Theresa May's hope of a big majority could slip from her grasp

Pic:Prime Minister Theresa May/ REUTERS
Political reporter(wp/es):

Before the Conservatives descend from “wobble weekend” to outright panic, they should remember: we have been here before. 

Every Tory victory since the Fifties has been preceded by at least one campaign poll pointing to defeat or a close finish. David Cameron confounded soothsayers like me two years ago; so did John Major in 1992 and Edward Heath in 1970. Margaret Thatcher had to navigate single polls suggesting she was in trouble.

We should therefore treat with caution latest polls from YouGov and Survation showing the Tory lead halving in a week to nine points. Until more polls are out we cannot be sure whether this is sampling tremor, a blip after the manifesto launch or a lasting shift in loyalties.

That said, Labour was gaining ground even before the headlines about the “dementia tax”, with both Ukip and the Lib Dems losing support. In contrast, the Tories average poll rating has stayed steady for four weeks.

st of my weekly projections combines the latest surveys, not in a crude “poll of polls” but allowing for the tendency of surveys over many years to overstate Labour and understate Tory support.  Without that adjustment I would project an 11-point Tory lead, not the 13 points in the table: I believe the big Labour bias in the polls two years ago has been reduced but not eliminated. But even that 13-point lead, identical to Tony Blair’s victory margin in 1997, would not quite give Theresa May the majority she really wants. 

I estimate the Tories would capture 29 seats from Labour (thanks to Ukip’s collapse since 2015) and six from the SNP. The Lib Dems could pick up a handful of Labour and Tory seats in strong “Remain” areas where there are few Ukip supporters for the Tories to squeeze.  The upshot is a Conservative majority of about 80 had the election been held at the end of last week.

For Mrs May to have the freedom to swat aside rebellions on a compromise Brexit deal she really needs a three-figure majority.  A month ago she was on course — unless she can halt Labour’s rise, it may slip from her grasp.

Church of England made stunning 17% return on investments in 2016

Pic:A focus on ethical investing has long been part of the Church of England’s mandate.
Staff reporter(wp):
The case for profitable ethical investing has been bolstered by the Church Commissioners for England, as the fund announced divine returns on its financial portfolio for 2016.

The body, which manages investable assets worth £7.9bn in order to “support the Church of England as a Christian presence in every community”, said it had smashed targets by making a 17.1% return on investments during 2016 – figures which will be the envy of many high-profile figures in the fund-management industry.

In 2016, Woodford Equity Income – which is run by the UK’s best-known manager, Neil Woodford – returned 3.2% compared with an 8.8% gain for the Investment Association’s UK equity income sector average, according to the financial website MoneyObserver.com.

The church’s fund’s outperformance over the past decade has slightly outpaced even the Yale Endowment fund, which is rated by the Financial Times (paywall)as the most admired in the sector.

The Church Commissioners, whose target is making a return of inflation plus five percentage points, said it had been partly aided in 2016 by sterling’s weakness after the Brexit vote, with the fall in the value of the pound accounting for about half the gains made on its equity portfolio.

First church estates commissioner Sir Andreas Whittam Smith said: “Contributing to this stellar out-turn was a strong showing by global equities (+32.9%), partly reflecting the depreciation of sterling. Equally helpful were our interests in private credit strategies (+33.1%), private equity (+26.1%) and timberland (+24.3%). The combined property portfolios delivered a creditable 11.6% in a relatively weak market environment.

“Consistency has truly been a guiding principle for the fund. Our historic performance over a 30-year period shows annual growth of 9.6% per annum, despite periods of turbulence in the financial markets and our own portfolio – an average of 6% per annum ahead of inflation.”

The Church Commissioners said returns meant it had contributed £230.7m to the mission of the Church of England, although it admitted this was “only around 15% of the church’s overall income – most funding comes from the extraordinary generosity of parishioners”.

The body said it had also been promoting responsible investment, including being “instrumental in filing climate disclosure resolutions at [mining groups] Anglo American, Glencore and Rio Tinto” and continuing “to vote against the majority of remuneration reports”.

