PoliticsUK

Anti-Semitism on the rise in the UK
February 2019

The number of anti-Semitic hate incidents in the UK rose by 16% in 2018, according to figures from Jewish charity the Community Security Trust. CST said it recorded 1,652 anti-Semitic incidents last year, the highest total since it began collecting data in 1984. These new figures are broadly in line with a Home Office report from October, which showed all forms of hate crime in England and Wales rose by 17% in 2017/18.

Of the 1,652 incidents recorded by the CST in 2018, 123 involved "potential grievous bodily harm or a threat to life", a 17% decrease from 2017. The most common single type of incident involved verbal abuse randomly directed at Jewish people in public.

The report cited a number of cases across different categories, including a man who was walking to a synagogue when food was thrown at him from a car, a woman who was spat at in the face on a bus, a Jewish bakery that was vandalised with anti-Semitic graffiti, and a brick that was thrown at a synagogue's glass front door.

The charity said these figures reflected "deepening divides in our country and our politics".

Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said the CST figures were "very worrying for Jews living in the UK". She said "overall, the UK remains a happy place for its Jewish community, but this reports shows that there is no room for complacency."

These figures come after polling last year on perceptions of anti-Semitism in UK politics. Four out of five British Jews believe that anti-Semitism has infected British politics, the highest figure in the European Union.

Other polling also found that Labour is considered to tolerate of anti-Semitism among their MPs, members and supporters, with 83 per cent of surveyed British Jewish people taking that view. It is significantly higher than the proportion of British Jews who think the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrat’s are too tolerant of anti-Semitism (19 per cent and 36 per cent respectively).

Polling by the JC also found that more than 85 per cent of British Jews think Jeremy Corbyn is personally antisemitic, compared to just 1.7 per cent who believe Prime Minister Theresa May to be antisemitic and just 6.1 per cent say that Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable is.

Mr Corbyn has been at the centre of a number of anti-Semitism rows in recent months. In July 2028, photos of Mr Corbyn surfaced from a 2014 event in Tunis, where he laid a wreath commemorating the terrorists behind the Munich massacre of the Israeli Olympic team in 1972. In August, a video emerged of him speaking at a 2013 event, during which he said British “Zionists” have “two problems”: “they don’t want to study history” and “they don’t understand English irony either”.

Some commentators have blamed Mr Corbyn and his acceptance of anti-Semitism for the rise in hate incidents against British Jews, with one claiming “the leader of the Labour Party has given a nod and a wink to those would do our community harm”.

Brexit "an opportunity to unleash Britain's potential" say Tory MPs
April 2019

Brexit is a historic opportunity to unleash Britain's potential said Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, and Liz Truss, the chief secretary. The two MPs, part of a group that authored Britannia Unchained in 2012, argued that Britain should embrace free markets as the UK begins navigating the world "unchained" by EU membership.

While short of calling for the "Singapore-on-the-Thames" model that has been mooted in recent years, Truss and Raab did call for dramatic liberalisation of the British economy. "There's a radical case for liberalisation of the labour market, for freeing start-ups like Deliveroo, and pursuing an international strategy based on comprehensive free trade deals that open foreign markets for British business," said Ms Truss at a Centre for Policy Studies event with Mr Raab. Ms Truss added: "Despite our efforts, the UK labour market is far more constrained than the German one, dampening hiring, slowing growth, and preventing real recovery in areas that are so-called 'left behind'."

Mr Raab, for his part, said that the Conservative's should pursue a "radical simplification" of the state and channel that money into tax reductions - particularly targeting high earners, capital gains, and corporation tax. "We've seen before that punitive rates of tax on productive members of society -from earners, to investors, to businesses - hamper growth. And growth must absolutely be what we pursue in order to prove, definitively, that Project Fear was wrong and that Britain will be unshackled following the end of the transition period."

The two reiterated their calls that the welfare system must be make to reward work and punish scroungers, who have used the dole to make British workers amongst the laziest in the world, a claim originally made in their 2012 book. "When the Chancellor says that we're in the middle of the G7 pack in terms of growth, it actually astounds me because a number of workers remain at the bottom of the G7 pack in terms of work ethic," said Mrs Truss at the event.

