The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Red handed

The world is a better place for China’s emergence from behind the bamboo curtain where it hid for half a century. Economic and market reforms have led to the greatest reduction of poverty in world history. For some western manufacturers, competition from low-cost China has sometimes proved fatal, yet the overall economic effect has been beneficial, helping to deliver years of global growth without the inflation which once acted quickly to snuff out the boom times. All this arouses a protectionist backlash, especially in America, but the American case against Huawei, the largest Chinese tech company, shows how many of these concerns are well-grounded.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 January 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off to seek a change to the Irish backstop of the EU withdrawal agreement after the Commons voted by 317 to 301 for a government-backed amendment by Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, proposing unnamed ‘alternative arrangements’. Mrs May said there was ‘limited appetite for such a change in the EU’ and hardly had the words passed her lips before Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, said: ‘The withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.’ An amendment by Dame Caroline Spelman to rule out no deal passed 318 to 310, but lacked legal force.

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2390: Tea Shop

The theme word is GRASS (for which the title is a cryptic clue). 1A, 1D, 6 and 37 are informers; 28, 29, 33 and 39 are types of grass; 8A, 15, 22 and 26 are German Nobel literature laureates.   First prize Mrs R.J.C.

The Spectator

On political tribalism

From The Spectator, No. 152, 24 July 1711: There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of vision that rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers to one another, than if they were actually two different nations… A furious party-spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancour, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion and humanity.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 24 January 2019

Autistic freedom Sir: Jonathan Mitchell, an autistic writer, argues that autism is an affliction and that a cure should be found (‘The dangers of “neurodiversity”’, 19 January). When my son was diagnosed I would have agreed with him, but I disagree strongly now. My son’s autism comes with real challenges, but I value the ways it’s helped him become a thoroughly decent person: he doesn’t lie, it wouldn’t occur to him to be nasty and he’s totally logical. Surely, the world needs more people like him, not fewer. As Mr Mitchell says, the autism spectrum is huge, encompassing people who can’t communicate, who are locked in a sensory hell and need a high level of care, often for conditions that are not part of their autism.

The Spectator

The Brexit vacuum

If knighthoods could be removed by vote of parliament, Sir James Dyson would be first in line. Knighted for being one of Britain’s most celebrated entrepreneurs, he backed Brexit — only to decide this week to scarper to lower-taxed Singapore. To Sam Gyimah, a former Tory minister, it is a ‘betrayal of the public’. To Labour’s shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, it exposes a ‘culture of short-termism’ in British business. To the Lib Dem Layla Moran, it is an act of ‘staggering hypocrisy’. This response encapsulates a failure to understand the economically liberal case for Brexit. The truth is that Brexit, in and of itself, will do very little for Britain. It brings new powers.

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Portrait of the week | 24 January 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, having survived a parliamentary vote of no confidence, came to the Commons with an amended plan for Brexit which would entail changing the Irish backstop agreement with the European Union. Otherwise Plan B looked very much like the Plan A that had been defeated by a majority of 230 a week earlier. There would now be a vote on 29 January, with Labour putting down an amendment that could open the way for another referendum. Amonportg British MPs there was a good deal of plotting in the wind. Margaritis Schinas, the European Commission’s chief spokesman, said that in the case of a no-deal Brexit, ‘I think it’s pretty obvious — you will have a hard border’ with the Irish Republic.

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to 2389: All change

The paired unclued lights are anagrams of one another, most being symmetrically arranged; 2/21, 5/23, 12/41, 15/25, 19D/20.   First prize Alan Peevers, Manchester Runners-up Martin Dey, Hoylandswaine, S.

Saturday

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Raw and noisy debate is exactly how laws should be made

An unexpected outcome of the tortuous process of Brexit negotiations has been the enhancement of Britain’s reputation as a parliamentary democracy. For many years, it has seemed as if political debate was draining away to the TV and radio studios, or even to social media — with MPs reduced to simply rubber-stamping decisions which have already been made elsewhere. This week, the Commons reasserted its authority in the most dramatic way imaginable, inflicting the largest ever government defeat on a substantive motion. The rejection of the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal is a humiliation on a scale which confounded the government’s attempts at expectation-management. To Mrs May’s credit, she immediately conceded that MPs must decide what happens next.

Thursday

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Barometer | 17 January 2019

Turkey and the deep state Boris Johnson said that if Brexit was blocked, the public would blame it on the ‘deep state’. The expression comes from the Turkish Derin Devlet — coined to express the conspiracy of military, police, intelligence bodies and even organised criminals which many Turks believed were operating against their democratically elected government. It made its way into the English language in the 1990s when Kurdish separatists were threatening to declare independence. While there is little doubt that police and the military were involved in the underhand suppression of Kurdish insurgents, their efforts did not support the existence of a well-organised secret government.

