Uk politics

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Has Britain reached ‘Peak Wealth’?

So the year-long squeeze on real earnings is now officially over. Figures released by the ONS this morning show that average earnings in the first three months of this year were 2.9 per cent ahead of what they were in the same period of 2018, while CPI inflation was 2.7 per cent ahead. In other words, we are all, on average, 0.2 per cent better-off than we were last year. That is no great deal, it has to be said, and continues the poor run of growth in real incomes ever since the global economic crisis of a decade ago. It is unprecedented in the industrial era to have had such a long peacetime period in which the population does not really grow any richer.

Monday

Richard Ned Lebow

How my lame joke saw me fall foul of the campus zealots

The International Studies Association (ISA) meeting in San Francisco is a chance for academics the world over to come together. A few years back, I was voted ISA “distinguished scholar of the year.” But I'll remember this year's meeting for a different reason. Heading back to my hotel room in a crowded lift one day, the male attendant asked people to shout out their floors so he could press the relevant buttons; in response, I said: “ladies lingerie.” Several days later, I learned that a fellow member of the ISA had filed a complaint against me and that I had been referred to its ethics committee.

Isabel Hardman

MPs in mess over new data protection laws

MPs are frantically deleting casework emails after being mistakenly advised that new regulations mean they have to clear the data that they hold on constituents. The General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect on 25 May, and is the reason your own inbox will be flooded by companies who've been sending you unsolicited emails for years who are now asking if you want them to stay in touch. It also has an impact on parliamentarians, who retain years' worth of correspondence about constituency matters. Recent briefings from the Commons authorities and political parties have left office staff and MPs confused about what they are allowed to keep, with one briefing suggesting that all data from before the snap election had to be deleted.

George Trefgarne

How we could be heading for another snap general election

I hate to depress everybody, but the possibility of both a leadership challenge to Theresa May and a general election is suddenly mounting. I don’t believe this is the desired outcome of any of the political factions currently flying under the Conservative party flag, but if things go on like this, it is not hard to see how it might happen. A failure to win Commons votes on numerous aspects of Brexit, notably the Customs Union; a vote of no confidence; Theresa May stepping down or being challenged; a new leader feeling the need for a refreshed mandate; the press and social media howling for this or that; all culminating in a butterflies-in-tummy drive to the Palace.

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s tricky Turkish diplomacy dilemma

Turkey's President Erdogan is in London this week, having tea with the Queen and praising Britain as a 'real friend'. As Robert Ellis says in his Coffee House piece about the way the Turkish regime is becoming increasingly brutal and censorious, a clear benefit for Britain in this friendship is post-Brexit trade with the Turks. But campaigners are asking at what cost this comes, given the human rights abuses of the current regime, and want Theresa May to condemn the practices of the Erdogan government. This presents a tricky dilemma for the Prime Minister. Turkish political culture - and that of many of the Islamic countries that Britain has strong diplomatic ties with - does not respond well to public shaming.

Steerpike

United Nations’ British racism report gaffe

Brexit Britain is a more racist country than before the referendum, according to the United Nations, whose inspector told us on Friday that anti-foreigner rhetoric has now become ‘normalised’. But how did Tendayi Achiume, the UN’s special rapporteur on racism, manage to make such a stark finding having spent just 11 days in Britain? After all, if her 'end of mission statement' is anything to go on, Mr S. thinks her conclusions might have been somewhat cobbled together. Achiume, it seems, didn’t even get a chance to run her damning report through a spellcheck before publishing it. Referring to a study by Warwick University, Achiume managed to misspell the university’s name as 'Warrick'...

Isabel Hardman

May briefs MPs on customs options as timetable for decision keeps slipping

Tory backbenchers have been briefed today by the Prime Minister on the different options for Britain's customs arrangements with the EU after Brexit. There was a presentation on the two different plans, and a summary which one MP who attended described as 'everything is just going terribly well'. The expression on this MP's face suggested that he didn't necessarily agree with that assessment. These briefings are taking place as the two working groups in Cabinet meet to discuss the two options set before MPs today: the 'max fac' solution or the new customs partnership.

