Uk politics

O tempora, o mores! The Speaker yesterday announced that men no longer have to wear ties in the House of Commons. In fact, until now it’s only been a convention – not a rule – that they should wear one. And that’s exactly as it should be. Politics is far too important to be trumped by sartorial rules. If you elect your representative, they should be allowed to wear shorts or a T-shirt in the chamber.  But not encouraged to. The thing about a suit and tie is that they just happen to make men look smarter than they do in shorts or T-shirts. A suit and tie lead to

This morning, The Spectator held a series of discussions about the future of Conservative welfare reform, chaired by Andrew Neil and made possible by the sponsorship of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It was a sell-out invent with a stellar panel, and we’ll bring you the full reports later. But I thought it worth mentioning what our keynote speaker, Iain Duncan Smith, had to say about tower blocks and the work capability assessments made notorious in the film I, Daniel Blake. There are 4,000 tower blocks in Britain which the former Work & Pensions Secretary says represent an “architect-led” planning mistake. “Tower blocks, by and large, are not part of the housing culture of

Comparisons between Jesus and Jezza became commonplace long before he chose to end his election campaign with a rally at a church in Islington. As far back as August 2015, which in today’s political currency is at least two lifetimes ago, commentators were asking, ‘Is Jeremy Corbyn The New Messiah?’. It wasn’t just the shared initials (it’s a sign!) but the crowds he drew and the tearful adulation among his audience. But Corbyn is not messiah-like – indeed his very lack of magnetism is part of his appeal. And neither does Corbynism fill some Christianity-shaped hole in British life. The old religion demanded confession, sacrifice and a commitment that extends beyond

Ever since the general election Nicola Sturgeon has lurked in her tent, contemplating the future. The result of that election, in which the SNP’s share of the vote fell by 13 points and in which it lost 21 seats, demanded a period of ‘reflection’ from the first minister. Where does Scotland stand now? The answer, which was wearily predictable, is just where it stood before. Nicola Sturgeon emerged from her period of reflection yesterday with a simple message: nothing has changed. Sure, she talked about ‘resetting’ her timetable for independence, confirming that she would not this year introduce a bill at the Scottish parliament seeking the Section 30 order from

A political party barely known outside Northern Ireland now holds the balance of power in Parliament. Nobody saw it coming, but then that’s the new catchphrase in politics. So who are the DUP? And do they deserve the pillorying that has been coming their way since the general election catapulted them into the spotlight? I have been watching the party up close for decades. Yet while the DUP isn’t always a pretty sight to behold, the party is much more complicated than the hysterical stereotyping makes out. It’s true that the DUP has its roots in uncompromising unionism and religion. And for many years it was little more than a one-man’s fan club: the political extension of Ian Paisley’s hardline

A funny thing happened on the way to the revolution. On Saturday, thousands of earnest millennials – and better-humoured Gen-Xers pretending to be millennials – gathered in a field in Somerset for a concert. The headliner was an ancient rocker of an even older tune but the crowd cherished every word as their own – new, meaningful, of the moment. They cheered. They applauded. They sang this year’s secular Te Deum: ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’, wailed to the tune of ‘Seven Nation Army’ by the White Stripes. And the snake oil flowed. Corbyn, a soft-spoken evangelist, testified and got them raptured up: ‘Politics is actually about everyday life. It’s about all

Theresa May has made a far better offer to EU nationals, saying they will be granted permanent residence after staying five years. But the EU has not. Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, has said that her offer is ‘below our expectations and risks worsening the situation for our citizens’. He wants the European Court of Justice to have authority over the UK government in policing its pledge to EU citizens. Theresa May has ruled out any ECJ authority saying, quite rightly, that the Brexit vote was a move to end all that. So where now? Joseph Muscat, the prime minister of Malta which holds the rotating EU presidency,

So, they limp on, and Corbyn is justified in holding aloft the Queen’s Speech in jubilantly derisive fashion. Some of you Tories are no doubt hoping that Theresa May ‘recovers her mojo’ and that the past six weeks have been some weird transgression from her norm. No, sorry. She does not have a mojo. She has never had a mojo. Theresa May with a mojo is about as probable as Ruth Davidson getting it on with a hunky fella. The rest of you – me included – wonder who she will be replaced by. Only Davies and Davidson would improve the current position. And even then not by much. But

‘There is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens,’ wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ‘which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58’. Unite the Union’s rules appear to operate on much the same basis as the Soviet provision against ‘counter-revolutionary action’. Gerard Coyne, Unite’s West Midlands secretary, has been sacked after what he claims was a ‘kangaroo court’.  So far, so internal union politics. But Coyne is not just some provincial functionary. He was most recently a contender for General Secretary of Unite, losing to incumbent Len McCluskey by around 5,500 votes. It was a process — calling it an election would be something of