Theresa may

Tuesday

The Spectator

Jeremy Corbyn backs Theresa May’s plan for a snap election: full text

Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour will support Theresa May’s decision to hold an early election. Here’s his full statement: I welcome the Prime Minister’s decision to give the British people the chance to vote for a government that will put the interests of the majority first. Labour will be offering the country an effective alternative to a government that has failed to rebuild the economy, delivered falling living standards and damaging cuts to our schools and NHS. In the last couple of weeks, Labour has set out policies that offer a clear and credible choice for the country. We look forward to showing how Labour will stand up for the

Will Heaven

Five times Theresa May ruled out a snap general election

Theresa May’s snap election, scheduled for 8 June, was unlikely for three big reasons. Holding off until 2020 would allow the Tories to take advantage of boundary changes that come into force in 2018. There’s a fixed-term parliament act, which is a major complicating factor (Labour will probably have to back a vote in the Commons to allow this election to take place at all). Most of all, she staked a large chunk of her credibility on not U-turning on her decision that there wouldn’t be one. Until this morning, her reputation for unwavering unflappability looked justified. Here are five occasions on which the Prime Minister personally, or her staff, denied

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Theresa May shows she is prepared to play political games

Theresa May has just announced that she’ll move a motion in the Commons tomorrow calling for a general election on 8 June. This is despite May and her team having repeatedly ruled out going to the country early. Much of the May brand, and her appeal, is built on the idea that she is a grown-up who gets on with the job and doesn’t play political games. By going for an election, and especially when the Tories have a record poll lead over Labour, she endangers that. May is clearly aware of this danger. In her statement outside Downing Street, May tried to pitch herself against Westminster. She said that while

The Spectator

Theresa May calls an early general election for 8 June: full speech

Theresa May has called a general election for June 8th. Making the announcement on the steps of Downing Street, the PM said that an early election is the ‘right approach’ and ‘in the national interest’. Here’s her full statement: ‘I have just chaired a meeting of the Cabinet where we agreed that the government should call a general election to be held on the 8th June. I want to explain the reasons for that decision, what will happen next, and the choice facing the British people when you come to vote in this election. Last summer, after the country voted to leave the European Union, Britain needed certainty, stability and strong leadership.

Sunday

The Spectator

How will the EU cope without Britain?

Many EU officials would like to present the Brexit negotiations as a case of one nervous member, weak at the knees, appearing before a menacing and united panel of 27. But that ignores the political and ideological rifts which are already apparent in the EU. Britain’s departure not only necessitates the creation of a new relationship between us and them; it fundamentally shifts the balance in EU politics. As Angela Merkel has been worrying aloud in recent weeks, the northern European countries which have always tended to take a liberal position on economics and trade are going to have a harder job fighting off the protectionist instincts of the south.

Saturday

Charlotte Gill

Forget the ‘nasty party’, Theresa May has turned the Tories into the zombie party

Watching Education Secretary Justine Greening discuss grammar schools this week, I felt exasperated and in desperate need of a cognac. And it wasn’t because I’m opposed to grammar schools. No, there was something else bothering me: the cold air as Greening stared into the camera. It was the sort of look that could kill you slowly over time, especially when paired with such mechanical, uninspiring words. It left me as cold as Paul Nuttall’s head. And it was then I realised something: this is all Theresa May’s fault. She might have worried about the Tories being seen as the ‘nasty party’. She need not have done. Instead, she’s in danger of turning them

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Our message to Assad: kill a lot more of your people, but nicely. And please spin it out

Let me take this opportunity to join with our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary in commending President Trump’s swift and decisive military action against the Syrian government as being ‘appropriate’ — one of my favourite words and one which I like to use every day, regardless of whether it is appropriate to do so. The important thing was not of course the destruction of a few Syrian planes and, collaterally, a few Syrian children. The crucial point is that this moderate and judicious use of expensive missiles ‘sends out a message’ to President Assad. And the message is very simple. We will no longer tolerate Syrian children being killed by

