uk politics Archives

Thursday

25 Jan 2018

Are we entering a golden age of backbench politics?

It’s been a while since the young H.H. Asquith told Spectator readers that ‘no third Party has ever been able to stand its ground in England.’ His leader, ‘The English Extreme Left’, appeared in 1876, when the enervated Liberal Party seemed destined to split. His core contention was that Britain would not, in fact could not, brook multi-party politics: For the last two hundred years there always have been two great Parties, and two only; and though that is in itself no reason why a third should not now be formed, it is a very serious practical obstacle in the way of its success. Parties, like other institutions, at any rate

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Is time finally up for Theresa May?

Is time up for Theresa May? A report in today’s Sun indicates that it could well be, with the paper suggesting that the chair of the party’s 1922 committee, Graham Brady, has told Tory MPs not to issue any more demands for a leadership challenge. Why does this matter? Because it suggests the threshold for a no confidence vote – 48 letters, or 15 per cent of the party’s MPs – could be approaching. Tory MPs would be ‘crazy’ to call time on May’s leadership, argues the Sun, which urges them to ‘resist’ making a move against the Prime Minister. It goes without saying that things are hardly going ‘swimmingly’

Wednesday

24 Jan 2018

Steerpike

Old habits die hard for George Osborne, Davos Man

George Osborne has returned to his old ways this week – flying to Davos as part of a contingent of Citizens of Nowhere who have made the luxury Swiss resort their home for the week. Only this year the global elite have been joined by some guests who could not be described as your typical attendee. Happily, Osborne welcomes the newfound interest in the event. the former Writing the diary in the new issue of The Spectator, the Evening Standard editor says ‘Davos Man understands that the struggle takes many forms’. ‘Shadow chancellor John McDonnell is braving the Glühwein to lecture us on Marxism,’ he writes. ‘Donald Trump is swapping cheeseburgers

Steerpike

Presidents Club chair’s credentials made it into government press release

The Financial Times investigation into a men-only charity dinner where hostesses were allegedly groped has sent shockwaves through Westminster today. Government minister Nadhim Zahawi has found himself in the hot seat over his attendance (he says he left early), while David Meller, a co-chair of the Presidents Club behind the event, has quit his non-executive role on the Department for Education board. Responding to an Urgent Question on the news, Anne Milton told MPs that she had never heard of the ‘President Club’ behind that dinner. However, Mr S is unsure that more longstanding members of the government will be able to use this line. After all, in the government press release

Lloyd Evans

Does Jeremy Corbyn think the Tories are to blame for human mortality?

Boris Johnson came up early in PMQs. The Cabinet’s new ‘shadow chancellor’ has called for extra money – five billion quid – to be lavished on the NHS. Jeremy Corbyn asked Mrs May if she agreed. She dustily replied that the real chancellor had promised more than five billion last autumn. He’d pledged six! Six billion didn’t satisfy Mr Corbyn. He called the Prime Minister out by cutting her pledge in half and subtracting £200m. This gave £2.8bn which, he, said, had been ‘spread like thin gruel over two years.’ Good word, gruel. Evocative of prison-hulks and Dickensian poor-houses. It adds colour to Labour’s dream-picture of the Tories as a set

Steerpike

David Cameron: Brexit isn’t as bad as I expected

Surprise guests at this year’s Davos include Donald Trump and John McDonnell. But fear not, there’s still the usual citizens of nowhere. David Cameron and George Osborne have upped (ski) sticks and headed to the luxury Swiss resort for the week. Unfortunately for the former Prime Minister, he appears to have been caught out by a roaming microphone. Channel 5 have released footage of Cameron in conversation with Lakshmi Mittal in which he lets his thoughts be known on Brexit. It turns out it’s not so bad as he thought – though it’s still a ‘mistake’: ‘It’s frustrating. As I keep saying, it’s a mistake, not a disaster. It’s turned

