Uk politics

Thursday

Steerpike

Has Diane Abbott forgotten her history of blunders?

Diane Abbott is calling for Amber Rudd’s head over the Windrush scandal – but Mr Steerpike was somewhat taken aback by her line of attack against the Home Secretary. On BBC News, Abbott asked: ‘Who can have confidence in Amber Rudd to make far-reaching changes in the Home Office, if she doesn’t seem able to get basic facts right?’ But is she forgetting her own history of blunders? Take the time in the run-up to last year’s snap election when Abbott told LBC’s Nick Ferrari it would cost £300,000 to recruit ten thousand police officers: Or when she recounted listening to Enoch Powell’s speech in primary school; a speech given

Steerpike Steerpike

Gavin Williamson’s PR blitz

Today’s Sun reports that Cabinet ‘big beasts’ – Michael Gove, Amber Rudd and Gavin Williamson – are amassing ‘huge war chests’ as they line up leadership bids. Williamson is on £10,000 – behind both Rudd and Gove. Still, the ambitious Defence Secretary is making sure he is not outdone on other fronts. Williamson is down to give a ‘wide-ranging’ speech at next week’s Institute of Economic Affairs bash – and then the following week will be a star guest at the Conservative Progress conference – an event stuffed with Tory activists. Well, with Gove lined up to advise not one, but three new Tory think tanks, Williamson still has work to

Steerpike Steerpike

Dominic Raab’s lunch scandal

Dominic Raab has awoken to a scandal relating to his team. The Daily Mirror reports that one of the Housing Minister’s staff has been ‘selling sex to sugar daddies’. While the paper refrains from identifying the staffer in question, it does publish their account of life working under Raab – and this is where the real scandal emerges. The woman in question has revealed Raab’s lunch order: ‘He has the chicken Caesar and bacon baguette, superfruit pot and the vitamin volcano smoothie, every day. He is so weird. It’s the Dom Raab Special.’ Well, at least it’s a more down to earth option than daily visits to Roux…

Jamie Bartlett

The Facebook scandal exposes our politicians’ technical illiteracy

Imagine a world in which all politicians were computer scientists. What a dreary dystopia that would be. It’s hard to think of anything worse than a nation ruled by people with PhDs in machine learning.   That said, politicians do need to know something about the digital world. It’s no longer good enough for our elected representatives to feign technical illiteracy, throw up their arms in defeat, and ask the office twenty-something to fix it. Every professional thinks politicians are clueless about their particular area of expertise – doctors complain that MPs are medically illiterate, teachers moan that they don’t get pedagogy and so on. But a special case can be

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Nicola Sturgeon’s response to Brexit has utterly failed

What’s Nicola Sturgeon playing at on Brexit? Quick answer: politics. Longer answer: politics.  The SNP leader has rejected a deal to resolve the impasse between Westminster and Holyrood over the repatriation of powers from Brussels. She accuses the Tories of a ‘power grab’ because some areas of responsibility will initially go to the UK rather than Scottish parliament and threatens to deny consent to the government’s Brexit Bill. If she does so – and her SNP holds a majority of seats at Holyrood with unofficial junior coalition partners, the Greens – it will fix a procedural wheel clamp on Brexit. At which point, the only way the Bill could go

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Amber Rudd is reminded of the Home Office’s reputation as a political graveyard

Amber Rudd must, privately, be hopping mad about the Windrush row. Not only is she having to defend policies that her predecessor and now boss introduced when she was Home Secretary, she is also having to try to resolve the mess that was exacerbated by Number 10 in initially refusing a meeting with Commonwealth leaders about the matter, and then made worse still by Caroline Nokes’ interview suggesting that people had been wrongly deported when there was no such evidence of this happening. That’s not to say that Rudd doesn’t have her own questions to answer: as she argued herself this afternoon when before the Home Affairs Committee, while the

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Why didn’t David Lammy give Corbyn a helping hand at PMQs?

