Uk politics

Thursday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Boris has been rumbled

Boris Johnson painted Brexit as a source of ‘hope not fear’ in his speech yesterday. The Foreign Secretary said that Britain’s departure from the EU was not a ‘great V-sign from the cliffs of Dover’. ‘That’s how you do it!,’ says the Sun in its editorial in which it urges other members of the Cabinet to follow Boris’s lead. His barnstorming speech ‘laid out the exciting case for a truly global Britain’ and was the same ‘vision’ which persuaded 17.4million Brits to back Brexit in the first place. ‘Too often’ other Ministers ‘treat our exit like a problem to be managed rather than an opportunity to be seized’. Philip Hammond

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Europeans are Britain’s new minority

If you ran the marketing department of a progressive organisation, which wanted to advertise its inclusiveness, how would you do it? My guess is that you would run down the checklist of identity politics and first make sure your advertising had a perfect gender balance. Showing men and women equally would not be enough, however. There would need to be racial balance: black and brown faces among the white. You would want to tick confessional boxes and feature a Muslim and a Sikh. Perhaps you would want to show a transgender man or woman, just to be on the safe side. At the end of it all, you would sit

Ed West Ed West

Children’s cinema is conservative – and brilliant

The Oscars promise to be truly unbearable this year, with vomit-inducing levels of sanctimony followed by the usual gibberish from the commentariat. The results and speeches and even clothes will be subject to endless politicised scrutiny, and whatever the film industry does to stay Woke, the Buzzfeed headline will inevitably be ‘and people aren’t happy about it’. I’m not sure actors really appreciate how their moralising, once simply tedious, is now grotesque; how there’s something almost darkly funny about members of the film industry presenting themselves as an ethical authority on anything, now they’ve been exposed as modern-day Borgias. But even before the Weinstein scandal broke there was something quite

Wednesday

Ed West

A tale of two Brexits

At one point during Boris Johnson’s speech today he asked the audience: ‘We all want to make Britain less insular, don’t we?’ Silence. Media-training experts use an initialism to try to get journalists and other talking-heads to come across well on television – BLT. Does the audience believe you? Do they like you? Do they trust you? The Foreign Secretary has never had a problem with the middle one, perhaps the most important of the three, but during the EU referendum there was certainly an issue with belief, since some of the more nationalistic rhetoric of the campaign clearly sat ill at ease with this ‘esoteric product of millennia of

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why are animals more important than unborn children?

Most of the time I feel perfectly at ease in my own country, and that would be the case had we voted Brexit or Remain, Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn. But just occasionally Britain seems to me an utterly alien place – bizarre even. Today, Jeremy Corbyn launched his manifesto for pets. He wants to ban foie gras, make it mandatory for motorists to report that they have run over and killed cats, and pass a law giving tenants the right to keep a pet. I don’t suspect that he will encounter a great deal of opposition on these things – bar a token protest on the last from buy-to-let investors.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Boris’s Brexit vision is an answer to a non-existent problem

The thing to understand about Brexit and Remain voters is that Brexit is only part of the problem. Many Remainers cast their votes with only moderate enthusiasm. They were not motivated, most of them, by any great enthusiasm for the European project. But they took what they considered to be a prudent, pragmatic, view of the national interest. They wanted a moderate, quiet life; and the status quo, however irritating it might sometimes be, was at least a known quantity and therefore preferable to the great unknown that must be unleashed by Brexit. Remain was a proper, old-fashioned, Tory choice.  And therefore, of course, rather unfashionable. But then, as far

James Forsyth James Forsyth

‘Old Boris’ is back

Boris Johnson has been down in the mouth in recent months. The ‘old Boris’ appeared to have been worn down by the cares of the office. Also, for a politician who loves to be loved, it has been difficult adjusting to his more divisive post-referendum status. But today was far more of the old Boris. He returned to his 2016 case for Brexit in a speech that was full of his trademark optimism and humour, including a slightly off-colour joke about dogging. Today had been billed as Boris reaching out to the 48 per cent—and there was a bit of that. But the real audience for this speech were the

