James Forsyth

Theresa May is a cautious politician. She has risen to the top by avoiding unnecessary risks; no one survives 18 years on the Tory front bench by being a gambler. But few prime ministers have the luxury of choosing their battles, and she would not have chosen the two that may now define her premiership: successfully negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union while saving the United Kingdom. If she achieves both, she will join the pantheon of great prime ministers. If she fails, she’ll be keeping Lord North company in the history books. Unlike David Cameron, May has been preparing for a new Scottish referendum from the moment she entered Downing Street.

Philip Hammond’s credibility as Chancellor has just taken a big blow. Under pressure from his own backbenchers, he has abandoned the proposed National Insurance increase for the self-employed. This means that he has U-turned on one of the central measures of his first Budget. What makes this change particularly humiliating for Hammond is that he told Tory backbenchers last Wednesday night that they could defend this National Insurance increase confident in the knowledge that the government wouldn’t change tack. But now it has. From now on, Tory MPs will treat Hammond’s reassurances with scepticism. The other problem for Hammond is that he made much of how he was making this change because of his deep concern about the erosion of the tax base.

Fraser Nelson is joined by Alex Massie and James Forsyth to discuss IndyRef2: Nicola Sturgeon has thrown down the gauntlet to Theresa May with her speech today. When the Scottish parliament backs a second independence referendum, as it will in the next few weeks, the UK government will have to decide how to respond. After all, there can be no referendum without Westminster’s consent. A Madrid-style outright refusal to allow a referendum is unlikely. But the real fight will be over the timing. Sturgeon says she wants a referendum in either Autumn 2018 or Spring 2019. But the UK government has privately made clear that any referendum would have to come after Brexit, so Scots would know what the UK’s relationship with the EU was when they voted.

The Tory rebellion over the tax hike on the self-employed isn’t abating, it is intensifying as I say in The Sun this morning. As one Cabinet Minister tells me, Tory MPs ‘left the Budget feeling a little bit concerned. They’ve seen the papers, and thought this isn’t good. After the emails and constituency stuff, there’ll be even more nervous’. One Tory backbencher, who is a good judge of the mood of the parliamentary party, says ‘People are not happy at all. Somethings’ got to change’. But Philip Hammond is digging in. He is ‘absolutely determined not to retreat on this’ according to one Cabinet ally of his. He has, I’m told, been ‘surprised by the extent of the backlash’.

The government is in trouble over the National Insurance increase for the self-employed. Journalists are busy pointing out that the Tory manifesto explicitly said that there would be no increases in National Insurance. But Philip Hammond’s allies are—rather absurdly—claiming that the Budget keeps this manifesto promise as the post-election tax lock law only refers to Class One National Insurance contributions, and what is being raised is Class 4 ones. This is the wrong ground for the government to fight on; and they’ll end up losing if they remain camped out here.

The clash between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister used to be the main event at PMQs. But this is fast ceasing to be the case. The most interesting bit of today’s session came after Corbyn had finished asking May questions. In her exchanges with Angus Robertson, May refused to confirm that all powers in devolved areas, such as agriculture and fishing, would go to Holyrood post Brexit. Now, there is—obviously—a bit of Nationalist grievance hunting going on here and having multiple agricultural regimes within the UK would not be entirely sensible. But it would be a mistake if Brexit did not lead to a more powerful Scottish parliament. We have got used to patsy questions to Prime Ministers from their own side.

Copeland was a truly awful result for Labour. But as I say in The Sun this morning, the really alarming things for Labour is that things can get worse for them. Many Labour MPs have been operating on the assumption that the NHS will keep the party’s loses down to a manageable level in 2020. But Copeland suggests that this hope is misplaced. Labour went all in on the health service there and had no shortage of material to work with, the maternity unit at the local hospital is under threat. By the end of the campaign, Labour’s message was perilously close to vote for us or the baby gets it—and yet people still didn’t vote for them. The other thing that should really worry Labour is that the Tories’ Corbyn card will be even more potent in 2020.

James Forsyth discusses the by-election results with Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman: Labour has avoided total electoral disaster and held the Stoke Central seat with a relatively comfortable majority of 2,620. The Labour vote share in the seat was only marginally down on the 2015 general election, which while not good for an opposition party does suggests that Brexit hasn’t taken as big a chunk out of Labour’s support in Leave voting seats as some are suggesting. Labour are trying to argue that their victory here marks a turning point in their attempt to see off the Ukip threat to them in Brexit voting seats in the Midlands and the North. It is certainly true that not winning here is a blow to the new Ukip leader Paul Nuttall.

Polls have closed in the Copeland and Stoke by-elections. It is too early to say with any certainty what the results will be, but we’ll be with you on Coffee House until the results are declared. In Copeland, it is a two horse race between Labour and the Tories. The Tories aren’t predicting they’ll take it, but they do sound rather optimistic. In private, some Labour MPs are very pessimistic about this result. But this could be expectations management. If the Tories do take Copeland from Labour, it’ll be a staggering result: the governing party hasn’t taken a seat in a by-election in thirty odd years and that was in the middle of the Falklands war with the former Labour MP standing for the SDP.

When Ed Miliband was asking the questions at PMQs, we didn’t think we were living through a vintage age of parliamentary debate. But every week, Miliband’s performances looks better by comparison. Jeremy Corbyn went on the right topic today, the NHS, but his questions were all over the place and lacked coherence. Indeed, at one point it was hard to tell what the actual question was. But, I suspect, that Labour will feel that if Corbyn has managed to bump the NHS up the agenda ahead of the two by-elections on Thursday, then it will have been a worthwhile exercise. But it is telling that any advantage Labour gained from the session came not from Corbyn chivvying information out of Theresa May, but just the obvious topic that he and his team decided to go on.

In normal times, by-elections are bad for governing parties and good for oppositions. But it is an indicator of how much trouble Labour is in, as I say in The Sun this morning, that they are the ones who are nervous ahead of Thursday’s by-elections. Some in the Labour machine seem almost resigned to losing Copeland to the Tories and are concentrating on trying to hold off Ukip in Stoke. Given that Labour is polling as low as 24% and Jeremy Corbyn’s ratings are worse than Michael Foot’s were at this point in his leadership, and the epic defeat Foot led Labour to in 1983 paved the way for 14 more years of Tory government, you might think that defeat in either contest would be the end of Corbyn’s leadership. But it won’t be.

There has been an understandable, and justified, outcry about the Law Commission’s proposed changes to secrecy legislation. The current proposals present a serious threat to investigative journalism and whistle blowers. But Theresa May’s Number 10 is very keen to point out that this review was something commissioned not by them, but by David Cameron’s Number 10. ‘This is a consultation by an independent body instigated by the previous Prime Minister’ is how one May aide describes it—which is a clear attempt to distance the current Prime Minister from this whole business. I am told that it is highly unlikely that the proposals will be implemented in their current form.

The government has no majority in the House of Lords and a majority of peers were pro-Remain. But despite this, the Article 50 Bill will get through the Lords I argue in The Sun this morning. Why, because the reason that we still have an unelected chamber in the 21st century is that the House of Lords has a strong self-preservation instinct: it knows its limits. If the Lords were to try and block something that had been backed in a referendum and had passed the Commons with a majority of 372, then it would be endangering its very existence. Indeed, I understand that the Labour front bench have already made clear through the usual channels that they won’t try and block the bill. There will, of course, be attempts to amend it.