The pair reiterated the central tenants of their argument, namely that the government should pursue a low tax, low regulation economy that prioritises innovation and STEM education. Mr Raab concluded the event, saying: "The longer we engage in some faux culture war about north versus south, working versus middle class, manufacturing versus services, the farther we get from the path to a successful economy: ending the bloated state, high taxes, excessive regulation, and welfare system that ballooned beyond all recognition. That was the journey we started on and 2010 and that is the journey we must continue on now."

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Power behind the throne or Judas at the last supper?



To her fans, recently divorced Juliet Manning is a powerhouse of the British Government: the Foreign Secretary who pulled of a Brexit masterstroke and launched a new era of British diplomacy; the Deputy Prime Minister who launched a housing revolution and secured tens of billions of pounds in funding for education; the ascendant mistress of the Tory centre. To her critics, she is a serpent laying at the feet of the Prime Minister: the woman who betrayed the promise of Brexit, reinvigorated UKIP and swept aside Conservative commitments on immigration; the heathen of the home counties who tore up the greenbelt and is building new garden cities in the middle of nowhere; the second-in-command who unseated Alec Dundas and now looks poised to stab Grant Kingston in the back.

Manning is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and an ardent student of political expediency. She voted against Brexit, joined the May administration in promoting the Chequers deal, extended the Implementation Period by three months (she asked for two years) and then signed the softest of soft deals within a fortnight. She spoke out against new homes in her own constituency, only to commit to building nearly 600,000 across England a year later. She is associated with the Tory centre-ground (and her credentials have enamoured her with the Cameron coalition of small-l liberal voters) and yet the latest news from the DPM’s office is that she is the heavyweight behind much-anticipated proposals to bring back grammar schools with a vengeance.

Who is the real Deputy Prime Minister? What does she believe in? What are her goals and is she a candidate for the top job?

Manning’s office at the Foreign Office is, in keeping with the rest of this glorious expression of British prestige and power, ornate and classically decorated. Her desk is tidy and devoid of personal touches, unless one counts a crystal decanter of brandy, and I’m told she rarely sits down - preferring to conduct meetings on her feet whilst her subordinates occupy the opulent leather armchairs that adorn the Foreign Secretary’s study.

“I am basically someone who has a pragmatic view of politics,” she says. “I ran Royal Mail Plc for a decade. I know what it takes to manage a large organisation and get things done. That’s basically my motivation: to get things done.”

But some decry Juliet Manning is *too* keen to “get things done,” and not keen enough to study the detail. She is known in the Cabinet as a blue-sky thinker - keen on the bold and sometimes the brash, and eager to use words like “revolution” and “reform.” But she is known equally as someone prone to tripping up over the finer details of policy; deferring to her bewildered officials when questions are asked. I put it to her that she whilst being a big-picture visionary may be her strength, her reputed lack of focus on detail is her weakness.

“I think it’s probably true that in any government there is a certain tension between those who want to do things and those who have to pay for them,” she replies shrewdly, not quite answering the question. Is she hinting at tension with the Chancellor?

“Actually I got everything I asked for from the budget and more. I’m sure it won’t always be like that. But Michael has the hardest job in government… we all come to him with these wonderful things we’d like to do, and he has to stop us in our tracks and say ‘how are you going to pay for it?’ And I smile sweetly, push out my bosom and say ‘that’s your problem.’”

Leaks from the Deputy Prime Minister’s office have become so commonplace that there is something of a “meme” circulating in Whitehall to the effect that the BBC usually knows what she is doing before her own staff do. Manning refuses to comment on the recently leaked education proposals, which apparently came out of her own “domestic affairs unit” - but they’re a clear sign that well beyond her brief, Manning is a power player. Is she now the most powerful woman in Britain?

“I think the crux of the question there is about how Cabinet works. And actually, this government has a very different style of Cabinet to any that has come before. Huge resources have gone into the Cabinet Office to make government joined-up, and the committees meet much more regularly… there are no more silos. Everyone is thinking about everything, and it’s very effective. It’s like having the government on crisis mode, with all that efficiency and quick-thinking, but in a standard political day. And that’s an enormously powerful thing.”

