Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Steerpike

Tory MP kicked out of conference

Oops. The Conservative party is meant to be focusing on law and order today at its party conference, with Home Secretary Priti Patel taking to the stage to announce new money for tackling country-lines drug gangs and a new fund for the roll-out of tasers among the police. But only metres away from the main stage, one MP was getting in hot water with security staff. This afternoon, the press area of the conference venue was briefly shut down after police were called to deal with an altercation in the International Lounge. It is believed that the Tory MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown clashed with staff when he tried to enter the closed-off area, and police were called to settle the dispute. Clifton-Brown was then asked to leave the conference.

Stephen Daisley

10 questions for Remainers, from a Remainer

We told them so, didn’t we? We said it was a terrible idea and would all end in tears. We pointed out that the UK doesn’t send £350 million a week to Brussels, that Turkey was not about to join the EU, and that Britain held the weaker hand and couldn’t dictate the terms of any new relationship. Now, 30 days out from our supposed departure date, Remainers find ourselves in the strongest position yet to thwart Brexit. Parliament has been unprorogued, the government’s hands have been tied, its majority obliterated, and opposition parties have learned to work together (more or less) to frustrate ministers.

Chris Daw KC

Corbyn’s cynical Brexit scheme will end in tears for Labour

My piece for Coffee House last week likened Boris Johnson to the naked emperor, puffed up with self-importance but devoid of real power. As the Tory party conference has got underway, I have become even more confident that Boris's cabinet will soon be shown to be as denuded of power as their leader. But it isn't just the Tories that are in a mess. Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit position is as untenable and, if anything, even more bizarre than Boris's. Has there ever been a major party leader entering conference season and an election campaign, in short succession, while explicitly refusing to take a position on the most important issue of our times?

Ross Clark

Why Grant Shapps shouldn’t accelerate the ban on petrol and diesel cars

How fortunate that electric vehicle technology has moved on to the extent that transport secretary Grant Shapps is able to announce he in looking at bringing forward to date on which petrol and diesel cars will be banned from 2040 to 2035. Or maybe not. On closer examination, it isn’t battery technology which has advanced – only the political pressure for being seen to act on climate change. It is possible, of course, that some as-yet unknown technology will arrive to make it feasible to ban all petrol and diesel vehicles from 2035. But we are no nearer discovering it yet. Without it, the government is heading for a very big policy failure. I wrote here about electric cars in August 2017, just after the then environment secretary Michael Gove had announced the 2040 date.

Steerpike

Watch: Boris’s ‘disposable cup’ gaffe

Boris Johnson survived his morning broadcast round without dropping any clangers but he did nearly get caught out on the floor of Tory conference. The Prime Minister was passed a cup of coffee by an aide, only for it to be quickly snatched back from the PM. The reason? 'No disposable cups', according to Boris's staffer. https://twitter.com/ashcowburn/status/1178988689868906496?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Looks like Boris will have to wait for his caffeine fix...

Robert Peston

Boris has five days to make a Brexit deal

The prime minister is about to launch himself on the most important and arduous challenge of his time in office, and arguably of his life. In the course of just the next five days he will try to secure a Brexit deal from an EU deeply sceptical he is prepared to make the compromises they say they need, and with a British Parliament largely hostile to his vision of life outside the EU. As I mentioned yesterday, he’ll announce the big headline of what he wants in his conference speech tomorrow.

Tom Goodenough

Jacob Rees-Mogg’s message to Brexiteers: you can trust Boris

Could the EU ride to Boris Johnson’s rescue over the coming weeks, not by offering a new Brexit deal but by ruling out an extension altogether? It would certainly be one way for the government to get around the Benn Act, which requires the Prime Minister to request an extension if he doesn’t get a deal by 19 October but doesn’t dictate what the EU will say in response. The Prime Minister suggested this morning that a refusal to grant an extension could be what the government is hoping for, telling the EU on the Today programme: ‘I think it would be a mistake to keep the UK bound in beyond the time people want to come out’. A similar view was put forward by Jacob Rees-Mogg at a Politeia Brexit fringe event last night at Tory conference.

Steerpike

Listen: Dominic Grieve heckled at conference event

They may no longer be Conservative MPs, but that did not hold back several members of the Gaukeward squad from heading to the Conservative party conference yesterday in Manchester. Former Tory MPs Dominic Grieve, David Gauke, and Alistair Burt took part in a fringe event outside the main conference area, organised by 'Conservative group for Europe'. And although the audience which had gathered was generally supportive of the 'rebel alliance' (and replete with EU flag berets), some in the crowd were less than happy with Dominic Grieve's plans to hold a second referendum.

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 of October.

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.

