Uk politics

Friday

James Kirkup

Are female prisoners at risk from transgender inmates?

Earlier this week, it was reported that an inmate in HM Prison New Hall, a women’s prison, had been charged with sexually assaulting four female inmates. According to the Sun, the inmate is transgender. Born male and still possessing male anatomy including male genitals, she now identifies as female. Because of that “identification”, the inmate was housed in the female prison estate; in broad terms, the Ministry of Justice says that transgender prisoners should be housed in the part of the prison system that corresponds to their gender identity.  That policy has many implications, one of which is that it is possible for a person with male anatomy, hormones and outlook, to be confined

Katy Balls

Michel Barnier’s pointed questions suggest no deal

Michel Barnier’s press conference responding to the UK government’s Brexit white paper will have been music to the ears of ‘no deal’ Brexiteers. After Theresa May pushed her Cabinet and premiership to the point of near collapse with her Chequers proposals for a softer Brexit, the EU’s Chief negotiator has today responded to her efforts with a heavy dose of scepticism. Barnier began by trying to play nice. He said he welcomed the development of the UK government’s position – he understood that it was the result of a debate and, for some, that debate is still ongoing. He said that the proposals from May contained several things Brussels could

Isabel Hardman

Julian Smith and the political art of not-lying

Theresa May’s defence of Julian Smith this afternoon hasn’t gone down amazingly well. The Prime Minister stuck to the line that Smith’s instruction to Brandon Lewis to ignore the pairing arrangement he had with Lib Dem Jo Swinson and vote on two key Brexit divisions was an ‘honest mistake’. This seemed somewhat implausible before the Times reported that Smith had in fact asked other paired Tory MPs to vote, and that he had also admitted to a chief whip from another party that he had instructed Lewis to vote. But the Tories now look dangerously as though they are sticking to a lie. Of course, this being politics, Labour has

Thursday

Steerpike

Olly Robbins’ Brexit bonus

Theresa May’s Brexit plan is going down badly and the EU is telling members states to step up preparations for ‘no deal’. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Brexit isn’t going entirely to plan. But this mess didn’t stop the Prime Minister’s Brexit guru Olly Robbins getting a bonus last year. Robbins was rewarded with a payment of between £15,000 and £20,000, according to figures released by the Department for Exiting the EU. As if that wasn’t enough, Robbins also earned a salary of at least £80,000 before his transfer from the Brexit department to No.10. Whatever happens with Brexit, Robbins, at least, has plenty to smile about…

Theresa May’s Brexit fear is selling Britain short

The EU is afraid of us, but we’ve got a prime minister who is afraid of the EU. The declaration by the European Commission that member states should prepare for ‘no deal’ is a powerful reminder that EU oligarchs are petrified that we will make a success of independence and expose the flaws in their dream of domination. They fear that we will reform our taxes and update our regulations to raise productivity and take market share from them. Their reaction is not to start improving their own competitiveness but to try to suppress our ability to compete, unfortunately with the willing compliance of the Chequers agreement and its anti-competitive

Steerpike

Kate Hoey on Jo Swinson vote pairing row: ‘she was okay to go on an anti-Trump demonstration’

Although the government managed to win the crunch customs union vote this week, the victory was short-lived thanks to a row over the fact Brandon Lewis voted despite being on a pairing arrangement with Lib Dem Jo Swinson – who missed the vote after recently giving birth. Today the Times reports that despite claims from the Chief Whip that it was all an ‘honest mistake’, two other Tory MPs were told by Julian Smith that they should vote on Tuesday despite being paired. On Wednesday, Kate Hoey waded into the row. Only the Labour MP – who voted with the government on Tuesday – has questioned the behaviour of not just

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

How May, Macron and Merkel failed to tame Trump

To conclude that relations between the United States and the Europeans are in quite a chaotic and unpredictable state is like saying German Chancellor Angela Merkel misses the good old days of Barack Obama and John Kerry. It’s so obvious that it doesn’t need repeating. There are a whole slew of foreign policy and economic issues that have shaken the U.S.-European relationship out of its traditional complacency. Steel and aluminum tariffs, Europe’s anaemic defense spending, the Iran nuclear deal, Brexit, trade imbalances, and Trump’s style of undiplomatic diplomacy have all thrown the continent for a loop. Trump appears to take pleasure in berating America’s European allies and watching them squirm;

