uk politics Archives

Monday

30 Sep 2019

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”

Robert Peston

It’s now or never for Boris Johnson if he wants a Brexit breakthrough

There is only one speech that matters this week, here in Manchester at Tory party conference. It will be Boris Johnson’s on Wednesday and it will be significant – potentially historic – for what he has to say about how and whether he hopes to break the impasse with Brussels on negotiating an alternative to the Northern Ireland backstop and therefore strike a new deal to leave the EU. Intriguingly, perhaps weirdly, cabinet ministers are ebullient with optimism that Johnson is on the verge of striking a deal with Juncker and Barnier that is sellable to most Tory MPs, Northern Ireland’s DUP and even enough Labour MPs to carry it across the

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

Sunday

29 Sep 2019

Steerpike

‘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

Saturday

28 Sep 2019

Isabel Hardman

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

James Forsyth

How the Tories intend to avoid a repeat of the 2017 manifesto disaster

The Tory plan was to fight the 2017 election as a Brexit election. But that strategy was derailed by a disastrous manifesto that alienated the Tory base and allowed Labour to change the subject to domestic policy. One of the problems with that manifesto was that it was written by a very small clique, meaning that problems weren’t spotted or ignored. To try and avoid a repeat of this, Boris Johnson has put a committee of Cabinet ministers in charge of overseeing the manifesto, I report in The Sun this morning. In line with the Pickles Review into what went wrong at the 2017 election, the Chancellor, the Home Secretary,

Thursday

26 Sep 2019

Alexander Pelling-Bruce

Has the Supreme Court handed Boris Johnson a Brexit escape route?

The Supreme Court’s judgement is the latest constitutional perversion after the Benn act. But ironically it may assist the Government in achieving its objective of Britain leaving the EU by 31 October, without having to seek an extension to the Article 50 process. In paragraph 34, the Supreme Court states that its ‘proper function’ under our constitution is to give effect to the separation of powers (which justifies court intervention in relation to prorogation). Then, in what appears to be an innocuous sentence in paragraph 55, it says that it is to be “remember[ed] always that the actual task of governing is for the executive and not for Parliament or the

Brendan O’Neill

Brexit voters do feel betrayed. So why can’t Boris say so?

Rarely has there been such a flagrant display of hypocrisy and cant as there was in the House of Commons last night. Opposition MPs stood up one after the other to denounce Boris Johnson for his use of apparently toxic and dangerous words like ‘surrender’ and ‘sabotage’. Such language is polluting the public sphere and making life hell for politicians, they claimed. Their ostentatious offence-taking would be a tad more convincing if they had ever said anything about the bile heaped on Brexit voters these past three years. Where were these people when it became positively vogue to refer to lower middle-class Brexit blokes as ‘gammon’? Where were they when

Two flaws in the Supreme Court’s verdict

Now that more experts have had time to study the ruling, the legal validity of the Supreme Court decision on the prorogation of Parliament is unravelling with every passing day. The court cited two cases to justify its involvement in political decisions: the Case of Proclamations (1611) and Entick v Carrington (1765). The Case of Proclamations laid down that the King could not make new laws by proclamation. The easiest way to study it is to look at the notes of the case by the presiding judge, Sir Edward Coke in his Selected Writings (p. 486 of the Liberty Fund online PDF version). The King wanted to prohibit building in

Wednesday

25 Sep 2019

Andrew Willshire

Should the Scottish Tories join forces with the Lib Dems?

Scottish politics is stuck. As with Brexit across the wider United Kingdom, the 2014 independence referendum has permanently shifted attitudes of the majority of the population into Yes/No camps, with little room for compromise. The SNP government stumbles from one crisis of service delivery to another yet continues to consistently poll around 40 per cent. In first-past-the-post Westminster elections, this is sufficient to return a clear majority of MPs, and probably to still be returned as the largest party in the Scottish Parliament in the scheduled 2021 election. The problem for Scotland is that the SNP believe this to be a mandate to speak “for Scotland” in broader constitutional matters,

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson has shown a worrying lack of emotional intelligence

The House of Commons has just turned very ugly indeed, after Boris Johnson dismissed a Labour MP who was complaining about the abuse and threats she and other colleagues are receiving as ‘humbug’. Paula Sherriff – who has had a particularly sustained campaign of abuse against her, including swastikas being left at her office – made an angry appeal to the Prime Minister to consider his language, and referred to the murder of her colleague Jo Cox as she did. This is what happened: Paula Sherriff: I genuinely do not seek to stifle robust debate but this evening the Prime Minister has continually used pejorative language to describe an Act of

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn clash spectacularly in the Commons

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have just clashed spectacularly in the House of Commons. Boris Johnson repeatedly goaded Jeremy Corbyn over his refusal to go for an election now. This was not a Prime Minister acting like one who had been chastened by the Supreme Court’s decision, but one determined to set himself up as the man determined to deliver Brexit against a parliament that was trying to stop him. One of the most striking features of his speech was how frequently he declared that the public could tell what was really going on, that MPs were trying to block Brexit. In response, Jeremy Corbyn was not at his best.

Steerpike

Watch: Geoffrey Cox slams MPs – ‘This Parliament is a disgrace’

Geoffrey Cox is not a happy bunny. The Attorney General has just blasted MPs, telling them that Parliament is a ‘disgrace’. Here’s what he had to say in the Commons: ‘This Parliament has declined three times to pass a withdrawal agreement. Then we now have a wide number of this house setting its face against leaving at all. And when this government draws the only logical inference from that position, which is that it must leave therefore without a deal at all. It still sets its face, denying the electorate its say in how this matter should be resolved. This parliament is a dead parliament. It should no longer sit.

Steven Fielding

Is this the beginning of the end for Jeremy Corbyn?

Did Labour’s conference help or hinder Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of becoming prime minister? For some, Corbyn ended up stronger than ever. There will be a review of the post of deputy leader, one likely to see the authority of Tom Watson, his severest internal critic, greatly diminished. Corbyn also won a critical vote on Brexit which endorsed his position of neutrality going into a general election. The conference also passed a raft of policies that confirm support in the party for Corbyn’s desire to dramatically extend state intervention in the cause of promoting economic growth, greater equality and tackling climate change. As John McDonnell, the ultimate architect of the party’s