Politics Archives

Tuesday

1 Mar 2016

Sadiq Khan threatens crackdown on Uber, saying allowing its taxis was a ‘mistake’

The worldwide Uber debate is quite helpful in that it forces politicians to answer a simple question: are you for the people, or the vested interests? Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate for Mayor, declared his hand today in an LBC phone-in. Challenged by a (Scottish) black cab driver about his views on Uber, he said: There are almost 100,000 private hire vehicles in London. Over the last three years there has been, roughly speaking, a 10,000 increase in the number of private hire vehicles. The black taxis are now as low as 23,000, for the first time in a generation, there are fewer people doing the knowledge. And I’m afraid

Hamish Macdonell

What a change – Cameron can actually look forward to his visit to Scotland

With the exception of Gordon Brown – and he was always so dour it was impossible to tell what he was thinking – there hasn’t been a Prime Minister in living memory who has actually enjoyed coming to Scotland. Margaret Thatcher became spiky and aggressive when she crossed the border – well, more spiky and aggressive than normal. John Major seemed to regard it as a duty he had to endure, while Tony Blair made no pretence about it: he just hated it. David Cameron, though, has always tried hard when in Scotland. Perhaps, deep down, he would consider it ill-mannered not to be as engaging and courteous as he

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn’s war with the mainstream media wages on

Jeremy Corbyn left Labour MPs angry last night after he ducked out of answering questions at a meeting of the PLP in order to appear on ITV’s The Agenda. So, with members of his own party turning against him once again, the Labour leader decided it was an opportune time to revisit another old feud — that pesky mainstream media. When answering a question on what he made of the Prime Minister’s decision to attack his appearance during last week’s PMQs, Corbyn told Tom Bradby that he was more bothered that the incident had been picked up by the media: ‘Obviously deeply hurt, but what actually on a serious point is sad

Alex Massie

The truth about Trident is that no-one cares about Trident

As a general rule politicians should spend less time saying things they do not really believe. However useful such a strategy may be in the short-term it will, sure as eggs be eggs, backfire on you eventually. But there are also occasions when it is a mistake to talk about the things in which you really do believe. This is something Jeremy Corbyn has yet to understand. So there was the gallant Labour leader speaking at a sparsely-attended anti-Trident rally in Trafalgar Square at the weekend, thereby reinforcing many of the back-to-1983 associations that will help ensure he leads the once mighty Labour party to electoral oblivion. I don’t doubt the

Isabel Hardman

Cameron’s EU referendum troubles were so inevitable

Britain’s membership of the European Union is a matter of principle and emotion for most Tory MPs. But it is also a matter of party management. David Cameron would have had an easier time as Prime Minister in the last parliament had he realised that while Conservatives will always want to bang on about Europe, the ferocity of and damage caused by those bangs still depends on how the leadership responds. Cameron didn’t want to hold a referendum, and ducked and weaved away from MPs demanding one. Now he is trying to ‘gag’ pro-Brexit ministers using civil service guidance to prevent them accessing documents that have a ‘bearing’ on the

Tom Goodenough

Brexit won’t mean more expensive flights for Brits. Here’s why.

We’ve been warned that Brexit could spell the end of cheap travel. But is it really true that Britain voting out of Europe would hit holidaymakers in the pocket? Easyjet’s boss Dame Carolyn McCall said before that Brexit ‘wouldn’t be good for Britain’. And in a company prospectus, the airline warned this year that if Britain votes out in the EU referendum in June, then it could have a ‘material adverse effect’ on the budget airline. But does this hold up to scrutiny? Easyjet says that: ‘The outcome of this decision (in the referendum) could have a material adverse effect on easyJet’s financial condition and results of operations.’ Obviously for

Monday

29 Feb 2016

Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs walk out of party meeting as Corbyn tries to enforce message discipline

Jeremy Corbyn’s much-awaited appearance at the weekly meeting of the parliamentary Labour party didn’t go particularly well this evening, which means that for the group of increasingly determined MPs trying to oust him, it was a hugely successful session. MPs were reminded that the meeting is off the record at the start, before being given a lecture by the leader about the importance of message discipline. They were told that there would be weekly messages that MPs should stick to. A number of MPs found this ‘unpalatable’, and some left. There was also a ‘dismal’ PowerPoint presentation from Jon Trickett which apparently promised a great deal but revealed little, telling