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The cult of youth undermines democracy

Should a young person’s vote count for more than an old person’s? Perhaps people under the age of 25 should get two votes and people over 50 just one. After all, the under-25 person will have to live with the consequences of political decisions for far longer than the over-50. On something like Britain’s relationship with the EU, shouldn’t the voice of those who have just entered adulthood carry more weight than the voice of those who occasionally find themselves thinking: ‘I wonder how much a stair-lift costs’? To most of us, this is a horrific idea. An ugly, misanthropic proposal. It would destroy the very heart of democracy —

The Spectator

Full text: Boris Johnson’s Brexit speech

The other day a woman pitched up in my surgery in a state of indignation. The ostensible cause was broadband trouble but it was soon clear – as so often in a constituency surgery – that the real problem was something else. No one was trying to understand her feelings about Brexit. No one was trying to bring her along. She felt so downcast, she said, that she was thinking of leaving the country – to Canada. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to be in the EU; she just didn’t want to be in a Britain that was not in the EU. And I recognised that feeling of

Steerpike Steerpike

Janan Ganesh, citizen of… Washington, DC?

Theresa May’s decision to launch a verbal attack on ‘citizens of nowhere’ backfired in the snap election when metropolitan voters turned on the Prime Minister over fears her Brexit vision was an inward one. Happily, citizens of nowhere have since found some champions of their own. Citizen-of-nowhere-in-chief Janan Ganesh, the Financial Times columnist, kindly wrote a column titled ‘how to be a true citizen of nowhere’: ‘True, we tend to come from nowhere. I live in one continent, was born in another, but originate from a third. So I am not even from where I am from. I grew up in an ambiguous social class in one of those zone

Ed West Ed West

Children’s cinema is conservative – and brilliant | 14 February 2018

The Oscars promise to be truly unbearable this year, with vomit-inducing levels of sanctimony followed by the usual gibberish from the commentariat. The results and speeches and even clothes will be subject to endless politicised scrutiny, and whatever the film industry does to stay Woke, the Buzzfeed headline will inevitably be ‘and people aren’t happy about it’. I’m not sure actors really appreciate how their moralising, once simply tedious, is now grotesque; how there’s something almost darkly funny about members of the film industry presenting themselves as an ethical authority on anything, now they’ve been exposed as modern-day Borgias. But even before the Weinstein scandal broke there was something quite

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Britain must learn from France’s approach to jihadis

Gavin Williamson, Britain’s defence secretary, and Florence Parly, minister of the French armed forces, share the same opinion, that it would be in their countries’ best interests if their jihadists never set foot on their soil again. The Defence Secretary has said of two captured members of the Isis gang dubbed ‘The Beatles’: ‘I don’t think they should ever set foot in this country again’; while France’s armed forces minister said recently that her country’s jihadists ‘have shown no mercy so I don’t see why we should show them any’. Few in France disagree with Parly’s comments, except the jihadists themselves, who have suddenly become all contrite after years of nothing but contempt

Tuesday

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s Valentine’s speech is a chance to prove his critics wrong

It’s been a quiet day in Westminster with the main excitement involving a suspicious package containing white powder that was delivered to an office in Parliament. The powder was later found to be non-harmful but police are investigating the incident. Tomorrow the relative calm will end when Boris Johnson gives his big speech. Titled ‘a United Kingdom’, the Foreign Secretary is to give the first in a series of government speeches that together form Downing Street’s ‘roadmap to Brexit’. Boris’s aim is to reach out to those who voted Remain and reassure them that Brexit Britain will be a country that reflects their liberal values. The last time Johnson wanted

