Uk politics

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Newsnight deserves an award for its superb follow-up to the Spectator’s scoop

It’s great to see Newsnight once again nominated for an award for its coverage of the Kids Company scandal, and I hope that it wins this time. When Miles Goslett broke the story in The Spectator in February last year, he had all of the details: the full horror of Camila Batmanghelidjh and her bizarre modus operandi, her dodgy finances and – crucially – how No10 overrode concerns from civil servants who had wanted to pull the plug on the venture. The story was there, on a plate: Miles Goslett had written the scoop of the year. He and Mary Wakefield, our commissioning editor, made sure it was bombproof - she sent her lawyers after us, but even they could find no specific complaint. But still, no one managed to follow up Miles's scoop.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Emergency brake breakthrough, claims Downing Street

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/whysexmatters-thedeathofsportandistheeusinkingwhetherbrexithappensornot-/media.mp3" title="Isabel Hardman, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson discuss whether the European project is in grave danger – regardless of Brexit happening or not" startat=1420] Listen [/audioplayer] Donald Tusk will not circulate the proposed draft UK/EU deal tomorrow. It had been thought that Tusk would put out a draft on Monday after final talks over supper with Cameron this evening. Instead, there will be further meetings between UK and EU diplomats, before Tusk decides whether or not to circulate a draft text to the other member states on Tuesday.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron seeks to beef up ’emergency brake’ as eurosceptics fight each other

David Cameron and Donald Tusk have been discussing Britain’s beef with the European Union over a dinner of beef this evening. The European Council president has just left, telling reporters there was 'no deal'. Top of the Prime Minister’s menu was the issue of benefits that has been so chewy for him during his renegotiation. Cameron now appears to be seeking to beef up (sorry) the emergency brake offer that his eurosceptic critics described only on Friday as a ‘sick joke’, arguing that it must come into force straight after the referendum result, that the present levels of EU migration to the UK could be sufficient to trigger it, and that it can stay in place ‘long enough to resolve the underlying problem’.

Alex Massie

Barack Obama doesn’t talk about Britain? That’s a good thing.

As was often the case, Oscar Wilde was clever and witty but mistaken. There are worse things than being talked about but not being talked about is one of them. For evidence of this we need do little more than consult this graphic compiled by our friends at Politico. Derived from an analysis of more than 2,000 speeches made since he became President, it shows how often various countries have been mentioned by Barack Obama. You will notice that the United Kingdom does not feature. This is a very good thing indeed. Of course, it has not been treated as such by some. See this, eh? So much for the so-called 'Special Relationship', eh? Hahahahaha. This snark is bipartisan.

Toby Young

David Cameron is plain wrong about Oxford and race. Here’s why

I applaud the Prime Minister for pointing out the scandalous lack of black students at Britain’s top universities, but he’s wrong about whose fault it is – at least when it comes to Oxford, his alma mater. Yes, it’s true that Oxford only admitted five black British Caribbean applicants in 2013, a disgracefully low number, as David Cameron points out, but there’s no evidence to suggest that the cause is 'ingrained, institutional and insidious' attitudes, i.e. racism, on the part of Oxford’s admission authorities. How do I know this?

Saturday

James Forsyth

Downing Street expects draft EU deal to disappoint

We are only days away from seeing Donald Tusk’s proposed text for the UK/EU deal. The President of the European Council is expected to circulate a draft early next week following his Sunday night supper with David Cameron. But, as I write in The Sun this morning, Downing Street is keen to stress that the publication of this draft doesn’t mean that the renegotiation is over. They are adamant that Cameron will have a chance to toughen up the terms at the European Council on February the 18th. Cameron’s problem is that he would like a deal at the February Council, so that he can have a referendum in June. But the more EU leaders think he wants a quick deal, the less they will be inclined to give him.

Friday

Fraser Nelson

With an 18-point lead in the latest poll, momentum is with the EU ‘in’ campaign. 

Why is David Cameron having such trouble persuading Jean-Claude Juncker to give in to his minimal demands for EU reform? The Prime Minister pledged, in a Tory manifesto, to restrict welfare for migrants for the first four years they're in Britain: not as an ‘emergency’, but as a matter of routine. He was returned with a majority, and under British democracy this means it ought to happen. If the Lords were to try to frustrate this, the PM would overrule them because it was a manifesto pledge, voted on by the public. Why accept a veto from the EU? But the polls show a clear lead for 'in' - a ComRes poll for the Daily Mail tomorrow shows in leading by 18 points (54pc to 36pc) with just 10pc as 'don't knows'.