Brendan O’Neill

The ‘Gammon’ insult is typical of Corbynista intolerance

Imagine referring to a whole section of society as meat. As mere flesh, bereft of sentience. It used to be hardcore racists who did that, to black people. Now it’s Corbynistas who do it, to that swarm of people they despise more than any other: lower middle-class or working-class white men, usually of middle age, probably lacking university education, and possessed of points of view that make the well-connected haughty youths of the Corbyn machine dry-heave in horror. These men from the lower-down parts of society are ‘gammons’, according to Corbynistas.

Steerpike

Labour’s prince across the water – ‘distance gives perspective’

Not so long ago, Rachel Sylvester penned a column in the Times in which she revealed that friends of Miliband say he is still ‘attracted’ to Britain. Now it seems the UK is in luck! Labour's prince across the water has made a brief return to British politics in a bid to stop a hard (any) Brexit. The former Labour politician is urging the UK to seek a 'safe harbour' after Brexit by staying in the European Economic Area. He warns that if Labour's Brexit position stays as is, Corbyn risks becoming the 'midwife of hard Brexit'. So is this a fleeting visit or will Miliband be tempted to give up his £425,000 a year job as the chair of the refugee charity International Rescue in New York and move back?

Steerpike

Fact check: the Observer’s ‘one million students’ back second Brexit vote report

Here we go. With David Miliband dipping his toe back into UK politics as part of the 'stop Hard (any) Brexit' campaign, there appears to be a new momentum to Remain efforts. In this vein, Mr S read the Observer's splash this weekend with particular interest. The paper reports 'one million students join calls for vote on Brexit deal'. So, is this the start of something big? A number that could tip the scales in the facour of Remain in a future vote? https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/995410563428704257 Perhaps not.

Sunday

Robert Ellis

What common ground will Theresa May find with President Erdogan?

When Turkey’s President Erdogan visits Theresa May in Downing Street on Tuesday, he will no doubt be on his best behaviour and control his baser instincts. Otherwise, as he will be met by a Free Turkey Media demonstration organised by English PEN, he could do as he has done earlier – as in Washington and Ecuador – and call on his bodyguards to beat up demonstrators. Of course, if it had been Turkey, they wouldn’t have been allowed to demonstrate, but if they had, they would not only have been beaten up but also incarcerated. Remember the Gezi Park uprising five years ago when over 8,000 were injured, 8 killed and 5,300 were arrested? Since the abortive coup in July 2016, matters have not improved.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Michael Gove – ‘Significant question marks’ over PM’s customs partnership

The Environment Secretary Michael Gove has defended Boris Johnson's criticism of the Prime Minister's proposed 'customs partnership' ideal in a recent Daily Mail interview, and told Nick Robinson that the proposal 'has flaws'. Gove and Johnson are reported to be in favour of a 'maximum facilitation' arrangement (or 'Max Fac') which would make use of technology and trusted trader schemes to help ensure a relatively open border with Ireland post-Brexit: https://youtu.be/AcJZrpaZ-b0 NR: You're on a cabinet working group to deal with this so-called customs partnership. Boris Johnson calls it 'crazy'. Is he right? MG: ...

David Blunkett

David Blunkett remembers Tessa Jowell – ‘always thinking of others’

Dame Tessa Jowell has died aged 70 after suffering a haemorrhage on Friday. The former Labour cabinet minister was diagnosed with brain cancer in May last year. In a post on Alastair Campbell's personal blog. Jowell's close friend David Blunkett has written a tube to his former colleague:. ‘Tessa was one of my closest friends for over 40 years. In 1980s local government, Tessa in Camden and myself in Sheffield, we helped to promote an alternative to Old Labour on the one hand and the far left on the other. Before the 1997 Labour victory, we worked on a programme to nurture children from the moment of their birth, but crucially also to work with parents and the wider community to transform the lives of those otherwise caught in intergenerational disadvantage.

Saturday

Julie Burchill

Chavs of Britain, unite!

