“Rishi Sunak is working on “new tough laws” to limit the impact of strikes, as Border Force staff prepared to join a wave of industrial action set to cause major travel disruption across the UK over Christmas. The prime minister told the House of Commons on Wednesday that if “union leaders continue to be unreasonable, then it is my duty to take action to protect the lives and livelihoods of the British public”. Sunak’s pledge came as air travellers in the UK learned they faced the prospect of long queues and possible flight cancellations this Christmas after the PCS union said Border Force staff would strike at six UK airports, including London Heathrow and Gatwick.” – Financial Times
>Yesterday: ToryDiary: Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Sunak the safe pair of hands grows more dependably dull
“Julian Knight has been suspended as a Conservative MP after a complaint was made to the Metropolitan Police, a party spokeswoman has said. She declined to comment on the nature of the complaint as it is now under investigation. Mr Knight, who has been an MP since 2015, chairs the culture committee in the House of Commons. He represents the Solihull constituency in the West Midlands, but will now sit as an independent. A spokeswoman for Chief Whip Simon Hart said: “Following a complaint made to the Metropolitan Police this evening, we have removed the whip from Julian Knight MP with immediate effect.” The chief whip is in charge of discipline within the parliamentary party. He also has the power to remove the whip from an MP, meaning they can no longer sit in Parliament as a Conservative MP.” – BBC
“Matt Hancock has announced that he will stand down at the next election, with the head of his local Tory association saying he is “not fit” to be the West Suffolk MP. Mr Hancock, a former health secretary, sparked outrage and was stripped of the Conservative whip for appearing on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!. He revealed his plan to step aside in a letter to Rishi Sunak on Wednesday, after weeks of allies insisting that he would contest his West Suffolk seat…Moments later, remarks emerged from his constituency association chief expressing “no confidence” in him as the sitting MP.” – Daily Telegraph
>Today: ToryDiary: Hancock’s attempts to justify his pandemic record have had the opposite effect
“Michael Gove has approved the UK’s first deep coal mine in more than 30 years after conceding that new green technologies are unlikely to replace the fossil fuel’s role in steel-making for many years. The Levelling Up secretary backed plans for a £165m coal mine in Cumbria in a decision that is expected to spark an immediate legal challenge from climate activists. The Woodhouse Colliery, near Whitehaven, will produce coal for steelmaking in the UK and for export to Europe, employing about 500 workers at peak production.” – Daily Telegraph
“Parents must be able to monitor what is being taught in schools amid fears woke teachers are brainwashing their kids, the Education Secretary has insisted. Gillian Keegan demanded “a big dose of transparency” to assure anxious mums and dads about creeping political bias in the classroom. She said the “vast majority” of teachers treat their commitment to neutrality “extremely carefully” but that some public institutions have “lost their way a little bit”. Tory MPs on the Commons Education Committee grilled her over reports that more than half of kids are being taught ideas like “white privilege” and “unconscious bias”. Conservative Miriam Cates fumed that pupils were being taught as fact “theories that the wider population don’t adhere to”.” – The Sun
“Patients will be encouraged to choose private hospitals for NHS care under plans to help clear backlogs of routine operations through outsourcing more treatment. A task force of private healthcare bosses and NHS chiefs met in Downing Street for the first time yesterday in an effort to find more capacity for hip replacements, cataracts and other routine procedures in the independent sector. NHS bosses are hopeful of meeting a target to eliminate waits of more than 18 months by April, but there is increasing concern in government about whether one-year waits can be eliminated by 2025 as planned.” – The Times
“Dominic Raab’s bill of rights may be ditched again as Rishi Sunak has decided to prioritise legislation to tackle small boats, The Times has learnt. Sunak is understood to have told the deputy prime minister this week that he has “deprioritised” the long-awaited overhaul of the Human Rights Act. However, Raab is “fighting back”, a government source said, and is trying to convince the prime minister that the bill is crucial, arguing that several other proposed laws “hinge” on his reforms.” – The Times
>Today: Stuart Carroll and Andy Johnson on Local government: The border crisis leaves Council Taxpayers picking up the cost
“Tory MPs have warned that the UK’s international influence is waning because of its failure to take leadership roles in global organisations seriously. A report called on the UK Government to “urgently” improve getting people into international organisations to protect and promote “our place in the world”. It says that the UK does not take seeking leadership positions in international companies seriously, allowing other countries to dominate organisations. The Conservative MPs Liam Fox and Andrew Murisson, who co-wrote the Policy Exchange report, said the UK shifting its place on an international stage was crucial to success post-Brexit.” – The i
“Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is facing a furious backlash after a new report revealed that £12 million is being spent each year on diversity and inclusion officer in Whitehall and associated agencies at a time when the economic crisis has forced tax rises and spending cuts. The figures in the Conservative Way Forward (CWF) report only includes Whitehall departments in Westminster, not the public sector as a whole. Dudley North MP Marco Longhi, one of the MPs to help sweep Labour’s Red Wall in 2019, said: “The scary thing about this report is that this £12m is what is spent on Civil Service only woke jobs. “What about all the NHS diversity jobs at £80k a year when we don’t spend training and recruiting our own doctors and nurses, but import them instead?” – Daily Express
“We have seen from our own experience at Dyson during periods of government-enforced working from home how deeply inefficient it is. It prevents the collaboration and in-person training that we need to develop new technology and maintain competitiveness against global rivals. This is what makes us succeed. In other countries where Dyson operates we are given the freedom to organise how — and where — our staff carry out the roles they are contracted to. In no other country have we experienced such overreach in terms of the government telling us how to organise our business. To impose this policy during what is likely to be one of the worst recessions on record is economically illiterate and staggeringly self-defeating. The UK increasingly looks like a lackadaisical global outlier that is determined to interfere in business and drive away investment.” – James Dyson, The Times
“The great shakedown is back on. For 25 years, the Conservatives have been terrorised by populists without and hardliners within. Leader after leader has thrown red meat to their right flank in the hope that one last meal will silence their barking only to be surprised when it doesn’t. Once, the fight was about leaving the EU, then over securing a “true” Brexit. Now it is over immigration and the asylum seekers crossing the Channel on small boats. In each case, the ploy is the same. Tory MPs play up the threat from a small party to their right, first Ukip, then the Brexit party, to coerce leaders into a more hardline stance…Conservatives have prospered as a party of the aspirational, the comfortable and the complacent. They cannot keep winning if they are solely the party of the angry.” – Robert Shrimsley, Financial Times
Thanks to technology and markets, it ought to be possible to decarbonise without ruining our society and economy, but 14 years on the revolution is proceeding just about as disastrously as anybody could have imagined. In typical British fashion, our political class has taken all the easy decisions first, and none of the tough ones. The blunders, the groupthink, the demented short-termism and the mind-boggling bureaucratic incompetence have amounted to one of the greatest national scandals of the past few decades…The politicians have a choice: make greenery consumer-friendly, harnessing technology to preserve the public’s quality of life, or face a calamitous democratic uprising.” – Allister Heath, Daily Telegraph