Uk politics

Monday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Jeremy Corbyn must rein in the thugs

From our UK edition

The protest that greeted Jacob Rees-Mogg’s talk at a Bristol university on Friday night shows that something sinister is happening in British politics, according to today’s newspaper editorials. The Times says that while Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘younger admirers’ might be blind to the idea, the Labour party and Corbyn’s ‘personal brand are tainted with an ugly and retrograde thuggishness’. The paper says the experiences of Claire Kober, the outgoing Labour leader of Haringey council, is a case in point. Kober used an interview in the Times on Saturday to document her experiences at the hands of some of Corbyn’s followers.

Steerpike

Security minister’s Private Pike jibe

From our UK edition

After a weekend of Tory in-fighting, blue on blue briefing wars and confusion over the government's Brexit position, it's safe to say that tensions are running high in the Conservative party. One minister who is particularly rattled by the contents of the Sunday papers is Ben Wallace, The Mail on Sunday reported that the Security Minister – and close ally of Boris Johnson – is on the verge of resigning in order to trigger a leadership contest against May. Only this seems to be news to Wallace. The Conservative MP has taken to social media to note that 'there is something very Dad’s Army about the Mail on Sunday story that I’m resigning' – adding that he 'shall put the paper in the fireplace where it belongs': https://twitter.

Katy Balls

‘Divide and rule’ is a dangerous game for a Prime Minister with no majority

From our UK edition

It's crunch week for Theresa May. The Prime Minister is under pressure to finally decide what the government's negotiating position ought to be going into the second round of EU negotiations. In order to work out what the UK's trade relationship with the EU should be after Brexit, May will meet with her Brexit war Cabinet on Wednesday and Thursday to try and agree a position on post-Brexit trade. There's hope that this will bring an end to the drift which has led Brussels figures like Angela Merkel to joke about May's 'make me an offer' approach to the talks. The crux of the issue relates to whether the UK will be in a customs arrangement of some kind with the EU.

Gavin Mortimer

The dilemma of dealing with the kids of the Caliphate

From our UK edition

They range in age from toddlers to teenagers and all will inevitably have been traumatised by what they have experienced. On the face of it, then, who wouldn't want to show kindness to the children who, through no fault of their own, have grown up and been born in the Islamic State? But as Commander Dean Haydon, the head of the Met’s counter-terrorism command, warned last week, diligence must come before compassion in the way Europe deals with the hundreds of children waiting to return from Syria and Iraq. 'We look at them on a case-by-case basis and they may be arrested', said Haydon. 'Some terror groups are training children to commit atrocities'.

Sunday

Steerpike

Toff takeover at Tories’ ‘black-and-white’ ball

From our UK edition

After Georgia ‘Toff’ Toffolo won I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, the Tories have been divided on how best to utilise their celebrity supporter. A proud Conservative, Toff's offer to share her million Instagram followers with the party was snubbed by CCHQ over concerns she was ‘too posh to win over Labour supporters’. Since then, the Made in Chelsea cast member has complained that MPs spun a trip she made to Parliament for TV work to make it look as though she had come for a meeting. Happily, Conservative MPs will soon have a chance to make amends with the reality star.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Amber Rudd defends civil service

From our UK edition

Amber Rudd: ‘I have complete confidence’ in the civil service The Home Secretary has defended the civil service after recent comments made by members of her party. Brexit minister Steve Baker and backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg – now the chair of the influential European Research Group – have both criticised the institution. Baker apologised to the House of Commons on Friday for suggesting that there was significant internal pressure from civil servants to stay in the EU customs union, while Rees-Mogg accused officials who drew up a post-Brexit economic analysis of ‘fiddling the figures’.

Steerpike

Former civil servant claims civil service ‘impartial’ on Brexit – says problem is… Brexit

From our UK edition

Oh dear. After a week in which senior Brexiteers accused the civil service of trying to frustrate Britain's exit from the EU, the Sunday papers have seen the first signs of fight back. In the Observer, Andrew Turnbull, who led the civil service under Tony Blair, claims the Brexit bunch are using tactics similar to those of rightwing German nationalists between the two world wars. Now Gus O'Donnell has appeared on Peston on Sunday to dismiss accusations that the civil service is trying to thwart Brexit. Defending the 'honesty, objectivity integrity and impartiality' of the civil service, the former Cabinet Secretary said the problem wasn't with his side but with... Brexit: 'Now of course, if you're selling snake oil, you don't like the idea of experts and testing your product.

Douglas Murray

Will the BBC go back to ignoring grooming gangs?

From our UK edition

The future of modern Britain looks set to be an unusually complicated affair. Take just one piece of news that came out of the trial of Darren Osborne over recent days. According to relatives of the Finsbury Park attacker, the first trigger towards his radicalisation was watching the BBC drama Three Girls about the Rochdale grooming gangs. Evidence suggests that this drama put him on the path to deciding to hire a van and drive it into a group of Muslims in Finsbury Park a few weeks later, murdering 51-year old Makram Ali. Now of course the BBC’s drama department should not be held responsible for the death of Mr Ali. Though I would love to see a real debate on Newsnight or the like in which the BBC questioned its own apparent role in this terrible business.

Charles Moore

Gavin Williamson’s unusual approach is a welcome change

From our UK edition

So we have to make do with a little touch of Gavin in the night. The new Defence Secretary has an unusual but rather successful technique. A likeable version of Uriah Heep (if that is imaginable), Mr Williamson is ever so ’umble about his intellectual attainments and deferential to those of others, yet ruthless in stealing a march on colleagues and swift in enlisting the media. Having been a loyal Chief Whip (no other sort is the slightest use), he is now an almost insurrectionist minister. His burst of activity has exposed the oddity that, since the 20th century, the Tories have chosen not to make the running on defence. They have taken pro-defence voters for granted and tried, for reasons both of cost and image, to play the subject down.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The best way to avoid a Tory split? Decisive leadership

From our UK edition

At political Cabinet this week, the chief whip warned ministers how difficult it was to hold the Tory party together, I write in The Sun this morning. Julian Smith warned them that noises off from the Cabinet made it even more of a struggle to maintain unity. Smith is right. The Tory party is dangerously divided, a split is a real possibility. He’s also right that ministers sounding off over Brexit heighten these tensions. But what he didn’t mention is the most important thing, the need for leadership. Ministers are putting forward their views on Brexit so publicly because there isn’t a clear government position. They think everything is still to play for, so a bit of public lobbying is justified.

Charles Moore

Darkest Hour is superb Brexit propaganda

From our UK edition

After I wrote that I would not be going to see Darkest Hour, so many people told me I should that I did. The Kino cinema in the village of Hawkhurst was packed for the afternoon showing and the youngish man in the seat next to me wept copiously. The scene in which Churchill travels by Tube is as absurd as I had heard. But one can understand the purpose of the device: here is a man who has become prime minister without a popular mandate yet has a stronger intuition of the general will than most of the high-ups who surround him. So he moves among the people — rather as Shakespeare presents ‘a little touch of Harry in the night’ on the eve of Agincourt: ‘That every wretch, pining and pale before,/ Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks’.

Friday

Isabel Hardman & Katy Balls

What do Tory MPs really think about Theresa May?

From our UK edition

It's not a good sign when a party finishes the week with MPs making the same complaints as they did at the start. Yet that is where the Conservatives are now, with the malcontents still fretting that there is no sense of vision or authority from the leadership. One thing that has changed is that the Tory party now seems rather more noticeably split over how MPs should be behaving. There is the camp who say, either privately or publicly, that Theresa May should go because things are only going to get worse under her leadership. But then there are others who are furious with anyone agitating for a change at the top, whether publicly or privately, because they think it is making everything far worse than it should be.

Jonathan Mirsky

Theresa May and the curious case of human rights in China

From our UK edition

Did Theresa May raise human rights with China during her visit to Beijing this week or not? The Chinese press has praised her for not mentioning the most neuralgic issue between China and all visiting officials. Downing Street sources, however, stated flatly that Mrs May raised the issue with both President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang. The Global Times, a voice of the Chinese Communist Party, said the 'Sino-UK partnership transcends media mudslinging over human rights...May will definitely not make any comment contrary to the goals of her China trip'. It contended, too, 'while the government is responsible for public well-being, the media tends to whip up sensations while disregarding sound international relations.

