uk politics Archives

Monday

2 Apr 2018

Steerpike

Carole Cadwalladr’s mixed messages

One of the most important ingredients for success in politics, journalism, campaigns and advertising is to have a clear message. So, spare a thought for Carole Cadwalladr’s Observer investigation which appears to have failed this test over the weekend. Over the past few months Cadwalladr has launched an investigation into alleged collusion and data misuse in the US election and the EU referendum. She claims that Cambridge Analytica has undisclosed links to the Canadian digital firm AggregateIQ that played a pivotal role in the official Vote Leave campaign. In this week’s Observer she runs a new instalment on AggregateIQ ‘the obscure Canadian tech firm’ used by Vote Leave and ‘the puzzle

Charles Moore

What do Corbyn and Thatcher have in common?

The late Alan Watkins was so right that no half-hour spent with Who’s Who is ever wasted. This is partly because it is complete in certain categories — MPs, peers, bishops, judges, generals etc — and therefore dependable; partly because no one can be removed from it except by death, so that it builds up a picture of the past 50 years or so; and partly because each entry is self-composed, so that one can read character between the lines. It takes a certain buoyancy, for example, to dare to fill an entire column of the book with your own entry. In the 2018 edition, the longest entry belongs to Professor Sir

Sunday

1 Apr 2018

Steerpike

Watch: Andrew Neil’s beginner’s guide to anti-Semitism

A Times/YouGov poll at the weekend found that nearly eight out of ten Labour members believe that accusations of anti-Semitism within the Labour party in the last fortnight are being exaggerated to damage Jeremy Corbyn and prevent criticism of Israel. So, it seems an opportune time to share Andrew Neil’s helpful explainer on what anti-Semitism is and where it leads, from This Week: ‘An evil demon we thought had been slain – anti-Semitism – pollutes society on both sides of the channel once more. I was told today that polls and focus groups show that many Brits, not just the young, don’t know what anti-Semitism is. Well, gather round. Mireille

Saturday

31 Mar 2018

Katy Balls

Good news for Labour moderates as Christine Shawcroft quits NEC

After a torrid few weeks for the Labour party over alleged incidents of anti-Semitism, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel – at least for the party’s moderates. As allegations of anti-Semitism in Labour spiralled, Corbyn’s close ally Christine Shawcroft had to resign on Wednesday as chair of Labour’s disputes panel for defending a candidate who posted a Holocaust denial article. Now Shawcroft has also resigned from her position on the party’s ruling committee. Announcing her resignation, Shawcroft said her membership of the party’s National Executive Committee had ‘become a distraction for the party and an excuse for endless intrusive media harassment of myself, my family and friends’: ‘I reaffirm

Stephen Daisley

The question Labour moderates must ask themselves

A question for Labour’s moderates, however we define the term and assuming they are still sizeable enough to merit the plural: Do you want to see Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister? Specifically, do you think he possesses the character and temperament of a national leader? Does the prospect of a Corbyn-led Labour government fill you with hope? I’m not asking how you’d feel finally to be rid of this hopeless government, with its prodigious incompetences and petty cruelties. I’m not asking about the Labour Party in your heart but about the one out here, in the world, standing before the voters. That is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party and it is

James Forsyth

The political weather has changed

It might be raining outside but the political weather has changed, I say in The Sun this morning. Theresa May is now in the strongest position she’s been in since the general election, and Jeremy Corbyn the weakest. When May addressed the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers on Wednesday, she received a—rather unusual—standing ovation. She herself was in upbeat form telling the meeting that the economy had turned a corner. This, perhaps, explains why the government is now prepared to talk about extra money for the NHS and defence. The Prime Minister who cut such a reduced figure after the election is now marshalling the Western coalition that is pushing

Friday

30 Mar 2018

Primo Levi

For today’s young, the holocaust is ancient history – which poses huge danger

The first news about the Nazi annihilation camps began to spread in the crucial year of 1942. They were vague pieces of information, yet in agreement with each other: they delineated a massacre of such vast proportions, of such extreme cruelty and such intricate motivation that the public was inclined to reject them because of their very enormity. It is significant that the culprits themselves foresaw this rejection well in advance: many survivors (among others, Simon Weisenthal in the last pages of The Murderers Are Among Us) remember that the SS militiamen enjoyed cynically admonishing the prisoners: ‘However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none

