Uk politics

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: How will May sell her fudge pudding to the DUP?

Theresa May’s plan to wrap up an agreement on the first stage of Brexit talks was scuppered at the last minute yesterday. Good, says the Sun. The paper argues that yesterday’s deadline was ‘always going to be a moveable feast’, and that ‘the Prime Minister is right not to agree a deal to meet a made-up deadline’. OK, it’s ‘disappointing’ that the PM will now need to do it ‘all over again later this week’. But the paper says May should remember that there is only one deadline that must be met: March 29th, 2019. Brexit is a process ’that will decide the future of our once-again sovereign country for decades to come’. ‘Let’s not rush it,’ the Sun concludes.

Steerpike

Battle of the Maybots

Unfortunately for Theresa May, her working lunch on Monday with Jean-Claude Juncker didn't work when it came to agreeing 'sufficient progress' with Brussels. However, as the Prime Minister works to solve the negotiations deadlock with the DUP – and subsequently the EU, she can at least find some light relief in the abundance of Maybot sketches now doing the rounds. In a sign that Theresa May is making an impression on Americans, May made a special appearance on Saturday Night Live over the weekend – with Kate McKinnon doing her best Maybot impression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WMMSmwzOTg Should that one not appeal, Tracey Ullman's Theresa May is also a strong contender for best Maybot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Monday

Robert Peston

To prevent an Irish Sea border, Theresa May will align UK regulations with the EU

So it turns out there is something Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party fears and loathes more than the possibility of a government led by Jeremy Corbyn. They would be prepared to sink Theresa May and her government to prevent even the remotest prospect of a border being introduced in the middle of the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Which is why the prime minister has to be quadruply clear that any regulatory alignment she offers to the EU to prevent the re-establishment of a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic has to be alignment that applies clearly and equitably to the whole of the UK and not just to Northern Ireland.

Katy Balls

No 10 calls briefing meeting, says nothing

Following Theresa May and Jean Claude Junker's press conference to announce that no deal has been reached (yet), Tory MPs were summoned to the Committee room corridor to be given a briefing on the progress – or lack there of. Only the meeting's organisers, Gavin Barwell and Steven Baker, didn't appear to have all that much to say – telling MPs that both sides were working hard to iron out the final issues holding up 'sufficient progress'. Or, as one MP puts it, 'what we were told is nothing has been agreed and nothing has been ruled out'. One Tory walked out with their hands in the air – though a more cheery attendee describes it as a 'positive' meeting with progress expected to come soon.

James Forsyth

How will the Irish border issue be solved in time?

Jean-Claude Juncker and Theresa May have just emerged from their lunch. But there is no white smoke over Brussels this evening. Juncker said that it was ‘not possible to reach complete agreement’. So, there’ll be no recommendation of ‘sufficient progress’ today. However, Juncker declared that he was still confident that the UK and the EU can reach sufficient progress by the December EU Council to move on to the next stage of the talks. Neither May nor Juncker set out which areas are still causing trouble, but all the talk today has been about the Irish border. The leaked text which talked about ‘continued regulatory alignment’ between Northern Ireland and the Republic kicked off a massive row.

Isabel Hardman

Why Number 10 needs to calm some Tory nerves this afternoon

In the midst of the confusion over whether the UK and Ireland have agreed for Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union, Tory MPs have been invited to a party meeting this afternoon at 4. Some backbenchers who are particularly interested in scrutinising Brexit had requested that they be given the same sort of off-the-record briefings on policy and developments as are offered on a regular basis by the Ministry of Defence, so this may well be one of those meetings. But the presence of Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s chief of staff, suggests that it’s not just an off-the-record update from Brexit minister Steve Baker.

James Kirkup

Here’s how Theresa May can show she is still serious about social mobility

As someone who cares about – and has experienced – social mobility, I’m sad to see Alan Milburn, Gillian Shephard and their colleagues leave the Social Mobility Commission (SMC), and I hope Theresa May is serious about finding the best possible 'new blood' for the commission. I have a few suggestions for who should try to fill Alan’s shoes (Sir Terry Leahy would be a good start), though obviously ministers will have to work hard to assure any new commissioners that the 'bandwidth' needed to make Britain more socially mobile will actually be available in a Brexit-fixated Whitehall machine.

