The Spectator

Sunday

The Spectator

Full text: Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Tory party conference speech

It is a great honour to be speaking at this conference. I, like many of you have belonged to this party since I was a mere youth - and I was once a youth. I have sat in these seats since the days conferences were held at the seaside and I am glad that the members are once again rightly the focus of these sessions. It was here in Manchester that Disraeli captured the essence of Conservative principles in his 1872 speech at the Free Trade Hall, when he set out our priorities for the constitution and the condition of the people, especially their health. He also noted that the audience he was addressing was of the highest intelligence, but not one that could compete with the brilliance, the luminescence of this gathering here today. As he knew, the Conservative Party is a grassroots party.

The Spectator

What’s on today at Conservative conference: The Spectator guide

Conservative party conference kicks off today in Manchester with a speech from Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. Michael Gove, Liz Truss and Jacob Rees-Mogg will also be taking part in panels on the main stage. Here are the highlights today: Main agenda: 14.00: Welcome to Conference James Cleverly and Pamela Hall 14.20: Building a Safe and Prosperous Britain Ben Wallace MP, Alok Sharma MP, Liz Truss MP 15.05: Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs speech Dominic Raab MP 15.15: Delivering Brexit Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, Michael Gove MP, Stephen Barclay MP 16.30: Meet the Chairman   Fringe events: 12.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: We must grasp the dangers of cannabis before it’s too late

On judging the judges Sir: The spectacle of judges questioning essentially political decisions is not an edifying one. But we should be slow to dismiss the importance of the role of judicial review. Dr Ekins is justifiably troubled by the escalation of appeals to the Supreme Court in politically sensitive terrain. (‘Judgment day: the danger of courts taking over politics’, 21 September), but there are a number of positive features of this always contentious activity. First, it is the proper responsibility of the judiciary to determine the moral principles which underpin our law and to apply them as they do the law itself. Secondly, judicial review is a powerful check on the tyranny of the majority.

The Spectator

How many people have swum the Channel?

Journey’s end Holidaymakers are being flown home after travel company Thomas Cook failed. The idea might have horrified the company’s eponymous founder, whose first excursion was a temperance outing from Leicester to Loughborough on 5 July 1841, on a charter train from the Midland Railway Company. All 500 tickets were swiftly sold. A holiday from Leicester to Liverpool and North Wales followed in 1845, including several nights in temperance hotels and a night-time ascent of Snowdon. Thomas Cook went on to organise trips to the 1851 Great Exhibition for 150,000 from the Midlands. Financial health A Labour activist and parent of a patient accused the Prime Minister on a visit to a London hospital of ‘destroying’ the NHS.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A Supreme Court ruling, Labour’s messy conference and Donald Trump’s ‘impeachment’

Home Eleven justices of the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that in advising the Queen to prorogue parliament ‘the Prime Minister’s advice to Her Majesty was unlawful, void and of no effect’. This was because the prorogation had ‘the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of parliament to carry out its constitutional functions’. The court was not ‘concerned with the Prime Minister’s motive’. The court cited the Case of Proclamations (1611) to show that the limits of prerogative powers were determined by the courts. The judgment overturned the decision of the High Court that the prorogation should not even be considered by the courts.

The Spectator

The balance of power in our constitution has been lost

Until recently, we used to comfort ourselves with the thought that the United Kingdom’s uncodified constitution was a great national strength. We didn’t need guidance laid down in one document because precedence, compromise and common sense were enough to ensure the smooth operation of power. As soon as a document is written, power passes from democratic institutions to courts where activist judges can interpret these documents in a political way. In Britain, this is not meant to happen. Our legal system has been seen, world over, as politically neutral, one of the most trustworthy in the world. So what are we to make of a Supreme Court granting itself powers over the government? The courts used to refuse to adjudicate political squabbles, so why have they started now?

The Spectator

to 2424: Poem V

The poem is La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats. ATONY (2), CORYZA (3), LOCKJAW (6), ENTERITIS (8) and NEUROMA (13) are examples of WHAT CAN AIL THEE (1A), while AND NO BIRDS SING might be a comment on GOOSE (26), MARABOU (28), CRANE (38) and RAVEN (39). JK, upwards in the tenth column, was to be shaded.   First prize David Threasher, London W5 Runners-up Chris Edwards, Pudsey, Leeds; Mrs J.

Tuesday

The Spectator

Full text: Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech

This is an extraordinary and precarious moment in our country’s history. The Prime Minister has been found to have acted illegally when he tried to shut down parliament.The highest court in the land has found that Boris Johnson broke the law when he tried to shut down democratic accountability at a crucial moment for our public life. The Prime Minister acted illegally when he tried to shut down opposition to his reckless and disastrous plan to crash out of the European Union without a deal. But he has failed. He will never shut down our democracy or silence the voices of the people. The democracy that Boris Johnson describes as a “rigmarole” will not be stifled and the people will have their say. Tomorrow parliament will return.

