Politics Archives

Tuesday

20 Oct 2015

Is our foreign policy being dreamt up by the James Bond screenwriters?

If there’s one thing that the James Bond films has taught us it is that the Chinese are not our enemies. We should perhaps remember this as President Xi Jinping polishes his heels on our red carpets this week. Our enemies are cold war Russians, jewel-encrusted North Koreans, ex-Nazi rocket scientists, fat Europeans obsessed with gold, and, of course, bald Polish-Greek crime lords called Ernst with a love of bob sleighs and white cats. The imminent release of the twenty fourth Bond film is a handy reminder that if we’re looking for threats, we should really look closer to home. What little we know of Spectre‘s plot suggests that it’s

Sebastian Payne

Foreign Office cleaners haven’t been disciplined after all for writing to Philip Hammond

The story of the fourteen Foreign Office cleaners who wrote to Philip Hammond about being paid National Living Wage has become murkier. After their note reached the Foreign Secretary, the cleaners — who work for Interserve, a private contractor — were called into a meeting. According to reports yesterday, the cleaners say that three of them were made redundant and the others were accused of ‘bringing the contract into disrepute’. In an attempt to bat off any suggestion that the cleaners were being told off for daring to contact their boss — something that would be a very bad look for the Foreign Secretary — Hammond said at Foreign and Commonwealth Questions this morning that

Steerpike

Watch: John Bercow calls Sajid Javid ‘incompetent’ in Commons showdown

John Bercow’s war with the Conservatives looks set to return after a lively exchange of words this lunchtime. The incident occurred after Javid responded to an urgent question from Labour on the steel industry regarding the 1,200 job losses Tata Steel. Bercow decided that Javid had taken too long to answer the question and told him it should have been ‘blindingly obvious’ to make a government statement on the matter instead. Rather than put the Business Secretary down gently, the Speaker let his feelings be known by calling Javid ‘discourteous and incompetent’ before warning him that ‘it must not happen again’. ‘What he should not do is fail to communicate with me

Isabel Hardman

Cameron tells Cabinet renegotiation will quicken soon

The Cabinet met this morning, but it didn’t manage to discuss two of the biggest political problems for the Tories at the moment, according to the Downing Street read-out of the meeting. The growing row on tax credits was only referred to when the discussion of parliamentary business touched on the fact that there is an Opposition Day debate on the matter later today, and there was no discussion of the demands from a number of those present at the table for collective responsibility to be suspended during the EU referendum. Not surprising, perhaps, given this was Cabinet rather than political cabinet, but a reflection of the way rows don’t

Sebastian Payne

The first big EU referendum battle: funding from Brussels

The Vote Leave campaign have found their first issue to fight the Stronger In campaign with: funding from Brussels. Brexit campaigners argue those working to keep Britain ‘In’ are embarrassed by the European Union — pointing out that the Stronger In campaign frequently refers to our relationship with Europe, not the EU. They intend to maximise this fault line by trying to link the campaign straight to the EU Commission. As Guido reported last week, there is a link between Stronger In’s predecessor organisation (Interim Campaign Limited) in that Laura Sandys, the former Conservative MP for South Thanet, was named on official Companies House documents of the organisation and is now chair of the European Movement, which has received

Sebastian Payne

Will Mark Carney’s intervention set the tone for the EU referendum?

In 48 hours’ time, Mark Carney will make an intervention on Britain’s membership of the European Union. According to this morning’s newspapers, the Bank of England governor will deliver a speech on Wednesday evening at St Peter’s College, Oxford to ‘coincide with the release of a report into how Britain’s membership of the European Union affects the central bank’s ability to manage the economy, and how it affects its ability to protect the country’s biggest banks’, according to the Daily Telegraph. That might sound as if Carney is going to deliver the findings of a pedestrian report, but given it has been briefed out to several newspapers, the Bank is clearly hoping everyone

