Uk politics

Monday

Steerpike

Conservative MP resigns from board that doesn’t exist

Oh dear. As resignations go, there has been some tough competition for the most newsworthy in recent years – from Nigel Farage’s unresignation to the entire Labour shadow cabinet’s to Priti Patel’s last week. However, up until now, Mr S had yet to come across a resignation from a job that it is unclear they still held. Step forward George Freeman. This afternoon Labour have gone on the attack over the news that Freeman – as he himself announced in a ConHome blog this morning – has ‘stood down‘ from his role in No 10. Given that just last week Freeman wrote to Theresa May (in a letter which mysteriously

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Michel Barnier’s Brexit trade deal warning

The furore over the Brexit divorce bill has been such that it is easy to forget that it isn’t the only major sticking point in talks with the EU. Theresa May looks set to up Britain’s offer this week (from €20bn to around €40bn), in the hope that more cash on the table will unlock the next stage of negotiations. But Michel Barnier’s speech today should serve as a warning to the British government: things won’t necessarily get easier when the Brexit divorce bill is sorted. In fact, Barnier makes it clear that talks could get even more difficult. The EU’s chief negotiator hinted that Britain would still miss out

Steerpike Steerpike

Scottish Labour leader: If it’s England vs Scotland, I support England

This weekend, Richard Leonard proved that an Englishman can succeed in Scottish politics. The Corbyn ally – who hails from Yorkshire – beat Anas Sarwar to be crowned the leader of Scottish Labour. However, it remains to be seen whether an Englishman can ever be First Minister. While Scottish Labour members may be over to get over their leader having an English accent, Mr S wonders if the latest confession by Leonard will prove a step too far when it comes to the general public. With England and Scotland enjoying a fierce rivalry in sport, Leonard was asked today, on Radio 5live, what side he was on when it comes

Jamie Bartlett

Can you distinguish between a bot and a human?

We’ve all gone a bit bot-mad in the past few weeks. Automated accounts have invaded our civic life – especially pesky Russian ones – and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have woken up to the fact that a new propaganda war is taking place online. Bots – which is of course short for robot – are essentially accounts which can be programmed to automatically post, share, re-tweet, or do whatever the programmer chooses. Creating a bot is extremely easy, and huge amounts of cheap bots are available on dark net markets for next to nothing. There are millions of harmless bots out there doing all sorts of helpful

William Cook

Germany’s political crisis puts Merkel’s future in doubt

When I had lunch with a senior CDU politician in Düsseldorf on Saturday, there was no sign that Germany’s coalition talks were about to break down so abruptly, plunging the Bundesrepublik into a political crisis with no solution in sight. Sure, negotiations had dragged on for weeks, said the man from Merkel’s party, but that wasn’t unusual here in Germany. They’d probably drag on until January, but the participants would eventually work something out. The next day his comfortable prediction was confounded, as Christian Lindner’s Free Democratic Party walked out of the coalition talks. ‘It became clear that the parties weren’t able to develop a common idea of how to

Mary Dejevsky

The riddle of Theresa May’s Russia policy

It is just a week since Theresa May used her Mansion House speech to launch a broadside on Russia. During a wide-ranging survey of the international horizon, it was Russia she singled out for special criticism and it was her Russia attack that attracted (and was surely intended to attract) the headlines. Just a reminder of what she said. Russia was ‘chief’ among those who seek to undermine ‘our open economies and free societies’. Not only had it annexed Crimea illegally, but it had fomented conflict in the Donbas, repeatedly violated the national airspace of several European countries, and waged a ‘sustained campaign of cyber espionage and disruption’. And this

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Morrissey’s Brexit love affair makes him the last true rock’n’roll rebel

Morrissey, Smiths frontman turned solo crooner turned novelist, has long taken pleasure in rattling the establishment. From mocking the monarchy on the 1986 Smiths album The Queen is Dead, to his lovely ballad about how much he wanted Margaret Thatcher to die, to his frequent foot-stomping over the meat industry, the music industry and industry in general, this Mancunian contrarian, this gobby quiff-sporter, has never been shy about shooting off his mouth at powerful people who irritate him. Now he’s at it again. Only this time he’s saved his ire for the new establishment: the PC, sex-panicking, Brexitphobic bores who make up the 21st-century chattering class. Risking his national-treasure status

