Politics Archives

Friday

8 Jan 2016

Steerpike

Tory MP: ‘everyone should enjoy the benefits of a chauffeur’

In the past the Conservative party has been accused of not being in tune with the British public. Matters have not been helped by a number of ‘out of touch’ gaffes including David Cameron’s confession that he does not know the price of a loaf of bread because he prefers to use his £100 bread-maker. However, at least one Tory MP’s heart is in the right place. Adam Afriyie, the MP for Windsor, has today shared his views on why it’s time for driverless cars to come to Britain. Rather than the eco-benefits of the car-sharing options it could bring, Afriyie says Britain needs ‘driverless cars’ on the roads so everyone can ‘enjoy the benefits

Fraser Nelson

The EU campaign has begun – and Tory wars are back

Liam Fox’s new year party at the Carlton Club has become the traditional start to the Tory Party’s year. This year there were 11 Cabinet members including the Chancellor, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, Business Secretary and Boris Johnson. I’d say that most of the Tory MPs there are ‘leavers’, who have this week been given permission to campaign freely against a ‘remain’ campaign expected to be led by the Prime Minister. So in this way, the old Tory wars are about to start again. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today. This is not Eurosceptic vs Europhile. This will be a battle between Eurosceptics: the ones who think

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn sacked Michael Dugher while ally Tom Watson was out of the country

Michael Dugher was sacked while his key ally and Labour deputy leader Tom Watson was out of the country, Coffee House has learned. Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle may have been limited, but it included a clear attempt to undermine alternative Shadow Cabinet powerbases, including the notion that Tom Watson can protect his allies on the frontbench. But Labour’s Deputy Leader was on holiday in Lanzarote when the reshuffle started, apparently unaware that there was going to be a reshuffle at the start of the week when Parliament was still in recess. I understand that he was told that Dugher would be sacked on Monday night. The Shadow Culture Secretary lost his

Thursday

7 Jan 2016

The Spectator

Barometer | 7 January 2016

The outsiders Did the seven members of Harold Wilson’s cabinet who campaigned to leave the Common Market in the 1975 referendum damage their careers? Michael Foot, Employment Secretary. Made deputy leader by Jim Callaghan in 1976. Elected leader in 1980. Tony Benn, Industry Secretary. Challenged Denis Healey unsuccessfully for Labour deputy leadership in 1981. Barbara Castle, Social Services Secretary. Sacked from cabinet by Jim Callaghan when he became prime minister in 1976. Eric Varley, Energy Secretary. Swapped jobs with Tony Benn after referendum. Fifth in shadow cabinet elections in 1979. John Silkin, Planning and Local Government Secretary. Became agriculture secretary in 1976. Stood for Labour leadership in 1980 but was

Isabel Hardman

Cameron hints EU renegotiation timetable could slip again if necessary

Could David Cameron have to delay his European renegotiation still further? In his press conference today with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the Tory leader said that ‘if it takes longer to make an agreement then obviously what matters to me is the substance rather than the timing’. Cameron and his senior colleagues had been confident of reaching an agreement on Britain’s new relationship with Europe at February’s European Council summit, but it may be that it is not finally signed off before the March meeting of EU leaders. This would push the referendum back to at least July, which is a difficult month because of Scottish school holidays. The

Steerpike

News from Labour: Labour says Labour is pro-women

It’s safe to say this week hasn’t been the best for Labour. As well as a never-ending reshuffle saga, Corbyn was accused of ‘low-level non-violent misogyny’ over the lack of women in the top roles in his Shadow Cabinet by Labour MP Jess Phillips. So with the cabinet officially reshuffled, brains at Labour HQ decided it was time for a very special announcement: they had increased the number of women in their Shadow Cabinet by one! A press release entitled ‘NEWS FROM LABOUR: Following the reshuffle women now occupy 17 out of the 31 shadow cabinet positions’ was sent around which included the number of women in both the shadow cabinet

Isabel Hardman

Ken Livingstone makes Labour’s bad week even worse

Funnily enough, after Ken Livingstone told the Daily Politics that the defence review that he is co-chairing with the new Labour Shadow Defence Secretary Emily Thornberry would consider whether Britain will leave Nato, the party has issued a statement shooting down the former Mayor’s suggestion: ‘The terms of the defence review are still to be agreed but will not look at our membership of Nato.’ Livingstone said the following to the BBC: ‘That’s one of the things we will look at. There will be many people wanting to do that. I don’t think it’s a particularly big issue because in the Cold War it was; it isn’t now. Russia is