The government’s machine is certainly well-oiled. The Conservatives recently put in a very strong showing in the Scottish Parliament elections, and in the London mayoral contest.

“Yes, and I think that’s because there was a bit more message discipline than the Opposition have mustered. I mean, if you take the issue of Brexit; Labour have spent four years arguing for a closer relationship with Europe, and refusing to make any commitment on immigration. As soon as an EEA deal was put before the House, they u-turned on everything they had said. The message discipline isn’t there.”

But isn’t the inverse an equally valid criticism of the government - that for four years it had ruled out the “Norway model,” before dropping everything to suddenly pursue it?

“I think it’s different, because I think what we tried to do - what I tried to do - was to find a compromise. We had to get out of the EU, we had to do that. It would have been an insult to the 17 million not to do that. But you have to win the trust of the 16 million too, who had legitimate concerns and fears. And the deal that we got brought us out of the customs union and liberated our trade policy; it brought us out of the CFP and CAP; it brought us out of the ECJ and it brought us out of the political institution of European Union. And there were compromises, of course there were. We have to talk about controlling immigration with different levers, different mechanisms. But it’s a good deal, and it works. The problem I’m highlighting with Labour is that we still don’t know what their alternative looks like. They wanted a customs union, but they don’t want free movement. They wanted no customs border in the Irish sea, but they don’t have a way around that. I don’t know what they stand for.”

And isn’t it equally true that whilst Labour has a solid and well-received plan on social care, nobody knows what the Conservatives believe on the issue?

“We promised - I think I promised, actually - that there’d be a plan from 2021. And there will be a plan from 2021.”

It’s an odd choice of words. What does “from 2021” mean - “by 2021” or “in 2021” or “after 2021”?

“In very early 2021 there will be a plan presented, I’m confident of that.”

I decide to change tack and delve deeper into Juliet Manning, the woman. What does she see as the biggest issues facing Britain today?

“The biggest issue is change. It always is. And there are two approaches to change: resisting it, or driving it. I believe in doing the latter. In the next twenty-five years you’re going to see enormous changes in the way we do business, the way we live, the way we educate our children. You know, the environmental crisis, the burning injustices, the changing economy, the rise of technology and a faster pace of life… these are all things we have to adapt to. I mean, my main focus is obviously on international affairs. And we’re confronting an increasingly dangerous world. We’re in a cold war again, that’s clear to me. The second cold war. And this time the belligerents aren’t just the old east and the old west, but the new far east as well. It’s about different societies as much as it is about different politics. China is a major economic threat. Russia poses an imminent, more conventional security threat. There is continuing instability in the middle east and in Africa. The role of the United States is changing; NATO is under pressure. Western economies are doing less well than their eastern counterparts. And the main struggle, really, is between open and closed societies: between democratic states and those that are not. That’s why what we tried to do - what I tried to do in part of the Broadcasting Bill was to massively boost our position in the information war, you know, through the World Service and such.”

The Deputy Prime Minister recently announced her divorce from her husband of 35 years, Damien Manning. She will keep his surname. I asked if working in frontline politics had made maintaining the relationship difficult.

“Yes, honestly, it has. We grew apart quite quickly when I was a junior minister at the Cabinet Office, and really… you know, I made a choice. And if things had turned out differently… you know, in 1989 I had a miscarriage and I was told I would never be able to have children. And that broke my heart, and it broke Damien’s heart, and really we threw ourselves into our careers in a way that maybe we wouldn’t - maybe I wouldn’t - if we’d had children. But as a woman especially you make these choices, career or family, and you shouldn’t have to but you do. Because it’s seen as your job to keep things together. And Damien and I are on very good terms and he’ll always be a very big part of my life. But for a long time really our relationship has been platonic and I think the divorce kind of certifies that for us and allows us to move on in the ways that we need to.”

There is one final question that I feel compelled to ask.

With Manning being the driving force behind so many of the government’s major policy initiatives, is she eyeing up the big job - a home at Number 10?

“No,” she says flatly. “I will never be Prime Minister. I don’t want to be. I don’t see the appeal of that job. You know, if I get fed up with all this one day, I can just go and retreat into obscurity. Within 20 years nobody would recognise me on the tube. You can’t do that if you’re Prime Minister.”

