Uk politics

Wednesday

The Spectator

Full text: Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston’s Tory resignation letter

From our UK edition

Dear Prime Minister. It is with regret that we are writing to resign the Conservative whip and our membership of the Party. We voted for you as Leader and Prime Minister because we believed you were committed to a moderate, open-hearted Conservative Party in the One Nation tradition. A party of economic competence representing the best of British business, delivering good jobs, opportunity and prosperity for all, funding world class public services and tackling inequalities. We had hoped you would also continue to modernise our party so that it could reach out and broaden its appeal to younger voters and to embrace and reflect the diversity of the communities we seek to represent.

Katy Balls

The Tory defections to the Independent Group could help Corbyn

From our UK edition

After days of bad news for Labour over the decision of several moderates to quit and form The Independent Group, it's now the turn of the Tories. Three Conservative MPs have today resigned the party whip to join the group. In a joint letter to the Prime Minister, Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen say they no longer feel at home in a party where the policies are so 'firmly in the grip of the ERG and DUP'.  They will now join eight former Labour MPs in the newly formed group – bringing the total size up to 11. While the news has shocked some Conservatives, these three MPs were the politicians who were seen as the most likely to quit.

Steerpike

Watch: George Galloway compares journalist to Goebbels

From our UK edition

George Galloway has just waded into Labour's anti-Semitism row and it is safe to say his intervention won't do much to calm things down. The firebrand former politician said the claims of anti-Semitism agains the Labour party were a lie – and he then compared the Sky News journalist interviewing him to Josef Goebbels. Here's what he said: GG: 'It is really a black-op what is going on here. This is pure Goebbelian propaganda.' Niall Paterson: 'We've just mentioned Luciana Berger, do you think it is entirely relevant to talk about Goebbelian propaganda?' GG: 'I do.' NP: 'We've got a Jewish Labour MP leaving because of anti-Semitism.' GG: 'I don't believe she is leaving because of anti-Semitism, I believe you want people to believe that and the Goebbels is you.

Tuesday

Katy Balls

Could a meaningful vote come as early as next week?

From our UK edition

Is a Brexit breakthrough imminent? The talk in Westminster tonight is that the government could soon have something to present to MPs on the Irish backstop. Geoffrey Cox – the Attorney General – has been in Brussels this week working with EU officials on a legally binding change. He has managed to charm some on the EU side and – in a sign of his commitment to the cause – is said to have threatened to sleep in the corridors if that's what it took to get a deal done. At Cabinet today, Cox urged caution, telling colleagues there is still some way to go – yet Cabinet sources are optimistic that a concession is coming in the form of a codicil. So, what will it look like?

Isabel Hardman

Joan Ryan quits Labour and joins the Independent Group

From our UK edition

Another Labour MP, Joan Ryan, has tonight announced she is leaving the party to join the Independent Group. This is significant, and not just because it creates a sense of momentum. Ryan is the first Labourite to leave who wasn't involved in the months of secret planning meetings. She was, until fairly recently, arguing that the best thing to do would be to stay and fight to change the party back. Now, she has gone, releasing a potent statement about her reasons. Those reasons include what she calls 'the scourge of anti-Jewish racism', which 'simply did not exist in the party before his election as leader'. She argues that she has 'fought for as long as I can within the Labour Party'.

James Forsyth

Sajid Javid is wrong to strip Shamima Begum of her British citizenship

From our UK edition

Sajid Javid’s decision to strip Shamima Begum of her British citizenship leaves me deeply uneasy. I can understand why a Home Secretary charged with keeping the public safe would want to do whatever possible to keep this woman out of the country. But Begum was born in this country, grew up here and was educated here. This, surely, makes her British. As a country, we should want to take charge of investigating her and, if the evidence is there, prosecuting her. After all, she offended against the ties that bind when she headed from this country—a liberal democracy with the rule of law—to go and serve in a so-called caliphate that offended against the values we hold most dear.

Steerpike

Watch: Angela Smith blames ‘funny tinge’ comment on tiredness

From our UK edition

Angela Smith unwittingly became the story of the day yesterday when she referred to people of a 'funny tinge' on the BBC's Politics Live. Smith apologised – but still the story is dragging on. Today, the MP was asked to explain her comments, and she came up with a new excuse: she was tired. Here's what she said: 'Look, I never meant to say that. I misspoke really badly. I was very tired at that point. I had had six hours of press engagement and I was very tired. I was very tired. I misspoke really, really badly.' Mr S isn't sure that the answer to all this is for Smith to do more 'press engagement'...