Steerpike

Watch: Ken Livingstone on Labour’s ‘disaffected uber-Blairites’

After Diane Abbott falsely claimed that Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds was a former special adviser on last night’s Newsnight, Reynolds hit back by describing her as a ‘sell-out’. Now — just when it seemed Labour’s in-fighting couldn’t get much worse — Ken Livingstone has appeared on the Daily Politics to offer his take on the incident. Asked if Abbott was wrong to falsely claim that Reynolds used to be a spad, Livingstone wasn’t so sure. It turns out that the former Mayor of London doesn’t always think it is a bad thing to insult someone live on television with false information. Instead, the real problem here is of course Blairism: ‘Diane is responding to this wave of

Steerpike

Jonathan Reynolds takes on Diane Abbott: ‘you’re a total sell-out’

After a tough day yesterday for Corbyn’s team following his chaotic reshuffle, there was only one thing left to do to save the day: send Diane Abbott onto the airwaves. The gaffe-prone shadow international development secretary appeared on Newsnight to wax lyrical about the state of Corbyn’s slightly reshuffled Shadow Cabinet. When put to her that things might not be quite so rosy given that three shadow ministers had resigned in protest of Corbyn’s reshuffle, she said it wasn’t really a great loss given that they all use to be special advisers who lacked real life experience: In case you missed: @hackneyabbott on the sacked "special advisers" from the frontbench https://t.co/xkVzH3WrUh — BBC

Isabel Hardman

Why is George Osborne sounding so gloomy?

You might have been forgiven for thinking that things were going swimmingly economically at the moment, given George Osborne managed to find £23bn down the back of the sofa for a cheery Autumn Statement. So why is the Chancellor giving such a gloomy speech today? Osborne is warning of a ‘cocktail of threats’ from around the world, and told the Today programme that ‘the difficult times are not over’. Given he started his Today interview with what sounded suspiciously like a memorised string of soundbites, he’s clearly up to something. Normally that something would be trying to embarrass Labour, but Osborne really doesn’t need to put any effort in on

Nick Cohen

Labour’s tantrum over Pat McFadden’s ‘toddler terrorists’ question was very revealing

Two points stand out from Pat McFadden’s career-killing question to David Cameron. ‘May I ask the prime minister to reject the view that sees terrorist acts as always being a response or a reaction to what we in the West do? Does he agree that such an approach risks infantilising the terrorists and treating them like children, when the truth is that they are adults who are entirely responsible for what they do? No one forces them to kill innocent people in Paris or Beirut. Unless we are clear about that, we will fail even to understand the threat we face, let alone confront it and ultimately overcome it.’ The

James Forsyth

Corbyn is untouchable now

There have been few more pathetic displays of political impotence than the tweets sent by shadow cabinet members paying tribute to Michael Dugher after his sacking by Jeremy Corbyn. Dugher, a classic northern Labour fixer, had taken on the role of shadow cabinet shop steward. He spoke out against Momentum, the Corbynite pressure group, warned against a ‘revenge reshuffle’ and criticised negative briefings against the shadow cabinet from the leader’s office. But rather than protesting at his sacking through a walkout, shadow cabinet members confined their solidarity to a 140-character gesture. Their tweets, rather than looking like brave defiance of the boss, actually showed just how cowed they are. Dugher’s

Alex Massie

The painful truth for Ruth

Minority sects are often more interesting, and more colourful, than their more popular rivals. That must explain why the Scottish Tories continue to be the subject of so much fascination. Barely a month passes without someone, somewhere, asking if this — at long last — is the moment for a Scottish Tory revival. Spoiler alert: it never is. Logic says that at this year’s Scottish parliament elections, things should be different. It is generally agreed that Ruth Davidson, the party leader in Scotland, had a ‘good independence referendum’; generally agreed, too, that after Nicola Sturgeon, she might be the most impressive politician in Scotland. This might be reckoned a low

Hugo Rifkind

What a spankingly splendid scandal

Apparently, according to a variety of relatively reliable sources that include the man himself, the Labour MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk, is in the habit of accepting money from a paparazzi agency in exchange for advising them how they might best snap pap pictures of the Labour MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk. Is this not one of the most amazing facts you have ever learned? Every bit of it — that tabloids want these photographs; that photo-graphers will pay for them; that an MP can earn a tidy sum by secretly facilitating them — simply boggles me. Are they all at it? Maybe that’s why we keep seeing those vile

Wednesday

6 Jan 2016

Isabel Hardman

Is ‘hard right’ Progress really the key threat to Jeremy Corbyn?

