Tag: Margaret Thatcher

Boles had left local members unsure if he would be standing again for the Tories, not least after he resigned from the local association last month. He added that of the 345 emails he had received from party members and supporters before the association’s local AGM last month, just 22 had expressed support for Boles, while more than 300 wanted him gone. Sagar accused Boles of arrogance and self-importance: “Rather than Nick and politicians like Anna Soubry, who are far too London-centric, the real victims are the local electorates and associations which largely voted for leave.” Sagar rejected suggestions from supporters of Boles that the local association had been the subject of a “Ukip takeover”. “What should happen next is entirely up to Nick. On Tuesday, some councillors were reluctant to offer their views on Boles’s actions and how he had been treated. But one councillor, Bob Adams, said he was “very disappointed” that the MP felt he had to resign from the party. So from that point of view it’s sad that this has happened,” said the self-proclaimed supporter of a no-deal Brexit. “None has earned the right to lead the country after Brexit.” Conservative MP Nick Boles quits party after his soft Brexit plan fails Read more The MP may have a mountain to climb should he seek re-election on a non-Tory ticket. His resignation – which prompted siren calls from other former Tory colleagues in the Independent Group of MPs, now known as Change UK – means that a rural Lincolnshire constituency is being represented by a non-Tory for the first time since 2010. Others point out that no one has won an election in a rural Lincolnshire seat against a Conservative candidate since 1948.

For the Conservatives, it was a year which had uncanny parallels with today – a prime minister facing questions about her leadership, a party split over Europe and the threat of cabinet resignations over the issue. Thatcher would survive the year but the resignation of Lawson in October, over the influence of her economic adviser Alan Walters, came, in hindsight, to be seen as the beginning of the end for the Iron Lady. Lawson was at loggerheads with Thatcher and Walters over the exchange rate mechanism (ERM). Thatcher recorded his departure in a private memo in terse terms: “Early Thursday morning – hair set 8-8.30 Andrew [Turnbull] came up to say Nigel Lawson wanted to see me. This seemed to me an absurd, indeed reprehensible proposition … in my view no one could possibly resign on the basis of such a flimsy and unworthy proposal.” She said she urged him to think again, concluding: “I then put the matter out of my mind.” The papers reveal that the following month she told the Sun’s editor at the time, Kelvin MacKenzie, in an off-the-record interview, that after taking a comforting “we love you” call from her children on the day of the resignation, in characteristic no-nonsense fashion she then prepared supper for her and her husband, Denis: “Someone’s got to do it … I just had to get on.” But Chris Collins, a historian at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, said the PM’s anger came through in her memo, in contrast with her public stance, in which she affected bafflement. “She would have loved to have really punched hard, I think,” he said. Collins said: “You can see that events in 1990 would not have happened as they did had it not been for 1989 ... The Lawson resignation is actually the one that makes [Geoffrey] Howe’s resignation so damaging.” In June of 1989, Howe had teamed up with Lawson for the “Madrid ambush”, when Thatcher’s then chancellor and foreign secretary threatened to resign if she refused to state a date for Britain joining the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM). She did not accede and although they did not quit immediately, when they did – Howe, then deputy prime minister, resigned in November 1990 – it would ultimately have devastating consequences for her. By contrast to the ERM, Thatcher was a fan of the single market.

The BBC’s long-running politics show This Week is to end after presenter Andrew Neil announced he was stepping down. The BBC One show, which airs on Thursdays after Question Time, will be taken off air this summer when its current series ends, the corporation said. Neil has fronted the show since it began in 2003 and regular guests include former Conservative MP Michael Portillo and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott. Sorry, this content isn't available on your device. @bbcthisweek will end after its current run, as presenter @afneil steps down from late-night presenting #bbctw — BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) February 14, 2019 Fran Unsworth, BBC director of news, said: “We couldn’t imagine This Week without the inimitable Andrew Neil, one of Britain’s best political interviewers. After 16 years, Andrew is bowing out of late-night presenting on the show, at the top of his game.” Neil will continue to present Politics Live on Thursdays, Unsworth added, and the BBC wants to keep the 69-year-old “at the heart” of its political coverage. This Week is known for its informal look at politics while Ms Abbott and Mr Portillo form an unlikely on-screen double-act, despite being on opposite sides of the political divide. The move comes amid uncertainty surrounding the BBC’s news output. Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen and other foreign correspondents have asked Lord Tony Hall to reconsider. Last year, Sunday Politics, hosted by Sarah Smith, was axed and replaced by Politics Live, which airs Monday to Friday.

