Uk politics

Why the Tories are talking tough on crime

Although Brexit remains the top of the news agenda, the Conservatives believe they will need to talk about more than just leaving the EU if they are to triumph in an early election. Boris Johnson used his conference speech to push a domestic agenda beyond Brexit. The areas he focussed on were the same ones that Downing Street has repeatedly pushed since the summer: the NHS, law and order, education and investment in the north. Johnson singled out tackling crime as a priority: ‘The first thing we must do in spreading opportunity is to insist on the equal safety of the public wherever you live to make your streets safer

‘You get to the stage where you are afraid to go home.’ MP reveals her experience of domestic abuse

In a first for Parliament, an MP has spoken openly and in detail about her experience of being abused emotionally and sexually by her partner. In an incredibly emotional speech, Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, told the Chamber about a relationship which started so promisingly but which was in fact a controlling one, full of rage and fear. She spoke of how her partner continued to tell her that he adored her, that she was all his, even as she was trying to work out how to leave, timing his morning showers so that she could quietly steal his keys and get him locked out of their home.

Isabel Hardman

Why did Boris Johnson bother giving his conference speech at all?

What was the point of Boris Johnson’s speech? It didn’t contain any announcements for Tory activists to clutch as they left the hall. Details of his proposals to resolve the Brexit stand-off were missing, and will instead be unveiled to parliament later today. It even finished on a strangely low-energy note, rather as if Johnson had ended up emulating the electric cars he had been praising by running out of battery sooner than expected. Yes, there were jokes, but many of them, particularly his fish-themed mocking of Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, have turned up in conference speeches of years gone by. So why bother? Before he appeared to run

Robert Peston

Boris Johnson’s threat to MPs and the EU: ‘Back me or sack me’

In setting the scene for Boris Johnson’s first and potentially historic speech as Prime Minister to Tory party conference, Downing Street made two statements that sounded a lot like threats, both to EU leaders and to opposition MPs. In tearing up the 2107 Joint Report that underlies the so-called backstop to keep open the border on the island of Ireland – that foundation of the Brexit deal agreed by Theresa May and ditched by Johnson – Downing Street said “officials have made it clear that if Brussels does not engage with the offer…then this government will not negotiate further until we have left the EU”. In other words, Johnson wants

Tony Abbott: My heart leapt when Boris Johnson became prime minister

If Britain is to be a free country, the difficulties of leaving simply have to be faced. Now, I know that many people here in Britain think that these are daunting times, but surely they are also stirring times ,because yet again a great country is grasping for freedom. If I can say one thing above all, it is that if there is any country on earth that should be capable of standing on its own two feet, it’s Britain. The mother of parliaments, the world’s common language and the industrial revolution, three of the greatest gifts to the modern world. So I just want to make a few fundamental

Why is the EU obsessed with forcing regulatory alignment on Britain?

I still don’t quite understand the position of some ardent Remain supporters. I do not understand why allowing the UK to leave, and then starting up a campaign to rejoin was rejected. After all, that is what the last line of Article 50 invites the state to do by invoking the process in Article 49 (the process to re-join). Doing so would allow Britain to honour the democratic vote, which, contra to common perception, is what a lot of genuine believers in the EU themselves want us to do. It would end the word ‘remainer’ entirely. A word now unfortunately synonymous with a very negative campaign and a dark time

Isabel Hardman

Priti Patel turns her back on Theresa May’s legacy at the Home Office

This afternoon’s law and order theme to Tory conference did take a bit of a knock when police were called to an altercation involving one of the party’s MPs, resulting in the backbencher, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, being sent home. Not long after this incident, which sent parts of the conference centre into lockdown, Priti Patel walked onto the stage and announced that ‘today, here in Manchester, the Conservative party takes its rightful place as the Party of Law and Order in Britain once again’. Politics today is so tumultuous that it has scarcely been thought remarkable that the Home Secretary is so happy to make clear that her party lost this

Katy Balls

Why senior Conservatives are talking about a Brexit extension

Will the UK have left the EU by October 31st? At the Conservative party conference, ministers, MPs and activists are keen to repeat the event slogan: ‘Get Brexit done’. However, many are unsure as to when exactly Brexit will get done. Johnson has promised to take the UK out of the EU by 31 October “do or die” – he has repeatedly said “extension means extinction” for the Tories. But with parliament passing legislation to try to force him to seek an extension, and opposition MPs refusing him an election until that extension is secured, senior Conservatives are starting to contemplate a world in which Brexit isn’t done at the end

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s conference speech will be quickly overshadowed

In a lengthy interview on the Today programme this morning, Boris Johnson denied that the UK’s plans for the Irish border will require checks a few miles from the border. When asked if the UK was proposing a ‘hard border’ a few miles in from the border, he said ‘absolutely not’. But he did say that it is ‘just the reality’ that there will have to be checks somewhere.  Given that Ireland and the EU have made checks anywhere on the island of Ireland a red line, there is going to have to be movement from one side or the other if there is to be a deal. Boris Johnson

The Oliver Letwin speech that first revealed the Benn Act game plan

On Coffee House last week, I wrote that the judgment of the Supreme Court shows that the Benn Act is unconstitutional. It is more than that: it constitutes a revolution in the way in which Britain is governed. Oliver Letwin, who helped draft the Act, made this abundantly clear when speaking in the House of Commons on 14 February. His speech came in the run up to the first time Parliament took control to direct Government policy by legislation. But it also reveals the game plan that ultimately led to the Benn Act and the topsy-turvy situation we now find ourselves in. Letwin describes it as “astonishing turn of events”

