Uk politics

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Vince Cable tries to solve the Lib Dems’ existential crisis

From our UK edition

Vince Cable's announcements about shaking up the Liberal Democrats don't exactly inspire confidence in the party as an energetic force in British politics. Despite pitching themselves squarely as the anti-Brexit party, and despite there being growing talk of a group of voters - and MPs - who feel politically homeless, the Lib Dems are struggling to attract attention or offer a sense of purpose. The Lib Dem leader's plan to open up the party's membership to a 'new class of supporters who pay nothing to sign up to the party's values' has sparked a fair bit of criticism from those who think this would leave the Lib Dems vulnerable to entryism, as happened when Ed Miliband enacted similar reforms in the Labour Party.

Harry Mount

Boris’s gloating critics should be ashamed of themselves

From our UK edition

Am I the last person in the metropolitan elite bubble who likes Boris Johnson? You’d certainly think so, going on the reaction to the sad news of his divorce from his wife, Marina Wheeler, after 25 years of marriage. Every divorce is a whirlpool of misery for all those involved: parents, children, family and close friends. And yet the coverage of Boris’s sad news bubbles on a seething undercurrent of gloating and delight. ’Twas ever thus with Boris. For all his huge fan club, there have always been MPs who are jealous of his popularity; who were angry with him, when he edited The Spectator, that he didn’t accept their stultifyingly dull pieces on ‘Whither the euro?’ Boris is completely aware of all this.

Melanie McDonagh

Karen Bradley’s bid to break Stormont’s deadlock could pay off

From our UK edition

Karen Bradley, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, would not, perhaps, win prizes for her in depth knowledge of sectarian politics in her patch – in an interview for the House magazine she said she had never realised that nationalists don’t vote for unionists, and vice versa (though that, actually, may change, given how Sinn Fein’s pro abortion, pro gay marriage gives Catholic voters the creeps) – but she’s on the ball in one respect.

Steerpike

Northern Ireland secretary: I didn’t realise nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties

From our UK edition

Oh dear. Although Karen Bradley is widely regarded as Theresa May's closest ally in the Cabinet, Mr S hadn't realised the lengths the Cabinet minister was willing to go to to take the heat from her boss. In an interview with the House magazine, the Northern Ireland secretary has confessed that prior to being handed the brief she didn't know much about... Northern Ireland. In fact, she didn't know that 'people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice-versa': 'I freely admit that when I started this job, I didn’t understand some of the deep-seated and deep-rooted issues that there are in Northern Ireland.

Thursday

Max Jeffery

Four things we learnt from Raab and Robbins’ committee appearance

From our UK edition

After the long summer recess, it was back to school for Dominic Raab and Olly Robbins as they appeared together before the European Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday. The meeting couldn't be described as ideal timing for either thanks to an unfortunate set of circumstances. With the government's Brexit plan slammed by Brexiteers and Remainers alike, Raab and Robbins – the Government’s two most senior negotiators – had to defend a plan which has been heralded as less popular than the poll tax. The second underlying tension of yesterday’s meeting was the tricky relationship between the Brexit Secretary and the PM’s Europe advisor.

Paul Nizinskyj

It’s now or never for Labour moderates

From our UK edition

You have to hand it to Labour – they certainly know how to make an entrance. In the week that parliament returns, it was announced on Monday that the full slate of Corbynista candidates had been elected to Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC). This included Pete “Trump fanatics” Willsman, who was given a hero’s welcome by activists as he arrived at Labour HQ the following day. This was caught on camera with one activist bellowing through a microphone: “Jews are not oppressed...Jews are not discriminated against. They don't suffer economic discrimination." Apart from sending chills down the spines of British Jewry, the main outcome of this NEC election is likely to be introduction of the much-threatened mandatory reselection for MPs.

Steerpike

Jacob Rees-Mogg: Why I support Boris Johnson as a future leader

From our UK edition

Will Theresa May’s troubles ever end? Jacob Rees-Mogg has put the PM under more pressure today, telling LBC that he would have preferred Boris Johnson lead negotiations with the EU. The ERG Chair said: ‘Two years ago, in the Conservative Party leadership campaign, I supported Boris Johnson, because I thought he would deliver Brexit extraordinarily well. I haven’t seen anything that would cause me to change my mind on that. I think that had he become Prime Minister, we would have negotiated from a greater position of strength, and would be heading towards a clearer, cleaner Brexit, rather than the muddle of Chequers.

