Politics Archives

Friday

4 September 2020

In defence of Tony Abbott

You sometimes wonder whether we live in an adult country anymore. For the last two days the broadcast media has been obsessing about whether Tony Abbott is a fit and proper person to be a trade envoy for the United Kingdom. Since he is a former Prime Minister of Australia, a distinguished statesman and a great friend of the United Kingdom you might have thought he would be eminently suited for the role. But Kay Burley of the Sky News network, among others, has announced that Abbott is (in her eyes) guilty of wrong-think. You don’t need to see the clips. You could come up with the list yourself. You know the drill. We are told that Abbott is a ‘homophobe’ and ‘misogynist’. He is furthermore a ‘climate change denier’.

Matthew Lynn

Rishi Sunak needs to learn to add up

It is, by any measure, a heck of a lot of pizza. The ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme turns out to have been a huge success. We learned today that is was used more than a 100 million times in August. In many cities, it was virtually impossible to get a table from Monday to Wednesday. Plenty of restaurants were grateful for the sudden boom in business, and no doubt a few were saved from closure. There is a problem, however, and it is a significant one. It turns out that we have a Chancellor who struggles to add up, and Treasury officials who don’t know much about basic economics – and that matters. By any measure, Rishi Sunak’s half-price meal deal, launched to persuade us all to get back into the habit of eating out again, has been a hit.

Stephen Daisley

Keir Starmer’s hypocritical attack on Tony Abbott

One of the most impressive qualities of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership so far has been his ability to land blows on the government without seeming political. He’s a lawyer with the demeanour of a bank manager: he’s just telling you how things are. That has served him well in his broadsides against ministers’ handling of Covid-19. But in his rounding on the Prime Minister’s preferred trade envoy, Tony Abbott, he has faltered. The charge that the former Australian PM’s views make him unsuitable for the role sounds like something cooked up by younger, less worldly advisors and foisted upon the Labour leader. I like to tell myself the same thing about his taking a knee in the Shadow Cabinet room. Abbott stands accused of sexism, misogyny and homophobia.

Steerpike

Kay Burley’s bizarre takedown

What a scandalous idea, drinking with someone you might disagree with. Rather than grilling the transport secretary over his own views, Sky's Kay Burley instead decided to attack Grant Shapps over whether he would 'have a drink with' Tony Abbott because of his perceived 'homophobia'. Which seems an odd line of questioning given the fact Burley is a well-known Westminster partygoers and has no doubt attended the odd do alongside someone she disagrees with. https://twitter.com/KayBurley/status/1301771342015062018?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw In fact, Burley was once spotted leaving Piers Morgan's Christmas drinks after what looks to have been a night of unconstrained revelry. All fun and games, and Mr S would never criticise someone for enjoying the odd drink. https://twitter.

Stephen Daisley

Could Scotland’s hate crime bill make depictions of Mohammed illegal?

Charlie Hebdo’s decision to republish the Mohammed cartoons has the media a-fretting. Al-Jazeera called the illustrations ‘offensive’. The Daily Telegraph brands them ‘notorious’. For the BBC, they are ‘controversial’. I consider gunning down Parisian cartoonists in the middle of an editorial meeting somewhat controversial, but maybe I’m overly sensitive. The satirical magazine reissued the drawings to coincide with the trial of 14 suspects in connection with the 2015 terrorist attacks on Hebdo’s headquarters and a Jewish market. In all, 17 people were killed. France is putting those accused of involvement in the Charlie Hebdo killings in the dock but in Scotland it could soon be illustrators themselves facing trial.

Thursday

3 September 2020

Isabel Hardman

Can Rishi Sunak win back the Tory backbenches?

It's not going to be an easy autumn for the Tories, which is why the top brass have started holding meetings with nervous backbenchers to try to allay their fears about tax rises and other politically difficult decisions which are looming. Rishi Sunak also clearly saw the value in ensuring the public was aware he was taking their concerns about these matters seriously when he accidentally on purpose revealed his lines for one of these briefings as he walked along Downing Street. Sunak's message yesterday afternoon when he and Boris Johnson spoke to the 2019 intake of Conservative MPs was very much 'you need to trust us', according to those present. One MP said that 'it was sombre but what we needed to hear. We left under no doubt that there will be difficult times ahead.

