Uk politics

There are many things the Conservative party needs to do before it is election fit – whether local or national. There’s securing a good Brexit deal, building more homes and repairing the damage done in the snap election – to name a few. As I write in today’s i paper, one of the big things brains at CCHQ are currently working on is firing up the party’s campaign machine. While the Tories don’t have a problem attracting party donors, they do have a problem getting people out door-knocking. One of the many missteps Theresa May made last year was catching her own party’s campaign machine off guard with her decision to

Why on earth would we want to put up a statue of Margaret Thatcher in Parliament Square? That’s the question that a number of politicians are asking after the possibility arose once again at the weekend. ‘Steady on,’ said Nicola Sturgeon. Labour’s Chris Bryant was (unsurprisingly, perhaps) rather more verbose. ‘What Mrs Thatcher did to communities like the Rhondda deserves recognition in the annals of callousness; not another statue.’ Down with the Tory fool behind the suggestion who just cannot stop reminiscing about the 1980s. Except the suggestion came not from a Conservative but a Liberal Democrat MP. Jo Swinson wrote a piece in the Mail on Sunday in which

When Theresa May gave her big housing speech today, in front of a rather strange fake brick backdrop that made the Prime Minister appear to be emerging from a chimney, she was trying to speak to two audiences. The first was those who believe, as she says she does, that the housing crisis is one of the biggest barriers to social justice in this country. The second was those who may agree with the first sentiment in abstract, but who are very worried about inappropriate development and destruction of our green and pleasant land. It’s a tricky game, playing good-cop, bad-cop all by yourself, but that’s what the Prime Minister

Was Theresa May’s big Brexit speech simply a string of ‘phrases, generalisations and platitudes’? That’s the claim from Michael Heseltine over the weekend. The Conservative peer made the Observer front page with an attack that’s said to break the Tories’ short-lived Brexit unity. He says May’s pitch on Friday fell flat as it only ‘set out the cherries that Britain wants to pick’ and complains that rightwing Tory MPs held ‘a knife to her throat’. But if anything, Heseltine’s lone criticism highlights the Tories’ newfound unity over Brexit. If you’d told Theresa May this time last week that the most prominent Tory to criticise her plans after her speech would be Heseltine

Mark Rowley, who is just stepping down as the country’s chief counterterrorism officer, is a classic British policeman of the best sort — a low-key, quietly amusing, naturally moderate professional who does not play political games. He became something of a hero (not a word he would endorse) for his cool handling of last year’s atrocities. On Monday night, he delivered the Cramphorn Memorial Lecture at Policy Exchange, firmly entrenching the understanding which the British authorities were too long loth to recognise, that extremism — even when not itself violent — is a necessary condition for Islamist violence to develop. On one point, however, I felt Mr Rowley did not

Theresa May’s speech today won’t have left any portion of her party ecstatic. As the Prime Minister promised ‘ups and downs in the months ahead’, she warned that ‘no-one will get everything they want’. With compromises coming down the track, May made sure to dish today’s disappointment out in an even-handed manner. For the Remain side of her party that meant their hopes for a customs union compromise – as Isabel reported earlier in the week – were dashed. She not only re-iterated her stated position that the UK would leave the customs union but said that the UK should be able to set its own tariffs. That suggests not even a partial

The Cabinet met earlier today to discuss Theresa May’s big speech on Brexit tomorrow. I understand that in a lengthy meeting most ministers applauded the speech. But there is one particular area of controversy, I hear. Both David Davis and Boris Johnson pushed back against the idea that the UK should make a ‘binding commitment’ to align with EU rules and regulations in certain sectors. The Brexit Secretary, I am informed, led the charge against this idea which the Brexiteers feels go further than what was agreed at the Chequers meeting of the Brexit inner Cabinet. My information is that Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, passionately defended the speech’s language,