Politics Archives

Saturday

9 March 2019

The death of Shamima Begum’s baby is a tragedy – but not Sajid Javid’s fault | 9 March 2019

It would take a heart of stone – and occasionally I possess just such an organ – not to feel sympathy for Shamima Begum after she lost a third baby, her son Jarrah, barely three weeks old, in a Syrian refugee camp. But should we feel guilt as well as compassion for leaving the child – all unbeknown to him, a British citizen and possibly Dutch too – to fester in the camp occupied by IS refugees? More precisely, how responsible should the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, feel, having deprived Miss Begum of her British citizenship? The BBC news all day long has linked him to the death: criticism of Javid as child dies. That’s its line. Diane Abbott has been keen to draw a link.

James Forsyth

Is there any way that May’s deal could pass on Tuesday?

The government’s efforts to get changes to the backstop have run into a brick wall in Brussels. The EU thinks, with justification, that MPs won’t allow no deal and so feels under no pressure to make significant concessions. As I write in The Sun this morning, one minister fully briefed on the negotiations says ‘we’re at what the hell do we do time’ But without a change to the backstop, Theresa May’s deal is going down to another heavy defeat on Tuesday. That won’t be the end of the matter, though. For the next day, parliament will vote against leaving on March 29th with no deal. Parliament will then almost certainly vote to request an extension to Article 50. At this moment, the UK would be in the EU’s hands.

Ross Clark

It would be a mistake for Tory rebels to back May’s Brexit deal

How unsophisticated can Theresa May get in her efforts to persuade MPs to back her crumbling Brexit deal? Earlier this week we had her £1.6 billion bribe for “left behind” constituencies of Labour MPs who might just be tempted to back her deal. Yesterday, in Grimsby, she turned to her own backbenchers, telling them: "Reject [the deal] and no-one knows what will happen. We may not leave the EU for many months. We may leave without the protections a deal provides, we may never leave at all." She is of course right: no-one knows what will happen on Tuesday nor in the coming three weeks before 29 March. It does her no credit that she has allowed it to get to such a late stage with businesses still having no idea how to prepare for Brexit, or no Brexit.

Charles Moore

Why I’ll be avoiding London on the day after Brexit

A kind billionaire called Jeremy Hosking, whom I do not know personally, has invited us to join the Britannia Express, a steam train, on 30 March, the day after Brexit. The train will traverse Wales and England, starting at Swansea and ending in Sunderland. In an unspoken rebuke to the metropolis, it will not travel via London. The train will, says the invitation, commemorate ‘the UK’s exit (or non-exit) from the European Union’. This is the opposite, I suppose, of the European train which people like the late Sir Geoffrey Howe constantly exhorted us to climb aboard. What to do? The most likely situation on the day is that we still will not know our country’s fate.

James Forsyth

Brexiteers may miss their best chance to take Britain out of the EU

Theresa May was only ever going to win approval for her Brexit deal by persuading MPs that it was the least worst option. Remain-supporting MPs, she hoped, would come to believe that her deal was the only way of preventing no deal. At the same time, she hoped that Tories worried about ‘no Brexit’ would see her agreement as the best way of ensuring that Britain actually left the EU. But with the Commons vote on May’s Brexit deal just days away, both parts of this strategy are in trouble. Little wonder that the Chief Whip sounded downbeat about the prospects of winning next Tuesday’s vote at cabinet this week. A cabinet revolt has forced May to promise that if her deal is rejected, MPs can have a vote on whether to proceed with no deal or not.

Friday

8 March 2019

Alastair Benn

The Tories have a problem with anti-Muslim prejudice

The Tories have a problem with anti-Muslim prejudice. There is a pathology there. It’s not hard to see. And it runs from the vulgarised dog whistle stuff, like Conservative councillors and activists who feel comfortable sharing crude Islamophobic content, right up to the CCHQ campaign tactics which led to Zac Goldsmith’s ill-thought through targeting of Sadiq Khan’s links to his local mosque. And it reflects what makes the Corbyn anti-Semitism stuff so alarming – an intellectual basis for making one community a menace to the whole fabric of UK society.

