Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Sam Leith

Diary – 29 November 2018

I got the sack the other day from the London Evening Standard, where I’ve been a weekly columnist for about a decade. ‘Belt-tightening’, I was told: Osbornean austerity claims another victim. As Fleet Street sinks giggling into the sea, a mini-tradition is emerging for long-serving hacks to grumble in the Spectator diary about losing regular work. Here, in recent months, have been Rachel Johnson (heave-ho from the Mail on Sunday) and Lynn Barber (heave-ho from the Sunday Times), so it was nice of the editor to offer me the opportunity now it’s my turn. Distinguished company, and the ritual serves everyone. As Kingsley Amis wrote: Life is mostly grief and labour Two things get you through. Chortling when it hits a neighbour Whingeing when it’s you.

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 29 November 2018

Theresa May, William Hague and others say that the EU will not want to trap Britain in the backstop because it is not in its interest. It will want to move to a free-trade agreement for its own benefit. If that is so, why is the backstop the thing above all others upon which the EU insists? Brexiteers must absolutely oppose the backstop because agreeing it would repeat Britain’s delusion in every European negotiation over nearly 50 years, which is that we should grab ‘practical’ advantages and concede ‘windy’ principles. This sounds good, but it invariably means that we are trapped later. The principles acquire legal force.

Steerpike

Full text: Liz Truss’s Parliamentarian speech – the backstop, Andrew Bridgen and overpaid bureaucrats

With the 2017 Parliamentarian of the Year winner Ruth Davidson on maternity leave, Liz Truss stepped in to present this year's awards – taking the opportunity to send up her cabinet colleagues, fellow MPs and the US president. Below is her speech in full: It's fantastic to be here this evening. I have to admit it was quite late when I got booked in as your guest of honour. And I did wonder whether or not I was first choice, or if Fraser had had to ring as many people as the Prime Minister did to recruit the new Brexit Secretary. I hear that Ruth Davidson was unavailable. As you pointed out she's got a lovely new baby son and I do hope that he will grow up to see the day when we're out of the backstop.

Jamie Bartlett

Finally, politicians have realised how to hold Facebook to account

This week, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee looking into fake news convened for a special session. For the first time since 1933, when the joint committee on Indian constitutional reform included parliamentarians from India, politicians from nine other countries joined Damian Collins and other MPs to cross-examine Facebook and others. A couple of days earlier, Collins had used an arcane parliamentary procedure to send a representative of the sarjeant at arms to a hotel room in order to squeeze documents from an app developer who made software to locate Facebook photos of people wearing bikinis. (You read that right). This, it seems, is what it takes to hold large international tech firms to account these days.

Steerpike

Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year 2018, in pictures

To the Spectator's Parliamentarian of the Year awards where politicians from across the political divide gathered to celebrate the best of Westminster. After a year which saw numerous cabinet resignations, failed coups and Brexit barneys, the annual awards proved more topical than ever. Liz Truss stepped in for last year's Parliamentarian winner Ruth Davidson – currently on maternity leave – to host the event. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury set the tone for the evening with a speech which held no punches. Of her new Cabinet colleague Steve Barclay, Truss joked that when it came to picking a host for the evening's awards, she hoped she wasn't as far down the list as Barclay was for the role of Brexit Secretary.

Steerpike

Watch: Geoffrey Cox’s minister of the year acceptance speech

Geoffrey Cox's rousing warm-up act for Theresa May at Tory party conference elevated the Attorney General's public profile. In the weeks since, Cox's importance has continued to grow, as cabinet ministers – both remainers and leavers – have come to depend on his legal know-how to interpret the Brexit deal. And now, Cox has been named minister of the year at The Spectator's Parliamentarian of the year awards last night. Here's what he had to say: 'Well, I'm incredibly grateful, privileged and honoured to have been awarded this tremendous and distinguished award. I have to say that, after just four months in the cabinet, it comes as both a surprise and a pleasant shock....

James Forsyth

Why Theresa May might end up embracing a second referendum

There are few things in the Brexit debate that are not disputed. But there is one thing that pretty much everyone accepts: that Theresa May believes in her deal. She really does think it is the right answer to the referendum result. However, as I say in the magazine this week, her deal is unlikely to get through the Commons. But what can May do given that she wants her deal to pass? Well, there is one route that might work for her: a second referendum. If the Commons won’t back her deal, then maybe the country will. This would require a massive volte-face from May, and her exasperated reaction when asked about a so-called ‘People’s Vote’ shows she isn’t currently entertaining the idea.