Steerpike Steerpike

CCHQ vs the Moggster

Last week Theresa May came under fire from grassroots activists not over her weak and wobbly leadership but over reported proposals to limit the say local party members have when it comes to selecting candidates. So, it’s rather unfortunate for the Prime Minister that the man currently favoured by the membership as her successor is with the grassroots on this one. Speaking on the ConservativeHome Moggcast, Jacob Rees-Mogg criticised plans to centralise power on candidate selection as ‘undemocratic’. He offered a cautionary tale of his own – had central office had their way the Moggster would not be in Parliament today. Rees-Mogg says CCHQ were at pains to prevent his

Monday

James Forsyth

The Oxfam scandal will unearth some difficult facts for ministers

When the media talk about government outsourcing, they normally concentrate on Capita, G4s or, recently, Carillion. But when it comes to aid, the government outsources too. The majority of the UK’s aid budget is sent directly to the country concerned. Just over a third of it is spent through partner organisations. The bulk of this money goes through organisations such as the World Bank. But some of it is spent with charities such as Oxfam. The UK government gave Oxfam £31.7 million in 2016 which isn’t a huge amount in government terms but is considerable in charity terms. This means that the scandal engulfing the aid world, which started with the

John Redwood

Can long-term forecasters answer these questions?

I find it difficult to believe some in the media are taking these latest economic forecasts for 15 years outside the EU seriously. They have all the hallmarks of the approach that the Treasury used to get the short-term forecast for the aftermath of a Brexit vote so hopelessly wrong. The first thing to stress is the forecasts which state the UK as a whole will lose 2 percent of GDP if we stay in the single market, 5 percent if we leave with a trade deal, and 8 percent if we leave without a trade deal are not saying we will be between 2 to 8 percent worse off in 15

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why May might not be so bad for May

As Brexit tensions continue to simmer in the Conservative party, the May local elections look to be the next big danger point for Theresa May. MPs who are losing patience with the Prime Minister fear that any move now would be near impossible to justify to the public when the Tories remain neck-and-neck with Labour in the polls. The thinking goes that disappointing results in the local elections could provide the perfect cover to oust May from her position. It’s true that disappointing results look likely. In London, the Tories expect a bloodbath, with elections analyst Lord Hayward predicting that the party could lose more than half of their London

Steerpike Steerpike

Andrea Leadsom receives anti-Brexit death threat

Boris Johnson will have his work cut out on Wednesday when he attempts to give a speech uniting Remainers and Brexiteers. Last week, Brexiteers started received death threats from the mysterious ‘real 48 per cent’. Zac Goldsmith was the first to go public when an 80-year-old constituent received one in the mail. Now Andrea Leadsom is the latest to receive the poison pen letter: Pretty despicable whoever sent me this. We live in a democracy- death threats because you don’t agree? And unsigned? coward… pic.twitter.com/ERnRvvVxWo — Andrea Leadsom MP (@andrealeadsom) February 12, 2018 As Mr S pointed out last week, there was always something rather sinister about the Remainer claim that

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Europeans are Britain’s new minority | 12 February 2018

If you ran the marketing department of a progressive organisation, which wanted to advertise its inclusiveness, how would you do it? My guess is that you would run down the checklist of identity politics and first make sure your advertising had a perfect gender balance. Showing men and women equally would not be enough, however. There would need to be racial balance: black and brown faces among the white. You would want to tick confessional boxes and feature a Muslim and a Sikh. Perhaps you would want to show a transgender man or woman, just to be on the safe side. At the end of it all, you would sit

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The Oxfam scandal is the start of the charities’ MeToo moment

It would be interesting, wouldn’t it, to sit in on the meeting today between Oxfam executives and Penny Mordaunt, International Development Secretary, who has got off to a cracking start in her job by giving short shrift to the weaselly equivocations by Oxfam after the sex scandals involving its country director and other staff in Haiti and now Chad. But the intelligent money must be on a MeToo rush of individuals recalling what they’ve seen in other charities, in other countries, on exactly the same lines. My husband worked for a British charity in receipt of lots of US government money during and after the conflict in Kosovo. His surprise