Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Sunday

Toby Young Toby Young

There’s space for a new party in Britain, but not for another SDP

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

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What will the Commons do to Brexit next week?

Brexit is back in the Commons next week. As I write in The Sun this morning, two of the big questions are: what will Eurosceptic Tories accept in terms of changes to the backstop and will the Cooper amendment pass. A document circulating among Tory Eurosceptics sets out what MPs should and shouldn’t regard as a meaningful change to the backstop. It warns that assurances from the EU Council would be ‘worthless’ and that changes to the political declaration would be ‘not legally binding’. It says that an interpretative instrument would have, ‘Some legal value’ but ‘would be a face-saver that would be legally pretty meaningless.’ Interestingly, though, it suggests

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

There’s nothing new about the Labour breakaway group

I once came up against Mike Gapes in a fraternal game of five-a-side football played at the Elephant and Castle leisure centre in south London in about 1985. Mike is one of the Labour MPs to have announced their resignation from the Labour party this week, in order to sit as members of the imaginatively named Independent Group. Back then he was something relatively senior in Labour’s Walworth Road HQ, I can’t recall exactly what. The match was between Walworth Road and the researchers and speech writers, of whom I was one, who worked for Neil Kinnock’s shadow cabinet, in the House of Commons. We viewed our Walworth Road comrades

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Where will the Independent Groupies end up?

Where will these nice Independent Groupies end up? If the SDP example applies, they will wander through the political wilderness, some of them coming to rest in existing parties. All the following were in the SDP. Greg Clark is a Tory cabinet minister. Danny Finkelstein is a Tory peer, excellent journalist and wordsmith to David Cameron. Andrew Cooper, the political strategist, is the Conservative Baron Cooper of Windrush. Adair Turner is a crossbencher peer with a quiverful of business and pro-bono positions. Sir Vince Cable is the leader of the Liberal Democrats. They are all likeable, friendly, able and successful men. Yet all of them have a ‘non-tribal’, EU-centred approach

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Andrea Leadsom Edition

28 min listen

Katy Balls talks to Leader of the House of Commons, Andrea Leadsom, about her childhood ambitions to prevent nuclear war, giving birth the night before a selection meeting, and going head to head with John Bercow in the Commons.

Steerpike Steerpike

Andrew Adonis’s case for a second referendum falls flat

It’s Andrew Adonis’s birthday and how better for him to mark the occasion than with a tweet about Brexit? Adonis, who has busied himself as chief cheerleader for the campaign to stop Brexit, took to Twitter today to deliver his verdict on how he thought momentum towards a second referendum had grown beyond all doubt: But Mr S. isn’t convinced that the example he used really helped advance his cause. In the 2016 referendum, Islington was one of the top five strongholds for Remain in the entire country, with 75.2 per cent of voters opting for Britain to stay put in the EU. It seems that in the years since,

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Cabinet ministers look to May for Theresa May’s exit date

Theresa May is currently busy trying to work out a way to get her Brexit deal through Parliament. Should the Prime Minister succeed in the coming weeks, No. 10 will then move to the daunting task of somehow getting all the accompanying legislation through. Both of these tasks are regarded as incredibly difficult yet even if May does succeed on both counts, she will receive little in the way of peace as a reward. Talk in government has already turned to May’s exit date. Although the Prime Minister is technically immune from challenge for a year after winning a December confidence vote, ministers believe she will go before the year

The Spectator

In normal times, the government would be boasting of falling unemployment

At any other time, news that Honda intends to close its Swindon plant in two years’ time with the loss of 3,500 jobs would have been seen for what it is: a tragedy for those affected, their families and businesses it supports. But the story was used by both sides in the Brexit wars to prove their point. Certain Remainers saw it as proof of what leaving the EU will bring, while some Leavers were almost callous in the way they shrugged off the closure. When news like this is being exaggerated for effect, it’s hard to form a clear view of what’s going on. But through the fog, a

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Ian Austin’s refusal to join the Independent Group shows the party is Continuity Remain

Ian Austin has become the ninth MP to quit Labour, blaming the party’s culture of anti-Semitism. He tells the Express and Star: ‘The Labour Party has been my life, so this has been the hardest decision I have ever had to take, but I have to be honest and the truth is that I have become ashamed of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.’ He continues: ‘I am appalled at the offence and distress Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party have caused to Jewish people. It is terrible that a culture of extremism, anti-Semitism and intolerance is driving out good MPs and decent people who have committed their life to mainstream

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Ian Austin quits Labour – but doesn’t join the Independent Group

Here we go again. This morning another Labour MP has announced they are quitting Jeremy Corbyn’s party over its handling of anti-Semitism allegations. Ian Austin – the MP for Dudley North – has told his local paper that he has grown tired of the ‘culture of extremism, anti-Semitism and intolerance’ in today’s Labour party: ‘I think Jeremy Corbyn has completely changed what was a mainstream party into a completely different party with very different values. I always tell them the truth and I could never ask local people to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister.’ Austin’s resignation comes after eight Labour MPs and three Conservatives this week quit their respective parties

Thursday

Peter Jones

Circling around Brexit

It is becoming clearer by the day that Mrs May was right not to consult her colleagues, let alone the Brexit-loathing parliament, on what the withdrawal agreement from the EU should look like. Had she done so, negotiations would never have begun. She must now show similar resolve in bringing matters to ahead. The Romans can show her the way. In 241 bc Rome finally defeated Carthage (in North Africa) in a long drawn-out fight for control of Sicily. In 237 bc Hannibal’s family conquered southern Spain with its silver mines, agricultural wealth and manpower and put themselves in a position to take on Rome again, if necessary. Rome was