Isabel Hardman

When staged Tory conference panels go rogue

The Tories have tried to jazz up their conference hall this year, after accusations that the whole thing was becoming a bit robotic and boring. It’s fair to say that this has had mixed results. One of the exciting developments is the use of panel discussions between ministers, which is supposed to encourage greater audience participation. Members in the hall can submit questions using the conference app, and the panel then answer the most popular ones. This morning’s session with Housing and Planning Minister Esther McVey, Business Minister Nadhim Zahawi and Northern Powerhouse Minister Jake Berry offered Tory activists a lively – and at times unintentionally unsettling – insight into

Ross Clark

It’s unfair for Britain to take Tooba Gondal and other Isis brides back

I am sure that Tooba Gondal, the latest Isis bride to beg for a return to Britain, would, as she says, rather face justice in a British court than in the detention camp where she is being held in a Kurdish-controlled part of Syria. Maybe she really is the “changed person” she claims to be and she really would, if given the chance, do her best to “help prevent vulnerable Muslims from being targeted and radicalised” – as she wrote in her letter to the Sunday Times yesterday.     But whether you believe her or not – and I have to say I read her pleas with a huge dollop of

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs on ‘red standby’ to leave snoozy conference for Brexit vote

The Tory MPs who’ve bothered to turn up to conference this week are torn between two places. They’re on a three-line whip in case anything kicks off in Westminster, where parliament will continue sitting this afternoon. Solicitor General Michael Ellis joked this morning that he was on ‘red standby’ to return to the House of Commons if there is a vote. The Labour party is on a two-line instruction, though many of its MPs are attending the sitting to try to make a point about holding the government to account while the government is away. It’s not yet clear whether they will hold any votes, though there is a need

Steerpike

Hall of Shame: The worst jokes at Tory conference

Dying is easy, comedy is hard. It seems it’s even harder when you’re a Tory politician. Mr Steerpike has barely had time to pick himself up from the floor after this afternoon’s humorous offerings from the Conservative party conference stage, with dreadful jokes infiltrating both the speeches and the awkward panel discussions between ministers. Here are some of the worst. Please do let us know if you’ve come across any more howlers. Jake Berry: The only homes we are not going to build in the North of England is Sherlock Holmes! *** Esther McVey: While the Conservative party is building homes for the future, the only thing the Labour Party is building

‘Tories not welcome here’: Pictures from the anti-Tory rally

Boris Johnson came in for criticism last week for his language in Parliament, but are his critics any better? Mr S headed down to a protest in Manchester timed for the start of Tory party conference to find out. It was mostly good natured, with clowns banging drums, a Boris blimp and a decent turn out despite the miserable weather. But some of those demonstrating certainly had ruder words than ‘humbug’ on their placards.

Steerpike

Watch: Jacob Rees-Mogg’s revealing summary of the state of British politics

Jacob Rees-Mogg has just given a pretty accurate summary of the state of British politics. The leader of the House of Commons pulled no punches as he addressed the Tory faithful at party conference. Mogg said Corbyn is a ‘weak man’, likened shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer to Brutus and said the Lib Dems were ‘extremists’ over their Brexit stance. Still, at least Mogg did have some kind words to say about one politician: his sister, Annunziata: Like Gulliver tied down at Lilliput, we are tied down by a ragtag, motley collection of feeble, fickle, footling politicians. All in desperate pursuit of a single ignoble aim – to renege on

Katy Balls

Liz Truss interview: ‘It’s important that we have robust honest debate’

As the Tories gather in Manchester for their annual conference, Boris Johnson hopes to use the event to push post-Brexit opportunities – saying that if the government can get Brexit done, a bright future awaits. Among those opportunities are the new relationships the UK can forge with countries outside of the EU. On the latest episode of the Spectator Women with Balls podcast, I spoke to International Trade secretary Liz Truss about her current brief along with her new role of women and equalities. Truss – who describes herself as a ‘Destiny’s Child feminist’ – says that when Johnson appointed her International Trade secretary he referenced her infamous 2015 conference

The Tories only have themselves to blame for Labour’s threat to Universal Credit

The Labour Party is buzzing about in Iain Duncan Smith’s constituency today, threatening both to unseat the former Conservative leader and scrap the reform he introduced: Universal Credit. Jeremy Corbyn made the promise, saying the changes to the benefits system have been an ‘unmitigated disaster’. The party will first get rid of the most controversial aspects of UC – including the fitness-to-work tests, the two-child limit, and sanctions which dock benefits from claimants who miss appointments – before scrapping it entirely. This has naturally prompted protests from the Tories, including some of the many MPs who served as work and pensions Secretary at one point or another. But the truth

Katy Balls

The message behind this year’s Conservative party conference

The Conservatives head to Manchester for an unconventional party conference. After opposition MPs vetoed plans for a conference recess, the Tories will meet while parliament sits. No 10 is bullish that it will not let opposition MPs ruin its moment. Expect cars and helicopters on standby to ferry politicians at the last minute if a surprise vote is called. With a working majority in the region of -40, Conservative MPs are fairly sanguine about the practicalities. ‘Frankly, it doesn’t matter if we are in London or Manchester. We can’t win votes even if we are all in Westminster,’ says one cabinet minister. Ministers and MPs are determined to use the