Uk politics

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Draft EU deal: five things you need to know

David Cameron is insisting that there is more work that needs to be done on the draft deal for Britain’s relationship with Europe published by Donald Tusk today. But here are the key points about that draft deal so far: 1. Cameron has got a weaker benefits deal. As explained here, the Prime Minister has not got his four year ban on in-work benefits for migrants that he originally set out to get, nor has he got the ‘emergency brake’ that he was pushing for over the weekend. Instead, Britain will be able to limit in-work benefits for new EU migrants over a four year period, starting with no benefits at

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Draft EU deal waters down Cameron’s migrant plan

Donald Tusk’s draft proposals for Britain’s EU renegotiation are out – and the focus is on whether David Cameron has got what he was after on benefits. The settlement includes the ‘emergency brake’ on in-work benefits for migrants, which would allow Cameron to ‘limit the access’ to benefits for four years. But this limit is not an outright ban: instead, it would be a gradual increase in eligibility starting with a total ban at the start of someone’s employment followed by ‘gradually increasing access to such benefits to take account of the growing connection of the worker with the labour market of the host Member State’. The draft document spells

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Britain’s new EU relationship to be revealed: but is it that different?

Today at 11am we will find out what Britain’s new relationship with the EU will look like. Downing Street insists that the draft renegotiation outline being published by European Council president Donald Tusk is still a draft, and there may well be changes to it (though presumably not all of them beneficial to Britain) in the next few weeks.  But it looks as though the European Council summit on 18 and 19 February will be discussing and signing off this renegotiation, and that therefore the June referendum is on.  The biggest challenge that David Cameron, who will give a speech later today on the proposals, has to overcome is any

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Donald Tusk to table Britain’s draft EU deal tomorrow at noon

This is the analysis of the latest EU referendum negotiations in tonight’s Evening Blend email, a free round-up of the day’s political events. Click here to subscribe. Today in brief The EU renegotiation entered its endgame, with European Council president Donald Tusk saying he will publish proposals for a draft deal tomorrow at noon… …as eurosceptics continued to attack the plans for an emergency brake on in-work benefits for migrants. The British Medical Association announced next week’s junior doctors’ strike will be going ahead. A committee of MPs blasted the ‘catastrophic’ conditions that failed charity Kids Company had been allowed to operate in – read Miles Goslett’s original scoop exposing

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Who will join Mark Pritchard in the reluctant Inners club?

Tory MPs have been buzzing today about Mark Pritchard’s announcement that he would be supporting the campaign for Britain to remain in the European Union. The well-known eurosceptic MP wrote a significant piece for the Sunday Times yesterday setting out his reasons for becoming a reluctant Inner, which include the risk of weakening Nato, and an end to ‘Britain’s political and diplomatic counterbalance to France and Germany’s strategic clumsiness’. What’s interesting about Pritchard’s intervention is that he had actually made up his mind on the matter in March 2015, and had told his staff and Downing Street that he would be backing the Remain campaign then. Most of his colleagues

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Newsnight deserves an award for its superb follow-up to the Spectator’s scoop

It’s great to see Newsnight once again nominated for an award for its coverage of the Kids Company scandal, and I hope that it wins this time. When Miles Goslett broke the story in The Spectator in February last year, he had all of the details: the full horror of Camila Batmanghelidjh and her bizarre modus operandi, her dodgy finances and – crucially – how No10 overrode concerns from civil servants who had wanted to pull the plug on the venture. The story was there, on a plate: Miles Goslett had written the scoop of the year. He and Mary Wakefield, our commissioning editor, made sure it was bombproof – she

Sunday

James Forsyth

Emergency brake breakthrough, claims Downing Street

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/whysexmatters-thedeathofsportandistheeusinkingwhetherbrexithappensornot-/media.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson discuss whether the European project is in grave danger – regardless of Brexit happening or not” startat=1420] Listen [/audioplayer] Donald Tusk will not circulate the proposed draft UK/EU deal tomorrow. It had been thought that Tusk would put out a draft on Monday after final talks over supper with Cameron this evening. Instead, there will be further meetings between UK and EU diplomats, before Tusk decides whether or not to circulate a draft text to the other member states on Tuesday. In a statement tonight, Downing Street has said that the European Commission accepts that the current UK immigration situation would