A Good Move Back to the Future
January 2021

The brilliance of Conservatism is the willingness to recognise that people in the past got things right, and that modern society often makes mistakes. One of the biggest mistakes in the past 6 decades was the dramatic reduction in grammar schools, with the anti-aspiration Labour Party leading the way.

Grammar schools provide opportunity for low-income students to gain a good education that they otherwise wouldn’t have secured. Comprehensives ended that. We should not be surprised that Oxbridge intake from state schools have decreased, as have social mobility, since politicians largely abolished grammars. Chris Woodhead, a former chief inspector of schools, states that "grammar schools have contributed more to social mobility than any other institution this country has known". The Sutton Trust has found that pupils who attend grammar schools do better than equally able pupils in comprehensives, and that also failed to find any evidence of collateral harm to any other schools, arising from the existence of grammar schools.

So it is good news that the Government is committed to re-introducing grammar schools, despite it currently lacking the majority in Parliament to implement them. Hopefully at the next election, the Conservative Party will secure the necessary votes to transform our education system for the better as it proposes in the Education White Paper.

The reception from Conservative backbenchers has been positive, especially since Juliet Manning’s defence of them in Prime Minister’s Question Time. The Deputy Prime Minister focused her defence of grammars and selective education on the one country in the UK that fully uses it: Northern Ireland. Dr John Marks, found in a Centre for Policy Studies report, found “the [5 A*-C grade GCSE] figures for Northern Ireland … are about 10 per cent absolutely and 40 per cent relatively above those for England.” Dr Marks also found that “selection is better for all pupils and not just those selected to attend grammar schools … The good overall performance of a selective system is, in part, due to the widely under-rated secondary modern schools.”

One backbencher Charles Kinbote said: “The proposals put forward by the Government on education are proof that the Conservative Party cares about education. Pledging to abolish tuition fees and introducing choice into education is something the Conservatives and thus Government are rightly proud of, and it should be something that is welcomed across the board.”

Senior Conservative figures have been particularly critical of the opposition of the National Education Union, with one saying “the NEU needs to get a grip. Opinion polling shows that parents support grammar schools. There are numerous studies which show that both more able and less academically able students perform better in a selective system.”

The Prime Minister in a rare public comment said the Education Plan is “based on the system that has seen great success in Northern Ireland, who regularly achieve the best exam results in the whole of the UK. This is a new system that will cater to all types of children, all of whom learn differently, be it academic learners, more vocational learners, or more technical learners.” It is clear that the technical and vocational schools will not be a forgotten part of the system, just as important as grammar schools. The focus of much of the establishment opposition has been on grammar schools, ignoring the very real benefits thousands will get from an education tailored to their skills and interests.

But these common sense reforms are not enough for some. Cosette Griffiths, the UKIP MP for Boston and Skegness, said that while UKIP “support[s] the idea of grammar schools … we also need to recognise a lot of things about it did not work”. Criticising the Government, Ms Griffiths said: “We think age 11, is too early to permanently decide a child’s future. It is unfair to decide a child’s future by the age 11 and pick a career path for rest of their life by the age of 11.”

Proposing allowing “more selective grammar schools for gifted children”, UKIP are calling for the process of selection to start around 13 or 14. UKIP have suggested “grammar schools should exist as a supplementary addition to … secondaries” and that UKIP would “increase the number of grammar schools and establish a strong quota for working class children so that we are creating more opportunities.”

Labour are stridently opposed to more grammar schools, and the flourishing of all students, with one senior MP claiming "the same Government that can't spell "flag pole" correctly has a plan that says a child's future can be determined by a once-in-a-lifetime test … That's the core of this policy, and it's ready to doom millions of students - even the ones who know its not called a "flag poll." They also suggests that “do well enough against your peers, and the grammar schools will beg for you; if you're smart and creative but can't beat your friends in a test, you're locked out of a meaningful education forever”, forgetting that good quality vocational schools will exist.” Yet the only education policy Labour has is a Royal College of Teachers, a bung to their union paymasters no doubt.