Steerpike Steerpike

Philip Hammond’s driverless car U-turn

On Sunday, Philip Hammond took both No 10 and No 11 by surprise with his interview on the Andrew Marr show. As well as announcing that there are ‘no unemployed people’, he promised to launch Budget week by posing in a driverless car, on a visit to the West Midlands today. Given that it doesn’t take much to work out that a beleaguered Chancellor about to deliver his budget pictured in a driverless car is not a metaphor for success, people soon took to social media to ask who had approved such an idea. It turns out no-one. As the Times reports today, aides had explicitly ruled out such a stunt. There was

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The collapse of coalition talks in Germany makes a ‘no deal’ Brexit a little more likely

The Cabinet is expected to resume talks about Brexit today, reportedly nudging towards a £40 billion offer ahead of a meeting on Friday – but is there much point? Germany still has no government with Angela Merkel’s coalition talks having collapsed. The chairman of the Free Democratic Party ended talks with Merkel last night and her old coalition partners, the Social Democrats, refuse to enter a deal as this would confer opposition status on the populist AfD and thereby augmenting the progress they made in the recent federal elections. All of a sudden, Merkel’s fourth term has been thrown into question, and there’s talk of her doing a Theresa May

Sunday

Steerpike

Martin Freeman’s Labour loyalty issues

Although Jeremy Corbyn has seen a number of celebrity supporters come and go, Martin Freeman has at least proved loyal. The Hobbit actor has spoken in favour of the Labour leader – and appeared in party broadcasts. Indeed on the Andrew Marr show this morning, Freeman once again endorsed Corbyn. Only this time he added a caveat – making clear he supported Corbyn primarily because he was the leader of the Labour party as given that Labour is his ‘team’, he would support whoever held that role: AM: You quite like Jeremy Corbyn as a man, don’t you? MF: Yes, generally I think most people do, a lot of Tories

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: John McDonnell says Labour’s nationalisation programme is no ‘magic card trick’

Philip Hammond – ‘We are delivering homes at record numbers’ Philip Hammond is set to deliver his second budget on Wednesday, which many believe will be make or break for his future at No. 11 Downing Street. He faces a difficult balancing act with challenges on many different fronts, including how to address the UK’s housing crisis. The Chancellor defended the government’s record on housing, though he acknowledged that the government did need to intervene in an area that he referred to as a ‘priority’: AM: Almost everybody agrees that there is a housing crisis in this country. Sajid Javid was sitting in that chair a few weeks ago and

Steerpike Steerpike

Philip Hammond bungles his Marr interview

Oh dear. As Budget day looms, there is growing concern among the Conservatives that Philip Hammond may be about to do something stupid. However, few expected him to step into disaster before Wednesday. In an interview on the Andrew Marr show this morning, the Chancellor created a pre-Budget row as he bungled his way through the exchange – dropping a series of clangers. First off, Hammond managed to turn one of his party’s top achievements into a toxic issue. Asked about unemployment – which is at a 42-year low – Hammond claimed that ‘there are no unemployed people’: "There are no unemployed people" claims @PhilipHammondUK. #marr pic.twitter.com/YrtvcRtCNG — The Andrew

Toby Young Toby Young

Can Boris Johnson’s dad avoid saying anything inflammatory on I’m A Celebrity?

