British Politics Thread

The Labour Party clashed with business groups on Monday after setting out a left-wing economic agenda aimed at boosting their chances of winning power by re-engaging with working class voters who backed leaving the European Union.

Finance spokesman John McDonnell, a veteran socialist, said Labour would raise the minimum wage, change company law to prevent firms taking on excessive debts to benefit shareholders, and redouble efforts to eradicate tax avoidance.

The agenda, which also included pledges to borrow more, reintroduce collective bargaining on a sector-by-sector basis and promote more employee-ownership, met with a chilly reception from business lobbying groups.

Labour re-elected leader Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday following a failed attempt to oust him after the EU referendum. Having won an increased mandate, he is set on shifting the party further to the left, away from the pro-business centre ground that delivered it its last spell in power between 1997 and 2010.

"We will rewrite the rules to the benefit of working people on taxes, on investment, and how our economic institutions work," McDonnell told the party's annual conference in the northern English city of Liverpool.

Predicting a snap election next year, Labour is using the conference to outline plans to win back the voters who abandoned the party at a 2015 election and spurned the political establishment by backing Brexit.

Business groups reacted with caution. The British Chamber of Commerce said Labour "must remember that the state cannot control every aspect of economic or business life and stay competitive in a global economy."

McDonnell also said Labour wanted to use low interest rates to borrow 100 billion pounds and leverage it to create a 250-billion-pound fund focussed on reviving manufacturing.

He has previously said Britain needs 500 billion pounds of infrastructure investment over the next 10 years, pledging to increase direct government spending by 250 billion pounds.

Backed by trade unions and historically the party of Britain's working classes, Labour's support in former industrial regions in northern and central England has fallen, undermining their hopes of winning parliamentary elections.

Britain, now governed by the centre-right Conservatives, is not scheduled to hold a national election until 2020, but Labour says the Brexit vote will push Prime Minister Theresa May to call one sooner. May has said she has no need to do so.

McDonnell said a Labour government would take a much more active role in protecting and developing industries such as steel production, which is under threat from high energy costs and Chinese oversupply.

He said the approach would see the government working "hand-in-hand" with businesses to guide research and development spending and help nurture new technologies.

Tensions over immigration could “explode” into riots, Labour MP Rachel Reeves warned today as she described her constituency as a “tinder box”.

The Leeds West MP gave the prediction as she urged her party to listen to people’s concerns over immigration.

Reeves is one of a number of Labour M Ps in the past few weeks to call for freedom of movement to be scrapped as part of any Brexit deal between the EU and the UK.

She said that claims she was “Red Ukip” for calling for the change were “really insulting.”

After speaking about the economic impact of the Brexit negotiations at a fringe meeting at Labour conference this afternoon, Reeves said: “The other reason we have got to get this right is because there are bubbling tensions in this country that I just think could explode.

“You had those riots in 2011, the riots didn’t happen in Leeds and in my constituency, but if riots started again in Leeds and bits of my constituency – it’s like a tinder box.”

Reeves said that since the referendum there had been “three racist attacks” in her constituency – one of which left a Polish man in hospital.

She added: “The trouble is I’m just not surprised and if we don’t get this right in terms of this response, and getting the balance right in terms of the renegotiation but also the deeper seated problems, these sort of things are just going to get worse.

“I worry about the economy and getting the deal right and all the rest of it, but I worry about the divisions in our society. Of course the referendum unleashed some of these feelings, but they are deeper seated as well.”

While Reeves and a growing number of her colleagues want the current free movement rules to be axed, other Labour M Ps are defending the principle.

This morning Shadow Health Secretary Diane Abbott told delegates that “an end to freedom of movement could be a disaster for the NHS.”

Reeves argued that most people recognise that Britain has benefited from immigration and that “most people who come to this country put in more than they take out.”

She added: “But they still have concerns, and they are legitimate concerns and we have to talk about them openly and frankly. A former MP said a couple of days ago that myself and a couple of other M Ps were now Red Ukip and that was really insulting. I am Labour, I love this party and I love this movement.

Reeves ended with a warning to Labour activists: “If we just say that people are wrong and we want to continue being a member of the European Union and its good for us as a country and those are the facts, we are never going to win an election again and we don’t deserve to.”

