Politics

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

Thursday

3 Dec 2015

Steerpike

Introducing Sajid Javid — the cyber-sadist

Although David Cameron recently made a promise to make broadband available to everyone in Britain, not everyone in his cabinet appears to be so on-message. Speaking at yesterday’s UK Israel Tech Hub event at Wayra Telefonica Accelerator’s HQ, Sajid Javid disclosed the preferred method of punishment that operates in his own household: ‘I’ll start by saying this, when I was a kid and my parents wanted to punish me if I’d been a naughty boy, they’d say “right that’s it, you’re not going to be allowed to play cricket anymore” and now that I’ve got kids of my own, my way of punishing them if they are naughty is to

Ed West

So governments can control the weather, but not our borders?

Niall Ferguson wrote a piece recently comparing Europe’s situation to that of the Roman Empire during its late, decadent, sexual pervert days: Here is how Edward Gibbon described the Goths’ sack of Rome in August 410AD: “ … In the hour of savage licence, when every passion was inflamed, and every restraint was removed … a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; and … the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies … Whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless…”. Now, does that not describe the scenes we witnessed in Paris on Friday night?

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the real victims of climate change and the oddballs in youth politics

Are the elderly and poor the real victims of climate change? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, presented by Isabel Hardman, Matt Ridley and Michael Jacobs debate the Paris climate change conference and whether politicians are too concerned about protecting ‘our grandchildren’. What is the point of this conference and will anything be achieved? Are attitudes towards the environment changing? James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson also discuss the Labour party’s civil war over the Syria airstrikes and whether this will help Dan Jarvis’ leadership chances. How much has the party damaged its reputation over national security? Is Jeremy Corbyn still safe as Labour leadership or will moderates in the party try

Freddy Gray

Yesterday’s vote wasn’t about Syria’s war. It was about Labour’s

Parliament is always in a way a comedy of vanity. Yesterday it was a narcissistic farce. Our elected representatives spent ten hours making the same unconvincing points over and over again. The standard of speaking was poor because nobody had much worth saying. The pro-bombers kept arguing that we had to stand with our allies, and that Isis was horrid. The anti-bombers urged us not to make another tragic mistake in the Middle East. And everybody had to say how they felt personally — as if personal feelings are more important than right or wrong. Yet all the MPs knew deep down that Britain’s intervention in the Syrian conflict would be so small-scale as

Brendan O’Neill

Hilary Benn’s speech was just a shallow historical re-enactment

What’s with the orgy of fawning over Hilary Benn’s Syria speech? It was eloquent, yes, but content-wise it reminded me of those historical re-enactment shebangs where sad men in their fifties try to inject meaning into their lives by pretending to be a Viking in a field for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon. Only instead of donning archaic armour and a horned helmet, Benn and his overnight Bennites – those currently clogging up Twitter with wild claims that his speech was the best oration since the Gettysburg Address – are wrapping themselves in the moral garb of the mid-20th century warriors against Nazi Germany. Benn’s speech, and

Steerpike

Breaking: Stan Collymore joins the SNP

This morning the 66 Labour MPs who voted in favour of airstrikes on Syria — ignoring the pleas of their leader Jeremy Corbyn — have woken up to deselection threats from the hard-left as they stand accused of being warmongers. On top of this, there is another burden they must bear: they have driven Stan Collymore out of the Labour party. In what will no doubt be a devastating loss to the Labour party, the former footballer — who issued a public apology in 1998 after he attacked his then-girlfriend Ulrika Jonsson — has cut up his membership card after discovering that a number of Labour MPs voted in favour of airstrikes: https://twitter.com/StanCollymore/status/672189903308984320 In need of a

Sebastian Payne

Can Leave.EU control its members? This video suggests not

A bizarre video has been released on the YouTube channel of Leave.EU, one of the campaigns vying for the official Brexit nomination. It was entitled ‘We Are At War Again’ and tweeted through its official account – before it was swiftly taken offline. Coffee House has received a copy of the video. You can watch it above. In the video, Ireland is labelled ‘The Balkans’ and countries in the Middle East are labelled a ‘bunch of foreigners’ and ‘f*ck knows’. The Leave.EU campaign say this is not an official video and it was uploaded to its website by one of its 350,000 ‘users’. A Leave.EU spokesman says: ‘It was a video produced in February this

