Uk politics

Monday

James Forsyth

Theresa May: Brexit does mean Brexit

Theresa May’s appearance in the Commons today debuted some new language but didn’t tell us much about what she’ll set out to the Cabinet on Friday. May repeated that membership of the European Economic Area would not respect the result of the referendum. Now, she has said this several times before but her comment will reassure some Brexiteers. They’ll be less reassured, though, by her dodging the question when Jacob Rees-Mogg asked her if the UK would continue to be bound by the Common External Tariff after Brexit. May was conciliatory in her tone at the despatch box, but she seemed particularly keen to calm Brexiteers.  When Desmond Swayne asked

Steerpike

Watch: Kit Malthouse wrong-foots his boss

Oh dear. Esther McVey has rather a lot on her plate right now with the faltering universal credit roll out. Today, however, her problems became physical while answering work and pensions questions in the Chamber. Only it wasn’t the Opposition causing the issue. Junior minister Kit Malthouse lost his balance as he stepped away from the despatch box – causing the muscular Tory to almost sit down on a petite McVey. See if you can spot it.

Steerpike

No more BBC Mairs for Boris Johnson

The news that Eddie Mair is departing the BBC for LBC has been met with disappointment by his former comrades. However, Mr S suspects that there is one man who will today be breathing a sigh of relief. Step forward Boris Johnson. It’s no secret that the foreign secretary has a frosty relationship with the broadcaster – in fact, the majority of Boris’s broadcast gaffes have been when Mair was the one asking the questions: Mair to Boris – ‘you’re a nasty piece of work’ In the first interview in 2013, Mair branded Boris a ‘nasty piece of work’. He was referring to Mr. Johnson’s integrity, which came under scrutiny

Steerpike

Sajid Javid takes the lead

According to weekend reports there are now 20 Tory MPs preparing leadership bids should Theresa May fall. However, one minister tells Coffee House that’s not right – it’s actually more like 40. So, with ambitious politicians plotting their next move, who is the frontrunner? Mr S was curious to note that Sajid Javid – the newly installed Home Secretary – has taken the lead for the first time. Javid has topped ConHome’s leadership poll – this is notable given that since the site revived their Next Tory Leader question after the snap election, it has been topped either by a candidate by the name of ‘other’ or by Jacob Rees-Mogg. id

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: MPs advised to stay off Twitter accounts

Remember when, as a child, you were astonished to discover that not only did your teacher not retreat to the resources cupboard to charge overnight, but that they had a life outside work and even a family? Some adults still seem not to have grasped this about MPs. Last night, Labour MP Luciana Berger posted a thread on Twitter in which she justified not attending a rally for the NHS’s 70th birthday in London at the weekend. It was quite a lengthy thread, in which Berger set out all the NHS-related work she had done that week, and rather plaintively said that while also knocking on doors over the weekend

Steerpike

Confirmed: Cameron did ask Obama to say Brexit Britain would be ‘back of the queue’

When Barack Obama warned Brits on a visit to the UK ahead of the EU referendum that a vote for Leave would see Britain put to the ‘back of the queue’, on trade deals there was much anger – and also bemusement. As Brexiteers were quick to point out, Americans rarely use the word ‘queue’ – leading some to ask: did No 10 ask the US president to intervene? At the time, Cameron’s allies strongly denied this suggestion. However, it seems that the truth is quite different. Speaking on the Today programme, former White House staffer Ben Rhodes claimed that Cameron’s aides did ask their side for Obama to say Brexit

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: NHS preparing for a no deal Brexit

Simon Stevens: the NHS is making ‘significant preparations’ for no deal Brexit This morning Andrew Marr sat down for an interview with the Chief Executive of NHS England. With the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the NHS approaching this week, Marr asked Simon Stevens about the implications of a no deal Brexit on the health service, and whether he was making appropriate preparations for such an event: “There is now significant planning going on around all the scenarios," says @NHSEngland Boss Simon Stevens, including a no-deal scenario to ensure that medical supplies are not disrupted #marr pic.twitter.com/Io5yPctoX8 — The Andrew Marr Show (@MarrShow) July 1, 2018 AM: …When you

