Uk politics

Monday

Steerpike

Andy Burnham’s BBC jibe backfires

Andy Burnham is now making a career out of being an aggrieved northerner, fed up with London dominating the agenda. Never mind that the Mayor of Greater Manchester made his name down south, Burnham takes a pop at the Westminster ‘bubble’ whenever the opportunity presents itself. But Mr S wonders whether he really thought through his latest dig. Following a morning of chaos on Britain’s railways, Burnham chose to direct his ire, not at the railways companies, but at the BBC for its coverage of the story: [caption id="attachment_10090812" align="aligncenter" width="265"] Andy Burnham's tweet[/caption] The only problem?

Steerpike

Fact check: Corbynista support for Maduro

Once upon a time, Labour politicians were lining up to praise the socialist achievements of the government in Venezuela. These days it's a much harder sell thanks to the fact that 82pc of households live in poverty. Happily, John McDonnell has found a workaround. Speaking on the Sunday Politics, the shadow chancellor rejected the idea that Venezuela was an example of  the failed socialist economic model. Instead the issue is apparently that when Nicolás Maduro took over from veteran socialist leader Hugo Chávez it ‘took a wrong turn’ and now ceases to be ‘a socialist country’. Only Mr S isn't so sure this defence holds up. For one, someone forgot to tell McDonnell's comrades: 1.

Steerpike

Young Labour official’s tribute to Maduro

This weekend, John McDonnell set the cat among the pigeons with an interview on  the Sunday Politics. With Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro winning re-election amid claims of vote-rigging, the shadow chancellor was asked whether Venezuela was an example of a failed socialist economic model. McDonnell's reply? The country isn't socialist enough. He said it 'took a wrong turn' when Nicolás Maduro took over from veteran socialist leader Hugo Cháveznder and it is now no longer 'a socialist country'. Alas, it seems not all of McDonnell's comrades are on the same page. Putting aside what Venezuela's chief UK cheerleader Chris Williamson thinks, Mr S was curious to learn of the stance being adopted by a Young Labour official.

Sunday

James Noble

Some tips for recovering from Brexit ‘madness’

The following letter appears in this week's Spectator I was touched by the sad article by Matthew Parris, in which he just cannot get over his horror at Brexit (‘Brexit has driven me mad, but I can’t let it go’, 12 May). Can I suggest a few things that might help him recover? First, he might get some perspective. He will still be able to drink his favourite rosé wine. He will still be able to go to Europe. The sun will still shine and the sky will not cave in. Secondly, it would help him tremendously to realise that the EU is not a wholly good force.

Steerpike

Watch: Emma Barnett skewers Barry Gardiner over Brexit comments

Oh dear. Although Theresa May's divided government is currently in a state of deadlock over Brexit, the Prime Minister can at least take heart that the Tories aren't the only party experiencing difficulties here. This morning Barry Gardiner was the victim of a car crash interview on the Andrew Marr show. With Marr on sick leave, Emma Barnett was Gardiner's interviewer – and she did not hold back. The BBC presenter took the shadow International Trade secretary to task over comments he made about the Irish border in March while at an event held by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. At the event, Gardiner described the Good Friday Agreement as ‘a shibboleth’ in the Brexit negotiations and said the issue was being 'played up' for 'real economic reasons'.

Katy Balls

Is an early election really on the cards?

Thanks to a weekend of nationwide jubilation over Prince Harry's marriage to Meghan Markle, politics has – for once - taken a backseat. However, there's one story in the Sunday Times that is still likely to cause mild alarm: 'Tory MPs prepare for snap autumn election as Theresa May hit by Brexit deadlock'. The paper reports that Conservative MPs have privately started to get ready for a snap general election. It's not that they fear Theresa May is about to go on a walking holiday and get over-excited about some better-than-expected polling. Instead, these Tories fear that the Brexit deadlock will soon become 'insurmountable for the prime minister'. This isn't the first time this month such a point has been made.

