Politics

As the UK approaches the end of the Brexit transition period, ministers have made it clear that businesses and Britain must ready themselves for ‘no deal’. But will Britain be ready? Almost every day, there are new concerns from the road haulage industry, not just about Kent and access permits for lorry drivers, but about the system’s operability and the viability of any back-up plans. The government does have an ‘oven ready’ response to the no deal naysayers – which Michael Gove used with evident relish against Theresa May in October – and can say that: ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’. Ultimately, however, the judgement about no deal will be made, as in the referendum itself, by the electorate.

Sir Keir Starmer has just announced he will not be restoring the Labour whip to Jeremy Corbyn following his comments about the extent of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party being exaggerated for political purposes. A panel of the party’s ruling National Executive Committee last night reinstated Corbyn as a member, but this morning Starmer said he would not do the same with the whip. You can read his full statement below. The reaction last night from Jewish groups to the NEC’s decision had made very clear that if Starmer accepted Corbyn back into the party on the basis of the non-apology he had issued, it would undo the new Labour leader’s work repairing relations with the Jewish community.

Since Dominic Cummings was last week given his marching orders, after allegedly calling Carrie Symonds ‘princess Nut Nut’, are members of Tory high command finding more subtle ways to make digs at the Prime Minister and his fiancée? Yesterday, Cummings's ally Robert Halfon – chairman of the Education select committee – gave the Sun a quote, apparently in support of footballer Marcus Rashford’s new book club, that caught Steerpike’s eye. Halfon, who in May was forced to apologise after tweeting support for Cummings following the advisor’s notorious trip to Barnard Castle, said: 'I remember as a child reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe over and over again.

Has the advertising industry been nationalised? It certainly looks that way. The run-up to Christmas is usually the time for UK advertisers to spend big. But not this year. While the John Lewis Christmas ad has been greeted with some fanfare, this is the exception, rather than the rule in 2020. Companies whose businesses have been shuttered and whose customers are locked down see little point in spending money on advertising. In any recession, one of the first things to be cut is the advertising budget.  However, there seems to be one mighty paymaster propping up a lucky few ad agencies: the government.

Series four of The Crown begins with the murder of Lord Mountbatten at Mullaghmore in August 1979. Mountbatten was killed with three others, on the same day 18 British soldiers were ambushed at Warrenpoint. It was a devastating blow for the British establishment. But it held a more intimate horror too. If you listen carefully to the scene in The Crown, you can hear Mountbatten speak to a ‘Paul’ as they prepare his boat, Shadow V, for its fateful journey out of the harbour before being blown to pieces by the IRA.

Every so often I make the mistake of thinking Boris Johnson must have exhausted his capacity for indolent carelessness and each time I do he pops up to remind me not to count him out. There are always fresh depths to which he may sink. For he is a Prime Minister who knows little and cares less that he knows so little. In happy times of placid prosperity this might be inconvenient but tolerable; these are not such times. Speaking to his northern English MPs last night, Johnson declared that devolution has been 'a disaster north of the border' and was the biggest mistake Tony Blair ever made. The implication, quite obviously, is that in a better ordered world the Scottish parliament should be abolished.