All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Philip Hammond has got himself into something of a bind over planning for a Brexit ‘no deal’. The Chancellor has ruled out – at least for the time being – spending money on contingency plans for a scenario in which Britain walks away from the EU without an agreement. The problem with this strategy is
Theresa May’s admission that the European Court of Justice could continue to play a role during any Brexit transition deal has not gone down well with some Leave supporters. Jacob Rees-Mogg suggested that the Prime Minister had gone too far in trying to appease Brussels. But the Sun doesn’t see the PM’s comments as anything
Theresa May will be pleased to have avoided any major clangers at PMQs. But while the Prime Minister wasn’t undone by a cough or a prankster this time around she very nearly lost her temper when she was accused of ‘running scared’. Labour MP Heidi Alexander said the British people ‘deserved better’ than the current occupant
Poor old Karen Bradley. This week it emerged the Culture Secretary was being investigated for not having a TV licence – and things aren’t getting any better for Bradley. This morning she unveiled the government’s plans to crack down on online abuse. But it seems Bradley got herself into something of a muddle when asked
Oh dear. Much excitement today among the commentariat over Rafael Behr’s op-ed in the Grauniad. The Guardian columnist says that for ‘hardline Brexiters, the lure of the cliff edge is irresistible’. Unfortunately for Behr, it’s his byline – rather than his words – that’s receiving the most attention: Perhaps the Fleet Street doom-mongers were right when
Ministers had been holding out some faint hope (at least publicly) that Brexit trade talks could start this month. It was an unlikely prospect. Jean-Claude Juncker warned only a few weeks ago that it would take a ‘miracle’ for that to happen. Now, it’s official that a Brexit miracle hasn’t take place: Donald Tusk, the
Theresa May’s long-awaited audit into racial disparities in public services has finally launched. We were prepared for the worst. Unnamed Whitehall insiders had said that they had been ‘shocked’ by the picture it reveals of racial discrimination in the UK. The scene was set for another bout of political self-flagellation regarding the subject of race
Oh dear. After Theresa May refused to say three times in an interview with Iain Dale on LBC whether she would back Leave in a second EU referendum, the Prime Minister has provoked the ire of some in the Brexit camp. But Brexiteers can take heart that May’s comments are positively eurosceptic compared with those
Theresa May had planned to move the political focus this autumn from Brexit to domestic priorities. That was always a tall order when the next round of negotiations and this month’s EU council are looming, but it’s particularly difficult given the Prime Minister managed to lose, not gain, authority with her conference speech. It’s also
Theresa May struck a defiant tone this afternoon in her first broadcast interview since her disastrous conference speech. Speaking to Iain Dale on LBC, the Prime Minister re-iterated her old claim that she still wishes to lead the party into the next election – even if the number of MPs in her party who support
We know from her unfortunate conference speech that it irks Mrs May to hear Labour claiming a monopoly on compassion, and this week’s racial disparity audit is her latest attempt to prove that she is equally concerned about injustice. The problem is that the disparity audit is based on a colossal intellectual blunder. Disparate outcomes
Who would want an MP who had never had a career outside of politics to represent them? That’s the question Mhairi Black has been asking today at SNP conference. Black used her speech at the event to say the SNP must reject ‘career politicians’. Hang on a minute. Given that the 23-year-old SNP politician went
Theresa May’s ‘I’m in charge’ message she delivered to Parliament wasn’t only aimed at MPs – it was also directed at Brussels, says the Daily Telegraph. After all, there’s little doubt that Michel Barnier will have looked at Theresa May’s disastrous Tory party conference performance and have concluded ‘she is hanging onto power by her
It’s over 150 years since John Stuart Mill called the Conservatives the stupid party and in every one of those years they have worked hard to live up to that assessment. Grant Shapps’ abortive leadership coup is the latest example of Tory idiocy. After Theresa May did herself a mischief in Manchester, Shapps scarpered over
Remortgaging your home can be an excellent way of saving huge sums of money, or of releasing capital which might be needed elsewhere. For many people (well, those lucky enough to have a mortgage, that is), mortgage payments are their single biggest financial outgoing. So it makes sense to get the best possible deal on
Barcelona After the demonstration in Barcelona on Sunday, I happened to walk past the city’s main police station. A unionist crowd had gathered to praise the officers who had so brutally suppressed the Catalan referendum the previous week. Wrapped in Spanish flags, they were chanting Viva España and throwing flowers. Then they started performing the
Funny, but I had picked up the idea, especially over the past year or two, that the Left was rather fond of the concept of street protest. Every time I am in Central London I seem to run into hordes of placard-holders protesting against ‘austerity’, student tuition fees, animal rights, save the NHS, war in
