Uk politics

Monday

Katy Balls

Why isn’t Theresa May’s conference catastrophe showing in the polls?

From our UK edition

After a lacklustre conference and a disastrous speech, Theresa May's position within her party has never looked more fragile. But she can take heart that her relationship with the public is a different story entirely. In a sign that conference is only a headline event for politicos, it appears May's shaky performance in Manchester has meant diddly squat. An ICM poll claims the Tories have actually gained a point from the whole debacle. Even if you combine the three different polls done since the conference – they show a swing between the main parties of... zero. https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/917406487936491525 The findings will come as a blow to Parliamentary plotters such as Grant Shapps, who had hoped to use recent events to push May out.

Isabel Hardman

How powerful can the Tory Universal Credit rebellion really be?

From our UK edition

One of the brewing Tory rows of the autumn looks to be over Universal Credit, with Heidi Allen now claiming she has 25 Conservatives prepared to rebel on the matter. They are worried about a number of aspects of the fiendishly complicated reform which is supposed to make the benefit system less, er, fiendishly complicated. Chief among their worries is the six weeks that claimants have to wait for their benefits, which is a long period in itself, but almost a quarter of claimants have had to wait even longer than that to receive their money, leaving many of them unable to buy food.

James Forsyth

Theresa May should appoint a Secretary of State for No Deal

From our UK edition

The Brexit talks collapsing would be a bad thing. It shouldn’t be the aim of the UK government, but it should be something that the government is prepared for. After all, there is a non-negligible chance of this happening. Compounding this is that the United Kingdom can’t credibly threaten to walk away from the table unless it is actually ready to do so. Without the ability to walk away, Theresa May will be left having to accept whatever the EU offers. It’s evident that Britain is not currently prepared for a no deal scenario. There needs to be a massive push if the UK is to get itself anywhere near ready.

Nick Cohen

Does the rule of law cover the poor?

From our UK edition

Belatedly, the disastrous rollout of Universal Credit has become a media 'talking point'.  I could do with less praise for Iain Duncan Smith in the debate. He is the man the Tories decided was unfit to lead them, but still fit to manage and, as we are seeing, wreck the lives of the poorest people in the country. He deserves no special indulgence. 'His intentions were good,' everyone feels obliged to say. As if motives mattered more than deeds, and what politicians hoped for matters more than what they achieved. Duncan Smith’s achievement was to preside over disastrous and expensive experiments with IT systems that did not work, and then establish pilot projects for the new catch-all benefit, which was meant to end the complexity of the welfare state.

Ross Clark

The Bombardier dispute could actually bring down May’s government

From our UK edition

When governments fall it often comes from an unexpected quarter. Thirty eight years ago, James Callaghan’s government fell not as a direct result of the Winter of Discontent but from the fallout over a failed referendum on Scottish devolution. Over the past week we have heard plenty of speculation about Theresa May losing her job thanks to her cough at Manchester or through Brexit-induced civil war in her cabinet. But could we be missing something more obscure but at the same time more ominous? The more I think about it, the gravest danger to the government comes not from its handling of Brexit, universal credit, inflation or any of the other stories which have dominated the news agenda in the past month.

Steerpike

Culture Secretary investigated for not having a TV licence

From our UK edition

Oh dear. As Culture Secretary, Karen Bradley is expected to foster and maintain good relations with both the media and broadcast industries.  So, Mr S was alarmed to hear that Bradley recently found herself on the wrong side of the TV licensing company. Writing on the infamous Tory MP WhatsApp group, Bradley complained to her fellow MPs she was being hounded by TV Licensing for not having a TV license for her constituency office. The MP for Staffordshire Moorlands asked if she was the only one having this bother – only to be greeted by silence.  A DCMS spokesman says Bradley has since explained to TV Licensing that she doesn't have a television in the office.

Sunday

Katy Balls

Cabinet reshuffle: who can Theresa May sack?

