Tag: James Brokenshire

The government has sacked its housing adviser Roger Scruton after he appeared to repeat antisemitic statements and denied Islamophobia was a problem. Scruton also said: “Hungarians were extremely alarmed by the sudden invasion of huge tribes of Muslims”, and accused the Chinese of “creating robots out of their own people”. Scruton’s sacking follows Labour-led calls for his dismissal. Last month the party suspended 14 members for allegedly making Islamophobic comments after a string of abusive posts were uncovered on social media. His comments are clearly distracting from the important work of the commission and so it is no longer right for him to act as a government adviser.” Earlier, the ministry said: “It’s very clear from the interview Prof Sir Roger Scruton is not speaking for the government.” Would you trust Roger Scruton to design your new home? Read more The interview prompted Labour to repeat its call from five months ago for Scruton to be sacked after it emerged that he had described Jews in Budapest as part of a “Soros empire”. Dawn Butler, the shadow equalities secretary, said Scruton’s new comments were “despicable and invoke the language of white supremacists”. She added: “His claim that Islamophobia does not exist, a few weeks after the devastating attack in Christchurch, is extremely dangerous.” When Labour first called for Scruton’s dismissal, Brokenshire defended him as a “champion of freedom of speech”. The government should also strip him of his knighthood.” Tell Mama, the anti-bigotry campaign, welcomed Scruton’s dismissal but raised questions about why he had been appointed in the first place. A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: “As the Conservative party faces its latest crisis on Islamophobia, it cannot continue with false promises to take the issue seriously … The reality is that these concerns will continue to recur until trust is rebuilt through – in part – an independent inquiry into Islamophobia in the party.”

The housing secretary, James Brokenshire, has admitted Conservative policies may be to blame for rising levels of homelessness, appearing to row back on a statement he made earlier this month. In an interview with the Guardian, Brokenshire had previously claimed rising rough sleeping in Britain was not the result of government policy, but was instead being driven by factors including the spread of psychoactive substances such as spice, growth in the number of non-UK nationals on the streets and family breakdown. Rise in homelessness not result of our policies, says housing secretary Read more Brokenshire said the Conservatives “need to ask ourselves some very hard questions” about why so many more people are now living on the streets than when the party came to power, and admitted “changes to policy” were needed. The comments follow the death of Gyula Remes, who collapsed in a stairwell outside parliament. The Labour MP David Lammy tweeted: “There is something rotten in Westminster when MPs walk past dying homeless people on their way to work.” A fundraising appeal set up by staff on the parliamentary estate to support the charity StreetLink in memory of Remes has already raised more than £10,000. The number of people sleeping rough has more than doubled since 2010 to 4,751, according to government figures. Brokenshire did not deny cuts to welfare may have played a part in the growing problem of homelessness, and said work was under way with the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, to assess where problems were. “I don’t see it in those terms,” Brokenshire said. “I see it as a combination of concerning elements in terms of addiction, family breakdown issues. Labour announced it would spend £100m to help rough sleepers in freezing weather.

The most likely alternative is a permanent customs union, which could get the backing of a majority of MPs. They have also discussed the Norway-plus option – with the welfare secretary, Amber Rudd, thought to be particularly interested – though this would be problematic for May’s red line on free movement. He is unlikely to survive if the prime minister falls. Clark and Gauke are thought to be prepared to consider a second referendum. Ultra-loyalists Every prime minister needs a few ministers who she can rely on whatever happens. Whichever option she goes for when MPs reject her deal as seems almost inevitable – a second attempt, renegotiating with Brussels, a second referendum or even a general election – they are likely to stand by her. Labour accuses government of defying will of Commons by not releasing full Brexit legal advice - Politics live Read more Born-again Brexiters These ministers all have their eyes on the biggest prize of all: being on the right side of the Brexit debate when May does eventually step down. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, was a natural Eurosceptic who backed remain at the behest of David Cameron but appeared to regret his decision after the vote, which lost him the trust of many Tory Brexiters. Loyal for now While they represent different factions of the Tory party, these ministers have all come out in support of the prime minister’s deal, for now. The health secretary, Matt Hancock, who was close to George Osborne, has survived, even thrived, under May and has played a relatively straight bat on Brexit.

Karen Bradley has admitted that before becoming Northern Ireland secretary she was profoundly ignorant of the country’s political divisions and “slightly scared” of the place. She said she was unaware that nationalists did not vote for unionists and that unionists did not vote for nationalists – the most elementary fact about Northern Ireland politics. “I freely admit that when I started this job, I didn’t understand some of the deep-seated and deep-rooted issues that there are in Northern Ireland,” Bradley told House magazine, a weekly publication for the Houses of Parliament. “I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa. “Actually, the unionist parties fight the elections against each other in unionist communities and nationalists in nationalist communities.” Minister announces pay cut for Stormont assembly members Read more Theresa May appointed Bradley to the post in January – succeeding James Brokenshire – at an exceptionally sensitive time because of Brexit and the breakdown in Stormont’s power-sharing government. Theresa May sent the former culture secretary to Belfast supposedly as a safe pair of hands. “That’s a very different world from the world I came from where in Staffordshire Moorlands I was fighting a Labour-held seat as a Conservative politician and I was trying to put forward why you would want to switch from voting Labour to voting Conservative. On Thursday she said their pay will be slashed after 19 months if the devolved government is not restored. Their pay would fall from £49,500 to £35,888 in November, with another reduction of £6,187 three months later if the assembly did not resume its work, Bradley told MPs. She ruled out immediate elections for the devolved assembly, which has not operated since power sharing between the DUP and Sinn Féin collapsed in January last year, and announced plans for civil servants to have more powers to implement policies.

Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, resigned in protest and subsequent elections saw his Irish nationalists Sinn Fein party almost win power. As the UK government's ranking official on issues related to Northern Ireland, Bradley has been tasked with leading the efforts to restore power-sharing to the region. On Friday, politicians in Northern Ireland reacted with dismay to Bradley's published remarks, accusing her of adding to the troubled atmosphere of the region's politics. "We are not surprised that a British government minister did not understand the intricacies of politics here in the North," Colum Eastwood, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, told Al Jazeera. "The British and Irish governments, as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, need to meet urgently to agree a package of legislation to get Stormont back up and running. Border concerns The implementation of 1998's Good Friday Agreement requires cooperation from the British and Irish governments. This week, the Irish government announced they would seek a separate agreement with the European Union on the status of the border to avoid further delay in agreeing its form. In the case of a "hard Brexit", no agreement would be reached and a presumptive "hard border" would return - along with checkpoints, as was effectively the case throughout the Troubles from the 1960s until the Good Friday Agreement 20 years ago, and vastly increased waiting times for cross-border trade. In Northern Ireland the issue of amnesty for the Troubles is a controversial one: bloodshed was not one-sided and the legacy of violence is inherently complex. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.