Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Theresa May is heckled about her Boris problem

Today, Theresa May stood before the Commons to update MPs on the state of the Brexit process. At this critical juncture in the negotiations and in her career, the Prime Minister tried to convey a solemn and statesmanlike appearance as she spoke about her dealings with the European Union. Unfortunately for her, the statesmanlike approach probably wasn’t helped by some rather on the nose heckling from the Labour benches. As May outlined the roadblocks she faced in Europe: 'But Mr Speaker, two problems remain' One cheeky Labour MP shouted: 'Boris!'  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-8xVvlLiIM Judging by the ashen faces on the Conservative front benches, it seems like May thinks the Boris joke is wearing thin.

James Forsyth

Brexit is the only thing keeping John Bercow in the Speaker’s chair

John Bercow’s job is being saved by Brexit. Not just because the Brexit drama means that Dame Laura Cox QC’s damning report into the bullying and harassment of parliamentary staff is receiving less attention than it otherwise would, but also because many MPs are prepared to forgive Bercow’s failings because they think he is the Speaker who’ll give them the biggest chance to influence things if the government and the EU fail to reach a deal. The majority of MPs are opposed to no-deal. I suspect that even if the EU refused to budge an inch from its current unreasonable position, there would still be a Commons majority against it. But with parliament having voted to invoke Article 50, no-deal is the default scenario.

Ross Clark

The return of fracking is a victory for common sense

Now that fracking has resumed in Lancashire after a seven year hiatus, the green lobby which sought to frustrate it and delay it at every turn can reflect on what they have achieved: keeping the UK's carbon emissions rather higher than they would have been, had our native fracking industry been allowed to develop more quickly. In the short term at least, the alternative to burning UK-produced shale gas is not, as the green lobby says, using more energy from wind and solar farms. We do not currently have anything close to the electricity storage capacity to cope with a supply which comes exclusively from intermittent sources, and is it not clear at present how this will be resolved. For now, the real alternative to shale gas is either coal or imported gas.

Steerpike

Blue on blue warfare: Anna Soubry vs Andrea Jenkyns

With only weeks to go until a Brexit deal is put to parliament, the Conservative party is showing no signs of coming together over Theresa May’s Brexit plan. In fact, if tensions online are anything to go by, the party’s internal war between Remainers and Brexiteers may even be getting worse. The latest spat occurred last night, when arch-Remainer Anna Soubry called out Andrea Jenkyns, revealing that she has been blocked by her Brexiteer colleague on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Anna_Soubry/status/1051463635422339072 Readers will be glad to know though that Soubry herself isn’t above putting her fingers in her ears and shouting. Back in 2016, she bragged about blocking supporters of her other colleague Andrea Leadsom: https://twitter.

Steerpike

Caption contest: Jeremy Hunt and the Brexit maze

Will Theresa May's government find a way out of the Brexit maze? As the Prime Minister's backstop plans are deemed a dead end by her colleagues, it looks as though Downing Street are fast running out of options. But could inspiration be found in Jeremy Hunt? The Foreign Secretary took to social media to boast that he and his fellow European foreign ministers had managed to navigate Chevening maze in the rain – making the Brexit negotiations seem comparatively straightforward: https://twitter.com/Jeremy_Hunt/status/1051512481435275265 Captions in the comments.

James Kirkup

Even our MPs are afraid of the transgender mob | 15 October 2018

What are MPs thinking? It’s easy to assume, in the age of Twitter, that we know more about the positions our politicians take than ever before: quite a few of them, after all, spend rather too much time online telling us what they think about stuff. That has changed political journalism, but not always to the improvement of public understanding of politics. Journalism-by-Twitter, after all, runs the risk of missing  the thoughts and opinions that MPs don’t put online. One of the issues that most MPs don’t tweet about is trangenderism and the laws and rules around gender. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons I write so much about those things here.

Sunday

James Forsyth

What can break the Brexit impasse?

The Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab travelled to Brussels this afternoon, but not to shake on a deal. Rather, he was there to tell Michel Barnier that there are bits of the Irish protocol that the UK cannot accept. If the two sides can’t come to an agreement on this, then there will be ‘no deal’—an outcome that neither the UK or the EU 27 wants but is now more likely than it has been at any point since the UK triggered Article 50. So, what happens next? Well, there’ll be many on the EU side—particularly, in the Commission—who think that if they just sit tight, the UK will come to them.