From our UK edition

Good news in Downing Street: Theresa May has survived the weekend. After the Shapps plot failed to take off, the new consensus is that the beleaguered Prime Minister should re-assert her authority on an increasingly unruly Tory party by reshuffling her Cabinet. Had the speech gone better, there was talk that she could have done this last week. The Sunday Times reports that a shuffle is now likely to occur after the European Council meeting in two weeks' time. If May does oblige, there are calls from within the party for her to use a reshuffle to promote younger talent – and to sack the Foreign Secretary. The latter still looks unlikely.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Scottish independence scotched (again)

From our UK edition

Sturgeon - It is 'premature' to set a date for second independence referendum The SNP are rounding off this year's party conference season in Glasgow, and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is eager to keep the dream of independence alive. Recent weeks have seen votes in Catalonia and Iraqi Kurdistan, but the chances are that any 'indyref2' in Scotland will take place later rather than sooner. ITV's Robert Peston asked Sturgeon about whether she had made a mistake in pushing for a second referendum so soon after the first: https://youtu.be/pGDnv3GiADs RP: There are some in your party who do believe that one of the reasons you did rather badly or worse than many people expected in the last general election is that you pushed too hard for an early vote.

George Trefgarne

The rules of the Tory leadership contest make it a wild card to play

From our UK edition

The moment Philip May helped his wife from the stage after her conference speech, it became clear that it is only a matter of when, not if, her leadership of the Conservative Party and occupancy of No.10 comes to an end. What happens next? Who knows, but if you understand the rules, it is just possible a sequence of events has started which will ultimately lead to hundreds of thousands of people participating in a three month election process for a new leader. It might even result in a surprising outcome. In other words, a relatively unknown newer MP, such as Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden); or Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden); or Rishi Sunak (Richmond, Yorks), being chosen. In the short term, such a contest would mean more uncertainty. It would definitely be a risk.

Toby Young

What is Boris Johnson up to?

From our UK edition

I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference where I can report that Boris Johnson, who has just wowed the blue rinses with a barn-storming speech, isn’t preparing a leadership bid. At least, that’s the line from all those closest to him. Without exception, they say if he was planning something they’d know about it and they don’t. It’s a media concoction. He’s a man without a plan. I know, I know. That’s exactly what Boris’s team would say if they had just press-ganged the last of 48 MPs to sign a letter to the chairman of the 1922 Committee, which is the magic number needed to trigger a leadership election in this Parliament. And there are plenty of reasons to be sceptical.

James Delingpole

If only the Tories understood how free market economics works

From our UK edition

‘I don’t think I’m quite as Austrian as you are,’ a Tory minister said to me the other day. And I knew then that the party is doomed. It wasn’t what he said so much as the way that he said it: in the fond, amused, each-to-his-own tone you might use to dismiss a friend’s enthusiasm for Morris dancing or Napoleonic re-enactment or dogging… But personally, I think free market economics (of the Austrian or any other classical liberal school) is far too important to be left to wonks, think-tankers and out-there right-wing commentators. So did Margaret Thatcher. ‘Hayek’s powerful Road to Serfdom left a permanent mark on my own political character, making me a long-term optimist for free enterprise and liberty,’ she said.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The three things Theresa May must do

From our UK edition

Even loyal Cabinet Minister admit that the Tories can’t go on like this for another 18 months. As I say in The Sun this morning, Theresa May needs to show that the situation is going to improve. I think there are three things that May needs to do. First, she needs to show that she is enjoying the job. Tory MPs are, genuinely, beginning to worry that May’s sense of duty is such that she’ll stay on even if she is being crushed by the burdens of office. Now, those who work for the Prime Minister in Number 10 are adamant that she is relishing the job and wants to stay. But she needs to demonstrate that publicly. Second, May needs a more radical domestic agenda. Even if her speech hadn’t been hit by those three disasters, it would have been inadequate to the moment.

Friday

Richard Ekins & Graham Gee

Will the UK’s new senior judge change the Supreme Court?

From our UK edition

The Supreme Court is changing.  Three new Justices are taking office, including Lady Black, who is only the second woman to serve on the UK’s highest court.  The first, Lady Hale, was this week officially sworn in as President of the Supreme Court, making her the UK’s most senior judge.   Lady Hale was appointed a member of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords – then the UK’s top court – in January 2004, which became the Supreme Court in October 2009.  She is by any measure not only an extremely experienced judge, but also a legal trailblazer.  What will her appointment as President mean for the law? One should not overstate the importance of her new office.

