Uk politics

So was it Corbyn’s appeal to younger voters what swung last year’s general election in his favour?  Not according to the British Election Study  (BES) which today publishes a paper questioning the received wisdom that Labour’s unexpectedly strong showing was down to a surge of support from younger voters who managed to cast off their apathy for the first time.     Indeed, claims the team, the Oxford English Dictionary may have been a bit premature in declaring ‘Youthquake’ as its word of the year.

There are many things to worry about with Brexit, but the terms of the transition should be pretty low down that list. The transition was always going to have to be off-the-shelf (if you could negotiate a bespoke transition, you might as well do the final deal) and as long as it is time-limited, it shouldn’t be a problem. Indeed, it should help smooth out Britain’s exit from the European Union. Bill Cash’s urgent question today was another sign of how some Tory Eurosceptics are becoming more and more concerned about the terms of the transition, and how it will make Britain—in effect—a non-voting member of the EU. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s charge that it makes Britain a ‘vassal state’ has resonated with many of them.

Since Georgia 'Toff' Toffolo won I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here, the Conservatives have been left with a dilemma over whether to utilise their celebrity supporter. A proud Conservative, Toff kindly volunteered to utilise her million followers for the party only for brains at CCHQ to block any such move over concerns she’s ‘too posh to win over Labour supporters’. Although the Conservative consensus has since changed in favour of bringing her into the tent, it seems it may be a case of too little, too late. In an interview with Sunday Times Style magazine, Toff comes across a little bit disgruntled about her recent interactions with the Tories.

David Lidington - Conservative family 'must come together' The Cabinet Office Minister and Theresa May's de facto deputy David Lidington has urged his colleagues to unite behind her after a week that has highlighted her precarious position. Fears have arisen among Conservative MPs that the party is facing annihilation in London and Birmingham in the local elections this spring, and the Chair of the 1922 Committee has signalled that he is dangerously close to the threshold of signatures for an automatic vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. Speaking to Andrew Marr, Lidington put up a spirited defence of the government's record and urged his colleagues to 'come together': https://youtu.be/t2szk7U93w4 AM: Your colleagues have been really really rude about Theresa May.

It's happened. Jeremy Corbyn has finally broken his silence on Iran. To be fair, he was rather forced into doing so when Andrew Marr raised the topic live on air this morning. Marr put to the Labour leader – who says ‘to stay neutral in times of injustice is to side with the oppressor’ – that he had gone rather quiet on Iran after over 20 people died and more gone missing following clashes between protesters and security forces.   https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/957555007414444033 Corbyn started of by saying Marr had been reading the Daily Mail too often. “I did some programmes for Press TV”  he said. “I ceased to do any programmes when they treated the Green Movement the way that they did.” This is flatly untrue.

Theresa May likes to avoid awkward rows at all costs: that much we already know. Today's papers carry two stories showing this: she is said to be abandoning plans to give a Brexit speech just in case it causes further divisions in her Cabinet, and is also racking up what The Times estimates is a £230 million bill by delaying the refurbishment of Parliament. Both the Cabinet and Parliament are dangerously unstable, with chunks falling from them every day. The latter, though, has been here a long time, is one of the most famous buildings in the world, and attracts vast numbers of tourists. Philip Hammond and Greg Clark don't raise quite so much interest, oddly.

Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond are further apart on Brexit than anyone else in the inner Cabinet. But there is one thing they agree on, I say in The Sun this morning. In the last 10 days, both of them have expressed their frustration to close allies that Theresa May won’t make a decision; that Britain is at a nation-defining moment in its history and that there is no real leadership. Their interventions are an attempt to provide that leadership, to give people an idea of what Brexit will be like. Absurdly, the Brexit inner Cabinet did not meet this week despite the fact that there is not yet a detailed UK position on what trade deal it wants with the EU. This lack of a position is creating the vacuum that both Boris and Hammond are trying to fill.

As I walked across Horse Guards one day last week, everything seemed eerily quiet. No one was about, and the only object I could see was a sleek limousine parked where one is not allowed to park, facing Downing Street. As I approached, I could read its number-plate, which said ‘1 VEN’. Was this the beginning of the long-awaited Corbyn coup, backed by fraternal aid from Nicolás Maduro? I cannot yet answer my own question for certain, because although Theresa May is still referred to as the ‘Prime Minister’ and even holds ‘cabinet meetings’, no one seriously suggests that she — or they — transact the business of government.