Douglas Murray

Strange young things

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreendelusion/media.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray and Steph Smith discuss whether all young politicians are oddballs” startat=1130] Listen [/audioplayer]Whenever the curtain is pulled back on youthful political activism, the picture is ugly. Three years ago, in Young, Bright and On the Right, the BBC followed students at Oxbridge fighting like vipers to get ahead in their university Conservative clubs. Along with the inevitable three-piece suits, wildly invented accents and endless talk of what ‘the party’ expected, there was also that characteristic lack of awareness that ‘the party’, like the rest of the world, remained largely indifferent to them. Now the suicide of a 21-year-old called Elliott Johnson has brought this world back

James Forsyth

After Labour’s Syria shambles, step forward Major Dan

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreendelusion/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson discuss Labour’s civil war over Syria airstrikes” startat=700] Listen [/audioplayer]It makes no sense for Britain to bomb Islamic State in Iraq but not Syria. Attacking a group that does not respect international borders on only one side of a border makes no strategic or military sense. From the Prime Minister down, government ministers are acutely aware of this absurdity. That is why they have been so keen to gain the Commons’ permission to extend the strikes to Syria. Yet this week Westminster has been gripped, not by the strategic case for taking the fight to Islamic State in Syria, but by the effect

Nick Cohen

The Corbyn crack-up

Jeremy Corbyn is a rarity among politicians. All his enemies are on his own side. For the Tories, Ukip and the SNP, Corbyn is a dream made real. They could not love him more. As the riotous scenes at the shadow cabinet and parliamentary Labour party meetings this week showed, his colleagues see Corbyn and John McDonnell as modern Leninists who are mobilising their cadres to purge all dissidents from the party. Conversations with Corbyn’s aides show a gentler side to the new regime, however. They suggest the Corbynistas are unlikely to be able to control Labour MPs when they can barely control themselves. ‘Chaos’ was the word that came

Wednesday

2 Dec 2015

Sebastian Payne

Podcast special: Syria airstrikes and Hilary Benn’s extraordinary speech

The House of Commons has voted to carry out airstrikes in Syria this evening by a majority of 174, but today’s debate has been overshadowed by an incredible speech from Hilary Benn. In this View from 22 podcast special, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the implications of the Commons vote and what the shadow foreign secretary’s address means for the Labour party. Has Benn challenged Corbyn’s authority with his barnstorming speech that has won praise from all parties? How long will the glow last? Did Benn inspire the large number of Labour rebels? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week,

James Forsyth

How the shadow Cabinet voted

A majority of the shadow Cabinet voted with Jeremy Corbyn tonight in opposing extending air strikes against Islamic State to Syria. But 11 members of it voted for bombing Islamic State in Syria. Here’s the full list: Against: Jeremy Corbyn Jon Ashworth Jon Trickett John Healey Lisa Nandy Kerry McCarthy Andy Bunrham Diane Abbott Catherine McKinnell Ian Murray Lilian Greenwood John McDonnell Seema Malhotra Nia Griffith Kate Green Owen Smith For Hilary Benn Tom Watson Angela Eagle Gloria de Piero Michael Dugher Maria Eagle Lucy Powell Heidi Alexander Luciana Berger Chris Bryant Vernon Coaker The chief whip Rosie Winterton, contrary to earlier reports, abstained.

James Forsyth

Commons votes to bomb Islamic State in Syria

British airstrikes against Islamic State will be extended to Syria after the House of Commons voted strongly in favour of the government ‘s motion tonight. The government had a majority of 174, enabling David Cameron to claim that he has the consensus backing for bombing IS in Syria that he has long craved. 67 Labour MPs voted in favour of strikes, which was higher than expected this morning. But Hilary Benn’s remarkable impassioned speech, the finest I’ve heard in the Commons, swayed at least one wavering Labour MP—Stella Creasy voting for, having previously been undecided and facing huge constituency pressure against action. Thought, it was worth noting that the government

