Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

France’s horror at the prospect of prime minister Boris

Should Boris Johnson become Prime Minister it would be a calamity for his country and for Europe. That's the view of Le Monde, a newspaper that declares it's time for France and the rest of the continent to stop 'regarding him as a buffoon'. In an editorial headlined ‘Boris Johnson at the head of the UK? No thanks!’, the left-wing paper said that Britain's answer to Donald Trump is a danger to European stability, although clearly not as much as the Brexit Party. Since the party's formation earlier this year, Le Monde routinely describes them as ‘extreme-right’, which must come as something of a shock to Claire Fox and millions of other British lefties and their old-fashioned belief in democracy.

Lloyd Evans

Boris Johnson had an easy ride at his campaign launch

Boris Johnson made his pitch to become PM at a spirited mini-rally in central London. He began with a swipe at the stalling economies of the Eurozone which he compared unfavourably with ‘the commercial dynamism of the British people.’ His one-nation pitch bore almost too many adman’s sound-bites. He called England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland ‘the quartet’, and ‘the awesome foursome’. Together they make Britain ‘the soft-power superpower of the world’. Towards the EU he was generous. He referred to them as ‘our friends and partners’, somewhat insistently and he hoped that Brussels would adopt his upbeat mood about Brexit. ‘I think there will be a symmetrical enthusiasm about getting this thing done’.

Isabel Hardman

May confirms she’ll stay on as an MP at dull PMQs session

A fair few MPs felt there was no reason to come to today's Prime Minister's Questions, given the real action is in the Conservative leadership contest. There were spaces behind Theresa May as she took questions from Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader clearly hadn't put much effort into preparing for the session, either, offering a bizarre hotchpotch of questions ranging from no-deal Brexit to the government's record on renewables. Those Tories who had turned up weren't interested in asking May tricky questions: what was the point, when she has just weeks left as Prime Minister? Instead, they wanted to praise what existed of her record, with Peter Bone praising her 'superb' work on human trafficking, and Huw Merriman criticising his colleagues who had forced her resignation.

Katy Balls

Boring Boris? Johnson opts for risk-averse campaign launch

It was the launch event everyone was waiting for. After weeks of keeping a low profile – a submarine campaign according to critics – with just one newspaper interview, the leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson emerged this morning to officially kickstart his campaign. However, rather than opt for a circus tent, waffle freebies and thinly-veiled attacks at colleagues like some of his rivals, Johnson's event at Carlton Gardens proved rather tame. The former mayor of London was introduced by a new Cabinet supporter – Geoffrey Cox.

Boris Johnson

Full text: Boris Johnson launches his Tory leadership campaign

It's a measure of the resilience of this country that since the vote to leave the EU and in defiance of all predictions, the economy has grown much faster than the rest of Europe. Unemployment has fallen to the lowest level since 1972, exports have soared, English football teams have won both the Champions League and the UEFA cup by beating other English football teams, and inward investment has soared to a record £1.3 trillion. It's almost as if the commercial dynamism of the British people is insulating them from the crisis in our politics, and yet we cannot ignore the morass of Westminster, where parties have entered a yellow box junction, unable to move forward or back, while around the country, there is a mood of disillusion even despair at our ability to get things done.

Steerpike

Watch: Boris Johnson dodges the question on his cocaine use

After spending some time in the shadows ahead of the first round of voting in the Tory leadership contest, Boris Johnson officially launched his campaign today, giving a speech in central London where he reiterated his intention to take Britain out of the EU by 31st October. Unsurprisingly, considering his confusing array of past comments on the topic, the topic of drugs was soon brought up. Johnson was first asked if he'd ever committed a crime, to which he confessed to occasionally breaking the 70mph speed limit. Honing in, the former Foreign Secretary was then asked directly about his use of cocaine.

James Kirkup

Rory Stewart is a reminder of what Boris Johnson used to be

Britain is not quite in the grip of Rorymania. He gave a properly impressive speech this week and he has spoken with honesty and clarity about politics and policy. But Rory Stewart isn’t going to be our next prime minister and it’s hard to see him remaining in Cabinet for much longer. He’s a hit on Twitter, but Twitter is not real life. Most voters still don’t know who he is. None of that means what Stewart has done during the Conservative leadership election is irrelevant or unimportant. He, like Matt Hancock, has run towards conversations about difficult and important things like social care when many of their colleagues have run away.