Katy Balls

Barnier offers May a non-concession on the backstop

After weeks of speculation, Michel Barnier has finally revealed the concession Brussels is willing to grant Theresa May on the backstop. The only problem is one could argue it's not actually a concession. Instead, it's the Northern Ireland-only backstop the UK negotiating team previously vetoed. This afternoon the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator told ambassadors the EU is willing to give Britain a unilateral exit from the UK-wide parts of the backstop plan for Northern Ireland. He has since taken to social media to set out exactly what the EU is offering: https://twitter.

Katy Balls

Theresa May’s latest Brexit speech only highlights the government’s problems

Theresa May is in Grimsby today putting in a last ditch effort to convince MPs to back her deal when it returns to the House of Commons on Tuesday. The view in both Downing Street and the Cabinet is that as things stand it will be rejected for a second time. With no concession on the backstop as of yet from Brussels, there is little chance of Brexiteers rallying around the Prime Minister's deal. May's speech this lunchtime has only served to hammer this point home. The Prime Minister used the set piece to turn her ire on Brussels for the lack of progress. May warned EU leaders that it wasn't just MPs who have a choice to make – the EU must too: 'Just as MPs will face a big choice next week, the EU has to make a choice too. We are both participants in this process.

Steerpike

Theresa May’s International Women’s Day row

At her speech in Grimsby this afternoon Theresa May made an attempt to get her colleagues in parliament to coalesce around her Brexit deal, by warning them about the dangers of Brexit being cancelled. It seems though that she may have alienated at least some of the audience today, when she took questions from the press on International Women's Day. As May left the podium after taking all her questions, ITV's Libby Wiener chimed in with another: why had May only taken one question from a female journalist? May appeared not to have heard as she left the stage, but just before she exited the room, turned round and quipped back: 'You've had all your questions answered by a female prime minister.' https://twitter.com/CBrockelbank/status/1104007936928612352 Fair enough.

Fraser Nelson

How Philip Hammond snookered Theresa May on Brexit

Philip Hammond’s whole career as Chancellor has been leading up to this moment. Next week, in his Spring Statement, he’ll say that MPs have a choice: back the EU’s deal, or go for a no-deal Brexit for which government has failed to prepare. Without any serious leadership for the latter, it’s unlikely to pass. The Prime Minister is snookered. He has won. He was against Brexit and has not quite stopped fighting those who advocated it – on the radio yesterday he distinguished himself from “the Brexit wing of the party.” But he has second best: a Brexit deal which is EU membership in all but name. Perhaps to be followed by a proper Brexit, perhaps not. And why is Theresa May unable to negotiate anything better?

Robert Peston

Theresa May’s Brexit blame game is bound to backfire in Brussels

The Foreign Secretary on Today has reinforced the Prime Minister’s Grimsby warning that if she loses the meaningful vote on Tuesday it will be the EU’s fault. Hunt warns EU leaders to take care the impasse “doesn’t inject poison into our relations for many years to come” and warns that if the EU doesn’t make further backstop concessions “people will say the EU got this moment wrong”. This is a million miles from how EU leaders see the state of negotiations. According to a source they believe the “EU has already made its choice to be as helpful as possible on giving legally binding reassurances that the backstop will apply only for as long as necessary”.

Steerpike

Theresa May’s flagship speech is derailed

Theresa May headed to the seaside town of Grimsby this morning to try and inject new life into her flagging Brexit strategy. The prime minister plans to give a speech in the Leave voting town, which piles pressure on the EU to offer her concessions so she can get her deal past parliament. But it appears that she may have been let down once again by her hapless transport minister Chris Grayling. Parliamentary lobby hacks hoping to cover the prime minister's speech this morning have been hit by train delays as they travelled from London to Lincolnshire, due to a cancelled connection at Newark. With the current state of the UK rail network, unsurprisingly, talk has already turned to whether Chris Grayling's bungling management of the railways might be to blame: https://twitter.

Thursday

7 March 2019

Katy Balls

The Mary Curnock Cook Edition

27 min listen

Mary Curnock Cook is an educationalist and former head of Ucas. On this podcast, she talks about leaving school at 16, how boys suffer from the real gender gap in education, and why it would be 'ludicrous' to abolish university tuition fees. Presented by Katy Balls.

