With the Trump visit and the D-Day commemorations, the Commons has taken such a back seat this week that it’s sometimes easy to forget Parliament is not still in recess. The main action has not been in the main chamber (some nearly died of shock when an actual vote occurred), but up on the Committee Corridor where the early Tory leadership hustings have been taking place. It’s almost as if Westminster is only serving as an historic theatre space for the psychodrama that is the race to succeed Theresa May.
Last night, the latest One Nation Caucus saw some heavyweight contenders strut and fret their half-hour upon this stage. In various ways, each tried to define themselves as the Not-Boris candidate. In contrast to Johnson’s notorious allergy to detail, poor negotiating skills and thin record of policy achievement, each sang their own praises. Jeremy Hunt cited the junior doctors contract and BBC licence fee (while adding Macron and Merkel had told him a hardline approach on Brexit would get a hardline response).
Matt Hancock talked of his own policy successes and attacked Jeremy Corbyn in vituperative terms (see below). Dom Raab seemed to cause most fuss when he refused to rule out proroguing Parliament to run down the clock to get the UK out of the EU by October 31 without a deal. Philip Hammond bristled and Amber Rudd said afterwards it was “outrageous to consider proroguing parliament…This is not the Stuart kings.” Rory Stewart said it would be illegal, unconstitutional, undemocratic “and it wouldn’t work.” (The cynic in me says Parliament already feels like it’s prorogued until we get a new PM, but hey ho).
Yet the most interesting gambit of the night was from Michael Gove. He also has a strong record of delivery in Whitehall. But fresh from being snubbed by Trump (he didn’t get a one-on-one meeting on Tuesday night, while Hunt did), the Environment Secretary wanted to be seen as a compromiser. He said the October deadline was arbitrary and he was willing to delay it by weeks or months to get a deal. He warned of a vote of no confidence and a general election if the next PM pushed no-deal. Gove is trying to reassure Brexiteer MPs he’s a lifelong Eurosceptic (unlike Johnson, or May) and reassure Remainer MPs he’s ready to be flexible to get the thing delivered.
If the Brexit Party wins today’s Peterborough by-election, that could panic more MPs to opt for Johnson. Labour’s hopes of a narrow victory will depend entirely on keeping the Lib Dem vote down. I’m told the number of Labour activists flooding the seat to get the vote out today is ‘insane’. But insiders admit that even the last minute ‘Brexit=Trump-Privatising-The-NHS’ scare is not working. Many Labour supporters have told canvassers they know how bad no-deal will be, but they want it anyway. That attitude could drive Corbyn finally to a referendum, as these voters look lost (and no-deal is seen by Corbyn as unacceptable). It could also drive the Tory leadership race towards no-deal.
Johnson has so far kept totally out the media spotlight, and his solid performance on Tuesday at the One Nation hustings (packed with his supporters) proved he can behave himself. But all of his opponents are just waiting for him to get exposed in the TV debates (or the tabloids) and everyone loves to hunt down a frontrunner. Some Gove supporters think he is best placed to take advantage of any Boris implosion, leaving a run-off with Hunt in the final round.
But with Sajid Javid so far failing to make an impact (he has an event tonight though), it’s Matt Hancock who is emerging as the man who wants to leapfrog Hunt to become the main former Remainer candidate. Yesterday, Hancock certainly made waves, and headlines. At the hustings, he said if the Tories choose the wrong leader “we could end up with the first anti-Semitic leader of a Western nation since the Second World War”. Corbyn’s allies were swift to say that was ‘outrageous’.
Yet Hancock’s full-throated attack on the Labour leader is also accompanied by a tilt centre-leftwards on policy. In his interview with HuffPost yesterday, he made a virtue of his opposition to Trump on the NHS, saying he didn’t care about not meeting the President. Hancock told me as PM he would drive through legislation to repeal key Lansley privatisation reforms, and also partly restore the student nursing bursary axed in 2016. And confirming that he is unafraid of profanities, Hancock said his record in office proved he was someone who could ‘get shit done’.