Richard Saunders, its head of equities, added: “We have always argued that ethical investing does not put us at a disadvantage – so I’m not going to argue it puts us at an advantage [on the back of these returns]. We have a strong ethical approach and invest over the long term, which we think will be successful. We look to harvest returns over a long period.”

A focus on ethical investing has long been part of the body’s mandate, although some of its investment picks have still provoked debate.

In 2012, it sold its shares in Rupert Murdoch’s media group after the phone-hacking scandal. However, the following year the church’s pension fund was found to have taken an indirect stake in controversial payday lender Wonga, while it has also invested in areas of finance that many view as contentious such as hedge funds.

More than 2.3m people have registered to vote since election was called

Staff reporter(wp):

About 2.3 million people have registered to vote since the general election was called just under five weeks ago, with registrations coming at a faster rate than before the Brexit referendum, the Electoral Commission has said.

This does not necessarily equate to the same number of new voters, as some of the applications could be duplicates from people already registered, said Emma Hartley, head of campaigns for the commission.

Would-be voters have until midnight on Monday to register if they want to vote on 8 June. Applications can be made online in a matter of a few minutes, although people in Northern Ireland have to physically hand in the completed form to a local election office.

“Since the general election was announced on 18 April more than 2.3m applications to register have been submitted,” Hartley told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

She said: “We saw similar levels of registration ahead of the referendum, and ahead of the 2015 general election, but because we’re working with such a shorter timeframe ahead of the 8 June general election, it’s a lot of applications within a shorter number of days.”

Some of these would be duplicate applications, Hartley said, but added: “It is a large number of people who are applying. We’ll know the final numbers about the size of the electorate after the polls.”

An estimated 7 million eligible voters are not registered, and Hartley said those most likely to be disenfranchised were younger people or those who had moved recently.

“We know that age and population mobility are the biggest variables that contribute to levels of under-registrations,” she said. “It’s more likely that people who are 34 years old or younger that are not registered – it’s around 30% of that population, compared to only 4% of those aged 55 and older who aren’t registered.

“With population mobility, we know that people who have moved home within the last year tend not to be registered to vote because it’s something that people don’t get around to doing when they have to do a lot of other things when they’re moving house.”

Simon Wooley, the director of Operation Black Vote, which seeks to encourage people from black and minority ethnic communities to engage more closely in politics, said the system of individual voter registration – changed in 2014 from household registration – was “much more complicated than it needs to be”.

He called for a system in which people are automatically registered to vote, saying: “Why would we want to undermine our democracy, with so many people not engaging?”

Wooley said his organisation often found a lack of connection to the wider political system. “A lot of people that we speak to up and down the country say that our institutions don’t look like us, sound like us, and don’t have plans to tackle those persistent inequalities that turn people off,” he said.

May school lunch cut ‘would hit 900,000 children of struggling families’

Pic:Theresa May has opted to end free school meals for infants
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About 900,000 children from struggling families will lose their right to free school lunches under a cut unveiled in the Conservative manifesto.

The total includes more than 600,000 young children recently defined as coming from “ordinary working families”, according to analysis for the Observer by the Education Policy Institute.

It means that the surprise measure risks undermining Theresa May’s pledge to prioritise families that are “just about managing” – those who are in work, but struggling to make ends meet.

May opted to end universal free school lunches for infants, introduced under the coalition government, and replace them with free breakfasts. The money saved will be used to see off a looming Tory rebellion over school funding.

The move risks punishing exactly the kind of families the prime minister has promised to help and will cost families about £440 for every child hit by the cut. It is likely to save about £650m a year. However, the Conservatives pointed to recent evidence that free breakfasts were more cost-effective, adding that the poorest children would still receive a free lunch.

After a week in which the parties released their election manifestos, more Tory candidates expressed private reservations about their party’s plan to make people pay for their old-age home care through their estates.

With the large Tory poll lead closing slightly in recent days, some nervous candidates are urging the leadership to make another attempt to explain the policy to voters, while others are planning to lobby for concessions after the election. May has insisted it is a fair measure that ensures only those with estates worth more than £100,000 will pay.