Matthew Lynn

The problem with a ‘no deal’ Brexit

There have probably been worse branding campaigns in history. Cadbury’s apparent attempt to drop the word ‘Easter’ from its egg hunts was a clunker of cosmic proportions. The launch of New Coke has found its way into the textbooks as a masterclass in how to trash one of the greatest brands in the world, and Nivea's 'White Is Purity’ campaign for its skin creams last year had to be dropped very quickly after the inevitable backlash. The attempt to sell a ‘No Deal’ Brexit is not quite up there with those disasters. But it is getting close. In truth, there is nothing terribly wrong with leaving the European Union without an agreement, and it might well be better than the alternative we are being bullied into.

James Delingpole

Will no one ever take on the Green Blob?

Gosh it hurts when your little corner of paradise is destroyed by a few idiots’ ignorance and greed. This is what has just happened to one of Britain’s best-kept secrets, the magically beautiful and remarkably untouristed stretch of the Wye Valley round and about Builth Wells. Every summer we used to take a holiday let there, jumping into our favourite swim-hole in the Wye, playing Cocky-Olly in the bracken, exploring Llewellyn’s Cave, watching the last of the sun bathe the uplands from the shade of the boules terrain outside the house where we’d enjoy our well-earned fags and evening gin and tonic. But I don’t think I could bear go back there. The sight of what they’re doing to it is just too painful.

Nicholas Farrell

The next Italian crisis

For those who believe in the European project, Brexit is a headache. Italy, on the other hand, is a bloody nightmare. Its new anti-elite populist coalition government of the alt-left Five Star Movement and the radical-right League is currently set on a collision course with the EU. This could easily start a chain reaction that destroys the single currency. The British media hardly mentioned it but on Saturday, once Jean-Claude Juncker, EU Commission president, had sent Theresa May on her way with a pat on the back, he sat down to ‘a working dinner’ with Giuseppe Conte, the Italian Prime Minister, to discuss Italy’s ‘unprecedented’ breach of EU rules on its budget.

Ross Clark

The Corbyn effect

What’s wrong with UK financial markets? The global economy is recovering, but British stocks and shares are not keeping pace. The pound has failed to recover from the slide it experienced in the wake of the EU referendum. This is frequently blamed on investors being spooked by Brexit, even more so by the possibility of a no deal. But has anyone actually asked the markets what is spooking them? Look closer and it becomes clear that while Brexit is a problem for some investors, most are much more worried about a far bigger risk, even if they rarely speak about it in public. It is the possibility of a Corbyn government. Since last year’s election, when the Labour leader came within a stone’s throw of No. 10, it has been impossible to write off the idea of a Corbyn victory.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Til Brexit (and a government job) do us part

Earlier this month Mr Steerpike noted that here might be some domestic troubles in one Westminster household, after MP Jack Lopestri came out in support of May's Brexit deal - unlike Andrea Jenkyns, his Brexiteer wife. Now it appears that Number 10 were paying attention too: today they announced that Lopestri has joined the government, as PPS to the new Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay. But while Jenkyns took to social media to say how pleased she was that her husband was promoted, she also suggested that his talents might not be the only reason he was given the job. In fact, it might even be a ploy by the Conservative whips to cause martial strife: https://twitter.com/andreajenkyns/status/1067838439066877952 If so, Mr S suspects Jenkyns will be able to take it in her stride...

Steerpike

Gary Lineker’s Brexit muddle

When Gary Lineker isn’t talking about football there is another subject that he likes to bang on about: Brexit. Lineker has backed the 'People’s Vote' campaign and is calling for a second referendum. As the Chancellor Philip Hammond unveiled his Brexit forecasts this morning, Lineker was spurred into action on Twitter: The only problem? That is the message the Treasury was selling 2.5 years ago. Back in May 2016, the chancellor’s predecessor George Osborne warned that Brexit would tip Britain into a year-long recession and cause a ‘profound’ economic shock. We were also told by David Cameron that a vote to Leave would be the ‘self-destruct option’. Of course in the end that never happened.