Reacting to Reeves’ comments, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron told the HuffPost UK: “The Britain I know is an open, decent and tolerant place. We have always been a beacon of hope for those in need. That is the Liberal outlook of the world.

“People in the progressive wing of politics must not be fanning the flames of division and should be making the case – loudly and clearly - that people are welcome in our communities and make a real positive difference. If people want to walk away from that,that is their call, I won’t.”

Natalie McGarry, the MP for Glasgow East, has been charged with embezzlement after a 10-month police investigation.

Police Scotland’s inquiry related to allegations that she was linked to tens of thousands of pounds in missing donations from Women for Independence (WFI), the campaign group she helped found.

McGarry’s solicitor Aamer Anwar confirmed that the MP, who withdrew from the SNP whip last November when the allegations surfaced, attended an interview with Police Scotland on a voluntary basis on Tuesday morning.

She was detained and questioned.

Anwar said: “Following this interview she was charged with several offences, including the embezzlement of funds, breach of trust, and offences under the Scottish Referendum Act 2013.”

“She will be released today and will be the subject of a report to the procurator fiscal.”

McGarry has previously denied any wrongdoing. Her arrest and charge raises the possibility of a byelection in her seat, one of the key battlegrounds in the 2015 general election.

WFI was founded in 2012 by a group of activists to promote women’s voices across the referendum debate. The group’s national committee identified an apparent discrepancy between its income and expenditure at the end of 2015 and referred the matter to the police.

McGarry, who has described the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, as a role model and campaigned for her in Glasgow’s south side, rose to prominence in the party when she fought and lost a bruising byelection in Cowdenbeath at the start of 2014. During the Scottish referendum campaign she was a regular critic of sexist abuse online and became a well-regarded advocate for women’s concerns. Her selection to contest the key Labour/SNP battleground of Glasgow East marked her out as one the SNP’s most promising new candidates.

She was elected in May, overturning the then shadow Scottish secretary Margaret Curran’s 11,840 majority and becoming one of 56 SNP MPs returned to Westminster in a landslide victory for the party. She was later appointed shadow spokesperson on disabilities.

Since the referendum, WFI has carved out a permanent position in Scottish civic society, campaigning on a range of issues, including successfully opposing the building of a women’s super-prison this year. It has more than 50 affiliated groups across Scotland, many of which are working on refugee rights and food poverty.

Sadiq Khan has said City Hall is planning to create a separate work permit system for London following Britain’s exit from the EU.

The London Mayor, who has previously urged the government to delay triggering Article 50, reportedly said plans for a tailored deal on immigration into post-Brexit London are being discussed with the chancellor Phillip Hammond, the Brexit secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

Mr Khan told Sky News on Tuesday that a group of business representatives were looking to create “a model that will ensure we can carry on recruiting and attracting talent”, following worries Brexit may cause an exodus of workers and businesses from the capital.

He said he is due to meet with Prime Minister Theresa May to discuss London’s stake in any Brexit deal.

"We are talking to business leaders, businesses, business representatives to see what we can do to make sure London doesn't lose out on the talent, the innovation the partnership that has let us be the greatest City in the world,” said Mr Khan.

"The good news is the Government gets it. The good news is in all the conversations I've had with members of the Government, from the Chancellor to the Brexit Secretary to the Foreign Secretary and others in Government, I think they get it.

"I'll be meeting the Prime Minister soon to discuss our issues but I think the Government recognises it is in nobody's interests for us to get a bad deal with the EU."

On the other, given the desiccated nature of the event inside and the enduring notion that you are nothing in public life if people can’t manufacture a security threat around you, it did rather give the impression of the Labour conference being somewhere too irrelevant to even dream of attacking. You’d have had more trouble getting into a league football ground. A conference headed for the Conference? I leave it to you to decide. You can only live your truth, after all.

Theresa May repeatedly tried to interfere with a crucial Government report to put a negative slant on the effects of immigration ahead of the EU referendum, it has been alleged.

