Uk politics

Until 5pm this evening, the main news from Theresa May's first trip to Africa as Prime Minister was that she isn't much good at dancing – after she attempted to join in on a dance with school children in Cape Town. However, the Maybot has since managed to set the news agenda alight by telling hacks that when it comes to her premiership she is 'in this for the long term'. Asked by the accompanying press pack, whether it was still her intention to lead her feuding party into the next election, May said she was in it for the 'long term' – adding that her focus right now is on delivering 'what the British people want'.

With Brexit negotiations stuck at a stalemate and a warring cabinet to contend with in the UK, the famously robotic Theresa May could be forgiven for wanting to let her hair down as she begins her tour of South Africa today. Which could possibly explain why she decided to throw caution to the wind, and join in with a spot of dancing when visiting a senior school in Cape Town this morning: https://twitter.com/DIRCO_ZA/status/1034341700532142085 Although, Mr Steerpike thinks if her dance moves are anything to go by, the ‘Maybot’ may be struggling to fully let go of her inhibitions.

If you wanted an easy illustration of the importance of a Parliament that looks vaguely like the country it works for, look no further than a tiny consultation issued this week by the Home Office. In it, ministers suggest new guidelines on the treatment of women in custody who are on their periods. This sounds like quite small fry - and the sort of subject that makes at least 50 per cent of readers recoil from going any further. But it’s important, not just in itself, but also because it shows what happens when more women join the House of Commons.

Political parties rarely have good summers. If you’re in government, something normally goes wrong just as you’re settling into a deckchair. If you’re in Opposition, a good summer is when something has gone wrong in the government. A disappointing summer is when no-one notices your carefully-planned announcements. A bad summer is when you get plenty of attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Labour has had a bad summer. It has spent much of it making rather wan attempts to calm the row on anti-semitism.

“We’re not doing a very good job of selling the private sector, are we?” So said an old friend of mine, among the Conservative party’s most senior advisors, as we discussed my upcoming Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on Carillion. Back in January, Jeremy Corbyn declared the implosion of the UK’s second-largest construction firm “a watershed moment” – and, in some ways, he was right. I don’t accept Carillion’s demise seven months ago means private companies should be kept away from providing public services, as the Labour leader has argued, or that Britain now needs wide-ranging nationalisation. The state already employs a fifth of the workforce, accounting for over two-fifths of GDP – which is quite enough.

There’s something going on across the pond. Less than twenty-four hours after Mr S informed readers of the New York Times’s struggle with the London foodie scene, Steerpike has come across another incident of an American journo who seems divorced from reality. The American Enterprise Institute's Dalibor Rohac has waded into the debate over where Theresa May, by the time she hangs up her heels and looks back on her legacy, will find herself in the pantheon of great British Prime Ministers. In the UK, that debate has been pretty much limited to three from bottom, two from bottom, or bottom. But across the pond, a more optimistic view is being taken.

At last they’ve found a name for it. A name for the meltdown that has occurred in certain political circles since June 2016. A name for the daily Twitter-rage against That Referendum. A name for the clearly potty belief that we are heading for the End of Days and that it is all the fault of dumb voters who don’t like the EU. A name for the non-stop fuming about Britain’s ‘inferior’ people and the almighty mess they have apparently landed the nation in. It’s called Brexit Anxiety Disorder. At least that is how Tom McTague at Politico sums up the findings of two psychological experts who have looked into post-referendum craziness. And we know how much Remainers love experts, so no doubt they will fully take on board this expert diagnosis of their malady.

William Hague’s warning today that the Conservative Party mustn’t change the rules by which its leader is elected shows quite how much has changed in British politics over the past few years. Ideas that were very much in vogue in 2015 are now widely trashed. Where once it was considered a no-brainer that parties should make it easier and cheaper for members to join and even give them more say over policy making, now parliamentarians and commentators are running scared of just that. Why?