Red Box - Friday January 12 2018

PLUS: The politics of Mrs Brown’s Boys

Friday January 12 2018

By Matt Chorley

Good morning,

If anyone thought that 2018 would be a quieter political year than 2017, the first full week suggests otherwise.

A cabinet reshuffle, a Labour sacking, an NHS crisis, a military mess, Tim Farron still talking about gay sex, a baroness dropping the c-bomb in the Lords and now a US president refusing to visit.

All that in today’s Red Box, plus the fascinating politics of Mrs Brown’s Boys, and Vanessa Kirby, who plays Princess Margaret in The Crown, on Theresa May’s efforts to go green.

You don’t get that in other morning emails…

Red Box is a must-read in No 10, and across Westminster. Know someone who is missing out? Get them signed up today thetimes.co.uk/redbox

Matt Chorley

Red Box Editor

@MattChorley

Must reads

Times exclusive: Military chiefs have drawn up a plan to cut the armed forces by more than 14,000 and combine elite units of paratroopers and Royal Marines under three money-saving three options described as as “ugly, ugly or ugly”..
John Humphrys, the Radio 4 broadcaster, made light of the BBC gender pay row in a leaked tape recording that has caused dismay among women at the corporation.
Boris Johnson could be getting a makeover. Well his office, anyway. Lucy Fisher in The Times reveals that the Foreign Office is advertising for two taxpayer-funded interior designers.

BREAKING: Trump won't cut ribbon

After much 'will he, won't he?' the Daily Mail splash revealed last night that Donald Trump would not be making his "lower key" definitely-not-a-state-visit to the UK after all. The trip to open the new US embassy in south London has been cancelled.

At just before 5am the president tweeted: "Reason I cancelled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for 'peanuts' only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!"

It seems that he has only just found out about the decision to move the embassy, taken in 2008 (by George W Bush, not Barack Obama). It spares Theresa May one headache and robs Labour of the chance to mobilise protests.

But it also raises questions about the stability of the so-called special relationship: in his first year Trump has managed to visit Belgium, China, France, Germany, Israel, Italy (twice), Japan, Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Vatican City, Vietnam and the West Bank.

Let's hope he doesn't lump us in with the African and Central American nations he described yesterday as “shit-hole countries”.

Read what I think this means for Britain’s place in the world here.

The politics of Mrs Brown’s Boys

Michael Gove, the cabinet minister, says that it is "pure genius", while Hugo Rifkind, The Times TV critic, says (correctly) that he is "so far from finding it funny that if you do we simply can’t be friends".

It was the most watched TV programme on Christmas Day, and yet is loathed by its detractors as not only painfully unfunny but grounds for suspecting that someone is not the person you thought they were if you catch them watching it.

Mrs Brown’s Boys is the show that divides an already bitterly divided nation.

The millions who love it do so adoringly; its bemused critics totally unable to fathom its appeal. It is the Brexit of television.

And now we have the proof. The brilliant Matthew Smith at YouGov has crunched the numbers on 13,000 people who love or hate the show.

Fans of Mrs Brown's Boys are more likely to be working class, older and less-well educated than those who dislike the programme. They like “toilet humour”, while detractors are more likely to say that they find “observations on news and current affairs” and “wordplay” funny. I think that's what you call "smart arses".

One of the most striking factors, however, was Brexit. People who like Mrs Brown split 62 per cent in favour of leaving the EU, with only 38 against. Among people who didn’t like the programme, it was 53/47.

Smith writes for Red Box: “Class is the key demographic difference between fans and critics. Working class Brits make up 52 per cent of those who like the programme but only 33 per cent of those who dislike it." Disliking the show, he says, is far more of a middle-class pursuit.

Fans are most likely to be concerned about curbing immigration and being tough on crime. They watch more TV, read red-top newspapers and describe themselves as homely, big-hearted and loving.

Critics worry about climate change, green energy and opposing restrictions on abortion. Some 21 per cent are most likely to read broadsheet newspapers, compared to just 7 per cent of fans. They describe themselves as clever, ethical and geeky.