The former Home Secretary is accused of playing up the significance of “benefits tourism” - EU nationals coming to the UK to live on welfare - despite reliable evidence that it was only a “small-scale problem”.

Ms May also removed figures supporting EU immigration from the report, according to Liberal Democrat advisers working in the then Coalition Government.

The allegations have come to light after internal emails among Lib Dem immigration experts dating back to 2014 were leaked to The Guardian.

Referring to evidence from the Department of Work and Pensions - that benefits tourism was not a major issue - one adviser said: “My impression is that Conservative secretaries of state are determined not to admit this.”

A large amount of evidence supporting free movement was purportedly removed from the report under the Conservative minister’s leadership, including a report by UCL that found EU migrants were 58 per cent less likely to live in social housing.

The government has been forced by a senior judge to reveal secret legal arguments for refusing to let parliament decide when and how the UK should withdraw from the European Union.

In a preliminary victory for those challenging Theresa May’s power to trigger Brexit, a high court judge, Mr Justice Cranston, has swept aside restrictions on publishing official documents before the hearing on 13 October.

In the released documents, lawyers for the government argue that it is “constitutionally impermissible” for parliament to be given the authority rather than the prime minister and dismiss any notion that the devolved nations – Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales – will have any say in the process.

They add: “The appropriate point at which the UK should begin the procedure required by article 50 [of the European Union treaty] to give effect to [notifying the UK’s exit] is a matter of high, if not the highest policy. The stories you need to read, in one handy email Read more

“[It is] a polycentric decision based upon a multitude of domestic and foreign policy and political concerns for which the expertise of ministers and their officials are particularly well-suited and the courts ill-suited.”

The government submission states: “The lawfulness of the use of [royal] prerogative is not impacted by the devolution legislation. The conduct of foreign affairs is a reserved matter such that the devolved legislatures do not have competence over it.”

The government had refused to allow its legal opponents to reveal before the case its explanation of why it ought to be able to use royal prerogative powers to trigger article 50.

But in an order handed down by Cranston on Tuesday, he told both parties: “Against the background of the principle of open justice, it is difficult to see a justification for restricting publication of documents which are generally available under [court] rules.”

Cranston’s decision has also allowed the People’s Challenge, a crowdfunded group, to publish its full claim without any sections of it being redacted or withheld. It argues that “only parliament can lawfully ‘decide’ to leave the EU for the purposes of article 50[of the treaty]; and that the [government] may only ‘notify’ such a decision to the European council under article 50(2) once [it] has been properly authorised to do so by an act of parliament”.

Responding to the release of the skeleton arguments, John Halford, a solicitor partner at Bindmans law firm, which represents the People’s Challenge, said: “The court’s order allows a floodlight to be shone on the government’s secret reasons for believing it alone can bring about Brexit without any meaningful parliamentary scrutiny.

“Those who were unsettled by the government’s insistence on its defence being kept secret will now be surprised by the contents, including submissions that Brexit has nothing constitutionally to do with the Scottish and Northern Ireland devolved governments, that parliament ‘clearly understood’ it was surrendering any role it might have in Brexit by passing the EU Referendum Act, that it has no control over making and withdrawal from treaties and that individuals can have fundamental rights conferred by acts of parliament stripped away if and when the executive withdraws from the treaties on which they are based.

“These arguments will be tested in court next month, but now they can be debated by the public too.”

The attorney general, Jeremy Wright QC will lead the government’s case in court on 13 October. He will appear alongside James Eadie QC and Jason Coppel QC.

Wright said: “The country voted to leave the European Union, in a referendum approved by act of parliament. There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door and no second referendum. We do not believe this case has legal merit. The result of the referendum should be respected and the government intends to do just that.”

He will appear at the hearings in the high court on 13 and 17 October.

It turns out Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health, is not imposing a contract on us junior doctors. He claims he never was, and no one ever thought he was. As a member for Justice for Health, the group who launched the legal bid against the contract, I feel a little bit confused by his words. I am left wondering what he meant by his “nuclear option” and by his repeated comments in parliament and the press when he said “yes I am imposing a contract”. He is clearly not a man of his word.