Rod Liddle

I was wrong about Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson – an apology. His speech today was a very fine one and correct in each and every aspect. A week back, I took a shot at Johnson for what seemed to me the self-serving nature of his political manoeuvrings. They may still be intrinsically self-serving, I suppose. But it is nonetheless laudable that the hive of dead bees, the Conservative Party in Parliament, should hear a few home truths. Boris’s best speech of his career, by some margin. Hats off to him.

Steerpike

Jacob Rees-Mogg backs Boris

Boris Johnson’s resignation speech wasn’t the Geoffrey Howe moment some had built it up to be. But the former Foreign Secretary’s critique of Theresa May’s Brexit policy certainly gave Tory MPs food for thought. Johnson made clear he thought the policy amounted to Brexit in name only – and pushed for a change of course. Given that the Prime Minister shows no sign of backing down and is adamant hers is the right way, this presents the Brexiteers with a problem. Despite their insistence they would rather May stay in office, will this position be tenable in two months time if nothing has changed? And who could they turn to

Lloyd Evans

Jeremy Corbyn gives Theresa May another easy ride at PMQs

There is something horrible and unnatural about seeing Theresa May in trouble. Her aloof and grandmotherly face becomes a canvas on which all kinds of dreadful emotions are drawn. It’s almost too much to watch, really, it’s like seeing Miss Marple on a shoplifting charge. She arrived early at PMQs with a gravestone pallor. It was the same grimace she wore on election night when she realised she’d blown her majority. Lips tightly pursed. Small eyes held in a rigid squint. Fear and remorse etched in every powdered wrinkle. She sipped at her water and fussed with a Kleenex. Then she hunched in her seat, neither resting against the leather

Stephen Daisley

Labour members must pick a side in the fight against anti-Semitism

Snap. It was a long time coming but it was always coming. Jeremy Corbyn, who has traded on an image of saintly anti-racism for his entire career, was finally confronted by someone who sees through it. Yesterday, Labour’s national executive committee adopted a new policy that rejected the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. Rabbis from across the spectrum had urged Labour to accept this definition; Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned that failing to do so would send an unprecedented ‘message of contempt to the Jewish community’. Of course, that was the point. Labour does not like Jews very much; some within its ranks downright hate them; and

James Forsyth

Boris’s speech makes it harder for May to sell her Chequers plan

Boris Johnson did not launch a full-on attack on Theresa May in his resignation speech. But he was brutally critical of the Chequers plan, saying that in crucial respects it was ‘Brexit in name only’. He complained that since the Lancaster House speech ‘a fog of self-doubt has descended’ and that the UK never even attempted to turn that speech into a negotiating position. He said that ‘18 months of stealthy retreat’ had led the UK to its current predicament. In a speech shorn of his usual jokes, the former Foreign Secretary urged Theresa May to change course, to return to Lancaster House. He said that there was ‘still time

Brendan O’Neill

In praise of Labour’s Brexit rebels

So this is what a principled politician looks like. They can be hard to spot these days, but last night, in parliament, we saw four of them in action. Kate Hoey, Frank Field, John Mann and Graham Stringer. Four Labour MPs who, despite knowing they would get flak from both Corbynistas and centrists, despite knowing the Stalinist sections of left-wing Twitter would shriek for their deselection, despite knowing they would be paraded online as ‘Tory stooges’ whom all good Labourites have a duty to despise, nonetheless voted with their consciences and rejected an amendment to Theresa May’s trade bill that could have kept Brexit Britain entangled in a customs union

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson’s resignation speech, full text

Thank you Mr Speaker for granting me the opportunity to pay tribute to the men and women of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who have done an outstanding job over the last two years, and I am very proud that we have rallied the world against Russia’s barbaric use of chemical weapons with an unprecedented 28 countries joining together to expel 153 spies in protest at what happened in Salisbury. We have rejuvenated the Commonwealth with a superb summit that saw Zimbabwe back on the path to membership and Angola now wanting to join. And as I leave we are leading global campaigns against illegal wildlife trade and in favour