Isabel Hardman

England named worst in developed world for literacy. So yes, school reform is needed.

Today’s OECD study of basic skills ranks England lowest in the developed world for literacy, and second lowest for numeracy. We knew that our schools might struggle to compete with the likes of Singapore and South Korea, but this puts the problem in a whole new perspective. It's the delayed results of a study taken four years ago where 5,000 in each country were sampled so, to some extent, it's a hangover from the days when a far greater share of children left school without five decent passes. But the report also found that England has three times more low-skilled people among those aged 16-19 than the best-performing countries like Finland, Japan, Korea and the Netherlands. One in ten of all English university graduates have low literacy and numeracy skills.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

MPs plan to water down controversial ‘Saatchi Bill’ on medical treatments

The latest incarnation of the Saatchi Bill - a piece of legislation properly known as the Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill - has its report stage in the Commons tomorrow. I’ve written before about the problems with this Bill, which is now being taken through Parliament by Tory MP Chris Heaton-Harris, and it now seems that a cross-party group of MPs will tomorrow succeed in making a well-meaning bill less dangerous. A series of amendments from Labour, Tory, SNP, SDLP and DUP members will remove the sections of the Bill that are aimed at preventing a doctor from being sued for negligence if they decide to use an ‘innovative’ treatment for an illness, which is what had worried clinicians so much.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Eurosceptics to push Cameron on EU renegotiation in Commons debate

It’s fair to say that David Cameron’s answer to John Baron at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, in which the Tory leader basically confirmed to his backbench colleague that he was ignoring him, hasn’t exactly helped relations with the eurosceptics in the Tory party. The row was splashed across the front page of the Sunday Telegraph this weekend, and I now understand that Baron has secured a Commons debate that will take up the issue he has been trying to raise with the Prime Minister.

Isabel Hardman

Google tax row is convenient for Labour

In the Google tax story, which continues to run in the papers today, Labour has found a theme that it can exploit in the Commons and in speeches over the next few weeks. Given so many Tories were prepared to criticise the 'derisory' amount the tech giant has agreed to pay back when the Commons discussed the matter on Monday, Jeremy Corbyn will feel he is on reasonably safe ground raising the issue at PMQs today.  Tax is always a handy issue, not just because it allows oppositions to promise to spend more using only the fruit of the magic money tree of cracking down on tax avoidance, but also because it taps into that feeling of one rule for the big guys and another for the ordinary voter, which is why MPs across the house were annoyed earlier this week.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Top Tories form social justice caucus to plot ‘all-out assault on poverty’

David Cameron has decided that social justice will be his key legacy theme as Prime Minister, with his autumn conference speech and most of the announcements so far this year focusing on an ‘all-out assault on poverty’. At times, this has appeared a little vague, while other announcements, like the plan for Muslim women to learn English, have been a little confused. But Cameron has clearly decided that the Conservatives must tackle injustices in society, not just because it is right for the country, but also because it is right for the party, which is still seen by too many voters as for the rich.

Monday

Alex Massie

Memo to Outers: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Honesty and consistency; two qualities everyone agrees to value but that are easily jettisoned as soon as maintaining them proves too inconvenient. It turns out they're not so valuable as all that. So it is with all things Euro-referendum-related. If we are to believe the rival tribunes competing for your affections later this year, negotiating the terms of a British exit from the European Union will either be a doddle or a disaster, with little room for hope in between those twin imposters. Well, perhaps. Sometimes, however, it helps to imagine an alternative but comparable scenario in which, as it happens, you may be less invested. Doing so might make some things clear. Conveniently, we have just such an alternative but comparable example close to hand.

Isabel Hardman

MPs hammer Treasury ministers on ‘completely unacceptable’ sweetheart deal for Google

Even though, as Fraser argued last week, Google has done nothing wrong in agreeing to pay £130 million to settle its UK tax claims, MPs were in a furious mood about the agreement when they discussed it in the Commons this afternoon. John McDonnell asked an urgent question on the deal, and found, unusually, that he had support from across the House. It wasn’t just Labour MPs who stood up to condemn what they saw as one standard for their constituents, who are hounded by the taxman over relatively small claims, and another for big powerful multinationals like Google. Tory MPs joined in, too, with Steve Baker telling David Gauke that the deal was ‘at once derisory, substantial, lawful and completely unacceptable to the public’.

