Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Katy Balls & James Forsyth

Move aside, Boris

When Boris Johnson compared Theresa May’s Brexit plan to wrapping a suicide vest around Britain’s constitution, the harshest response came from a fellow Tory MP, Tom Tugendhat, who tweeted: ‘A suicide bomber murdered many in the courtyard of my office in Helmand. The carnage was disgusting, limbs and flesh hanging from trees and bushes. Brave men who stopped him killing me and others died in horrific pain. Some need to grow up. Comparing the PM to that isn’t funny.’ The response was a reminder of how high feelings are running in the Conservative party — and that Tugendhat is not one to pull his punches.

Steerpike

Peter Willsman welcomed back into the fold at Labour conference

When Peter Willsman was re-elected onto the Labour NEC this month, there was a sense of shock in the party. It wasn't that it was surprising a Corbyn ally had beaten a moderate in a party vote – that's now the status quo. Instead, it was curious that Willsman was elected despite being recorded saying that Jewish 'Trump fanatics' are 'making up' anti-Semitism allegations within the party. The incident led Momentum to revoke their endorsement of his candidacy. So, with Willsman back on the NEC, questions had remained as to how the party would handle his re-election, with many MPs calling on him to stand down and spare the party (any more) blushes. But it seems there was no need to worry about a cold welcome for Willsman.

James Forsyth

The Tories are conspiring to chuck the Chequers plan

Right now, as I say in the magazine this week, Theresa May doesn’t have the political space to make further significant concessions to the EU. Without significant concessions, the EU isn’t going to agree to the Chequers plan. This is why a growing number of Cabinet Ministers are already talking about when the government should move on from Chequers and put a different offer - closer to a Canada-style deal - on the table. One influential member of the cabinet insists that this is the key issue: whether Theresa May has ‘the agility to change tack’.

Steerpike

Watch: John McDonnell’s call for ‘direct action’ against Tory MPs

Jacob Rees-Mogg won support from across the political spectrum on Wednesday when the MP and his children were ambushed outside of their home. Class War activist Ian Bone took it upon himself to inform the Conservative politician's young children that their 'daddy is a totally horrible person': 'Lots of people don't like your daddy, you know that? He's probably not told you that. Lots of people hate him.' The incident led to mass condemnation from the Left as well as Tories. So, why would people come up with the idea of harassing an elected Member of Parliament in this way? Mr S wonders whether the answer can be found in a statement made by John McDonnell in 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

James Forsyth

All battle, no plan

It looks as if the Conservative party is already at war. Fifty or so Brexiteer Tory MPs openly meet to discuss deposing the Prime Minister —  yet they have no strategy and (at present) no chance of defeating her in a confidence vote. On Twitter, Tory backbenchers and even ministers can be found threatening to destroy each other. This isn’t just about personality. In the last few months, the question of what Britain’s relationship with the EU should be and who should be Prime Minister have fused together — so the most divisive issue in British post-war politics has been combined with a drawn-out leader-ship contest. The Prime Minister has produced a plan: the Chequers proposal.

Robert Hardman

The Eurosceptic Queen

There has been much inconclusive speculation on the Queen’s views on Brexit. In 2016, the Sun asserted that she was in favour (later overruled by Ipso as ‘significantly misleading’). Last year, pro-EU commentators claimed that the blue hat with yellow stars she wore to open Parliament showed coded support for Remain. For now, we are none the wiser. What we do know, however, is that the monarch must be finding things a good deal easier on the way out than on the way in. Rewind to 1972 and a damp May evening at the Palace of Versailles.

Lionel Shriver

One discouraging word and you’re a transphobe

This column is not in my interest. But then, not for the first time. I cannot count the conversations conducted in recent years with reasonable, moderate people when expressing what should be reasonable, moderate views, during which my companions exhibit signs of drastic anxiety: fidgeting, darting pupils, twisting hands. The mumbling under the breath can border on unintelligible. If we’re in public, they will look wildly around to see who might be listening. Even in private, friends and colleagues emphasise that they’re speaking off the record. These must have been the kind of uneasy, secretive exchanges whispered between folks not wholly on board with National Socialism in 1930s Berlin. But in 2018, what gets discussed in hushed tones? Transgenderism.

