Uk politics

Mrs May’s plain style may well come to irritate people in a few months, but just now it is extremely popular. The lack of glamour, soundbites, smart clothes, and ministerial overclaiming is a blessed relief. I can’t pretend that I find Mrs May an endearing figure, but when she said in her speech that Britain should not go round saying ‘We are punching above our weight’ (a phrase beloved of the Foreign Office), I almost wanted to hug her. There isn’t even much party knockabout. In the old days, any speech which made some pathetic jibe against ‘the brothers last week in Blackpool’ could be guaranteed laughter and applause.

Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet reshuffle is all about strengthening, and demonstrating, his control over the party. Jonathan Ashworth, a Corbyn-sceptic, has lost his place on the party’s National Executive Committee and is replaced by Corbyn backer Kate Osamor. The word in Westminster is that Ashworth was told he could take shadow Health and lose his seat on the NEC, or reject it and lose it anyway. Ashworth made the deal. In an email to Labour MPs, the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party John Cryer makes clear that the leader’s office started the reshuffle while talks on shadow Cabinet elections were still ongoing. Cryer complains that ‘the party leadership did not engage in the talks in any constructive way.

Scottish jobs for Scottish workers. We're going to stop foreigners from coming here and taking jobs Scottish people can do. We are going to make companies declare the nationality of their employees: those that do not employ a sufficiently high percentage of Scots will be 'named and shamed'. They have a duty to this country; a duty to our people. If companies wish to employ foreigners they will have to prove they need to and demonstrate that they have tried, but failed, to fill the position with a native-born Scot. We understand the pain felt by those Scots who have lost their jobs to English migrants. We feel your anger too.  As for those English people currently living in Scotland, let me remind you that you are here under sufferance.

According to Theresa May, interviewed by Tim Shipman in today's Sunday Times, Brexit will make the United Kingdom 'a sovereign and independent nation' once again. I know we are all supposed to be impressed by our new Prime Minister and much enthused by her Matron Gragrind approach to politics that is, again, such a refreshing change from the soft-furnished Call me Dave years but, really, can we pause for a moment to note that this is twaddle. Because if it were true - and if it were true that Mrs May believes this - then we are asked to believe that Britain was not, before its blessed liberation in June, a sovereign or independent nation. And if she really believed that, we might pause to ask why she did not campaign for Brexit?

Six years ago, Matthew Parris suggested in The Spectator that David Cameron’s first act of parliament should be the Blanket Repeal of Legislation (Failure of New Labour, 1997-2010) Bill. That would have been a repeal bill worthy of the name. Theresa May’s proposed 'Great Repeal Bill' is not. Brexit we know about: that decision was taken on 23 June. But beyond Brexit, the Bill won't repeal anything. On the contrary, it will 'convert existing EU law into domestic law' so it is about continuity, rather than annulment. It should really be called the Great EU Regulation Continuity Bill. Nothing wrong in that; it's necessary legislation. But why spin it as radical change?

Brexit, they say, has emboldened the hateful. It has given people permission to spout their prejudices, to pollute public life with their weird, rash dislike of anyone who is different to them. And it’s true, Brexit has done this. Only not in the way they think. The most visible hatred in the three months since the EU referendum has been of the Remain variety. It has been demosphobia, a borderline Victorian agitation with the pig-ignorant pleb who is madly trusted with making big political decisions about things like the EU. The hate that’s really been emboldened by Brexit is that old, historic disdain for ordinary people and their allegedly irrational antics. Since Brexit they’ve been coming out of the woodwork, these emboldened elitists. Consider Bob Geldof.

Jeremy Corbyn will shortly address the Labour conference with what is officially known as the ‘parliamentary report’. An accurate ‘parliamentary report’ would include an in-depth discussion about relations between the parliamentary party and its leader, who has gone from being one of the most rebellious backbenchers to demanding loyalty from his colleagues. Normally before a leader’s speech, pundits pick over what it is that the leader needs to cover. Normally, this involves variations of rousing the party faithful, announcing a policy or two that give us an idea of who the leader is and their vision for the coming year, and facing down any critics, whether in rival parties or their own.

Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech includes the normally unremarkable but currently remarkable assertion that he wants Labour to win the next election. Given the debate that has raged within the Labour party over the past few months about purity vs power, that the re-elected Labour leader is saying this at all is significant. He will say tomorrow that he expects a general election next year and that ‘we expect all our members to support that effort, and we will be ready whenever it comes’. Some Labour MPs will point out that this will require a dramatic shift from some members who haven’t yet delivered any party leaflets but are still threatening to de-select them.

Whether or not to serve on Labour’s frontbench is a question of the same order of asking whether the deck chairs on the Titanic should face north or south. But Labour MPs do have to work out what’s best to do while their ship is being captained by Jeremy Corbyn - and we’re starting to see signs of splits within the moderate camp on how best to do this. This evening, centrist MP Johnny Reynolds is reported to be returning to the Labour frontbench as City Minister, which may mean Labour actually holds meetings with people in the City as opposed to ignoring them. But it is also a completely different approach to that being mooted by a number of his like-minded colleagues.

Now that Jeremy Corbyn has won, the fight moves to the jungle of Labour Party rules, regulations and procedures. Whoever controls these controls the party. Last Tuesday, for example, an eight-hour session of the party’s governing National Executive Committee (NEC) concluded that Scotland and Wales should each have their own member on the NEC. This seemed a bizarre, almost trivial outcome: so much argument and such a paltry outcome? The answer is simple: if the Corbynistas want to proceed with a purge of the Labour Party they’ll need a majority on the 33-member NEC. At present, power is balanced - but if there were Scottish and Welsh members then the moderates would have the balance of power. The moderates managed to win this argument.

The Labour Party is in a sour mood at present, that much we already know. Usually, most of the sourness expressed by MPs is directed at their own party comrades. But this afternoon, at the Labour Women’s Conference, speaker after speaker decided to turn fire on Theresa May. Angela Rayner congratulated her on being the second female Prime Minister of this country, but said ‘I cannot celebrate her arrival’. Kezia Dugdale attacked both May and Nicola Sturgeon for not being real feminists, saying: ‘Look at Theresa May - she has the audacity to wear a ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ T-shirt.