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cameron seeks to beef up ’emergency brake’ as eurosceptics fight each other

David Cameron and Donald Tusk have been discussing Britain’s beef with the European Union over a dinner of beef this evening. The European Council president has just left, telling reporters there was ‘no deal’. Top of the Prime Minister’s menu was the issue of benefits that has been so chewy for him during his renegotiation. Cameron now appears to be seeking to beef up (sorry) the emergency brake offer that his eurosceptic critics described only on Friday as a ‘sick joke’, arguing that it must come into force straight after the referendum result, that the present levels of EU migration to the UK could be sufficient to trigger it, and that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Barack Obama doesn’t talk about Britain? That’s a good thing.

As was often the case, Oscar Wilde was clever and witty but mistaken. There are worse things than being talked about but not being talked about is one of them. For evidence of this we need do little more than consult this graphic compiled by our friends at Politico. Derived from an analysis of more than 2,000 speeches made since he became President, it shows how often various countries have been mentioned by Barack Obama. You will notice that the United Kingdom does not feature. This is a very good thing indeed. Of course, it has not been treated as such by some. See this, eh? So much for the so-called

Toby Young Toby Young

David Cameron is plain wrong about Oxford and race. Here’s why

I applaud the Prime Minister for pointing out the scandalous lack of black students at Britain’s top universities, but he’s wrong about whose fault it is – at least when it comes to Oxford, his alma mater. Yes, it’s true that Oxford only admitted five black British Caribbean applicants in 2013, a disgracefully low number, as David Cameron points out, but there’s no evidence to suggest that the cause is ‘ingrained, institutional and insidious’ attitudes, i.e. racism, on the part of Oxford’s admission authorities. How do I know this? Because Oxford already publishes a wealth of data about admissions – the new law Cameron is drafting to force universities to

Saturday

James Forsyth

Downing Street expects draft EU deal to disappoint

We are only days away from seeing Donald Tusk’s proposed text for the UK/EU deal. The President of the European Council is expected to circulate a draft early next week following his Sunday night supper with David Cameron. But, as I write in The Sun this morning, Downing Street is keen to stress that the publication of this draft doesn’t mean that the renegotiation is over. They are adamant that Cameron will have a chance to toughen up the terms at the European Council on February the 18th. Cameron’s problem is that he would like a deal at the February Council, so that he can have a referendum in June.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

With an 18-point lead in the latest poll, momentum is with the EU ‘in’ campaign. 

Why is David Cameron having such trouble persuading Jean-Claude Juncker to give in to his minimal demands for EU reform? The Prime Minister pledged, in a Tory manifesto, to restrict welfare for migrants for the first four years they’re in Britain: not as an ‘emergency’, but as a matter of routine. He was returned with a majority, and under British democracy this means it ought to happen. If the Lords were to try to frustrate this, the PM would overrule them because it was a manifesto pledge, voted on by the public. Why accept a veto from the EU? But the polls show a clear lead for ‘in’ – a ComRes

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

England named worst in developed world for literacy. So yes, school reform is needed.

