Uk politics

Wednesday

Steerpike

Laura Pidcock fails to practise what her party preaches

From our UK edition

Oh dear. When a Tory MP missed last week's Opposition Day debate on universal credit to referee at a Barcelona match, both the SNP and Labour were quick to go on the offensive – accusing Douglas Ross of failing his constituents. Now it seems that one of Labour's most vocal justice warriors has also fallen foul and missed a debate on universal credit. Laura Pidcock was notably absent from Tuesday's emergency debate on the government's new benefits system. However rather than sickness keeping her away, it was a holiday to Venice.

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Labour’s shameful refusal to suspend Jared O’Mara

From our UK edition

Jared O’Mara is yet to make his maiden speech in Parliament, says the Sun – and ‘it might not be a bad thing if it stays that way'. The ‘disgraced’ Labour MP – who ousted Nick Clegg from his Sheffield Hallam seat at the snap election – has said sorry for his ‘crass comments’, which included making jokes about rape and calling overweight people ‘“f***ing pigs”’. But his  ‘patronising “apology’’, in which he pinned the blame on ‘“lad culture and football” — isn’t enough’, isn’t enough, says the Sun. O’Mara is so useless, argues the Sun, that it almost makes the paper ‘wish that Nick Clegg…was still in Parliament’.

Nick Cohen

Freedom of speech and Russia Today

From our UK edition

Russia does much worse than suppressing dissident opinion and manufacturing fake news. Putin has aided and abetted the vast crimes against humanity in Syria. The terror sent refugees flooding into the EU, and their presence helped produce Brexit and the rise of a pan-European far right: a double victory for the Kremlin, when you look at how 'patriotic' parties put Russia’s interests before their countries’ interests from France to the Balkans. Sanctions and the vast corruption Putin organises and profits from has produced vast poverty. It’s to be expected but should not be forgotten. Also worth recalling are the murders of opponents, the harassment of opposition parties, the anti-gay laws, and the endorsement of wife beating. All that and the invasion of Ukraine too.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Tory whips in a quandary over Labour social care challenge

From our UK edition

If ministers are going to offer any concessions in the row over Universal Credit, they’ve decided to keep them back for a little while longer. This afternoon MPs have been holding an emergency debate on the reform, with Employment Minister Damian Hinds defending the reform and the roll-out, rather than suggesting that the government is going to accept the suggestions of Tory and Labour MPs on delayed payments. The emergency debate was called after Conservative MPs were whipped to abstain on Labour’s Opposition Day debate on the benefit reform last week.

Katy Balls

Just because you’re Labour, doesn’t mean it’s alright Jared

From our UK edition

The Women and Equalities Select Committee is a member down today after one of its male intake was forced to resign on Monday over his formerly misogynistic behaviour. However, to the surprise of some feminists, it's not Philip Davies, the man many have spent the past year calling a misogynist, but Labour's Jared O’Mara. The MP for Sheffield Hallam's equality credentials have been cast into doubt after Guido uncovered a series of online messages from him dating back ten years or so. They include calling gay people 'fudge packers' and 'poofters', asking Girls Aloud for an orgy (on the condition the blonde member wasn't in the picture), and claiming fat women don't deserve respect.

Steerpike

Theresa May’s silent treatment

From our UK edition

After an unflattering account of Theresa May's dinner last week with Jean-Claude Jucker wound up in the German broadsheet FAZ, tensions between Brussels and Westminster have heightened. The briefing claimed that May 'begged' for help and appeared 'tormented' with 'deep rings' under her eyes. Keen to prove that he was not behind the leak, Juncker yesterday insisted that May 'was in good shape, she was not tired' – insisting the reports were untrue. So, Mr S was intrigued to read Rachel Sylvester's column in today's Times. She claims that on the UK side, those who report meeting May recently describe her as 'stricken and stunned'.

Gavin Mortimer

Better a dead fanatic in Syria than a live one in Britain

From our UK edition

Let us give thanks for the straight-talking Rory Stewart. After last week's alarming comments from Max Hill, a QC who appears to believe British Isis fighters just need some TLC, Stewart, a Foreign Office minister, has given a more incisive assessment of the approach that should be taken towards the British jihadists still at large in Syria and Iraq. 'They are absolutely dedicated, as members of the Islamic State, towards the creation of a caliphate,' the Conservative MP told the BBC's John Piennar. 'They believe in an extremely hateful doctrine which involves killing themselves, killing others and trying to use violence and brutality to create an eighth century, or seventh century, state.