Stephen Daisley

Luciana Berger’s departure is the beginning of the end for Labour

From our UK edition

Manny Shinwell knew how to deal with anti-Semites. Born in London’s East End, reared in Glasgow, and once jailed for inciting a riot on Red Clydeside, the pipe-smoking pugilist was a tough, proud Jew. During a debate in parliament in 1938, Shinwell (then Labour MP for Seaham) was jabbing at the government when Tory MP Robert Bower heckled: ‘Go back to Poland’. Shinwell got up, crossed the floor and thumped Bower clean in the face, then turned to the Speaker and said: ‘May I make a personal explanation?’.  Eight decades later, his great-niece has delivered another bloody nose to the face of anti-Semitism.

Robert Peston

Tom Watson’s intervention spells trouble for Jeremy Corbyn

From our UK edition

The second most important political act yesterday was the impassioned declaration of near UDI by the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson. His sorrowful response to the resignation of Berger, Umunna, Leslie, Smith, Gapes, Coffey and Shuker was that they were wrong to resign but they were correct to identify that the party he loves has lost its way, especially over anti-Semitism. Watson was in effect setting himself up as shop steward of a parliamentary Labour Party that feels almost totally detached from the Labour leader and the shadow cabinet.

Monday

James Kirkup

Corbyn’s cheerleaders are wrong to sneer at Which? magazine

From our UK edition

First, a confession. Because I try not to spend too much time on Twitter, I sometimes miss “the story that everyone at Westminster is talking about” and struggle to keep up with village gossip. Worse, I lose track of the minor characters the ceaseless opera of poisonous soap, or fail to recognise them for what they are.  For instance, I only recently discovered that Aaron Bastani is actually a real person and not, in fact, someone’s parody of something. Sorry. Today on political Twitter, it seems that “everyone is talking” about Dr Bastani and Which? magazine, in the context of the new Independent Group of Labour MPs.  Dr Bastani suggested that the new group is “Pro Which? Magazine” in a tweeted list of its other supposed crimes.

Alex Massie

In praise of the Labour splitters | 18 February 2019

From our UK edition

The first thing to note is that it’s not about policy. The not-so secret seven MPs who left the Labour party this morning have not changed their policy preferences. They have not become Tories. Nor have they even become liberals. They could, with little difficulty, endorse much of the Labour party’s 2017 manifesto without compromising themselves in the slightest.  Because this break, this rebellion, this journey into exile, is not about policy. It is about character and values and so many of the other things the Labour party believes it holds dear to the extent it often behaves as though it thinks it owns a monopoly on these things.

Steerpike

Watch: Angela Smith apologises over ‘funny tinge’ gaffe

From our UK edition

The Independent Group is only a few hours old but already one of its leading members has made a blunder on air. Talking about race on the BBC's Politics Live, Angela Smith said: 'It's not just about being black or a funny...tin...from the BME community' Oh dear. Angela Smith has since apologised for her comments, saying that she 'misspoke': https://twitter.com/angelasmithmp/status/1097518807357288448?

James Forsyth

Will any Tory MPs join the Independent Group?

From our UK edition

Is this a split in the Labour party or something more? At today’s launch, Chuka Umunna was clear that the Independent Group want to attract MPs from parties other than Labour. Tory party sources admit that they ‘would not be surprised’ if some Tory MPs were to join this new group. Right now, the values of this group seem fairly—for want of a better word—Blairite. The addition of any Tory MPs would make this group more ideological heterodox; and show if it can carve out a distinctive intellectual position. Politically, it would also mean that it was not just Labour who are split.

Steerpike

Chuka Umunna identifies the Independent Group’s big flaws

From our UK edition

Chuka Umunna has quit the Labour party and set up a new political party. Calling itself the Independent Group, Umunna said the party wants to go about 'building a new politics'. But in a Q and A with journalists, Mr S couldn't help but notice that Umunna also managed to spell out quite clearly the new group's big problem. He told reporters: 'The usual way things are often done in Westminster, is a little bit, you know, you have a podium, someone goes up and tells you how it is going to be.' Perhaps this message might have been somewhat more compelling if Umunna had not just been addressing journalists in Westminster...from behind a podium. Umunna then went on to say this: 'The idea that you can cook this up in Westminster is not the way people want things to be done.

