Mr Speaker, we are not honourable ladies and gentlemen

Mr Speaker, we are not honourable ladies and gentlemen.

Let us look back to the Queen's speech debate on 13 May, concerning the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. At one point the deputy speaker suggested that the member for Warrington North really intended to insert an "inadvertently" in her claim that the Secretary of State had misled the House. Might I suggest that she should have done no such thing?

*

The shadow education secretary had observed that it was "concerning... that the Minister for Universities was forced to admit on radio yesterday that this flawed legislation could have dangerous and troubling consequences, including potentially protecting holocaust deniers", to which the secretary of state responded rather histrionically in an intervention that "The Universities Minister never said that this would protect holocaust deniers".

But, as the shadow secretary of state was able to demonstrate by quoting a transcript of the programme, she did.

"The Universities Minister says: 'What this bill is designed to do is to protect and promote free speech which is lawful so any free speech which is lawful...'

The interviewer, Evan Davis, says: 'It is lawful isn’t it? Holocaust denial in this country is lawful isn’t it?'

The Minister says: 'So what I’m saying, yeah, so that’s...'

Evan Davis asks: 'So holocaust denial is okay, you’d defend a holocaust denier being invited to campus because that is part of the free speech argument?'

The Minister responds: 'Obviously it would depend on exactly what they were saying'."

To which the shadow secretary of state responded, "Madam Deputy Speaker, it never depends on what a holocaust denier is saying".

Mr Speaker, we might have ahead of us a long series of debates in committee, to ensure that holocaust deniers are handled correctly, but the simple fact in dispute here - that the Universities Minister told the Radio 4 audience that the bill would protect such a person - is resolved. She did, the secretary of state was wrong, and therefore he did mislead the house.

*

By contrast, there are occasions when the mistake perhaps is inadvertent. In PMQs on 28 April the Prime Minister claimed: "it is this Conservative Government who have built 244,000 homes in the last year, which is a record over 30 years". I can remember several ministers making the same mistake - Lord Pickles when he was a minister in David Cameron's government for example, or the Right Honourable member for Maidenhead when she was Prime Minister.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government publishes a series of documents which allow us to answer these questions quite easily. The figure 244,000 seems to come from the one entitled "Housing supply; net additional dwellings, England: 2019-20". Here we see that the number of net additional dwellings produced during 2019-2020 was 243,770, which is indeed a record for. . . the 29 years for which numbers are given. This number includes homes produced by conversions and change of use - and 9020 demolitions - as well as actual new homes, of which there were 220,600 in the year concerned.

Surely it is an inadvertent mistake that the prime minister - or his researcher - has taken the form of this answer from a series of old speeches and the latest important number from the front page summary of the statistics release. Surely.

*

So, Mr Speaker, I would like us to be considered honourable ladies and gentlemen. I would like our voters to remark on it, and I would like not have to use the phrase in every other sentence to assert something that may not be true.

Cry "God for Boris, the Union (but Saint George)!"

For most of us it started with Charlie Stayt "savagely" poking fun at the size of Honest Bob Jenrick's flag on the BBC Breakfast programme. So savage was it that co-host Naga Munchetty had to hold back a giggle. But then, Honest Bob was also amused. Was he enjoying the joke? Did he think it was puerile? Or was something already brewing?

A year ago there would have been no flag there.

Naturally, there was an Outcry, with BBC director-general Tim Davie having to assure us that the Corporation is "proud of being British" and that the Union Jack will still fly over its headquarters. The two presenters were "spoken to" and the strict new BBC social media policy had Ms Munchetty apologising and withdrawing "likes" for tweets about the incident.

The following week, Tim Davie gave evidence to the Commons Public Accounts Committee, which keeps an eye on public spending. James Wild, Conservative MP for Northwest Norfolk (who happens to be married to the Leader of the House of Lords) appeared to be better briefed on one subject than the director-general.

"In your annual report last year…" he asked, "do you know how many Union flags featured in any of the graphics in those glossy pages?" Davie had to admit that he had no idea, at which Wild pounced. "It was zero. Do you find that surprising?".

Davie's response was reasonably accomplished: "No. I think that is a strange metric. One of [the] things I looked at when I came into the building this morning was a Union Jack flying proudly on Broadcasting House, as it does on many days of the year. I have travelled around the world championing the UK. I sit on the private sector council for the GREAT campaign*. I don’t think there is any problem with the BBC in terms of championing the UK and Britain abroad. We are incredibly proud of it. If you wander up Regent Street today, have a look at the Union Jack flying proudly on top of the BBC" but Wild continued with what I took to be a veiled threat: "It is always good to see the Union Jack flying, but in a 268-page report about the BBC - the British Broadcasting Corporation - my constituents would probably expect to see more than one flag appearing".

(* GREAT is "the UK government's most ambitious international promotional campaign, uniting the efforts of the public and private sector to generate jobs and growth for Britain and Northern Ireland".)

I mentioned pouncing above. Scientist and presenter Adam Rutherford was one of many who were quick to point out that James Wild wasn't exactly practising what he preached. There are no Union flags in the 2019 Conservative manifesto, which must be a surprise mustn't it Mr Wild?

What's more, he seemed to have forgotten to include any flags on his website, or his Facebook page (this could all have changed by now of course). Broadening out a little, Boris Johnson had forgotten to request any flags on his website, as had Prince Charles, Prince William, Visit Britain, the Houses of Parliament, the RAF, Brexit Party Ltd (now reborn as the collection bucket for Reform UK), the British Lions, the British Museum. . .

There were a few on the Great British Bake Off though (look for the bunting).

****

Two days later an announcement came from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The Union flag is now to be flown from government buildings every day "unless another flag is being flown" rather than just on special days. They told us exactly why, in case we had any doubt (spot the difference).

The Culture Secretary said: "The Union flag unites us as a nation and people rightly expect it to be flown above UK Government buildings. This guidance will ensure that happens every day, unless another flag is being flown, as a proud reminder of our history and the ties that bind us."

