Uk politics

Monday

Katy Balls

Lots of Irish questions, but no answers – yet

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

'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?

From our UK edition

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 our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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’

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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’

From our UK edition

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’.

Robert Hardman

Should Donald Trump be invited to the Royal Wedding?

From our UK edition

Two golden rules of royal weddings. First, it’s always wonderful on the day. Second, there is always an almighty official spat beforehand which no one saw coming. When Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, there was a Spanish boycott because the honeymoon included Gibraltar. In 2011, Prince William’s marriage plans had a crisis moment when it turned out the guest list had included the Syrian ambassador but not ex-PMs Blair and Brown. We can already spot one sensitive issue. Should Donald Trump be invited? For: the bride is American. Against: she backed Hillary. In fact, Mr Trump is unlikely to be invited because he is not a friend and this is not a state occasion.

Charles Moore

The government’s ‘industrial strategy’ is harmless nonsense

From our UK edition

‘Industrial strategy’ must be added to this column’s collection of phrases which automatically lower the spirits. Others include ‘replacement bus service’, ‘all the toys’ and ‘smart casual’. There is literally no need for any government to have one — what industrial strategy built Silicon Valley? — and it is literally impossible to remember, when one has been announced, what it is. (If you doubt me, try reading Greg Clark’s ‘Our vision to make Britain fit for the future’ in Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph.) Its sole raison d’être is presentational: it is (sadly) considered better to claim you have a plan than to explain why you don’t.

Friday

James Kirkup

Come back David Cameron

From our UK edition

We don’t hear much from David Cameron these days. He’s generally too busy. He fills his time in many ways: writing a book; making bundles of cash; playing tennis; not taking the blame for Brexit. But he’s given an interview to the Financial Times about Alzheimer’s disease and the search for a cure. It’s worth a read, and not just because it’s an important subject. It’s also a reminder of what was lost when Cameron fled Parliament last summer (I know - it seems much longer). To my mind, it is both shameful and a shame that Cameron has left the Commons, and did it in such a manner.

Melanie McDonagh

Damian Green’s private life is not a police matter

From our UK edition

So, a former Met detective, Neil Lewis, professes himself 'shocked' – yes 'shocked' – by the amount of pornography allegedly found on the computer of the Deputy Prime Minister, Damian Green, in 2008. He had analysed the way the computer in question had been used and declared he had 'no doubt whatever' that it was Mr Green, then opposition Home Affairs spokesman, who had used it. 'The computer was in Mr Green’s office...logged in, his account, his name', said Mr Lewis (at the time working as a computer forensics examiner for counter terrorism operations). 'It was ridiculous to suggest anybody else could have done it,' he added.

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn: I’m a centrist dad

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn caused a social media flurry on Thursday after it was revealed that he is the cover star of the new issue of GQ magazine. Sticking to his socialist values, the Labour leader managed not to fall in the trap of other comrades (like Owen Jones) who put on designer gear for the glossy magazine shoot – opting to wear an M&S suit. So, what did Corbyn have to say? Well, the Labour leader discusses Corbynista slang – and specifically the term 'centrist dad' which is used to describe someone stuffy and out of touch – often a Blairite. However, Corbyn claims that he is a 'centrist dad' just one that has been 'radicalised'. It turns out that 'radicalised' centrist dads don't bother with the Today programme, opting instead for Classic FM in the mornings.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Should Trump’s state visit go ahead?

From our UK edition

Donald Trump’s January visit to Britain now looks to be in doubt following the furore over his tweets. Diplomats in the United States are said to have put the plans on ice, according to the Daily Telegraph. Good, says the Guardian in its editorial this morning: it’s time to ditch the state visit. Tump’s decision to retweet anti-Muslim videos shows ‘again that he panders to bigots and is no friend of this country’, the paper argues. Brexit already makes this a ‘dangerous’ moment for Britain, says the paper, which goes on to suggest that further allying ourselves to a ‘thuggish narcissist’ will hardly help matters.

David Bergman

Tulip Siddiq’s shameful silence on Bangladesh’s missing people

From our UK edition

‘Just heartbreaking', wrote the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq this week as she shared a picture of the daughter of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian mum who is currently imprisoned in Iran on trumped-up charges of espionage. Tulip has, quite rightly, dedicated much time to trying to free Zaghari-Ratcliffe. It's a pity though that she doesn't go to the same lengths to lobby Bangladesh, another repressive country, over the hundreds of people that have been secretly detained there in recent years.