Uk politics

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Barnier’s Brexit deadline highlights May’s political weakness

From our UK edition

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.

Steerpike

Alex Salmond makes life difficult for Nicola Sturgeon

From our UK edition

It’s safe to say that Alex Salmond’s decision to host a talk show on Russia Today has not gone down well. The former first minister has been widely condemned for taking the controversial gig on the Russian-funded channel. Nicola Sturgeon has also now joined in, saying that she would have advised her predecessor 'against RT and suggested he seek a different channel to air what I am sure he will be an entertaining show’. But somewhat embarrassingly for Sturgeon, Salmond isn’t the only SNP figure to make an appearance on the channel. SNP politicians have popped up on RT nearly 50 times in recent years. Admittedly, Salmond himself accounted for many of those appearances. But a current SNP MP, Douglas Chapman, has also made several appearances on RT.

Gavin Mortimer

The poppy industry blooms as our hold on history withers

From our UK edition

England play Germany this evening at Wembley and it sounds like the football will be incidental to the virtue signalling. Not only will the two teams be sporting poppy armbands but there will be poppies on sale, poppy T-shirts given away, poppy wreaths laid, poppy banners paraded and then, during the minute's silence before kick-off, the Wembley arch will glow red as 'Football Remembers' flashes up on the big screen. As if football could forget. As if any of us could forget. Not in this day and age when the poppy is so ubiquitous at this time of year. Once upon a time, when history was still a serious subject in schools and kids had a grandparent or two to tell them a war story, we honoured our warriors with a plain old paper poppy. How quaint and uncommercial.

Julie Burchill

The Queen is not ‘one of us’

From our UK edition

When Republicans like myself mouth off against the Windsors, we always add the caveat ‘But the Queen's different!’ What we mean is that among a menagerie of malingerers – her mother left behind £7million in debts when she died; her sister, a sottish snob who crippled herself during a miscalculation with boiling bath water; her husband a mouthy bounder; her sons a hopeless shower – she alone seems to understand that the price a modern monarchy must pay is not to appear to be layabouts who believe that life – and the public purse – owes them a high standard of living.

Kate Andrews

The gender pay gap is largely a myth

From our UK edition

The Fawcett Society would have you believe, as part of its Equal Pay Day campaign, that today is the day “women effectively stop earning relative to men”, highlighting the gender pay gap, which they place at 14.1 per cent for full-time workers. If that number seems high to you, or not reflective of your working environment, that is because this 14.1 per cent can only be achieved by including outlier salaries that skew the figure towards high earners. Rather than using the Office for National Statistic’s official figure of 9.1 per cent (calculated using the median hourly earnings of full-time workers), Fawcett uses the ONS’s mean calculation instead, to achieve a figure five percentage points higher than the preferred figure.

Alex Massie

Alex Salmond has become Russia’s useful idiot

From our UK edition

When Alex Salmond became first minister of Scotland in 2007 many people wished him well. You did not need to have voted for the SNP to appreciate that Salmond’s minority administration was a welcome breath of fresh air. It replaced a tired and muddled Labour-Lib Dem coalition with one that had a pleasing sense of purpose and ambition. Scotland was ready to grow and Salmond seemed the kind of statesman who would not embarrass the nation.  A decade later, Salmond is reduced to working for the Kremlin’s propaganda station “Russia Today”. It has been a depressing fall from grace, one to be pitied as much as anything else. You do not often see an erstwhile statesman chump himself quite so thoroughly as this.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Boris’s critics risk becoming Tehran’s unwitting helpers

From our UK edition

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.

Ross Clark

It’s time for the Tories to admit rail privatisation has been a disaster

From our UK edition

Buried in yesterday’s drama over Priti Patel was the news that train drivers represented by Aslef have voted to end their industrial action on Southern Rail by accepting a pay deal which will give them a 28.5 per cent rise over five years. It will take their basic pay – for a four day week – to £63,000. With overtime, some could find themselves dragged into Jeremy Corbyn’s supertax bracket, aimed at those earning more than £80,000. It won’t even mean the end of the misery on Southern Rail, because the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), which has also been striking, has not accepted a deal. Wasn’t this sort of thing – unions holding railways to ransom for outrageous pay demands – supposed to be ended by privatisation?