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Armed with partisan missives, May outgunned Corbyn at PMQs

Poor Jezza. The Labour leader had a decent showing today but he was outgunned by Mrs May who performed with astonishing prickliness and aggression. Mr Corbyn claimed that Universal Credit has forced millions onto the bread-line. The PM countered that reform was vital. She cited a young mum in Maidenhead who'd been advised to skive, not work because benefits paid more. The advice came from the Job Centre. The PM received an unexpected stroke of fortune. One of Mr Corbyn’s ploys is to recite weepy letters from constituents whom he identifies, rather like lost puppies in need of a good home, by their first names only. For once, Mrs May was armed with her own collection partisan missives. And the Labour leader unwittingly gave her the perfect cue.

Isabel Hardman

How serious are the plots against Theresa May?

Following last night's reports of open plotting against Theresa May, her critics in the Conservative party seem rather keen to row back on any suggestion that they really are planning a coup. Iain Duncan Smith, for instance, told BBC Radio 5 Live that he 'would stamp on' any attempted challenge, and that the talk of a plot was 'totally overblown'. Others have pointed out that there were notable senior absences from the European Research Group's meeting last night, including Bernard Jenkin, David Davis, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Of course, even if those big names had been present and plotting merrily away, their plans would have been seriously undermined by the easy leaks that came from the meeting.

James Forsyth

An old-fashioned barney, but no friendly fire for May at PMQs

PMQs today was an old-fashioned, political barney. I have rarely heard the chamber as loud as it was today. Corbyn’s final question - which was, in reality, more of a speech - was inaudible up in the press gallery because of the noise below. But to the relief of May loyalists, there were no hostile questions for her from her own side: no fuel was thrown on the fire started by last night’s meeting of the European Research Group. Corbyn’s questions were on Universal Credit. May tried to turn his usual PMQs tactics back on him, and quoted ordinary people who had benefited from universal credit. But the tactic wasn’t as effective defending government policy as it can be  attacking it; something would be very wrong if no one had gained from a government policy.

Nicholas Farrell

The UN’s politically motivated search for human rights abuses in Italy

When politicians in Europe listen to the people and actually do something to stop uncontrolled immigration, the Holy See of the Global Crusade to Abolish Countries and the White Working Class – a.k.a the United Nations - sends in the thought police. This spring it happened in Britain when Tendayi Achiume, UN 'Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance', turned up to do a fortnight's fieldwork in order to demonstrate what she had already decided: Britain, thanks to Brexit, is a human-rights emergency in the grip of surging racism.

Tuesday

Josephine Bartosch

Labour’s refusal to accept the definition of a woman

‘Well what sort of question is that? That’s bloody stupid if you ask me. I’ve two daughters and five grandchildren. I’ve got my bits and him indoors, he’s got his - that’s just nature.’ Those were the words of my octogenarian neighbour Joan who, reasonably enough, looked at me like I was a simpleton when I asked her what she thought ‘made a woman.’ What prompted my question to Joan was the upcoming arrival of a huge billboard emblazoned with the unremarkable words ‘Woman; wʊmən/(noun) adult human female.’ This message will be placed in Liverpool city centre by the campaign group Standing for Women ahead of the Labour Party conference.

Robert Peston

The Brexiteer mutiny against Theresa May has begun

I am just going to let this speak for itself. It’s a slightly edited but verbatim account of tonight’s weekly meeting of the Brexiter European Research Group faction of the Conservative Party. It requires no additional comment from me - other than that I have multiple sources vouching for its veracity. “We've just had an ERG mass meeting, 50 odd MPs present, where virtually the only topic of conversation for 40/50 mins was: how best do we get rid of her? What's the best way to use our letters? Comments included: ‘Everyone I know says she has to go’, ‘she's a disaster’, ‘this can't go on’. You might think that this is usual far for us, but it's not! Not in the mass weekly meeting, never in what's basically a public forum.