Steerpike

Watch: Luciana Berger’s damning verdict on Labour

From our UK edition

Luciana Berger and six other Labour MPs have just quit the Labour party. Explaining her reasons for quitting Corbyn's party, Berger said she had come to the conclusion that Labour is 'institutionally anti-Semitic'. She said she was 'embarrassed' to stay put in Labour. Here is her damning verdict on the party: I have become embarrassed and ashamed to remain in the Labour party. I have not changed. The values which I hold really dear, and which led me to join the Labour party as a student almost 20 years ago, remain who I am. And yet these values have been consistently and constantly violated, undermined and attacked as the Labour party today refuses to put my constituents and our country before party interests.

Saturday

James Forsyth

What can May now get on the backstop?

From our UK edition

When Theresa May goes to Brussels next week to bat for changes to the backstop, she’ll do so with a large crack in her bat—I say in The Sun this morning. The symbolic defeat that MPs inflicted on her Brexit plan on Thursday night has significantly weakened her negotiating position. The EU doesn’t want to make significant changes to the backstop. When the Brady amendment passed the House of Commons, saying parliament would accept the deal if the backstop was replaced, the EU responded by saying that they didn’t think this parliament majority was ‘stable’. Thursday night’s vote helps them make that argument.

Thursday

Henry Newman

John McDonnell’s mask is slipping

From our UK edition

One of the more interesting developments over the last year is the attempted transformation of John McDonnell from a hard-left activist who joked about “lynching” a female Conservative MP, towards a softer, more jovial, chancellor-in-waiting. It seemed to be going quite well. I appeared with McDonnell on Politics Live last year and he laughed heartily as I teased him about coveting the Labour leadership. SW1’s water-cooler chat is that McDonnell is a far more effective advocate of a Corbynite Labour position than Jeremy Corbyn himself, particularly because the Labour leader often looks so irritated at being asked relatively normal questions on television. But could that be about to change?

Richard Ekins

Why Brexit won’t lead to a bonfire of human rights

From our UK edition

Faced with the prospect of the UK’s departure from the EU, some Britons are contemplating urgent measures, whether applying for an Irish passport or migrating to New Zealand. Nothing wrong with either, of course, but the latter is an odd reaction. After all, one of the implications of Brexit is that it restores the fundamental similarity between the structure of government in the UK and New Zealand, the last two bastions of the Westminster constitution. In both countries, parliamentary sovereignty is fundamental and judges do not reign supreme. EU membership has long complicated this picture, with the UK subject to binding European law, enforced by the confident and inscrutable – not to mention largely unaccountable – Court of Justice.

Isabel Hardman

Will ‘Isis bride’ Shamima Begum really end up in a British prison?

From our UK edition

What will the UK do about Shamima Begum, the schoolgirl who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State? The Times' stunning scoop this morning about the 19-year old's plea to be allowed home from the Syrian refugee camp prompted Security Minister Ben Wallace to tell the Today programme that 'actions have consequences' and that she could face prosecution. Some argue that as a teenager who left when she was just 15, she has been indoctrinated and needs rehabilitation, not punishment. Wallace may well agree with that, but it's not something he's likely to say in a broadcast interview, given it is still important for the government to send the message that you cannot support a proscribed organisation or potentially commit crimes in its name without fearing that the law will catch up with you.

Isabel Hardman

After Brexit defeat, Downing Street insists nothing has changed

From our UK edition

After Theresa May mysteriously evaporated from the Commons following tonight's government defeat, Downing Street has issued a statement insisting that nothing has changed. The official line is, somewhat tortuously, that the previous set of indicative votes from MPs were the ones that mattered, whereas this one didn't. A No.10 spokesman said: 'While we didn't secure the support of the Commons this evening, the Prime Minister continues too believe, and the debate itself indicated, that far from objecting to securing changes to the backstop that will allow us to leave with a deal, there was a concern from some Conservative colleagues about taking no deal off the table at this stage.