The Housing Secretary said "Our nation’s flag is a symbol of liberty, unity and freedom that creates a shared sense of civic pride. People rightly expect to see the Union Flag flying high on civic and Government buildings up and down the country, as a sign of our local and national identity."

The people expect this, apparently, and they are right to do so. Pretty heavy stuff, and there's more to come. There is also a dense paragraph laying out rules for flying more than one flag at once, which manages both to give the Middlesex county flag and the Scottish saltire equal status and to suggest that the EU flag needn't ever be flown, even if - say - the Council president Charles Michel is visiting.

****

That afternoon along came John Hayes (Conservative MP for South Holland and the Deepings in Lincolnshire) to explain it all on Radio 4's PM programme (available for 19 days as I write - the item begins at around 16 minutes and the interview around 19 minutes).

Hayes told the host, Evan Davis: "We had a meeting with the Common Sense Group of Conservative MPs, with Oliver Dowden, and asked for exactly this… You know, people would look at government buildings and think, why on earth aren't they flying the flag?"

Davis asked whether he was really convinced that "people" noticed that, but Hayes was in full flow: "I think we just don't fly our flag enough actually. If you go to other countries, to the capitals of other countries - not that we can do that at the moment of course - if you went to the capitals of other countries, around the heart of those capitals, particularly on government buildings, you routinely see the flag of that country flying." [slight logical leap] "So it does seem to be something that unifies the country, that brings us together, that allows us to share in our national pride. What's wrong with that?"

Davis pushed again: "I guess I'm interested in why we're doing this now. 'Cause there is an interpretation that there's a little bit of politics in this, as opposed to just national unity and a bit of patriotism. Which is, you know there are lots of people who are less into the flag waving than you are Sir John and that this is really designed to put Labour on the back foot and to make it an argument in which Keir Starmer's forced to kind of say 'we support flying the flag' or to say 'this is a silly thing', and that it's really about creating an argument in a culture war that we don't need to have." 

A gift to Hayes! "So you're suggesting - I just want to be clear about the question - you're suggesting that Labour aren't as patriotic, Labour aren't as proud of their country. That's quite a bold charge."

"No…" protested Davis, "I'm suggesting that they don't measure their patriotism as much around the flag as you do and that that is why - there's definitely a difference in flag values, isn't there? - …there are many people reacting to this very badly on social media for example, you can find people saying this is just a distraction, it's game-playing, it's kind of forcing it on people when it doesn't need… and I'm just trying to work out whether there's a bit of politics as well as your desire to see the flag flying more."

"Patriotism, you could argue, is a political thing, so you're right of course," admitted Hayes. "If you don't share my faith in the nation then you perhaps wouldn't take such a clear view about it. But totems and emblems matter, don't they? In every civilisation and every society. Totems and emblems, being symbols of unity matter. And so flying the flag is of course an aesthetic thing, but it's more than that. It's what it says about us as a people, and it is unifying, and it is a matter of pride and purpose, and I see that as a positive thing. It's interesting isn't it? In my lifetime, many more people display flags in their own homes, display flags outside the home, in the home. I think that's probably a good thing, not a bad thing."

Davis hadn't finished: "But Margaret Thatcher never did this, Margaret Thatcher never felt it necessary to kind of spell it out this way, did she? But she was a patriot wasn't she? She was as patriotic as anybody."

"She was indeed," but now Hayes was repeating himself.

"Just finally," Davis was winding up. "Around that issue of unifying, one wonders whether, in the press release, likening the saltire, the Scottish flag, to the Middlesex county flag and saying local flags can hang alongside... I wonder whether that will unify the people of Scotland in the way you intend."

Hayes was running out of energy: "We've just all completed our census haven't we? And I'm proud to be English and British, and I know many Scots feel exactly the same, Scottish and British… So I do think there's a desire for this, we want to illustrate our pride in locality and our pride in nation. And what a good thing that is."

Since Keir Starmer won't say it, may I suggest "this is a silly thing", and that "it's really about creating an argument in a culture war that we don't need to have". It's being set up as a test of patriotism, a test of legitimacy. Rejecting it "rightly" as invalid and unacceptable might mean I've failed the test in Conservative eyes, but I won't take "it is unifying, and it is a matter of pride and purpose" as an order.

****

When I saw this one, (2 April) I knew the time was coming to stop. London's Evening Standard published a story which seemed to be about uniform/dress codes but also told us there was doubt about the leadership of the school. The headteacher had announced that the union flag, which "evokes often intense reactions" would not be flown during consultations.

"re-education camps for the insufficiently patriotic"? asked one reply, but Adam Rutherford was there again.

There's no flag on Mr Hunt's website, he pointed out, nothing on the constituency website, or Hunt's election manifesto, or the Ipswich Conservatives' site, or Hunt's Facebook page, or indeed the Ipswich Conservative headquarters.

Very much "do as I say, not what I do" again.

With God on our side

Does the Conservative party now think it has a monopoly of the Union flag? Does it think it needs one? Because now they're going for the Almighty as well.

These tweets have attracted many scornful replies and some truly angry protests at this presumption of morality, tweets about rich men and eyes of needles among them.

Again, this is aimed at Labour - painting them unpatriotic,ungodly and illegitimate - and with Starmer's ineffectual attempts at patriotism it might be enough to hold on to "red wall" voters who've been tempted by Honest Bob's Towns Fund goodies.

 

Happy anniversary?

The Union flag dates back to 1801 but its meaning has changed since then. The country I live in - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - is 100 years old this year.

When he became Prime Minister in 2019, Boris Johnson gave himself the title Minister for the Union. He also commissioned a report on devolution from Lord Andrew Dunlop. This is now finished but - remind you of anything? - not yet published. One of its recommendations is reported to be the creation of a position titled "Secretary of State for Intergovernmental and Constitutional Affairs", a role which would be fulfilled by a Cabinet "big beast". If Johnson can find one.

