Ross Clark

Imagine the reaction of Her Majesty’s Opposition if the government announced that it was to introduce a new ‘voter charge’ – a levy which citizens had to pay before they were allowed into the polling station. Just as they did with the ‘Community Charge’ over a quarter of a century ago Labour would undoubtedly – and quite reasonably – call it a ‘poll tax’. How could a democracy possibly try to exclude the poor from the vote, they would ask, before backing a legal challenge on the grounds of human rights? Why, then, is Labour so determined to introduce its own internal poll tax?

It is beginning to look like a bit of a trend this year: the Conservatives get themselves into a tight spot, only for Labour to trump them quickly. Just as the Tories seemed to be descending into a bitter leadership crisis on the weekend after the referendum, half the shadow cabinet resigned. Now, just as David Cameron was being mauled from all quarters over the cronies in his resignation honours list (including from the presumably not soon-to-be Lord Hilton), Jeremy Corbyn has directed attention to himself by ennobling Shami Chakrabarti, formerly of human rights group Liberty. The appointment is embarrassing three times over. Firstly, because he said last year: 'Labour will certainly not nominate new peers for the Lords, which risks undermining its legitimacy'.

During the Blair years the security guards at Labour party conferences had a reputation for over-zealous intervention – remember the sight of octogenarian Walter Wolfgang being manhandled out of his seat and ejected from the chamber for daring to heckle Jack Straw over the Iraq War? Appropriately enough, under Corbyn, Labour’s conference security has the opposite problem – it seems to have been unilaterally-disarmed. As Guido Fawkes reveals this morning there is a serious possibility that this year’s event, scheduled to take place in Liverpool next month, will have to be cancelled owing to the party’s inability to organise security for the event. The problem goes back to last year when the party’s grandees high-mindedly decided to boycott G4S.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day the nuclear button was finally pressed – a vote by the board of French energy company EDF to go ahead with Hinkley C power station was assumed to be the moment at which the project would finally spring off the drawing board. Instead, business secretary Greg Clark announced that he needed until September to make a final decision on the government’s behalf. He is to be commended for not being pushed into the go-ahead. Hinkley – along with Heathrow and HS2 – is one of three ‘Hs’ bequeathed by the Cameron-Osborne years: hugely expensive infrastructure projects seemingly frustrated by chronic indecision.

It is still a little too early to say for sure that George Osborne’s gloom-laden economic forecasts for post-Brexit Britain were bunk. But never mind the future, it now emerges that he wasn’t much good at telling us what was happening in the present. Throughout the referendum campaign he could barely disguise his contempt for the whole exercise, telling us that the UK economy was suffering from the mere fact we were having a vote. A week before referendum day, for example, he told us that  'The economic uncertainty that the ‘Leave’ campaign carelessly insist won’t be caused is already being seen.' Whatever he was seeing, it didn’t reflect reality. The growth figures for the second quarter released today reveal that in fact the economy grew by 0.

Of today’s corpses piled up in Downing Street, none has caused more shock than that of Michael Gove. That Nicky Morgan, who signed Gove’s nomination papers to be leader, has also gone hints at some kind of personal animosity. But might the explanation be more straightforward than that – simply one of his policy and approach as justice secretary? Gove acquired a reputation as a great reformer during his time at the Department for Education, facing down huge opposition from teachers’ unions in the process. He incurred considerable personal cost for doing this, with David Cameron shifting him to the whips office before the last election on the instructions of Sir Lynton Crosby, who feared Gove to be electorally toxic.

The award for most pathetic remark of the week goes to Tim Farron who earlier released a press statement saying this: 'Just 13 months after the last election the Conservatives have plunged the UK into chaos. It is simply inconceivable that Theresa May should be crowned Prime Minister without even having won an election in her own party, let alone the country. There must be an election. The Conservatives must not be allowed to ignore the electorate, their mandate is shattered and lies in ruins.

'I’m a gay woman with strong northern working-class roots,' Angela Eagle told Robert Peston on Sunday. 'I think I’m the right person for this job at this time.' In case we didn’t get the point she followed it up this morning by boasting: 'I’m a northern working-class girl who understands modern life.' How outrageous that Jeremy Corbyn’s challenger should bring her class, her geographical birthplace and her sexuality into the leadership debate, suggesting that they would make her a more suitable leader than Corbyn.   Or maybe it isn’t outrageous that someone should draw on their personal experiences while campaigning for office.

While frustrated Remain campaigners continue to speak of economic Armageddon, a very significant move happened yesterday. Business secretary Sajid Javid flew off to Delhi to begin preliminary negotiations for a trade deal between Britain and India. It is significant because this is exactly the sort of deal that we have been forbidden from doing for the past 43 years. As members of the EU we are forbidden from signing our own trade deals with third countries. Instead, we must rely on deals collectively negotiated with the EU. Trouble is, the EU isn’t very good at negotiating them. It is painfully slow process because the competing demands of 28 different EU economies must be satisfied.

So now it is certain: the Conservatives will produce Britain’s second female Prime Minister, after Andrea Leadsom eliminated Michael Gove from the leadership contest and will now go head-to-head with Theresa May in a vote of Conservative members to be announced on 9 September. So why isn’t the Left cheering this social advance? Instead, the bitching has already begun.   Andrea Leadsom is being savaged for being less than 100 per cent enthusiastic about gay marriage (bizarrely, she voted for and against in the same vote); while Theresa May is eviscerated for her proposal – since dropped – to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights.

The Conservative party’s electoral system won an unlikely compliment this afternoon from Labour MP Ian Austin, who declared that it showed how a ‘serious party’ operated. It might look serious compared with the fiasco of Labour’s leadership crisis, but does the election of a new Prime Minister really have to be dragged out over two months, and at a time when the country is crying out for someone to take leadership over Brexit? It is bizarre that 100,000 Conservative party members are deemed to require twice as long to make up their minds as 46 million UK voters have to decide in a general election campaign. Until 2001 the Conservative party leadership was decided on fairly quickly via a ballot exclusively of MPs.

Just when you were beginning to wonder whether we have done the right thing, along comes Jean-Claude Juncker to remind you exactly why Britain voted for Brexit. It is ‘not going to be an amicable divorce’, he tells us. Why can’t it be amicable? We’ve decided that we’ve grown apart, not run off with the milkman. There’s no need to put the car keys down the drain and upload some naked photos onto the web. It isn’t so much Ukip who are exploiting the politics of hate; it is Juncker. In his desire for revenge he is demonstrating the contempt for democracy that has been the bane of European Commission ever since it was founded. The Remain camp just can’t seem to see why so many voters are fed up with the bullying attitude of the EU.

A vote to leave the EU would cause economic Armageddon. We know because David Cameron and George Osborne have told us so, claiming that there is a wide consensus among economists on the matter. But what if – as now seems increasingly likely – we vote to remain but then have a recession anyway? The Prime Minister and the Chancellor are very quick to quote economists when making the case for us to stay in the EU, saying we should listen to the experts. They would do well to listen to what the experts are saying about the chances of a recession.  A Wall Street Journal survey in May put the chances of a recession in the next 12 months at 20 per cent.