He also pointed out that just 8% of women under 25 back the Tories and as well as defending abortion rights, unveiled plans to crack down harder on crimes like ‘cyberflashing’. There was a wider point he made too, signalling a Cameron-like faith that the 160,000-strong Conservative membership could prove to have more modernising instincts than many expect. “There’s a noisy proportion who focus very strongly on Brexit, but there’s a much broader group [who care about other things],” he told me. Hancock suggested the drift of Tory voters to the Lib Dems in the Euro elections could prove more significant that any Peterborough by-election triumph for Farage.
Even one Gove supporter told me last night that Hancock really connected with many MPs at the hustings because he told them the unvarnished truth. ‘He actually looked like a prime minister, that he could do this job.’ At 40, he’s the youngest contender, and several of his colleagues think Hancock’s bid has come too soon and he lacks big numbers for a breakthrough. But others think he offers the ‘next generation’ appeal (Cameron was 39, Blair was 41 when they became leader) sadly lacking from the rest of the field.
Rebecca Long-Bailey made a decent debut in PMQs, not least because she played to her strengths on climate change and energy and industrial policy. Reminding voters of the science-sceptics on the Tory benches is one way to depict the government as out of touch and ineffective in the face of the emergency facing the planet.
And just like George Osborne before him, Philip Hammond is bean-counting rather than thinking of the environment. The FT reports that Chancellor has warned Theresa May less money will be available for schools, policing and the NHS if she pushes ahead with £1trillion plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by the year 2050. May wants to introduce new legislation next week, hoping it will become “one of her most important legacies” as she prepares to leave Downing Street.
But many this side of the Atlantic have missed the big policy unveiled by Joe Biden this week which could help him clinch the Democrat nomination, and defeat Trump. He has called for $1.7 trillion in federal spending along with a mix of executive orders and legislation that would transition the U.S. to net-zero emissions “no later than 2050”. He would re-engage the rest of the world by getting the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement and convening the world’s biggest carbon polluters to cut emissions.
Crucially, however, Biden is borrowing from Trump’s assertiveness on trade. He is threatening to use America’s heft and size to jack up tariffs on high-carbon goods from those countries that fail to meet climate goals. And his plan targets China, specifically its Belt and Road infrastructure initiative that has spurred oil, coal and gas production and fossil fuel-dependent infrastructure in developing countries. Tory and Labour politicians alike will need to look at that very closely indeed. Oh, and here’s new research that global CO2 has spiked to a record high.
Watch this D-Day veteran land from a parachute jump, put on his beret and then salute. On this day, 75 years ago, more than 4,000 men died as they landed on the beaches of Normandy. The Queen put it perfectly yesterday: thank you.
Emily Thornberry certainly showed she wouldn’t hide away yesterday as Rebecca Long-Bailey took her place in ‘deputy PMQs’. Many MPs suspect the choreographing (which was decided a week ago, I’m told) was not just about putting Thornberry in her place for challenging Jeremy Corbyn on a second referendum - it was also about lining up Long-Bailey as a possible deputy leader.
At last year’s party conference, Tom Watson surprised his critics by trying to bounce the NEC into creating an extra, female-only deputy post. The plan was blocked mainly because allies of Corbyn hadn’t yet got a contender lined up to take on Angela Rayner. Well last night, John McDonnell told Peston that ‘another position’ ‘might resolve some of these issues’ by boosting ‘gender balance on deputy leadership’. The real difficulty remains a personal one: Rayner and Long-Bailey are flatmates and close friends. Neither would want to run against the other. One to keep an eye on folks.
HuffPost globally (across the US, Europe, India, Brazil and Australia) is running a special Pride 2019 series throughout this month. Here in Britain, we focus on a story that proves just much further LGBT rights have to go. We have an exclusive interview with Andrew Moffatt, the teacher at the centre of the controversy at Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, said the protests proved why equality lessons have ‘got to start’ at primary level.
We also carry an interview with Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman, in which she warns parents (and Tory leadership contender Esther McVey) that they cannot ‘pick and choose’ bits of the Equality Act.
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