Ross Clark

Great Ormond Street is wrong to return the Presidents Club’s cash

The Presidents Club dinner is not the type of event to which I tend to be invited and neither do I suspect I would go were I to be asked – although in truth that is as much down to my native tightfistedness as to the reports of boorish behaviour from this year’s event. I don’t like the idea of anyone trying to get me drunk in order that I might lose my inhibitions and start writing a very large cheque for charity, however worthy the cause. I would rather make my charitable donations when sober, thank you very much. Were I running a charity, on the other hand, I

James Forsyth

Dennis Skinner’s antics put Jeremy Corbyn off at PMQs

Jeremy Corbyn has learnt from last week’s PMQs where Theresa May simply stood up and said she wasn’t going to answer as he hadn’t asked a question. His first two questions were short, sharp and to the point. He began by asking Theresa May if she agreed with Boris Johnson that the NHS needed an extra £5 billion. He followed that up by asking her who the public should believe about the NHS and the winter crisis, her or A&E doctors? Then, Corbyn slightly lost his thread. But this wasn’t really his fault. The chamber was distracted by a vigorous row between Dennis Skinner and the SNP MP Angus MacNeil;

Melanie McDonagh

Thank goodness Turkey is not in the EU

What, you might well ask, could possibly make the situation in Syria look much worse, after President Erdogan’s assault on the Kurds in Afrin? The Turks are, obviously, attacking the forces that did most of the heavy lifting when it came to dealing with Isis on the ground. Indeed, If it hadn’t been for the Kurds, it’s at least arguable that Isis would still be sitting tight in Raqqa rather than dispersed elsewhere. They are the only really reliable ally in the area for the US – though I take on board the argument that it was the US’s move in establishing a force of 30,000 border guards, dominated by

Katy Balls

Forget pink, David Davis just rubbed out the government’s negotiating red lines

During the government’s crunch negotiations with Brussels to get ‘sufficient progress’ before Christmas, nervous Brexiteers began to worry that Theresa May was about to give too much away. Jacob Rees-Mogg used a question at PMQs to warn the Prime Minister that her Brexit red lines were ‘beginning to look a little bit pink’. He urged her to ‘apply a new coat of paint’ before she next goes to Brussels. So, it will come as some concern to the Conservative Brexiteers – and the members of the European Research Group, that Rees-Mogg now leads, that today Davis said anyone who goes into negotiations with ‘red lines’ is an ‘idiot’. In an appearance

Steerpike

Watch: David Davis saved by the bell

David Davis is no stranger to accusations that he has dodged Parliamentary scrutiny over Brexit. This morning though, there was no getting out of an appearance in front of the Brexit select committee. Fortunately for the Brexit secretary however, he was briefly rescued during a tricky exchange about transitional arrangements when his phone went off. Davis scrambled to silence it quickly, before it died in his hands. Mr S. hopes Jean-Claude Juncker doesn’t try to get in touch this morning…

Harry Mount

Meghan Markle and the return of American Anglophilia

Prince Harry’s imminent wedding to Meghan Markle will reinvigorate the dying special relationship between Britain and America. It is a boost for the fading American regard for the monarchy. In America, the mother country is increasingly the forgotten country – and it has been fading for a century, ever since the First World War. As Sellar and Yeatman put it in 1066 and All That, after the allied victory ‘America was thus clearly top nation, and History came to a full stop’. As the increasingly weaker party in the 242-year affair, we cherish the special relationship much more than the dominant partner. That great Anglo-American WH Auden – an exile

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Boris is right about the NHS

Boris Johnson was reportedly humiliated in yesterday’s cabinet following his demand for more money for the NHS. If it was the Prime Minister’s intention to embarrass Boris Johnson it was a mistake, says the Times. In its editorial, the paper calls the ministerial discussions ‘an exercise in staged humiliation rather than consensus-building’. The PM may well be thinking that her ability to survive a tumultuous few months now means ‘that she is not only safe but steadily confounding her critics’. Such thinking would also be wrong, the paper argues, pointing out that Boris’s ‘return to trouble-making…reflects deepening frustration with Downing Street on both wings of the party’. Britain needs ‘drive

Tuesday

23 Jan 2018

Katy Balls

What the government’s fake news unit tell us about the Brexit negotiations

The UK government has today announced plans to establish a new unit to counter ‘fake news’. This will serve as a ‘dedicated national security communications unit’ which aims to combat ‘disinformation by state actors and others’. Announcing the move, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘we are living in an era of fake news and competing narratives.’ Its creation has led to inevitable jokes, with Tim Farron declaring that the three Brexiteers – Boris, Gove and David Davis – ‘should be the first investigations’. Meanwhile, others online have taken the swift government action as an indicator that Russian activity could have played a role during the EU referendum. However, the big Brexit

Isabel Hardman

Can Theresa May really survive all this Cabinet indiscipline?