Fraser Nelson

Why Primo Levi’s warning about the young forgetting the holocaust resonates now

One of the most thought-provoking pieces in The Spectator this week is from Alastair Thomas on why his generation don’t get so upset about anti-Semitism. He explains the phenomenon and offers an explanation: the years have passed, the memories of the holocaust have dimmed. It’s no longer the experience of someone’s grandparents’ generation, but further back. Since then, there are more recent memories: of the Israeli Defence Force and Gaza. The conflation between Jews, Israel and Zionism has restored the idea of the Jews as being suspiciously powerful – the oppressors rather than the oppressed. This certainly stands to reason. Memories of the holocaust were kept alive for my generation

Ross Clark

UK investment is at a record high. So why has almost no one reported it?

Why is it that whenever some organisation comes up with some half-baked prediction of doom for the UK economy post-Brexit it is splashed all over the news, yet real data on the economy gets ignored? Yesterday, the ONS quietly released the latest figures for Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) which covers investment across the whole economy, public and private sectors, manufacturing, construction, services and extractive industries. They showed that contrary to the received wisdom that investors have fled the UK following the Brexit vote, investment grew by 1.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2017, to a total of £84.1 billion. Over the course of 2017 it grew by

Stephen Daisley

A Scottish Tory government is no longer wishful thinking

‘The Scottish Conservatives aspire to lead the next government of Scotland,’ proclaims Ruth Davidson in a pamphlet setting out the party’s thinking. Could it really happen? Could the Tories go from wipeout in 1997 to triumph in 2021 – from resisting devolution to effectively running the show in a generation? Too long; didn’t read answer? Yes. More complex answer: Yes, if… Scottish, Conservative, Unionist is a ‘Yes, if’ document, informed by an understanding that the party cannot sit back and wait for voters to come to it. Muhammad must launch a charm offensive on the mountain. The booklet features contributions from leading lights and rising stars. MSPs Adam Tomkins and Donald

Steerpike

Labour’s pockets of anti-Semitism: the evidence

This week, Jeremy Corbyn said he was ‘sincerely sorry’ for the pain that had been caused to the Jewish community by anti-Semitism in ‘pockets’ within the Labour Party. Alas, his apology wasn’t enough to stop protesters – including some of his party colleagues – gathering in Parliament Square on Monday to voice their concerns. Nor were Corbyn’s comments enough to dissuade some of his more loyal supporters that allegations of anti-Semitism aren’t always an MSM smear designed to keep the Tories in No 10. So that readers can make up their own mind as to the size of those ‘pockets’, below is a list which has been compiled detailing alleged incidents

Thursday

29 Mar 2018

Stephen Daisley

Labour can’t tackle anti-Semitism under Corbyn

The Labour Party brings to mind any number of Yiddish expressions — most of them involving the performance of lavatorial functions — but none more so than the proverb Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht. Man plans and God laughs. The Almighty’s black humour is surely at work in the resignation of Christine Shawcroft, chair of the Labour Party disputes panel. The woman responsible for rooting out anti-Semitism has been caught defending a council candidate accused of posting Holocaust-denying content on social media. In a leaked internal email, Shawcroft called for Peterborough’s Alan Bull to be reinstated after suspension for ‘a Facebook post taken completely out of context and alleged

Theo Hobson

The unspoken cause of Labour’s anti-Semitism problem

There is another cause of Labour’s anti-Semitism. It is not just that Israel is seen as the last vestige of western imperialism, and that Jews are still suspected of running global finance. It is also that many on the left hate religion, and Judaism is, in some ways, the most intense face of religion. But surely it is far less threatening to the secularist than Christianity or Islam, as it does not seek universal uptake? True, but as the parent of these other monotheisms, it is seen as having a special culpability. Christians and Muslims can be seen as wannabe Jews – they have been infected by the Jewish God-bug.