Today’s OECD study of basic skills ranks England lowest in the developed world for literacy, and second lowest for numeracy. We knew that our schools might struggle to compete with the likes of Singapore and South Korea, but this puts the problem in a whole new perspective. It’s the delayed results of a study taken four years ago where 5,000 in each country were sampled so, to some extent, it’s a hangover from the days when a far greater share of children left school without five decent passes. But the report also found that England has three times more low-skilled people among those aged 16-19 than the best-performing countries like

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

MPs plan to water down controversial ‘Saatchi Bill’ on medical treatments

The latest incarnation of the Saatchi Bill – a piece of legislation properly known as the Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill – has its report stage in the Commons tomorrow. I’ve written before about the problems with this Bill, which is now being taken through Parliament by Tory MP Chris Heaton-Harris, and it now seems that a cross-party group of MPs will tomorrow succeed in making a well-meaning bill less dangerous. A series of amendments from Labour, Tory, SNP, SDLP and DUP members will remove the sections of the Bill that are aimed at preventing a doctor from being sued for negligence if they decide to use an ‘innovative’

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Eurosceptics to push Cameron on EU renegotiation in Commons debate

It’s fair to say that David Cameron’s answer to John Baron at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, in which the Tory leader basically confirmed to his backbench colleague that he was ignoring him, hasn’t exactly helped relations with the eurosceptics in the Tory party. The row was splashed across the front page of the Sunday Telegraph this weekend, and I now understand that Baron has secured a Commons debate that will take up the issue he has been trying to raise with the Prime Minister. Baron’s debate will be in a backbench business session on 4 February, and has a rather spiky motion for discussion: ‘That this House believes in the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Google tax row is convenient for Labour

In the Google tax story, which continues to run in the papers today, Labour has found a theme that it can exploit in the Commons and in speeches over the next few weeks. Given so many Tories were prepared to criticise the ‘derisory’ amount the tech giant has agreed to pay back when the Commons discussed the matter on Monday, Jeremy Corbyn will feel he is on reasonably safe ground raising the issue at PMQs today.  Tax is always a handy issue, not just because it allows oppositions to promise to spend more using only the fruit of the magic money tree of cracking down on tax avoidance, but also

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Top Tories form social justice caucus to plot ‘all-out assault on poverty’

David Cameron has decided that social justice will be his key legacy theme as Prime Minister, with his autumn conference speech and most of the announcements so far this year focusing on an ‘all-out assault on poverty’. At times, this has appeared a little vague, while other announcements, like the plan for Muslim women to learn English, have been a little confused. But Cameron has clearly decided that the Conservatives must tackle injustices in society, not just because it is right for the country, but also because it is right for the party, which is still seen by too many voters as for the rich. I understand that a private

Monday

Alex Massie

Memo to Outers: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Honesty and consistency; two qualities everyone agrees to value but that are easily jettisoned as soon as maintaining them proves too inconvenient. It turns out they’re not so valuable as all that. So it is with all things Euro-referendum-related. If we are to believe the rival tribunes competing for your affections later this year, negotiating the terms of a British exit from the European Union will either be a doddle or a disaster, with little room for hope in between those twin imposters. Well, perhaps. Sometimes, however, it helps to imagine an alternative but comparable scenario in which, as it happens, you may be less invested. Doing so might make

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

MPs hammer Treasury ministers on ‘completely unacceptable’ sweetheart deal for Google

Even though, as Fraser argued last week, Google has done nothing wrong in agreeing to pay £130 million to settle its UK tax claims, MPs were in a furious mood about the agreement when they discussed it in the Commons this afternoon. John McDonnell asked an urgent question on the deal, and found, unusually, that he had support from across the House. It wasn’t just Labour MPs who stood up to condemn what they saw as one standard for their constituents, who are hounded by the taxman over relatively small claims, and another for big powerful multinationals like Google. Tory MPs joined in, too, with Steve Baker telling David Gauke

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ministers tease Labour frontbenchers about party’s predicament

Ministers appear largely to have given up on taking scrutiny from the Labour party seriously, if today’s Education Questions was anything to go by. Both Nicky Morgan and Sam Gyimah had come armed with jokes and jibes about the Opposition’s predicament, which were designed to deflect from a rare co-ordinated Labour attack over the implementation – or lack of – of the Conservatives’ flagship manifesto promise to double free childcare for three and four-year-olds, and questions about the attainment gap. Jenny Chapman asked about that promise – and whether one in three families who were told they would get free childcare would in fact receive no additional care at all.