Katy Balls

The Brexiteers have their own numbers problem to deal with

This week was supposed to be the week that the European Research Group of backbench Brexiteers finally revealed their hand and published a Brexit plan to rival Theresa May's. With the Prime Minister currently without the numbers to get her Chequers proposal through Parliament (even if there were no further concessions), there were concerns from May supporters that a viable alternative Brexit plan could be the final nail in the coffin. Only that rival plan hasn't come to fruition after so-called creative differences among the Brexiteers over the mooted 140-page draft proposals. Matters weren't helped when 'mad' plans to build a 'Star Wars'-style missile shield to protect Britain from nuclear attack and an 'expeditionary force' to defend the Falklands emerged in the weekend papers.

Tanya Gold

Boris’s Rules of love

I cannot speak for Boris Johnson’s politics, for he can barely speak for them himself, but his taste in restaurants in excellent. According to people that follow his romantic entanglements – for I follow none but my own - he dined in Rules of Covent Garden on Valentine’s Day with a woman whose name escapes me. But she looked like that healthy sort of upper-class – or fake upper class - girl who could, at a witch’s nod, be turned into a set of bowls; that is, athletic, and always laughing at something - but most probably nothing. Ah, Rules! My own best restaurant! The supper club of my unmarried years – but I have never been hip – in which I sat with a female friend, sucking cow bones until all the meat was gone.

Steerpike

Goldsmiths student group: Gulags ‘actually a compassionate, non-violent course of action’

Yesterday, the LGBTQ+ society of Goldsmiths University, emitted a series of tweets defending the educational value and 'compassion' of Soviet Gulags. Writing to 'clarify what a gulag is', the group sought to demonstrate that to send a friend, family member, or stranger to the gulag 'is actually a compassionate, non-violent course of action'. It turns out that gulags – sometimes referred to as death camps – offered a chance to gain skills and 'move up the ranks'! The tweets have since been deleted and as of this morning, LGBTQ+ Gold 'are protecting our tweets temporarily for the sake of safeguarding'.

Steerpike

Alan Duncan’s outrageous double standards

Boris Johnson appears to have perfected the art of triggering his Westminster colleagues. First with letterboxes, now suicide vests, the former Foreign Secretary has developed a particular knack for driving fellow Tory MPs round the bend with a simple turn of phrase. This latest round of 'outrage' has seen a number of Conservative MPs condemn Johnson over his decision to compare Theresa May's Brexit negotiating position to wearing a suicide vest. Particularly scandalised by the incident was a junior minister at the Foreign Office, also known as The Rt Hon Sir Alan Duncan. Sir Alan howled: 'For Boris to say that the PM’s view is like that of a suicide bomber is too much. This marks one of the most disgusting moments in modern British politics.

Steerpike

The banks abandon Project Fear

Three senior bankers from Barclays, J.P. Morgan and Citi descended on the House of Commons today to give evidence to the Treasury Select Committee on the impact of a No Deal Brexit. Their interview must have seemed like perfect timing for Chancellor Philip Hammond, who is currently doing his own tour of the Commons and is expected to drum up support for Chequers by stoking fears of the calamitous impact of No Deal Unfortunately for Hammond, the three bankers were not nearly as morose as the Treasury could have hoped for. Instead they said the risks of No Deal were comparable to the instability they regularly faced across the world.

Nick Cohen

Why an insurgent Remain could win a second vote | 11 September 2018

Cold calculation suggests there won’t be a second referendum. It could destroy both the Tory and Labour parties, and in any case, we appear to be heading for a classic EU fudge that will postpone hard choices. But as all predictions in 2018 are likely to be false, and the Tory right appears determined to provoke a crisis, it’s worth understanding why the People’s Vote campaign thinks that next time it will be different. They will be the insurgents and the Brexiters will be defending the status quo. Running against a failed establishment has always been a good tactic, but never more so than in the 2010s. Remain campaigners find in focus groups that the double standards of the Brexit elite have 'cut through,' as the marketing departments say.

Monday

Steerpike

Dawn Butler: Labour didn’t lose the general election

It’s been over a year since the last general election, but it looks like there are still some Labour MPs who are confused about their presence on the opposition benches. One such appears to be the shadow minister for women and equalities and Corbyn devotee, Dawn Butler. In an interview on TalkRadio this afternoon, it was put to the MP,  that Labour's manifesto can’t have been that brilliant if they went on to lose the general election. Butler responded: ‘Well actually, we didn’t lose. We didn’t win, but we didn’t lose the election’ https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1039146683966398465 Mr S must have missed the brief reign of Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn...