Uk politics

Wednesday

James Forsyth

David Davis: There’s no deal without a trade deal

From our UK edition

With a year and a day to go to Brexit, David Davis sat down for an interview with Andrew Neil this evening. Davis was clear that there wouldn’t be a deal, and thus a £37bn payment to the EU, unless there was an agreement on the future relationship too. Contrary to the received wisdom, David Davis told this special Spectator event that the UK and the EU will ‘get pretty substantively close’ to a free trade agreement by October. He argued that this meant that the withdrawal agreement would have a lot of detail on what the future trading relationship would be. He said that he thought that this would be necessary to get it – and permission to pay the EU £37bn – through parliament.

Lloyd Evans

May’s PMQs attitude should worry Corbyn

From our UK edition

Poor Jeremy Corbyn seemed muted and cowed at PMQs. He stooped over the despatch box, his chin down, his voice murmuring like a trapped bluebottle, his stature loose and uncertain. He grizzled through his six questions without a trace of passion or conviction. He couldn’t even whip himself into his trademark strimmer-call of petulant outrage. Is he having a bit of a crisis? Last night Jewish protestors gathered outside parliament to denounce him. Which is rather ironic. One story has it that his parents met at an anti-Mosley rally. Perhaps the parents of a future Labour leader will meet at an anti-Corbyn march. May had brought up Labour’s anti-Semitism last week so she had a perfect excuse to mention it today. She didn’t. And that should worry Corbyn.

Isabel Hardman

How Jeremy Corbyn had a successful PMQs

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn didn't pick the most obvious topic to lead on - or indeed mention - at Prime Minister's Questions today. While the Tories are in deep discomfort on the Worboys case, the Labour leader chose instead to talk about something on which even he had to concede Theresa May has shown a fair bit of commitment over the years: mental health. It wasn't until later in the session that the Ministry of Justice's handling of the serial rapist's case was raised at all. But that said, this was one of Corbyn's best Prime Minister's Questions. Normally when he attacks on health, he often meanders around general topics without really prosecuting a particular point or indeed picking up May on the points that she has made.

James Forsyth

John Bercow should keep his opinions to himself

From our UK edition

Late on in PMQs today, Joanna Cherry, an SNP MP, asked Theresa May about the case of a Syrian refugee in her constituency who can’t go on a school holiday to Spain as he doesn’t have the necessary papers and the Home Office are saying it will take three months to sort this out. Cherry asked the Prime Minister to intervene, to speed up the process. So, a standard, good constituency question. As was May’s reply, she said that the Home Secretary had heard what Cherry had said and would look into it. But then John Bercow rose from the chair and said ‘good’. This was completely inappropriate. It is not the job of the Speaker to opine on whether what the Prime Minister is saying at the despatch box is ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

James Forsyth

The John Worboys verdict is a triumph for justice

From our UK edition

The John Worboys verdict is a triumph for justice, and a huge credit to the victims who so bravely brought their case to court. This rapist is staying in prison and a fresh parole board will now review his case. With the court recommending that someone with judicial experience should be on the panel, one has to hope that it will come to a more sensible verdict. The other good news from today’s proceedings is that the Sun, who I write a column for, has won its case against the blanket ban on revealing the details of the Parole Board’s decision-making. This greater transparency is hugely to be welcomed. If you want to maintain public confidence in the judicial system and in the early release of some prisoners, then you need to be able to show how these decisions are being made.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

May announces NHS funding boost

From our UK edition

Who is the most powerful person in government at the moment? In normal times, the automatic answer would be the Prime Minister, but things are rather more complicated at the moment. Theresa May's stock has risen in recent weeks, thanks to her confident handling of the Salisbury attack - and partly because Labour is in a terrible mess. But today we learned a little bit more about quite how influential one of her ministers has become. The Prime Minister spent this afternoon giving evidence to the Commons Liaison Committee, the powerful group of select committee chairs who grill the Prime Minister periodically. She was in her usual defensive mode of not giving anything away for much of the session. But then, towards the end, she announced that the NHS would be getting more money.

