Uk politics

Thursday

Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Brexit Wars

On this week’s Spectator Podcast we look at the final Brexit war amongst the Conservatives. We also discuss the maverick politician taking Ukraine by storm, and get on the blower with Blowers. First up, with a 4,000 word intervention by Boris Johnson doing the rounds this week, ahead of Theresa May’s pivotal Brexit speech in Florence, the Conservatives look more divided than ever on the European question. Will it be EEA minus or CETA plus? Or are we headed for an even more mongrel departure? These are the questions James Forsyth asks in this week’s cover piece, and he joins the podcast along with Henry Newman, director of Open Europe. As James writes: “The time for

Steerpike

Is Sarah Champion regretting nominating Jeremy Corbyn?

Sarah Champion could hardly be blamed for bearing a grudge against Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour MP was among those who nominated Corbyn in his original bid to become Labour leader. Yet it’s likely that she regretted that decision when she was forced out of the shadow cabinet for her comments on Pakistani grooming gangs. Now, it seems, support for Champion’s decision to nominate Corbyn is being quietly deleted from Twitter. A message retweeted by Sarah Champion during Corbyn’s 2015 leadership bid was taken down this morning. Here’s what it said: @SarahChampionMP top move nominating @Corbyn4Leader … you’ve done democracy a service, much love Is Sarah Champion regretting nominating Jeremy Corbyn?

Liam Halligan

This is what Theresa May should say in her Florence speech

Tomorrow in Florence, Theresa May needs to make the speech of her life. Britain has a strong hand to play in these EU talks and it’s time the Prime Minister showed it. May must assert once again that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’, shoring up the UK’s bargaining position. She should also insist Britain won’t confirm any ‘divorce bill’ until these Article 50 talks end in March 2019, with the final amount dependent on the goodwill the EU has shown. Above all, taking her cue from Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister needs to present an inspiring vision of the UK outside the EU. The heyday

Steerpike

Caption contest: Cabinet unity

A week is a long time in politics. After Boris Johnson kicked off his working week with a 4,000 word Brexit essay for the Telegraph, the Foreign Secretary has been dogged by resignation rumours. Now, however, the Cabinet is all smiles. Although Johnson and Philip Hammond are reported to be on a collision course over their vision for Brexit, the pair were put on a friendly display as they exited today’s Cabinet meeting, ahead of Theresa May’s big Florence speech. Captions in the comments.

Matthew Lynn

Forget hard or soft. What we need is a quick Brexit

Should the exit bill be €20bn or €40bn? Should the trade deal be the ‘Swiss-plus’ or ‘Canada-lite’? Should our negotiating strategy be the full cliff-edge, or should we opt for the reverse gear? If we had a couple of micro-chip factories for every different version of Brexit on offer, we’d probably be worrying about it a lot less. But in fact there is something far more important than whether we end up with a hard or soft Brexit – and that is a quick Brexit. Ask anyone in business – and the debate about how to leave the EU is mostly about preserving the economy – and they will tell you

Stephen Daisley

Scotland’s artist-activists are the country’s truly sinister nationalists

The SNP’s Fiona Hyslop is not an obvious candidate to lead a cultural revolution. The Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs is more Nicola Murray than Nicola Sturgeon. Hyslop has a permanent look of terror that someone might ask her a question but she’s harmless enough. Stick a few flags and a bowl of borscht in her office and tell her she’s at the UN and she’d be happy enough. Yes, she’s a bit clueless, pretty forgettable and has achieved almost nothing in eight years but it could be worse; she could be Mike Russell.  That’s why I’m not terribly worried about the latest tussle between

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: May must mean what she says on a Brexit no deal

Ahead of tomorrow’s Brexit speech in Florence, the Sun has some advice for the Prime Minister: show that you’re prepared to walk away. The paper says it is vital that the Cabinet pulls together around the PM’s Brexit. But it also asks: what happens if Angela Merkel doesn’t buy her plan? Of course, it would be good for Britain if the German Chancellor ‘realised the damage a ‘punishment’ Brexit will do to German car giants and saw reason’. But there’s no guarantee of that. So May must ’get serious about walking away’ – ‘It cannot be a bluff’, the Sun says. Former chancellor Lord Lawson is right to say ‘we