John Connolly

Is mass testing the answer?

14 min listen

Matt Hancock today announced Operation Moonshot, a £500 million scheme to ramp up the UK's testing capacity and offer a return to normality without social distancing. Does it really offer a way out? John Connolly speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

James Forsyth

Negotiating Scottish independence gives Unionists a winning chance

If the SNP win a majority at next year’s Holyrood elections, the UK government should be prepared to start independence negotiations with them. This may sound like a mad idea, at first. But as I say in the magazine this week, it might actually offer a way to save the Union. Rather than saying a straight no to another independence referendum, the UK government would tell Nicola Sturgeon she could have one, if the terms of independence were negotiated first. This would take time – unravelling a 300-year-old political, economic and military union would make Brexit look like child’s play – but it would mean that when the referendum came, it would be on the realities of independence not just the idea of it.

Ian Acheson

The ticking terror time bomb in our prisons

This week saw the publication of an independent review into multi-agency arrangements that manage terrorist offenders released into the community. The report was ordered by the Government following the horrific murders committed by released Islamist extremist, Usman Khan in November of last year who was at the time subject to these arrangements and had convinced professionals he had given up terror. It provided a golden opportunity for radical proposals to overhaul a plainly broken risk management system. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a swing and a miss. Risk assessment and threat management of ideologically motivated offenders is perhaps one of the most challenging tasks for criminal justice professionals.

Rob Sutton

Is Boris Johnson turning into Ted Heath?

A Balliol-graduate and Oxford Union president who reshaped our relationship with Europe on the mandate of a decisive general election victory, but whose once-promising leadership was derailed by social unease, domestic tensions within the Union and economic turmoil. The comparison between Ted Heath and Boris Johnson is irresistible, if somewhat unintuitive. In personality, the two could hardly be more different. Heath was a lifelong bachelor whose romantic life seems to have been non-existent. Johnson, whose escapades have taken up considerable inches of newspaper column, is set to be married for the third time. Heath was aloof, detail-focused and introverted, and struggled to form relationships with even his closest companions.

The Spectator

Boris Johnson’s non-existent get back to work campaign

This week was built up by the Prime Minister to be the moment that would mark the return of economic and social life to robust health. But there was no real attempt by his government to urge people to go back to the office. Even Number 10 has admitted there never was a back to work campaign. In London, the number of Tube journeys made at the beginning of the week — as good an indicator of economic vitality as any — was still far below last year’s levels. In spite of repeated assurances that returning to school is safe and necessary for children’s health, a YouGov poll suggested that nearly one in five parents are still considering keeping their offspring at home. Recent figures from Scotland indicate they are doing precisely that.

James Forsyth

To save the Union, negotiate Scotland’s independence

The first cabinet meeting of the new term and Boris Johnson’s summer holiday were both dominated by one concern: how to turn the tide on Scottish nationalism. Johnson’s foray into the Highlands was intended to demonstrate his own personal commitment to the Union; it also allowed him to find out for himself how awful mobile phone coverage is in much of rural Scotland. The cabinet on Tuesday discussed how to stop the Scottish National party turning the legislation that will underpin the UK’s post-Brexit internal market into their latest argument for independence. The Prime Minister is confident about his chances of knocking back the Nationalists.

Isabel Hardman

Why Graham Brady’s criticism should worry Boris

Graham Brady isn’t an MP given to criticising the government in public very often at all. As chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, he tends to communicate his views and those of the party to the Prime Minister in private. So when he does speak out, it’s worth listening. His criticisms have been escalating over the past few weeks, and that says a lot about where the party is generally. This morning on the Today programme, the Altrincham MP was highly critical not just of the local lockdown affecting his constituents, but also of the way the government is communicating with people more widely about whether or not it is safe to go back to work. He also fired a warning shot about the possibility of tax rises, arguing that they could stultify the recovery.