Charles Moore

Morgan, Clegg and Miliband just don’t get the message

Watching Nick Clegg, Nicky Morgan and David Miliband sort of launching what might one day become a sort of new centre party amid a granary-full of Tilda rice in Essex, I realised why we still need the Labour party. Despite their equation of themselves with rationality — Sir Nick’s office advertises itself online under the name of Open Reason — the moderates are a bit crazy. They are centrist Bourbons, who have forgotten nothing about how they all, in their different ways, fell from power, yet have learnt nothing about why. How could they possibly think that the key to the future of our country is to be found in membership of the European Economic Area? I think I can see the chain of reasoning that got them there, but the conclusion is irrational nevertheless.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Why the Tory Brexiteers are swallowing May’s compromises

This week, Theresa May got her Brexit inner Cabinet to agree that, in the event of no trade deal being in place by December 2020, the UK would continue to apply the EU’s common external tariff. In The Sun this morning, I try and explain why Brexiteers aren’t kicking off about this and the other concessions May is making, or preparing to make. One influential figure puts it to me like this, ‘it is all very unsatisfactory, but it is what it is’. In other words, given the mistakes that have been made—with the lack of proper no deal planning and the backstop--there isn’t really an alternative.

Friday

Katy Balls

How long can John Bercow hang on?

How long can John Bercow hang on for as Speaker of the House of Commons? In recent months, he has come under pressure to resign his position amid allegations from former parliamentary staff that he bullied them. Adding to that, today Bercow has found himself the centre of a fresh row over his alleged behaviour. The Telegraph reports that Bercow called Andrea Leadsom – the Leader of the House – 'a stupid woman'. Curiously, Bercow has not issued a clear denial – instead the Speaker's office has acknowledged that 'strong and differing views were expressed' in the House of Commons: 'Wednesday was an unusual and controversial day in how business was handled in the House by the government and some strong and differing views were expressed on all sides on the subject.

Steerpike

Watch: Rod Liddle’s dog reacts to party leaders

This week Rod Liddle took over the London Palladium for one night only. Mr S's colleague and comrade spoke to a sold out audience about his approach to writing and politics – as well as his managerial style at the BBC (clue: not legal). For those readers unable to bag a ticket, Mr S is pleased to share one of the highlights from the evening. In a video, Liddle revealed his dog Jessie's feelings toward various politicians – and there's one in particular that caused a strong reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LtAM3LxTUg&feature=youtu.be Well, let it never be said that Corbyn's Labour is going to the dogs...

Gavin Mortimer

Europe is the new front in the Israel-Palestine conflict

Gaza has a galvanising effect on Europeans. Jeremy Corbyn, for example, appeared to have no consolatory words for France after last week's Islamist knife attack in Paris, yet on Monday he posted messages on Twitter and Facebook expressing his disgust with Israel. Likewise in France, the far-left, curiously quiet whenever there's a terrorist attack on their patch, have this week staged protests in Lyon, Marseille, Rouen, Paris and Bordeaux to voice their opposition to Israel's killing of 62 Palestinians, the victims including several children and fifty members of Hamas, an EU-designated terror organisation. But what do the protestors in France hope to achieve?

Steerpike

Watch: Diane Abbott jeered on Question Time over fake news

Diane Abbott tried to go on the attack on Question Time last night, by suggesting that one of her fellow panellists has said that victims of knife crime in London were all drug dealers. The shadow home secretary said: 'It's really not true to say that every young person that gets stabbed in London is a drug dealer' Of course, Abbott is right to make that point. But unfortunately for her, it seems that no one had actually tried to suggest that was the case. When Abbott repeated the point, the audience turned on her, with one yelling out: 'No one said that'. Mr S thinks Abbott should choose her words more carefully next time...

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill

The snobs won against the FOBTs

It’s good to see that for all their bickering over Brexit and war of words over austerity, the Tories and Labour are firmly united on one point of view: that the poor must be saved from themselves. That the wretched are incapable of making sensible choices and therefore their betters must step in and make choices on their behalf. Behold the great bipartisan belief of 21st-century British politics: paternalism. How else do we explain the cross-party effort to reduce the maximum bet one can place on a fixed-odds betting terminal — or FOBT — from £100 to £2? The government unveiled this state-mandated reduction in how much of our own money we can put inside a fruit machine this morning.

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Corbyn’s comic timing is more Karl Marx than Groucho

He’s making the most of it before he gets the push. The Speaker chaired one of the longest-ever sessions of PMQs today. It lasted nearly an hour. He opened proceedings with a ceremonial speech welcoming a handful of visitors to the chamber. They thought they’d come to watch parliament but Bercow knew better. They were there to see him. He greeted each of his guests by name and then turned towards the public gallery, his right arm sweeping upwards in a gesture of munificent benediction. Caesar offering peace-terms to the humbled tribes of Gaul could scarcely have looked nobler. Jeremy Corbyn seized on the latest Brexit wounds. He asked the PM what she’d meant by ‘as little friction as possible’.