Crikey Moses! Stanley Johnson has been cast as the token pensioner in the new series of I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! At 77, he will be 27 years older than the next oldest person in the jungle-based reality show, 50-year-old ex-footballer Dennis Wise. He cheerfully admits he has never watched the programme before, which comes as no surprise. If he had known what he was letting himself in for, would he have signed up? I don’t just mean the routine indignities, such as chewing on turkey testicles or washing down a plate of live cockroaches with a beaker of blended emu liver. Or the discomfort of enduring a

Saturday

Stephen Daisley

Jeremy Corbyn’s takeover of Labour is all but complete

Oh Jeremy Corbyn, your takeover of Labour is all but complete. Left-winger Richard Leonard has triumphed in the Scottish Labour leadership, defeating moderate rival Anas Sarwar. The Yorkshireman and former GMB official becomes the party’s sixth leader in ten years and takes over from Kezia Dugdale, who abruptly quit the post in August for the backbenches and Bush Tucker Trials. The outcome, announced at Glasgow’s Science Centre this morning, was hardly surprising. Sarwar’s campaign was arguably doomed from the start. Outwardly, he seemed like a fresh face to take Scottish Labour forward — young, articulate, media-savvy — but he was dogged by questions about his shareholdings, a family firm which

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scottish Labour’s new leader is unlikely to trouble Davidson or Sturgeon

In the end, it wasn’t even close. Richard Leonard now takes ownership of the black spot handed to every leader of the Scottish Labour party. He defeated Anas Sarwar, the son of the former MP Mohammed of that ilk and the early presumed favourite in the race, by 12,469 votes to 9,516. Mr Leonard is the party’s sixth leader in a decade. Sarwar began the contest with several disadvantages, the first of which being that he was relatively well-known. That was sufficient to win him the support of most of his Holyrood colleagues but a grave handicap in terms of a party membership craving something – anything – new. His

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The month that will determine Theresa May’s future

Three events in the next four weeks will determine Theresa May’s future as Prime Minister, I say in The Sun today. If May goes 0 for 3 on the Budget, the Damian Green inquiry and the EU Council then she’ll truly be on the skids. But if the Budget doesn’t unravel, Damian Green is cleared and she gets ‘sufficient progress’ to move on to trade and transition in December then she’ll be in the strongest position she’s been in since the election. The Budget on Wednesday is the first of these tests. As I write in the magazine this week, so many Tory political tensions abound right now that it’ll

Pádraig Belton

Northern Ireland’s political deadlock is starting to bite

Brexit is proving such a distraction that few seem to have noticed the creeping start to direct rule in Northern Ireland. While much of the coverage in the newspapers focused on the EU withdrawal bill, the Northern Ireland Budget Act – which shifts Stormont’s most important power, the task of setting Northern Ireland’s budget, to London – tiptoed its way through parliament this week.  The thing about direct rule is that once you have started, it’s hard to stop. It will also do little to heal the country’s fractured politics: the DUP will push for more; they will also seek the appointment of direct rule ministers as quickly as possible. This makes

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Is tax avoidance always wrong?

In the argument about tax avoidance, people feel very strongly, yet it is hard to define wrong behaviour. We all know that tax evasion, being illegal, is wrong. But what tax behaviour is legal, yet wrong? Take a deliberately trivial example. Safety riding hats carry no VAT if they are sold as children’s hats. No law says that only children may buy or wear them, and no law limits their size. So it is commonplace for adults, without any dishonesty, to buy children’s riding hats for themselves to avoid the VAT. I struggle to see this as immoral. Is it just a matter of scale, then? Is it all right

Rachel Johnson

Why I feel sorry for Damian Green

I have to admit, I feel a bit sorry for Damian Green about the porn found on his work computer. What if someone else had downloaded it? What if it had been planted as kompromat via some Russian malware? Especially as what’s on telly can be far more alarming. I was sofa-side on Monday night, crying through Gabriel Gatehouse’s Newsnight package on the massacre of Rohingya Muslims, which showed dead babies and interviewed their mothers and widowed fathers. I was so distressed that my husband changed to Channel 4 for relief. On our wide HD flatscreen were close-ups of no fewer than six hairless adult female pudenda. It was his turn to scream, and

Friday

Steerpike

Labour’s Christmas attack

Christmas is meant to be the season of goodwill. Alas, no-one at Labour HQ appears to have got the memo. The Labour party have released their Christmas cards – with a distinct Conservative vibe this year. Corbyn’s party has used the festive opportunity to make fun of Theresa May’s conference speech where the letters fell from the board behind her – meaning the slogan of ‘building a country that works for everyone’ soon became confused. Yours for a mere £8…