Monday

19 Oct 2015

Steerpike

Isabel Oakeshott on David Cameron: he said he would trash whatever we wrote

The launch party for Call Me Dave proved to be an eventful affair as it was revealed that Lord Ashcroft was unable to attend after falling critically ill around the time of the book’s launch. As guests munched on cocktail sausages and sipped champagne, his co-author Isabel Oakeshott took to the stage to give a speech. To kick things off, Oakeshott recalled David Cameron’s advise to her when she first planned to help Ashcroft write the biography. Oakeshott, who was the Sunday Times political editor at the time, says he warned her against joining the project: ‘We had a conversation about my plans to help Michael with his book, I recently looked at the transcript of our conversation and

James Forsyth

Lord Warner resigns the Labour whip

Lord Warner has resigned the Labour whip in protest at the direction in which Jeremy Corbyn is taking the party, Patrick Wintour has revealed tonight. Warner was a minister of state at the Department of Health under Tony Blair. Now, Corbyn supporters will be quick to point out that Lord Warner is hardly a household name and that he was at the far Blairite end of the party. Both of these statements are true. But Warner’s departure should still worry Labour. All parties are coalitions and no leader should want to be losing former ministers from the party at any point in their leadership, let alone this early. One footnote

Isabel Hardman

Osborne defends tax credit cuts to his MPs as enemies circle

Tory MPs had a briefing meeting today with George Osborne which a number of them used to press the Chancellor about the tax credit cuts. Peter Aldous raised concerns about the changes, which which lower the threshold for withdrawing tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and speed up the rate of withdrawal as pay rises, and was supported by colleagues. But though it was quite clear to the Chancellor that a large number of MPs from across the party – not just troublemakers – were seriously worried about the changes, he didn’t give anything away about any changes he could make. Instead, the case he made to MPs was that

Steerpike

Lord Ashcroft absent from book launch after suffering septic shock

With Lord Ashcroft notably absent in the days and weeks following the release of Call Me Dave, guests at the book’s official launch at Millbank Tower waited with anticipation for Ashcroft to make his grand entrance. However, when it came time for the speeches, it fell on the book’s publisher Iain Dale to break the news to guests that he was not coming, instead playing a video by way of explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHNkVEoS8C0 While guests — including Neil Hamilton and Owen Paterson — first took the Channel 5 Belize video to be a spoof, it soon became clear that Lord Ashcroft had been taken ill following the release of the biography, after suffering renal failure, liver and

Rod Liddle

John McDonnell doesn’t give a fig about Teesside’s steel industry

John McDonnell has accused me of telling an untruth. Yes, I know, worse things have happened. But still. His accusation refers to the closure of the Redcar SSI steel plant. Mr McDonnell claimed that a visit to the area, where he met with tearful workers, prompted him to do a u-turn on supporting the Conservative plan to balance to budget. I said on Question Time last week and again in The Sunday Times this Sunday that this was utter cant. A charge I will cheerfully repeat now. It is utter cant, McDonnell. The shadow chancellor made his commitment to abide by Osborne’s budget surplus proposal at the Labour conference on 28

Isabel Hardman

Osborne’s enemies use tax credits row to undermine Chancellor’s leadership bid

Few Conservative MPs are expected to rebel on tomorrow’s Opposition Day motion on tax credits, mainly because defying the whip to vote with Labour on a motion that is non-binding on the government is pretty pointless. But that doesn’t mean that the internal Tory revolt on the matter isn’t building. More and more big names are speaking out on the matter, and the Chancellor opponents now see the cut as an ideal way of undermining his bid to be leader. They want to make it about his personal judgement and awareness of the struggles that ‘hardworking people’ face. One of those who would rather George Osborne doesn’t succeed in his

James Forsyth

David Cameron’s EU renegotiations appear to be underwhelming his own MPs

David Cameron has just delivered a statement to the House of Commons on last week’s European Council meeting. Cameron stressed that any visa liberalisation programme for Turkey would not apply to Britain as this country is not part of Schengen. He also reiterated his condemnation of President Assad and accused the Russians of predominantly striking other rebels groups in Syria not Isil; he said that only 20 per cent of Russian strikes in Syria had been directed against Isil. But the most politically significant part of the statement came when Cameron again set out his renegotiation demands. Tellingly, as Cameron outlined his four main aims — an opt-out from ever

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron expected to give eurosceptics their free EU vote – after letting them put up a fight