Katy Balls

Lots of Irish questions, but no answers – yet

As Theresa May sits down to lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker to try and persuade the EU Commission to give Britain the green light to talk trade, confusion reigns over what concessions the UK government is making in order to do this. There are reports that a solution to the Irish border has been found.  A draft version is said to promise 'continued regulatory alignment' – if no solutions are found: 'In the absence of agreed solutions the UK will ensure that there continues to be continued regulatory alignment with those rules of the internal market + customs union which, now or in the future, support North South cooperation +protection of the GFA.

Brendan O’Neill

Ireland, the EU is playing you like a fiddle

The EU has no shame. It is a completely shame-free zone. How else do we explain the grotesque spectacle of EC President Donald Tusk cosying up to Ireland this weekend, and claiming to respect Irish sovereignty, as if the past 15 years of Brussels treating Ireland as a colonial plaything had never happened? As if the EU hadn’t time and again overridden the Irish people’s democratic wishes? As if the EU didn’t just a few years ago send financial experts to run the Irish economy above the heads of the apparently dim Irish demos? Tusk claiming to be a friend of the Irish takes EU chutzpah to dizzying new heights. EU officials were all over Ireland at the weekend. Tusk decreed that Ireland would have the final say on the Brexit deal.

Ross Clark

The government must learn its lesson from Alan Milburn’s resignation

There is a simple lesson the government needs to learn from Alan Milburn’s resignation as social mobility czar: employ a GOAT at your peril. A ‘GOAT’  – the acronym derives from Gordon Brown’s phrase ‘Government Of All Talents – is a figure appointed to a government job, either as a minister or an adviser, even though he or she has a political persuasion. Presumably, what was going through David Cameron’s mind in 2012 when he appointed Milburn to the job driving Tory social mobility policy was that it would make his government look broad-minded and caring. That was, after all, what Cameron was all about – he was above all else a one-man PR operation to ‘detoxify’, as he saw it, the Conservative brand.

Ed West

All conservatives should support Michael Gove’s green crusade

'The sea is in my blood. My father made his living as a fish merchant, as did his father before him. Generations of Goves have gone to sea, harvested its riches and fed families with the healthiest — and most renewable — resource on the planet, our fish.' So begins Michael Gove's passionate call to arms, inspired by Blue Planet II, to save the oceans from mankind. Gove is one of the most intellectually original people in politics, and a very likeable man. But if British politics is a box set series, he also has the best character arc of any politician – like Jaime Lannister after he loses his hand or Prez in The Wire when he becomes a teacher, Gove always seems to be developing and surprising the audience.

Are companies that buy back their own shares manipulating the market?

Last week’s white paper on industrial strategy put forward a few useful ideas but ignores the main structural problem we face: the ‘financialisation’ of the economy. At a time when we urgently need to invest to raise productivity, PLCs have been putting over half their profits into buying back their own shares. This practice used to be against the law. Under common law it was treated as a kind of market manipulation. Company law, including the 2006 Companies Act, still has some hallmarks of this assumption but a radical change was made in the Companies Act of 1981. Before that, British companies were not permitted to purchase their own shares.

Nick Cohen

The Damian Green inquiry isn’t really about porn

From the beginning, there’s been a whiff of the police state about the treatment of Damian Green. Free societies do not allow detectives to burst into an MP’s office because he or she has been embarrassing the government. That bad smell has risen to the level of a stench. The now ex-police officers, who claimed they had seen pornographic pictures on Green’s computer, raised the prospect, however fleetingly, of an authoritarian future. The police failed to find evidence that Green, then an opposition MP, had engaged in a ‘criminal conspiracy to solicit leaked information detrimental to national security’ when they raided Parliament in 2008. Not that it bothered them. Because Green and his friends fought back hard, he had to be punished.