Steerpike

Theresa May takes a swipe at herself

From our UK edition

Over the past few weeks, Mr S has detected the faint whiff of May-mania on the horizon. The Prime Minister's handling of the poisoning of a former Russian double agent on British soil has seen her popularity rise again. What's more, she learnt a new trick – recently fist-bumping a Salisbury resident. Now she can add cracking jokes to that list. At her appearance before the Liaison Committee this afternoon, May was asked about the importance of the agriculture industry in Wales to the community. Here she pointed out that she had seen this herself on her many walking trips in Wales – only not everyone would appreciate this: 'I'm tempted to point out that I do see value of Welsh agriculture to the Welsh landscape quite often when I go walking in Wales.

Steerpike

Watch: Bercow blasts Boris’s ‘sexism’ over Lady Nugee jibe

From our UK edition

John Bercow has been keeping a somewhat low profile of late, since bullying allegations were levelled against him. But now the Speaker has chucked himself firmly back into the spotlight with a spot of virtue-signalling in the Commons – by calling Boris Johnson ‘sexist’. Bercow took Boris to task after he referred to the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, as Lady Nugee (the name she is entitled to as the wife of the High Court judge Sir Christopher Nugee) telling him: 'The shadow foreign secretary has a name and it is not ‘Lady something’, we know what her name is. It is inappropriate and frankly sexist to speak in those terms. I am not having it in this chamber.

James Kirkup

Fear and loathing grips the gender debate

From our UK edition

Since I started writing about issues of sex and gender here a few weeks ago, I have made all sorts of new acquaintances; a lot of people are interested in this topic, it seems. Many of the people I’ve been in touch with are women who worry about the direction of politics, policy and even popular culture when it comes to gender and sex. And many of them are frightened. Frightened of what happens if the law is changed to let people born male become legally female simply on the strength of their own declaration. Frightened that the word “woman” will become meaningless and allow the legal rights and protections currently granted to women to be eroded and erased. Frightened to meet to discuss these concerns. Frightened even to speak about them.

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Labour MP turns on Corbyn in the Chamber over Russia

From our UK edition

Oh dear. It's no great secret that the Parliamentary Labour Party has struggled to get to grips with Jeremy Corbyn's response to Russia over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent on British soil. However, up until now they had refrained from criticising him directly in the Chamber. Today John Woodcock decided to go there following Theresa May's statement on Russia.

Isabel Hardman

May praises ‘solidarity’ from EU and US on Russia, and backs her aide in outing row

From our UK edition

Theresa May covered a fair bit of ground in her statement to the Commons on last week's European Council meeting. She talked about how EU leaders were supporting Britain in the stand-off with Russia following the Salisbury attack, on the agreement that leaders reached on the next stage of Brexit negotiations, steel tariffs, and on allegations that her own political secretary Stephen Parkinson outed his former partner as gay. On Russia, the Prime Minister told the House that 'I have found great solidarity from our friends and partners in the EU, North America, Nato and beyond over the past three weeks as we have confronted the aftermath of the Salisbury incident'.

Steerpike

Watch: Labour supporters clash at rally against anti-Semitism

From our UK edition

Although Jeremy Corbyn today wrote to the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council to say 'sorry' for the 'pain which has been caused' by his party's handling of cases of anti-Semitism, this acknowledgement appears not to extend to all of his supporters. This evening around 500 members of the Jewish community gathered in Parliament Square to raise concerns over the Labour leadership's attitude towards the Jewish community – after Corbyn apparently supportive message to the creator of an allegedly anti-Semitic mural in 2012. Only not everyone was happy to let this group have their say alone. The pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice for Labour group organised a separate rally to counter the protest. The location? Also in Parliament Square.

Stephen Daisley

Labour’s anti-Semitism problem is nothing new

From our UK edition

We may be witnessing a #MeToo moment in Labour anti-Semitism. Britain's Jews, so damn accommodating and willing to extend the benefit of the doubt, have finally snapped and said 'enough is enough'. At 5.30pm tonight they will gather in Westminster to protest in the most British way imaginable by handing the Labour Party a strongly-worded letter. The letter calls Jeremy Corbyn a 'figurehead for an anti-Semitic political culture' and says he has repeatedly 'sided with anti-Semites rather than Jews'. If anything, it goes a little easy on him.  The spark was Corbyn's defence of, and dissembling over, an anti-Semitic mural in east London but the frustrations have been building up over time.