Isabel Hardman

Ministers tease Labour frontbenchers about party’s predicament

Ministers appear largely to have given up on taking scrutiny from the Labour party seriously, if today’s Education Questions was anything to go by. Both Nicky Morgan and Sam Gyimah had come armed with jokes and jibes about the Opposition’s predicament, which were designed to deflect from a rare co-ordinated Labour attack over the implementation - or lack of - of the Conservatives’ flagship manifesto promise to double free childcare for three and four-year-olds, and questions about the attainment gap. Jenny Chapman asked about that promise - and whether one in three families who were told they would get free childcare would in fact receive no additional care at all. Gyimah replied: ‘Well, I thank the honourable lady and welcome her to her post.

Charles Moore

Cecil Parkinson: A man to remember

Lord Cecil Parkinson, former Conservative Party chairman under Margaret Thatcher, has died at the age of 84. Parkinson was one of Thatcher's most trusted allies and served for 30 years in the Conservative front ranks. He was famously forced to resign in October 1983 when it emerged his secretary was pregnant with his child. Here, in an article written in August 1984 in the Spectator, Charles Moore pays tribute to Parkinson. Why not bring back Cecil Parkinson? it is asked. He may have been an erratic actor with a turbulent private life, but he brought a certain dash and glamour to the show which it now badly lacks. Constitutional experts point out that there are precedents for such a quick recovery from disgrace.

Rod Liddle

Did we really have to hear all about Crispin Blunt’s sex life?

A year or so back my friend and colleague Hugo Rifkind wrote a very good piece in which he argued that the issues concerning gay rights should not be resolved simply by an elongated 'eeeeuw'. In other words, heterosexual distaste at the practices of homosexuals should not determine general policy towards this minority. A good point and well made and I agreed with much of it. But it shouldn’t stop the rest of us going 'eeeeuw' from time to time, nonetheless. So, Crispin Blunt MP feels hurt because laws proscribing amyl nitrate (or 'poppers') would criminalise the entire gay community. A jar of poppers and a tube of 'lube' are always found in the bedside drawer of a gay man, we are told.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Nicola Sturgeon ridicules Labour’s ‘tortured’ Trident debate

Given last year’s election was so much about the possibility of the SNP and Labour working together in government, Labour figures will be smiling ruefully at Nicola Sturgeon’s interview on the Andrew Marr Show today, in which she stuck the boot into the party she once suggested a ‘progressive alliance’ with. The Scottish First Minister is of course thinking more about fighting Labour in this year’s Holyrood elections than about the Westminster Parliament, and so she wanted to paint her main challengers as weak and confusing.

Saturday

James Forsyth

How many Tory MPs will back staying in the EU?

With the government still convinced that there’s a better than 50:50 chance of a deal at the February EU Council which would pave the way for an EU referendum in June, the pressure on Tory backbenchers to back the Prime Minister is being stepped up. This week, saw the launch of the Cameron endorsed, pro-EU membership Conservatives for Reform in Europe group. Those involved in this group are confident, as I write in The Sun today, that they will get the support of a majority of Tory MPs. Tory MPs are being left in no doubt as to what side Cameron wants them on come the referendum. The message to them, as one of those close to Cameron puts it, is that a ‘free vote doesn’t mean a free pass’. But there are reasons to suspect that the referendum timetable might slip.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn didn’t consult Shadow Business Secretary over controversial business policy idea

Angela Eagle wasn’t told about a controversial plan to ban companies who do not pay a living wage from paying out dividends to shareholders before Jeremy Corbyn floated it in a speech last week, Coffee House understands. I have learned that the Shadow Business Secretary was not consulted over the proposal, which is believed to have triggered the resignation of the Labour leader’s Head of Policy and Rebuttal, Neale Coleman. Corbyn floated the idea in his speech to the Fabian Society on Saturday, saying 'another proposal would be to bar or restrict companies from distributing dividends until they pay all their workers the living wage'.