Steerpike

The Chief Whip can’t take your call right now, please leave a message after the tone

No one has their finger on the pulse in the House of Commons like the government’s chief whip. To make sure every bill gets through parliament unscathed, the whip has to understand exactly how every MP in the party plans to vote, what they're thinking about the government - and work out how they can get rebellious MPs to change their minds. But it looks like Theresa May’s chief whip Julian Smith has drawn up the drawbridge tonight. The man in charge of relations with backbenchers might just have had enough of talking with his own MPs. The government enforcer posted this picture (without caption) on social media at 9 p.m. tonight: https://twitter.com/JulianSmithUK/status/1051567081177698310 What possibly could the whip be receiving this many calls about on a Sunday night?

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Emily Thornberry defends Labour’s Brexit tests

Iain Duncan Smith - The PM should put £2-3 billion of extra funding back into Universal Credit Sophy Ridge was joined this morning by the former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith. Duncan Smith resigned from the coalition government two years ago in protest at a lack of funding for his Universal Credit reforms. With Labour now calling for the policy to be scrapped, Duncan Smith outlined how he felt Universal Credit could be saved ahead of the 2018 budget: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1051395445958856704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw IDS: The government has a really really transformative policy on its hands... If you [underfund it] you lose the great benefit of it and then end up starving people of cash...

Katy Balls

Hell week 2.0: can Theresa May cling on?

If last week was 'hell week' for Theresa May, the next few days could be classed as the Prime Minister's trip to the ninth circle. With problems over the Irish border backstop unsolved, No 10 are fighting fire on multiple fronts ahead of a crucial EU Council meeting on Wednesday. The papers are filled with Cabinet resignation threats, rumoured leadership bids and a warning from the DUP that 'no deal' is now the most likely outcome. The Sunday Times puts the number of no confidence letters with 1922 chair Graham Brady at 44 – if four more go in a confidence vote will follow. Should that come to be and May lose, David Davis is now being talked up (once again) as a caretaker PM over Boris Johnson.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Are we heading for a Salzburg-style smash?

Sunday night was when the deal on the Irish backstop was meant to be done. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, this now seems unlikely to happen. The UK  and the EU are just too far apart on too many issues. There are two big issues at play. One, whether there should be a UK-wide backstop or one for Great Britain and another for Northern Ireland. I am told that at Thursday’s meeting of the inner Cabinet, ministers were told that the EU has not yet agreed to a UK-wide customs backstop. The second question is whether the backstop should be time limited. One member of the inner Cabinet who attended its discussion on Thursday night tells me that the meeting ‘didn’t really settle anything’. I am told that ‘The PM chaired as opposed to opined’.

Friday

Stephen Daisley

Why we shouldn’t forget Jeremy Corbyn’s contemptible past

There are many clever people - pollsters, commentators, strategists - who say that Jeremy Corbyn's past does not matter, that the voters do not care about it, and that his critics ought to move on. Recounting every Islamist he shared a platform with, every anti-Semite he rallied beside, every Irish republican he cosied up to is a waste of time. Corbyn has caught the spirit of the moment and his detractors are stuck in the past. They may be right but let me try to explain to them why we care so much about these things. Thirty-four years ago today - at 2.54 a.m. to be precise - a bomb tore through the Grand Brighton Hotel during the Conservative Party conference. Anthony Berry, MP for Enfield Southgate, was killed, along with Muriel Maclean, Eric Taylor, Jeanne Shattock and Roberta Wakeham.

Geoffrey Alderman

How the Tories’ education shake-up risks alienating Jewish voters

Labour desperately needs to win over Jewish voters if Jeremy Corbyn is to make it to Downing Street. At the snap election, the party was damaged by underperformance in seats with large Jewish populations: Hendon (held by the Tories by a only 1,072 votes) and Finchley (Tory majority 1,657) are two examples. Labour's summer of anti-Semitism has made winning over such voters even trickier. But while the Tories look well placed to keep hold of these seats, they appear to be doing their best to imitate Corbyn and alienate Jewish voters. An increasingly bitter row between the government and orthodox Jewish communities across Britain is to blame for this.