In this week's Red Box podcast we discussed the phenomenon of emotion in politics, and how for many it now comes to override everything. The values people hold, and believe that our leaders do or do not hold, overrides policies and costings and, often, reality.

If people love Donald Trump, or Jeremy Corbyn or Brexit, it doesn't matter if individual things happen that would normally make them doubt themselves: it is almost like a religion. Trump and Corbyn and Brexit are right because they are Trump and Corbyn and Brexit.

And yet their opponents are so baffled and appalled that they cannot even imagine the sort of people who fall for it.

A critic laughing at a Mrs Brown bum joke or a Remainer finding an EU demand outrageous does not make them question their stance: it just makes them more angry. Simply thinking someone is "right" or "wrong" on a particular issue has instead become an immovable question of "good" versus "evil".

Politics has become an increasingly bitter, divided, angry, unforgiving, mean-spririted exercise which is all broadcast and no reception. It is increasingly hard to see how that might change.

But, like Mrs Brown's Boys, it's no laughing matter.

Matthew Smith: Mrs Brown’s Britain: a TV show that divides a nation

Monday's best comment

Brexit exposes our reliance on the City

Philip Collins – The Times

Beware politicians who promise you fairness

Paul Johnson – The Times

Adjust to the new normal or regret it

Anne Ashworth – The Times

This government is making it harder than ever for illegal immigrants to live and work in Britain

Caroline Nokes - The Daily Telegraph

No deal is a disaster. The government must tell us the truth about Brexit

Sadiq Khan - The Guardian

Today's cartoon from The Times

Treat to woo voters

It was back in the sunny days of June 2014 that the Labour party's official Twitter account promised: "Everybody should have his own owl." It turned out to be Ed Miliband's most popular policy, although it was the result of the account being hacked and it never took off.

Now, like so many other Miliband ideas, it has been adopted by Theresa May, who revealed that she was "proud of the fact" that she had a barn owl box in her garden. She has a bat box too, which should appeal to the Thick of It's "quiet bat people".

It came as the PM announced her green vision, which actually included rather a lot of ideas, even if some of them are not due to happen until she is 86.

And in a show of just how much attention May's greenery is garnering, Vanessa Kirby, who plays Princess Margaret in the hit series The Crown and is a Greenpeace campaigner, uses an exclusive piece in today's Red Box to call for the PM to go much further in her imitation of David Cameron's "hug a husky" environmentalism in a bid to save us from the "plastic soup" we have made for ourselves.

Red Box: Comment

May should ride a Blue Planet wave of public enthusiasm to a far cleaner, greener Britain

Vanessa Kirby – The Crown star and Greenpeace campaigner

"A piecemeal, pick-and-mix approach won’t get us out the plastic soup we’re in. What May should have announced is a real ban on throwaway plastic."

Read the full article

The Sketch

Big beasts’ ideal habitat is a safe corner indoors

Patrick Kidd

Theresa May had come to a wildlife reserve to talk about the environment, so naturally her speech was held indoors, well away from any fowl play that the photographers had planned for her. Tarquin and Iolanthe, her advisers, had been sent ahead to scoop up any limping mallards that might hobble past, providing an awkward metaphor, and the news on the wetland’s website that the redpolls had been doing very well was played down. The feather report also spoke of snipe, pintails and a peregrine, although that might have been another press officer.

Read the full sketch

Farage: Cooey, I’m over here!

Fire up the battle bus: Nigel Farage outed himself as a Re-moaner yesterday when he popped up on TV and said that he was coming round to the idea of a second EU referendum.

Don't tell Brenda from Bristol.

Read the full story

Tweet of the day

I agree with Nigel.

@nick_clegg

Vegan Serial Killer killed

Quiz question: who isn’t the only Labour MP to be sacked from the frontbench by both Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn?

Clue: His nickname among Labour colleagues is the “Vegan Serial Killer”, because, as it was explained last year, “he is a vegan. And he looks like a serial killer”.

Answers on a postcard. Winner gets to replace him as shadow fire minister. As long as you don’t talk about hiking council tax.

Read the full story

The PM's ear

Tensions over Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former chief of staff, flared yesterday as Jo Johnson, the newly minted transport minister, publicly attacked him for disparaging Justine Greening, his former boss in the education department.

