Uk politics

Saturday

James Forsyth

Could the Tory leadership race end early?

The Tory leadership is fast becoming Boris Johnson’s to lose, I say in The Sun this morning. He has more MPs backing him than any other candidate, and his campaign receives a further boost this morning with the former Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon endorsing him. In the words of one of those knows the Tory parliamentary party best, ‘the wind is blowing in one direction’. There is increasing talk among senior figures in the party that if the former Foreign Secretary comes out on top in the parliamentary rounds, it would be best to skip the members part of the contest and make him Prime Minister straight away. The

Claire Fox

What Channel 4’s Jon Snow can learn from the Brexit Party

Since being elected a Brexit Party MEP, I have gone from gamekeeper to poacher as far as the broadcast media is concerned. Until six weeks ago, I had the privilege of being a commentator who could sit on couches endlessly pontificating. Now as a politician, I’m the target of my fellow commentators. They either discuss me in my absence or ask a series of staccato questions with little room for context or nuance.  Maybe I’m fair game. After all, I have spent two decades as a Radio 4 Moral Maze panelist interrogating witnesses. This, perhaps, is my comeuppance. Yet what I’ve learned about the way the broadcast media works in recent weeks

Friday

Stephen Parkinson

Boris Johnson’s court victory is good news for remainers and leavers

In the end common sense has prevailed – and swiftly. When District Judge Margot Coleman decided last week to issue a summons against Boris Johnson for misconduct in public office it looked as if the case would drag on for weeks or months. But exceptionally the High Court today intervened in the criminal case to stop it now, recognising that it would have inevitably failed had it made it to the Crown Court. The arguments in court today centred around the nature of the crime that Boris Johnson was alleged to have committed. Misconduct in public office is an offence aimed at public officials who misuse their public position to such an extent

Konstantin Kisin

Brexit and the death of the British sense of fair play

As an immigrant Remain voter, I am starting to worry about my fellow members of the metropolitan elite. Some of those whose cause I share dutifully attend protest marches, attack people whose political views they don’t share and talk cheerfully about the rise of fascism. The madness of this supposedly liberal cause is in plain sight, yet it continues to thrive, boosted supposedly by Remain’s performance in the EU elections. We were told by some that Remain won the election in which a six-week old Brexit Party captured first place, a third of the popular vote and 40 per cent of seats. It rather reminded me of how we do

Robert Peston

Will Brexit destroy – or save – the Tory party?

Pretty much the whole intellectual gap (if we can dignify it as such) between the candidates in the Tories’ leadership contest is summed up in two tweets this morning that react to the Conservative humiliation in the Peterborough by-election. One tweet was by the Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, the other by his predecessor Boris Johnson. And I will come on to the dispute between them after weighing the catastrophe that Peterborough was for their party. In what for years was a relatively safe Tory seat, the Conservatives slumped from second place to third, suffering a fall of 25 percentage points in their share of the vote, compared to the result

Ross Clark

Labour’s victory in Peterborough should terrify the Tories

Politics may seem to be deeply confusing at present, but in fact there is one very stark conclusion to come out of the Peterborough by-election – that while Labour and the Conservatives are both deeply unpopular, the Labour vote remains more tribal than that of the Conservatives and will hold up better in a general election. Hard though it might be to see the bright side when your party’s share of the vote has plunged from 48 per cent to 31 per cent, Peterborough is something of a quiet triumph for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour result is truly miserable until you realise that the Conservatives’ share fell from 46 per

Steerpike

Watch: Peterborough’s new Labour MP quizzed on anti-Semitism

Peterborough’s new Labour MP has only just been elected but already she is finding herself embroiled in controversy. Lisa Forbes was taken to task in the early hours of this morning over a revelation that she once liked a Facebook post saying that Theresa May had a ‘Zionist Slave Master’s agenda’. Here is what she had to say in response: ‘I don’t have an anti-Semitic bone in my body…. It was engaging in posts in error and for that I’m deeply sorry.’ Forbes also once signed a letter calling on Labour not to adopt the full IHRC definition of anti-Semitism. It now seems she has changed her tune: ‘At the