Thursday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: It’s time to stop blaming Brexit

What does a spike in hate crime, a slump in sterling, supermarket price hikes, rising inflation and a squeeze on living standards have in common? The answer is simple, according to some: Brexit is to blame. But it’s time to stop pointing the finger at Brexit, says the Sun, which argues in its editorial that the vote to leave in last year’s referendum has ‘wrongly copped the blame for every negative development since’. Now that it has emerged that inflation has ‘outstripped’ pay for the first time since 2014, the same thing is happening. It’s true, the Sun admits, that the slump in Sterling is pushing up prices. But there’s

Saturday

David Butterfield

Like them or not, Theresa May’s grammar school plans will end the postcode lottery of education

Grammar Schools. Now there’s a potent pair of words. Mention them, and genial conversation will instantly shift into awkward silence or seething torrents of passion. In either case, reasoned argument is in short supply. Yet now that Theresa May seems committed to overturning Labour’s ban on opening new grammar schools, discussion is vital. But instead of rehashing the same arguments in favour of academically selective schools, or raking over the same problems they can cause, it’s important instead to look carefully at the evidence about whether grammar schools really do promote ‘social mobility’. One of the major themes of anti-grammar salvos is that they don’t. And to make this point, the crudest approach is typically

Friday

James Kirkup

The National Trust could teach Theresa May and the Tories a thing or two

What drove Theresa May to break off from a trade trip to the Middle East to chuck a half-brick at the National Trust over some Easter bunnies? Maybe Dame Helen Ghosh, the Trust’s Director General, knows. When the two worked together at the Home Office, they got along like a house on fire: there were flames, some screaming and eventually someone (Dame Helen, as it happens) left the building through a window. Given that history, it’s probably unwise to suggest that Mrs May might learn something from Dame Helen and the Trust instead of battering them, but I’ll give it a go anyway. The lesson is about members. The Trust

Thursday

The Spectator

Regressive Conservatism

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party is coming to resemble a drunk trying to get home on a bike. Most of the time he just pushes it along, but occasionally he mounts the saddle and whirls into action — only to find himself swiftly spread-eagled on the road. Take next month’s local elections. Corbyn launched his party’s campaign trying to bemoan the state of Britain. There are plenty of statistics which he could have trotted out to depict a country underperforming on living standards, debt levels and social mobility. But he chose to cite a supposed decline in life expectancy — which is demonstrably and famously wrong. Life expectancy

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The real significance of Theresa May’s meeting with Donald Tusk

Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, has been in Downing Street this afternoon meeting with Theresa May. The official readout of their talk is much as you would expect. Warm words about the hopes for a ‘deep and special partnership’, an attempt to calm things down over Gibraltar but nothing major as the EU 27 have yet to agree their negotiating position. But the real significance of this meeting is that it is meant to be one of a series between May and Tusk as the negotiations continue. This shows that the European Council—which represents the member states—wants to keep the Commission on a close rein during these

Wednesday

Hugo Rifkind

Let’s rein in Brexiteer triumphalism before we all go mad

According to archaeologists and all the papers last week, the 11th-century villagers of Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, used to mutilate their dead, chopping off their heads and breaking their legs to minimise the danger of zombie resurrection. ‘Imagine being afraid,’ I chortled while reading this, ‘that the undead might put you in mortal danger!’ Whereupon I flicked forward a couple of pages and came across Michael Howard’s plan to defend Gibraltar by sending a gunboat. Personally, I’m against the idea of war with Spain. Although I say that cautiously, because we Remoaners must not hold back the will of the people. Indeed, such is the way of things these days,

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

How to solve the Gibraltar problem – in the style of Donald Trump

Two of the top tips in Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal, of which I wrote last week even though he allegedly didn’t write it himself, are ‘Think Big’ and ‘Maximise the Options’, also expressed as ‘I keep a lot of balls in the air’. How should Theresa May apply that advice in response to Spain’s opportunistic bid to raise the issue of sovereignty over Gibraltar as a potential Brexit hurdle? She could, of course, offer a repeat of the 2002 referendum in which Gibraltarians voted 99 per cent ‘No’ when asked whether Britain and Spain should share the Rock’s sovereignty. But the ‘balls in the air’ gambit I

