Uk politics

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May discovers the perfect answer to difficult Brexit questions

Theresa May has the perfect answer to all difficult questions: we don’t want to give away anything that will harm our position in the Brexit negotiations. No matter whether the information an MP is requesting has anything to do with Britain’s negotiating position: it’s a handy line to use when the answer is in fact ‘I don’t actually know’. The Prime Minister deployed this argument about not wanting to undermine the negotiations several times as she took questions from MPs in the Commons following her statement on last week’s European Council summit. She refused to give any further details on the sort of figures involved in the divorce bill negotiations

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: John Bercow’s strange Scottish turn

Oh dear. Although John Bercow has a penchant for winding up Conservative MPs in the Chamber, he also has a habit of taking the SNP to task for failing to grasp Westminster etiquette. However, today he adopted a rather different approach. During questions after Theresa May’s statement on the EU Council summit, the Speaker appeared to have an odd turn. Calling the SNP’s Alan Brown to speak, Bercow attempted a Scottish accent: Mr S recommends he leaves it to the Scots next time…

James Forsyth James Forsyth

If the Tories want to survive they must build more houses

Too many Tories have a sense of inevitable defeat at the next general election. They can see what the problems are but are fatalistic about their ability to solve them before 2022. Sajid Javid isn’t one of these Tories. He quickly grasped that the election result changed the internal Tory debate about housing policy and has been pushing for more radicalism ever since. On Sunday, he went on Andrew Marr to argue that the government should borrow to build. Javid’s argument is the same he made when he was backing Stephen Crabb for leader in 2016, interest rates are so low that it makes sense for government to borrow to

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Mhairi Black’s mixed messages

Last week, the SNP proved particularly vocal at PMQs after they went on the offensive over a Scottish Conservative MP missing Labour’s opposition say debate on universal credit to referee at a Barcelona match. Although the vote was non-binding – and the Conservatives abstained anyway – Douglas Ross has since promised to hang up his whistle – after next year’s World Cup. Not willing to drop the issue, however, the SNP’s Mhairi Black has gone on the warpath in her Daily Record column today. Black says that while the SNP MPs were out in force, Ross ‘cared so little that he was completely absent from Parliament’: ‘One Scottish Tory MP, Douglas Ross,

Sunday

Robert Tombs

Michel Barnier’s arrogant inflexibility over Brexit comes from a long Gallic tradition

If Michel Barnier and David Davis, in their regular dialogue of the deaf, seem to be inhabiting different mental universes, that is because they are. The British and French have often found each other particularly difficult to negotiate with. Of course, Barnier represents not France but the EU, and he has a negotiating position, the notorious European Council Guidelines, on which the veteran British diplomat Sir Peter Marshall has recently commented that ‘I have never seen, nor heard tell of, a text as antipathetic to the principle of give and take which is generally assumed to be at the heart of negotiation among like-minded democracies’. But, as a senior German

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Emily Thornberry says Britain is heading for ‘no deal’

Emily Thornberry – Britain is heading for ‘no deal’ The Shadow Foreign Secretary has warned that the United Kingdom is on the path to receive a ‘no deal’ outcome if the government continues to pursue Brexit negotiations in the manner it has been so far. Speaking to Andrew Marr, Thornberry was keen to stress the disadvantages that a no deal scenario would bring to the UK. However, Marr pressed Thornberry about her assertion that that there was ‘deadlock’ between the government and the EU: AM: You say there is deadlock, but directly Donald Tusk says ‘After Prime Minister May’s intervention my impression is that reports of deadlock between the EU

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Private Eye has become a humour-free zone

Anyone subscribe to Private Eye? I do, and have done for almost forty years. But I am beginning to wonder why. The cackle quotient declines on an almost weekly basis and this week I couldn’t find a single thing to laugh at. One can usually depend upon Craig Brown’s piece and ‘From The Message Boards’, which is almost always very cleverly written. But not this edition. There’s also Dumb Britain which often raises a laugh and Pseuds Corner. But the main body of the mag has been a humour-free zone for yonks. A few years back they increased the number of cartoons hugely, presumably in order to fill in for

Saturday

James Forsyth

Cabinet urge Hammond to be bold on housing in the Budget

With the next European Council not scheduled until December, political attention now turns to next month’s Budget. As I say in The Sun this morning, there are signs that the government is getting to the right place on housing. I understand that when Cabinet discussed the Budget this week, a frequent refrain from ministers was the need to be bold on housing. One ally of the Chancellor tells me, ‘Housing will be the big centrepiece of it’. I understand from government sources that the Budget is likely to back both land release and the government directly commissioning houses. This means the government would free up public sector land and then

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

No, we’re not half a trillion poorer, but foreign investment looks shaky

How did we mislay half a trillion pounds? Revised data from the Office for National Statistics has just reduced the UK’s ‘net international investment position’ from a surplus of £469 billion to a deficit of £22 billion. Downing Street dismissed this as ‘a technical revision’ — and in truth it’s not as bad it sounds, since what it tells us is that we own fewer foreign assets, and foreigners own more British assets, than had previously been recorded. Does national pride not attach to the idea that the rest of the world sees us as an investment safe haven? So why worry? Well, past miscounting apart, actual current trends in

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Ceci n’est pas une no deal, says Macron

This post is from tonight’s Evening Blend email, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s politics. Sign up here. Is the government really changing its policy on planning for a no deal? That question isn’t simple to answer, not least because it’s not entirely clear what the government’s policy is on this matter: Philip Hammond has said the government won’t spend the necessary money until it needs to, while Theresa May says whatever money needs to be spent will be spent. But the pressure has been rising from Brexiteers for ministers to make real plans and produce real money to ensure that those plans are implemented. This isn’t just