Jeremy Corbyn attempted to exploit the row by accusing the Tories of provoking a “war between generations”. He accused May of drawing up an “anti-pensioner package” that weakened protections for the state pension, removed the winter fuel allowance from many and forced thousands to pay huge amounts for home care. Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, said May’s social care policy would “go down as her poll tax”.

The decision to axe universal free school lunches for infants comes only three years after they were introduced by Nick Clegg, the former deputy PM.

The Education Policy Institute’s analysis found that about 100,000 children who are in relative poverty will no longer receive a free meal under May’s proposals. It found that an additional 667,000 children defined as coming from “ordinary working families” would no longer receive a free lunch.

Overall, its research concludes that about 900,000 children who are either eligible for the pupil premium supplement or classed as being in ordinary working families will lose the right to a free hot lunch.

A Conservative source questioned the figures, claiming they had been “cobbled together” by an organisation led by a former Lib Dem minister, David Laws. A Tory spokesman said: “We don’t think it is right to spend precious resources on subsidising school meals for better-off parents. So instead we will give that money to headteachers, to spend on pupils’ education instead.

“We will make sure all those who need it most still get free lunches – and will offer a free school breakfast to every child in every year of primary school. So the most disadvantaged children will now get two free school meals a day rather than one.”

Labour has pledged to extend the free school lunches policy to all primary school children. It plans to pay for the £1bn-a-year measure by applying VAT to the fees paid for private education.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “It is always disappointing when a policy is abandoned after only being given a few years to bed in. This sort of chopping and changing actually costs more money in the long run.”

However, there has also been support for free breakfasts. The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded that free breakfasts improved the performance of young children and were likely to be “more cost-effective”.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of Association of School and College Leaders, said evidence supported a school lunch system in which “children on free school meals have them discreetly paid for while children whose parents can pay should do so”.

The government has defined ordinary working families as those that are not eligible for the pupil premium, but still have below-average incomes. The pupil premium is aimed at a poorer group. It includes any child who has been eligible for free school meals at any point in the past six years because of their family’s low income.

Natalie Perera, executive director of the Education Policy Institute, said: “Around 900,000 children from low-income families will lose their eligibility for free school meals under these proposals. Around two-thirds of those children are from what the government considers to be ‘ordinary working families’.

“The typical annual cost for an ordinary working family would increase under these proposals to around £440 for each child aged between four and seven.”

Boris Johnson wrongly claims £350m NHS promise at manifesto launch

Political reporter(wp):

Boris Johnson has suggested Theresa May promised to give the NHS an extra £350m a week at the launch of the Conservative party manifesto, when neither she nor the document made any such promise.

The foreign secretary was pressed on why there was no pledge from the Tories to use any proceeds from Brexit to fund the NHS, when handing over £350m a week was a flagship promise of his campaign to leave the European Union.

Asked on ITV’s Peston on Sunday why the sum was not in the manifesto, Johnson said: “It is. It is. Theresa May, she said it at the launch of the manifesto … She said we are going to take back control.”

ITV News’ political editor, Robert Peston, said: “Where?”, but Johnson went straight into a speech about how the election was a contest between May and Jeremy Corbyn as leaders.

At the manifesto launch, May made a promise to “take back control of [EU] structural funds and use them to strengthen our union and reduce inequalities between our communities”.

However, there was no mention of any of this money specifically going to the NHS.

A senior Conservative source said Johnson was saying a commitment to take money back from the EU and spend it on services such as the NHS was in the manifesto but he had been cut off several times by the interviewer.

Since the referendum, she and her cabinet ministers have repeatedly been challenged about why they are not honouring the pledge that was emblazoned on a bus used to transport Johnson on the campaign trail.

The former leave strategist Dominic Cummings has suggested it was instrumental in helping the leave campaign win the contest.

Vote Leave Watch, a group pressing for the pledge to be honoured, has accused Johnson of “taking the public for fools”.

The foreign secretary was also caught sneaking a look at Peston’s questions before their Sunday morning TV encounter. Peston later tweeted a series of pictures showing Johnson rifling through his notes while he was questioning other guests.