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Theresa May makes a stand against Saudi dress codes

Well, Theresa May met half of the Foreign Office’s dress code for women in Saudi Arabia when she arrived there yesterday. Her coat was loose, you couldn’t take exception to her trousers, but it was the hair that was the great thing. She was bare-headed, just like Angela Merkel was when she turned up in the Kingdom. The vicar’s daughter and the pastor’s daughter have both made a stand, in a country where women normally have the equivalent of a bin liner to wear when it comes to fashion.  This kind of thing matters.  For a woman head of government to dress for a visit to the Kingdom pretty well just as

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Is Theresa May’s media honeymoon over?

Is Theresa May’s media honeymoon over? The bungled Budget might have led to a raft of bad headlines for the Government, but these were mostly aimed in Philip Hammond’s direction. Today, the Sun turns its fire on the Prime Minister. The paper says May has ‘shown she understands what most Brits want’ from Brexit. But it adds a crucial caveat: ‘until now’. The Sun says that while it agrees with her plan to leave the single market behind, it is ‘deeply concerned by suggestions that free movement may apply for a further three years’ after Brexit. Most Brits who wanted out of the EU did so to tighten up Britain’s

Tuesday

Rachel Cunliffe

Why has the Prime Minister waded into a fight about chocolate eggs?

Cadbury has changed the name of its annual ‘Easter Egg Trail’ to ‘Cadbury’s Great British Egg Hunt’, callously dropping any reference to the Christian festival celebrated by 31.5 million Brits. (Actually, the word ‘Easter’ appears multiple times in the marketing, but it’s out of the title, and that’s the important bit.) Theresa May has taken this as an opportunity to tell everyone yet again that she is the daughter of a vicar, calling the decision ‘absolutely ridiculous’ and reminding the country that Easter is ‘a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world’. So it is – far more so than the overhyped Christmas celebration. But

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Brexit is exposing the cowardice of conservatism

The decision by Conservative MPs to walk away from the Commons Committee on Exiting the EU is one of the most unintentionally revealing abdications of duty I have seen. The report they refused to endorse was polite to the point of blandness. The necessity of securing cross-party approval meant that its restrained language bore little relation to the chaos in Whitehall the committee’s hearings had uncovered. In March, the committee’s chair, Hilary Benn, showed its extent when he submitted David Davis to a tough cross-examination which the Brexit Secretary was lamentably unable to withstand. Although ministers were parroting the line that ‘no deal was better than a bad deal’, Benn

Mark Nayler

Can Anglo-Spanish relations survive Brexit?

As the events of the last few days show, the increasingly toxic issue of Gibraltar means the UK’s Article 50 talks with Spain might become more fraught than either party would like. It’s not just that Spain wants to share sovereignty of the Rock with Britain; more dangerous is the fact that Brussels can exploit this dispute to punish the UK for Brexit. In fact, this weekend’s fracas over Gibraltar’s post-Brexit status shouldn’t have caused the uproar it did. True, the document distributed to EU member governments on Friday by Donald Tusk highlighted Spain’s ability to veto Gibraltar’s inclusion in any EU-UK deal; but as part of the soon-to-be 27 member bloc, Spain already possessed that ability. After all, every other member state would have a veto too.

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: the Gibraltar row heats up

Theresa May says the way to deal with the row over Gibraltar is ‘jaw-jaw’ rather than war. And there is plenty of chatter on the subject in today’s newspapers: Of course we don’t want a war with Spain, says the Sun. But ‘nor will we sit quietly’ and let Madrid ‘launch its latest ridiculous attempt to claim the territory’. Some have said that Theresa May brought this mess upon herself, by failing to namecheck Gibraltar in her Article 50 letter to the European Union last week. This isn’t the case, says the paper, which points out that the PM is right to say the Rock’s ‘future is settled and its