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| Friday March 17 2017 |
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By Matt Chorley
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Good morning,
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As a general rule anyone who says "a week is a long time in politics" should be taken out and shot, so I shall merely observe that quite a lot has happened since Monday.
Not least for Luciana Berger, who is "over the moon" after the birth of her first child, Amelie Moselle. It is just nice to see an MP have some good news from being in Labour.
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Theresa 2.0
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Theresa May launches her Plan for Britain today - but the new government website was accused of talking the country down
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It is not a relaunch. It is not a relaunch. It is not a red, white and blue relaunch.
It might come at the end of probably her "worst week yet", but Theresa May's Plan for Britain has been in the pipeline for some time. It's timing, however, means it will be seen as an attempt to get back on the front foot after a difficult few days with Scotland, the budget U-turn, Brexit confusion and record fines over Tory election spending.
The prime minister is setting out, again, her mission statement after eight months in the job, trying to show that her premiership is not all about Brexit, that leaving the EU is "not an end in itself".
Writing in The Times, the PM says: "It is this generation’s opportunity to shape a brighter future for our country. The government’s Plan for Britain provides the route to that brighter future. It is a plan to deliver a stronger, fairer Britain by getting the right deal for Britain abroad and a better deal for ordinary working people at home."
It didn't get off to the best of starts: when the new website was launched yesterday visitors were greeted with the message "www.planforbritain.gov.uk page isn’t working". Even the internet was talking Britain down.
Now back online in all its patriotic glory, it sets out May's belief that the referendum last summer "was not just a vote to leave the EU but an instruction to change the way our whole country works — and the people for whom it works — for ever".
It promises to "get on with the job of delivering Brexit, striking the right deal for Britain abroad and forging a new partnership with Europe that gives us control of our borders and our laws".
It goes beyond Brexit too: good schools, a million more homes, investing in the NHS, getting more people back into work, controlling immigration and tackling “historic injustices, like racial and gender discrimination, that hold too many people back”.
There is talk of bringing down the deficit while also investing “where and when it is needed”, and making are “everyone - however big or small - plays by the same rules”. There's also hints of more to come on energy prices, with the promise to “help people with everyday costs and bills by acting to ensure consumer markets work in the way they should”.
And then there is Scotland. Of the four headline priorities, perhaps the most difficult is securing a "united nation".
In a high risk move, May has rejected Nicola Sturgeon's demand for a second Scottish independence referendum by spring 2019.
Yesterday the PM said "now is not the time". In her Times article she goes further, warning that a rerun of the 2014 vote while "while all our energies should be directed towards the negotiations with Europe" is not what "any responsible UK government" could agree to.
It would be, May says, "fundamentally unfair to the Scottish people". This is a bold move to fight Sturgeon on her own turf, where the SNP likes to claim only it speaks for the "Scottish people".
Aides say May will use a speech at the Conservative Spring Forum in Cardiff to make a "personal, passionate" plea for the Union, laying out her "commitment to delivering for the whole country".
At the same time the SNP conference gets underway in Aberdeen. Sturgeon has inevitably reached for the cliché drawer, accusing May of “returning to the bad old days of Margaret Thatcher”, saying that it would be a “democratic outrage” if Scots were denied the chance to vote on their future before Britain left the European Union.
In a few short paragraphs on the new government website, May lays out just what a mammoth task lies ahead of her. She wants to be a prime minister who presses the reset button on an economy and society that works too often for a privileged few.
But exiting from one Union while trying to hold together another is what will come to define her over the coming months, and years. After seeing what happened to David Cameron last summer, she does not want to be the PM who lost the Saltire from her red, white and blue vision for Britain.
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Podcast: Sturgeon v May
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This week I'm joined on the Red Box podcast by Emma Tucker, the Times deputy editor, and Iain Martin, the Times columnist, to discuss who has the upper hand: Nicola Sturgeon or Theresa May.
Plus: Lindsay McIntosh, the Scottish political editor, on who could lead the No campaign, and Bruno Waterfield, the Brussels correspondent, on the hundreds of thousands of moving parts in the Brexit negotiations.
Listen to the podcast:
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Today's cartoon from The Times by Peter Brookes
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Searching for answers on extremist ads
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Are the sort of people who watch online videos of rape apologists, anti-Semites, homophobes and banned hate preachers also the sort of people who might be interested in a career in the Royal Navy? It doesn't look good when taxpayers' money is unwittingly funding extremists through advertising.
The Times splashes on news that Google is to be summoned before the government to explain what is going on, as the Cabinet Office joined some of the world’s largest brands last night in pulling millions of pounds in marketing from YouTube.
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Picture of the day
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If a ruthless streak is needed at No 10 no one taught Larry, the chief mouser. This intruder ran off (Steve Back)
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XXX
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What voters think of Hammond
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The budget hit Philip Hammond's reputation, even before the U-turn. A new IpsosMORI poll shows that dissatisfaction in the chancellor leapt from 28 per cent to 46 per cent between November and last weekend.
Perhaps more worrying for the man at No 11 is news that economic optimism is slipping. Half of people say they expect the country’s economy to get worse over the next 12 months, an increase of six points from February. Just one in five expects the economy to improve.
The Daily Mail reports that allies insist Hammond is unsackable, although only because there is no one any better to do the job.
The Sun says the chancellor has been accused of reneging on another manifesto promise after budget documents revealed setbacks over free childcare places.
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Read the full story
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Remain in the shops
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Some good news for the chancellor: People who voted to remain in the European Union have defied conventional wisdom and gone on more of a spending spree since the referendum than those who elected to leave.
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Read the full story
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GCHQ ridicules White House
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Being a spy means, on the whole, keeping out of the news. Sometimes though you just have to say something.