The day Jeremy Hunt first used the word imposition, I cried. In the same way a patient might feel when they get told a serious diagnosis, I had a complex mix of emotions of both anger and fear. The anger was simple; Jeremy Hunt had ignored the concerns of hard working doctors who have made huge sacrifices to ensure their patients get good care. We were being treated like ungrateful children and brushed to the side. The fear however was more intense, as there was genuine concern for the future of our beloved NHS. How could someone who was prepared to belligerently push through dangerous plans, ignoring even his own advisors warnings on the risks, be trusted to have patients’ best interests at heart. Like many, I started to question his underlying motives.

It has only been through the case being brought to the high court by Justice for Health, that an apparent U-turn in Hunts position has been achieved. By clarifying his ‘current’ position in court, that he is not imposing a contract but merely recommending one, he has dodged the bullet of a legal declarations made against him that potentially could have ended his ministerial career. Given that if he had lifted the imposition earlier, he might have avoided the strikes that resulted in thousands of operations being cancelled, it is rather disappointing that he has only chosen to do this at the 11th hour, and only in an apparent attempt to save his own skin.

The government spin machine is of course hailing the legal judgment as a “win” as declarations were not made against Jeremy Hunt. However, this is a misrepresentation of the judicial review process which is much more nuanced. The legal challenge was to stop Hunt’s imposition; we have done that, so in fact the victory is ours.

There is now a glimmer of hope for the junior doctors that all is not lost. The judge has clarified that there is a window of opportunity for junior doctors to reopen negotiations with their employers, as we are no longer under the false impression that they do not have the power to be masters of their own destiny. The employers agree that the seven day NHS plans are impossible to deliver, so perhaps we can now have a sensible dialogue about how to move forward.

Jeremy Hunt’s machiavellian tactics will never be forgotten or forgiven by this generation of junior doctors. Luckily, health secretaries come and go, so we must look towards the future, and work with the staff that dedicate their lives to the NHS. The overwhelming public support over the past year has been the tonic to the pain inflicted by Jeremy Hunt. It has kept us motivated and even at our lowest moments ensured that the vast majority of us have committed to stay working within the NHS. There is much work to be done to rebuild moral, and build bridges that have been burnt during this conflict between staff and their employers. All these things are realistic and achievable, and our determination will hopefully ensure that we achieve success in this, and secure NHS services for future generations.

Theresa May had a private meeting with Rupert Murdoch during a flying visit to New York last week, in which she made her maiden speech to the UN as prime minister.

May met the media mogul, who owns the Times and the Sun newspapers, as well as Sky in the UK, on a trip that lasted less than 36 hours. The meeting, less than three months after she was appointed prime minister, is notable given her previous reputation for keeping the media at arm’s length.

A supporter of the remain camp during the EU referendum, May kept a relatively low profile throughout the campaign. Murdoch has made little secret of his antipathy towards Brussels.

When asked by the journalist Anthony Hilton why he was so opposed to the EU, Murdoch is said to have replied: “When I go into Downing Street, they do what I say; when I go to Brussels, they take no notice.”

His meetings with British leaders became public when he told an influential committee of M Ps that he “often entered Downing Street by the back door”.

The meeting between Murdoch and May, never part of the “Chipping Norton set” of her predecessor, David Cameron, suggests that she is happy to nurture a relationship between Downing Street and the Murdoch media empire, which had been strained by the phone-hacking scandal.

Last Christmas saw the beginning of a rapprochement, when Cameron and some of his senior ministers attended a party at Murdoch’s London house.

May managed to squeeze in the meeting with Murdoch during the one-night trip. On Tuesday evening, after the speech, May met staff from his Wall Street Journal title. Downing Street confirmed that a “brief meeting” had taken place.

She spent most of her time in the US having meetings with world leaders, but also hosted a reception for businesspeople to convince them that the UK remains a good place to invest. Among those invited to the consul general’s residence were executives from Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Black Rock, IBM and Morgan Stanley.

Although it was the Daily Mail that came out most forcefully for May during the Conservative leadership battle, both Murdoch-owned national daily British papers supported her going up against the former Times writer Michael Gove.

The Sun’s leader read: “The final choice for our next prime minister must be between Theresa May and Michael Gove. No one else will do.”

