In PMQs yesterday, Theresa May fondly recalled that this month was the 40th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s first general election victory. But the comparison only served to underline to many Tory MPs the yawning gap in authority and electability between their two female prime ministers. And as May arrives back in Blighty this morning from Paris, few Conservatives forget that even the once-invincible Thatcher stood on the steps of our French embassy in 1990 to hear the news that plotters back home had started the end of her premiership.
May is due to meet the backbench 1922 Committee executive late this morning, and it’s clear that several unruly pupils want to school their head teacher in how to set a specific leaving date. But the ultras don’t seem to have the numbers to force the issue today. More importantly, her big gamble of bringing back the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) has effectively set a summer deadline for her leadership anyway. She may have done enough to avoid a major leadership rule change, while giving herself a tiny bit of flexibility and control over her departure.
The real problem for the PM is that she may have for the first time boxed herself in on Brexit. Having announced the WAB will be definitely ‘brought forward’ for the first week of June, it’s hard to see when exactly she holds the first reading (publishing the bill) and the second reading. The Commons is having a ‘duvet day’ on Monday June 3, partly to avoid Trump being able to address Parliament.
But on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday that week, the PM has important joint events with the US President, both here and on the Normandy beaches. Just minutes before May meets the ’22, Andrea Leadsom has a business statement which may tell us if there’s any change to recess dates or if May’s really taking a gamble and publishing the bill ahead of the Euro elections.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay seemed to box May in further yesterday, when he told a Lords committee: “I think if the House of Commons does not approve the WAB then the [Michel] Barnier deal is dead in that form.” Still, when asked if there would be no fifth attempt at rescuing the deal if the WAB was defeated at second reading, the PM’s spokesman gave us a non-committal reply: “We have to put everything behind getting this [4th attempt] through so that we can deliver on the referendum by the summer recess.”
May will be unsurprised that her former chief of staff Nick Timothy (‘et tu Timothy?’) has today written in the Telegraph that it is “beyond time for the prime minister to accept the game is up.” There are indeed some people on the pitch (including Cabinet allies) who think it’s all over. But is it now? She has a habit of just keeping the game going. Aides say it’s a mistake to read her stubbornness as simply clinging to power for power’s sake. If she really thinks that this Parliament will never, ever pass her Brexit deal, at that point she may well walk off into the summer sunset.
One possible glimmer of hope for May is Corbyn’s innate Euroscepticism, allied with his own interest in moving on from Brexit and onto the more fertile electoral territory of austerity and inequality (not for nothing did he zero in at PMQs on the IFS’s damning findings this week). And it’s for that reason that some around the PM flirted with the fantasy that Corbyn could actually order his troops to abstain in the WAB second reading, in order to amend it later.
As I tweeted yesterday, my own understanding is that abstention is a non-starter. One senior member of the shadow cabinet told me that they would walk through the voting lobby to oppose the WAB no matter what their whip said. And last night on ITV’s Peston, Emily Thornberry went public with what sounded like a collective stance: “We are going to oppose this.”
Abstaining on a ‘botched Tory Brexit’ was never going to be part of Corbyn’s armoury, given his entire leadership was born in that key moment in the summer of 2015 when he was the only candidate to vote against rather than abstain on Tory welfare plans (Andy Burnham admits that his abstention, in line with the whip, was what set the tone of the race and cost him the crown).
As for the Euro elections (just a week away folks), there was good news for Team Corbyn yesterday as Change UK looked totally CHUK-ed in Scotland, where the candidate at the top of their list defected to the Lib Dems. But elsewhere there is real unease among MPs that Labour is getting outgunned by the Lib Dems and Nigel Farage. We report that the Libs and Brexit Party are outspending Labour on Facebook ads by more than three times. Farage and UKIP have both sending out millions more Freepost leaflets than the main parties too.
Allies of Corbyn tell me that in fact the party is spending more than it has ever done on any Euro campaign (the Electoral Commission figures will tell us once it’s all over), and is prioritising a mix of online and offline techniques. And although the leader told the PLP this week that he would act on the feedback from MPs, he did not make any promises about changes to messaging on a second referendum. Some around Corbyn think that the Euros could actually vindicate his strategy of trying to unite Remain and Leave voters. If the party comes a healthy second, and the Tories possibly fourth or fifth, many Tories will be terrified a similar read-across to a general election will spell doom.
In an early incarnation of May-ism, more state intervention was not a dirty word. Today, David Gauke looks like he’s buried the Cameron-era experiment of part-privatising the probation service. Chris Grayling’s disastrous policy had the last rites read to it earlier this year, when inspector Glenys Stacey said it was “irredeemably flawed” and people would be safer under a system delivered by the public sector.
The National Audit Office said the scheme had cost taxpayers a whopping half a billion quid while reoffending ‘skyrocketed’. Time for Labour to repeat its gag that ‘Britain just can’t afford Chris Grayling’? Gauke, as deadpan as ever, delivered this damning verdict on his Cabinet colleague (who only runs our railways): “Any minister needs to make sure they are being strategic, thinking through the long-term implications of changes.”
Meanwhile, Labour’s own plans to renationalise the National Grid will be Corbyn’s focus today. He and Rebecca Long-Bailey will say that heat and electricity should be a human right for all and nationalisation is key to decarbonising the economy and tackling fuel poverty. The party denies Tory claims that the overall cost will be £48.5 billion, claiming instead “this is cost neutral to the public purse because the government will exchange a bond for a profitable asset”.
All political parties could benefit from the kind of solidarity and fellow feeling shown by these two tortoises in this clip.
Donald Trump could be looking at a million Londoners protesting his State Visit when he arrives here next month, if the latest YouGov/QMUL poll is to go by. But Trump’s latest executive order banning firms from dealing with Huawei points up again his big differences with UK policy.
And on Iran, those tensions surfaced yesterday with an extraordinary rebuff by a British military chief, as the US seemed to be gearing up for confrontation with Tehran. The Times rightly splashes on Major-General Chris Ghika, remarks by Britain’s top military commander in the US-led mission against Islamic State, that “there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria”.
As part of our ‘Twenties Takeover’ in partnership with Radio 5 Live today, we report a new poll showing more than half of twenty-somethings said finances had taken a toll on their mental wellbeing, ahead of self-esteem concerns (49%), body image pressures (47%) and work pressures (37%). It also found that almost two-thirds (65%) of people in their 20s say they have less than £500 in savings and 30% have none at all. Read this piece on how Instagram culture is fuelling debt and overspending.
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