GCHQ has issued a rare statement saying claims it was involved in wire-tapping Donald Trump are "nonsense, utterly ridiculous and should be ignored".
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Read the full story
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Tories fined record £70,000
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The record-breaking fine handed to the Conservatives for breaking the law on campaign spending has turned the spotlight on two of Theresa May's most senior aides.
Nick Timothy, now the PM's chief of staff, and Stephen Parkinson, a special adviser, were part of a team that spent time in the constituency where Nigel Farage was standing for Ukip, but their expenses did not appear as part of the local spending declaration at the end of the campaign.
The Independent picks up on David Cameron responding to the claims last night: "This is not the first time this has happened. Other parties have been fined." That's OK then.
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You changed, not me
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Lord Heseltine is proving he still has the capacity to needle a Tory prime minister, firing off a stinging letter to Theresa May after she sacked him last week for rebelling on Brexit. “The simple fact is you have changed your mind ... I have not," he told the former Remain-supporting PM.
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| Quote of the day |
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‘I saw Boris as a nasty young kid — and he never changed.’
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Pascal Lamy, former director-general of the World Trade Organisation
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Tweet of the day
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xxx
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Here come the girls
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A rare glimpse into the world of an MP. Sir Roger Gale hit the airwaves yesterday to defend employing his wife on the taxpayer, but ended up admitting to BBC Radio 5Live how it has pushed his marriage to the brink.
"I got up one night and saw the office light shining on the lawn at 3 o’clock in the morning. I went downstairs and Suzy was in tears. I said, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’.
“She said ‘I’ve got to get this work done’. She looked at me sadly and said ‘I’m sorry Roger, I just think of you as a source of work.’"
He is also in hot water for describing female staffers as “girls”.
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Read the full story
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Debate: Who should run the West Midlands?
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7pm, Wednesday, April 26 2017, The Studio in Birmingham
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Six areas in England will elect regional mayors for the first time on May 4. The West Midlands is one of the most hotly-contested, with the Conservatives and Labour fighting to prove they can win in the country's second city.
I will be joined by Times columnists including Matthew Parris for a lively panel debate between the two frontrunners in the West Midlands race: Andy Street, the former John Lewis boss running for the Tories, and Siôn Simon, the former Labour minister and MEP in the region.
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The Sketch
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Call 999. . . Labour has swallowed its tongue
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Patrick Kidd
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There is a media conspiracy, some twitterati suggest, to play down the government’s embarrassments and to amplify Labour’s failings. Any casual observer of parliament can see that Jeremy Corbyn is as effective as a fishnet condom, but to his keyboard warrior fans he is the sort of chap you used to see on Soviet posters with a firm chin, a thrust-out chest and a steely glare above the word “Forward”.
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Read the full sketch
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Taxing questions
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The timing isn't great, in the week the government backed down over a plan to increase tax.
But The Guardian reports that the Lib Dems are calling for income tax to be increased by 1p to deliver a £4.6billion boost to the NHS.
The Daily Mail splashes on how the number of patients who have to endure the humiliation of being in a mixed-sex hospital ward has trebled in only two years.
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| TMS |
| From the diary |
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By Patrick Kidd
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Johnson Sr is lost for words
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Stanley Johnson has the same nodding relationship with print deadlines as his oldest son, Boris. Stanley thought he was making good progress with his new novel, Kompromat, which is about Britain being tricked into voting to leave the EU (implausible, I know), when he sent his publisher a draft, boasting that he was up to 60,000 words, three quarters of the way to his target. Then they read it. An hour later, he received a reply. “Actually, it’s only 55,000 words,” it said. “You included one chapter twice.” Stanley doesn’t think this matters. “I doubt anyone would really notice,” he says.
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Read more from the TMS diary
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What the papers say
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The Times
"Britain’s campaign finance rules exist to help preserve the principle of one person, one vote against the unreasonable influence of big donors and vested interests. They must apply equally to all." Read the full article
The Daily Telegraph
"Theresa May showed true leadership when she rejected Nicola Sturgeon’s timetable for a second Scottish referendum. Hardly anybody wants one." Read the full article
The Guardian
"The prime minister should be aware when rebuffing the SNP that, on the terms of a Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon articulates concerns that resonate on both sides of the Scottish border." Read the full article
Daily Mail
"Yes, there are huge pressures on the NHS, but with billions more coming to pay for social care and free up beds there is no excuse for this indignity to continue." Read the full article
Read the full article
Read the full article
Read the full article
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Agenda
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Today
- Theresa May addresses Conservative Party spring forum in Cardiff.
- Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, continues his trip to several African countries.
- Michael Fallon, defence secretary, visits armed forces bases in the southwest.
- David Mundell, the Scottish secretary, speaks at the Scottish Council for Development and Industry forum in Edinburgh.
- The Scottish National Party opens spring conference in Aberdeen.
- Pascal Lamy, former World Trade Organisation director-general, discusses the geopolitical consequences of Brexit at the Chatham House think-tank.
- Tim Farron, Liberal Democrat leader, and Nick Clegg, former deputy prime minister, take part in a discussion session and a "rally for Europe" at the start of the party’s spring conference in York.
- More than a third of British. Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people have experienced racist abuse since Brexit, according to the Trades Union Congress.
- St Patrick’s day festival begins in London. A parade will take place on Sunday.
- 9:30am: John Prescott, former deputy prime minister, speaks on ‘taking back control of the north’ at IPPR North, the Institute for Public Policy Research's think-tank for the north of England.
- 3pm: Philip Hammond, the chancellor, attends a meeting of G20 finance ministers. It will be the first G20 meeting attended by Steven Mnuchin, the new US treasury secretary.
- 5:45pm: Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, attends the Asian business awards.
House of Commons and House of Lords
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@MattChorley