The royal nativity opened proceedings at PMQs. Mrs May sounded thrilled about the newborn nipper but the Labour leader could barely conceal his ill-temper. Mr Corbyn slouched at the despatch box and forced a muttered tribute to ‘their baby’ out of the side of his mouth. He sounded like a man who’s just twisted his knee laying flowers on his mother-in-law’s grave. But why the aversion to Supermum Kate’s non-stop sproggery? A wise Marxist ought to welcome a population explosion at the palace. The more numerous and parasitical the royals, the swifter and bloodier their overthrow. Mr Corbyn led on the Windrush crisis and accused Mrs May of creating ‘a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Maybot returns at PMQs

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions saw the Maybot reactivated. Jeremy Corbyn decided to lead the session on the fallout from the Windrush row, widening out his questions to the flaws in the hostile environment policy on illegal immigration, and on who was to blame for these flaws being apparent but not fixed for so long. The exchanges very swiftly became a ding-dong between May and Corbyn as to whose fault the creation of a hostile environment policy actually was. Corbyn wanted to pin the policy on May, but also demanded that Amber Rudd resign for aiming to harden the policy. His questions were decent, but it was May herself who created

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

David Davis tries to calm fears over a customs union reversal

For those Brexiteers worried the government may change its mind on leaving the customs union, David Davis’s appearance in front of a select committee gave reasons for reassurance – but also possibly some cause to worry. The Brexit secretary was clear that he is sticking firmly to his guns on the issue. But can he – and the government – continue to do so under pressure from MPs who are seeking to keep Britain inside the customs union? Hilary Benn asked Davis what would happen if the vote in Parliament on the Brexit trade bill went against the government. Here’s what Davis had to say: Benn: You have emphatically rejected

Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘positive and constructive’ anti-Semitism meeting

Oh dear. On Tuesday evening, Jeremy Corbyn met with Jewish leaders to discuss his party’s anti-Semitism problem. The meeting didn’t sound as though it would be the most harmonious affair what with the Labour leader accused of not taking the concerns of the Jewish community seriously – and his decision to meet with the ‘radical’ fringe group Jewdas first. So, there was much relief when Corbyn issued a post-meeting statement heralding a ‘positive and constructive’ meeting: ‘We will continue to engage and work with Jewish community organisations to deal with this issue. Our party will not fail our Jewish brothers and sisters.’ Only, it seems the Jewish representatives at the meeting

Tuesday

James Forsyth

May and Boris in Cabinet clash over immigration amnesty

At Cabinet today, ministers discussed the fallout from the Windrush scandal. I understand that Boris Johnson made the point that there needed to be a broader immigration amnesty for long-standing Commonwealth immigrants. He argued that this was necessary to prevent others from getting caught up in the same situation, having to produce overly onerous amounts of evidence to show that they have been living here for years. Obviously, this amnesty wouldn’t apply to those with a criminal record. I’m told that Theresa May then rather acidly remarked that Boris had previously called for an amnesty for all immigrants, which he did first in 2008 and then again in 2016 when he privately proposed

Steerpike Steerpike

EU commissioner: at least it’s not Jacob Rees-Mogg at the negotiating table

Oh dear. As anxiety grows about the Theresa May’s customs union stance, Jacob Rees-Mogg has this afternoon told hacks that the government’s mooted customs partnership is ‘completely cretinous’. The Moggster’s tough talk will play out well among Brexiteers who fear May’s own resolve has weakened in recent months. What will play out less well with the Brexit camp, however, is a comment made by a European commissioner appearing to make this very point. Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Phil Hogan, the Irish agriculture commissioner on the 28-strong executive, broke from the script and made a choice comment when asked about Rees-Mogg’s claim that the UK government should call the

Steerpike Steerpike

Amber Rudd’s shopping misstep

Amber Rudd is not having a good few weeks thanks to her department’s shaky handling of the Windrush scandal. Now she’s under fire on another front: shoes. The Financial Times reports that the Home Secretary told guests at a private business dinner this month that the post-Brexit registration scheme for EU nationals will be ‘as easy to use as setting up an online account at LK Bennett’. Alas, L K Bennett does not pass the ‘know the price of a pint of milk and you are in touch with the people’ test – given that the pricy fashion chain sells shoes for over £200. But then again, what else would