Isabel Hardman

There isn’t as much consensus on NHS funding as you might think

From our UK edition

Is there really a cross-party consensus on tax rises for the health and social care system? A group of MPs from across Parliament has written to Theresa May calling for a year-long parliamentary commission on funding for all branches of the health system. Meanwhile Jeremy Hunt is calling for a ten-year settlement for the NHS, attacking a 'feast or famine' approach to funding it. 'There's no doubt that NHS staff right now are working unbelievably hard and they need to have some hope for the future, but their real concern is this rather crazy way that we have been funding the NHS over the last 20 years,' he told ITV's Peston on Sunday.

Katy Balls

After the Salisbury attack, who is isolated now?

From our UK edition

No 10 can breathe a sigh of relief this afternoon. Not only has Theresa May's response to the attempted murder of a former Russian double agent on British soil won her plaudits back home, it has also been met by a rigorous international response. With Germany, France, Ukraine and Canada already expelling envoys, today America joined the fold. Donald Trump has ordered 60 Russian diplomats to leave the country in response to Russia's alleged use of a nerve agent in Salisbury. A White House spokesperson said: 'The United States takes this action in conjunction with our NATO allies and partners around the world in response to Russia's use of a military-grade chemical weapon on the soil of the United Kingdom, the latest in its ongoing pattern of destabilising activities around the world.

Brendan O’Neill

Corbyn’s blindness to anti-Semitism is typical on the left

From our UK edition

I don’t believe Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite. I think most Corbynistas aren’t anti-Semitic. But here’s one thing I can say with utter certainty: if any other politician in the land had commented favourably on an explicitly racist mural, on a vile, caricatured depiction of a certain section of society as evil and dangerous, he would be finished. He would be hounded out of public life. He would be told in no uncertain terms that there is no place for apologists for racial hatred in the political sphere. And you know who would tell him this? Who would do this to him? Who would be at the forefront of demanding he be cast out? Corbynistas.

Steerpike

Corbyn supporter: ‘Jeremy needs to apologise less’

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn is still refusing to apologise for his reaction to the removal of an anti-Semitic mural. But according to one of his followers, Corbyn’s big mistake isn’t not apologising – it’s apologising too much. Corbyn supporter Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, from Jewish Voice for Labour, appeared on the World at One this afternoon to defend the Labour leader who is under mounting pressure over the anti-Semitism scandal. According to her: ‘If I have one criticism of Jeremy, it is that he is far too nice, far too apologetic, far too reluctant to beard his enemies in their den…Jeremy needs to apologise less’ Mr S isn’t so sure...

Ross Clark

The EU’s petulance is turning its Galileo satellite into a white elephant

From our UK edition

Moves by the EU to try to stop British armed forces from accessing the Galileo satellite system, and to prevent British companies from bidding for work on it, are, as one senior UK official told the FT, ‘outrageous’. Britain has contributed 12 per cent of the costs. The EU’s argument that to allow British involvement would be a security risk are perverse, given that China, Israel, Ukraine and Morocco are participating in the project. Does anyone really think that relations between post-Brexit Britain and EU will sink so low that European governments will consider us more of a security risk than China? Galileo isn’t principally a military system at all.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Jewish community says ‘enough is enough’ on Labour’s anti-semitism

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn this evening said he was 'sincerely sorry' for the pain caused by 'pockets of anti-semitism' in his party, and is arranging to meet representatives of the Jewish community this week. Tonight the Labour leader has had something of a preview of how that meeting might go, with the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council publishing a furious letter in which they accuse him of ignoring the 'mainstream majority of British Jews'. The letter, entitled 'enough is enough', says Corbyn personifies the form of politics that repeatedly fails to take antisemitism seriously, and says that 'again and again, Jeremy Corbyn has sided with antisemites rather than Jews'.

Steerpike

Vote Leave row: Isabel Oakeshott vs Carole Cadwalladr

From our UK edition

Here we go. After much anticipation over the weekend, the Observer's Vote Leave investigation is finally public. The paper alleges that the Brexit campaign group may have flouted referendum spending rules and then attempted to destroy evidence. While those involved with Vote Leave vehemently deny the claims, Carole Cadwalladr – the journalist behind the ongoing investigation around Trump, Brexit, Russia and Cambridge Analytica – appeared on the Andrew Marr show to discuss her claims.