James Forsyth

Penny Mordaunt’s promotion shows May’s limited room for manoeuvre

From our UK edition

Penny Mordaunt is the new International Development Secretary. After last week’s very unexpected appointment of Gavin Williamson as Defence Secretary, Theresa May has done what many observers expected her to do in appointing Mordaunt to replace Priti Patel. The choice of a female Brexiteer maintains the gender and Brexit balance of the Cabinet. Mordaunt has done two minister of state jobs already, she was until today minister for disabilities and before that minister for the armed forces. So, she had claim to be the next cab off the rank. Though, the fact that May is going for as close to a like-for-like replacement as possible is yet another reminder that her room for manoeuvre as Prime Minister is strictly limited.

Joanna Williams

When sexual harassment is defined so broadly it becomes meaningless

From our UK edition

Almost a third of young women think that winking is a form of sexual harassment. Let that sink in. For 28 per cent of women aged 18 - 24 the merest flick of an eyelid, an action so small as to be barely noticeable, is considered to be unwanted sexual behaviour that violates their dignity, makes them feel intimidated, degraded or humiliated and creates a hostile or offensive environment. Now, I’m normally first in line to point out the flaws in surveys that tell us only the views of a small number of people motivated to answer questions about sexual harassment. But the YouGov research lands at a time when stories about sexual harassment dominate news coverage. It comes on the back of a BBC survey claiming half of women are sexually harassed at work.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: May was right to ditch Patel – but she shouldn’t stop there

From our UK edition

Another week, another Cabinet minister heads for the exit. Priti Patel’s departure means Theresa May now faces another difficult decision in choosing who should replace her. But was she right to get rid of Patel? The newspaper verdict is unanimous: ‘We like Priti Patel,’ says the Sun: ‘But she had to go’. After all, ‘fierce ambition’ is one thing – it’s quite another to hold ‘unauthorised meetings in Israel’ which show clearly her ‘over-confidence’ and also ‘no little naivety’. Priti is indeed a ‘loss to the Cabinet’, the paper says; she is a ‘working-class Thatcherite’ who, crucially for the Tory party, remains ‘in touch with ethnic minority voters’.

Brendan O’Neill

The political class has lost the plot

From our UK edition

The political class has lost its marbles. This goes beyond Priti Patel failing to follow basic ministerial code or Boris Johnson’s blabbermouth making life a hell of a lot harder for an imprisoned Brit in Iran. There is also the increasingly deranged ‘Pestminster’ scandal. And their ongoing emotional meltdown over Brexit. And the Russian conspiracy theories being spouted by Ben Bradshaw and others — the David Ickes of polite society — which imply Putin is puppeteering the Western masses’ brains. It increasingly feels like we’re being governed not merely by fools and incompetents, but by nutters. Incompetence is the go-to explanation for the political class’s current malaise. And it’s a tempting one.

Wednesday

Tom Goodenough

Priti Patel resigns from the Cabinet

From our UK edition

Priti Patel has resigned from the Cabinet. Patel said that she accepted her decision to hold meetings with Israeli officials during her summer holiday without the prior say so of the government meant that her 'actions fell below the high standards that are expected of a secretary of state'. The secretary of state for international development went on to 'offer a fulsome apology' to the Prime Minister. Theresa May responded by saying 'now that further details have come to light' about exactly what Patel got up to on her summer jaunt, 'it is right that you have decided to resign'. Her resignation tonight is not much of a surprise.

James Forsyth

Who might replace Priti Patel in a reshuffle?

From our UK edition

Priti Patel is currently on her way to Downing Street, where she is expected to be fired by Theresa May. The early signs are that Number 10 is looking for a Leaver to replace her as International Development Secretary, to preserve the Cabinet’s Brexit balance. But this would be the wrong way to think about the reshuffle. Trying to replace Patel with someone who matches her profile as closely as possible would just be another advertisement of how weak May’s position is. In parliamentary terms, though, May is, obviously, in a weak position, Getting a clean EU withdrawal bill will be very difficult. (Indeed, the position of the Scottish Tories means that significant changes will be required to Clause 11 of the bill.).