Theresa May has used her closing speech at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham to announce that she is getting rid of the cap on what councils can borrow to build homes. The amount of extra investment in housing could be around £1bn a year, but this is dependent on how many councils decide to borrow. May told the Tories: The Local Government Association described the move, which involves lifting a Labour policy, as “fantastic”. Stressing her opposition to a second referendum, she warned: She claimed that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party had rejected the “common values” that used to be shared by both main parties. Would Neil Kinnock, who stood up to the hard-left, have stood by while his own MPs faced deselection, and needed police protection at their party conference? Would Jim Callaghan, who served in the Royal Navy, have asked the Russian government to confirm the findings of our own intelligence agencies? Would Clement Attlee, Churchill’s trusted deputy during the second world war, have told British Jews they didn’t know the meaning of antisemitism? That is what Jeremy Corbyn has done to the Labour party. And here are verdicts on the speech from a Guardian panel: Matthew d’Ancona, Katy Balls, Dawn Foster and David Shariatmadari. That’s all from me for the day.

A fair few political gamblers will be counting their losses after Ruth Davidson’s firm denial that she harbours any wish ever to become prime minister. The Scottish Conservative leader made clear in an interview at the weekend that her personal life, her burgeoning family and her mental health would all suffer were she to become a Tory MP, or enter national politics. The result of our culture is a cavalcade of politicians bearing no resemblance to those they claim to represent The Scottish Tory leader’s frankness has been applauded by campaigners for helping to combat the stigma surrounding mental illness. Self-harm in particular is rarely disclosed or understood in discussions about psychological wellbeing, although Davidson must surely see the tension inherent in seeking to end stigma about mental illness while the party she proudly represents tears down mental health provision. Riffling through biographies of senior politicians, it’s clear that seeing elected office as a career end in itself is hardly an anomaly: Theresa May spoke of her desire, while still at university, to be the first female prime minister, and was reportedly enraged when Margaret Thatcher beat her to it. A recent article by Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph lamented the fact that for the first time in history, a Conservative cabinet has no Old Etonians, thanks to Boris Johnson’s departure. This lingering deference to the performatively posh, brashly arrogant and those convinced they have been groomed for power is not unusual. The admission by the Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, that she didn’t understand the politics of the province revealed how so many politicians see the pursuit of power as the main motivation, with deep knowledge viewed as passé. We need people with nonprofessional backgrounds, older people and candidates with children and interesting personal histories that inform their politics. But who would be a politician when you can, instead, have a life?

But equally notable is how many of the hundreds of mostly Democratic women running are political outsiders, tossing the old playbook aside that said female candidates have to be twice as qualified, twice as polished, and twice as careful as their male counterparts to run. McGrath already beat the mayor of the district's biggest city, Lexington, in the Democratic primary, even though he had the backing of the national party. "I served as a U.S. Marine Corps officer for 24 years. "And we need people in office right now who care more about getting the mission done for our country than their own political party, or themselves." Debbie Walsh, director of the Rutgers' Center for American Women and Politics, said the majority of women who were elected during the last "Year of the Women," in 1992, had worked their way up from state legislatures. Betsy Dirksen Londrigan won her crowded Illinois House primary after campaigning on health care as a rallying cry. Now, her kids wear "Mama for Congress" T-shirts. About what kind of clothes I should wear, how I should wear my hair,” said Hill, a Democrat. “The whole playbook is gone,” Hill said. So it freed me up to run the race I want to run.”

The Labour former home secretary David Blunkett has said the resignation of veteran MP Frank Field means the party faces irrelevance unless the situation is used as a “catalyst for seismic change”. The choice is his.” Profile Frank Field The veteran MP, who has resigned the Labour whip, was among those who nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership in 2015, calling the other candidates 'thin post-Blair gruel' and saying the leftwinger would change the terms of the debate. Field, 79, has been MP for Birkenhead since 1979. He served as a minister under Tony Blair but is best known for his role as chair of the work and pensions select committee, taking robust positions on food banks, benefit sanctions, the gig economy and migrant workers. Most recently, his Euroscepticism has been in the spotlight, often voting against the party whip on Brexit, including recent votes where pro-Brexit Labour rebels saved Theresa May’s government from devastating defeats. The MP said his constituency Labour party was trying to 'misrepresent' his pro-Brexit vote. The comments came as Field said he would employ “the best legal minds” to dispute party rules that say he cannot return to the party after resigning the whip. Field, who has served as the MP for Birkenhead for almost 40 years, was told by Nick Brown, the party chief whip, that his decision to resign automatically meant he was no longer a member. Labour sources confirmed that by resigning the whip Field had “automatically opted to resign from the Labour party”. “I hope and I believe Jeremy will lead us into the next election and it is not true I’m a constant critic of Jeremy,” said Field.