Katy Balls

Tory tensions rise as decision day looms for Theresa May

‘It’s not just backbench Conservative MPs who expect ministers to pull together behind May: the great swathe of the electorate which either voted Leave, or voted Remain but recognises that a united team will achieve a better trading relationship for the future than a divided one, expects it too.’ This is the warning Graham Brady issued to badly behaved Tory ministers over the weekend. Writing in the Guardian, the chair of the all-powerful 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, presented the feuding Cabinet with a choice: get behind May or prepare for a Corbyn victory at the next election similar to 1997. This isn’t the first time Brady has had

Sarah Sands

Is the weather the Brexiteers’ best argument?

We have reached peak summer, literally. And the weather is probably the Brexiteers’ best argument, since it would be madness to go abroad. This is the great week of summer parties in London, including the US Embassy and the FT. Last week was the V&A summer party, described to its director Tristram Hunt by one disbelieving guest as Civilisation set on Love Island. The reason was that millennials prefer pink carpets to red ones and drink slightly less than their elders, and worse. I am not saying there is a London/country divide, but we take our pleasures differently in Norfolk. Our neighbours were busy organising their stall for the village fête last weekend, with

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Erdogan, Trump and other fragile egos: Theresa May’s unenviable foreign policy dilemmas

Given the way her Cabinet ministers are behaving at the moment, Theresa May is really rather used to dealing with fragile egos. This will come in handy over the next month when the Prime Minister has to go from what promises to be an extremely tricky Nato summit straight into Donald Trump’s visit to the UK. As James says in his politics column this week, the challenges of these events, along with the ongoing problems both in the Cabinet and Parliament over Brexit, will make July one of the hardest months of May’s premiership to date. But trying to tell her warring ministers to shut up seems easy compared to

Steerpike

US ambassador’s Independence Day party: special relationship ‘alive and well’

To the American ambassador’s (early) independence day party. Despite the ambassador now possessing a shiny new embassy in south London – an off-location according to one @realDonaldTrump – guests were invited to Woody Johnson’s personal residence Winfield House, north west London. Gavin Williamson and Liz Truss were both in attendance though Mr S understands that the tricky topic of the government spending review did not come up as party chat. Other politicians there included Greg Clark, Tobias Elwood and Thérèse Coffey. In his speech to guests – who munched on hot dogs and Krispy Kreme doughnuts – Johnson said the special relationship was ‘alive and well’. Tory vice-chair Kemi Badenoch

Brendan O’Neill

Danny Dyer is wrong about Brexit

Oh so you all love Danny Dyer now? The turnaround in Dyer’s fortunes over the past 12 hours has been extraordinary. He’s gone from being the butt of posh tweeters’ jokes to a celebrated political sage. From a ridiculous uber-lad whose cosying up to football’s hard men and promiscuous use of words like ‘slags’ and ‘twats’ provoked laughter and/ or horror among the chattering classes, to the Twitterati’s favourite working-class person. What changed? He dissed Brexit. And if you diss Brexit, they love you. The resurrection of Danny Dyer occurred on Good Evening Britain yesterday, a TV show for those gluttons for punishment who don’t quite get enough of Piers

Steerpike

Osborne at a loss over Evening Standard

Evening Standard editor, Kissinger Fellow, Honorary Economics Professor, Blackrock Advisor and Stanford Visiting fellow George Osborne is a skilled man at many things – namely job applications. However, as Chancellor Osborne struggled with deficit reduction, repeatedly missing his targets. He seems to now be experiencing economic turbulence in one of his new jobs, as editor of the London Evening Standard. BBC Media Editor Amol Rajan reports that in the space of a year the Standard has gone from a two million pound profit to a ten million pound loss. The paper will post a loss of £10m for the year ending in September 2017. Osborne started at the paper as editor