Downing Street has been bombarded with freedom of information requests for details of Timothy visiting , calling and emailing the PM, with whispers among Tory spads about him being seen ducking in and out of rooms last year trying not to be seen.

Expect the row to rumble on into the weekend, with Sunday papers no doubt reporting about "letters going into the 1922 committee" demanding a leadership election: the political news equivalent of the SAS being on standby.

Read the full story

Today in Brexit

Confusion reigns over the plan for financial services following a kerfuffle between Philip Hammond and Downing Street over a "pay to play" deal that would see the UK paying into the EU budget in exchange for European market access for British banks. Read the full story

Meanwhile, an analysis commissioned by Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, has concluded that a Brexit deal with the European Union would result in only marginally lower UK growth and employment, while a no-deal scenario could cost 500,000 jobs and £50 billion in lost investment. Read the full story

The Guardian reports that the EU will resist any renegotiation of fishing quotas in the seas around the UK for the proposed two-year transition period after Brexit.

If that's enough to send you running for the Pyrenees, you could join the thousands of Brits who applied for French passports last year. Read the full story

Red Box: Comment

We need to take a serious look at Efta

Stephen Hammond – Conservative MP

Frozen out

The Daily Telegraph splashes on news that the government will attempt to flush illegal migrants out of the UK by asking banks to close their accounts.

In her first outing as immigration minister, Caroline Nokes says that the government is refusing to turn a "blind eye" to migrants who overstay their welcome.

Poor Mrs Bone

Tory MP Peter Bone has mentioned Mrs Bone in the Commons no fewer than 23 times, using her as a device to call for an EU referendum, complain about spending in Scotland and worry about the effects in David Cameron of spending time with Nick Clegg. Don't expect him to do that again.

The Sun splashes on news that he has left Jenny for a married physio 20 years his junior.

Red Box: Comment

Getting out of a JAM: making ends meet is an increasingly sticky affair

Jonathan Schifferes – Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce

Around the world

USA: Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump have a “very good relationship”, the US president suggested last night, in remarks that appeared to signal a new openness to diplomacy with North Korea. Read the full story

GERMANY: Angela Merkel warned that there were still “big obstacles” to forming a German coalition government as talks went down to the wire last night. Read the full story

FRANCE: French police recovered all the jewels snatched by a gang of thieves from a shop in the Paris Ritz on Wednesday after they were dropped during a botched getaway, a source close to the investigation said last night. Read the full story

Also in the news

TRANS SHORTLISTS: Labour may open quotas to transgender women (The Times)
FREEDOM: May vows to defend free press after Lords push for inquiry (The Times)
BREXIT PLUS PLUS: Brussels raises prospect of longer Brexit transition (Financial Times)
WHIFFY LEAKS: Julian Assange told to take shower (The Times)
NHS CRISIS: Thousands of patients hospitalised with flu as virus ‘takes off’ (The Times)
HMRC HOTLINE: HMRC fiddles figures on telephone waiting times (The Times)
HARASSMENT SCANDAL: Westminster harassment report has been watered down, says MP (The Guardian)
IN HOUSE: Ministers must run Carillion contracts to safeguard jobs, says union (The Times)
CROWNING VICTORY: Crown jewels hidden from Nazis in a biscuit tin (The Times)

TMS

From the diary

By Patrick Kidd

Noble ears get a blast of blue

Hansard is now an obscene publication. Today’s copy of Westminster’s official report carries what is believed to be the first deliberate use of the “c word” in parliament, spoken by Baroness Jenkin of Kennington in a debate on the abuse of politicians. With two bishops in front of her and after a warning to “block your ears” at her unparliamentary language, she spoke of how one candidate had been met every morning by Momentum activists who shouted “f***ing Tory c***” at her. Unlike us, Hansard printed it unasterisked. The only c words that appear in its archive are typos, including one in 1861 when an MP said that c*** is “the cause of disunion in the United States”. He probably meant “cant”, or perhaps it wasn’t a typo and the speaker just didn’t like Lincoln.