If Boris Johnson is really serious about this, he could begin by publishing the Dunlop report, but why are we "looking forward to" a Festival of Brexit next year but not a Festival of the Union in 2021?

Bad information ruins lives - an email sent to BBC Radio 4 Feedback

Yesterday the report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities was published. It was immediately controversial, and the government would have expected that. The media were provided with some material from the report and the chair of the Commission was made available for interview. Was this good enough?

In the early part of the Today programme (around 6:35) the BBC home editor Mark Easton told Nick Robinson and the listeners that it was "slightly odd", and that "we're relying on selected lines which have been provided by the government". I saw two print/online journalists discussing the same thing on Twitter. The report itself was not to be published until 11:00, so all the listeners had to go on was (admittedly very relevant) interviews and several news items and introductions based on these "selected lines", but the "slight oddness" of that information was not mentioned at any other point in the programme.

Later that day, fact checkers FullFact published a comment by their chief executive Will Moy, lamenting this approach by government (and by media). "Will we accept these tactics again when the inquiry into how the coronavirus pandemic was handled is released?" he asked. "A favourable summary given press coverage while some convenient time later the rest of the report comes out?" He went on to propose "a parliamentary inquiry into the oversight of government communications to protect the good they do and the vital importance of good official information" and suggested "the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee [as] one of the possible routes to make that happen".

Former senior civil servant Jill Rutter responded "I also think it's up to journalists to refuse to report until the whole thing is available".

The sceptical audience's perception of government media management must be that information is released to prime the debate, ministers (or other approved speakers) are made available for the "morning shows" and then - far too often - everybody disappears when the report (or whatever) comes out later in the day.

I agree with Mr Moy, and sympathise with Ms Rutter (though which editor will hold back while others are running with the story?) and I would be grateful if you could get some comment from the editor or presenters of Today itself, as Radio 4's prime accomplice in/victim of these particular media management exercises.

Out with the old

The story so far...

Let's suspend Parliament to concentrate minds

It was five weeks after Boris Johnson's first trip to the Palace to become prime minister (with Parliament at work for just two days of that time) that Jacob Rees Mogg took a flight north to Balmoral, accompanied by Commons chief whip Mark Spencer and Natalie Evans, the leader of the House of Lords. They went to advise the Queen (that is, to instruct her) to suspend Parliament - or prorogue, in the jargon - for five weeks. There was to be a Queen's speech, they said.

This is hardly a big deal for a new prime minister - you'd expect a Queen's speech earlier than this - but Conservative Campaign HQ and the executive committee (a select group) of the "1922 Committee" (all the Tory MPs) had engineered the election to leave no time before the summer break.

It was just for a Queen's speech wasn't it?

Of course it wasn't - first, the complicated stuff.

Of the two cases which ended up at the Supreme Court for prorogation to be judged unlawful, the one in the Inner Court of Session in Scotland had acquired detailed evidence, as set out in pages 7 to 9 of Lady Hale's summary of the Supreme Court judgment. The three important aspects of the evidence for me are:

• The proposed prorogation was carefully crafted to occupy as many days as possible, but still not fall foul of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, which was in turn designed to require reports from government ministers and prevent the long prorogation-for-No-Deal which had been feared.
• "The dates proposed sought to provide reassurance by ensuring that Parliament would sit for three weeks before exit and that a maximum of seven days were lost apart from the time usually set aside for the conference recess." No conference recess had been approved, and there were strong moves not to do so.
• "Politically, it was essential that Parliament was sitting before and after the EU Council meeting (which is scheduled for 17th-18th October). If the Queen’s Speech were on 14th October, the usual six-day debate would culminate in key votes on 21st and 22nd October. Parliament would have the opportunity to debate the Government’s overall approach to Brexit in the run up to the EU Council and then vote on it once the outcome of the Council was known." That "opportunity" never arose. Johnson's "ample time for debate" was pathetically and dishonestly kept so short as to be useless.

So that Queen's speech...?

It's easy really, as Jacob Rees-Mogg discovered a little later, when the plan changed so that there really would be a Queen's speech. An innocent-looking Leader of the House told Cardiff West MP Kevin Brennan, that "Prorogation will meet the judgment of the Court and, therefore, will be the time necessary to move to a Queen’s Speech, and no more".

It's worth noting that the two and a half weeks of prorogation before it was declared unlawful didn't produce a Queen's speech or, apparently, any part of one. It's as if they didn't do any work on it, as if that hadn't been the reason at all.

But even when there was a Queen's speech Parliament blocked it

No they didn't.

The speech was delivered on 14 October and the final decision - which went through by 16 votes - came ten days later, having eaten up a lot of that "ample time" Johnson had promised for debating Brexit.

And then they tried to block Brexit by forcing another extension

No they didn't.

The Benn Act prevented No Deal on 31 October, which was a serious risk, with all that "ample time" having gone. If Johnson wasn't lying about wanting a deal (now why would we even think that?) he really needed that extra time.

The EU Council meeting would be too late to achieve Brexit on 31 October, and the way Johnson actually achieved his deal - wasting two months after appointment, then frantically negotiating amendments to ten percent of the previous deal and eventually adopting parts of the deal before that, which he'd dismissed as unacceptable in September, and by abandoning the DUP he'd assured would never see that choice made by a British Conservative prime minister - lost him any hope of a majority in time. But MPs did not block Brexit, they temporarily blocked No Deal

(The ERG, of course, were right behind Arlene Foster and her crew. Until dumping them became the best way to achieve the higher prize - Brexit whatever.)

And then Parliament blocked the Withdrawal Agreement Bill

No they didn't.

With No Deal out of the way for the moment many of the Conservative rebels were happy to support the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, and enough Labour MPs joined them to give the bill a second reading (agreement in principle that the bill should go through the process of becoming law) by 30 votes.

What Johnson couldn't get through was the timetable for debate. Three days for all stages in the Commons was rightly seen as ridiculous, and trying to force the Lords to ignore the fact - for example - that the Bill presented no useful detail of how the new Northern Ireland "solution" would be implemented seemed likely to produce a battle, and quite possibly No Deal, if the 31 October deadline had to be observed.