Steerpike

Breaking: A mayor speaks at party conference

Although this year’s Labour conference is to take on a distinctly anti-mayoral vibe – with both London mayor Sadiq Khan and Manchester mayor Andy Burnham refused speaking slots – it seems there are still some safe spaces out there for regional mayors. At next month’s Conservative party conference in Manchester, West Midlands Mayor Andy Street will take on a starring role. Street – who provided one of the Conservatives’ surprise wins in the local elections – will get to deliver a conference speech, the Birmingham Mail reports. With Labour’s mayors unhappy about their treatment by the party, perhaps they can ask Corbyn to take inspiration from the Tories?

Wednesday

Charles Moore

The political nature of statistics

Sir David Norgrove, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), is an honourable man. When he publicly rebuked Boris Johnson for his use of the famous £350 million figure about our weekly EU contribution, I am sure he was statistically, not party-politically motivated. But two points occur. The first is that Sir David was, arguably, mistaken. He thinks Boris said that, after Brexit, Britain would have £350 million a week more to spend. He didn’t. He said ‘we will take back control of roughly £350 million a week’. This is correct. So long as we are in the EU, that £350 million a week is out of our control,

Katy Balls

Theresa May’s singing birds can only hold the same tune for so long

After concerns about the Foreign Secretary’s job security bumped Vince Cable’s keynote leader’s speech at Lib Dem conference off the news agenda yesterday, a sense of stability has been restored to Cabinet. Boris Johnson has told hacks in New York that he is not going anywhere – likening Cabinet harmony to ‘a nest of singing birds’. The message from Downing Street, too, is one of quiet confidence that Johnson won’t be departing the frontbench – at least, not this weekend. This suggests two things. Firstly, that May’s Florence speech won’t be as drastic as had first been thought. Secondly, Johnson is coming round to the idea of payments to Brussels continuing during a transition period.

Steerpike

MPs gear up for Tory Glastonbury

The Conservatives have had a difficult few days. After Boris Johnson published his 4,000 word Brexit blueprint in the Telegraph, the Cabinet is feuding, Theresa May’s authority is under strain and backbenchers have taken to the airwaves to call for the Foreign Secretary to be sacked. But fear not, help is on its way. Tomorrow Tory MPs are upping sticks and heading onto the M4 to make their way to Tory Glastonbury. Officially called the ‘Festival of Ideas’, Conservatives are expected to do some soul-searching – on everything from helping the young to boosting productivity – at the one-day event organised by George Freeman. Although Freeman says he was inspired

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Tory Brexit infighting could hand Corbyn victory

Boris Johnson’s Brexit intervention ‘is a dismal reflection on Theresa May’s position’, says the Times. But worse than that, this Cabinet ‘disunity is corroding the Conservative brand’ – and making a Corbyn victory at the next election ever more likely. ‘In normal times,’ says the Times, ‘the case for dismissal would be unanswerable’. But while the Foreign Secretary’s popularity has ‘plummeted’ of late, he still retains ‘a talent for generating headlines when he is in the mood for trouble’. Mrs May has learnt a lesson from her brutal treatment of George Osborne, and seems determined not to repeat her mistake on that front. Yet while Boris has survived in his

Tuesday

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

When Boris gets it wrong, don’t make excuses for him

When Boris Johnson received a sharply worded rebuke for his ‘clear misuse of official statistics’ from Sir David Norgrove, the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, The Spectator rushed to his aid. Steerpike asked why the statistics chief had intervened when ‘every word from Boris (this time) was accurate’.  The short answer is that Norgrove intervened because Boris was wrong to say that ‘once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly £350 million per week’. Here’s why. The Boris explanation – or, at any rate, Steerpike’s – is as follows: ‘We all know the deal with the EU: we pay in, then there’s the rebate