A new study in the British Journal of Criminology indicates that the different political periods in which people 'came of age' has an important influence on their perception of crime, even decades later. For over forty years, researchers have sought to understand the causes and implications of people's fear of crime. But to date, no studies have been able to take into account whether the political period in which a cohort grew up had a meaningful effect on their emotional responses to crime. Researchers from the University of Sheffield, University of Southampton and Sciences Po, Paris, analyzed data on fear of crime and antisocial behavior from the British Crime Survey in England and Wales spanning 30 years. The researchers found a strong relationship between a respondent's current crime fears and their political generation. Meanwhile, the Wilson/ Callaghan generation expressed the highest levels of worry about robbery and mugging, which was a key concern for politicians, policy makers and journalists at the time. Responses to antisocial behaviours tell a similar story. Political and popular debates about crime that are prevalent in one's youth appear to impact the fears those individuals report through adulthood and into middle age," said one of the paper's authors, Stephen Farrall. s.farrall@sheffield.ac.uk 07906 716 590 To request a copy of the study, please contact: Daniel Luzer daniel.luzer@oup.com Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert!

A rightwing thinktank has been offering potential US donors access to government ministers and civil servants as it raises cash for research to support the free-trade deals demanded by hardline Brexiters, according to an investigation. The director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) was secretly recorded telling an undercover reporter that funders could get to know ministers on first-name terms and that his organisation was in “the Brexit influencing game”. In July it launched a £50,000 prize for ideas about harnessing the free market to solve the UK’s housing crisis. The recordings include discussions between Littlewood and the reporter in which the IEA director sets out the potential benefits of funding work by the thinktank. These foods are currently banned in the UK: Chlorine-washed chicken (banned in the EU). Hormone-treated beef (banned in the EU). Food colourants (banned in the UK, regulated in the EU). She said he only ever had meetings “on merit”, adding: “We would not want any ambiguity whatsoever to exist on this point.” Littlewood claimed the IEA also arranged for Link, and the director of an Oklahoma business thinktank, to go to the Department for International Trade, Fox’s department, where they met a senior civil servant. Davis, Baker and Lord Callanan, a Brexit minister, all recorded meetings with the IEA in the first three months of this year. The IEA has argued that Greenpeace should not have charitable status because it serves “no public purpose” and has accused it of opposing GM rice “that could prevent the deaths of more than 2 million children a year”.

At least 100,000 people took to the streets yesterday as part of the largest ever demonstration of support for a new referendum over Britain’s final Brexit deal. With more businesses poised to issue dire Brexit warnings this week and senior Tories already drawing up plans to soften Theresa May’s exit proposals, organisers of the march on Sunday said it showed Britain’s departure from the European Union was not a “done deal”. Anger on the streets at the prime minister’s handling of the Brexit negotiations is being accompanied by a renewed push from industry to ensure that trade with Europe is not disrupted as a result of leaving. More prominent manufacturing firms are set to issue warnings about Britain’s Brexit negotiations within days, after Airbus and BMW broke cover to say they could reconsider their UK investment plans unless a Brexit deal was reached keeping Britain closely aligned with Europe. Senior Tory MPs are already warning that the government will face another parliamentary crisis over Britain’s post-Brexit trade arrangements within weeks unless May gives clear indications that she backs such a deal. They have always had to have a wide manufacturing base, but it has always been an irritation to them that manufacturing wings for their aircraft is not carried out in mainland Europe, where its major shareholders are located. The timeline of some of these products is years.” One senior business figure said further public concerns were on the way and EU countries would benefit from an exodus of UK-based businesses. “There are people waiting in the wings if they think they can intervene without serious consequences from the government,” he said. Boris Johnson and other leading cabinet Brexiters have come under renewed attack from business leaders for pushing for a hard Brexit. A Downing Street source said: “The government is getting on with delivering the Brexit people voted for and we are working hard to ensure that our future outside the European Union is brighter and better.”