Boris Johnson’s leadership ambitions are no secret. But the Foreign Secretary’s latest attempt to get into Downing Street hit a more obvious snag this morning. Ahead of today’s Cabinet meeting, Boris and Liam Fox were filmed walking through Downing Street. When Boris tried to get into No.10, however, he found himself locked out. Mr S is sure
Daniel Hannan has written, compellingly and eloquently as usual, about the constitutional crisis taking place in my country, Spain. In his piece, he invokes the celebrated Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno who, as Spain plunged into civil war in 1936, admonished the anti-intellectual, anti-liberal nationalist rebels that they would ‘vanquish, but not convince’. Unamuno was
Belatedly, the disastrous rollout of Universal Credit has become a media ‘talking point’. I could do with less praise for Iain Duncan Smith in the debate. He is the man the Tories decided was unfit to lead them, but still fit to manage and, as we are seeing, wreck the lives of the poorest people
Most of Theresa May’s statement today was simply a reiteration of what she had said in Florence. But we did get clarity on one crucial point. In answer to a question from Jacob Rees-Mogg, Theresa May explicitly accepted that the European Court of Justice would have a role during the transition. She said that she
Theresa May is threatening a reshuffle – and would be wise to threaten it for as long as possible as the only thing more problematic than naughty ministers you need to move is angry ex-ministers who didn’t want to be moved. Katy looks at who the Prime Minister could move in this post here, and
After a lacklustre conference and a disastrous speech, Theresa May’s position within her party has never looked more fragile. But she can take heart that her relationship with the public is a different story entirely. In a sign that conference is only a headline event for politicos, it appears May’s shaky performance in Manchester has
One of the brewing Tory rows of the autumn looks to be over Universal Credit, with Heidi Allen now claiming she has 25 Conservatives prepared to rebel on the matter. They are worried about a number of aspects of the fiendishly complicated reform which is supposed to make the benefit system less, er, fiendishly complicated.
Politicians are always going on about ‘the voiceless’. By which they usually mean poor and working-class people. People who have been shunted from public life and never get to air their concerns. At the Conservative party conference Theresa May styled herself ‘voice of the voiceless’ (before, too ironically, becoming voiceless herself). Impeccably bred Corbynistas, all
The Brexit talks collapsing would be a bad thing. It shouldn’t be the aim of the UK government, but it should be something that the government is prepared for. After all, there is a non-negligible chance of this happening. Compounding this is that the United Kingdom can’t credibly threaten to walk away from the table
When governments fall it often comes from an unexpected quarter. Thirty eight years ago, James Callaghan’s government fell not as a direct result of the Winter of Discontent but from the fallout over a failed referendum on Scottish devolution. Over the past week we have heard plenty of speculation about Theresa May losing her job
Oh dear. As Culture Secretary, Karen Bradley is expected to foster and maintain good relations with both the media and broadcast industries. So, Mr S was alarmed to hear that Bradley recently found herself on the wrong side of the TV licensing company. Writing on the infamous Tory MP WhatsApp group, Bradley complained to her
Sir Richard Greenbury, the former Marks & Spencer chairman who died last week aged 81, was one of those choleric but thin-skinned corporate chiefs (Sir Alastair Morton of Eurotunnel was another) who never learned to handle journalists. The Telegraph reporter Kate Rankine famously caused him to blow his top at a 1997 press conference by asking when
Good news in Downing Street: Theresa May has survived the weekend. After the Shapps plot failed to take off, the new consensus is that the beleaguered Prime Minister should re-assert her authority on an increasingly unruly Tory party by reshuffling her Cabinet. Had the speech gone better, there was talk that she could have done
Sturgeon – It is ‘premature’ to set a date for second independence referendum The SNP are rounding off this year’s party conference season in Glasgow, and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is eager to keep the dream of independence alive. Recent weeks have seen votes in Catalonia and Iraqi Kurdistan, but the chances are that
The moment Philip May helped his wife from the stage after her conference speech, it became clear that it is only a matter of when, not if, her leadership of the Conservative Party and occupancy of No.10 comes to an end. What happens next? Who knows, but if you understand the rules, it is just
I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference where I can report that Boris Johnson, who has just wowed the blue rinses with a barn-storming speech, isn’t preparing a leadership bid. At least, that’s the line from all those closest to him. Without exception, they say if he was planning something they’d know about it
‘I don’t think I’m quite as Austrian as you are,’ a Tory minister said to me the other day. And I knew then that the party is doomed. It wasn’t what he said so much as the way that he said it: in the fond, amused, each-to-his-own tone you might use to dismiss a friend’s