Uk politics

'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: 'Here, have this one for free'.

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.

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 a promise was bad enough but to do it for such a paltry sum was madness.

The Tory rebellion over the tax hike on the self-employed isn’t abating, it is intensifying as I say in The Sun this morning. As one Cabinet Minister tells me, Tory MPs ‘left the Budget feeling a little bit concerned. They’ve seen the papers, and thought this isn’t good. After the emails and constituency stuff, there’ll be even more nervous’. One Tory backbencher, who is a good judge of the mood of the parliamentary party, says ‘People are not happy at all. Somethings’ got to change’. But Philip Hammond is digging in. He is ‘absolutely determined not to retreat on this’ according to one Cabinet ally of his. He has, I’m told, been ‘surprised by the extent of the backlash’.

In an interview with the BBC last night, Nicola Sturgeon suggested that the autumn of next year would be a ‘common sense’ time to hold another referendum on Scottish independence. Which would, of course, mean voting without knowing what the terms of the Brexit would be. (Or, perhaps, whether it will really happen.) Why the haste? This is another topic that came up on Question Time last night. I suggested that Sturgeon’s sense of urgency might be explained by opinion polls showing her ‘tanking’ approval rating. The 2021 Holyrood election will probably end the majority for independence, given that the SNP will have been in power for 14 years by then and Scots will already be ‘scunnered’ with them (as Ms Sturgeon might put it).

It's fair to say that Philip Hammond hasn't charmed Fleet Street with his Spring Budget.  There is little sympathy even from newspapers inclined to agree with a Conservative assessment of how to run the economy. Broken promises are potent in politics - just ask the Liberal Democrats. The Tories made their tax lock pledge in the 2015 election as they were hoovering up seats from the Lib Dems who were being punished for failing to keep a pledge on tuition fees they had made at the previous election. Westminster had almost forgotten the tuition fee row. Voters hadn't.

Ahead of his budget announcement this week, Philip Hammond has told Andrew Marr that the UK may continue to face EU contributions after Brexit, though he dismissed claims of a £60bn divorce fee as 'a piece of negotiating strategy'. The Chancellor looked relaxed as he shrugged off the potential failure of a trade deal with the EU, stating simply that 'we will forge new trade deals around the world'. In a typically uncharismatic performance, Hammond also poured cold water on the Resolution Foundation's findings that the so-called 'just about managing' are going to be severely squeezed over the next three years. 'I don't recognise these numbers,' he said, 'various bodies publish various numbers, which exclude certain things.

Theresa May might have won every Brexit vote in the House of Commons so far, but it’s getting trickier now. The House of Lords this week rejected the plan to trigger Article 50 without offering assurances to EU nationals, knowing that most MPs are sympathetic. I understand that the Tory whips are working hard to whittle down threatened rebellion at the 'ping-pong' stage. Given that everyone in Vote Leave pledged to protect EU nationals – as did four out of the five original Tory leadership contenders – it’s harder work. Quite a few rebels feel they need to make a point about the status of EU citizens. The whips will probably succeed, and it seems (this time) that the Lords will not send it back to the Commons again.