So it wasn't. Thank you Mr Benn, Ms Cooper, Mr Letwin, and all who helped develop the legal manoeuvres to stop government doing maximum damage to the country, but not - I must stress - to stop Brexit.

So now what? No idea

The manifesto gives little detail, and who could expect to believe it anyway?

The Brexit timetable is still ridiculous - just three days again for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - and the bill is even more unacceptable than before - among other things, parliamentary scrutiny over future negotiations has been removed. But a sizeable Conservative majority, who have all apparently signed in blood to support whatever deals Johnson manages to contrive, means he doesn't have to bother about that. The Lords will amend it, but they'll be forced to accept rejection of those amendments under pressure of time and No Deal on 31 January (it's always there).

One thing we can be sure of is that Johnson will avoid proper scrutiny whenever he can.

But whatever happens, No Deal must be on the table

Nope. As anybody who's ever bought a secondhand car knows (this is their favourite analogy, and I've been through that transaction myself a few times), walking away means you're no worse off, apart from the loss of some time. The terms of Article 50 mean you lose your membership at the deadline even if you have walked away. If you're going to do this Brexit thing, that seems like a really bad way to do it.

Because the EU only ever negotiates when they're close to a deadline

A lot of people parrot this line, but what past negotiations are they talking about? What other negotiations with the EU have had fixed deadlines?

Recent trade agreements with Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, etc which we've negotiated together while this Brexit thing was going on were finished when they were finished. Leaving the EU has a two-year timetable - it's different. May then negotiated a transition period of 21 months, extendable to 45 months, to negotiate (optimistically) a future UK-EU relationship. After a few Article 50 extensions and Johnson's master negotiation technique that's now eleven months, extendable to 35, and he's nailing us to the eleven.

Which will actually be about nine. The 27 would talk longer if we asked. They're not stupid. But if Johnson insists on his Christmas 2020 deadline he'll be faced with demands to commit to continuing full alignment of regulations in several fields. Here's a description of the data adequacy area which - together with financial equivalence - is discussed in the Times article referred to as if these requirements are somehow a surprise.

Anyway, it was Johnson, not the EU, who shifted after his little walk in the park with Varadkar. Falling into No Deal would be stupid - it would be make future talks longer and harder. Pursuing No Deal would be a policy which nobody campaigned for in 2016, as far as I can remember, so very few people would have voted for it. If that's Johnson's objective, he should be honest for once in his life and say so.

Now for the "people's priorities"

If they can fit them in.

Apart from all that legislation in the latest Queen's speech, much of which couldn't have been guessed at from the lightweight manifesto, what might there be to do? Significant parts of the country are still living with flooding or the effects of flooding, which Johnson shows no sign of reacting to. Then there are the homeless, who've been helped this week with... an announcement. Government certainly seems to have been embarrassed into action here, but some of the numbers are vague and some look a bit pathetic - "The Communities Secretary also announced £10 million – extended today by £3 million – for the Cold Weather Fund, which will boost life-saving support for rough sleepers during the cold winter weather". That's across the whole of England.

When Parliament opens again on 7 January Johnson will have been prime minister for 167 days, with Parliament sitting for just 35 of them, and in that time he's just about managed three sessions of Prime Minister's Questions. Watch for a proposal to change the format of PMQs for the avoidance of even more scrutiny. That's a real people's priority!

Or maybe a quick trip to Mustique

And now he has his majority he doesn't have to care, so off he and girlfriend Carrie Symonds fly to "the exclusive island" to "spend new year with the Von Bismarck family". As you do.

And "According to The Times, it is expected that Mr Johnson will pay for the flight himself" is apparently news. I wonder why that might be. I'll be keeping an eye on the Commons register of members' financial interests. He could be really strapped for cash compared with the last couple of years in which he's pulled in about £800,000 above his MP's salary - the House of Commons' top outside earner.

Questions for whatever government mouthpiece next appears in front of a journalist - 1

Image: Daily Express
"Boris Johnson squares up to Vladimir Putin
as he vows to stand up to
'Russian aggression'"

1. Do you accept that Dominic Grieve, the former chair of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, believes that the Russia Report should have been published before the election campaign?

2. Do you accept that Jonathan Evans, former head of MI5, Peter Ricketts, former National Security Adviser, David Anderson, former reviewer of terrorism legislation and Robin Butler, former head of the civil service, all agree with him?

3. Do you accept that the report was submitted to the security services and the Cabinet Office in March of this year, that the scrutiny and redaction process was complete by early October, when "the agencies and the national security secretariat indicated that they were happy that the published form would not damage any operational capabilities of the agencies", and that the report was sent to the Prime Minister on 17 October for "final confirmation"?

4. Do you accept that a report from the Intelligence and Security Committee - as with reports from an ordinary select committee - does not require a response from government before it is published?

5. So why was the report not published on 5 November?

Brexit Day (No 3) +27 - The "revoke the past; sod that, revoke the present" election

Little Matty Hancock - he does like a selfie

History, according to the New Book Of Tory, consists of various "Labour years of disaster" and the last 126 days. Little Matty Hancock came onto the Today programme on Saturday with a shiny new announcement on dementia research to distract us from the Labour manifesto. The figure of £1.6 billion was mentioned, but that's for Research! generally. The actual proposal is £83 million over ten years to fund a "dementia moonshot", a national effort, with scientists invited in from all over the world (even if they earn less than £32,000 a year).

Justin Webb asked him, "Do you have a sense that, included in this announcement is an acceptance that there has not been a proper spend up to now?" and Hancock went into a long explanation that the problem of dementia was actually "partly as a consequence of success in dealing with cancer and cardio-vascular diseases". He has a point, since the incidence of dementia rises with age, but he was rather too proud that "we've seen the fastest acceleration in survival of cancer of all the major European countries", because we started from a lower point than comparable countries and have been trying to catch up.