According to John McDonnell, the reason three Labour frontbenchers resigned today is that there is a ‘group within the Labour party who have a right-wing conservative agenda. Within Progress itself, there are some who are quite hard right, and I think they’ve never accepted Jeremy’s leadership’. McDonnell told Channel 4 News that these ‘hard right’ MPs were still welcome in the Labour party because it is a ‘broad church’, but it was clear that he wants to paint Progress, largely a Blairite campaign group, as a menace. Certainly Progress has a different approach to left-wing politics than McDonnell. And it’s not supportive of the current Labour leadership. But the Shadow

Steerpike

Knives out for Seumas Milne over reshuffle shambles

Labour has found itself on the verge of a civil war today as a number of MPs have turned on their dear leader over his Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. After weeks of conflicting briefings in the media, it was Corbyn’s decision to axe Pat McFadden which proved to be a particular sore point amongst Labour MPs as two shadow ministers resigned in protest. This was in large because McFadden claims he was sacked over his comments after the Paris terrorist attacks when he asked David Cameron to confirm that the actions of terrorists could not be dismissed as a reaction to the actions of those in the West. At the time, it was

Lloyd Evans

PMQs sketch: A wet performance from Jeremy Corbyn

Corybn gave his wettest ever performance at PMQs. The party leaders had different theories about the authorship of the floods. Corbyn blamed Cameron. Cameron blamed the weather. Rainfall, he explained, had wept from the heavens in such unheralded quantities that a record-breaking dip-stick had to be lowered into the bucket to assess its full volume. Corbyn wouldn’t have this. He said government scrimping was at fault. He personified the issue with his usual set of hand-picked hankie-drenchers. He’d met a nice pair from Leeds, he said, called Chris and Victoria, whose holiday had been ruined by tides of sewage inundating their pressies. This prompted mystifying giggles from Tory backbenchers. Geography

Isabel Hardman

Cameron splashes about on flood defence policy

The substance of Jeremy Corbyn’s questions today in the Chamber was very good. The Labour leader used enough detail to make David Cameron look uncomfortable on flood spending and which defence schemes were approved and which weren’t. The Prime Minister tried to talk repeatedly about the government increasing money on flood defences and the importance of good economic management, but Corbyn stuck at it, with one particularly good question: ‘In 2011, a £190 million flood defence project in the River Aire in Leeds was cancelled on cost grounds by the government, a thousand homes and businesses in Leeds were flooded in recent weeks, the government is still only committed to

James Forsyth

PMQs: Corbyn’s farcical reshuffle has overshadowed everything else

Jeremy Corbyn actually asked six reasonable questions at PMQs today. But his attack on the government’s handling of the floods will be completely overshadowed by his chaotic reshuffle; one shadow Minister actually resigned during PMQs. The Tories were itching to bring up the Labour reshuffle. The first question from a Tory MP asked Cameron to reassure her that condemning terrorist attacks was not a bar to holding high office, a reference to Pat McFadden’s sacking. Then, in reference to a question about the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death from Nadhim Zahawi, Cameron rattled off a series of pre-prepared gags, cracking that the reshuffle was a ‘comedy of errors’. But far more

Harry Mount

Jeremy Corbyn has continued his purge of the Oxbridge set

Back in October, I wrote about how Corbyn had replaced the shadow cabinet’s Oxbridge and Harvard elite with red-brick university graduates. This week’s reshuffle has continued the trend. Maria Eagle – alma mater, Pembroke College, Oxford – has been demoted, and replaced by Emily Thornberry, who went to the University of Kent. Admittedly, the sacked Michael Dugher and Pat McFadden didn’t go to Oxbridge, but to Nottingham and Edinburgh respectively. Still, they are both higher-achieving universities than Northumbria University, where Emma Lewell-Buck, the new shadow local government minister, did her politics and media studies undergraduate degree. I don’t want to be intellectually snobbish. There’s nothing wrong with the universities attended by