Graham Gudgin

Prepare for the rise of Irish Euroscepticism

Welcome to the wacky world of Irish national economic accounts. The official figures for Ireland’s tax-haven economy are so bizarre that they have been dubbed ‘leprechaun economics’ by Nobel Prize winning American economist Paul Krugman. And now the distorted figures which are used to measure Ireland's GDP could be coming back to bite Ireland in the form of contributions the country must make to Brussels. Could this lead to a rapid rise in Euroscepticism across the Irish Sea? GDP per head in Ireland is measured by the Irish government – and accepted by international organisations – as being 91 per cent higher than the UK. At face value, this appears to indicate that Ireland is almost twice as rich as the UK.

Wednesday

2 September 2020

James Kirkup

Tories need to get real about tax rises

It’s sometimes said that Rishi Sunak has been playing politics on easy mode: when you’re giving away loads of cash, it’s hard not to be popular. Now, as summer fades and autumn beckons, politics gets harder. The chancellor is facing his first real test with Conservative MPs over reports that his Treasury is considering a range of tax rises to help repair, in part, the public finances. A number of those Conservative MPs have made clear in recent days that they do not want taxes to rise. On one level, this is unsurprising: not many people who get elected to Parliament as Conservatives are keen on higher taxes. Yet what is surprising is the lack of significant Tory engagement with the wider fiscal context of this debate.

John Connolly

The latest No. 10 U-turn

13 min listen

Bolton and Trafford were returned to Manchester's local lockdown this morning after yet another U-turn by the government. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer went head to head for their first PMQs of the new parliamentary term. Finally, Rishi Sunak and the PM met members of the 2019 Tory intake in an attempt to shore up the government's backbench support. John Connolly speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Lloyd Evans

Boris’s PMQs performance was the perfect birthday present for Keir Starmer

It was woeful. It was ugly to behold. It was beyond gruesome. Even Boris’s most faithful supporters had to watch PMQs from behind the sofa. Sir Keir Starmer, who turns 58 today, got a fabulous birthday present – a stunningly inept performance from the Prime Minister. Sir Keir demanded a ‘straight answer to a straight question’: when did Boris know ‘there was a problem’ with the algorithm used to decide A-level grades? ‘May I congratulate him on his birthday,’ said Boris – making it clear he hadn’t the foggiest what to say. The Prime Minister then started firing off random phrases in the hope that a coherent sentence might accidentally take shape in mid-air.

Isabel Hardman

Ofqual hits back at Gavin Williamson

Whose fault is the school exam results fiasco? Based on who has left their jobs in the past few weeks, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was officials in the Department for Education and at Ofqual, not the Secretary of State for Education. Gavin Williamson has apologised for the 'stress' caused to pupils, but remains in post and both he and the Prime Minister have been keen to shift the blame for the row onto the exam regulator. Today, Ofqual hit back. The organisation's chairman Roger Taylor appeared before the Education Select Committee this morning to present his version of events, and claimed that the decision to use what Boris Johnson has called a 'mutant algorithm' to moderate results came from Williamson, not the regulator.

Stephen Daisley

Richard Leonard must go

They’re all it at. The dust has barely settled on the ruthless removal of Jackson Carlaw from the Scottish Conservative leadership yet it seems the Caledonian branch of the People’s Party are in rebellious mood too. Three Labour MSPs have called on Holyrood chief Richard Leonard to stand down, with moderate Jenny Marra describing his leadership as ‘tied from the start to the disaster of Jeremy Corbyn's project’. Leonard was chosen to replace Kezia Dugdale in 2017 but his lacklustre style, as much as his left-wing leanings, has seen him make no impact in almost three years. Well, no impact on the SNP; he’s certainly left his mark on Scottish Labour.

Steerpike

Rishi’s taxing speech

Oh dear. It's safe to say that Rishi Sunak is not having the best week. Although the Chancellor's made the news every day, it's more because Tory MPs are complaining about various Treasury tax proposals than because they have anything nice to say. While the jury's out on tax rises, it seems that the Chancellor has at least begun to come up with a plan to calm tensions in the party over his Autumn Budget. Sunak was photographed leaving No. 11 today holding written notes – never a particularly good idea for a frontline politician given all the cameras unless of course they have a message they want to get out. https://twitter.com/PoliticalPics/status/1301140388493877250?