Way back in 2002, Tony Blair delivered a party conference speech in which he declared “we’re at our best when we’re at our boldest”. Gordon Brown thought Blair’s love of the private sector was in conflict with the party’s roots, so a year later hit back with his own soundbite: “Best when we are united, best when we are Labour”.
Those Blair/Brown spats seem like ancient history today (as does a time when a governing party won consecutive landslide elections). But as Theresa May tries a fourth time to sell her battered Brexit deal to this hung and hangry Parliament, she thinks that repackaging it as a “bold, new offer” will somehow work. The problem is that many in her party think she’s out of touch with her party’s grassroots. And in the face of the Farage threat, a growing number of MPs think the Tories are ‘best when we are Boris’.
In an effort to win over Brexiteer backbenchers, the PM looks like she will insert Graham Brady’s ‘alternative arrangements’ on Northern Ireland into her Withdrawal Agreement Bill. Yet even if some MPs are somehow convinced, former ‘switchers’ have switched back to opposing her deal again. Yesterday, David Davis (who’s backing Dominic Raab) told LBC that he’d be voting against.
The PM remains hamstrung by three disincentives for agreeing her deal: she’s pre-announced she’s leaving office; the EU’s Halloween extension has taken the pressure off MPs whose minds are focused by deadlines; and Brexiteers think the Letwin-Cooper cross-party coalition against a default no-deal (which squeaked home by one vote remember) can’t be resurrected.
Still, May’s allies hope she can get enough Labour MPs on board to cancel out her own rebels. Stronger workers’ rights and plans to give Parliament more of a say over the future UK-EU relationship could help. As I wrote on Friday in my piece on how the Lab-Con talks collapsed, there are many in No.10 who think the legislation has been improved by those discussions. The downside, however, is that many Tory MPs actually think tying the UK to new EU rules on worker rights would be a disaster. I can’t overstate how angry some of them are on this and you can expect Boris supporters to be on the warpath in coming days.
The donkey derby that is the Tory leadership race has another outing today. While others pussyfoot around, Esther McVey has an actual campaign launch at lunchtime, with a ‘blue collar Conservatives’ event. Maybe she’ll spice up a contest that is already leaving many Tory backbenchers bored and bemused. Contrary to popular belief, lots of Conservative MPs hate leadership contests as they disrupt their own career prospects/progress and are just so damned disruptive.
The One Nation Caucus, which regularly meets in Committee Room 15 (just as the PLP meets next door) at 6pm on Monday nights, tonight has big speeches from Tory MPs who aren’t running but who are positioning themselves as kingmakers. Amber Rudd, Nicky Morgan, Nicholas Soames and others all know their group is large enough to be valuable to candidates who want to get into the top two of the contest. Ruling out a no-deal exit is likely to be their key demand. Then again even moderates are split over the One Nation group, with critics pointing out many of its leading lights failed to oppose welfare cuts.
And thanks to the Daily Telegraph, tonight we get what looks like the first proper mini-hustings as Dom Raab, Liz Truss, Matt Hancock, James Cleverly and Victoria Atkins (a next-but-one leader-in-waiting) discuss ‘The Future Of The Party’. On the Today programme, Hancock dismissed a recent poll putting him on 1%, saying ‘the contest hasn’t started yet’. “I don’t rule out standing for the leadership of the Conservative party,” was his formulation. “I have a strong view about the sort about the leader we need…not just now but for future…in the centre ground of British politics….a patriotic unionism not a narrow nationalism”. The One Nation Caucus’s ears will have pricked up when Hancock also said a no-deal would be ‘deeply damaging’ to the UK. Which is not the line of his main rival for the centre-right vote, Jeremy Hunt.
While Labour’s own leadership is not in question, Jeremy Corbyn’s stance on Brexit often is. Several in the shadow cabinet were pleased by his line on Marr yesterday that “I think it would be reasonable to have a public vote” on a Brexit deal. He also talked about the ‘option’ of a public vote, but his ‘reasonable’ language felt like small but significant shift. His MPs really fear the party coming third behind the Lib Dems this Thursday. Leftwinger Clive Lewis tells the Indy: “You can only drive a wedge so far between yourself and the people who put you in that position before your opponents start looking at their options.” Ouch.
May’s attempt to revive the ‘alternative arrangements’ plan for Northern Ireland will face the formidable obstacle of Dublin. Although some in Brussels have not totally killed off the idea in order to help the UK get the deal over the line, many think it’s the unicorn to beat all unicorns. Speaking on RTÉ last night, deputy Irish PM Simon Coveney warned the Withdrawal Agreement simply could not be reopened under any new Tory leader, adding “the personality might change, but the facts don’t”.
The Telegraph reports DUP chief whip Jeffrey Donaldson saying: “The difficulty remains for us that the backstop is still incorporated into the legislation. As things stand our position remains unchanged.” And the DUP is unlikely to be over the moon about the FT report that May’s chief of staff Gavin Barwell told aides last week that a no-deal Brexit would lead to unstoppable pressure for a “border poll” on the reunification of Ireland. Barwell said that Scotland would push harder for independence too, and some present and even raised the idea of Wales following suit.
Amid all this, May is still facing huge anger from backbench MPs over her refusal to give special protection from prosecution for ex-soldiers who served in Ulster. It was left to Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood to tell his colleagues how it really is: “You’d have to share that with terrorists as well and [the PM] was unwilling to do that. That’s international law, that’s what we have to abide by.” Such straight-talking will be missed from the Tory leadership race, as Ellwood told Sophy Ridge he lacked the “rank” or the “experience” for the top job.
Northern Ireland remains a key issue for the Tories. This week we have Northern Ireland questions, on Wednesday and as the BBC’s Mark Darcy correctly points out we could see auditions by a few MPs aspiring to succeed Andrew Murrison as chair of the Northern Ireland select committee, following his appointment as a minister at the Foreign Office. Simon Hoare, Mark Pritchard and Maria Caulfield and Nigel Mills are tipped to run.
Watch this Norwegian woman, Ayla Kirstine, run and jump like a horse. Well, because. (And yes, it’s gone viral).
ChangeUK continue to flatline in the polls and today interim leader Heidi Allen hinted the party may not be even around at the next election. She told Today: “If we’ve managed to bring together other MPs from the House of Commons the format might be slightly different. But whatever the ‘brand new world’ party looks like at that point in the general election.”
On Saturday, Rachel Johnson told the Times magazine her party has ‘a terrible name’, wants to ‘focus-group everything’ and made an error in not doing a deal with other Remain parties. Last week, Johnson admitted Farage’s party would walk it in the South West, and she was someone who was going to have her “arse handed to her on a plate by Ann Widdecombe”.
Donald Trump’s trade curbs on firms who do business with Huawei has had swift impact, with Google announcing today it has barred the world’s second biggest smartphone maker from some updates to the Android operating system. If a mobile firm’s phone lacks YouTube (Google-owned) that so many kids now watch rather than TV, never mind Google maps or Android functions, it is in big trouble. When Trump arrives in the UK next month (with daughter Ivanka, the Sun reports), he may be crowing.
Meanwhile, could 5G rollout be hampered not by Chinese cyber warfare (the risk of which, remember, our spooks are confident they can manage) but by Tory cuts to councils? The Guardian reports cash-strapped town halls want more in return for allowing lampposts to be used as transmitters.
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