Paige Bond is an attractive blonde lady of a certain age - thrillingly, the Evening Standard claimed that she was both 48 and 57 in the same report. As far as one can judge from photographs, she looks lively and confident, so I imagine she was irked to say the least when after applying for a job with an organic grocers, Forest Whole Foods of Hampshire, she mistakenly received an email from one employee of the company to another summing her up in terms which are all too typical of the sort of snoot who believes that espousing over-priced organic food is yet another handy way of looking down on one’s fellow humans - like being a ‘traveller’ rather than a tourist, or voting Remain rather than Leave.

Douglas Murray

London’s knife crime problem is the talk of the town in New York

New York is as boiling as Naples. Yet walking by Central Park after dinner with friends on Fifth, several couples are heading back to their apartments in black tie. One old gent is even strolling back home in evening tails. It looks glamorous and natural in a way it no longer would in our capital. Everyone in New York asks about the knife crime in London. I tell them it won’t be sorted out because we’ve already decided what the causes can’t be. The next evening I am in conversation before a live audience on Lexington Avenue. It is great fun, and the hugely friendly, mainly young, audience brings some relief. In recent years I have spoken less and less.

Friday

Rob Lyons

Sadiq Khan goes to war on junk food. What about knife crime?

Sadiq Khan has been busy. But the mayor of London isn't snowed under trying to deal with the capital's knife crime epidemic. Instead, he is facing down a bigger demon: junk food. This morning, Khan has been touring the studios unveiling plans to ban adverts for unhealthy food on London's tubes and buses. It is clear the mayor has got his priorities all wrong. What's more, this censorship is bad for free speech. It also does very little to actually deal with what Khan calls the 'ticking timebomb' of childhood obesity. The press release announcing the plan tells us that almost 40 per cent of London 10- and 11-year-olds are 'overweight or obese'.

Brendan O’Neill

The House of Lords is out of control — it’s time for abolition

The Lords have lost it. They’re out of control. They have taken a wrecking-ball to the government’s plans for Brexit 14 times in recent weeks, putting themselves on a war footing with the people we actually elect. They are behaving like they did in the first decade of the 20th century when they arrogantly vetoed the Liberal government’s People’s Budget. ‘The House of Lords regards all our liberties and political rights as enjoyed and as enjoyable only so long as they choose to let us go on having them’, fumed Winston Churchill back then. Where’s the modern Churchill to put these ermine-robed loathers of the largest democratic vote in British history, the vote for Brexit, back in their place?

Melanie McDonagh

The Tories will regret backtracking on faith schools

The archbishop of Liverpool, Malcolm McMahon, got it right: the Government has broken its manifesto promise on church schools – can we just drop the “faith schools” bit? As he said trenchantly: “In their general election manifesto the Conservative Party made a commitment to the Catholic community that the unfair rule effectively stopping the opening of new Catholic free schools would be lifted. Today the Government has broken this promise, dropped the pledge they made to our country’s six million Catholics and ignored the tens of thousands of Catholics who campaigned on this issue.” That’s telling ‘em. It doesn’t help either, that the Education Secretary, Damian Hinds was so weaselly about the Government’s bad faith.

Gavin Mortimer

How London’s gangs could spawn tomorrow’s jihadis

What will happen when the teenagers stabbing each other on the streets of London grow up? Some will go straight, some will go to prison and some will probably follow a similar trajectory to Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. These two evolved from being minor figures on the south-east London gang scene into two of the most notorious Islamist killers in Britain, responsible for murdering Lee Rigby outside Woolwich barracks in 2013. In the aftermath of the murder, Harry Fletcher, a former assistant general secretary of the probation union Napo, explained: "A major concern in recent years has been the crossover between criminal groups and Islamist organisations. It's mainly gangs in Southwark and Lambeth and we're talking about dozens, not hundreds, of members who are at risk.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Tim Farron just can’t escape gay sex

What does Tim Farron think about gay sex? Like Ken Livingstone's repeated reluctance to discuss Hitler, the former Lib Dem leader has never really offered his views on the subject. This time a year ago, for instance, he was so busy talking about all the things his party was putting into its general election manifesto that there was just never time for the matter to creep into interviews. He's never avoided questions on gay sex, or changed his views on gay sex, or offered formulations which sound as though he loves gay people (just not in The Way) but actually mean he doesn't think they should be having gay sex. So what a surprise that gay sex has cropped up as a problem for Farron this week. It's not like it's ever been in an issue before.