Isabel Hardman

Hilary Benn’s Syria speech was passionate, spellbinding – and historic

After 10 reasonably dismal hours, Hilary Benn has just given a truly historic speech in the House of Commons. (Here’s the full text.) The Shadow Foreign Secretary garnered loud applause and an emotional waving of order papers from members across the house. His colleagues tell me he wrote much of it while sitting on the frontbench in the Commons during the debate. Benn made the only truly spellbinding argument in the whole of this largely unimpressive debate. He ran through why he believed that the conditions for action had been met, appealing as he spoke to Labour’s heritage. He was furious and passionate but impressively generous towards the man who claims

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn gives his half of the Labour response to Syria

By the time Jeremy Corbyn got to his feet in today’s debate on action in Syria, the House of Commons was in a fractious mood, with interventions from MPs focusing as much on the Labour party as the issue up for debate. The Labour leader did not find much support from his own side, either, with a number of pro-intervention MPs frowning and muttering as he ploughed on with his speech. Hilary Benn appeared to be grinding his teeth during much of the response. It opened, inevitably, with a man who could quite reasonably be described as a ‘terrorist sympathiser’, given his dealings with the IRA and his ‘friends’ in

Sam Leith

While ‘Daesh’ prepare to fight, MPs debate how to hurt their feelings

Today in the Commons the Tory backbencher Rehman Chishti asked: “Will the Prime Minister join me in urging the BBC to review their bizarre policy; when they wrote to me to say that they can’t use the word Daesh because it would breach their impartiality rules? We are at war with terrorists, Prime Minister. We have to defeat their ideology, their appeal. We have to be united in that. Will he join me now in urging the BBC to review their bizarre policy?” https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/cameron-on-what-to-call-isis David Cameron positively purred: “I agree with my honourable friend. I’ve already corresponded with the BBC about their use of IS—Islamic State—which I think is even

James Forsyth

David Cameron’s ill-advised remark has undermined his whole approach in the Syria debate

The House of Commons is not rising to the occasion today. David Cameron’s opening speech in the Syria today was dominated by repeated interventions demanding that he apologise for talking about ‘terrorist sympathisers’ in the Labour party yesterday. Cameron said that there was ‘honour’ in voting either way in this debate. But he wouldn’t apologise; I suspect because he remembers those murdered by the IRA and what the shadow Chancellor said in the eighties about the ‘ballot, the bullet and the bomb’. But Cameron’s ill-judged remark last night undercut his whole planned approach today. Cameron wanted to strike a humble, consensual tone; emphasising how the motion had been shaped by

The Spectator

The best speeches from the Syria airstrikes debate

Welcome to Coffee House’s coverage of the Syria debate in the House of Commons yesterday. Here are the best speeches in favour of and against the motion, with full quotes and audio clips. 10:15pm: The foreign secretary Philip Hammond has closed the debate on behalf of the government, making the case for the airstrikes: 9:45pm: Shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn has delivered a rousing speech in favour of the airstrikes that received huge applause from both sides of the Commons. There was a standing ovation for Benn, led by former Tory Cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell from Tory backbenches. Quite extraordinary. 9:10pm: former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer has said he is voting against airstrikes, although he

James Forsyth

There are two strong reasons why the UK should join Syrian airstrikes

There is a war in Syria already. Islamic State’s headquarters in Raqqa are already being bombed on a regular basis. These facts are all too frequently forgotten in our debate about whether to extend airstrikes against Islamic State to Syria. But that we would not be the first country to strike Raqqa is not a reason to sit on the side-lines. To my mind, there are two particularly strong reasons for the UK joining the coalition attacking IS in Syria. The first is our obligations as an ally. Post the Paris attacks, the French President has made a direct plea for our help. Imagine how we would feel if Islamic

Sebastian Payne

David Cameron will be kicking himself for calling Corbyn and co ‘terrorist sympathisers’

Today’s debate and vote on airstrikes in Syria has already descended into name calling. At last night’s meeting of Conservative MPs, David Cameron reportedly urged his party to vote for the airstrikes because: ‘You should not be walking through the lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers’ It’s a line that echoes the Tories’ prior attacks on Corbyn as a threat to Britain’s national security, as well as and the Prime Minister’s accusation in his conference speech this year that the Labour leader ‘hates’ Britain. On a day which was set to be about ideas and arguments, and not personalities, Cameron’s remarks have provided ammunition for Corbyn and his New