Uk politics

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s Windrush woes continue at PMQs

The government has got at least two colossal messes to deal with, and yet Theresa May managed to survive today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. This was all the more surprising given the topic of PMQs was on a mess created as a result of one of May’s own policies.  Jeremy Corbyn chose, rightly, to lead on the treatment of the Windrush generation, and had a decent series of questions for the Prime Minister. These ranged from a case he had previously raised of a man called Albert Thompson who had been denied NHS treatment, to highlighting Amber Rudd’s comment about the Home Office being too concerned with policy and strategy to attacking May’s own ‘hostile environment’ policy on immigration.

Steerpike

Watch: Chris Williamson’s spat with Nicky Morgan

Jeremy Corbyn has few defenders over his handling of Labour's anti-Semitism problem. But there is one man staying loyal to the Labour leader. Step forward, Chris Williamson. The Corbynite MP has just traded blows with Nicky Morgan over the matter. During the heated Sky News row, Morgan accused Williamson of 'chuntering away' while he watched PMQs. Williamson then responded by saying the Tory MP was trying to play 'party political football' with the issue of anti-Semitism, and suggested that right-wing trolls were responsible for some of the abuse blamed on lefties online.

Steerpike

Watch: Corbyn’s PMQs attack backfires spectacularly

Theresa May should have been on the backfoot at PMQs today as a result of the Windrush scandal. But, somehow, Jeremy Corbyn still managed to ensure the Prime Minister got the upper hand. The Labour leader started off the session by going on the attack; unfortunately, for Corbyn, it backfired spectacularly: JC: Yesterday, we learned that in 2010, the Home Office destroyed landing cards for a generation of Commonwealth citizens, and so have told people: we can't find you in our system. Did the Prime Minister – the then-home secretary – sign off that decision? TM: No, the decision to destroy the landing cards was taken in 2009, under a Labour government. Oh dear...

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May now has authority for further military action

Aside from the need to act swiftly and with an element of surprise when striking Syria's chemical weapons capability, it is still fair to say that Number 10's preferred option was not to have a vote before the strikes took place at the weekend. David Cameron's experience in 2013 of failing to get parliamentary consent for action has left institutional bruising which means everyone is now cautious of asking MPs for approval, despite the fact that the Commons has in fact consented to air strikes both in Syria and Iraq since that failed vote. Parliamentary recess did make it much more convenient to avoid such a vote, and there was certainly no appetite for the government to push for one retrospectively.

Alex Massie

Windrush, Syria and the miserable state of British politics

What a dismal week this has been for British politics. And it is still only Wednesday. The distinguishing feature of this political moment is its shabbiness. The two stories dominating the news this week, Windrush and Syria, each demonstrate as much.  The Windrush scandal – it ceased being a saga some time ago – is shameful. But it is not simply a question of Home Office incompetence (some of which is only, when dealing with matters of significant complexity, to be expected) but, worse, one of Home Office vindictiveness. It is a feature of the system, not a bug within it. A system which, quite deliberately, excises humanity and common sense from its calculations and concentrates, instead, on box-ticking and raw numbers.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

What will happen to Millennials when they retire?

Recently, a rather agitated Tory MP came to me and asked why on earth his party wasn't talking more about pensions. It was an important message to voters, he argued, managing to stay agitated about an issue that normally sends people off to sleep. This MP thought that highlighting the importance of a sound economic policy to public sector workers' pensions would be a good way of persuading them that the Conservatives are on their side. He has a good point: the Tories could do with working out how to talk to public sector employees, given their current tendency to vote Labour, and given the importance that many of those workers place on their pensions.

James Kirkup

If Mumsnet can stand up for free speech, why can’t MPs?

OK, I admit I’m a bit of a Mumsnet groupie, but this needs to be said: Justine Roberts is great. Roberts is the founder of Mumsnet who has this week come out fighting for free speech and sensible political discussion, both of which are at risk in the debate about gender laws. Why Mumsnet? Because a website previously best known for chat about childcare, biscuits and something called a penis beaker has developed an important role in an important political debate.

Isabel Hardman

Whips struggle with emergency debate on Syria

This afternoon's emergency debate on Syria isn't quite working out as anyone had really planned. For Labour, it was an opportunity to undermine the government by complaining about the lack of parliamentary consent for the weekend strikes on the Assad regime's chemical weapons capability. For the Tories, it was an opportunity to show that there was still strong support across the House for that action. Some MPs may even have come along to debate the principles in question; namely the balance of powers between executive and legislature.

Ross Clark

The Brexit bounce making a mockery of George Osborne’s Project Fear

We are now just two months away from the second anniversary of the Brexit vote and therefore in a position to judge the apocalyptic forecast made by the Treasury in May 2016 in the run-up to the vote. In a paper signed off by George Osborne, which neither the former chancellor nor anyone else who has made a grim prognosis for Britain’s departure from the EU should be allowed to forget, the finest minds in the Treasury came up with two scenarios for the aftermath of a vote to leave the EU. In the ‘shock’ scenario, GDP would be 3.6 per cent lower after two years (compared with if the country had voted to remain), the pound would fall by 12 per cent and unemployment would rise by 520,000.

Stephen Daisley

Jeremy Corbyn and our golden age of paranoia

Tony Gilkes is a very English hero. The Middlesborough pensioner wanted nothing more than what all hungry Englishmen want: a hearty meat pie. Yet when he tried to procure pastries from his local Morrisons at 8.45am he was rebuffed; staff at the supermarket refused to serve him before 9am. So what did Gilkes do? He went to war on the retail chain until it backed down and agreed to serve flaky fare from 7am. But most English of all was Tony's suspicion that sinister motives were afoot. He mused: 'There’s more to this. Morrisons have got their own agenda. They don’t want people to know about it. They have given too many ridiculous stories about why. They contradicted themselves over and over.