Monday

Georgia Mcshane

The Tory party is becoming ‘Labour light’

From our UK edition

On the Andrew Marr show yesterday, the Communities Secretary Sajid Javid suggested that the government should 'sensibly borrow more money' and take advantage of the 'record low-levels' of interest rates in order to tackle the UK’s housing crisis. He added that the lack of affordable housing was the 'biggest barrier to social progress in our country today' and that such measures would go some way to re-balancing social inequality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMLiFO3CCI0&t=1s Javid’s remarks also highlighted another crisis: that of the identity of the Tory party. It is true that the UK currently faces a severe housing shortage with the number of homes being built falling far short of the 200,000 target which is generally recommended by housing experts.

Isabel Hardman

Will Universal Credit conform to the normal pattern of policy disasters?

From our UK edition

How far is the government going to row back on Universal Credit? This afternoon an emergency debate has been granted on the matter in the Commons tomorrow. Two of the pilot councils in the roll-out of the new benefit have warned that the new system could be a catastrophe once implemented fully, predicting rent arrears in ‘many hundreds of millions of pounds’ and reporting a huge surge in referrals to food banks. Southwark and Croydon Councils warned of ‘major flaws’ in UC, and urged the government to fix the policy immediately. The pressure, which grew last week with Labour’s Opposition Day debate on the roll-out, hasn’t diminished since ministers said they would make the helpline for claimants a free number, rather than one that charged 55p a minute.

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May discovers the perfect answer to difficult Brexit questions

From our UK edition

Theresa May has the perfect answer to all difficult questions: we don’t want to give away anything that will harm our position in the Brexit negotiations. No matter whether the information an MP is requesting has anything to do with Britain’s negotiating position: it’s a handy line to use when the answer is in fact ‘I don’t actually know’. The Prime Minister deployed this argument about not wanting to undermine the negotiations several times as she took questions from MPs in the Commons following her statement on last week’s European Council summit.

Steerpike

Watch: John Bercow’s strange Scottish turn

From our UK edition

Oh dear. Although John Bercow has a penchant for winding up Conservative MPs in the Chamber, he also has a habit of taking the SNP to task for failing to grasp Westminster etiquette. However, today he adopted a rather different approach. During questions after Theresa May's statement on the EU Council summit, the Speaker appeared to have an odd turn. Calling the SNP's Alan Brown to speak, Bercow attempted a Scottish accent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt2HALDW5a8 Mr S recommends he leaves it to the Scots next time...

James Forsyth

If the Tories want to survive they must build more houses

From our UK edition

Too many Tories have a sense of inevitable defeat at the next general election. They can see what the problems are but are fatalistic about their ability to solve them before 2022. Sajid Javid isn’t one of these Tories. He quickly grasped that the election result changed the internal Tory debate about housing policy and has been pushing for more radicalism ever since. On Sunday, he went on Andrew Marr to argue that the government should borrow to build. Javid’s argument is the same he made when he was backing Stephen Crabb for leader in 2016, interest rates are so low that it makes sense for government to borrow to invest in infrastructure. There are those who will be uncomfortable about the idea of the government borrowing even more.

Steerpike

Mhairi Black’s mixed messages

From our UK edition

Last week, the SNP proved particularly vocal at PMQs after they went on the offensive over a Scottish Conservative MP missing Labour's opposition say debate on universal credit to referee at a Barcelona match. Although the vote was non-binding – and the Conservatives abstained anyway – Douglas Ross has since promised to hang up his whistle – after next year’s World Cup. Not willing to drop the issue, however, the SNP's Mhairi Black has gone on the warpath in her Daily Record column today.