Webb tried to return to the question, and this is where things got silly. "Here's the problem though, with all of that, and talk of moonshots, and you heard it with the audience last night [the Question Time leaders' debate], the scepticism that there was towards Boris Johnson, this business of making promises. They know, and everyone in that audience knows, that the NHS has been underfunded in historic terms over the last decade. They know as well that our spending on research and development is less than the OECD average, has been for many years. They know that these things could have been done in the past and weren't, and they just don't believe you."

Little Matty protested, "Oh I don't think that's reasonable at all", but Webb persisted, "Most of those things are true, aren't they [all of them, surely]?". Hancock then started to paint a new history: "No. Boris Johnson has been prime minister for a hundred and twenty days. I've been health secretary for 15 months...". And now it was Webb's turn to protest (I simplify slightly, there was a lot of talking over each other): "Is that really credible? 'It wasn't us. It was other Conservatives...'?".

"It's called renewal," Hancock replied. "You renew in office, and if you're saying that anybody who has been in a party that's been in government can't come up with new ideas, that's for the birds." Nobody said that, of course, but let's leave them to it for a while.

JW: Did you support the levels of NHS spending that there were for the last decade?

LMH: Yes, it's gone up every single year, in fact...

JW: By well under the long term average, isn't it?

LMH: Hold on, the only year that NHS funding has been significantly cut in real terms [he said "times" but let's be kind] was in 1976, the last time a Labour government...

JW: You're avoiding the point that I'm making...

LMH: I'm not...
.

JW: You know perfectly well that it's been less than the long term average for the last decade, and people know that ...

LMH: And in the future Justin... elections are about what we're going to do next and what we're going to do is we're now clearly the only party that can move past the Brexit status [I think he meant stasis] that has got politics stuck for the last few years, and then we're going to put the longest and largest cash injection into the NHS, and including doubling the research budget, so on this point on dementia..." and he went on to a story about his grandmother, which I don't want to belittle, but it is a standard way to hold the stage uninterrupted.

Believe a little more, and TinkerBrexit will live!

There you have it. We should ignore what has gone before, forget the mistakes and bad decisions of previous Conservatives (which included these Conservatives of course, but under a different flag) and look to the future. I fully expected him to demand that we believe a bit more.

Friday night's Question Time leaders special drew the same kind of argument from Hancock's boss. The audience began with a question about telling the truth, greeted with laughter (which somehow disappeared in the clip prepared for the BBC news bulletins). "I think the issue of trust in politics is central to this election", said the improbable prime minister, and the problem of course, was the "failure of politicians to deliver Brexit". "Why do you think you're being asked that question?" asked Fiona Bruce, but we didn't hear an answer.

What he did say was, "I didn't want to have an election... We had to do it because Parliament is blocking Brexit". To her credit, Bruce pulled him up - they voted  for second reading, but were unwilling to let him force it through with no proper consideration, but he was in full flow. "They were given every opportunity to pass it...". To which I can only say "bollocks".

When asked about poverty by a teacher... "I want you to know that I've been in office for 120 days or so, as prime minister, and I do understand. I've been to many hospitals, many schools in the time that I've been prime minister, and I've talked to nurses and doctors, and teachers about what's going on in their schools, and that's why we're now levelling up funding for education across...." And of course he has no knowledge of, and no responsibility for, what his own government did before.

Other Tory automata have come out with the same line, including Nicky Morgan, who's not even standing this time, on Wednesday morning. The manifesto tells us "With a new Parliament and a sensible majority Government, we can get that deal through in days. It is oven-ready - and every single Conservative candidate at this election, all 635 of them, have pledged to vote for this deal as soon as Parliament returns". A pledge signed in blood, no doubt.

****

I've been told off for suggesting this, but Labour are doing something rather similar. When was the last time you heard a Labour spokesperson even mention the achievements of the last Labour government, which ended - I know it's hard to admit it - less than ten years ago? I'm very ready to be corrected, but the only things of that sort I can remember Corbyn applauding are the Good Friday Agreement, the Human Rights Act and the Equality and Human Rights Commission "which we set up".

Richard Burgon, who could be Secretary of State for the Justice Department in 16 days, but is told off by lawyers for casual use of the word "robbery", was explicit on Wednesday's Today. Nick Robinson reminded him that Labour had been in power for many of the years during which the WASPI women were not warned about their impending change of pension terms, and he told us straight: "Labour is under new management now". Not quite Year Zero - I haven't received my booking card for a session at a holiday camp in Xinjiang yet - but plain enough.

There is no time

One of the gems associated with the UK House of Commons is @PARLYapp, a "journalism project that focuses on the UK Parliament and the Westminster village" as they say, and which reports the business of the day in plain English on Twitter. Up it popped on Monday with the news that "If the government is returned a Queen’s Speech with reduced ceremonial will be held on Thursday 19th December," and "In any other scenario such as a hung parliament or a Labour victory, the Queen’s Speech will be in January". As the duty PARLYapper explained, "'reduced ceremonial' likely means the 2017 version of the [Queen's speech] - Queen in a day dress, arrives in a car rather than in a carriage. (EU hat TBC)".

Other timings: 19 December is also the beginning of the Christmas recess, whoever is elected, unless the new prime minister really wants to get people's backs up. When Her Maj goes off to Sandringham to hang up her EU hat for another year we can't quite be sure yet. Since Parliament only meets after the election on 17 December, and nothing much can happen until all the MPs are sworn in, nothing will happen before Christmas, despite Johnson's manifesto pledge: "If we elect a majority of Conservative MPs to Parliament, we will start putting our deal through Parliament before Christmas and we will leave the European Union in January".

Again, unless the new prime minister wants to annoy everybody, nothing else will happen until 6 January, by which time Johnson will have been prime minister for 166 days, and parliament will have been sitting for 34 of them. Somehow our hard-working, accessible prime minister has managed to fit three PMQs into that, but Donald Tusk's words "Do not waste this time" do come to mind.