Fraser Nelson

Why Danny Dyer has a point about David Cameron

As an admirer of David Cameron, I was appalled when he broke his word and resigned on the morning of the Brexit vote two years ago. Not for the first time, I was thrown because I had taken him at his word and believed him when he said that he’d stay no matter what the result. His decision to ban Whitehall from preparing for a ‘no’ result denied crucial preparation time with consequences still being felt today. So I had a certain sympathy with Danny Dyer who had a few things to say about Cameron on ITV’s Good Evening Britain last night.  As I say in my Telegraph column today,

Thursday

James Forsyth

Jeremy Hunt tells Tories that a ‘low taxes at all costs’ party would lose the next election

In conversation with Andrew Neil at a Spectator event this evening, Jeremy Hunt defended the principle of increasing taxes to pay for more spending on the NHS. He warned Tories unhappy with the idea that if in an election you offer voters a choice between a low taxes at all costs party and decent public services, they’ll vote for decent public services. He said that this extra money for the NHS was needed to deal with a ‘once in a generation change in demography’ and that it was important that the Tories show the public they are on the right side of this argument. In language reminiscent of David Cameron,

Steerpike

Breaking: FT backs Brussels

In a way, tonight’s England vs Belgium football match ought to be win-win. If England beats Belgium there will be mass celebrations – but even if they lose they’re still though and a bad performance could take them into an easier route to the final. Yet Mr S suspects that this isn’t the reason a number of non-Belgiums will be cheering on the other team. Jeremy Corbyn’s man in Brussels Richard Corbett and Leo Varadkar have said they will be cheering on Belgium. Now the Financial Times’s Peter Spiegel has been revealed to be cheering the other side – he even has the scarf to prove it: More evidence of

Steerpike

Matt Hancock’s World Cup struggle

Ahead of England’s crunch World Cup game against Belgium tonight, you might expect that support for the Three Lions is reaching fever pitch in the cabinet. Not so, Mr S is sad to report. Theresa May is more of a cricket fan, while Boris has been busy talking down England’s chances. It seems that culture secretary, Matt Hancock, is also failing to get excited about the football. At a party organised by the department for culture, media and sport for England’s opening game against Tunisia, Hancock seemed more interested in fiddling with a virtual reality set than paying attention to the game, Steerpike hears. “He’s more of a cricket man”

James Forsyth

Nato’s Trump trouble is music to Putin’s ears

Is the Nato summit going to precipitate the greatest crisis for the Western alliance since 1966? Senior figures in the British government fear it will, as I reveal in the magazine this week. Trans-Atlantic relations are already at their lowest ebb in decades, as the US and the EU fight over trade. This­ summit will, as Fraser pointed out recently, give Trump the chance to open another front in this war. He’ll be able to berate — with some justification — Germany, and all but three of Nato’s EU members, for not spending the alliance minimum of two per cent of GDP on defence last year. He’ll be able to

Steerpike

Brexit football chant competition: ‘He’s here, he’s there! He’s a citizen of nowhere: Barnier, Barnier!’

Congratulations to Radio 4’s Today programme for the amusing item on Brexit football chants. Very good. Radio 4 being Radio 4, however, there was a slight Remain bias to their chants. Also they lacked something of the sweet nihilism that all the best football chants have. So here, in the interests of balance and free speech, are a few we came up with in The Spectator office yesterday. We just about resisted the natural urge to rhyme with Jean-Claude Juncker, and now we dare to dream that one of them will be sung at the Kaliningrad stadium tonight for England’s match against Belgium. Please send your own chants (preferably with

Matthew Lynn

Businesses should try and shape Brexit – not fight it

Airbus will abandon the UK. The car factories will all be closed down. Trade will grind to a halt, we will run out of food and medicines, and Harry Kane will be sold to Real Madrid and made captain of Spain instead of England. Okay, I made that last one up, but all the others are among the dire warnings that big business have issued over Brexit in the last few weeks. Project Fear III, or IV, or possibly XXVII by now, keeps coming back. Right now, it seems to have as many sequels as Jurassic World, and with plot-lines that are about as original. That, however, is a mistake,