Uk politics

Philip Hammond's former top advisor has confirmed what many in Westminster have known for some time. Writing in the Guardian, ex-special advisor Poppy Trowbridge came out all guns blazing, calling Boris Johnson 'reckless' and accusing him of 'mistaken posturing and trash talk'. In the article, entitled 'Boris Johnson talks tough but still hasn’t said what he’s doing to get a Brexit deal', she laments the failures of May's withdrawal agreement and writes in support of spreadsheet Phil's bid to stave off no deal. But the Chancellor's former SpAd also admitted the extent of Hammond-era resistance to Brexit.

It's law and order week in No. 10. After a series of announcements over the weekend, on stop and search and a promise of more prison places, Boris Johnson has today announced a review of sentencing guidelines for rapists and murderers. More announcements and appearances are expected as the week goes on to further hammer home the message that this is a Government that's tough on crime. With 80 days to go until the UK is to leave the EU, No. 10 is focussed on three main areas: Brexit, health and law and order. It follows that these three topics are also what the Tories are expected to campaign on in an early election. Under Theresa May, the Conservatives' reputation as the party of law and order has suffered.

There’s been much talk this week of a so-called government of national unity (GNU) to stop Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan. The idea is that he’d be forced out in a vote of no confidence in September and replaced by a caretaker PM who would request an extension to our EU membership before resigning and calling a general election. But, as I say in The Sun this morning, it is hard to see this happening. First, this wouldn’t be a government of national unity as its sole purpose would be to extend our membership of the EU which would make it one of the more divisive governments in living memory. But more importantly, Jeremy Corbyn won’t back anyone else for Number 10 while Tory rebels and the Lib Dems aren’t prepared to support him.

What George Orwell said of left-wing intellectuals now applies to Boris Johnson and his ministers: so much of what they propose is a ‘playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot’. They may suspend Parliament and crash us out of the EU on 31 October or crash us out in the middle of an election campaign. Understandably, all the talk is of the threat to the conventions of democratic life. Yet if Johnson does not buckle, the autumn will not just bring a constitutional crisis but an economic and social crisis. No one knows how bad crashing out will be because no country has been stupid enough to tear up its main trading relationships without having an alternative in place.

'Imagine there's no countries,' John Lennon once sang. It seems that one Labour MP is taking that song literally. Paul Sweeney, who represents Glasgow North East, had this to say: Well, Mr S. has to admire the scale of Sweeney's ambitions, but he also wonders whether this plan might not be the best way to dig Labour out of the hole it found itself in yesterday. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, caused trouble for his party at the Edinburgh fringe festival by saying that Labour would not block a Scottish referendum if they won power. The comments went down badly with Scottish Labour MPs. Sweeney stepped in to clarify the party's position as a 'statement of basic democracy'. He then explained that: '...

The argument about whether Boris Johnson would have to resign if he lost a confidence vote is continuing to rage at Westminster. There is, though, an angle to this argument that is being neglected. Right now, the Labour leadership is clear that it won’t back anyone other than Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister. This means that even if Boris Johnson lost a no-confidence vote, it is not clear who could command the confidence of the Commons. With no alternative government ready to go, then an election would be the obvious answer.  Things become more complicated if an alternative government could somehow be formed. In these circumstances, there would be more pressure on Boris Johnson to resign.

Talk of an early election has been on the rise in recent months as the Brexit arithmetic has looked increasingly shaky. This week it has hit fever pitch. Boris Johnson announcing extra funds for the NHS has been read as a sign the party is getting campaign ready while party chairman James Cleverly set the cat among the pigeons at the weekend after he used a broadcast interview to say only that the Tories would not 'initiate' a general election. The verdict: an early election is beginning to be seen as inevitable.

Niall Paterson stood in for Sophy Ridge this morning, interviewing the Conservative party chairman James Cleverly. Paterson asked Cleverly whether billions of pounds worth of spending pledges outlined by new PM Boris Johnson meant that the government was considering an early general election. Cleverly insisted that the government would not be pursuing this course of action, despite a vanishingly small majority in the House of Commons: https://youtu.be/SVXgUrRmYE4 NP: Tell me there isn't going to me a general election this year. JC: ...We are not going to initiate a general election. We have elections all the time... What we've got is a new Prime Minister who, during the leadership campaign, made a number of explicit commitments...

In the run-up to the referendum, a common argument against Brexit went like this:  “We should not leave the EU, because if we try, the EU will be capricious and irrational, it will not prioritise the welfare of its people, it will instead punish us, we must be afraid of that wrath, forget any merit, we must be prudent”. A similar argument is often discussed at length by Sir Ivan Rogers, and repeatedly published in The Spectator. It is both right and wrong. The people who believe it are not ‘Remoaners’, as some might claim: they are patriots. But I disagree. And for me, this argument is why I voted to leave. I am an autonomous and free human being. I am also a citizen of a society. I surrender my freedoms in order to make that society function.