****

Thanks for the title and theme of this post to my Twitter sparring partner RicoS90.

Brexit Day (no 3) +11 - the "can this bunch really be serious" election

Iain Duncan Smith celebrating
announcement of the "national living wage"

The minimum wage has not been a big election issue so far, though Labour and the Conservatives have both made a pitch. But today came the announcement of new Living Wage rates. (For the purposes of this piece, and indeed for anything else I write, George Osborne's "national living wage" is the minimum wage rate for over-25s).

The current rates are therefore:

• Living Wage: £9.30 per hour (£10.75 in London)
• minimum wage 25+: £8.21
• 21+: £7.70
• 18+: £6.15
• 16+: £4.35
• apprentice: £3.90

Sajid Javid's proposal came at the Conservative conference in October - the minimum wage for the top band would rise to £10.50 by 2024, and the age for receiving this rate would fall to 21 by the same date. We haven't seen the 2019 manifesto yet, but what have the Tories said at previous elections?

• 2010: "we will keep the minimum wage"
• 2015: "take everyone earning less than £12,500 out of Income Tax altogether and pass a law to ensure we have a Tax-Free Minimum Wage in this country... the National Minimum Wage should rise to £6.70 this autumn, on course for a Minimum Wage that will be over £8 by the end of the decade... nobody working 30 hours on the Minimum Wage [should pay] Income Tax on what they earn"
• 2017: "A new Conservative government will continue to increase the National Living Wage to 60 per cent of median earnings by 2020 and then by the rate [of increase] of median earnings"

The Labour offer has come from John McDonnell - the minimum rate for all workers would be £10 per hour "immediately", then rise with living costs [not earnings?] so that "everybody over 16 years of age will be earning comfortably more than £10.50 an hour by 2024". And in previous years?

• 2010: "We will end for good the concept of a life on benefit by offering all those unemployed for more than two years work they must accept, and we will make work pay better with the goal of a minimum wage rising at least in line with average earnings and... a new £40-a-week Better Off in Work guarantee [and] the Low Pay Commission’s remit will have the goal of the National Minimum Wage rising at least in line with average earnings over the period to 2015"
• 2015: "raising the National Minimum Wage to more than £8 an hour by October 2019"
• 2017: "raise the Minimum Wage to the level of the Living Wage (expected to be at least £10 per hour by 2020) – for all workers aged 18 or over"

****

Even Brexit Party Ltd promise they'll announce a full set of policies and present them in a "contract with the people" rather than a manifesto (though how such a contract could be enforced any better than a manifesto I have yet to hear) but we know what they want. The SNP, Lib Dems and others are making it primarily a Brexit election, along with Johnson's "Get Brexit Done" party and Corbyn's "Get Brexit Sorted" party, but  most of the time it's hard to work out what anybody's actually planning. Just waiting for the results... but (where have I heard this before?) they'll have very little time to do anything in Parliament by the time the election's done with.

One trade specialist is wondering: "Both Labour and Conservative are committing to completing a fundamental negotiation with our main trading partner next year. Yet in this election campaign so far dominated by triviality we have little idea of what they'll negotiate".

Emily Thornberry inspiring her colleagues

In interviews today, Emily Thornberry did outline what Labour has in mind and, as I said a few days ago, I find it hard to believe. "We want to be able to negotiate the sort of deal that we have been talking to the Europeans about for more than three years," she told us. "It is being in a customs union, in a single market, in a close alignment of rules and regulations." That menu surely can't be done under the EU27's current negotiating mandate - one of the Barnier mantras throughout has been that a permanent relationship can't be agreed under Article 50.

And yesterday Labour's campaign coordinator Andrew Gwynne told Andrew Marr that Labour would seek to strike "reciprocal agreements with the EU27 that allow British citizens to enjoy some of the freedoms that they will lose as a result of Brexit”, with Thornberry supplying further detail: "if a Labour government left the EU, the post-departure immigration policy would include controls on EU nationals, although those already in the UK would face no restrictions". All in three months? This means major amendment to the existing withdrawal agreement, which is all Barnier is allowed to negotiate, and - again - couldn't be done under Article 50.

****

Today's main performance came from Brexit Party Ltd. At a campaign launch in Hartlepool, Richard Tice's newly adopted constituency, Farage told the world he'd been thinking (after complaints and even resignations by many of his - still - potential candidates arguing that putting up 600 candidates was daft), and he'd decided that they really shouldn't stand in seats which were won by Conservatives in 2017.

Having concluded, after careful study, that the new proposed withdrawal agreement "is not Brexit" and must be opposed across the country (except Northern Ireland), the proprietor saw a single tweet which converted him to this new strategy. Johnson spoke to him, and he was enlightened. We can get a "a free trade agreement on the model of a super Canada plus arrangement..." was the message. "... not based on any kind of political alignment... a fantastic new free trade agreement with the EU by the end of 2020. And we will not extend the transition period...".

And that did it for him. Such clarity of thought! I haven't come across anybody serious who thinks this is remotely possible, and the Tory-Brexity insistence that this mess is all about trade - in goods, not even services - and not also about the many other sorts of cooperation that this kind of Brexit would throw away (and which would certainly change that "plus"into a "minus") still doesn't seem to concern anybody much in the media.

I've seen an extreme Brexiter tonight on Twitter who was fully in agreement with Farage yesterday, and is now fully in agreement with new-Farage. It's easy!

Until the next rethink.