Steerpike

Westminster dog of the year: Corbyn misses out

From our UK edition

Mike Amesbury hoisted Corbyn into the air and patted him on the head. The shadow employment minister was at the 2018 Westminster Dog of the Year competition with his Cockapoo (who his son named Corbyn), and had just won the so-called ‘pawblic vote’. However it was Alex Norris, another Labour MP, who finished on the top of the podium with his dogs Boomer and Corona. Andrew Mitchell’s Scarlet came second, and Cheryl Gillan’s recue dog Goosebury came third. The annual event is hosted by Dogs Trust in Victoria Tower Gardens. Adrian Burder, Chief Executive of the charity, explained that the event provides an opportunity to ‘raise awareness of key dog welfare issues.

D Reilly

Corbyn’s Salisbury response is straight from the Trump playbook

From our UK edition

It is deeply weird that Jeremy Corbyn will not condemn Russia for carrying out a chemical weapons attack on British soil. Actually, it’s beyond weird. It’s astonishing. Earlier this year, Corbyn saw the same intelligence that convinced everyone else – including his closest comrade John McDonnell – that the Salisbury novichok poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia was carried out by Russian agents and approved at the highest levels within the Kremlin. This same evidence was deemed sufficient grounds by 27 countries to expel more than a 150 Russian diplomats.

Wednesday

Mervyn King

We’re heading for a ‘worst of both worlds’ Brexit

From our UK edition

If as a country we cannot take a big decision about whether or not we should be in the European Union, which is based on sovereignty, which is based on controlling our borders; there are arguments on both sides. We ought to be able to have a reasonable and civilised debate on that, and then have a vote. What we are now getting is not a reasonable or civilised discussion. It is a discussion where both sides seem to be throwing insults at each other. And I find that deeply depressing; and frankly, if a government cannot take action to prevent some of these catastrophic outcomes – whatever position you take on the EU – it illustrates a whole lack of preparation that doesn’t tell us anything about whether the policy of staying in the EU is good or bad.

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn and Novichok: what did the Labour leader really say?

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn's spokesman this afternoon caused something of a stir when he insisted to journalists that the Labour leader had always said that the evidence from the Salisbury attack pointed to direct or indirect Russian involvement. This didn't seem quite right: Corbyn attracted a great deal of opprobrium for failing to blame Russia for the attack at the time. It's worth going back over what precisely the Labour leader did say after the attack - and what he didn't. On 12 March, when Theresa May made her first statement to the Commons about the matter, she told MPs that 'the government have concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal'.

Lloyd Evans

Jeremy Corbyn’s PMQs speechwriters deserve better

From our UK edition

‘He should apologise!’ PMQs opened with a backbench question about anti-Semitism and Theresa May lobbed it straight at the Labour leader. She demanded that Jeremy Corbyn show contrition for joking that Jews in Britain ‘don’t understand English irony.’ Corbyn diffused the attack, a little clumsily, and said he deplored racism everywhere, ‘including the Conservative party.’ May didn’t press him on it. Corbyn had a decent script today. He prised open Tory divisions and he restated the latest hissy-fits between bickering cabinet members. He added a few croaks to the chorus of denunciation for the Chequers deal, and he finished with this.

Katy Balls

Salisbury novichok suspects named – how should Theresa May respond?

From our UK edition

A break from Brexit in Parliament was found today by way of Russia. In a statement to the House after PMQs, Theresa May announced that there had been significant developments in the UK investigation into the Salisbury poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal. The government have identified the individuals involved and linked them to the Russian military intelligence service: 'We were right to say in March that the Russian State was responsible. And now we have identified the individuals involved, we can go even further. Mr Speaker, just as the police investigation has enabled the CPS to bring charges against the two suspects, so the Security and Intelligence Agencies have carried out their own investigations into the organisation behind this attack.

Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Corbyn accuses May of ‘dancing round’ on Brexit

From our UK edition

It's a measure of quite how badly split the government is on Brexit that Jeremy Corbyn, who would previously avoid the matter because of problems in his own party, looked comfortable as he devoted all six of his questions at Prime Minister's Questions today to the subject. Theresa May came prepared, not so much with answers on who in her government is telling the truth about the Chequers agreement and the chances and consequences of a no deal, but with attacks on Corbyn's handling of Labour's anti-semitism row. This preparation gave the Prime Minister some decent pay-offs, including her final answer, when she closed the exchanges by saying 'he should be ashamed of himself'.

Steerpike

The return of flip-flop Andy Burnham

From our UK edition

During Andy Burnham's time in Westminster, the then Labour MP quickly built a reputation for flip-flopping. Never sure which way the wind would blow, Burnham would go from taking one Strong Stance to switching to a completely different Strong Stance when it seemed the mood was turning. These topics ranged from immigration and the NHS to Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Blair. Happily, it turns out one can still flip-flop up in Greater Manchester where Burnham is regional mayor.

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

How the EU is fighting back against populism

From our UK edition

There aren't many EU politicians with a high profile, but Federica Mogherini, the former Italian foreign minister and, since 2014, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, is one of the exceptions.  Mogherini’s five-year term is up next year. Where she will go after her time expires – back to a fractious and circus-like Italian political scene, or somewhere else in the EU structure – is anyone’s guess. But if her address at yesterday's EU Ambassador’s Conference is anything to go on, she intends to use the twilight of her tenure as Europe’s top foreign policy official to drill home a central point: multilateralism is not a dead or dying concept worth discarding.

Rory Geoghegan

The truth about stop and search

From our UK edition

Today in Britain, some of our poorest communities are under siege from gangs and violent crime – and it can be stopped. It is near impossible for people to realise their potential when they do not even feel safe in their communities and so it is a social justice issue that the Home Secretary is right to weigh in on. Sajid Javid is said to be planning a significant extension of police stop and search. After years of restricting these powers, it's about time. Javid is far from alone in believing stop and search is part of the answer to dealing with surging knife crime and serious violence. The Centre for Social Justice’s poll of Londoners in July found 89 per cent think that increasing the chances of being caught is important to tackling the problem.

Isabel Hardman

Can Jeremy Hunt really keep playing it safe on Brexit?

From our UK edition

Funnily enough, MPs across the Commons were today very keen to welcome Jeremy Hunt to his position as Foreign Secretary and suggest that he might garner more praise from them than his predecessor. At his first departmental questions in the new role, Hunt also had to address one of the messes left by Boris Johnson - and explain what his priorities were for the aspect of the portfolio that Johnson resigned over: the EU. The priorities of a Secretary of State can often be divined from which questions he or she chooses to answer at these sessions, and which ones are farmed out to his junior ministers. Hunt answered questions on the mass killing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma, the detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran and Brexit.

James Forsyth

How Boris Johnson will rain on Theresa May’s parade

From our UK edition

Ever since Boris Johnson resigned, Tories have wondered what he’ll do at conference. We now have an answer: he’ll address a thousand-person rally on the Tuesday, inside the secure zone. The event will be hosted by Conservative Home, the influential Tory website. This is a headache for Tory conference planners. Boris Johnson’s appearance on Tuesday, where he will reiterate his call to ‘chuck Chequers’, will overshadow everything else that is on that day. Given that Johnson’s Telegraph column comes out on Monday, there’s a good chance that he’ll be the big story of the conference for two days out of the four. This is, to put it mildly, not ideal for Theresa May as she tries to reassure Tory members about what her Chequers proposals mean.

Steerpike

Why did Corbyn visit Palestine when it was mourning the co-founder of Hamas?

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn is a man of peace with an unfortunate tendency to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong wreath – when it comes to anti-Semitism. Just last week it emerged that the Labour leader once claimed that Israel’s Prime Minister and other leading politicians compete to see 'who can kill the most' people in Palestine. Only Corbyn seems to be more relaxed about leaders who talk up killing Israelis and Americans. In the spring of 2004, the Labour leader – then a lowly backbencher – visited Palestine. It was a rather curious time for a visit given that after a series of assassinations of Hamas leaders, the mood was particularly febrile and Western visitors were thin on the ground. https://youtu.be/4vtV2yuqWTg?