Richard Madeley

Diary – 21 February 2019

A choppy week sitting in for Piers Morgan again on Good Morning Britain. One nude studio guest, a sprinkling of prevaricating politicians and an interview with the delightfully direct Dolly Parton. That’s breakfast telly for you. And I love Dolly. Who doesn’t? I’ve met her a few times and she’s as sharp as a tack. Once, mid-interview, she stretched out her legs and considered her shoes. I laughed. ‘You’ve got really tiny feet, haven’t you, Dolly?’ She nodded, adjusting her embonpoint with both hands. ‘Nothing grows in the shade, honey.’ I remember my first interview with a naked person. (You don’t forget that kind of thing.) I was the local paper’s

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 21 February 2019

The BBC reported on Tuesday that the proposed closure of Honda’s plant at Swindon was largely caused by the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. The collapse of ‘just-in-time’ procedures would do for the factory, it said. That’s odd, I thought as I listened: why would you close a whole factory because of something that might very well not happen? Why not wait five more weeks and find out whether or not it will? Sure enough, a few hours later, Honda’s vice-president for Europe said that ‘It’s not a Brexit-related issue for us, it [the decision to close] is being made on … global-related changes.’ Since the entire nature of our departure

Johannes de Jong

For the Dutch, Brexit is a mistake – and a big opportunity

An advert in the Netherlands features a hairy beast warning about the looming departure of Britain from the EU. Move over Project Fear, this is Project Fur: a campaign aimed at urging businesses to brace themselves for a no-deal Brexit. So what do the Dutch make of the big blue Brexit monster? While the British media has been busy laughing at photos of the muppet-like creature straddling a desk as the Dutch foreign minister watches on, the truth is that this campaign has actually passed many people by. This is a shame: there are good reasons for Dutch folk to worry about the impact of an acrimonious Brexit. Such an outcome would

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories must temper their Brexit passions – or pay the price

There is a great opportunity in front of the Tories. As I say in the magazine this week, there’s 12 more years in power for the taking for them because of the split in the Labour party. But seizing this opportunity will require the Tories to temper their passions on Brexit. There are two Brexit outcomes that would be electorally disastrous for the Tories: no Brexit and no deal. No Brexit would be catastrophic because the Tories would have failed to deliver on the referendum result. The last two and a bit years would have been for naught and a pro-Brexit party would take huge chunks out of the Tories’

Robert Peston Robert Peston

The nine ministers who could quit if May doesn’t rule out no deal

On my show last night, the Home Secretary Sajid Javid captured why nine of his ministerial colleagues have told the Prime Minister they may have to resign next week (though he won’t be joining them). Javid said that a no-deal Brexit would be damaging for the UK, that he didn’t want it, that the risk of it had increased but that there was no way to stop it. Well four cabinet ministers and five junior ministers agree on everything but that last point. In two separate meetings with the PM on Monday, they told her that either she has to agree to ask the EU to delay Brexit, if it

Steerpike Steerpike

Stephen Kinnock: who is Derek Hatton?

Derek Hatton’s journey from Militant councillor to not-quite Labour member has been something of a rollercoaster in recent days. After being banned for 32 years for being part of the Militant tendency, it was revealed that Hatton had been readmitted to the party on Monday. Two days later, Labour said that he had been suspended once again – pending an investigation into a tweet he sent in 2012. One person who clearly hasn’t been following the twists and turns of Hatton’s story though is the Labour MP for Aberavon, Stephen Kinnock. In an interview on Newsnight last night, Kinnock was asked by Kirsty Wark what he thought about Hatton’s readmittance,

Robert Peston Robert Peston

The offer Chuka Umunna made to the prime minister

I learned two fascinating things about the Labour and Tory refuseniks in The Independent Group from my guests on the Peston show last night (at 11.05 on ITV) – though quite how much of it made it on to the show I am not sure, because we had a hard stop at the end of a jam-packed episode. First Gavin Shuker told me that he and Chuka Umunna and other MPs still in the Labour Party made an offer to the PM after she lost the meaningful Brexit vote in January that they would support her in office for at least a year and vote for her Brexit deal if

Peter Oborne

Modi’s operandi

 Islamabad Six months into Imran Khan’s premiership and the new Pakistan prime minister has been plunged into his first major foreign crisis. Last week, a suicide bomber attacked Indian soldiers in Kashmir, killing more than 40 paramilitary troops. Simultaneously, another suicide attack massacred 27 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard near the Pakistani border of Iran’s troubled Sistan and Baluchestan Province. Khan has spent the early months of his premiership attempting to strengthen links with neighbours. He stretched out the hand of friendship to India. He opened the Kartarpur corridor to allow the visa-free passage of Sikh pilgrims. He has warmed up Pakistan’s old alliance with Iran, while working hard to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Splitting headache

The first thing to note about the ‘South Bank seven’ is that they are nothing like the four former Labour cabinet ministers who split the party in 1981, forming the SDP. The Gang of Four were national figures who between them had held every major office of state, bar the top job. Most of the MPs who announced from a swish venue on the South Bank that they were quitting Labour to set up a new outfit have little to no public profile. They’re more likely to be an answer on Pointless than stopped in the street for a photo. While the most well-known member, Chuka Umunna, has high ambitions