subscriber only Archives

Tuesday

21 Mar 2017

At least Martin McGuinness made old age. Many others didn’t

So Martin McGuinness has died. Already this is giving vent to the sort of ‘How McGuinness became a man of peace’ stories. Personally I have always thought the salient point about the man is not that he became a man of peace but that he was ever a man of violence. Over recent years a narrative has developed around the Troubles, that the people who ‘became men of peace’ are much to be admired. This narrative overlooks the fact that the real people to be admired are those from all sides who – despite sharing many or all of the same grievances as the ‘men of violence’ – never thought

Steerpike

Andrew ‘Calamity’ Cooper – the man who blew Remain – in talks to take on Scotland project

Scottish nationalists may want to get the champagne at the ready. Word reaches Steerpike that Andrew ‘Calamity’ Cooper – the serial bungler whose last project was the EU Remain campaign – is being sounded out to lend his expertise to Scots trying to save the union. The SNP want a referendum within two years; Theresa May has said ‘not yet’ but plans are being made by unionists. Unsurprisingly, Cooper has been at a bit of a loose end since the EU campaign. A campaign is currently being set up in preparation of a second independence referendum — with the working title ‘New Direction’. It’s thought that Populus, Cooper’s firm, is the frontrunner to be

Monday

20 Mar 2017

Tom Goodenough

Revealed: the 63 Labour seats the Tories could snatch at the next election

Theresa May has once again ruled out a snap general election but that doesn’t mean the temptation to hold one will go away. Today’s ICM poll shows why: the Tories, on 45 per cent, have a 19-point lead over Labour. This pushes the Government’s poll lead up by three points following a fortnight dominated by Philip Hammond’s Budget debacle, his subsequent u-turn over hiking national insurance rates and Theresa May coming under pressure from the SNP. With Jeremy Corbyn in charge of the Labour party, the usual rules that a government would be punished for a bungled budget need not apply. In fact even after a raft of dismal headlines for Philip Hammond,

Steerpike

What hard-left plot? Corbyn and Watson go on ‘away day’

This morning, Tom Watson kicked off the day with an appearance on Sky News, where he complained that the hard left are behind a secret Momentum plot to ‘take over the Labour party’ and secure a Corbynite as Jeremy Corbyn’s successor. The comments have provoked a bout of civil war in the shadow cabinet, with John McDonnell accusing Watson of dragging Labour into an unnecessary row. With that in mind, it may well be a bit awkward the next time Watson runs into Corbyn and McDonnell. So, it’s a case of rather unfortunate timing that today is also Labour’s ‘shadow cabinet away day’. Yes, the entire shadow cabinet have decamped to an unknown location

Tom Goodenough

Theresa May will trigger Article 50 next week

The wait is over. Almost. Theresa May will trigger Article 50 – the first formal step in Britain’s departure from the EU – on March 29th, Downing Street has confirmed. Brexit Secretary David Davis said: ‘Last June, the people of the UK made the historic decision to leave the EU. Next Wednesday, the Government will deliver on that decision and formally start the process by triggering Article 50. We are on the threshold of the most important negotiation for this country for a generation.’ The announcement means that the Prime Minister will make good on the pledge she made at the Tory party conference to kick start the process of Brexit

Steerpike

George Osborne finds old habits die hard

George Osborne became the subject of much mockery over the weekend after Rohan Silva let slip that the former chancellor had only decided to apply to be editor of the Evening Standard editor after friends had come to him for help with their own applications. While Mr S has since advised readers not to approach the MP for Tatton for career advice (unless one is sure Osborne would not be interested in the job for himself), it may be best to avoid going to Osborne for help full stop. Mr S couldn’t help but recall an interview the Tory politician gave to the Mail on Sunday, in which he revealed how he met his

Fraser Nelson

If the EU didn’t like Boris’s prison guard joke, why conform to the stereotype?