Katy Balls

The Tories’ biggest problem at the next election? Generation Rent

The government is currently busying itself trying to win retrospective Commons votes on Theresa May's Syria intervention and clearing up the Home Office's Windrush mess. But should they have time for some morning reading, today's Resolution Foundation research on millenials' property prospects ought to give cause for alarm. The think tank predicts that one in three millennials will never own their own home. Instead, they will have to live – and potentially raise families – in privately rented accommodation throughout their lives. And that's before we get to what happens when they stop working and rely on a pension. What's more, half of current UK 20-35-year-olds are expected to be renting in their 40s. This has big implications for the Conservative party.

Melanie McDonagh

Why is the BBC preaching to the Commonwealth on gay rights?

There’s a curiously two-faced aspect to the British take on the Commonwealth, wouldn’t you say? On the one hand, there’s justifiable contrition about the treatment of the elderly Windrush generation and a general feeling that the Commonwealth leaders assembled for this week’s summit might be justified in taking Britain to task for its cavalier approach to postwar Caribbean immigrants. On the other, when Commonwealth countries get uppity and show signs of not conforming to the social norms of this country, why, they get very short shrift indeed. There was an ugly little interview this morning on the Today programme which expressed precisely this ambivalence.

Brendan O’Neill

Why Theresa May is to blame for the Windrush scandal

To see the cruelty of bureaucracy, the injustice that can spring from reducing public life to mere process and human beings to paperwork, look no further than the Windrush scandal. Scandal is an overused word these days. Everything from a politician’s ill-advised tweet to a celeb’s extramarital affair gets chalked up as scandal. But if we abide by the true definition of the word — to mean something that is morally wrong and which stirs outrage among the public — then the British state’s sudden, hostile turning against the Caribbean people and others who have made their home in Britain over the past 70 years genuinely fits the bill. This is truly scandalous.

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Stop the War protester – ‘Assad is a good man – he’s a doctor for heaven’s sake’

After Theresa May authorised targeted military strikes in Syria without seeking Parliament's approval, the Prime Minister has received a mixed response. One group particularly angry about recent events are Stop the War. The anti-war campaign group – of which Jeremy Corbyn is a supporter – gathered this evening to demonstrate against the government response. Only Mr S isn't sure the demonstration will win everyone round to their way of thinking. In an interview with Paul Brand for ITV news, one attendee explains why Assad – whose regime is thought to be behind the chemical attack which sparked the recent turn of events – is a good man. After all, he is a doctor: PB: You believe Assad over Theresa May?

Isabel Hardman

How Theresa May could make future decisions on military action a little easier

Though Theresa May, still responding to questions from MPs in the Commons on the weekend strikes in Syria, seems to have won support from a clear majority of MPs, her session has not been entirely comfortable. A large number of backbench Labour MPs made clear that they agreed with the Prime Minister's assessment that the chemical attack in Douma had been launched by the Assad regime, but they also expressed disappointment that there had not been a vote in Parliament beforehand. Lib Dem leader Vince Cable agreed with this, as did the SNP. But one striking intervention came from Ken Clarke, who asked May to consider setting up a cross-party commission examining the role of Parliament in such matters.

Steerpike

Breaking: Home Secretary blames Home Office

Oh dear. As the government goes into meltdown over whether or not Windrush immigrants have been accidentally deported or not, Amber Rudd has found herself in the firing line at the despatch box – with David Lammy tabling an urgent question. However, the Home Secretary appears to have found a scapegoat... the Home Office: 'I am concerned that the Home Office has become too concerned with policy and sometimes loses sight of individuals' Should someone tell her?

Steerpike

BBC’s car-crash television

They say the term 'car crash TV' is over-used these days. However, Mr S is pretty sure a case of car crash television occurred this afternoon on BBC news. As a BBC correspondent reported from outside the drink-driving trial of Ant McPartlin – of Ant and Dec fame – a vehicle collision occurred. Well, that footage could come in useful...

Steerpike

Caroline Nokes’ bad day

Oh to be a fly-in-the-wall at the Home Office today. The government department appears to be in a state of meltdown as Amber Rudd and her ministers attempt some damage limitation after it was revealed that a request by Commonwealth leaders to discuss the cases of the Windrush generation experiencing immigration issues with the Prime Minister had been turned down. In an interview with ITV news, Caroline Nokes – the Home Office minister – admitted to 'terrible mistakes' – suggesting that things were so bad that some Windrush immigrants may have even been wrongly deported: https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/985846900644614145 She's changed her tune from yesterday...

Isabel Hardman

Government backtracks in Windrush row

How did the government manage to create such a terrible row over the Windrush generation? The Home Office has told many people who arrived here as children in the late 1940s and 1950s that they are in fact illegal immigrants because they cannot produce documents from 40 years ago about their residence here. That in itself might have been a terrible cock-up, but Number 10's decision to then turn down a request from the representatives of 12 Caribbean countries for a meeting was totally bizarre particularly given those representatives are in London for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting this week. Inevitably, since the row about this broke, the government has decided it needs to wind back a little, announcing that Theresa May will meet those representatives after all.

Katy Balls

Government wins first Commons vote on Syria

The government has won the first of two expected retrospective votes on Theresa May decision to join French and American allies in targeted military strikes in Syria, she did so without seeking Parliamentary approval. MPs debated Alison McGoverns emergency debate late into the evening – with the SNP calling a vote on the motion that the House has 'considered the current situation in Syria and the UK government approach'. Labour – minus Dennis Skinner – abstained and the government won at 314 ayes to 26 noes It now looks as though a more testing vote looms. Jeremy Corbyn has won approval for an emergency debate on a motion reaffirming the convention that Parliament should have to approve military interventions.