Sunday

Katy Balls

Jeremy Hunt’s Brexit warning misses the point

Jeremy Hunt has managed to get both Remainers and Brexiteers in a spin this weekend with his appearance on Peston on Sunday. Following reports of growing eurosceptic anger over concessions Theresa May is expected to make on the ECJ in a bid to get 'sufficient progress' at this month's EU council meeting, Hunt said his Parliamentary colleagues have a simple choice – May's Brexit or no Brexit at all: 'I think there's an even bigger point here, that the choice we face now is not between this Brexit and that Brexit; if we don't back Theresa May we will have no Brexit - and she is doing an unbelievably challenging job amazingly well.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Jeremy Hunt – ‘if we don’t back Theresa May, we will have no Brexit’

Alan Milburn - There is only so long you can push water uphill Last night Alan Milburn, the former Health Secretary who had been appointed by David Cameron as the government's 'social mobility tsar' in 2012, announced that he would not be continuing in the role any longer, and nor will any of the current membership of his team. This morning, Milburn spoke to Andrew Marr about the reasons for his departure: https://youtu.be/C1iJrl7UWbA Milburn: I care deeply about the issue and I believe that it matters profoundly to the country. I've reached the conclusion sadly that with the current government there is little, if any hope of progress being made towards the fairer Britain that the Prime Minister has talked about.

Fraser Nelson

No 10 should have seen Alan Milburn’s resignation coming

For the whole board of the Social Mobility Commission to resign with its chairman, Alan Milburn, condemning the Prime Minister’s commitment to the agenda is pretty damaging. But this attack was inevitable, for reasons that haven't (so far) been picked up by the newspapers. Ever since Theresa May took office, she has shown almost no interest in the Social Mobility Commission, set up under the coalition years. No10's approach seems to have been one of strategic neglect. Alan Milburn's five-year term came up for renewal last July: Justine Greening, the minister responsible, was keen for him to stay. But No10 refused, and asked her to come up with other names.

Steerpike

John McDonnell’s ‘wargamer’ trolls Isabel Oakeshott

At this year's Labour conference, John McDonnell went somewhat off message when the shadow chancellor announced at a fringe event that his party was 'war-gaming' for a 'run on the pound' if elected. Given that this hardly signs like a desirable outcome for a party of government, the shadow chancellor has since tried to retract his comments – claiming there will not be a run on the pound. But that hasn't stopped them 'war-gaming'. On today's Sunday Politics, Richard Barbrook, a key member of the McDonnell's Treasury 'war-gaming' team, made an appearance to explain how he is helping prepare the party for power.

Rod Liddle

It’s been a bad year for Blue Labour

Not a good year for my small sector of the political sphere, Blue Labour. I say small because politically, at the moment, that is what it is: indeed, nigh on non-existent. And yet its basics – socially conservative, fiscally radical, mindful of tradition, patriotic – strikes a chord with so many voters outside London. Blue Labour’s influence in the Conservative Party was seen to have been a partial cause of Theresa May’s lamentable performance at the last election. I am not so sure that the policies promulgated by Nick Timothy were to blame, despite what my editor here may believe: presentation, arrogance and poor leadership were more crucial, I think.

James Forsyth

The Tories’ fate is in their own hands

How will the Tory party remember 2017? Will it be the year it lost its majority, alienated key sections of the electorate and paved the way for a Jeremy Corbyn premiership? Or the year when uncertainty about Britain’s future relationship with the European Union peaked, when debt finally began to fall and the Tory party resisted the temptation of a Corn Laws-style split? We won’t know for several years. What we can say with confidence is that Brexit will prove key to determining which view of 2017 wins out. On Monday, Theresa May heads to Brussels for a meeting with the European Commission. Over lunch, she will set out what Britain is prepared to offer on the financial settlement, EU citizens’ rights and the Irish border.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Government getting jittery about ‘sufficient progress’

Theresa May is not one of those politicians who enjoys lengthy conversation over lunch. But her lunch on Monday with Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday will be one of the most important lunches in recent British history, I say in The Sun this morning. Earlier in the week, there was a growing confidence in Whitehall that the lunch would go well, that Juncker would throw his weight behind ‘sufficient progress’ and the UK would formally get there at the December EU Council. But there has been an outbreak of the jitters in the last day or so. I am informed that we are a ‘million miles from this being a done deal’. The reasons for this skittishness is, as one source explains, that the government is ‘mindful of the lesson of October where we were burnt’.