Katy Balls

Rory Stewart campaign point to new polling in bid to win backing of MPs

Will Rory Stewart still be in the Tory leadership race come Tuesday? The International Development Secretary is seen as the wildcard of the contest. Regarding at first as having little to no chance of becoming leader owing to his pro-deal position, the undeterred Tory MP has ran a rather creative campaign going on various walks and meet and greets with members of the public in a bid to convince members of Parliament to get behind his leadership bid. His efforts have garnered a lot of attention and endorsements from unlikely places. The problem is very few of those endorsements are coming from the Conservative parliamentary party that decides who makes

Thursday

Toby Young

Could a Tory-Brexit Party alliance actually work?

In 2013, I started promoting a tactical voting alliance between Conservative and Ukip voters. It wasn’t just about avoiding the calamity of a Labour victory at the 2015 General Election – which looked likely then – it was also about trying to secure a parliamentary majority for an EU referendum. I called the campaign ‘Country Before Party’. Given that a potential alliance between the Tories and the Brexit Party is something that almost half of Conservative Party members are in favour of, I thought it might be worth recounting my experience. Having once been a tub-thumper for this type of arrangement, I’m now less enthusiastic. It’s happened before, of course.

Michael Gove

How I could get a better Brexit deal

There are things that we can do which will change the way in which we leave the European Union. I think that, critically, one of the issues that caused me particular concern has been the backstop. And it’s caused me concern for two reasons. One: as a unionist I didn’t like the idea of any part of our United Kingdom being treated differently. And secondly, as someone who wants all the benefits of a full Canada-style free trade agreement I don’t want to have some of the customs restrictions that are implicit in the backstop. At the last meeting at Strasbourg, the EU committed to working alternative arrangements that could

Robert Peston

How Boris and Corbyn could both be undone by Brexit

When the influential Tory ERG Brexiter Steve Baker refused last night on my programme to deny Boris Johnson is closer to his position on how to leave the EU than Dominic Raab, and he would be backing Johnson, I concluded that Johnson is now unstoppable. Barring some self-inflicted cataclysm (which cannot be ruled out) – the former foreign secretary will be Tory leader and new PM in July. Because where Baker goes, a significant number of other Brexiter Tory MPs will venture too; Baker denies he is their shepherd, but the ERG MPs habitually choose the sometimes illusory safety of travelling as a herd. If Johnson can coral David Cameron’s deputy chief

Katy Balls

How will Raab’s prorogue comments play out with Tory MPs?

To prorogue or not to prorogue? That’s the question dividing the Brexiteer candidates today following the One Nation conservative hustings. After Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom and Sajid Javid on Tuesday all ruled out proroguing Parliament in order to achieve a no deal Brexit in the event that MPs tried to block one, Dominic Raab used his appearance on Wednesday night to tell a group of MPs that he would not rule out suspending Parliament to bring about the UK’s exit from the EU – with or without a deal. Proroguing Parliament is what happens at the end of every parliamentary session. In terms of Brexit, the theory goes that a way

Wednesday

Karen Glaser

The probe into Labour’s anti-Semitism gives hope to Britain’s Jews

The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s announcement last week that it is to formally investigate Labour over anti-Jewish racism is an hour of great shame for the party. It is also, finally, a moment of hope for British Jews. The public body set up, with chilling irony by the party it is now to probe, has seen evidence of the institutional anti-Semitism that Jews have been making complaints about for four long years and decided that it is credible enough to investigate. Its decision makes Labour only the second political party in British history to face a formal racism inquiry. The first? The British National Party.  Finally Britain’s Jews are feeling as though