Katy Balls

Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism response backfires

As MPs go into the Easter recess, Jeremy Corbyn is rounding up one of his worst weeks as leader yet. After the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council wrote to the Labour leader accusing him of ‘again and again’ siding with ‘anti-Semites rather than Jews’, both members of the Jewish community and Labour moderates attended a demonstration in Parliament Square to voice their concerns. Only some of Corbyn’s more dedicated supporters weren’t having any of that and staged a rival protest defending their leader from ‘MSM smears’. Today we begin to see Corbyn’s team’s attempt to change the narrative and tackle the issue. Corbyn has

Steerpike

Michel Barnier makes easy work of David Davis

On Wednesday evening, David Davis left his sick bucket at home and made his way to the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster for an hour long grilling courtesy of Andrew Neil. At the Spectator event, the Brexit Secretary spoke of his supreme confidence that the final deal would be voted through – and that the makings of a trade deal would be know by this time next year. However, it was Davis’s comment about Michel Barnier – the Chief EU negotiator that caught Steerpike’s attention. The Cabinet minister joked that Barnier had said it was not ‘too hard’ to get Davis to give in: AN: The £37bn divorce bill agreed last

Wednesday

28 Mar 2018

James Forsyth

David Davis: There’s no deal without a trade deal

With a year and a day to go to Brexit, David Davis sat down for an interview with Andrew Neil this evening. Davis was clear that there wouldn’t be a deal, and thus a £37bn payment to the EU, unless there was an agreement on the future relationship too. Contrary to the received wisdom, David Davis told this special Spectator event that the UK and the EU will ‘get pretty substantively close’ to a free trade agreement by October. He argued that this meant that the withdrawal agreement would have a lot of detail on what the future trading relationship would be. He said that he thought that this would

Lloyd Evans

May’s PMQs attitude should worry Corbyn

Poor Jeremy Corbyn seemed muted and cowed at PMQs. He stooped over the despatch box, his chin down, his voice murmuring like a trapped bluebottle, his stature loose and uncertain. He grizzled through his six questions without a trace of passion or conviction. He couldn’t even whip himself into his trademark strimmer-call of petulant outrage. Is he having a bit of a crisis? Last night Jewish protestors gathered outside parliament to denounce him. Which is rather ironic. One story has it that his parents met at an anti-Mosley rally. Perhaps the parents of a future Labour leader will meet at an anti-Corbyn march. May had brought up Labour’s anti-Semitism last week

Isabel Hardman

How Jeremy Corbyn had a successful PMQs

Jeremy Corbyn didn’t pick the most obvious topic to lead on – or indeed mention – at Prime Minister’s Questions today. While the Tories are in deep discomfort on the Worboys case, the Labour leader chose instead to talk about something on which even he had to concede Theresa May has shown a fair bit of commitment over the years: mental health. It wasn’t until later in the session that the Ministry of Justice’s handling of the serial rapist’s case was raised at all. But that said, this was one of Corbyn’s best Prime Minister’s Questions. Normally when he attacks on health, he often meanders around general topics without really

James Forsyth

John Bercow should keep his opinions to himself

Late on in PMQs today, Joanna Cherry, an SNP MP, asked Theresa May about the case of a Syrian refugee in her constituency who can’t go on a school holiday to Spain as he doesn’t have the necessary papers and the Home Office are saying it will take three months to sort this out. Cherry asked the Prime Minister to intervene, to speed up the process. So, a standard, good constituency question. As was May’s reply, she said that the Home Secretary had heard what Cherry had said and would look into it. But then John Bercow rose from the chair and said ‘good’. This was completely inappropriate. It is

James Forsyth

The John Worboys verdict is a triumph for justice

The John Worboys verdict is a triumph for justice, and a huge credit to the victims who so bravely brought their case to court. This rapist is staying in prison and a fresh parole board will now review his case. With the court recommending that someone with judicial experience should be on the panel, one has to hope that it will come to a more sensible verdict. The other good news from today’s proceedings is that the Sun, who I write a column for, has won its case against the blanket ban on revealing the details of the Parole Board’s decision-making. This greater transparency is hugely to be welcomed. If