Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Ian Acheson

What Rory Stewart did next

Rory Stewart’s pitch for prime minister seems strangely distant now, lost in the enveloping chaos of Boris Johnston’s shamble to glory. All is not lost, however. The divergent metrics of parliamentary and public sentiment – and the character deficits of the frontrunner, who claims to be able to square that circle – make it abundantly possible that Stewart will have another chance to shine before the year is out. So what should he be doing in the meantime? I was peripherally involved in Stewart's leadership campaign, helping to organise some of his Northern Ireland visit, including a trip to my home county (and Britain's true Lake District) Fermanagh.

Dominic Grieve

Boris’s Brexit stance is either reckless or ignorant

Boris Johnson’s statement that he would not impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the event of no deal may be said with sincerity and for the best of reasons, but he is either proposing something completely reckless – which will be deeply and fundamentally damaging to the whole of the British economy – or else he does not understand the UK’s legal obligations under the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. That treaty was drawn up after the experience of the trade wars of the 1930s and the way in which they helped create the atmosphere that led on to war. So the treaty is designed to check any moves towards using trade as a crude instrument of foreign policy and to encourage its growth as a cement for peace.

Steerpike

Chris Williamson’s return to Labour branded a ‘disgrace’

Chris Williamson is back in the Labour party. The controversial Corbynite MP was suspended from Labour earlier this year following comments he made about anti-Semitism in the party. But now after an internal investigation, Williamson is once again a Labour MP. Williamson was slapped with a formal warning after he was filmed at a Sheffield Momentum event saying that Labour had been ‘too apologetic’ for anti-Semitism. But to the surprise of no one – not least Mr S – Williamson avoided getting the boot. It's safe to say the news is going down badly among MPs.

Steerpike

The Boris bus conspiracy

When Boris Johnson was asked by TalkRadio yesterday what he did to relax, and he embarked on a confusing ramble about his secret passion: making models of buses and painting them, few thought it was a sign of the former London Mayor's famed erudition. https://twitter.com/rosskempsell/status/1143491303466053633 Indeed, many seemed to think that Boris' strange rant was probably more influenced by a bus driving past the window, some crates of wine left over in the corner, or just the sheer terror of giving a Maybot-esque answer to an easy question. It appears that some though have begun taking a deeper look at the former Foreign Secretary's motives.

Lloyd Evans

Can MPs call each other liars now?

Theresa May, our stand-in prime minster, was hit by a surprisingly effective ambush at PMQs. Jeremy Corbyn led on Britain’s involvement in the Yemeni conflict. Last week the Court of Appeal ruled that the government had overlooked Saudi Arabia’s responsibility for breaches of international law. Mrs May sounded desperate as she quoted a legal finding from 2017 that the government had engaged in ‘anguished scrutiny’ of Saudi Arabia’s position. Corbyn rolled out some mighty figures. 200,000 had died in Yemen, he said, many of them children. Famine and disease are about to claim 100,000 more lives. All because of May. Her response – that the Foreign Secretary is hosting a meeting of the Yemen Quad – sounded feeble. Corbyn clobbered her again.

Robert Peston

Why neither Boris nor Hunt can stop a no-deal Brexit

There is a lot of confusion about Boris Johnson’s approach to Brexit. And that is deliberate because the candidate has yet to make a big call about the nature of the modifications he is seeking to the Brexit plan negotiated by Theresa May. The ultra Brexiters among his supporters, the hard core of the European Research Group led by Steve Baker and Jacob Rees-Mogg, want him to ditch her Withdrawal Agreement completely – and replace that with a “GATT 24” temporary free trade arrangement for the years that would be necessary for the negotiation of a permanent new trade deal with the EU. This they regard as true liberation from the EU. Now confusingly Johnson yesterday – in a Talkradio interview – referred to this as his “Plan B”.

Ross Clark

The flaw in Jeremy Hunt’s Brexit plan

Jeremy Hunt’s case to be Conservative leader is that he is the sensible, low-risk option. While Boris is now committed – thanks to his interview on Talkradio yesterday to leave the EU on 31st October, come what may, ‘do or die’, Hunt is holding out the prospect of some flexibility. The last day of October, he said this morning, is a ‘fake deadline’. Trying to force Brexit on that date, he said, could lead to a general election, a Corbyn government, followed by no Brexit at all. If the government were close to cutting a deal, he has said, then we should extend the deadline. If there were no deal in sight, on the other hand, Hunt says he would take Britain out of the EU without a deal.