Will David Cameron allow senior ministers to take whatever side they wish in the EU referendum? There are reportedly six Cabinet Ministers pushing for a free vote on the matter, and today Liam Fox added his voice to the calls, telling the Daily Politics that even if the Prime Minister refused an official suspension of collective responsibility, ministers would find other ways of making their views heard. He said: ‘Ultimately the legitimacy of the result will depend on whether the voters think they have heard all the arguments openly and fairly and I think any attempt by any side to restrict people’s voice in that debate will limit how people

Sunday

18 Oct 2015

Melanie McDonagh

Cameron should listen to Syrian bishops, not the Anglican ones

Well, it’s something, I suppose, that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York didn’t sign that ill-advised letter last month from 84 CofE bishops to the PM calling for the Government to take in 50,000 more Syrian migrants; Justin Welby and John Sentanu do have some redeeming sense of caution. Meanwhile the 84 are still waiting for a proper answer from the Home Office, apparently, which seems to be why they’re sharing their pique with The Observer today. Quite the most devastating critique of that letter came, in fact, from a man who was rather grateful for them for their “love and their charity”. It was the Archbishop of Aleppo (the

Fraser Nelson

Has Nicola Sturgeon found a verbal formula to disguise SNP’s failure of poor students?

At the SNP conference the First Minister and her deputy, John Swinney, both had precisely the same thing to say about university. Here’s Swinney: “Students from a poorer background have never had a better chance of a place at university than under the SNP”. And Nicola Sturgeon: “More students from poorer backgrounds are now going to university”. More. That’s the test they set: if more poor students are going to uni then the SNP is succeeding. They both talk about “university,” as distinct from other forms of further education. Yes, the ratio of poor kids at uni is rising in Scotland – but shamefully, it’s half the level of England. Worse, the gap is growing (see chart,

Saturday

17 Oct 2015

Ross Clark

North London will be boosted by HS2 – but the North won’t be

Futurology is a cursed science, but just occasionally I feel I can already write a news story years into the future. Watch out about the year 2040 for a headline: ‘Building HS2 wasn’t worth it, ministers admit.’ It gave a us a gleaming new Euston station, it will go on to say, and regenerated the once depressing Euston Road into a desirable suburb. But as for the rest of the country? There are a few signs of regeneration at one or two points along the route, but there is really not much to see. How can I be so sure? Because, swap Euston for St Pancras and HS2 for HS1

Isabel Hardman

Nicola Sturgeon: the SNP would welcome uncomfortable scrutiny

Nicola Sturgeon spoke at the open and close of the SNP conference, and her speech today transposed the key themes of the short address she gave on Thursday morning. She attacked Jeremy Corbyn for disappointing her ‘high hopes’, saying ‘so far, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t changing Labour – he’s allowing Labour to change him’. And she talked about independence, though in this speech the First Minister didn’t talk about when, but how. Her first speech had acknowledged that the party couldn’t commit to another referendum until there was evidence a majority of Scots were now in favour of leaving. Today she argued that ‘if we want Scotland to be independent –

Alex Massie

The Age of Nicola: Sturgeon maps out the road to independence

The problem with Nicola Sturgeon is that she is, by the standards of contemporary politics, unusually straightforward. There is little artifice and even less deceit about Scotland’s First Minister. What you see is what you get; what she says is what she mostly means. That is, even when she’s sidling past the truth it’s clear what she really means. And so, there it was, out in the open at last: a clear confirmation that Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour party are Nicola Sturgeon’s useful idiots. Sure, there may not be any need for another referendum on independence before 2020 – not least because, as matters stand, that referendum might, like

Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon parties with the Daily Mail

Nicola Sturgeon and the Daily Mail hosted a drinks reception for journalists last night. The unholy alliance included speeches from the First Minister and Scottish Daily Mail political editor Alan Roden. Roden recounted a fashion show he had covered at the Scottish parliament which had involved Sturgeon as one of the models, and two Mail correspondents covering it, while Sturgeon teased the journalist for asking so many questions about her shoes that she had begun to wonder whether he was less interested in writing about them and more interested in buying them. She then handed Roden a sewing kit so he could fix a pair of split trousers. ‘Can you