Monday

Dennis Lennox

Macron-Trump bromance blossoms as the sun sets on Special Relationship

Twenty-one years ago the sun finally set on the British Empire with the handover of Hong Kong. Now, the sun is setting on what is known as the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States. It would be easy to blame Brexit for London’s increasing irrelevance in Washington. After all, the U.S. foreign policy establishment has been rapidly pro-European Union since Henry Kissinger supposedly said that Americans needed to know who to call if they wanted to call Europe. Since then, when a president wanted something from the Old World the British prime minister was their helpmate. There is no question that France has manoeuvred to fill

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Windrush scandal – why hasn’t anyone resigned?

The Home Secretary cut a solemn figure in the Commons today as she attempted to clear up the Windrush immigration mess. After a weekend of torrid headlines and claims the Home Office knew of the problem long before they acted, Amber Rudd tried to make amends. Rudd apologised again before attempting to spread the blame – claiming the current situation (by which Caribbean migrants who came to the UK between 1948 and 1973 have wrongly been threatened with deportation) was the result of successive governments introducing measures to combat illegal immigration. She acknowledged the ‘unintended and devastating’ impact these errors had had on the families and promised speedy compensation. Rudd

Matthew Lynn

Who is making the case for leaving the customs union?

Whole industries will be devastated. There will be thirty mile queues of lorries stretching back from Dover. The price of food will rocket, our farmers will be wiped out, and the IRA will be letting off bombs all over the UK as the Troubles return to Northern Ireland. With every day that passes, the scare stories about leaving the customs union are getting more and more hysterical – and the pressure is growing to stay inside. In fact, most of it is nonsense. The fifth largest economy in the world is perfectly capable of managing its own trade arrangements. But leaving needs a big sell. Why? Because there is a

Steerpike Steerpike

Ex-grammar school boy’s Julia Hartley-Brewer jibe

Owen Jones triggered the MSM over the weekend when he took to social media to complain that too many journalists went to private school and were not representative of society at large. While Mr S directs the Guardian columnist to this article on representation at Jones’s paper of choice, a number of hacks have risen to the bait. However, Steerpike is more interested in some of the curious responses. Julia Hartley-Brewer – the commentator – took to social media to say she had attended a comprehensive and got into Oxford university on merit. Surely a great achievement and one which the meritocracy-loving Left could get behind? I didn’t go to

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Labour’s tragedy is Britain’s tragedy

If you want a monument to the winner-takes-all conservatism developed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and reduced to absurdity by George Osborne and Donald Trump, look at the pulverised public realm and browbeaten citizenry around you. The project is a wreck. And I have seen few better examinations of its ruins than The New Serfdom, published tomorrow by the Labour MP Angela Eagle and Labour researcher Imran Ahmed. Arguments have their time. The self-confidence with which Eagle and Ahmed take apart the ruling ideology ought to be a sign that Britain is ready for a reforming government that can ease the pain and remedy the injustices the Conservatives have presided

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Could Theresa May really survive a customs union climbdown?

The Sunday Times set the cat among the pigeons over the weekend with a report claiming that Theresa May ‘may surrender over customs union’ after a secret wargaming exercise concluded that Brexiteers including Michael Gove and David Davis would not resign if the UK stayed in a customs union with the EU. The paper quoted a No. 10 source as saying Downing Street ‘will not be crying into our beer’ if parliament forces the government’s hand. Unsurprisingly the report has managed to get Brexiteers into a spin. Staying in the customs union is seen as poison to a large chunk of Brexit-backing MPs as it means the UK would have great

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Emily Thornberry – ‘I really think Amber Rudd should quit’

The Shadow Foreign Secretary has called for the Home Secretary to resign over the Windrush debacle that has been dominating the newspaper headlines over the past week. The government has u-turned and apologised after threatening to deport Caribbean migrants who could not provide proof of their decades of residence in the UK, with some of those affected having been refused jobs and access to healthcare as a result. To add insult to injury, it was revealed that the Home Office had destroyed the landing cards for immigrants who arrived aboard HMT Empire Windrush, thereby removing a vital source of documentation. The government has since said that it will provide compensation