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategy is to play chicken with the EU

Theresa May’s Brexit strategy was to play chicken with parliament. Boris Johnson’s is to play chicken with the EU. Theresa May believed that if she pressed on with her deal, parliament would – ultimately – blink and pass it. Her thinking was that MPs’ scared of no deal would vote for her deal to avoid that outcome. While Brexiteer MPs who didn’t like the deal, would back it in the end to be sure Britain did leave the EU. May’s approach failed because she was trying to squeeze two groups simultaneously with two different messages. Crucially, she also blinked – she didn’t resist the Cooper, Letwin, Boles attempt to force her to seek an extension.

Tuesday

Miranda Levy

How Jeremy Corbyn made me Jewish again

On Sunday night, I went to the local synagogue to listen to a talk by Louise Ellman, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside. This was surprising on several levels. I hadn’t set foot inside a synagogue for over 30 years (apart from weddings and bar mitzvahs) and had even gone as far as marrying a non-Jew. Also, before the past couple of weeks, I had no interest whatsoever in seeing a politician, of any stripe, speak. A few minutes into Ellman's speech, I was horrified to hear of the abuse that had been meted out to this charismatic, grandmotherly politician by members of her own party. ‘She has no human blood,’ some delightful individual had written on social media.

Camilla Swift

Why aren’t the Tory leadership contenders courting rural voters?

Around nine million people – over 17 per cent of the population – live in an area classed as ‘rural’. That number is set to grow; by 2025, it has been estimated that the population of the English countryside will have increased by half a million. So surely, when a politician is bidding to become the next prime minister, it would make sense to consider what the rural population’s priorities might be. A national survey of rural opinion on the leadership contest, organised by the Countryside Alliance, would indicate that this isn’t happening. It’s far from new to say that farming communities are worried about Brexit, and concerned that their needs aren’t being considered in the debate. But that’s not the only cause for concern.

Nick Cohen

Why Tories are hooked on Boris Johnson

Modern politicians are like drug dealers intent on keeping their clients’ hooked. They sell fixes to their core voters: upping the strength and deepening the addiction. The punters know at some level they are being played. But a temporary high is better than no high, and infinitely preferable to the sweats and shakes the cold turkey of reality brings. Boris Johnson is the British right’s pusher. He feeds its addiction, taking Conservatives from drug to drug. Higher and higher they go. Further and further from the straight world of the normies with their tedious facts and nagging doubts.

Steerpike

Watch: Boris Johnson’s model buses

Boris Johnson has had a tricky time being quizzed by journalists over the past few days, as he's been grilled about his Brexit position, his negotiating stratgey, his late-night row with Carrie Symonds and his history of consuming (or not quite consuming) Class-A drugs. But it seems as if the former Foreign Secretary was floored by the simplest question of them all today. Appearing on TalkRadio this afternoon, Boris was simply asked by presenter Ross Kempsell what he did to relax? Johnson appeared to be stumped: 'I like to paint, or I make things... I have a thing where I make models of... I make  buses.' Kempsell asked the potential prime minister to clarify: did that mean he made models of buses? The former London of Mayor replied: 'I make models of buses...

Neil O'Brien

Boris’s secret weapon in the fight against Corbyn

After nine years cleaning up Labour's mess, things are looking up. Government debt as a share of the economy is starting to fall. For Theresa May's successor, this means there is an opportunity to spend some desperately-needed money on public services: the police, prisons, schools and local government. But it's also vital – and a key Tory weapon in the fight against Corbyn – to cut taxes, putting more money in people’s pockets. Boris Johnson has already made such a pledge, floating the idea of increasing the point at which people pay the higher rate of tax. In the long-term, that would be good to do. Yet given the limited room for manoeuvre, right now we must focus on tax cuts that benefit large numbers of people.