Isabel Hardman

MPs blast ‘sordid’ document ban for pro-Brexit ministers

Even if there has been no mistake at all in the guidance to civil servants about what documents they can share with pro-Brexit ministers during the referendum campaign, the government has clearly made a number of mistakes at least in the presentation of that guidance, as this afternoon’s urgent question in the Commons showed. The first mistake that ministers made was purely a process one: they failed to get any supportive MPs who are in favour of the guidance to attend the session, which meant that Matt Hancock spent the whole urgent question being beaten up by pro-Brexit MPs who are furious a minister will not be able to obtain

Steerpike

Watch: Tom Watson jokes about Labour’s misery

Although the Tories currently find their party divided over Europe, they can at least take heart that the opposition face greater internal conflict. In fact, rather than attack Matthew Hancock in the Commons today over the Cabinet’s Brexit issues, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson opted to make a joke about his own party’s misery: ‘Mr Speaker sadly I am not in the strongest of positions to lecture the poor minister on handling splits in his own party.’ Watson did at least manage to find time to take a small jab at the Conservatives. He asked the minister whether he really believed that Jeremy Heywood’s decision to ban SpAds from providing ministers with material that could be used to support Brexit would really

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Boris on Brexit and Project Fear’s ‘dragons and serpents’

Boris Johnson said he wanted to see ‘total transparency’ ahead of the EU referendum. He referred to this as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to get it right: Owen Paterson laid into ‘Project Fear’ – suggesting that by the time it got to June, ‘dragons coming out of the Thames’ and ‘serpents coming out of our taps’ could be predictions made by those supporting Remain if Britain did vote out: Whilst Matt Hancock didn’t mention dragons or serpents, he did say Brexit could mean ‘pain and problems’: Labour’s Emma Reynolds, speaking on the Daily Politics, insisted she wasn’t an MP who plotted over lunch and was a ‘perfectly straightforward politician’: And Michael

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn hires Yanis Varoufakis to advise Labour

Given that one of the major findings of the Beckett report into Labour’s general election loss was that the party were not trusted with the economy, it’s safe to say that John McDonnell has his work cut out when it comes to winning back voters on this issue. So, the latest individual to be appointed as an advisor to the party makes for a rather curious choice. Step forward Yanis Varoufakis. Yes, the former Syriza MP and Greek finance minister — who resigned from his role during negotiations for an EU bailout for the debt-ridden country — has been selected to advise Labour in ‘some capacity’. Speaking to the Islington Tribune, Jeremy Corbyn explained

Steerpike

SNP politician struggles with the deficit

During the Scottish independence referendum, the SNP claimed that Scotland’s oil revenues for 2016-17 would be somewhere in the region of £7.9 billion. However, since then the oil price has plummeted meaning the revenues will likely be just a fraction of their estimate. So, now would be an opportune time for the SNP to show that despite the figure faux pas, they still have a firm grasp of the UK economy. Alas one SNP politician appears to lack a basic understanding of finance. John Mason, the SNP MSP for Glasgow Shettleson, has tweeted his tax return — making the point that he hopes some of the tax he pays will stay in Scotland this time around: Arrived

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn faces stronger opposition from MPs

The one thing quieter than the quiet Commons at the moment is the Labour leadership. Even when Jeremy Corbyn speaks in the Chamber, he makes so little impact that trees falling in empty forests have excited more attention. Last Monday during his response to David Cameron’s European Council statement, Labour backbenchers nattered amongst themselves in a manner more common in the tea room. Corbyn probably wasn’t offended: he almost seemed indifferent to his own statement too. Time was when a poor performance from the leader was bad for morale amongst Opposition backbenchers. But these days, most Labour MPs would rather Corbyn did a bad job consistently, as it doesn’t give

Isabel Hardman

Snooper’s Charter to make waves in quiet Commons

If the parliamentary diary for this week is anything to go by, the next few days are going to be very quiet in Westminster. There is hardly any legislation in the Commons, save for the exciting and largely pointless circus of Private Members’ Bills on Friday, and a series of votes on estimates – public spending by government departments. It’s almost as though the government’s mind is entirely elsewhere. Given how fractious the Tory party is at the moment after a week of insults in the EU referendum campaign, it seems odd that ministers would want to leave MPs even less occupied, with even more time to buzz about in

Steerpike

Dermot Murnaghan vs Anna Soubry: ‘are you sure you’re in government?’