The Spectator

What’s on today at Labour conference: The Spectator guide | 24 September 2019

There is no love lost between Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson, so the Labour leader will have to grin and bear it as his deputy takes to the stage this afternoon. Here is the pick of today's events in Brighton: Labour events:  8:30: Policy Seminar 9:45: Morning Plenary Session: Tackling The Climate Emergency 12:35: Votes 12:45: Break 14:00: Afternoon Plenary Session: Tackling The Climate Emergency Tom Watson MP Speech 16:45: Policy Seminars 17:20: Votes   Fringe events:  10:30: Students Against Climate Change: What Can We Do? Ambassador, Hilton Brighton Metropole 12:00: Diversity in the Law – Room for Improvement?

Monday

Sunday

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: parliament has a responsibility to stop Brexit

Parliament’s responsibility Sir: I always enjoy reading the intelligent and outspoken Lionel Shriver. But her latest article (14 September) puts forward an invalid argument. As Ms Shriver points out, no one in the USA seriously argued that the disaster of Trump’s election, and the damage it could cause the country, meant the result should be contested. She compares this with the fact that many in the UK want to overturn the EU referendum result; and concludes from this that our political system is ‘broken’. But had an election been fought here, with one party promising Leave and the other Remain, few would be seriously arguing for the overturn of the outcome — whatever it was. Elections are, rightly I believe, taken more seriously than referendums.

The Spectator

How many Britons now vape?

Talking Turkey David Cameron again accused the Leave campaign of ‘lying’ about the prospect of Turkey joining the EU. A reminder of what he himself has said on the subject: — ‘I’m here to make the case for Turkey’s membership. And to fight for it… I will remain your strongest possible advocate for EU membership and for greater influence at the top table of European diplomacy.’ (Speech to Turkish parliament, 2010) — ‘In terms of Turkish membership of the EU, I very much support that. That’s a longstanding position of British foreign policy which I support. We discussed that again in our talks today.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: EU negotiations, genderless babies and Brexit in court

Home ‘I will uphold the constitution, I will obey the law, but we will come out on 31 October,’ Boris Johnson told the BBC, adding that the EU ‘have had a bellyful of all this stuff’. After a lunch of chicken and pollock at the Bouquet Garni in Luxembourg with Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, he found noise from British protesters made it impossible for him to join Xavier Bettel, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, in an open-air press conference, so Mr Bettel continued on his own, gesturing angrily to an empty podium and saying what a ‘nightmare’ of uncertainty Britain had left Europe in.

The Spectator

Why would Britain want to be a member of a club like the EU?

The past three years of agonising non-progress on Brexit have damaged Britain in many ways. Our political institutions have looked ridiculous and, through endless uncertainty, unnerved markets. But we have also learned much about the EU. Its behaviour, and that of its officials, has served to reassure those who were uncertain about their Brexit vote that the UK could never be happy as part of this club. Better to be the EU’s greatest ally than its most reluctant and disruptive member. But post-Brexit relations will be shaped, in no small part, by the process of leaving. The Prime Minister’s trip this week to Luxembourg was a good example of what can go wrong.

Thursday

The Spectator

Does the outcome of the Ashes dictate who wins a general election?

Party speak Should the next Speaker of the House of Commons be a Labour MP on the basis that John Bercow was a Conservative before taking the chair? There has been a tradition in recent decades that the two main parties alternate in filling the role. But it doesn’t go back far — Michael Martin, Labour MP for Glasgow Springburn, succeeded Betty Boothroyd, also Labour, in 2000, not least because the Conservatives had only 165 MPs at the time and didn’t want to lose one. Between 1928 and 1965 a succession of four Speakers had been Conservative MPs. Between 1835 and 1905, by contrast, the Commons had two Whigs followed by four Liberals. Prior to that, four Conservatives were elevated to the Speaker’s chair between 1789 and 1835.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: The Speaker resigns, BA pilots strike and Mugabe dies

Home A bill sponsored by Hilary Benn and supported by Alistair Burt and other dissident Tories was passed — becoming the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019. It commanded the Prime Minister to send by 19 October a letter of stipulated wording to the President of the European Council requesting that the deadline for Britain leaving the EU under Article 50 be extended until 31 January. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said he’d ‘rather be dead in a ditch’ than ask for an extension. The government was twice defeated on a motion for a general election to be held on 15 October. A tearful John Bercow told the Commons he would resign as Speaker on 31 October. Welsh MPs sang at 2 a.m.