Stephen Daisley

If the Tories fall, this will be regarded as a golden age of stability

From our UK edition

One of the hazards of writing about a government so hapless you wonder if it’s doing it all for a dare is that it could fall any minute. By the time you get to the end of this sentence, Theresa May could be cramming that last pair of heels into the back of a Pickfords van. Let’s work on the assumption that someone is in charge, nominally at least, and hope we get through the next few minutes without a minister setting their desk on fire or putting Wales on eBay.  That this is a spectacularly inept ministry is now beyond all doubt. Al Murray has a cracking stand-up routine in which his nostalgic Pub Landlord decries every government as the worst ever — except for the preceding one. Although far from their biggest sin, the Tories have ruined that joke.

Melissa Kite

Michael Fallon, for all the times I may have touched your knee while drunk, I’m sorry

From our UK edition

This one goes out to all the male MPs I’ve taken to lunch. I want to apologise to each and every one of you. Some of you know who you are and what went on. Some of you were so tipsy you may not have been fully aware of how shockingly you were being exploited. I estimate there are dozens, if not hundreds, of you whom I’ve taken to lunch, dinner and drinks during my time as a political correspondent. In dark bars and expensive restaurants, or just casually in Commons corridors, I’ve sidled up to you in a designer outfit and pretty much said ‘Howdy, right honourable!’ Look, it was a long time ago and I’m practically an old lady now, in media years.

Rod Liddle

Priti Patel is right: Let’s give our foreign aid money to Israel

From our UK edition

So, let me get this right. Priti Patel should resign because, while on a private holiday, she did some work – i.e. meeting foreign politicians. BBC PM's Eddie Mair says she is in serious trouble. Only with arseholes like you, sunshine. The real reason for leftie anguish is that Patel suggested that Israel could possibly receive some of the UK's foreign aid budget for its humanitarian work in the Golan Heights. Too right, Priti. If we are to have a foreign aid budget I think it should all go to Israel. Especially for its humanitarian work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Support democracy, militate against our enemies. Frankly I'd be delighted if all of our overseas aid budget were to be hypothecated to the IDF.

Isabel Hardman

Focus in Priti Patel row switches to what Downing Street really knew

From our UK edition

Priti Patel is on her way back to Britain to face the music following her strange holiday-cum-lobbying operation in Israel. Yesterday it emerged that the International Development Secretary had not told Number 10 that she had suggested giving humanitarian aid to the Israeli army in the Golan Heights. It has been so heavily briefed that she is expected to be sacked that there is little chance that the minister will get away with just another reminder of her responsibilities.

David Butterfield

Gordon Brown still hasn’t learned his lesson from Bigotgate

From our UK edition

As Gordon Brown’s new memoir, My Life, Our Times, sends mild ripples across the political play pool, the rest of the country tends to its own business. But there’s an episode from Brown’s turbulent spell as Prime Minister that merits revisiting: ‘Bigotgate’. Not only was it the moment that perhaps secured Labour’s dramatic fall from power but Brown’s finessing of what happened has worrying signs for politicians’ private frankness. You remember it well: while pressing the flesh in Rochdale as part of the 2010 election campaign, Brown found himself in conversation with a lifelong Labour voter. For a savvy politician, this was a golden opportunity to play the crowd and reiterate the party’s core beliefs.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Priti Patel and Boris should go

From our UK edition

Priti Patel could well follow Michael Fallon in making a departure from the Cabinet today. If she does leave, she’ll be the second minister to go in the space of only a week. So, is this bad luck on the part of the government? Not so, says the FT. The paper says this is a 'symptom of a deeper malaise’ and ‘two domestic incidents have highlighted the sense of drift’ at the heart of the government. Boris Johnson’s blunder in suggesting an imprisoned British-Iranian citizen was ‘teaching people journalism’ is typical of his ‘blasé attitude’. The FT goes further though, saying that Boris ‘may be the least distinguished figure to occupy the Foreign Office since the second world war’. And what about Patel?