Lloyd Evans

Stop the press: Corbyn shows some wit at PMQs

As their time draws near, doomed leaders like to have a final go on the train-set. Mrs May entered this state of self-absorbed hyperactivity about a week ago when she started to push and yank at all the levers of power in Downing Street. Honours were handed out. Jets were commissioned to zoom her between various provincial capitals. TV stations were ordered to suspend their Sunday schedules and to prepare for a stage-managed debate starring Mrs May. Her hope is to mobilise support for the chit of paper she recently received from Brussels in return for £39bn. Never was chit more dearly purchased. At PMQs we got a foretaste of the TV spectacular in which Mrs May hopes to vaporise Jeremy Corbyn. But unforeseen circumstances have raced to Mr Corbyn’s assistance.

Steerpike

Diane Abbott takes a pop at police

If Jeremy Corbyn makes it to No.10, then Diane Abbott will be Home Secretary. In that role, Abbott will be ultimately responsible for the police. But the Labour MP isn't doing much to win over the affection of the thin blue line. In a tweet yesterday, Abbott had a pop at police officers for knocking suspects off mopeds. Her criticism has unsurprisingly not gone down well with officers: Oh dear...

Alex Massie

The moment Theresa May sealed our Brexit fate | 28 November 2018

Theresa May is in Scotland today which is one way of ascertaining the depth of the hole in which she finds herself. One day, prime ministerial visits to Scotland – or, indeed, to Northern Ireland or Wales – will cease to be considered newsworthy events in their own right. Until such time as they are not rarities, however, they are doomed to be seen as gestures. A whistle-stop tour of the United Kingdom’s northern and western extremities is not enough, no matter how much the Prime Minister might enjoy a day or two away from the Westminster snake-pit. This visit, like so many others, will be an occasion for saying at least some of the right things but it will not make any meaningful difference to anything that is actually meaningful.

Ross Clark

Philip Hammond has exposed the problem with the Treasury’s Brexit forecast

It is the decimal point which really gets me. If we have a ‘no deal’ Brexit, according to Treasury forecasters, the economy will be 7.6 per cent lower in 15 years’ time than it would be if we didn’t leave the EU. What, not 7.7 per cent? It is an age-old trick: express your guesswork with a decimal point or two on the end and hope that it sounds a bit more convincing, as if a bit more science has gone into it. But sorry, the Treasury should not be fooling anyone this time.

Charles Moore

The UK must avoid the backstop trap

Theresa May, William Hague and others say that the EU will not want to trap Britain in the backstop because it is not in its interest. It will want to move to a free-trade agreement for its own benefit. If that is so, why is the backstop the thing above all others upon which the EU insists? One reason why Brexiteers have to oppose the backstop absolutely is that it is yet another manifestation of Britain’s delusion in every European negotiation over nearly 50 years, which is that we should grab ‘practical’ advantages and concede ‘windy’ principles. This sounds good, but it invariably means that we are trapped later. The principles acquire legal force.

Katy Balls

Is the May-Corbyn television debate pointless?

Theresa May has two weeks to sell her deal to MPs ahead of the meaningful vote on Tuesday 11 December. The fact that Philip Hammond used an interview this morning meant for selling the deal to state that at present there was no consensus in favour of it tells you everything you need to know about how that is going. There are gloomy estimates that the government could lose the vote by as much as 200 – that seems steep but a defeat around the 100 mark is beginning to seem likely. So, how does No.10 plan to turn things around? There's a special Brexit grid which will see a topic focus for each day – economy, security, trade – in the build up. Perhaps the most striking part of the Downing Street campaign is the mooted TV debate. No.

Nick Cohen

The quack doctors of Brexit ignore the cure to Britain’s strife

The British are like patients with an incurable illness. Thinking and worrying can do no good, but those who understand Britain’s sickness can think of nothing else. Rationally, we understand there is nothing we can do about Brexit until and unless the balance of forces shifts in Westminster. No one knows what will happen next. No one can say when the European question will be settled, and we will be free to to get on with our lives as best we can. All options have been discussed to the point of exhaustion and beyond. But like patients who cannot shut their illness from their minds, we can’t help ourselves. We talk in circles in arguments without end. Brexit was meant to bring back control, but has left us impotent and at the mercy of impostors promising miracle cures.