Uk politics

Jean-Claude Juncker could have been invented by Nigel Farage’s spin doctors. He is sneering one-man advert for Brexit, Frexit and any other kind of EU-exit. As Hugo Rifkind argues in this week’s magazine, he is a caricature of the arrogant Eurocrat: “smug, lazy, unelected and utterly impervious to anything.” He is a notorious boozer, and managed ‘head of state’ by running Luxembourg, which a country with a population about the size of Sheffield. His ascension to President of the European Commission embodied everything that was wrong with the EU, a huge signal that it was time to abandon ship. When Michael Gove was once at a party and asked to make

Speaking in Downing Street this evening, Theresa May has urged people to go about their business normally tomorrow. In a statement that struck an appropriately defiant tone, May said that the targeting of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament ‘was no accident’. But that that any attempt to defeat the values of ‘democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law’ through ‘violence and terror is doomed to fail’. Talking of the police officer who died in the attack, and the others who have been injured, she praised the ‘exceptional bravery of our police and security services who risk their lives to keep us safe’. This is the first terrorist attack

If Nicola Sturgeon is not the only star in the nationalist firmament, she remains the only one that can be relied upon to shine brightly. The SNP’s conference in Aberdeen this weekend reminded us of that fact. Angus Robertson commands a measure of respect but not even he would claim to be loved by the party. Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t always been either; she is now. And there was a reason—or, rather, many reasons—why Alex Salmond as denied the chance to address delegates from the conference stage. Yesterday’s man is considered an unfortunate embarrassment these days. And Sturgeon’s speech began well. ‘Our job is not to talk to each other’ she

What on earth does George Osborne know about journalism? How can someone with no journalistic experience go straight in as editor – editor! – of the London Evening Standard? What were its proprietors thinking? To have dinner with an MP is one thing, but to hire him as an editor? And what does this sacked politician know of the demands facing an editor in the digital era? How can he combine such a demanding job with his duties in parliament and towards his constituents in Tatton? If I wasn’t an editor, these might be a few of my reactions to the extraordinary news today. But much as I hate to

‘Now is not the time’ is not an answer to anything, not least since no one has actually suggested a second referendum on Scottish independence take place ‘now’. In that respect, the Prime Minister’s line today answers precisely nothing and cannot be sustained inevitably. I should have thought this sufficiently obvious enough that even people in Downing Street could have discerned this. But evidently not. The SNP are past-masters when it comes to mining grievance. That being so, however, you wonder at a strategy that hands them a gold-plated grievance and does not even seek to charge them a fair price for it. Theresa May might as well have said:

For weeks, politicians on both houses of Parliament have been carrying on a drama where they pretend to get worked up about the Brexit bill while knowing that the Lords was always going to cave and the Bill was always going to be passed. The House of Lords, which last week voted to make Brexit conditional on final parliamentary approval, has tonight dropped its objection. As everyone in Westminster knew they would. It has been a long parliamentary charade, but there was still something wonderful  about it. The referendum was non-binding: parliament could have overturned the result. Just as it could have overturned the result of the 2014 Scottish referendum. In

Throughout David Cameron and George Osborne’s six-year double act, we seldom heard of serious arguments between them. Both were keen to avoid a repeat of the Blair-Brown psychodrama and prided themselves on their indivisibility. Same with their respective teams. You would never pick up the Sunday papers and read the sort of No. 10 vs No. 11 insults that we see this morning. The Sunday Telegraph splashes on ‘Cabinet war over Budget shambles’ and describes how even the Cabinet were not told that Philip Hammond was about to break their manifesto commitment not to raise National Insurance. Most of the Cabinet is hopping mad: one member last week told me that Hammond’s breaking