Brexit Day (no 3) + 6 - the "apologise, just in case" election

James Cleverly observing Ken Clarke

for tips on debating skills 

The "getting Brexit done" party

We began the day with James Cleverly touring the studios, apologising for everything the ruling party did yesterday:

• an insouciant toff belittling the good sense of Grenfell victims (Cleverly didn't bother with Andrew Bridgen's apology for apologising for Jacob Rees Mogg)
• a cabinet minister apparently withholding relevant information about the suitability of a Conservative candidate for the Welsh Assembly, to whom a judge had said: "Are you completely stupid? You have managed single-handed, and I have no doubt it was deliberate on your part, to sabotage this trial… get out of my court". (This later led to Little Alun Cairns resigning as Welsh Secretary, but even then, in an otherwise quite reasonable interview, Stephen Crabb MP regretted the leak of the email which suggested that Cairns had lied and which made him resign. 
• a doctored video (lots of people do it, but they tend to be satirists) and Cleverly then had a different excuse for each interview he did (we had to shorten it, it was satirical, we put them both out, which Nick Robinson pinned him down on - guess which version got all the shares)
• various Conservative candidates being unpleasant at various times
• did he even mention Johnson's tabloid-Telegraph front page about affluent peasants?

This Sky News video itself turned out to have been unfair, since Cleverly's tour of the studios had taken him to Julia Hartley Brewer at Talk Radio when Kay Burley thought he was coming to Sky News, but it's an excellent account of the the things Cleverly should have been apologising for:

“And yet we have an empty chair”

Pretty devastating rundown of Tory blunders by @KayBurley while party chairman James Cleverly is 15ft away and refusing to come on air

pic.twitter.com/JIpGmmBBPY

— Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) November 6, 2019

Then, around lunchtime, Johnson took his convoy of cars and security vans off to Buckingham Palace to tell the queen the speech she made just 23 days ago is officially useless, and she'd be making another one, probably just after Christmas, and he couldn't be sure it wouldn't be his again.

"You're not very good at this, are you?" she might have thought, but not said.

Then he returned to Downing St to make another election campaigning speech. He started by claiming that he really didn't want an election, but election campaigning is what he's spent far more of his time doing in the three and a bit months since he was appointed than negotiating with the EU, let alone attending the Commons.

At least he used the plain lectern, with no crest, so he wasn't claiming it was a state announcement this time.

Fact checkers have been tearing into Johnson's material for weeks - the 40 hospitals that might be six, the 20,000 police officers who might almost replace the ones we've lost since 2010, the free ports we had until 2012, and which exist in many other EU countries, but which have apparently always been forbidden by the EU - but he keeps churning it out.

Because fact checkers don't reach a large audience unless they're on the media people watch, listen or engage with, and unless they call things out in real time.

For a good look under one of these headline numbers you need go no further than a powerful tweet by a former Chief Prosecutor of North West England, which outlines the damage which the pledge on police funding don't even pretend to undo.

There's an election on then

Suspend your disbelief as you enter here. We're saying there's a Conservative government of some kind after 12 December, and that "Brexit happens" on 31 January next year.

We keep hearing that Johnson pretends he can negotiate everything he needs from the EU by the end of 2020. This means he doesn't intend to use the option of more transition time which his withdrawal agreement has inherited from its very close cousin, the one May left us when she resigned.

The transition period (so called because it would be a transition to an unknown destination) is usually known by Conservatives as the implementation period (so called because there would be nothing to implement), and was originally nearly two years - 21 months - with the option to go on for another two years - 45 months. With extension to 31 October it was 14 months extendable to 38, and  Johnson's new deadline of 31 January makes it 11 months extendable to 35.

The only number Johnson wants us to look at is eleven - February 2020 to December 2020. Let's assume that the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to actually implement Brexit ("coming back with a deal" is just the beginning) gets through Parliament, with some of its excesses (allowing ministers to do pretty much whatever they like) trimmed back and some of the glaring omissions (too little on how the new arrangements for Northern Ireland would be put together) filled in, the transition might start.

Referring to the Explanatory Notes for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (clause 31), the next thing to do in the UK is "the making by a Minister of the Crown of a statement on objectives for the future relationship with the EU", then not to proceed until "a Minister of the Crown has moved a motion on the statement on objectives for the future relationship with the EU in the House of Commons and the House of Commons has approved this motion and... a Minister of the Crown has moved a motion for the House of Lords to take note of the statement on objectives". The Commons has to vote for the objectives of the negotiation.

I'm oversimplifying massively here. Let's assume they can do it by the end of February.

That makes ten months.

Meet Phil Hogan, the new
EU trade commissioner

Let's also assume that the EU side can do their equivalent work (appointing negotiators - under the new Irish trade commissioner Phil Hogan - and agreeing a negotiating mandate without waiting for an EU Council meeting) in the same kind of time.

That gives Johnson (remember - disbelief still suspended) three or four months (up to 1 July, as specified in the Withdrawal Agreement) to decide whether he wants to carry on negotiating for the rest of the year before giving up, give up then and there, or request an extension past December 2020. He tells us he will not take the third option, which makes the most likely outcome a WTO-only relationship with the EU from the beginning of 2021 (though the Withdrawal Agreement, with its provisions for the Irish frontstop, citizens rights and a financial settlement of what would be around £19bn by then, would still be in operation and really annoying some Tories) .

And many other negotiations would have to be going on at the same time - to try not to lose too much of the police and justice cooperation we've built over the years, to try to construct some kind of associate membership of the regulatory structures we have again built over the last 40 years - for the aerospace, automotive, chemicals, food and drink and pharmaceutical industries. (This really is a ludicrously expensive way to reconstruct something not quite as good as what we have now.)

The timing is ridiculous. Johnson doesn't mean it.

Laura McAlpine with Jeremy Corbyn
at what I think is a different meeting

The "getting Brexit sorted" party

Corbyn chose Harlow yesterday for his Brexit speech. Harlow is currently the seat of Robert Halfon, promoter of "blue collar Conservatism". He was campaigning for free car parking at hospitals in 2017 and before, but didn't manage to convince his party, while Labour was campaigning on it in 2017. Labour's candidate for December is Laura McAlpine, who hosted the event, as is Labour's standard pattern.

Let's see what a "Labour Brexit" might be (these quotes are taken from the speech which was put out on the web, not as it was delivered).

"Labour’s plan will get Brexit sorted [not 'done'] so a Labour government can get on with delivering the real change Britain needs [not 'the people's priorities]."