Ross Clark

Chris Grayling’s railway fantasy is costing the Tories

Yippee! Now I can finally take a train to Scotland without putting money into Richard Branson’s pockets. This afternoon’s announcement by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling that the franchise on the East Coast mainline is to be taken back into the government’s hands returns the railway to the position it was in between 2011 and 2015. As the unions have been only too quick to point out today, this is the third time that a private operator has come to grief on the East Coast mainline in 10 years – and there is little to suggest that things will be any different when, as Grayling says he wants to do, the line is returned to the private sector. I am no fan of nationalised industry.

Alex Massie

A Brexit ‘power grab’ could play into the SNP’s hands

The stramash between Theresa May’s government in London and Nicola Sturgeon’s ministry in Edinburgh over the need for the devolved parliaments to consent to the UK government’s EU withdrawal bill is, as the wags say, the world’s most boring constitutional crisis. So much so, indeed, that many voters in Scotland – to say nothing of elsewhere in the realm – remain splendidly indifferent to it.  The Scottish parliament yesterday refused to give its consent to the withdrawal bill. Legally, this changes little. Politically, it has the potential to change many things. Nicola Sturgeon, with the support of Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens, says she is “protecting devolution” and standing up for the Scottish parliament.

Steerpike

Benedict Cumberbatch’s big Brexit challenge

Benedict Cumberbatch has a reputation as one of Britain's finest actors. The Sherlock actor has won plaudits across the world. He is also politically engaged – previously ranting on-stage about the government’s response to the refugee crisis following a performance of Hamlet at the Barbican. According to the Daily Mail, Cumberbatch let it be known that he thought the government’s pledge to take 20,000 refugees was not enough, before — eloquently — concluding: ‘f— the politicians’. The comments led Mr S to ask: is Benedict Cumberbatch the new Russell Brand? So, is his next job his greatest challenge yet?

Steerpike

Michael Gove takes a swipe at CCHQ Venezuela attack lines

Although the local elections saw the Conservatives do better than expected, there is a sense that the Tories are not out of the woods yet when it comes to defeating Jeremy Corbyn at the next election. In that vein, last night the Centre for Policy Studies' 'New Blue: Ideas for a New Generation' launch, with Ben Bradley and Michael Gove. The Defra Secretary gave the keynote speech and used it to say it wasn't enough for his party to bang on about Venezuela and then expect the problem of socialism to go away: 'Simply to rely on a few tired arguments about what has happened in Venezuela, heart rending though the fate of that country is, or to say that we need to recapture the arguments of the 1980s, heroic as that decade was. The world has changed, capitalism has changed.

The Spectator

Brexit debate: Andrew Adonis vs Robert Tombs

Robert Tombs, professor of European history at Cambridge University, and Labour peer Andrew Adonis took part in a discussion on the following question: Should those who know their history welcome Brexit? Here is an edited transcript of their arguments in the debate hosted by 'Our Future, Our Choice' and Clare College, Cambridge: Andrew Adonis: Robert Tombs has been very strident about Brexit in his post-2016 statements. He says joining the European Union was 'an immense historical error, borne of exaggerated fears of national decline and marginalisation, and a vain attempt to be at the heart of Europe'. However, what I find interesting reading his book, The English And Their History, you will not be able to detect that Professor Tombs is a Brexiteer.

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley

Gammon vs Prosciutto: learn to speak like a Corbynista

Are you considering a career in Labour politics but fear you may be left behind amid all the exciting changes the party is undergoing? Maybe you want to be a part of the Jez revolution but can’t get your head around the ever-developing terminology. Perhaps you are eyeing up a safe seat but aren’t sure which paramilitary cell’s endorsement would most impress the selection panel.  Help is at hand with this guide that takes you through the key terms of Corbynspeak.  Gammon: Self-righteous middle-aged man who voted Leave, thinks everything was better back in the Seventies, and doesn’t get along with ethnic minorities. Deployed, boldly, by fans of Jeremy Corbyn. Prosciutto: Blairite gammon.