Uk politics

Among the many things that have been puzzling me since Priti Patel’s resignation last week, one stands out. So far as I can see there doesn’t seem to be a single person on the Conservative – or conservative – side who has claimed that the campaign against Ms Patel (for campaign it most certainly was, within and without) was motivated by racism. This is curious. In recent years we have become used to men and women on the political left making errors both big and small. And whenever that person happens to be of a minority ethnic background a chorus of defenders in the Labour party and on the broader left always cry ‘racist’ against any and all critics of that person. Diane Abbott’s defenders are one example.

'Take up our quarrel with the foe', intones John McCrae’s famous In Flanders Fields. 'To you from failing hands we throw, the torch'. For the millions of us marking Remembrance Sunday today, that quarrel is a solemn reminder of past sacrifice. It refers, somewhat euphemistically, to one of the bloodiest, most tragic conflicts in history. For some activists in and around the European Union, however, a more contemporary quarrel comes to mind. Obsessed with what they perceive as the dark foreboding forces of Brexit, they can’t help raising aloft the torch of EU supranationalism. The most egregious example being a piece in The Independent with the outrageous clickbait headline 'If you voted Leave don't bother wearing a poppy'. https://twitter.

Another week, another Cabinet resignation. Now, as I say in The Sun this morning, there are those saying that Theresa May is just being unlucky right now. As Downing Street aides point out, few would have predicted a few weeks ago that Westminster was going to be engulfed in a sex scandal or that Priti Patel was going to have to resign for running her own, independent foreign policy. Theresa May’s problem, though, isn’t that a black cat walked in front of her. Rather, it is that her government is becalmed. It doesn’t have enough momentum to get through crises, so it gets stuck in them. As a result, the calculation about whether May can stay as Prime Minister is staring to shift.

Given all the rows in Westminster at the moment, it’s easy to forget that there are Brexit negotiations going on. But those involved in the talks from the EU’s side haven’t, and neither have they neglected to notice that Theresa May’s government is looking remarkably flimsy. Hence Michel Barnier’s warning today that there are only two weeks in which to make sufficient progress on the very important questions of the Brexit divorce bill, the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland and citizens’ rights. Barnier knows that the pressure is mounting on May at home to move on to trade talks, and that a Prime Minister as weak as her can’t take all that much domestic political pressure.

Boris Johnson made a mistake when he said that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training journalists in Iran. He and the Foreign Office should have moved to clear up the error far faster and far more comprehensively than they did. But some of Boris Johnson’s critics are risking turning themselves into Tehran’s unwitting helpers. Take, for example, Emily Thornberry’s letter to Boris Johnson saying that he should resign if Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sentence is extended. This proposal would, effectively, hand the Iranian regime a veto over who the British Foreign Secretary should be. All of us talking about this matter should also be aware of what Tehran is up to.