Politics

As far as I can gather, the EU has only one genuinely non-negotiable red line that could prevent a resumption of talks on a free trade agreement with the UK – which will be made clear by its negotiator Michel Barnier in a telephone call on Monday with the UK negotiator David Frost. Barnier and the EU are insisting the UK adhere to the EU’s framework for limiting subsidies to businesses, what is called ‘state aid’, and there should be a UK enforcement mechanism for those state aid rules. The prime minister, counselled on this issue by Dominic Cummings, has been saying this is unacceptable because: 1) Boris Johnson wants the freedom to subsidise as much or as little as he likes.

If there is one word that best describes Senate Republicans in the age of Donald Trump, it’s “docile.” With the exception of a few independent-minded lawmakers who have been able to make a name for themselves or who have spent decades cultivating their own brand, the Senate GOP conference has played the roll of cannon fodder–dewey-eyed shock troops at the front waiting for instructions from the General residing on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. It doesn’t matter what Trump says or what controversy he creates for himself: the GOP will defend him until the last man standing. Yet a little more than two weeks from Election Day, this dynamic is starting to change.

Boris Johnson has not had the easiest of relationships with the north lately. While the Prime Minister started his premiership promising to ‘level up’ northern regions, during the pandemic he’s ended up spending more time clamping them down, as Covid restrictions have been introduced across swathes of the north, and he’s clashed with local MPs and regional mayors. So you'd imagine he was not exactly enthused when it was announced last week that a new group of Tory MPs were banding together to form a ‘Northern Research Group’ (NRG) to make sure the ‘levelling up’ agenda was not forgotten. These days 'Research Group' tends to spell trouble for the government.

Despite being barely two months old, Spectator TV — The Spectator's latest broadcast venture — is already making headlines from New York to New Zealand. Andrew Neil's interview with Dr David Nabarro of the World Health Organization was raised in the House of Commons and even tweeted by Donald Trump. In this week's episode, Andrew Neil is joined by feminist activist and former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali to discuss Emmanuel Macron new bid to tackle Islamic extremism. However, she has her reservations about the French President's plans: Leaders have failed constantly, and they’ve failed in four ways.

Keir Starmer has made life difficult for Boris Johnson this week with his demand for a circuit-breaker lockdown. But the Labour leader’s colleague Andy Burnham is currently presenting a far greater threat to the Prime Minister. On Thursday, the Mayor of Greater Manchester gave a furious speech in which he accused the government of being 'willing to sacrifice jobs here to save them elsewhere' while treating his area like 'canaries in the coalmine for an experimental regional lockdown strategy'. The government, he argued, was treating the North with 'contempt' by telling regional leaders there wasn't enough money to protect jobs during the new restrictions while spending large sums on consultants for the test and trace programme.