The Spectator

Vince Cable’s conference speech, full text

It is with a real sense of pride that I stand before you as leader of the Liberal Democrats. First of all, I’d like to put on record my thanks to my predecessor, Tim Farron. He hands over a Party, which is larger, stronger and more diverse than the one he inherited. He stood up for refugees whose plight the government had shamefully ignored. He established our very clear identity as the only real, undiluted pro-European party. We are all hugely indebted to him. It’s good, today, to be amongst friends. So please forgive me if I start by addressing people who are not yet our friends, but whom we might persuade.   People who say they

Brendan O’Neill

The great Brexit bus delusion

I know many Leave voters. Most of my family. Around half of my friends. Lots of the people in the immigrant community in London I grew up in. (We’re bad immigrants, being anti-EU, so we never feature in the migrant-sympathetic commentary of EU-pining hacks.) And not one of them has ever said they chose Brexit because of that £350m-for-the-NHS thing on the side of a bus. The idea that that bus swung the referendum, that it duped the voting hordes, has become one of the great, and nasty, myths of the Brexit era. The bloody bus is back in the news this week after Boris Johnson said he’d like to

Steerpike

George Osborne defrosts humble pie

Oh dear. It was a case of bad timing for George Osborne last week when the day after the paper he edits offered Theresa May an olive branch, a profile appeared in Esquire magazine claiming the former Chancellor had told hacks he would not rest until the Prime Minister was chopped up in bits in his freezer. Since then Osborne has been widely condemned by both Tory MPs and women’s action groups against violence. So, it was only a matter of time until an apology came. This apology appears to be lurking in a leader in today’s Evening Standard. Osborne appears to have had to eat humble pie – with the

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn gives Piers Morgan the cold shoulder

Although Jeremy Corbyn has seen a huge rise in popularity since the snap election, the Labour leader hasn’t forgotten those who were with him from the beginning. At next week’s party conference, Corbyn loyalists will be rewarded with a platform to speak on – while those who questioned his abilities will do without. It seems the same approach is in practise when it comes to public figures. At this month’s GQ awards, Piers Morgan attempted to join in a conversation Corbyn was having Arsenal’s Spanish right back, Hector Bellerin. Alas, the Labour leader didn’t share the sentiment and took swift action to prevent Morgan from joining the chat: ‘Later, fellow Arsenal

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Boris is speaking for the majority of Brits

Boris Johnson has come in for plenty of criticism since setting out his Brexit blueprint in a 4,000 word article in the Daily Telegraph. But the Sun says the Foreign Secretary has done the PM a favour in speaking up for ‘the 52 per cent who voted Leave and the many more won over since’. ‘Theresa May must listen’ up, the paper says – and she should also ‘ignore the siren calls from Cabinet Remainers’ who want to reverse the referendum result. The attacks levelled at Boris are ‘designed solely to discredit him and trash the optimistic vision’ of Brexit he has set out. Instead of getting angry at Boris, the

Monday

Douglas Murray

Are refugees welcome to plant bombs on our trains?

It’s all a long time ago now isn’t it?  All of three days since someone put a bomb on a London Underground train and then stepped out of the carriage.  Thankfully the detonator went off without managing to trigger the main bomb, which isn’t a mistake we can hope for every time.  30 people were injured on the District Line on Friday morning.  But if the bomb had done what it was meant to do then those 30 people wouldn’t have been treated for relatively light injuries.  Instead, bits of their remains would have been gathered together in some order and put into the dozens of body bags ordered for them and others at Parsons

Ross Clark

Ryanair’s chaos prediction is coming true – but Brexit isn’t to blame

So, the worst has happened, just as Ryanair said it would. The budget airline has had to cancel thousands of flights – around 50 of them, every day, for the next six weeks. It follows an ominous warning that was made by chief executive Michael O’ Leary last month: “What is increasingly likely to happen is that there will be no flights. Mrs May and the Brexiteers will be trying to explain that to you in 12 months’ time, why getting a car to Scotland or a ferry to Ireland are the only options on offer.” Except, that is, while last month’s warning concerned Brexit, this week’s cancellations concerned a cock-up