"So an incoming Labour government will first secure a sensible deal. That will take no longer than three months because the deal will be based on terms we’ve already discussed with the EU, including a new customs union, a close single market relationship and guarantees of rights and protections... It’s a deal that will protect British manufacturing and respect the precious peace in Northern Ireland... And then we’ll put that deal to a public vote."

A few things here: Starmer and his people have certainly kept a line open to their counterparts in the EU negotiating team. As a responsible negotiator, Barnier would have kept in touch with a possible replacement government, but I'm not convinced his responsibilities would have allowed him to make any commitments. Yesterday, Starmer claimed that his Labour team and May's team had jointly talked to Barnier about the terms they'd been discussing in their cross-party talks. He claimed they'd been told it could be done in four to six weeks. I have trouble believing that.

Are Labour telling us that what they could put to a referendum would be a "finished Brexit"? More than a withdrawal agreement with a commitment to a customs union and close alignment to single market rules, which the EU were reluctantly willing to concede in the backstop? I don't believe it. Barnier would certainly talk to an alternative government. He wouldn't go outside his negotiating mandate, and the EU is going to agree - it can't - a future relationship under Article 50.

"So if you want to leave the EU without trashing our economy or selling out our NHS, you’ll be able to vote for it. If you want to remain in the EU, you’ll be able to vote for that. Either way, only a Labour government will put the final decision in your hands. Because this has involved the whole country from the start, it can’t now be left to politicians. To finally get this sorted and move forward we need the people to sign on the dotted line. And we will immediately carry out your decision, so Britain can get beyond Brexit."

Logically put. I hope Labour people will be asked to commit to the legislation for such a referendum making the decision legally binding, which the 2016 vote was not (what a prime minister says - "we will implement..." - isn't law).

"Boris Johnson staked his reputation on leaving the EU on 31st October 'do or die'. 'No ifs, no buts,' he said. So the failure to do so can only be his. The irony is, for all his boasting, Johnson’s sell-out deal STILL won’t get Brexit done. It will lead to years of continuing negotiations and uncertainty... The EU negotiator Michel Barnier has said an EU trade deal on Johnson’s terms would take 'three years, maybe more' of further negotiations... Whereas Labour’s plan will sort Brexit quickly, because whatever the final decision, we won’t be ripping up our main trading relationship."

That's a big claim. We know that Johnson isn't being honest about when Brexit might be "done", but what does Corbyn think he's saying here? Labour will get a deal within three months. Starting when? Given Christmas, let's be generous and assume he means the end of March. As I said above, that could surely only be a withdrawal agreement with a political declaration going for a close-ish relationship.

There'll be an EU Council in late March, and we should know soon what the EU Parliament calendar looks like. Assume they both say OK and the UK Parliament approves it (we're talking about a Labour government here, remember) it goes into a referendum campaign (for which the Labour government has already managed to pass an enabling law, and for which the electoral commission has agreed a question). We then need ten weeks... Just about doable.

Suspending a lot of disbelief (starting with the Labour government) that means that Labour's withdrawal agreement could be put to a vote at the end of June - assume the 25th. Then would come implementation...

Brexit Day (no 3) + 2 - The "stop bad things while people are watching" election

The Preston New Road site, visualised

At the top of the hour the news bulletin told us "The government has halted all fracking operations in England". Not that there are many. And it turned out to be not exactly a ban - "After reviewing the [Oil and Gas Authority] report into recent seismic activity at Preston New Road, it is clear that we cannot rule out future unacceptable impacts on the local community. For this reason, I have concluded that we should put a moratorium on fracking in England with immediate effect," said Industry Secretary Andrea Leadsom.

Asked about her decision by Mishal Husain on the Today programme, Leadsom used words of regret - "this a great opportunity for the UK" but didn't sound all that disappointed. Almost as if the moratorium wasn't designed to last very long. She volunteered "and we have acted on their report within a couple of days".

"In the run-up to an election," we might add.

Husain went on to ask about the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report on "the threat posed to this country by Russia", as Dominic Grieve put it on Thursday. Leadsom didn't seem to have any good answers on the subject, not even briefed answers. "I'm not aware that there is any hold up with that report" was an easy opening, then she descended quickly into generalities. "... at all times select committees make reports and the government prepares a response and there's nothing peculiar about the time that takes...".

The ISC is not a select committee. It's established under its own law, which specifies the selection of its members and their privileged access to secret information. Select committees publish their own reports, and government responses sometimes appear months later. Government certainly can't hold up publication of a select committee report. It can delay this one, precisely because it's different.

Grieve has told us about the seven months or more since his committee's report was completed, and that it's been vetted to death by spooks and civil servants. All it needs is the final OK from Downing St. They've had their ten days, and Johnson's mouthpieces can't tell us what's holding it up.

Leadsom told us several times that she knew nothing about this report, but she "wouldn't accept that it's been held up". Not an answer. Especially when she went on to say "I completely recognise that, in the run-up to a general election Dominic Grieve might be calling for [publication] but nevertheless the fact is that many select committee reports are produced and the government has to respond properly. It can't respond in haste..."

Funny that "in the run-up to an election" government couldn't "act on their report within a couple of days".

Former attorney general Dominic Grieve calls for a report into alleged Russian interference to be published before the general election, and says Number 10's justification for not releasing it is "completely and totally untrue. It's a lie"

Read more: https://t.co/a8StmgpFRo pic.twitter.com/i6kIsEwaA3

— Sky News Politics (@SkyNewsPolitics) November 2, 2019

When they knock on the door... 

Is this really the best the Conservative party can do?

Here’s a game both for the media and people at home

This is Tory general election brief for candidates - and here’s the page with suggested answers to qs

Why not read along with candidates when they deliver preprepared lines? Surprise them by pre-empting what they’ll say next! pic.twitter.com/uuu4QAHnQq

— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) November 2, 2019

More news of those Brexit riots

Always on the button, the Sheffield Star reports "Confusion as NO ONE turns up for 'huge' pro Brexit demo in Doncaster".