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson doubles down on his Brexit position

The Boris Johnson campaign has today responded to accusations that Johnson has been avoiding scrutiny by sending their candidate on a mini-media blitz. In the past 24 hours, Johnson has given interviews to the BBC, LBC and Talk Radio. There's even a promise of more media interaction to come. In all of the interviews, the former mayor of London refused to answer questions on his private life – on the issue of why police were called on Friday night to the apartment he shares with his partner Carrie Symonds. He did, however, send social media into a frenzy when he was asked how he liked to relax and replied that it involved making model buses out of old wine crates.

Ross Clark

Boris and Carrie’s staged picture is a PR masterstroke

Whatever you think of Boris Johnson’s ability to be Prime Minister you have to admire the PR skills of Carrie Symonds. Last Thursday evening an event occurred which could seriously damage Boris’ chances of winning the Tory party leadership contest – a domestic row between the couple in which the police were called to her flat. Unsurprisingly, it dominated the news agenda over the weekend. In a sense it still is way up the news agenda. But over the past 36 hours the focus has subtly changed. The ‘scandal’ is no longer what was said, and thrown, in an upstairs flat in Camberwell last Thursday, but the provenance of a soft-focus photo of the couple – apparently all smiles again – sitting in a Sussex garden.

Robert Peston

‘Preposterous rubbish’: The EU’s verdict on Boris’s Brexit plan

I asked important EU and UK people involved in Brexit talks what they made of Boris Johnson's claim on BBC that: 1: The EU would be prepared to cancel the Northern Ireland backstop. 2: Continue free and frictionless trade with UK for an "implementation period" after Brexit on 31st October. 3: Negotiate a new package of measures to keep an open border on the island of Ireland during the implementation period, and; 4: Would break all their own red lines because they won't like Nigel Farage's 29 MEPs turning up at the European Parliament, and will panic when Johnson says he won't necessarily pay all the £39bn Theresa May agreed that the UK owes the EU in full, or on time.

Steerpike

Watch: Boris dodges Carrie Symonds question 26 times

Boris Johnson has come out of hiding but it seems he is still doing his best to dodge scrutiny. On LBC this morning, Boris was quizzed repeatedly about how a picture of him in the Sussex countryside with his girlfriend Carrie Symonds found its way into the media. And 26 times, he refused to answer. Here is how the exchange unfolded: NF: Why the picture today? BJ: Newspapers will print whatever they are going to print. NF: Where did the picture come from? Boris Johnson, where did the picture come from? BJ: The longer we spend... NF: Where did the picture come from? BJ: The longer we spend on things extraneous... NF: Is it actually you or is it Ed Sheeran? ... NF: Did you know the picture was being put out there Mr Johnson? BJ: There are all kinds of pictures of me put out there...

Steerpike

Jon Snow makes another race gaffe

Can veteran Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow stop putting his foot in his mouth when it comes to race? The channel has already been forced to apologise this year after the presenter observed live on television that he had 'never seen so many white people in one place' when covering a Brexit rally in London. Now it seems he's at it again. When interviewing the Tory MP Nusrat Ghani, who is supporting Jeremy Hunt in the leadership race earlier this week, Snow brought up the topic of the Tory members who would be voting in the upcoming leadership contest, remarking that: 'There's not an entirely flattering picture of the cross-section of the Conservative members who are going to have to vote in this thing.

Alex Massie

Boris’s backers have a lot to answer for

In today’s Times, a “long-standing friend” of Boris Johnson complains that “there’s a tendency to infantilise Boris”. Putting the man who still looks likely to be the next leader of the Conservative and Unionist party and prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland under a form of, well, house-arrest must have seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, the race is his to lose and can only be lost by him. “Clearly”, the chum adds, “there was a need to protect him but it went too far”.  This seems revealing. A number of questions arise. First, *why* do people feel inclined to “infantilise” Johnson?

James Kirkup

Why David Gauke is key to the survival of the Tory party

Everyone knows the story of how a small number of Conservatives will cast a vote that decides something of great and lasting importance. But the group of Tories is much smaller than you think, and they vote much sooner than you imagine: on Friday, in fact. I am not referring to the 160,000 members of the national Conservative party. I am talking about the 600 who belong to the South West Hertfordshire Conservative Association. On Friday 28th June, those members will be invited to a special meeting to vote on a motion of no confidence in the Conservative MP for South West Herts, David Gauke. According to the motion, Gauke has 'wilfully obstructed' the implementation of the 2016 referendum result. It does not specify how Gauke, the Justice Secretary, has done this.