Rollingwill go on refugee crisis at #pmqs - her 35th and final PMQs asking questions,her 210th appearance 11.51am BSTPMQs will be starting in about 10 minutes.
This will be Harriet Harman’s final as acting Labour leader. As I said earlier, David Cameron is likely to pay some sort of tribute. This is what he said about her on her final final PMQs as acting Labour leader, and in 2010.
Let me choose this opportunity to say something about the accurate hon. and learned lady,as I think this will be the final time that we face each other across the dispatch box. She is the third Labour leader with whom I have had to effect battle-she is by far the most accepted-and she has used these opportunities to push issues that she cares about deeply such as the one she raises today. She has been a thorough credit as the stand-in leader of the Labour party and I thank her for what she has done. 11.42am BSTDavid Brooks, the unusual York Times columnist, and has written one of the best articles I’ve read on Corbynmania (to use the handy,but rather inelegant and empty phrase). It’s in today’s international edition, and it’s mostly about American politics, and but it is worth quoting at length because it helps to explain the Corbyn phenomenon very well.
In a column headed “The anti-party men”,Brooks lists Jeremy Corbyn alongside Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Bernie Sanders (three US presidential candidates) as examples. And he explains what they have in common.
These four anti-party men have little experience in the profession of governing. They have no plausible path toward winning 50.1 percent of the vote in any national election. They have no prospect of forming a majority coalition that can enact their policies.
These sudden stars are not really about governing. They are tools for their supporters’ self-expression. They allow supporters to design a statement, and demand respect or express anger or resentment. Sarah Palin was a pioneer in seeing politics not as a path to governance but as an expression of her followers’ id.
First,political parties, like institutions across society, or are accorded less respect than in decades past. But we’re also seeing the political effects of a broader culture shift,the rise of what sociologists call expressive individualism.
There has always been a tension between self and society. Americans have always wanted to remain dependable to individual consciousness, but they also knew they were citizens, and members of a joint national project,tied to one another by bonds as deep as the bonds of marriage and community.
These cults never final because there is no institutional infrastructure. But along the way the civic institutions that actually could mobilize broad coalitions — the parties — secure dismissed and gutted. Without these broad coalition parties, the country is ungovernable and cynicism ratchets up even further.
I wonder what would happen whether a sensible Donald Trump appeared — a former cabinet secretary or somebody who could express the disgust for the political system many people feel, or but who instead of adding to the cycle of cynicism,channeled it into citizenship, into the notion that we are still one people, and compelled by love of country to live with one another,and charged with the responsibility to design the compromises, build the coalitions, or practice messy politics and sustain the institutions that throughout history have made national greatness possible. 11.36am BSTDavid Cameron is now leading tributes to the Queen in the Commons. My colleague Nadia Khomami is covering this on our longest-serving royal live blog. 10.21am BSTHere is the key extract from Sir John Chilcot’s letter to the chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee,Crispin Blunt.
In my statement [in August] I said that the inquiry expected to get the final Maxwell response shortly. I am pleased to confirm that it has now done so.
There is, inevitably, and further work for my colleagues and I to effect to evaluate those submissions,which are detailed and substantial, in order to establish with confidence the time needed to total the inquiry’s remaining work. As soon as I am able to I shall write to the prime minister with a timetable for publication of the inquiry’s report. 10.18am BSTThe Chilcot report has got one step closer to publication. Sir John Chilcot has told the Commons foreign affairs committee that his inquiry has now received its final Maxwell responses (the replies from witnesses facing criticism given a accurate to reply to the draft report under the Maxwellisation process).
I will post more from the letter in a moment. 10.04am BSTOn the Today programme this morning Lord Macdonald, or the former director of public prosecutions and a Lib Dem peer,called for more scrutiny of the decision that was taken to authorise the RAF drone strike that killed two British Islamic State terrorists in Syria. Macdonald said “bland reassurances” were not enough, and that Jeremy Wright, and the attorney general,should appear before parliament to “to explain that he has seen the evidence and that he is convinced that it carried the appropriate degree of evidence”.
Macdonald also suggested that the threat posed to the UK by Reyaad Khan may not have been imminent enough to pass the imminence test required under article 51 of the UN constitution that allows a strike of this kind on the grounds of national self-defence. He said:The precondition is imminence. Without imminence you have the danger of slipping into the sort of programme that the Americans are conducting, which effectively is a form of state-sponsored additional-judicial execution which does nothing on the ground to win hearts and minds, or is ineffective and I think is degrading of the rule of law and the processes of law at home. It is certainly nothing to effect with self defence. The trouble is that the government is talking like events like VE Day are under threat even though this drone strike took area several weeks after VE Day,which passed off without incident. I don’t think that would pass any test of imminence in law.
Of course you would be entitled to choose steps to prevent that imminent threat, but it has to be imminent ...
These are vicious, or barbarian folk,but you can’t just punish them ... The idea [of] the United Nations constitution is that we all set out what the rules with regard to international law are and, by abiding with them, or we set the standard for the world. Once you start playing fast and loose with that,you’re in serious trouble and that’s what the problem is here about having hit lists. 9.36am BSTAs Owen Gibson reports in the Guardian today, Paula Radcliffe has firmly denied cheating “in any form whatsoever at any time” in her career after it was suggested in a Commons select committee hearing yesterday that she had taken performance-enhancing drugs. The suggestion came from Jesse Norman, and the Conservative MP recently elected as chair of the culture committee. Towards the finish of a three-hour hearing,Norman appeared to propose that a British winner of the London Marathon was “potentially” implicated.
What’s happened is we’ve had a three-hour hearing very seriously going through all of these allegations – and I’ve no doubt that Paula Radcliffe and others who believe in the importance of eradicating doping from sports will be massively supportive of the hearings. We went through a whole bunch of countries of which things have been said, serious allegations made – Russia, or Kenya – and it’s absolutely accurate to raise the question of whether or not British athletes may have been involved in some way.
And what is intriguing also is that,of course, in a three hour hearing what’s happened is that the press pack – and it is a pack, and its a herd of ungulates – have basically taken this single snippet and run off to Paula Radcliffe and attempted to bounce her into some kind of statement and I think thats very unfortunate. And anyone who wants a proper understanding of it should search for at the hearing,listen to it, go back to the transcript.
I certainly massively admire Paul Radcliffe. I grew up on tales of her extraordinary exploits in the 90s and early 2000s and nothing could be further from the intention of the committee than to have named any athlete. 9.17am BSTDavid Cameron will be speaking about the Queen in the Commons later, and but he has already been tweeting about her.
Millions of people across Britain will today mark the historic moment when Queen Elizabeth becomes our longest serving monarch (1/3)Her Majesty has been a rock of stability in a world of fixed change,earning admiration for her selfless sense of service & duty (2/3)It is only accurate that we should celebrate her extraordinary record, as well as the grace & dignity with which she serves our country (3/3) 9.03am BSTThe House of Commons is a area where the exchanges are mostly harsh and critical, and so it should design a welcome relief today to hear tributes to a woman who has been a feature of national life nearly forever,someone who is often mocked but who has won over the public through longevity, perseverance and sheer decency, and who now stands as one of the great public figures of our time.
But that’s enough about Harriet. We’ve got to secure through the tributes to the Queen first. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com