Isabel Hardman & Katy Balls

Has the Shapps plot changed anything for Theresa May?

From our UK edition

The Tory party is in a furious mood following Theresa May’s conference speech. MPs are swearing, ranting, and muttering dire threats about the object of their anger. Helpfully for the Prime Minister, though, the bulk of the anger has little to do with her and everything to do with the two men MPs suspect are trying to destabilise her: Grant Shapps and Boris Johnson. After extensive conversations with MPs from across the intakes, senior backbenchers and Cabinet Ministers, the Spectator understands that these two men will find it far more difficult to walk back into Parliament when it returns on Monday than the Prime Minister will.

Isabel Hardman

Andrew Mitchell to speak at plotter Grant Shapps’ dinner tonight

From our UK edition

Grant Shapps isn’t the most popular man in the Tory party at the moment, but at least he has a friend to keep him company this evening. By sheer coincidence, Andrew Mitchell has long been booked to speak at the Welwyn Hatfield MP’s Conservative Association annual dinner tonight. But Mitchell is very keen not to appear to be a fellow plotter, having given a speech at the Cambridge Union last night in which he praised the Prime Minister’s ‘courage of high order’ for completing ‘what was an important and interesting speech in impossible circumstances, and I think all of us in politics should recognise that’.

Philip Collins

Theresa May’s speech was a dud because Tories can’t do rhetoric

From our UK edition

There are many ways to make a conference speech memorable and Theresa May managed most of them. A prankster with a P45, a constant cough and a set that fell to bits as she spoke, the speech was a riot of metaphors in waiting. It may yet be pointed to as a decisive moment in her premiership but it was certainly notable. The only forgettable aspect was the content. When Mrs May tries to inject passion into her voice it is not just the frog that catches in her throat. It is her conservatism. Conservative politician can ascend to the rhetorical heights at time of peril. Winston Churchill, was, as David Cannadine once wrote, both a master and a slave of the English language. In his early years, Churchill had an unenviable reputation for lavish verbosity.

Charles Moore

Is Jeremy Corbyn following the Ian Paisley playbook?

From our UK edition

By the simple expedients of being cheerful and attacking Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson scored a deserved hit at the Tory conference on Tuesday. It is right not to be shy about questioning Mr Corbyn’s record. But while it is true that Mr Corbyn has never wavered, over 40 years, in his extreme socialist views, it is also worth noting that he has recently changed his tone a lot. It reminds me of how Ian Paisley, without ever recanting his anti-Popery, dropped his noisy and lurid 1970s expressions of it, and adopted a more modern political voice. In his speech in Brighton last week, Mr Corbyn almost completely left out one of his deepest convictions — the need for a return of trade union power.

Steerpike

Listen: Baroness Warsi tells Grant Shapps to shut up

From our UK edition

Grant Shapps' attempt to topple Theresa May is not going quite to plan. Tory MPs are busy tweeting their support for the Prime Minister. While others are turning their fire on Shapps himself. Nadine Dorries said the plot was ‘pathetic’ - and Baroness Warsi was even more outspoken on the subject of Shapps' bungled bid to oust the PM. On the World at One this afternoon, she was asked for her message to the former Tory party chairman: 'My message to Grant Shapps is really shut up.' But Warsi did, however, admit that some good had come from Shapps' intervention: 'If there's one thing that Grant has done, if there's one positive that's come out of all of this, it's that he has united a party and large sections of the public behind Theresa May.

James Kirkup

Does the Tory party really want to decapitate itself?

From our UK edition

It's taken me a while, but I think I've got my head around this now. Grant Shapps is proposing that the Conservative Party should hold a protracted contest to select a new chief, and thus render itself and the Government of Britain leaderless for several weeks, at a time when the UK economy and public finances are worsening and Brexit talks are going horribly.  And he's doing this because he says the Conservatives need to demonstrate leadership. When you think of it that way, you start to understand the (really rather unkind) things Tory MPs are saying about Mr Shapps today. Not that anyone is saying he's wrong about Theresa May. She's in a dreadful state, the PM. But the brutal truth is that for the Conservatives today, there are no good choices, just degrees of badness.