Will Heaven

The problem with ‘Islamophobia’ and the Tory party

On Sunday, Policy Exchange held three events at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester – one on the Irish backstop with Arlene Foster, Leader of the DUP; one with Michael Gove talking to Iain Martin on how to deliver Brexit; and one on the subject of Islamophobia. There were some fascinating moments throughout the afternoon. But the most memorable speech of the day was at the session on Islamophobia – an event which is now being horribly misrepresented on Twitter, including by the NUS president, Zamzam Ibrahim, who claims that it denied 'the existence of anti-Muslim bigotry'. She could not be more wrong.

Steerpike

Mark Francois: Why I won’t buy David Cameron’s book

It perhaps isn't much of a surprise that Mark Francois won't be buying David Cameron's book. But his reason for not splashing out on 'For the Record' is somewhat unusual. The Brexiteer revealed that he won't be putting it on his Christmas list for the simple reason that he doesn't appear in it. Francois told a Tory conference fringe event: 'I went to the index, i went down to F, and I looked for my name and it wasn’t there so he can keep his £25 quid.' Mr S isn't quite sure how Francois's refusal to buy the book means that Dave gets to 'keep' his money works...

The Spectator

What’s on today at Conservative conference: The Spectator guide | 1 October 2019

Priti Patel is the big draw on the main stage at Tory conference today. But there is plenty happening on the fringes too. Here are the highlights on day three: Main agenda: 10.00 - 12.15: Forging Stronger Communities 14.00: Social Justice in Action 14.45: Shaun Bailey, Tory London Mayoral candidate 2020 15.00: Toughening Up Our Criminal Justice System Robert Buckland Brandon Lewis Lucy Frazer  15.45: Priti Patel, Home Secretary   Fringe events: 09.00: With one month to go until Brexit, how prepared are Britain’s key transport links? Chris Heaton-Harris; Doug Bannister (chief executive, Port of Dover); Manchester Central: Central 5 09.15: Moggcast Live Jacob Rees-Mogg; Paul Goodman; Manchester Central: Conservative Home Marquee 10.

Monday

Alexander Pelling-Bruce

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.

John Connolly

Dominic Grieve’s strategy for a second referendum

The former Tory MP Dominic Grieve may have voted against the parliamentary recess for Conservative party conference, but that certainly hasn't kept him away from the action this week. The now independent MP showed up in Manchester yesterday, and this afternoon attended a 'Conservatives for a People's Vote' event at the aptly named (for a man with few allies inside the hall) 'Friends House' outside the conference area. As expected, the MP first used his platform to launch attacks on Boris Johnson's government. Grieve said reports that he and his Remain allies had sought help from the French to draft the Benn bill were a serious piece of 'defamation' and that Number 10 had overseen a 'culture war' and 'corruption of our political system'.

James Forsyth

The Tories aim to be the people’s party with minimum wage rise

Sajid Javid has just announced that the national minimum wage will rise to £10.50 by 2024. This is another big hike. It is currently £8.21 and was just £5.93 as recently as 2010. It will end up going to everyone over 21, not 25 as currently. The politics of this announcement are clear. The Tories want to position themselves as the people’s party, the party of the worker and delivering a big pay rise for the low paid is one way of doing that. It is also a way of promising to put more money in people’s pockets that doesn’t, directly, cost the government anything. This should help the Tories in their bid to win over traditional Labour voters in Leave voting seats in the Midlands and the North East.

Fraser Nelson

In speaking Punjabi from Tory Party stage, Sajid Javid has made a small piece of history

Sajid Javid hates identity politics and has spent most of his political career avoiding it. But his speech today showed how effective he can be when he discusses his own life story. Having his mum in the hall was quite something: this is a woman who grew up in poverty in the Punjab and came to Britain with nothing. She now looks at her son as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is what Michael Howard referred to as the “British dream”. She thought it was a big deal when the first Asians moved into Coronation Street, he said: now they’re in Downing Street and still “living above the shop”. And then he spoke to her in Punjabi, asking if she remembers his dad’s first shop which was about a mile away from where he’s standing.

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 line in a Commons vote.

Matthew Lynn

Here’s the flaw in the Boris hedge fund conspiracy theory

It is one of the most diabolical plots of all time, a conspiracy so vast, so deep, and so wicked it could have come from the pen of Dan Brown. A small cabel of powerful hedge funds have installed Boris Johnson at Number 10, paying for his campaign and his advisers. Once there, his task is to crash the UK out of the European Union without a deal, plunging the economy into chaos, and sparking a rout of sterling and a collapse in the FTSE. In the background, those same hedge funds will have ‘shorted’ the pound and the London equity market. In the process, they will make a few quick billion before they disappear to their Cayman Islands' mansions to sip champagne and chuckle over the brilliance of their scheme.

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 their plans to build more homes and rejuvenate the high street.