Gove, the former justice secretary and leave campaigner, has subsequently started writing again for the Times as a columnist and book reviewer.

Speaking at the general assembly, May argued that the British people’s vote to leave the EU was a sign that they want a “politics that is more in touch with their concerns and bold action to address them”.

“The challenge for those of us in this room is to ensure our governments and our global institutions, such as this United Nations, remain responsive to the people that we serve,” she said.

News Corp declined to comment.

...he has dodged the bullet of a legal declarations made against him that potentially could have ended his ministerial career...

What does Theresa May believe? The new Prime Minister has had the summer to settle into her job and has a chance next week to tell us more about her plans for government. Had she come to power after a general election, or even a proper leadership race, we’d know more about her. Instead, she has the Tory party conference to introduce voters to their new government.

We know already that her focus is on those who are ‘just managing’, a phrase that trips off the tongue far more lightly than ‘the squeezed middle’ (Ed Miliband) or ‘alarm-clock Britain’ (Nick Clegg). But there are still vast lacunae in her philosophy, and strange inconsistencies: why, if you want to help those who are ‘just managing’, do you pick your first policy battle on grammar schools, whose pretensions to social justice are backed up by no reputable body of research? What does the Prime Minister think about climate change and its impact on energy and business policy? What about airport expansion?

We will find out these details soon enough. But even they might not give us a proper understanding of Mayism, and perhaps that’s because we’re looking for the wrong thing. What if Mayism isn’t a philosophy, or even a general outlook on life, but merely a way of doing things?

The Prime Minister has spoken in the past about her admiration for Angela Merkel’s way of ‘getting things done’, and what has been most distinctive about her time in office so far has been her modus operandi. While Margaret Thatcher pulled Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty out of her handbag and told colleagues that ‘this is what we believe’, May began her tenure in Downing Street by telling ministers how to work: no more games, no more preening in front of the media.

Ministers who kept their jobs in May’s brutal summer reshuffle all remark on the presence (and the weight) of papers and briefing notes. May has already rejected reports sent to her by her colleagues, telling secretaries of state that they aren’t good enough yet. That’s because she actually cares about what is in the report. ‘Thatcher used to chair meetings by announcing what she thought and daring everyone to disagree with her,’ says one cabinet colleague. ‘But May will ask for papers, let the minister present and then sum up at the end in the way all the textbooks on government tell you to.’ It is striking that she places more emphasis on how things will be done in a meeting than what she personally wants the meeting to agree.

Most ministers like this way of operating because it favours the organised and hardworking rather than personal friends of the Prime Minister who were present at kitchen suppers in Downing Street. Where they come a cropper is if they assume they have their boss’s trust from the outset. ‘That’s just not how it works,’ says one May ally. ‘She takes time to trust people and give them freedom.’ It is striking that the ministers who speak most warmly of May are those who were her allies when she was Home Secretary. They’ve already proved their worth and are allowed to get on with things. ‘I’ve found her very straightforward and practical to deal with,’ says one difficult-to-please cabinet colleague.

Others do note a firmer hand on the tiller: No. 10 wants to know what’s going on, and has a greater interest in what is being briefed to journalists. But so long as ministers stick to that and ‘don’t go grandstanding, or flying kites in the Sunday papers’, as one cabinet member puts it, then they’re fine.

The problem is that most cabinet ministers love doing both, and have spent years building up their political careers using these techniques. As time goes on, they will become nostalgic for such pursuits.

Three ministers are already straining at May’s tight leash: Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox. They all just happen to be responsible for the toughest task of her government — leading Britain out of the European Union. Given his regular involvement in stirring up parliamentary revolts against May when he was a rebellious backbencher, Davis was surprised to be offered a job at all, and left his phone off for much of reshuffle day.

But May’s decision to appoint him shows how calculating a politician she is: David Cameron never forgave Davis for walking out of the front bench in 2008 and would never have offered him a job, no matter how well he’d do it. One cabinet colleague who has been watching the three Brexiteers across the table says the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union seems the most on top of his brief, while others variously describe Boris as ‘very interesting’ and ‘pretty leftfield in the things he chooses to talk about’.