Rupert Darwall

The toxic politics of ‘soft Brexit’

From our UK edition

The management principle that in static organisations, people are promoted to their level of incompetence reveals the government’s two most inept politicians to be the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Appearing at Davos last week, Philip Hammond pitched the government into its current – conceivably terminal – Brexit crisis. Thanks to his intervention, the Chancellor’s game plan is now obvious: the softest possible Brexit. Getting away with it involves a softly, softly approach. The politics of being outside the EU but ruled by the EU as a de facto Brussels protectorate require copious doses of political Temazepam. This, one would have thought, would have come naturally to Philip Hammond.

Steerpike

Michael Portillo: Jacob Rees-Mogg offers what the public is crying out for

From our UK edition

With doubts about Theresa May's leadership rising, talk has turned – once again – to who might replace her. Jacob Rees-Mogg has topped this month's ConservativeHome leadership poll of members. So, is Moggmentum what the public needs? That's the suggestion made by Michael Portillo. Speaking on This Week, the Tory stalwart conceded that Rees-Mogg could have some of the answers: AN: Jacob Rees-Mogg is now the bookies’ favourite and indeed in some internal Tory party polling is the favourite to succeed, what do you make of that?

Ross Clark

Tories should imitate – not attack – Jeremy Corbyn’s land policy

From our UK edition

Ever since Labour published its manifesto for the snap election it became clear to me that tackling Jeremy Corbyn is going to require a bit more than simply calling him a bearded Trot. This is because some of his prominent policies, while notionally quite left wing, are actually rather popular with many natural Conservative voters. Renationalising the railways and utilities, ending the automatic contracting-out of public services – you will find plenty of support from people on the right who, while generally sceptical of state intervention, feel that the current arrangements are not a free, open market which offers consumers a genuine choice.

Tom Goodenough

Theresa May must stop presenting Britain as the supplicant in Brexit talks

From our UK edition

Theresa May is on her way back from China, but those hoping the Prime Minister has turned over a new leaf on her trip will be disappointed. Formal talks will soon begin on the implementation – or transition period, yet all the signs are that the Government is continuing to prevaricate on spelling out what it really wants from Brexit. Instead of setting out any kind of grand vision, the PM opts instead to take baby steps on the long road towards Britain’s departure from the EU. During her interview on the Today programme just now, May kept up this approach and again refused to spell out much in the way of detail. The PM was challenged by the BBC’s Laura Kueenssberg to ‘come clean on what you really want’.

Gavin Mortimer

France’s Jewish population has good reason to feel afraid

From our UK edition

In January 2016, Nicolas Sarkozy was honoured by British Jews at a ceremony in London. The former French president was thanked by Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldsmith for his support during a decade that had seen an upsurge in anti-Semitism across France. 'France right now is the main battleground between hope and fear for the future of Europe, especially for the Jewish community', said Goldsmith. Two years on, and Britain has also become a battleground for Jews. Anti-Semitic attacks are now at record levels in the UK, according to a report released this week, with 2017 witnessing a 34 per cent rise in violent assaults against Jewish people. Holland and Belgium have also undergone similar dramatic surges in anti-Semitism in recent years.

Stephen Daisley

Jeremy Corbyn and his followers are in denial about his past

From our UK edition

There are three people in every conversation about Jeremy Corbyn’s grim past. I have noticed this before but renewed interest in his paid work for Iran's Press TV confirmed it for me. First, there’s the anti-Corbynista, who points out one outrage or another. This might be Corbyn’s ‘friends’ in Hamas and Hezbollah, his inviting a hate preacher to tea on the Commons terrace, or the time he was arrested at a ‘solidarity’ demo for the Brighton bomber. These are well-documented facts and the anti-Corbynista believes, despite melancholy experience, that reason and evidence still have some purchase in current political debate.  He is quickly disabused, again, when the Corbynista interjects.

Thursday

Katy Balls

Conservatives dump their dirty laundry on the despatch box

From our UK edition

Well, this is going well. The leak of the government's Brexit economic forecasts this week has led to an almighty row within the Conservative party. With Britain predicted to be worse off in all the off-the-shelf alternatives to EU membership, Remainers have claimed it as evidence that Brexit is a bad idea while Brexiteers are quick to brand it as the latest Project Fear effort. Steve Baker – a Brexit Minister – took the unusual step on Tuesday of rubbishing the government report – and, for that matter, the government's ability to forecast anything; 'I am not able to name an accurate forecast and I think they are always wrong and wrong for good reasons'. As Mr Steerpike points out on Coffee House, he has a point.