Politics Archives

Thursday

14 Jan 2016

Will Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle ever end?

Pity the poor correspondents who set up a reshuffle ‘live’ blog to cover Jeremy Corbyn moving around his frontbench team last Monday. The Labour leader has, a week and a half in to the slowest shuffle ever, just made a few more appointments. Imran Hussain, Kate Osamor and Thangam Debbonaire are all new MPs, and join the International Development, Women and Equalities and Culture, Media and Sport teams respectively. Last night Jo Stevens, also a new MP, became Shadow Solicitor General. When will it end? To be fair to the Labour leader, the reshuffle has dragged on partly because people keep resigning, so it’s not entirely his fault that he

James Forsyth

Policy Exchange’s latest hire shows that integration is now a key government issue

Few think tanks have been as associated with the Cameron project as Policy Exchange. Its alumni are dotted in various positions around government, with a particularly strong presence in Downing Street. So, it is interesting that Policy Exchange’s director Dean Godson has today announced that he has hired David Goodhart, the former editor of Prospect and the author of The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War immigration, to head a new Integration Hub at the think tank. Goodhart’s arrival is a reflection of how much questions of immigration and integration are now preoccupying the centre-right. This new unit will be launched on 25 January at an event with Louise Casey,

Steerpike

Coming soon: Red Ken’s guide on the future of the Labour party

A number of Labour MPs have become increasingly riled with Jeremy Corbyn this week over the much-delayed Beckett report on Labour’s General Election loss. Despite calls from Dan Jarvis and Caroline Flint for Margaret Beckett’s investigation into the reasons Labour lost the election to be published, Corbyn has so far refused even though he has been sitting on the report since November. While many Labour brains have put this down to Corbyn not wanting to face some of the reasons Labour lost the election, there may soon be a more Corbyn-friendly analysis on offer. Step forward Ken Livingstone. Red Ken is to publish a handy new book which will lay out his advice

Ivar Arpi

Sweden’s shameful cover-up

Stockholm It took days for police to acknowledge the extent of the mass attacks on women celebrating New Year’s Eve in Cologne. The Germans were lucky; in Sweden, similar attacks have been taking place for more than a year and the authorities are still playing catch up. Only now is the truth emerging, both about the attacks and the cover-ups. Stefan Löfven, our Prime Minister, has denounced a ‘double betrayal’ of women and has promised an investigation. But he ought to be asking this: what made the police and even journalists cover up the truth? The answer can be discovered in the reaction to the Cologne attacks. Sweden prides

Mary Wakefield

I, robot. You, unemployed

One evening last autumn, four experts in the field of artificial intelligence arrived in Westminster with an urgent message for our government. There’s a robot revolution on the way, they said, and unless we prepare for it we’re in trouble. The briefing was a quiet affair — I was one of only a few journalists invited, for fear of headlines like ‘The Terminator is coming’. However, by the time the last A.I. expert had said his piece, it was hard to imagine how a hack could over-hype the story. Computers really are set to take over, it turns out. We’re rolling unstoppably towards servitude to machines. The four experts spoke

Wednesday

13 Jan 2016

Ross Clark

The author of the RBS ‘sell everything’ note has been predicting disaster for the last five years

Should we sell everything because Andrew Roberts (not the historian but an analyst at RBS) tells us to in the expectation of crash? Before you press the ‘sell’ button, it might just be worth reflecting on the fact that there has always been a time when some analyst somewhere has been handing out the same advice. Quite often that somebody has been Andrew Roberts himself. In June 2010, for example, he said: ‘We cannot stress enough how strongly we believe that a cliff-edge may be around the corner, for the global banking system (particularly in Europe) and for the global economy. Think the unthinkable,’ he said. The unthinkable in that case

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: We’re all dying, according to MPs

Cameron has a dream. And Jeremy Corbyn wants to destroy it. Our belligerent prime minister has declared war on those inner-city council estates that foster poverty, despair, unemployment, truancy, social exclusion, (and an aversion to Tory candidates). His hope is to replace these crime-ridden concrete citadels with frondy low-rise dream-homes. It sounds like Syria organised by Foxtons. But consider the result as it takes shape in the prime minister’s mind. Acre upon acre of urban dereliction transformed into mini Chipping Nortons. A sofa from Habitat in every sitting room. A sea bass in every fridge. A sundial in every garden. A low-carbon Toyota Land Cruiser on every driveway. And a future

Alex Massie

Three cheers for the new politics

I love the new politics. It warms my heart even on cold and gloomy winter mornings. The novelty of the always-new, freshly-minted, happy-shiny, more-decent-than-thou new politics will never fade. Consider this stirring tale from beyond the wall. The Scottish Asian Women’s Association (SAWA) was launched amidst what tradition dictates we must refer to as great fanfare at a lavish opening gala at Stirling Castle in 2012. The canapes alone cost £4,500. It is likely you have never heard of this charity which ostensibly exists to ‘promote religious and racial harmony’ by raising the profile of Scottish Asian women. Or, at any rate, raising the profile of one Scottish Asian woman. That woman would be Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh,

James Forsyth

PMQs: It seems that David Cameron has no desire to expand Heathrow

Will the Tory party be able to come back together again after the EU referendum? Well, today’s PMQs suggested the reason why it should be able to. The Cameron/Corbyn clash was a classic left/right affair and by the end of it, Eurosceptics were cheering Cameron as loudly as anyone else on the Tory benches as he thundered that Labour have a leader ‘who doesn’t believe in Britain’. I suspect that we will also hear again Cameron’s line that Corbyn is a ‘small c’ conservative who just wants to leave the poor to stew on sink estates while the Tories are the party of home ownership and aspiration. In the theme

Alex Massie

David Mundell comes out as the first openly gay Tory cabinet minister. So what?

David Mundell, the Secretary of State for Scotland, is gay. And you know what, so what? Of course Mundell is not the first gay Tory cabinet minister, merely, it’s believed, the first to “openly” acknowledge the fact. He did so in typically low-key fashion, writing on his website: Having taken one of the most important decisions of my life and resolved to come out publically as gay in 2016, I just want to get on with it, and now, just like that, I have said it. How can it be both so easy and so hard to say a few short words? Good for him and good luck to him.

Steerpike

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

Steerpike

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

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.

Steerpike

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

12 Jan 2016

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

Steerpike

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

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

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

11 Jan 2016

Steerpike

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