Uk politics

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Theresa May’s tuition fees plan is rotten politics

From our UK edition

I don’t really object to bad policy, it’s the rotten politics I can’t stand. There would be something almost amusing about a Conservative prime minister gravely intoning, in effect, 'Labour are right; please don’t vote for them' if it weren’t so head-thuddingly stupid.  Remarkably, however, this is the position into which Theresa May has put herself. Labour’s policy on university tuition fees may be a) ruinously expensive and b) a boon to the most affluent but it is c) easily understood. Labour would – or, rather, say they would – scrap tuition fees.  Responding to this – and, more broadly to their problem with 'younger' voters (i.e.

Katy Balls

David Davis’s Mad Max comparison is an own goal

From our UK edition

It's safe to say that David Davis's turn at navigating the roadmap to Brexit has not gone completely to plan today. The aim of the speech was to reassure businesses and Brussels that the UK will maintain high standards and regulations – with a pledge to keep a level playing field on state aid and competition policy. However, in pre-briefed quotes ahead of the speech, the Brexit Secretary promised that Brexit would not mean Britain is ‘plunged into a Mad Max style world borrowed from dystopian fiction’ but instead will lead a ‘race to the top in global standards’. The colourful prose has won much attention in the press – and has led to headlines along the lines of 'David Davis denies Brexit Britain will be like Mad Max'.

Steerpike

Ken Livingstone: I was too left-wing for the KGB

From our UK edition

The row about Jeremy Corbyn and a Czech spy shows no sign of dying down. Following a former Czech spy's claim that Corbyn was paid by the Eastern bloc to spy on Britain in the 1980s, the Labour leader has denied the claim and instructed solicitors to respond to 'any false and ridiculous smears' appearing online. Meanwhile, Tory MPs are calling on Corbyn to give permission for the publication of the Czech intelligence file on him. While that looks unlikely, one man who is happy to talk about his Communist dealings in the eighties is Ken Livingstone. Red Ken tells the Daily Mail that he met a KGB spy posing as a journalist for a number of interviews in the 1980s. This man even organised for him to go on a ten-day trip to Russia.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Theresa May has her priorities wrong

From our UK edition

Theresa May’s launch of a review into university funding shows she has her priorities all wrong, says the Sun. It is true that the funding system for higher education ‘is broken’. 'But it is nowhere near a priority for Britain, Theresa May or the Tories,’ according to the paper. Yes, ‘some fees should be slashed’. And yes, ‘many courses are pointless’. But the Prime Minister is merely ‘tinkering’ in a bid to match Corbyn’s ‘economically insane’ promise of free tuition. She should stop doing so now, says the Sun, which calls her promised shake-up ‘a distraction from what really matters to millennials’: the ‘dire shortage’ of homes.

Monday

William Dry

Sorry, Brendan O’Neill, but we won’t be no-platformed on Brexit

From our UK edition

If you read Brendan O’Neill’s Coffee House article on Our Future, Our Choice! OFOC! – the campaign group of which I am co-president – you are left with the impression that we are a bunch of young fascists seeking a teenocracy. Brendan seems to believe that Britain’s youth see themselves as Nietzsche’s young warriors, and want to push out the ‘old men’. The ‘cult of youth’ wants to round up the walking-stick brigade, the village church congregations, the ageing Brexiteer army and send them where they belong: ‘peaceful’ correction camps. This is ludicrous. I wholeheartedly believe in ‘one person, one vote’. It goes without saying that we at OFOC! do not want to ‘dehumanise the old’.

Isabel Hardman

The Tories must beware steering leftwards onto the rocks

From our UK edition

That the Tories are having to shift their policymaking far left even of the Milibandesque positions that Theresa May took before the snap election is quite obvious. Today's education speech by the Prime Minister involved an admission that the current system, drawn up by the Conservatives in coalition, isn't working. The problems that the Tories have noticed with that system are largely political, but that's not to say that there aren't flaws in the details, too. But it's not just on tuition fees that the party is having to change its tune from its time in government under David Cameron and George Osborne.