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Letters | 17 January 2019

The straight dope Sir: Much of the media and a large part of the political class in Britain seem to have fallen completely for the propaganda of one of the biggest greed lobbies in the world, the billionaire-backed campaign for cannabis legalisation. Articles such as the one by Robert Jackman (‘Homegrown industry’, 12 January) suggest that marijuana is a benign drug, and make vague claims for its supposed medical benefits. Yet across the world, as Alex Berenson’s new book on the subject, Tell Your Children, shows, worrying developments are correlated with this poorly researched, expensively hyped and brilliantly spun adventure.

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Portrait of the week | 17 January 2019

Home Brexit threw politics into unpredictable chaos. The government was defeated by an unparalleled majority of 230 — 432 to 202 — on the withdrawal agreement it had negotiated with the EU. The result was greeted by cheers from demonstrators outside the House, both those in favour and those against Brexit. Labour tabled a motion of no confidence for the following day. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said in the House after the vote: ‘The House has spoken and this government will listen.’ She said she would talk to senior parliamentarians and that the government would return to the House on Monday with proposals. This arrangement was in line with a business amendment by Dominic Grieve that the Speaker had allowed the week before.

The Spectator

Rude health

An unexpected outcome of the tortuous process of Brexit negotiations has been the enhancement of Britain’s reputation as a parliamentary democracy. For many years, it has seemed as if political debate was draining away to the TV and radio studios, or even to social media — with MPs reduced to simply rubber-stamping decisions which have already been made elsewhere. This week, the Commons reasserted its authority in the most dramatic way imaginable, inflicting the largest ever government defeat on a substantive motion. The rejection of the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal is a humiliation on a scale which confounded the government’s attempts at expectation-management. To Mrs May’s credit, she immediately conceded that MPs must decide what happens next.

Monday

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Where every Tory MP stands on Brexit: the full list

As things stand, it looks inevitable that Theresa May's Brexit deal will be defeated in the House of Commons on Tuesday, but what happens afterwards is the great unknown. While a number of MPs have voiced their opposition to May's deal and no deal, the majority still have not made clear what they would support in its place. And unless there is a parliamentary majority for another option, Britain will leave the EU on 29 March without a deal by default. So what is there a majority for in the Commons? In an attempt to find out, Coffee House has compiled the public Brexit position of every single Tory MP. Their views have been split into five different categories: supporting May's deal, no deal, a second referendum, Norway, or 'Undeclared’.

Thursday

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Letters | 10 January 2019

The changing EU Sir: If, as Frederik Erixon writes, ‘there is a strange pre-revolutionary atmosphere in Brussels’ and ‘power will be handed back from Brussels to the nation states’ (‘The Last Heave’, 5 January), isn’t this what we have wanted and shouldn’t we delay our Brexit negotiations in order to see what happens? The Brexiteers have always said that the EU, its immigration policies and the euro are not sustainable. After the elections across Europe in 2019 the forces for change will be greater than David Cameron found. Surely we need to combine with other like-minded nations, as we have done in the past, to strengthen the forces demanding change rather than walking away, leaving us unable to influence what happens in Europe?

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Rise above it

For several weeks now, a group of anti-Brexit protesters have found a way of regularly appearing on television news. They wave banners and chant slogans and try to disturb politicians being interviewed. Most MPs take it in good part. Jacob Rees-Mogg even expressed his admiration for those able to shout ‘Stop Brexit’ in a way that is picked up by microphones a hundred yards away. But when pro-Brexit protesters called Anna Soubry a Nazi, dozens of MPs wrote to the police asking them to intervene. The police issued new guidelines to officers. Broadcasters have been conducting interviews with politicians on the green outside parliament for decades. Protesters have rarely interfered. That they do so now on a daily basis is a reflection of the coarsening of political debate.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 10 January 2019

Home The government drifted towards a vote by the Commons, which it had cancelled in December, on its withdrawal agreement from the EU. British and European officials discussed extending the period under Article 50 before Britain leaves the EU, which would otherwise come into effect on 29 March. ‘We’re continuing to work on further assurances, on further undertakings from the European Union in relation to the concern that’s been expressed by parliamentarians,’ Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said. She even invited groups of MPs for a drink at 10 Downing Street to court their votes. The government was defeated by 303 votes to 296 on a cross-party amendment to the Finance Bill to limit tax-raising powers for no-deal preparations unless authorised by Parliament.