Cindy Yu

Is Theresa May’s climate change target realistic?

In a last-ditch effort to find a domestic legacy, Theresa May has set her sights on the hot topic of the day: climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions in Britain will be cut to zero by 2050, the PM has pledged. May's promise is a response to the Extinction Rebellion protests that ground the capital to a halt back in April. It is also an answer to pig-tailed climate change activist Greta Thunberg who captured the imaginations of politicians from Michael Gove to Jeremy Corbyn earlier this year. The pledge is certainly ambitious. In May, the Climate Change Committee said that with an awful lot of cash and political will, Britain can become net zero emitters of all greenhouse gases within 30 years.

Steerpike

Channel 4 News blames Brexit for its low ratings

Channel 4 posted its annual report yesterday, revealing that its revenues were up by £15m in 2018 and its digital audience had increased by a quarter year-on-year. Unfortunately though, it appears that one part of the broadcaster didn't do quite as well. Under a section entitled 'Telling the full story', Channel 4 News revealed that their viewing figures were down by almost a tenth in 2018. Luckily, the news section of  quickly stumbled across something it could blame for its declining viewing figures: Brexit. On average, 7.

Tuesday

Michael Ezra

Tax cuts are welcome, but Boris’s proposal is not the best

The source of government revenue is a mystery for many people, but one thing voters do remember is that they are taxed. When people open up their pay slips, the income tax deduction stares them in the face. The sight of it is galling, and the higher the percentage taken, the worse it is. This is true even if there is a sense that, like a foul-tasting medicine, it is a necessity. So this aversion to tax explains why Boris Johnson's pledge to raise the level at which the higher rate tax band of 40 per cent kicks in – from £50,000 to £80,000 of earnings – is electorally attractive.

Sam Dumitriu

Michael Gove’s plan to scrap VAT is a big mistake

When I read about Michael Gove’s plans to abolish VAT and replace it with a US-style Sales Tax, I thought: “Is he on drugs?” Gove’s views on experts have often been misrepresented. His infamous attack was aimed at a subset who haven’t been held accountable for failed predictions, not on the very idea of expertise. In fact, his scepticism of over-confident forecasts was influenced by the research of Prof Philip Tetlock, an expert on forecasting. Yet, while he isn’t the post-truth, anti-expert that his opponents paint him as, he happens to be promoting a policy opposed near-universally by tax experts.

Ross Clark

A legacy Theresa May can be proud of

Theresa May is said to be desperately searching for a legacy in her last few weeks at Number 10. It is staring her in the face. Today, the Office for National Statistics published its latest employment figures which confirm, against all odds, that we are in the midst of a jobs miracle of which any previous prime minister would have been proud. The employment rate climbed again to 76.1 per cent, the equal highest on record. The unemployment rate fell to 3.8 per cent, the lowest rate since the autumn of 1974. The rate for economic inactivity – which takes into account people who are not working but not looking for work either – is also at its lowest rate ever, at 25.2 per cent of the working age population.

John Connolly

Will Rory Stewart’s circus act really impress Tory MPs?

You would not normally expect a Tory leadership campaign launch to take place at a comedy-festival venue in the trendy Southbank of London. Nor would you expect it to be situated in a small circus-tent, with spotlights beaming on an elevated stage in the centre. Nonetheless, Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart strolled out onto the stage of the 'underbelly' circus-tent this evening to launch his bid to be prime minister, looking like a slightly sinister ring-master. Stewart's message to the several hundred people who had gathered to see him could not have been clearer: I am not your usual Tory candidate, and I can reach the kind of people who would never normally vote for the Conservative party.

Steerpike

Rory Stewart: would you trust Boris with the nuclear codes?

