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| Monday July 24 2017 |
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By Matt Chorley
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Good morning,
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A group of poseurs who prize vanity over intelligence cuddle up to rivals and screw potential partners in an attempt to emerge with the big prize.
It's the Love Island finale tonight: like the Tory leadership contest, but in swimwear.
And now you're thinking about David Davis in bikini. Sorry.
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Must reads
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- The University of Oxford’s academic reputation is being exploited by Ukrainian businessmen selling millions of pounds worth of fake awards and honours, The Times can reveal.
- Ian Blackford, the SNP's leader in Westminster, received cash from a multimillionaire Conservative donor before last month’s general election.
- A lovely obituary of James Davidson, who was accused of spying in Russia, danced with the Queen in South Africa and became a Liberal MP in Aberdeenshire and was once tipped to become leader.
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Stop, Hammond time
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Theresa May walks off into the the sunset today for her summer holidays, crossing another deadline set by her critics for dates she would not survive until.
And while the cat's away, the mice will restate the Tory economic argument. In the next few days and weeks you will hear a lot about the case for balancing the books, living within our means and protecting the country from future shocks.
Philip Hammond - who will take charge in the PM's absence from next week - plans to use that time to say what was so rarely uttered during the election campaign: "Stronger growth is the only sustainable way to deliver better public services, higher real wages and increased living standards."
The chancellor has a spring in his step: cabinet friends and foes alike agree that he has the prime minister's ear, as was seen with the end-of-term consensus on free movement continuing throughout any post-Brexit transition period.
Relations between No10 and No11 are still not perfect, but they have improved immeasurably since the election. The departure of Nicky Timothy (branded "economically illiterate" by Hammond allies) and Fiona Hill (who kept taking Hammond off the election campaign grid) has helped enormously.
Now a summer bombardment is planned, with speeches and charts and statistics used to get back on the economic front foot. It is a move backed by the wise old heads in the Tory party. As Ken Clarke told 5Live yesterday: "We need to go back to economic growth, we need to concentrate on the key problems.”
That means less time worrying about the person who lives in No10, and more time worrying about the security of the other homes in the country. Anyone with a mortgage in particular will be made to sit up and take note: could you afford your monthly repayments if interest rates rise?
"We need to talk in a language people understand," says a Treasury source. "Mortgages are the biggest outgoing for most people, and yet we never talk about them."
There remain tensions in the cabinet about austerity: Hammond will use his autumn budget to sound like he is loosening the purse strings, while keeping a tight grip on them. Other ministers want to go further and halt austerity until the shape of Brexit is known, but they are united against a common enemy: Jeremy Corbyn.
This will mean dismantling Corbynomics and warning, in plain language, what Labour's sharp shift to the left means. "In their manifesto we have got their game plan," says a Tory source. "We have got to get stuck into it."
But this cannot be all doom and gloom - they tried that in the election. One cabinet minister tells me there should be a two-for-one strategy: "For every one anti-Corbyn message there should be two positive messages about why they should vote for the Conservatives."
May heads off on summer recess still prime minister, with only 22 per cent of Tory members saying she should quit and no cabinet rival commanding the support of more than a fifth to be leader instead.
And now the chancellor will be allowed to talk about the economy. Wonders will never cease.
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Should May stay or go?
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The latest polling from Professor Tim Bale's fascinating Party Members Project by the Economic and Social Research Council reveals what Conservatives think about the future of their party.
Seven in ten (71 per cent) think Theresa May should stay on as leader, and only David Davis and Boris Johnson poll better than Don't Know when asked who could be leader instead. All this just six weeks after May led the party into an election they didn't need to have, and lost her majority.
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Today's cartoon from The Times by Seamus Jennings
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Corbyn won't ‘deal with it’
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Jeremy Corbyn has a special Twitter account - @LOTOcomms - which swings into action when the dear leader is traduced, dismissing stories as "not serious", "entirely untrue" and "lies".
Strangely, it didn't seem perturbed when the NME wrote a story just before the election which said: "Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to ‘deal with’ the debt of students who have already graduated university during the period in which they paid £9,000 per year." Funny that.
Anyway, the Labour leader was made to squirm a bit on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday, including his admission that he was "unaware" of the size at the debt he was hinting that he might write-off.
The Mail splash calls it "Corbyn's student debt humiliation". I suspect Team Corbyn will be more concerned about the splash in Metro, the most read newspaper in the country.
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Market forces
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Jeremy Corbyn's loose grasp of the facts was also exposed when he said that being in the single market is “dependent on EU membership”. Try telling that to Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein, said supporters of a softer Brexit, including Chuka Umunna.
It's worth remembering that two thirds of Labour members think Britain should stay in the single market, and another fifth are leaning in that direction.
Geoff Hoon, a former Labour Europe minister, writes for Red Box on how he helped defeat the Tory government during Maastricht the in 1990s. "Given that a majority of Labour voters supported Remain in the referendum, it is difficult to understand why Labour MPs are pandering to UKIP supporters and the right wing of the Tory Party," he says.