Thursday

The Spectator

Director’s cut | 11 October 2018

‘The role of government is not to pick favourites and subsidise them or protect them.’ So says the government’s industrial strategy, published last year — a document which was supposed to distinguish between a free-market approach and the interventionism favoured by Jeremy Corbyn. Yet in one industry, at least, the government is doing exactly what it says it should not: it is showering firms with subsidies in the hope of generating growth. This week the British Film Institute (BFI) published a report making grand claims for the government’s ‘tax reliefs’ for the film industry.

John Waters

Paddy powerless

In February, I spoke at the first ‘Irexit’ public meeting in Dublin, a discussion about options for Ireland in the event of various eventualities arising from Brexit or some more fundamental disintegration of the EU. Nigel Farage was among the speakers, so what might otherwise have been ignored became the focus of finger-wagging by the media ayatollahs. Punctuating the speeches were videos about Ireland’s economy, resources, history--in-the-EU and so forth. One featured a classic Irish rock song by the venerable fivesome Horslips, a rock band of the 1970s. The song was ‘Dearg Doom’ (Red Destroyer), which turns on a riff based on an Irish march, ‘O’Neill’s Cavalry’.

Steerpike

The Left begins to eat itself: Labour disputes row

Oh dear. This year's Labour conference was notable for the fact that the big dispute was not between the moderates and the Corbynistas but instead the trade unions and Momentum. With the majority of Labour moderates now resigned to defeat on the direction of the party, it's fallen to the various Corbynista hard left factions to continue the internal fight. So, Mr S was intrigued to learn of the latest Left-on-Left action. The elections are coming up for places on National Constitutional Committee – this is Labour’s highest internal body and members of which have the power of expulsion. It follows that who ever is on it with have a sizeable say on how the party handles allegations of anti-Semitism regarding members.

Robert Peston

Why the DUP could risk toppling Theresa May’s government

Maybe I was wrong (words I probably don’t say enough). I thought the DUP would be fairly pragmatic about the terms of the 'backstop' designed to keep open the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland till a permanent solution was found (stop smirking). So when I learned that the draft backstop deal agreed on Tuesday by UK and EU officials contained 'only' a requirement for additional physical checks in and around the Irish Sea on agriculture and food, I thought the DUP could probably live with that. How so? Well there are already such checks. And what is being proposed is simply an increase from 10 per cent to 100 per cent of checks on livestock and foods to verify them as healthy and conforming to EU standards.

Steerpike

People’s Vote celebrity ad: I voted Remain… and I still want to Remain

With Theresa May's Brexit proposals looking increasingly difficult to get through Parliament, the so-called 'People's Vote' campaign has stepped up its efforts to bring about a second referendum... sorry, 'vote on the final deal'. The campaign group runs on the idea that the facts have changed so it's only fair that there's another vote. In that vein, they have released a new advert packed with on-message celebrities. https://twitter.com/peoplesvote_uk/status/1049985514324066304 Among those proclaiming the benefits of a second referendum are people's champion Gary Lineker, thespian Dominic West and Steve Coogan. In it, blogger and writer Scarlett Curtis declares 'this is not what we voted for'.

James Forsyth

The DUP is showing that its Brexit threats aren’t a bluff

Things are escalating fast in the row between the government and the DUP. Yesterday’s threat to vote against the Budget was followed by them abstaining on the agriculture bill. The message is clear: if we don’t like what you sign up to on the backstop, we’ll make it impossible for you to govern. So, what is going on here? Well, a large part of it — as Katy Balls says on Coffee House — is about trust. The DUP suspect Downing Street and the civil service, in particular, of being ready to sell them out, and so aren’t inclined to believe their assurances.

Gavin Mortimer

Why Emmanuel Macron should fear a no-deal Brexit

Last month I made my annual pilgrimage to the battlefields of the Somme, something I've been doing for 27 years. In that time, the area has changed dramatically: Albert, the small, sleepy town in the heart of the world war one battlefields has been transformed from a decaying backwater into a bustling place with cafes, hotels, shops and a fine world war one museum; although this is nothing compared to the one adjacent to the Thiepval Memorial, opened in 2016. The latter pulls in tens of thousands of visitors each year, predominantly British, most of whom stay at the numerous B&Bs in the outlying villages. The one I stayed in last month was run by a French couple who told me how the region has been regenerated this century by the battlefield tourists.