Sunday

Robert Tombs

Michel Barnier’s arrogant inflexibility over Brexit comes from a long Gallic tradition

From our UK edition

If Michel Barnier and David Davis, in their regular dialogue of the deaf, seem to be inhabiting different mental universes, that is because they are. The British and French have often found each other particularly difficult to negotiate with. Of course, Barnier represents not France but the EU, and he has a negotiating position, the notorious European Council Guidelines, on which the veteran British diplomat Sir Peter Marshall has recently commented that ‘I have never seen, nor heard tell of, a text as antipathetic to the principle of give and take which is generally assumed to be at the heart of negotiation among like-minded democracies’.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Emily Thornberry says Britain is heading for ‘no deal’

From our UK edition

Emily Thornberry - Britain is heading for 'no deal' The Shadow Foreign Secretary has warned that the United Kingdom is on the path to receive a 'no deal' outcome if the government continues to pursue Brexit negotiations in the manner it has been so far. Speaking to Andrew Marr, Thornberry was keen to stress the disadvantages that a no deal scenario would bring to the UK. However, Marr pressed Thornberry about her assertion that that there was 'deadlock' between the government and the EU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydd1qrWmkvM AM: You say there is deadlock, but directly Donald Tusk says 'After Prime Minister May's intervention my impression is that reports of deadlock between the EU and the UK have been exaggerated.

Rod Liddle

Private Eye has become a humour-free zone

From our UK edition

Anyone subscribe to Private Eye? I do, and have done for almost forty years. But I am beginning to wonder why. The cackle quotient declines on an almost weekly basis and this week I couldn’t find a single thing to laugh at. One can usually depend upon Craig Brown’s piece and 'From The Message Boards', which is almost always very cleverly written. But not this edition. There’s also Dumb Britain which often raises a laugh and Pseuds Corner. But the main body of the mag has been a humour-free zone for yonks. A few years back they increased the number of cartoons hugely, presumably in order to fill in for the otherwise utter absence of mirth. But the cartoons – unless the wonderful McLachlan has contributed – are pretty dire and sometimes inexplicable.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Cabinet urge Hammond to be bold on housing in the Budget

From our UK edition

With the next European Council not scheduled until December, political attention now turns to next month’s Budget. As I say in The Sun this morning, there are signs that the government is getting to the right place on housing. I understand that when Cabinet discussed the Budget this week, a frequent refrain from ministers was the need to be bold on housing. One ally of the Chancellor tells me, ‘Housing will be the big centrepiece of it’. I understand from government sources that the Budget is likely to back both land release and the government directly commissioning houses. This means the government would free up public sector land and then get housebuilders to build thousands of homes on it.

Martin Vander Weyer

No, we’re not half a trillion poorer, but foreign investment looks shaky

From our UK edition

How did we mislay half a trillion pounds? Revised data from the Office for National Statistics has just reduced the UK’s ‘net international investment position’ from a surplus of £469 billion to a deficit of £22 billion. Downing Street dismissed this as ‘a technical revision’ — and in truth it’s not as bad it sounds, since what it tells us is that we own fewer foreign assets, and foreigners own more British assets, than had previously been recorded. Does national pride not attach to the idea that the rest of the world sees us as an investment safe haven? So why worry? Well, past miscounting apart, actual current trends in this respect do not encourage optimism.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Ceci n’est pas une no deal, says Macron

From our UK edition

This post is from tonight's Evening Blend email, a free round-up and analysis of the day's politics. Sign up here. Is the government really changing its policy on planning for a no deal? That question isn’t simple to answer, not least because it’s not entirely clear what the government’s policy is on this matter: Philip Hammond has said the government won’t spend the necessary money until it needs to, while Theresa May says whatever money needs to be spent will be spent. But the pressure has been rising from Brexiteers for ministers to make real plans and produce real money to ensure that those plans are implemented.

Steerpike

George Osborne’s revenge on civil service bean counters

From our UK edition

Since George Osborne moved to the Evening Standard, the one-time austere chancellor has rebranded himself as a centrist darling – and a critic of Theresa May's government. So, at last night's Standard Progress 1000 awards at the Tate Modern, Osborne took great delight in telling the esteemed crowd – which included Diane Abbott, Matt Hancock and Grayson Perry – of how he had stood up to government bean counters when he first arrived in the Treasury: 'In the first week of my former job, I was advised by the Treasury civil service to cancel immediately three projects because we had to save money and it was easier to save money from things we hadn't built yet than things that had already been built.