Ross Clark

Ever since Labour published its manifesto for the snap election it became clear to me that tackling Jeremy Corbyn is going to require a bit more than simply calling him a bearded Trot. This is because some of his prominent policies, while notionally quite left wing, are actually rather popular with many natural Conservative voters. Renationalising the railways and utilities, ending the automatic contracting-out of public services – you will find plenty of support from people on the right who, while generally sceptical of state intervention, feel that the current arrangements are not a free, open market which offers consumers a genuine choice.

So was it Corbyn’s appeal to younger voters what swung last year’s general election in his favour?  Not according to the British Election Study  (BES) which today publishes a paper questioning the received wisdom that Labour’s unexpectedly strong showing was down to a surge of support from younger voters who managed to cast off their apathy for the first time.     Indeed, claims the team, the Oxford English Dictionary may have been a bit premature in declaring ‘Youthquake’ as its word of the year.

Theresa May has a very big failure to her name, but strangely few people seem to want to pick her up on it. The latest crime figures show a sharp increase in recorded offences in England and Wales, especially in knife crime, which rose 21 per cent to 37,443 incidents. This continues a trend which began four years ago, since when the number of recorded knife offences has risen by half. It reverses an equally sharp fall in recorded knife crime between 2010, when Theresa May became Home Secretary, and 2014. What happened to bring about the end of what looks like a very successful period of tackling knife crime?

Has an albatross ever wielded so much influence? The bewildered chick who regurgitated a plastic bag in front of Sir David Attenborough’s camera crew — fed to him by his mother after she had scooped it from the sea — has caused one of those regular ructions in public opinion. The supermarket chain Iceland has announced it would phase out all plastic packaging from its own-brand foods. The compulsory 5p charge on supermarket plastic bags is to be extended to all shops in England and a 25p ‘latte levy’ may be put on coffee cups containing plastic. Plastic ‘microbeads’ have been banned from cosmetic products. Such initiatives are largely a reflection of a sudden and violent public concern over plastic.

Were I a politician observing Henry Bolton’s embarrassment with glee I think I might just stop short of demanding his resignation as leader of Ukip. What point, anyway, in trying to destabilise a party which has destabilised itself to the point at which nearly every credible challenger for the leadership seems already to have left – along with quite a few incredible ones? Why not just sit back and enjoy the sight of an old fool falling in love with young glamour puss and falling flat on his face? Any public figure who goes further might find that it comes back to haunt them. As Lara Prendergast wrote in this week's Spectator, the age of social media has become a trap for anyone with any kind of past online life.

Was there ever a more pathetic piece of political posturing than the attempt by New York mayor Bill de Blasio to sue five oil companies, including BP and Shell, for the cost of building £14.8bn ($20bn) worth of sea defences to protect vulnerable parts of the city? To add to his virtue-signalling, de Blasio has also announced that the city’s pension funds will seek to divest from the shares of oil companies. One should never under-estimate the ability of the courts, whether in the US or elsewhere, to come up with perverse judgements but it ought to be pretty improbable that New York could win the case.

The Spectator, in association with Tate & Lyle Sugars, brought together MPs, representatives from Tate & Lyle, the Fairtrade Foundation and the Australian High Commissioner to discuss the future of the UK sugar sector following Brexit. This is a report of the discussion which followed. The sugar industry is an interesting case study for the opportunities as well as the challenges which could result from Britain’s departure from the EU. At present, 50 to 60 per cent of the sugar consumed in Britain comes from sugar beet grown and processed in this country. The industry has been subsidised since before Britain joined the EU and subsidy has continued under EU membership (not directly but via farm subsidies).

As the Brexit ‘war cabinet’ meets this morning to discuss what future trading relationship Britain would like with the EU there is a grim inevitability about the next few months. We know what we want – free trade with the EU, in services as well as goods, as well as free trade with the rest of the world. The EU, as it has made clear in recent days, has other ideas. Its plan is to allow us a Canada-style deal – a free trade deal in goods but not services, something which will be completely unacceptable to Britain, with our financial services-dominated economy. Moreover, it is going to try to impose punitive tariffs on British imports wherever it feels that UK regulation is unhelpful to EU industries.

This morning has brought predictable outrage about Tory ‘traitors’. The Prime Minister has been undermined, Guy Verhofstadt has had his fun describing it as a ‘good day for democracy’. The government has been reduced to damage-limitation, suggesting that last night’s defeat – which means that Parliament will now have the final say on a Brexit deal – won’t derail its plans. That is true. Allowing Parliament the final judgement on the deal almost certainly won’t alter the outcome: Britain will leave the EU on 29 March 2019 with whatever deal the government is able to cut with Michel Barnier and his team.

I didn’t think I would ever see myself write this, but I think Nick Clegg is right: we need a second referendum on the EU. I come to this conclusion not because – like some Remainers seem to do – I think 52 per cent of the British population are too thick to make decisions affecting the future of the country and need to be made to vote again so that they can come up with the correct answer. I have come to it because it is the only way that Theresa May and her government are going to survive the next 15 months. As is clear from polls at the weekend there is a lot of public anger, as well as disquiet on the Tory backbenches, at the size of the £40 billion leaving bill.