: the Tories are hellbent on fixing welfare, not destroying it

Squeeze were at their best in the 1970s, and this morning demonstrated that their political ideas haven’t much evolved from that awful decade. Playing out the Andrew Marr show in front of the Prime Minister, Glenn Tilbrook changed the lyrics of this latest song to insert the line “I grew up in council houses, they’re part of what made Britain great. But there are some people who are hellbent on destruction of the welfare state.” Not quite. Today’s Conservative Party is hellbent on reforming the welfare state – so it helps people out of poverty rather than traps them in it. That is what’s behind today’s news that the PM

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Eurosceptics brand no contingency plan for Brexit ‘disgraceful’

David Cameron’s admission on the Marr Show this morning that the EU referendum might take place either a little later in 2016 than most expected or indeed in 2017 isn’t what has exercised eurosceptics. From their point of view, a later referendum will give them more time to set out their arguments for a change from the status quo. But what has annoyed them is the Prime Minister’s suggestion that the government was not drawing up contingency plans for Britain voting to leave the European Union. Marr asked him whether the government was prepared for the possibility of leaving the EU. Cameron replied: ‘I don’t think that is the right

Charles Moore Charles Moore

If Britain votes to leave the EU, Scotland could vote to end Britain

One of the things that worries me about a vote to leave the European Union (which I should like to cast) is that it might cause Scotland to vote to leave the United Kingdom. There’s not much point in ‘getting our country back’ if we then lose it, although I suppose English nationalists would not agree with my definition of ‘our country’. But the SNP threat needs thinking round carefully. First, a threat is not a fact. Second, it cannot be right to disaggregate the United Kingdom vote in a United Kingdom referendum. It will certainly be interesting to find out how Scots voted, but if they vote differently from

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Which way will Boris and Gove go on Europe?

David Cameron might have announced this week that Cabinet Ministers will be allowed to campaign for Out come the EU referendum. But Downing Street is doing what it can to limit how many ministers take up this offer. At the moment, the consensus view around the Cabinet table is that four Cabinet Ministers are going to be for Out—Chris Grayling, Theresa Villiers, John Whittingdale and IDS—with another—Priti Patel—highly likely to. As I say in The Sun today, if Cameron can keep the number of Cabinet Outers down to four or five, Number 10 will be delighted. Cameron will be able to say that the vast majority of the Cabinet support

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour complains about shadow minister’s resignation on BBC

The Labour party has this evening complained about the BBC arranging for Stephen Doughty to announce his resignation on the Daily Politics. A spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn said: ‘By the BBC’s own account, BBC journalists and presenters proposed and secured the resignation of a shadow minister on air in the immediate run-up to Prime Minister’s Questions, apparently to ensure maximum news and political impact. That was evidently done before any notice of resignation was sent to the Labour leader. ‘Such orchestration of political controversy is an unacceptable breach of the BBC’s role and statutory obligations ‘Trust in the impartiality and independence of the BBC is essential. The BBC’s role is