With the Sunday papers filled with stories suggesting David Cameron’s party is in turmoil over the EU, Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan decided to raise the issue with Anna Soubry during an appearance on his show. Alas he got more than he bargained for when the Minister for Small Business — who is known not to mince her words — proceeded to take Murnaghan to task over his ‘seriously boring’ line of questioning: DM: Are you saying ‘oh dear it’s all turning a bit nasty’? AS: No, I’m saying: ‘oh dear this is so boring for ordinary viewers who are not interested in this media bubble, mainly centred in Westminster’. Out here in the real world people

Sunday

28 Feb 2016

Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith: Brexit would be a ‘stride into the light’

The papers report today that many Conservatives are furious with the way David Cameron is conducting the referendum campaign. MPs threaten that if the Prime Minister continues with the personal attacks that he launched at various opponents on the ‘Leave’ side this week, it will impossible for him to continue at leader after the referendum, whatever the result. Today Iain Duncan Smith exacted some revenge on the Prime Minister with his own attacks on the Remain side, offering the Marr Show a rather furious critique of the campaign’s tactics. Though he claimed he wasn’t being personal, he directly quoted warnings made by both David Cameron and George Osborne as he ridiculed

Steerpike

Rachel Johnson lifts the lid on Boris’s Brexit deliberations: tennis, frozen lasagne and Nigel Farage

This week Sarah Vine used her Daily Mail column to reveal the details of the roast lamb supper her husband Michael Gove used to plot a move to back Brexit with Boris Johnson. Now the Mayor of London’s sister Rachel Johnson has gone one better and lifted the lid on her brother’s subsequent Brexit deliberations. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Rachel says that it was not at the dinner, but on the Saturday after that Boris finally made up his mind to support the Leave camp. She says that last weekend she found her brother in turmoil in an Oxfordshire farmhouse — frying sausages and hammering at his laptop: ‘Last Saturday I drove through the sleet

Saturday

27 Feb 2016

James Forsyth

Can Cameron and Boris keep a lid on it?

David Cameron’s slap down of Boris Johnson on Monday was one of the most brutal, and personal, that I’ve seen in six and a half years of reporting on parliament. But, as I report in my Sun column today, Number 10 are now keen to calm things down. Indeed, even some of Cameron’s closest allies now concede that the tone he took with Boris on Monday was a mistake. I’m told that Cameron and Boris have been in contact and are now exchanging, dread word, ‘bantery’ texts. One well-placed source is clear that the ‘PM’s tone will be much more emollient from now on’. Though, given how irritated Cameron is

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Boris vs Dave

The week the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London have been at loggerheads over the EU. After Boris Johnson declared his support for Brexit, David Cameron launched a thinly veiled attack on him in the Commons. So, can expect to see a ‘posh bloke’ fight before the referendum takes place? Is it feasible that David Cameron and Botis Johnson will end up having a posh bloke fight like in Bridget Jones over the Brexit thing? — Graeme Swann (@Swannyg66) February 23, 2016 Swann, the former international cricketer, asks if Johnson and Cameron will recreate the fight between the two posh public school boys in Bridget Jones’s Diary when Daniel Cleaver — played by Hugh

Charles Moore

Why will no one in the cabinet admit to being a Europhile?

One of the oddest features of the cabinet majority for staying in the EU is that almost no one in it admits to being a Europhile. How is it, then, that the very last-century ideas of Edward Heath, Ken Clarke, Michael Heseltine and Chris Patten can still exercise so much power over those who have so strongly and, in some cases, consistently criticised the EU in the past — Philip Hammond, Theresa May, Michael Fallon, Sajid Javid, Oliver Letwin, Liz Truss, Stephen Crabb, and, of course, David Cameron himself? Obviously one factor is that Tory MPs have found it convenient in recent years to adopt Eurosceptic protective colouring in their constituencies.