Steerpike

Irish Herald’s headline fail

From our UK edition

Oh dear. We're only two months into 2018 and already the winner for 'headline fail of the year' appears to have been found. The Irish Herald today publishes a report on a man who 'lived' in a flat with his 'dead wife's body in a wardrobe for 48 hours'. Rather unfortunately the accompanying half page advert is for... discount wardrobes: https://twitter.com/Trickstersworld/status/965573039294468096 Mr S hopes that this wasn't advertising selling against the story...

Joanna Williams

Maternity leave isn’t all good news for business

From our UK edition

The never-ending churn of stories explaining why it is awful to be a woman has a new focus. A survey of workplace ‘decision-makers’ published this week has exposed the shocking news that some employers think maternity leave can be a bit inconvenient. That’s right: some sexist and uncaring bosses do not feel delight when mum-to-be announces her plans but instead worry about the impact on the bottom line. A poll conducted for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has revealed that almost 60 per cent of employers think a woman applying for a job should disclose whether she is pregnant.

Stephen Daisley

Did Jeremy Corbyn bring down the Iron Curtain?

From our UK edition

There are two competing theories about how the Soviet Union collapsed. One holds that Ronald Reagan's moral leadership against communism and bolstering of US defences weakened Moscow's will and buried them economically. The other contends that Mikhail Gorbachev's domestic reforms and wise diplomacy brought down the Iron Curtain in spite of the cowboy in the White House. We can now add a third hypothesis: Jeremy Corbyn did it. If the claims of a former Czechoslovakian agent are to be believed, the Labour leader was a paid informant for the secret police. That would certainly explain the devastating collapse of state socialism. Even the mighty Warsaw Pact could not have withstood the support of Jeremy Corbyn.

Isabel Hardman

Does Theresa May know what she’s getting herself into?

From our UK edition

What does Theresa May want post-18 education to look like? The Prime Minister’s plans for tuition fees are getting the most attention today, but her big education speech has a lot more in it than just the cost of university degrees. Indeed, May is criticising the ‘outdated attitude’ that university is the be all and end all, and promising reform of vocational training, including apprenticeships. A focus on vocational training is something all prime ministers tend to meander into, before realising that higher education is so devilishly complicated that they retreat before achieving said reform. In May’s case, it may not be the complexity of the sector so much as the confusion in her own government that causes the most trouble.

James Forsyth

In praise of the ‘brainy’ Brexit Brits

From our UK edition

Democratic debate functions best when it is accepted that there are people of good will and good arguments on both sides. In the Brexit debate, this sense has too often been missing. There’s plenty of blame for this to go round. To put it crudely, too many on the Leave side have been too quick to question the motives of those arguing the Remain case. While too many of those who backed the status quo have refused to accept that there are any credible arguments for leaving the EU.   So the launch by two Cambridge academics, Robert Tombs and Graham Gudgin, of Briefings for Brexit is a welcome development.

Katy Balls

Theresa May risks conceding the argument to Labour on tuition fees

From our UK edition

After last month's purge of the Department for Education and following months of speculation among Tory MPs, No 10 have finally showed their hand on university education. The Prime Minister is to launch a year-long review of university and adult technical education. The aim is to de-toxify the party among young voters who are worried about the current levels of student debt – be it by appealing to their parents and grandparents. On the menu of ideas being mooted are the return of university maintenance grants ( or 'maintenance support'), lower tuition fees for courses that are cheaper to run such as arts degrees and cuts to student loan interest rates.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: The questions Corbyn must answer

From our UK edition

The row over Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged contact with a Czech spy rumbles on. In its editorial, the Sun condemns the Labour leader, who it says has questions to answer over his ‘dealings with foreign spies and diplomats’. Labour is no stranger to ‘dodging basic questions’, the paper argues. But while it can get away with refusing to answer on issues such as the ‘economy or defence…this is a different kettle of fish’. Some have dismissed the allegations as unimportant given that they happened so long ago; others have said the stories were are simply ‘fake news’ – yet this ignores the documents suggesting there was contact between Corbyn and a foreign diplomat.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Damian Hinds reveals how constrained May is on domestic policy