Rory Stewart has not exactly had the most orthodox of campaign strategies to become the next leader of the Conservative party. The dark horse of the leadership race has built up a cult following by heading out across the country, recording hand-held campaign videos and having conversations with various members of the public. And he decided to continue this trend of unorthodoxy once again today when he officially launched his leadership bid: in a small circus-tent in the Southbank in London. There, the international development secretary used his launch to put forward his vision for the United Kingdom. But it was Stewart’s view that the frontrunner Boris Johnson could not be trusted with the nuclear codes that garnered the most attention at the launch.

Steerpike

Which Tory leadership contender is the biggest animal lover?

Twitter was awash this morning with pictures of Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart, bending to stroke Larry the Downing Street cat as he made his way into Number 10. https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1138386605046149120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw However, Mr S couldn’t help but notice that Larry gave Stewart something of a cold shoulder, casually strolling away without a backward glance. Perhaps the sensible moggy could sense that Stewart is much more of a dog person. Walking across Afghanistan in 2002, Stewart was accompanied on his trek by an ‘enormous’ dog who he named Babur, after a Mongol emperor. And in a 2010 interview with the Financial Times commented that the one thing he would most like to own was a dog. Of cats, Stewart says little.

Isabel Hardman

The one part of Theresa May’s legacy her successor must protect

Promising to protect Theresa May’s legacy isn’t really a feature of this Conservative leadership contest. That’s not just because so many of the candidates disagree about the type of Conservatism that they the outgoing Prime Minister espoused, but because she doesn’t really have much of a legacy to protect. But one of the few reforms that May did introduce is under threat as a result of the upheaval in the party. The Domestic Abuse Bill is currently in draft form, despite there being apparently widespread support for its policies in parliament. Its publication in draft was delayed a number of times ‘because of Brexit’, which is the sort of excuse that any new Prime Minister could make as they delay it for another few years, too.

Steerpike

Watch: Jean-Claude Juncker refuses to renegotiate the backstop

Jean-Claude Juncker's term as European Commission president may be coming to an end, but it's clear that the EU leader won't be hiding his strong opinions about Brexit and the UK negotiating process anytime soon. At a Politico event held this afternoon, Juncker ruled that he would not renegotiate any part of the Withdrawal Agreement with Theresa May's successor, telling his interviewer, Florian Eder, that: 'There will be no longer renegotiations as far as... the Withdrawal Agreement is concerned. We can have some clarifications, precisions, additions to the political declaration concerning the future of our relations.' Asked if that also meant he would not consider time-limiting the backstop, Juncker simply replied: 'No'.

Fraser Nelson

Gove, Javid and the uses of backstory

Michael Gove’s launch was, easily, the strongest of any candidate yesterday and he deserves the plaudits he’s getting now. Even if you dislike him, his speech is worth listening to (it’s here) and it was made without notes. I’ve heard him talk before about the school in Liverpool he mentioned where only one pupil got decent grades. In his original telling, his point was that the distance between Liverpool and Edinburgh (where his birth mother is from) was about the same as the distance between Aberdeen and Edinburgh – so he could have ended up in either city. But alongside the cocaine use, another disclosure in Owen Bennett’s new book is that Gove was actually born in Aberdeen.

Steerpike

Andrea Leadsom: ‘Bollocks to Bercow’

No political rivalry in recent years has been as fierce as the one between Andrea Leadsom and the Speaker of the House, John Bercow. As leader of the Commons, Leadsom spent a huge amount of time in the Chamber speaking on the government's behalf, and frequently clashed with the pugnacious Bercow over parliamentary procedure and each other's manners. And while Leadsom has since resigned from her position in May's government, it appears that her hostility towards the Speaker hasn't subsided. In fact, it seems that Leadsom may even have incorporated her dislike of Bercow into her official Tory leadership campaign.

John Connolly

The downside of Mark Harper’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ approach

One of the major problems facing the less well-known Tory leadership contenders is this: how do you stand out to Conservative members and MPs when there are so many other candidates? With ten contenders still fighting to be prime minister, even Cabinet members seeking to boost their publicity have been forced to rely on gimmicks, whether it's Rory Stewart wandering around Kew Gardens pretending to shoot hand-held videos, or Matt Hancock handing out free waffles and phone chargers at his campaign launch. Former chief whip and immigration minister Mark Harper meanwhile decided to opt for honesty at the start of his campaign this morning.