Katy Balls

Theresa May’s premiership enters ‘last days of Rome’ mode

‘I used to worry that something bad would happen, now I worry that something catastrophic will happen.’ This is how a Cabinet minister sums up the new political crisis facing the Conservative party – and soon the country. Last night one such catastrophe was narrowly avoided. The government managed to defeat the Tory rebel amendment calling for a customs union if frictionless trade was not agreed by January. Had they lost it, Theresa May’s Brexit strategy would be dead in the water and the Whips allege that a confidence vote would have been brought – and an early election loom. The reason May avoided this fate? Labour rebels came to

Tuesday

Katy Balls

Government’s not so cunning plan for an early summer break is scrapped

The government suffered a defeat in the Commons this evening. The good news for Theresa May is that it wasn’t the one No 10 were so worried about. Although Philip Lee’s amendment for European medicines regulatory network partnership succeeded, the Tory rebel amendment calling for the government to join a customs union if it does not agree a free-trade deal with the EU was narrowly defeated, at 307 to 301. This means the government can breathe a little easier for now. They can still claim to agitated Brexiteers that they are negotiating a deal which would allow them to strike international trade deals. As for Brussels, May told the Brexit

Steerpike

‘I’m literally a communist’ T-shirt – literally free market economics

Last week, the left-wing blogger Ash Sarkar told Piers Morgan she was ‘literally a communist’ after the pair got into a heated debate over her decision to protest Donald Trump’s visit to the UK when she hadn’t done the same for Barack Obama. Since then, the clip has gone viral and Sarkar – who works for Novara Media – has been rebranded as a liberal champion – with Teen Vogue even chipping in. Now Novara Media is keen to cash in. The blog has released a new t-shirt to its online shop emblazoned ‘I’m literally a communist’. Only rather than, say, practise communism and dispensing them ‘from each according to his

Steerpike

Blue on Blue: Nadine Dorries attacks Anna Soubry – ‘they’ve lost the plot’

Oh dear. As No 10 attempt to stop more Commons rebellions today on the customs bill, relations between Tory Remain rebels and Tory Brexiteers have hit an all-time low – and that’s saying something. Appearing on the Daily Politics, Nadine Dorries launched a broadside against Anna Soubry over her comments in the Chamber on Monday – when the Tory MP accused her Brexiteer colleagues with a ‘gold-plated pension and inherited wealth’ of backing Brexit to the detriment of people’s jobs. One such Brexiteer colleague’s response? Dorries just described it as ‘one of the worst moments that we have ever seen or witnessed in the chamber’. “No longer anger, they have

Alex Massie

Michael Gove’s Brexit regret is much too little, much too late

Not the least extraordinary thing about the campaign to leave the European Union is that it turns out no-one was in charge of it. Things just happened and decisions were just made without the oversight or knowledge of the most senior politicians whose support for the project was reckoned, with some reason, to be crucial to its essential success.  If Boris Johnson gave the Leave campaign a popular – and populist – presence in the nation’s television studios, Michael Gove gave it a certain intellectual credibility amongst the – admittedly small – percentage of the electorate that worries about such things. And with good reason: Gove’s intelligence, if not always

Monday

Steerpike

Theresa May’s big problem? Her ‘passion for what’s workable,’ says Tory MP

Andrea Jenkyns is regarded by many Tory MPs as a Brexit champion – after the Conservative MP for Morley pre-emptively quit last month as a PPS to fight for Brexit. Since then Jenkyns has become one of the loudest voices calling for a new tack from No 10 in the negotiations. However, Mr S can’t help but wonder whether Jenkyn’s latest intervention didn’t land quite as she had intended. In an interview with the Telegraph, the Tory MP attempts to criticise the Prime Minister for not being a true Brexiteer – not because she’s a Remainer but because her passion is… ‘what’s workable’ ‘It is time for her to go.