Theresa may

One of the professional drawbacks of coming from Scotland and then moving to London is that I don’t really know an awful lot about England. True, I spent a few years in East Anglia on my way south, but it was a particular part of East Anglia that possibly has rather more dreaming Gothic spires, rusted bicycles and robotics labs than the norm, so I’m not sure it was wholly representative. Still, I know the cities. I have spent enough time in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield, say, to know that they are not so terribly different from Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness or even the bits of Edinburgh without the cobbles.

Theresa May’s biggest conference dilemma was what to say about Brexit. She doesn’t want to trigger Article 50 yet, or even say when she will do so. Why, because the government hopes that the longer it waits, the more the rest of the EU will be inclined to have preliminary discussions before the actual negotiations start. But May had to have something to say to conference on Brexit. So, May’s team have come up with an announcement that doesn’t involve Article 50 but does enable her to show ‘momentum’, and to claim she is getting on with things. It is a ‘Great Repeal Bill’ which will repeal the 1972 European Communities Act, but only when Britain actually leaves the EU.

What is Theresa May’s greatest weakness as she goes into conference season? The Prime Minister had such a good start to the job that it’s easy to forget that she has the same problems that David Cameron did in terms of parliamentary arithmetic and fractures in her party over Europe. For Cameron, the parliamentary arithmetic was most difficult because there was a hardened core of eurosceptics who distrusted him, and because he and George Osborne had a habit of trying to sneak half-baked policies such as huge cuts to tax credits past MPs and hope that they wouldn’t notice (which they nearly didn’t).

There was a time when the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo would have featured strongly in political debate in Britain. Just two weeks after a negotiated ceasefire appeared to have provided some respite, a war of attrition in Syria’s second largest city is escalating into a vast human tragedy. Last Saturday, a bomb dropped by Syrian government forces knocked out a pumping station which had been supplying water to two million people, 250,000 of whom are besieged in the rebel-held east of the city. On the same day, at least 45 people, many of them children, were killed by barrel bombs dropped indiscriminately on civilians — a now common occurrence. Food supplies had already been running low, supply lines to rebel areas having been severed in early September.

To a new Prime Minister’s speech-writer the party conference approaches like a bullet train. If my friend, Sir Ronald Millar, were still alive he would be working flat out on Theresa May’s speech by now. With the date of delivery advancing and the drafts on her desk ever more undeliverable, the need for ‘Ronnification’ must be overwhelming. It always was. Ronnie is best known today as the playwright who wrote ‘U-turn if you want to: the lady’s not for turning’ for Margaret Thatcher in 1980, and gave this paper’s former editor, Charles Moore the title for the second volume of his great biography.

Tim Shipman’s book about the EU referendum campaign, All Out War, is serialised today in the Sunday Times. The newspaper today leads on the remarkable disclosure that David Cameron blames Theresa May for the paucity of the deal he negotiated in those 30 sleepless hours with Brussels. Here’s the extract:- Before the speech, conscious that immigration was likely to be an explosive issue in the referendum campaign, Cameron had floated with Merkel the idea of an annual cap on the number of national insurance numbers handed to EU migrants or an emergency brake on numbers. But the German leader said she would not agree to changes to free movement for EU citizens.

The Labour Party is in a sour mood at present, that much we already know. Usually, most of the sourness expressed by MPs is directed at their own party comrades. But this afternoon, at the Labour Women’s Conference, speaker after speaker decided to turn fire on Theresa May. Angela Rayner congratulated her on being the second female Prime Minister of this country, but said ‘I cannot celebrate her arrival’. Kezia Dugdale attacked both May and Nicola Sturgeon for not being real feminists, saying: ‘Look at Theresa May - she has the audacity to wear a ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ T-shirt.

Theresa May has made one thing clear: Brexit mean Brexit. But when will the Prime Minister actually pull the trigger and invoke Article 50? Boris Johnson gave his take last night: 'The Government is working towards an Article 50 letter which as you know will be produced, probably, in the early part of next year. That's still subject for discussion but what is clear I think to our friends and partners in the EU is two broad principles: we are not leaving Europe; Although we are leaving the EU treaties, we do want to have the closest possible trading relationship and it's very much in their interests to achieve that... it's very much in their interests to do a great free trade deal with us, and I think that will happen.