A few weeks ago, Boris Johnson made a point about the EU negotiations and the futility of the idea of punishing Britain for the sake of it. ‘If Monsieur Hollande wants to administer punishment beatings to anybody who chooses to escape’, he said, ‘rather in the manner of some World War II movie, then I don’t think that is the way forward, and actually it’s not in the interests of our friends and partners’. Cue howls of outrage. ‘Abhorrent and deeply unhelpful’, said Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator. But was Boris really so wide of the mark? Yesterday Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, gave an interview

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Why Tony Blair is still wrong about Brexit

Why did 17.4m people vote for Brexit? A long list of reasons have been put forward but Tony Blair thinks he has the definitive answer: ‘authoritarian populism’. The Sun is not impressed; the paper says that it’s a sorry spectacle to see former Prime Ministers ‘slinging insults’ at voters having been ‘defeated and rejected by the people they used to govern’. What’s more, Blair’s attempt to explain away the referendum shows he is missing the point. After all, the paper argues, Blair seems rather less keen to ‘acknowledge the effects of the uncontrolled immigration he forced on British communities’ in determining the outcome of the referendum. But Blair isn’t alone. Sir

Katy Balls

George Osborne trolls MPs

After George Osborne was announced as the new editor of the Evening Standard on Friday, there was uproar across the House — with Labour writing to the Cabinet Office to complain about the appointment while Tory MPs took to their WhatsApp threads to sulk. Today the drama moved into the Chamber thanks to an Urgent Question from Labour’s Andrew Gwynne. Asked about the ministerial code relating to Osborne’s latest job, Ben Gummer — speaking for the government — said the advisory committee on business appointments has received a letter from George Osborne about his appointment as editor of the Standard. The minister for the Cabinet Office said the committee were ‘considering’ the request and would publish

Sunday

19 Mar 2017

Steerpike

Boris Johnson and the Cursed Theatre Trip

Spare a thought for Boris Johnson. Ever since the Brexit vote, the Foreign Secretary has struggled with the often hostile reception he now receives in London from angry remain-ers. Now it seems things have got so bad that he can’t even enjoy a quiet night out at the theatre. Thandie Newton — the Crash actress — tells the Sunday Times that her teenage daughter, Ripley, spotted Johnson in the audience on a recent trip to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre. Alas Ripley doesn’t hold such a high opinion of the Conservative politician and she proceeded to seek him out to alert him to this fact: ‘She

Matthew Taylor

Sunday political interviews round-up

Tim Farron’s fearsome foursome: May, Le Pen, Trump, Putin What can Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, do to get attention? He had an idea for the party’s conference in York today: suggest that the world is in the grip of a fearsome foursome: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen… and Theresa May. He claimed that have the same traits in common: being “aggressive, nationalistic, anti-Nato, anti-EU. It is the post-war internationalist consensus unravelling in real time. Winston Churchill’s vision for a world that achieves peace through trade, common values and shared endeavour evaporating before our eyes.” Clegg: Bring on the election. The Lib Dems couldn’t do any worse BBC1’s Sunday

Melanie McDonagh

The great ‘adventure story’ of British Catholicism

Roy Hattersley would never have been born had it not been that his mother ran away with the parish priest who instructed her in the Catholic faith before her marriage to a collier — the priest conducted the wedding; a fortnight later they eloped. This deplorable episode had one happy consequence: the birth of Roy, who never knew the reason for his father’s ease with Latin until after he died. So Roy is in a way a small part of his latest book, The Catholics, a history of the church and its people in Britain since the Reformation. He is an atheist but says, ‘Religion in general — belief in

Ferdinand Mount

Is the main purpose of the cabinet secretary to frustrate the PM?

The minister’s private secretary wrote to another cabinet minister about the previous day’s cabinet meeting: They cannot agree about what occurred. There must have been some decision, as Bright’s resignation shows. My chief has told me to ask you what the devil was decided, for he be damned if he knows. Will you ask Mr G. [Gladstone] in more conventional and less pungent terms? That was in 1882. Twenty years later, the fog still reigned. Sir Robert Morant, the driving force behind Balfour’s 1902 Education Act, wrote: Impossible to find out after a cabinet meeting what has actually been the decision. Salisbury does not seem to know or care, and

Rod Liddle

Europe’s elite rightly feel extinction breathing down their necks

Allahu Akbar! Greetings from Samsun, where Turkish protestors — their eyeballs spinning in orgasmic Islamic rage — tried to set fire to the Dutch flag while chanting the usual ‘Allah’s dead good’ stuff. They used cigarette lighters and some lighter fuel and up it went — and was then jubilantly trampled on by the inflamed, howling masses. Except that it wasn’t the Dutch flag — they had got hold of the French flag by mistake. I wonder if any of the similarly inflamed Turkish protestors in the Netherlands would have noticed? My guess is most of those demonstrating in Rotterdam had spent their entire lives in the Netherlands, but possibly

Saturday

18 Mar 2017

Steerpike

Listen: Osborne applied for Standard job… after friends asked for help with their applications

Lesson No.1: Never ask George – ‘six jobs’ – Osborne for career advice. Or at least, never ask the former chancellor for career advice if you think it’s a job he could be tempted by. On the Today programme this morning, Rohan Silva — the former No 10 SpAd — took to the airwaves to try and defend his one-time boss’s decision to take on the role of Evening Standard editor while also continuing as the MP for Tatton and as a £650k per annum advisor to BlackRock. Alas, despite his best efforts, Mr S suspects that Silva may have actually made the situation worse. Explaining why Osborne had applied, Silva said the

Michael Lind

Whatever happened to Trumpism?

Well, that was quick. Along with President Donald Trump’s preliminary budget proposal, Trumpism as a radical new governing philosophy is dead on arrival. Trump was elected in part by voters who preferred Obama to Romney in 2012. They saw in Trump a different kind of Republican from the green-eyeshades accountants whose passion is cutting government spending on the middle class and the poor. During the campaign, Trump sounded more like a New Deal Democrat, promising a trillion dollars in infrastructure investment, the revitalization of manufacturing, and a less aggressive foreign policy. That Trump, it seems, is being held hostage in Mar-a-Lago, while the Trump impersonator who used to pose with

Martin Vander Weyer

White men grab the chairs

Tesco chairman John Allan provoked feminist fury by telling would-be non-exec directors, ‘If you’re a white male, tough: you’re an endangered species’ — then claimed he was really trying to make the opposite point, that ‘it’s a great time for women’. But to the contrary, this was a week in which tough white males grabbed the corporate prizes, while one high-flying woman from an oppressed minority was hounded out of her job. First, the blokes. HSBC announced, for the first time in its history and to the satisfaction of governance zealots, the appointment of an outside chairman. Incumbent Douglas Flint is to be succeeded by Mark Tucker, a former professional

Charles Moore

Too many Hoggs spoil it for Charlotte

Charlotte Hogg forgot to tell the Bank of England, of which she had been appointed deputy governor, that her brother Quintin is director of strategy at Barclays bank. She has had to resign. There is something strange about this story. After all, if the Bank of England did not know already that her brother held this position, its knowledge of the banking world it is supposed to supervise must be thin indeed. You can see why Miss Hogg might have assumed that those appointing her knew already, and so have given it no thought, rather as Tony Blair and David Cameron probably never thought to put in the Register of

Friday

17 Mar 2017

Steerpike

Was George Osborne sloppy second to City AM editor?

Following the announcement that George Osborne is the new editor of the Evening Standard, the BBC’s media editor Amol Rajan was quick to brand the appointment ‘a remarkable move that will dazzle the worlds of politics and media’. But — as dazzling as it may or may not be — did Evgeny Lebedev only turn to George Osborne after the editor of London’s rival free sheet rebuffed his advances? Word reaches Steerpike that it was City AM‘s Christian May who was first approached — but decided to stay put in his current role rather than jump ship. While May has not responded to Mr S’s request for comment — should Osborne need

Steerpike

Revealed: George Osborne’s speech to Evening Standard staff – I know how to run a country, not a newspaper

Although George Osborne has many questions to answer regarding how he can take on the role of editor of the Evening Standard while remaining the MP for Tatton and a £650k per annum advisor to BlackRock, the former chancellor shied away from addressing any of the numerous conflicts of interest when he addressed staff in the Standard newsroom this afternoon. Mr S’s mole reports that the MP for Tatton — whose last editorship was on Oxford University’s Isis Magazine — received a lukewarm reception from the paper’s staff as he gave a short speech to the shocked hacks. Osborne complained that he had been ‘keeping it secret for weeks’ and went on to