The Spectator

Close the deal

It is becoming painfully clear that on Tuesday the House of Commons will be asked to vote on an EU withdrawal bill that is almost entirely the same as the one defeated by 230 votes in January. Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, is seeking to guarantee that Britain will never be trapped in the backstop. If he succeeds, Brexiteers, whatever their wider misgivings, should hold their noses and vote for Theresa May’s deal. It will be tempting for MPs who are seeking a proper break with the EU to repeat their rebellion. May’s deal means Britain will, for two years, be an EU member in all but name: paying all of the money and obeying the directives while undergoing (at least) two more years of Brexit talks.

James Forsyth

The odds are still stacked against Theresa May’s Brexit deal

Government loyalists are grim-faced today. There is no sign of a breakthrough in Brussels and Theresa May’s deal appears to be heading for another defeat on Tuesday. May’s problem is that everyone thinks that they get what they want by voting against her deal. As I say in the magazine this week, lots of ERG types have convinced themselves that they’ll eventually get the Brexit they want, come what may. If the Brexit deal goes down on Tuesday, the Commons is highly likely to compel the Government to request an Article 50 extension. At that point, the UK will be a supplicant: it’ll be up to the EU to decide whether to grant one, how long it will be for and what conditions are attached.

Steerpike

David Davis tries to widen his appeal

With Theresa May's departure expected later this year, a host of ambitious males are keen to parade their wares. Frontrunner Boris Johnson has lost weight and is the RSPCA’s new pin-up boy, while Sajid Javid is trying to show his strength through the medium of ostracising Isis brides. On Wednesday night, it was David Davis's turn to make his mark. The former Brexit secretary appeared in noticeably slender form for an event at the Adam Smith Institute where he began proceedings by introducing himself as a 'romantic radical'. Looking back on his university years at Warwick, Davis appeared to imply that he had an appeal to the Left as well as traditional Tory voters.

Steerpike

Listen: Amber Rudd’s ‘coloured woman’ remarks

Amber Rudd has caused a storm of outrage this afternoon after she referred to Labour's Diane Abbott as a 'coloured woman'. Rudd was being interviewed on Jeremy Vine's show on Radio 2 to mark International Women's Day. Asked by Vine whether online abuse is worse for women in general, the work and pensions secretary replied: 'It definitely is worse if you a woman. And it's worst of all if you're a coloured woman. I know that Diane Abbott gets a huge amount of abuse.' Listen here: Diane Abbott has responded to the comments with this post on social media: https://twitter.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1103662137636016128 And shortly afterwards Amber Rudd sent out this apology in response: https://twitter.

Alex Massie

If May’s Brexit deal passes, then her troubles really begin

Brexit is breaking British politics. Both the traditional powers have been shipwrecked by this storm and show no signs of knowing how to repair their ruined timbers. This is the sort of thing everyone understands. If the Tories enjoy more support than Labour this is only because Labour is so very bad. It is not because Theresa May’s Government commands the confidence of the people. In any case, her party is slowly but surely devouring itself over Brexit. Again, everyone knows this. But what if we’re approaching this from the wrong direction? Instead of observing how Brexit is destroying the Conservative party, perhaps we should wonder if, actually, Brexit has both made and saved Theresa May’s Government. It might be the only thing holding it together.

Steerpike

Equalities watchdog: Labour may have unlawfully discriminated

It's been a gruelling couple of days for the Labour Party, as their approach to handling and meddling in anti-Semitism complaints has been held up to scrutiny. But it looks like things may be about to get worse for the party. The equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has begun the first stages of an inquiry to see if the party has broken the law in the way it has treated its members and employees. In a statement the EHRC said that: 'Having received a number of complaints regarding anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, we believe Labour may have unlawfully discriminated against people because of their ethnicity and religious beliefs. Our concerns are sufficient for us to consider using our statutory enforcement powers.

James Forsyth

Will Brexiteers miss their best chance?

Theresa May was only ever going to win approval for her Brexit deal by persuading MPs that it was the least worst option. Remain-supporting MPs, she hoped, would come to believe that her deal was the only way of preventing no deal. At the same time, she hoped that Tories worried about ‘no Brexit’ would see her agreement as the best way of ensuring that Britain actually left the EU. But with the Commons vote on May’s Brexit deal just days away, both parts of this strategy are in trouble. Little wonder that the Chief Whip sounded downbeat about the prospects of winning next Tuesday’s vote at cabinet this week. A cabinet revolt has forced May to promise that if her deal is rejected, MPs can have a vote on whether to proceed with no deal or not.