The wonderfully frank Liam Fox, meanwhile, is the one everyone expects to get in serious trouble first. ‘It’s a question of how far he wants to push it,’ says one Mayist. ‘He has gone through several amber lights.’

All three have already been ticked off in public for saying more than the Prime Minister wants. All love talking to journalists, and are as experienced with the media as they are with government. Colleagues in other ministries find the Brexiteers cautious in private, but forthcoming in public. Mrs May is the opposite. She has retreated from Cameron’s obsession with the news agenda (complaining that he sometimes acted as if No. 10 was a 24-hour news channel) and is very keen to tell ministers that she prefers them to take time to get something right. The idea that you might shoot the breeze about your portfolio with a journalist is utterly alien to her.

Perhaps a measure of caution is wise when you’ve given three known mavericks such big jobs. But the question is whether May’s obsession with management, which just about got her through the Home Office, will work in No. 10. At this stage in Cameron’s leadership, everyone was scratching their heads, trying to find out what his big idea was. As things turned out, there wasn’t one. This not only hampered his chances of a full victory in the 2010 election, but also made it more difficult for him to persuade his MPs to stay loyal in the years that followed. There was no Cameronism, so there were no Cameronites. Just chums.

Everyone can take pride in doing things properly: prime ministers need to believe in the things they do. And if they want to win elections, persuade others to believe in them too.

With Seumas Milne on the way out, Jeremy Corbyn will soon be on the prowl for a new Director of Communications. Although Paul Mason has denied that he is interested in the job, he is still a favourite to join the Leader’s Office. So, with that in mind, Mr S was curious to hear his views on Fleet Street and the Mainstream Media (better known as MSM among Corbynites) at a Momentum talk on ‘radical media’. It turns out that the former Newsnight economics editor isn’t such a fan.

While he promised to ‘try and be strained in my vitriol and personal views’ in the discussion, Mason went on to say that Fleet Street hacks think they are ‘trying to write their first draft of history using a professional code and ethos of bourgeois democracy and that everything they do is in the public interest’. However, in reality they are actually ‘utterly subservient to a bunch of right wing reactionary misogynistic racist bottoms’.

While he says that the Guardian — for which he writes a column — is the only paper exempt from this^note  Although there are plenty on the Left who disagree with that assertion — GM, he claims that even public service media ‘can’t see what’s wrong with treating Corbyn like a terrorist’. If Mason does plump for the job, no doubt hacks will be in for a real treat the next time they get a lobby briefing.

As the UK prepares for Brexit into the big wide world outside, it has been pointed out that the Foreign Office is sadly lacking in people with hard experience of that world, and even more lacking in people from that world. But if the Romans can do it, surely we can too.

Whatever else the Romans were, they were not hung up about race. That did not mean they admired all foreigners. The satirist Juvenal was cynical about the Greeks, who would happily turn into anything you wanted them to at the drop of a hat; and doctors observed that different environments produced not only different physical make-ups but also different mentalities — often unattractive ones.

But Romans seemed to think that none of that mattered as long as Johnny Foreigner learned the Roman way. That would turn him into a good, honest Roman, as people from all over the empire discovered, from Britain to Syria, from Africa to Armenia, from Greece and Asia to the Danube.

To take one example: the Roman army was full of provincials, who found it a very good way to become a Roman citizen and make (with luck) a decent living. They came from all over: Gaul, Spain, Belgium, the Balkans and so on. Provincials who worked their way up to high position in the army could also find themselves in positions of considerable political power.

Septimius Severus, for example, was from a family in Carthage (North Africa). His grandfather had held high position in the African town of Leptis Magna when the Roman emperor (born in Spain) was Trajan (d. ad 117).

When Septimius was born (ad 145), the family already had two senators in Rome. His civilian career (governor in Pannonia, north of the Balkans) and military experience brought him to the imperial throne in ad 193.

The rise of Maximian was even more dramatic. During the military power struggles of the 3rd century ad, he became co-emperor with Diocletian. His origin? Son of a Serbian shopkeeper.

Rome was a world where you could make good. So is the UK. Brexit needs the best the world can offer. Bring them, and their experience, in.