Politics

Today’s Cabinet was not a happy affair. I’m told that Liam Fox, Gavin Williamson and Andrea Leadsom all made clear their grave concerns about the Government’s new strategy. There was considerable anger at Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke for how they have heaped pressure on May to offer this vote on a delay if the meaningful vote fails on the 12th of March. Liz Truss labelled them ‘kamikaze Cabinet Ministers’ and Andrea Leadsom was, I’m told, audibly furious. Brandon Lewis, Julian Smith, Jeremy Wright, Damian Hinds and James Brokenshire all criticised the way this trio had behaved. Michael Gove asked how May would whip in the vote on

Let us consider the gravity of Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement that Labour will push for a second referendum. In siding with the so-called People’s Vote lobby, Corbyn has betrayed Labour’s traditional working-class base, who tend to favour leaving the EU. He has betrayed his party’s own manifesto in the 2017 general election, which promised to respect the outcome of the referendum. He has betrayed his old Labour mentors, most notably his hero Tony Benn, who was the left’s most articulate critic of the EU. And he has betrayed himself. He has betrayed his own longstanding and correct belief that the EU is an illiberal, undemocratic, anti-worker outrage of an institution. Has

Sorry. I just don’t believe it. The conviction of George Pell – still Cardinal Pell – last December, on which reporting restrictions are lifted today, isn’t credible; he’s appealing against it. Fiat Justitia and all that, but the problem with the rerun of this bizarre trial on five counts of child abuse in 1996 is that the implausibilities of the case against the Cardinal are as great as ever – in his first trial, the Catholic News Agency reported the jury was divided 10-2 in Pell’s favour. Here is what Pell was accused of: “The complainant said that he and another choir boy left the liturgical procession at the end of

Chuka Umunna – I cannot vote to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister After a week which has seen 11 MPs leave their parties, Sophy Ridge interviewed Chuka Umunna, once seen as one of Labour’s rising stars, about why he had decided to quit: CU: After really soul-searching on this issue, can I, in all conscience, say that I want to make Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister? And the team around him, put them in charge of our national security? At the 2017 general election, let’s just be honest, nobody thought that was going to be a prospect. At a future general election, it could be a prospect and in all conscience

When it comes to Brexit, the New York Times has a track record in prophesying doom and gloom. Last year, the paper’s coverage included the suggestion that everyone in London was eating boiled mutton and porridge until a few years ago and that nervous citizens are stockpiling food for a Brexit emergency, Mr S. is saddened but not surprised to report that the Times is still at it. And this week, the paper hit new heights of fantasy. ‘Roads gridlocked with trucks. Empty supermarket shelves. An economy thrown into paralysis,’ a would-be novelist named Scott Reyburn wrote earlier this week. His story, ‘As Brexit Looms, the Art World Prepares for the Fallout’, was recycled as

I was 17 when the Labour party last split, in January 1981, and for a variety of reasons got quite caught up in the moment. It was partly because my father, the author of the 1945 Labour manifesto, was close to the Gang of Four — the original band of defectors — and was one of a hundred people named as supporters of the breakaway group in a full-page ad in the Guardian. But really I was just swept up by the general enthusiasm for the new party that seemed to affect vast swaths of the middle classes. If you recoiled from the economic policies of the Conservative government, which