From our UK edition

Theresa May hasn’t had many opportunities to talk about domestic policy since the snap election. It’s probably fair to say, too, that the Prime Minister hasn’t exactly seized what opportunities there have been, either. This week, though, the Tories are talking about education, offering their response to Labour’s very attractive tuition fee pledge, and letting new Education Secretary Damian Hinds out to talk about his vision for the brief. Hinds has made clear today that he’s the sort of Education Secretary that Theresa May often wished she had over the past year.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Guy Verhofstadt – A trade deal will not be agreed before Brexit

From our UK edition

Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief representative in the Brexit negotiations, sat down with Andrew Marr to discuss at length the UK's future relationship with the EU. Verhofstadt told Marr that a trade deal between the United Kingdom and the European Union will not be finalised before the 29th of March 2019. Instead, Verhofstadt hinted that this would take place during the two year transition arrangement, putting him at odds with the UK government's policy that everything would be agreed 'at the same time': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0nfsRgxfD8 AM: Is it at all possible that by the time we formally leave in March next year, there will be a free trade agreement?

Steerpike

Toff apologises to the Rees-Moggs

From our UK edition

Since Georgia 'Toff' Toffolo was crowned queen of the I'm a Celeb... Get Me Out of Here jungle, the (majority of) Conservatives have been on a mission to hug their celebrity supporter close. In that vein, Toff was the centre of attention at this month's Black and White ball, where she attended as Stanley Johnson's guest. Happily her rising profile has not affected her manners. Writing in her Style column, Toff reveals that the first thing she did on arrival at the bash at the Natural History Museum was apologise to Jacob Rees-Mogg's wife Helena for calling her husband a 'sex god' in an interview: 'Stanley and I arrive and instantly bump into Jacob Rees-Mogg and his wife, Helena. So thin. Can’t believe she’s had six kids.

Katy Balls

The latest Labour bullying row highlights the moderates’ dilemma

From our UK edition

Although it's the Conservatives nowadays who are best known for in-fighting, this weekend we were offered a reminder of the divisions in Labour. At a meeting of the National Policy Forum (NPF), a row broke out between the Momentum contingent and the moderates. The subject of the row was – once again – Ann Black, the veteran activist who was ousted as chair of the Disputes Panel last month (and replaced with Corbyn favourite Christine Shawcroft) after the Corbynistas won a majority on the National Executive Committee. Black was expected to defeat union representative Andi Fox to be elected as chair of the policy forum, which sets Labour policy for future general elections. However, it appears Jeremy Corbyn’s allies had other ideas.

Charles Moore

What Prince Charles should say to the Commonwealth

From our UK edition

The Queen is Head of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is headquartered in London, in the splendour of Marlborough House. The Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Lady Scotland, is British (and also Dominican). Britain is about to take the chair of the Commonwealth for the customary two years, and so the next Heads of Government Conference — probably the last to be attended by the Queen — will take place in London in April. At the same time, Britain is leaving the European Union. So it would seem that circumstances combine to favour a push by the British government to make the Commonwealth work much more actively in our favour. Being a Brexiteer, I am tempted by this idea; but in fact I fear it could all go horribly wrong.

Saturday

James Forsyth

There’s a Brexit deal to be done on security

From our UK edition

Theresa May was pushing at an open door in her Munich speech when she warned against ‘rigid institutional restrictions’ harming security cooperation after Brexit, I say in The Sun today. Member states are reluctant to follow the Commission’s tough line on this as they know how valuable the UK’s contribution in this field is. I understand that when the Commission told the 27 that the UK would have to be treated like other third countries on security after Brexit, several member states pushed back. They argued that it must be possible to find sensible compromises. Security is where it is most clearly in the interests of EU member states to find an accommodation with the UK in these negotiations.

Friday

Katy Balls

Theresa May and Angela Merkel’s curious conference

From our UK edition

There was a cold front in Berlin today as Theresa May took to the stage for a joint press conference with Angela Merkel. The Prime Minister is in Germany to discuss post-Brexit security – with a speech scheduled tomorrow in Munich – but all anyone wanted to talk about today was Merkel's Davos joke. The German chancellor is said to have regaled hacks at the meeting of the global elite with an anecdote about May having no idea what she wants from Brexit. Asked in the Q&A today whether she understood Merkel's frustration that she is still unable to say what Britain wants, May insisted the government had a clear position – but added that 'this isn't just a one-way street'. For her part, Merkel appeared none-the-wiser as to May's Brexit wish list.