James Kanagasooriam

Why Tories should think carefully before backing Boris

In my old job as an investment banker, there were two schools of thought about how to get the best return. Long-term funds – where money was invested over a number of years; and short-term ones – which sought quick returns wherever it could be found. The Conservative party now finds itself facing a similar dilemma: wondering whether to make the short term bet – aping the Brexit Party’s push for no deal in the hope of an immediate recovery from its dire position. Or whether to take the long view: make for the centre ground while still delivering Brexit. The latter is a strategy that is riskier in the medium

James Forsyth

Gove pitches himself as the liberal candidate in the Tory leadership race

Michael Gove’s positioning in the Tory leadership race became clearer last night. In conversation with Fraser Nelson at a Spectator event, Gove made clear that he would be prepared to extend the Brexit deadline beyond 31 October if there were negotiations going on that would lead to a better deal. He argued that Sinn Fein’s poor recent election results meant that there was more chance of getting the devolved institutions up and running in Northern Ireland if Stormont had a far greater role in the administration of the backstop, which would allay some of the DUP’s concerns: ‘I think that there are ways in which we can work with the

Isabel Hardman

Tory leadership candidates start frenzied final push for support

With just a few days to go until nominations close in the Tory leadership contest, candidates are busy trying to shore up support in the parliamentary party. There are five – Sam Gyimah, Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart, Mark Harper and Esther McVey – who currently don’t have sufficient nominations to make it onto the ballot paper. Harper tried to get some attention by asking a question about the Peterborough by-election at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, while Gyimah has been doing the rounds in Portcullis House as MPs have trundled through. Meanwhile I understand that Rory Stewart has cancelled all his media appearances in order to hold as many meetings as

Lloyd Evans

Rebecca Long-Bailey has exposed Labour’s climate-change muddle

A festival of inertia at PMQs today. A party without a leader, a Government without a purpose and a Parliament without a programme. Theresa May, in Portsmouth for the D-Day commemorations, was understudied by David Lidington who looks like a maths professor but performs like a comedian. His waggish streak is undermined by his gentlemanly dislike of mocking women. He blushed and giggled as he pointed out that Jeremy Corbyn’s regular deputy, Emily Thornberry, had been ‘despatched to internal exile somewhere’. Her crime, he teased, was to ‘outshine the Dear Leader’ at PMQs. In Corbyn’s place stood Rebecca Long-Bailey. Lidington warned that she too risked being ‘airbrushed out of Politburo

Tim Farron

The lessons from the rise and fall of Change UK

Leaving your party is brave because it is a costly and painful thing to do. You risk the loss of relationships, your sense of belonging and identity, your status and your income. The eleven MPs who formed the Independent Group took those risks knowingly. They saw Conservative and Labour parties transformed by blinkered nationalism and dogmatic socialism, each of them over-run by zealots whose commitment to their ideology is exceeded only by their unkindness towards those who do not share the faith. I remember seeing the relief on the faces of those eleven MPs back in February when they made the break. All of them seemed happier without the burden

John Connolly

What do Peterborough voters think about Thursday’s by-election?

There’s only one day to go until the Peterborough by-election, which decides who will replace the former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya, and yet it’s still all to play for in this marginal seat. Under normal circumstances, with the last Labour MP found guilty of perverting the course of justice and thrown out by her constituents, you would expect the Conservatives (who only lost by around 600 votes in the 2017 general election) to be favourites to win. But the recent rise of the Brexit party in the local and European elections means that conventional wisdom no longer applies. The Brexit party are currently frontrunners in the race and some bookies

Katy Balls

Inside the One Nation Tory leadership hustings

What is a one nation Tory? On Tuesday evening, various leadership contenders descended to the committee room corridor to try and convince MPs that they could be described as one. Earlier this year, the One Nation Tory caucus was launched – led by Amber Rudd and Nicky Morgan – and was reported to be aimed at keeping the Tories in the centre rather than lurching to the right in a leadership contest.The party has since declared a list of its core values – which range from protecting the union to the environment and free enterprise. The view that they have garnered the most attention for, however, is their opposition to