Theresa May does seem to lose more authority with each week. A reshuffle in which people refuse to move, followed by Cabinet ministers using the media to ask for more money for the NHS and defence. But does this make her more likely to go soon? That the Prime Minister is weak has been priced in since the general election. It means Cabinet ministers feel so confident that they can turn down job moves, send the head of the army out to complain about defence spending, and brief the newspapers about something they haven’t yet said. But the fact that this is so well-acknowledged, and has been for a long

Steerpike

No 10’s SpAd gridlock

Rather than re-energise the Tory party as intended, Theresa May’s new year reshuffle just exposed her weaknesses and managed to annoy a lot of Conservative MPs in the process. What’s more, Mr S understands there is another undesired consequence. Two weeks on and Downing Street is yet to fill a host of special advisor vacancies. Mr S hears murmur of discontent over the way the process is being handled – with complaints of No 10 control-freakery and attempts to thrust candidates on ministers. One aspect of this is a bid to keep the redundancy payments low – so re-appoint those SpAds who lost their jobs rather than go for external

James Forsyth

Boris is right about NHS funding – but he didn’t get his way today

Cabinet today was not the dramatic showdown over NHS funding that some expected. Boris Johnson was, unsurprisingly given that Theresa May knew what he wanted to say, not called on to speak first. Those Ministers who went before him emphasised that it would be better if these debates took place in private, not public. When it was Boris’s turn to speak, I am told that he slightly pulled his horns in. He made the case for more money for the NHS but he didn’t argue for a specific figure, I understand. Interestingly, and in a sign of how May still views the International Trade Secretary as her bridge to Brexiteers,

Robert Peston

Is Boris preparing to flounce out of the cabinet?

‘Is Boris preparing to flounce out of the cabinet?’ Not my question, but that of one of his senior ministerial colleagues. Why could that be? Exhibit A. In this morning’s cabinet, he is hijacking Jeremy Hunt’s update about how hospitals are coping with the winter pressures with a headline grabbing and overtly populist demand for the Treasury to find an additional £5bn a year of health spending – which would be a modest down payment on the £18bn (‘£350m a week’) he pledged during the EU referendum campaign. Theresa May won’t be amused. Hunt can’t be sure if Johnson is friend or foe. But it is the kind of typical

Steerpike

Theresa May’s Burns Night faux pas

Oh dear. On Monday night, the Prime Minister attempted to show her support for the union by throwing a Burns Night supper at No. 10. Although Theresa May gave a short address at the inaugural event, Steerpike understands it fell to David Mundell – the Scottish Secretary – to address the haggis (a ‘crispy haggis’, served as a starter). Meanwhile, Kristene Hair gave the toast to the laddies. Downing Street has released a list of the guest list for the dinner. Guest list for @theresa_may’s Burns supper tonight. No info on who addressed the haggis… pic.twitter.com/Cdl4bgRYtT — Nick Eardley (@nickeardleybbc) January 22, 2018 Alas, there’s a problem – or several problems

Lauren Mcevatt

Should the Tories consider all-women shortlists?

That’s a question I never thought I’d ask. Women shouldn’t need to be patronised by creating a special class of system to run for election. But with the announcement of the Conservative Government’s PPS list yesterday I was shocked to note that only 8 out of 43 appointments were women. That’s a mere 18.6 percent of the list. At 21 percent of the Conservative parliamentary party, women are still too under represented, despite the valiant efforts of our Prime Minister and Baroness Jenkin through Women to Win and similar party efforts to encourage more female candidates. To give the Prime Minister credit where it’s due, out of all of the