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George Osborne’s revenge on civil service bean counters

Since George Osborne moved to the Evening Standard, the one-time austere chancellor has rebranded himself as a centrist darling – and a critic of Theresa May’s government. So, at last night’s Standard Progress 1000 awards at the Tate Modern, Osborne took great delight in telling the esteemed crowd – which included Diane Abbott, Matt Hancock and Grayson Perry – of how he had stood up to government bean counters when he first arrived in the Treasury: ‘In the first week of my former job, I was advised by the Treasury civil service to cancel immediately three projects because we had to save money and it was easier to save money

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Caption contest: May goes it alone

Oh dear. Despite managing a carefully co-ordinated photo opp with Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron on arrival in Brussels, Theresa May cut a solemn figure this morning. A snapper took a photo of the Prime Minister alone at a meeting table – looking glumly into the distance. It’s hardly the Brexit image that Downing Street were trying to project. Oh to be a fly on the wall in No 10… Captions in the comments.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs threaten to rebel and vote for government policy

The talk of the Commons tearoom today is last night’s Opposition Day vote on Universal Credit. This is unusual: Opposition Day votes are non-binding and have recently been used largely for Labour to bang on about pet projects rather than hold the government’s feet to the fire. But the Opposition has sharpened up its act, and used growing Conservative concerns about the roll-out of the new benefit to good effect in yesterday’s debate. The whips had already decided that one of the ways they could make these Opposition Day debates even less politically powerful when they are operating in a minority government is to instruct all Tory MPs to abstain,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ministers may have to withdraw the EU Withdrawal Bill for a long time

So the EU (Withdrawal) Bill has been delayed once again, with Andrea Leadsom confirming a ‘pause’ to MPs this morning. The legislation is so weighed down with hundreds of hostile amendments that the whips daren’t take it anywhere near the Commons, and are trying to work on compromises with the many different groups of rebels in order to avoid a series of embarrassing defeats. Leadsom told the Chamber that ‘out of respect for this House, the Government are doing justice to the very significant concerns that have been raised about procedures and policy in the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, and it will come back to the House just as soon as

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Alastair Campbell’s Brexit ding-dong with John Redwood

Alastair Campbell has made his views on Brexit loud and clear to anyone who will listen. Tony Blair’s former spin doctor is not happy about Britain leaving the EU and he wants us all to know it. It’s something of a shame then that he doesn’t give others who don’t agree with him about Brexit the opportunity to have their say. Cracking set-to between Alistair Campbell and John Redwood over the WTO. pic.twitter.com/veUDBFCDTy — Nick Hilton (@nickfthilton) October 19, 2017 Campbell popped up on Sky News this afternoon to discuss why he thought walking away with no Brexit deal would be a mistake. But when it came to Tory MP John

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Damian Green gives Osborne the cold shoulder in Press Gallery speech

Oh dear. Although Theresa May is on a mission to unite her Cabinet after months of in-fighting, her mission appears not to extend to the party-at-large. Or if it does, that memo is yet to reach Damian Green. Today the First Secretary of State was guest speaker at the Press Gallery Lunch. Although Green is widely regarded as a safe pair of hands within government, there were a few lines that will ruffle feathers: Speaking about his predecessor – and former MP – George Osborne, Green said he normally takes ‘all his political insight’ from the London Evening Standard: ‘So I know that Theresa May is to blame for Ben

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A bungled Brexit could hand the SNP a new impetus

There is one thing that would absolutely guarantee that the United Kingdom could not make success of Brexit, the break-up of the Union. The immediate danger of that happening has receded. The SNP lost ground in the general election and Nicola Sturgeon now talks about independence far less than she once did. But, as I say in the politics column in this week’s magazine, if Brexit is mishandled this could change. This is why the EU withdrawal bill, which is currently paused as the whips work out how to get it through, must be changed. Clause 11 of the bill can be seen as an attempt to claim back previously devolved

The Tories are falling short on tackling crime

The 2017 Conservative Manifesto proclaimed that ‘the last seven years have seen historical falls in crime’ and promised to build on that record. The crime figures out today show that police-recorded crime increased by 13 per cent in the 12 months to June 2017. Was the increase the result of Government policies? And how much can we rely on the figures? We have got so used to the crime figures being manipulated that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) felt it necessary in today’s release to state several times whether or not the figures were real. On the overall increase of 13 per cent it says ‘we judge that there

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Ministers must take a Brexit ‘no deal’ seriously

Deal or no deal? Whatever type of Brexit Britain ends up with, the government should take the prospect of walking away with nothing seriously, says the Daily Telegraph. Yet the postponement of the EU withdrawal bill, which may not now come before Parliament for several weeks because of a looming Tory rebellion, does not bode well. The Telegraph stops short of echoing the warning of Labour’s Keir Starmer that the delay sums up the “paralysed” state of the current administration. But there remains ‘a palpable sense…of a catastrophe in the making’. With the Brexit stalemate unlikely to be broken this week, a Brexit no deal could end up as the

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

John Bercow’s ego trip lets May off the hook at PMQs

PMQs began with an announcement. The life president of the John Bercow fan-club rose from the Speaker’s chair to welcome a distinguished Dutch parliamentarian sitting up in the gallery. No one recognised the name of this blow-in from the land of windmills. But he is no doubt as important in his own domestic circle as Mr Bercow is in his. Taxpayers will be thrilled to know that the Speaker makes pals on his overseas junkets. And how apt that a man of such humble stature has befriended a parliamentarian from the Low Countries. Mr Bercow spent most of the session demonstrating his mastery of events by interrupting MPs with his slim