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Grinding down
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Jon Trickett, Labour's shadow cabinet office minister, uses an interview in the i newspaper to warn Theresa May that the party aims to turn Parliament into a “battleground” with the aim of “grinding down” her minority administration.
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Biased BBC
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Liam Fox is in Washington today, preparing for the US trade deal which we might be able to strike in about 2055. The Telegraph reports that the international trade secretary has demanded a meeting with the BBC director-general after accusing the broadcaster of "biased" coverage of Brexit.
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Pop-up parliament
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Is a massive glass pop-pop parliament the solution to where to put MPs and peers during restoration work? Lord Foster, the architect, seems to think so, claiming the two chambers and offices could be housed on Horse Guards Parade.
Although one MP texts to say they were concerned that it looks like "a giant Madonna bra from above".
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Read the full story
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Ukip's demise continues
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Ukip's grip on reality has been weak for sometime: now the last council where it had a majority has slipped through its fingers.
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Read the full story
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Because you're (not) worth it
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Lord Hall, the director-general of the BBC, has promised to "value the contribution" of 40 female stars who signed a letter demanding equal pay. A quick look at the BBC's pay list suggests that until recently he thought that their combined contribution is barely worth one Chris Evans.
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Read the full story
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Tweet of the day
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Gabe Winn, a political comms guru, posted this picture over the weekend, hoping to shift a cardboard cutout of Ed Miliband. After a flurry of interest, bidding reached £100 in aid of Great Ormond Street hospital. You could probably hire the real Ed for less.
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Knock ’em down
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John Hayes is not a man to use one word when an extended metaphor or literary reference will do. The Telegraph reports that the transport minister has given a speech taking up Prince Charles's battle against modern architecture by saying “most of what’s been built in my lifetime could be demolished without aesthetic cost”.
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Switching gender
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Men and women will be able to change their gender without a doctor’s report, under government proposals to make it easier, quicker and less intrusive for adults to alter their gender and amend their birth certificate.
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Read the full story
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Dear Tony...
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Confidential letters from the Prince of Wales to Tony Blair about the foxhunting ban should be made public, the information commissioner has ruled.
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Read the full story
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Honeymoon's over
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French voters turned off by Emmanuel Macron’s authoritarian and image-conscious streak have helped trigger a ten-point fall in his approval ratings in the past month.
It seems that his decision to dress up like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, despite never serving in the French military, has not helped matters.
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| TMS |
| From the diary |
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By Grant Tucker
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Long arm of the law
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Afzal Khan (Lab, Manchester Gorton) may be unique in having made his maiden speech after his debut at the dispatch box. The inheritor of Sir Gerald Kaufman’s seat was given a place in Jeremy Corbyn’s home affairs team and tackled question time 16 days before his first speech. He said he had been one of the few ethnic minority police officers in Manchester in the 1980s and that one voter told him he would not support him as a result. “Twenty years ago you arrested me,” the constituent explained.
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Read more from the TMS diary
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What the papers say
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The Times
"While the opposition is unable or unwilling to get its facts straight and its EU stance clear, the government and the public cannot know what Brexit deal would get through parliament. The Labour leader should start coming clean." Read the full article
Financial Times
"With help from President Trump, Riyadh and its Arab allies have painted themselves into a corner at a precarious moment for the Gulf." Read the full article
The Daily Telegraph
"Parliament has broken up and MPs should make the most of a well-earned rest. But the Tories cannot afford to let the summer slip through their fingers: their problems aren’t magically about to disappear." Read the full article
The Sun
"Perhaps he deserves some credit for being so open about his own uselessness, but Jeremy Corbyn’s U-turn on tuition fees debt is jaw-dropping. The Labour leader’s claim that his promise to abolish student debt was meaningless is certainly an original approach to persuading voters that he deserves the keys to Number Ten." Read the full article
Daily Mirror
"Mrs May’s pitiful attempts to restore some authority have flopped. The long summer break will provide plenty of opportunity for scheming Tories to plan how to oust her. How she must rue the day she ever called that election." Read the full article
The Guardian
"Nearly all the UK’s food regulations are made in Europe. To unpick this relationship is a huge task, the consequences of getting it wrong could be terrible. The hope that we could go into an election in 2022 having left the EU and completed a transition period is a dangerous triumph of ideology over common sense." Read the full article
Daily Mail
"So for those students who supported Labour believing its leader to be a man of his word, this is a salutary lesson. Beware left-wing politicians offering lavish free gifts in exchange for your vote. They're invariably lying."
Daily Express
"A lot of gullible young people - and their parents, no doubt - were suckered in by Labour's weasel words. Let's hope they've learned their lesson."
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Agenda
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Today
- Boris Johnson flies to Australia on the latest leg of a nine-day international tour.
- 11:00am: Greg Clark, the business secretary, gives a speech on industrial strategy in Birmingham.
- 1:30pm: Liam Fox, international trade secretary, delivers an address on the steps the UK is taking to form a sovereign trade policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC.
- 5:00pm: John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, holds a campaign rally in Thurrock.
House of Commons & House of Lords
- Parliament is in summer recess and will return on Tuesday September 5.
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@MattChorley