However, there was no mention of any of this money specifically going to the NHS.

A senior Conservative source said Johnson was saying a commitment to take money back from the EU and spend it on services such as the NHS was in the manifesto but he had been cut off several times by the interviewer.

Since the referendum, she and her cabinet ministers have repeatedly been challenged about why they are not honouring the pledge that was emblazoned on a bus used to transport Johnson on the campaign trail.

The former leave strategist Dominic Cummings has suggested it was instrumental in helping the leave campaign win the contest.

Vote Leave Watch, a group pressing for the pledge to be honoured, has accused Johnson of “taking the public for fools”.

The foreign secretary was also caught sneaking a look at Peston’s questions before their Sunday morning TV encounter. Peston later tweeted a series of pictures showing Johnson rifling through his notes while he was questioning other guests.

Separately, Corbyn, the Labour leader, said that if he gained power he would put in place a migration policy based on the needs of society.

He added immigration would “probably be lower” but he did not want to make predictions. “Freedom of movement obviously ends when you leave the European Union because it’s a condition of the membership,” he told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday.

He added: “I want there to be fair immigration based on the needs of our society. That is the proper way of approaching it.”

Pressed further on the issue, Corbyn went on: “I want us to have a society that works and I cannot get into a numbers game because I don’t think it works.”

In a trickier section of the interview, the Labour leader was repeatedly asked to condemn the IRA, following a fresh string of newspaper stories about his links to figures in the militant group in the 1980s. He said: “Bombing is wrong, of course all bombing is wrong and of course I condemn it … I think what you have to say is all bombing has to be condemned and you have to bring about a peace process.

“In the 1980s Britain was looking for a military solution in Ireland. It clearly was never going to work. Ask anyone in the British army at that time.

“Therefore you have to seek a peace process. You condemn the violence of those that laid bombs that killed large of numbers of innocent people and I do.”

Asked to condemn the IRA without equating it to the deaths caused by British security services, Corbyn said: “And there were loyalist bombs as well, which you haven’t mentioned. I condemn all the bombing by the both loyalists and the IRA.”

In another Sky interview, Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, also came under pressure in a interview over his views on abortion, which he described in an interview 10 years ago as morally wrong.

Asked five times whether he still believed it was wrong, Farron stressed he believed women should have access to abortion which is “legal and safe”.

Told by Ridge he had not been clear on the question of morality, he replied: “Well, I believe women should have access under law which is safe and legal, and I think that’s the critical issue - do you believe people should be able to make that choice under law, and do you believe the law as it stands is right and the science that dictates, or rather underlines, that law is right. I do believe that, I did then and I do now.”

Young man rushed to hospital after being knifed at train station

Crime reporter(wp/es):

A young man has been rushed to hospital after being stabbed in broad daylight at a busy south London station.

The victim, believed to be aged 22, was knifed in his arm at East Croydon station just before 1pm on Saturday afternoon.

Police were called to the station and the victim was taken to a nearby hospital.

A British Transport Police spokesman said his injuries were “not believed to be serious”.

The incident was not affecting National Rail or London Overground services on Saturday afternoon.

A British Transport Police spokesman added: “We were called at 12.58pm to East Croydon station, to reports that a man in his twenties had been assaulted.

“The man, believed to be a 22-year-old from the local area, is being taken to hospital with a knife wound to the arm. It is not believed to be serious.

Brexit negotiations set to start on 19 June

Political reporter(wp):

The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has pencilled in 19 June for the first formal day of talks with Britain about its withdrawal from the European Union, in what are being billed as the most important negotiations in the country’s history.

That highly symbolic morning, Barnier will face whoever is the British Brexit secretary after the election for the first day of an arduous 15 months of negotiations to hammer out the terms of the UK’s exit.

It is understood that the European commission’s Brexit taskforce, led by Barnier, shared the proposed date with key figures in Brussels last week.

EU officials are yet to discuss any logistics with the UK, however, due to an ongoing row with Theresa May’s government over its blocking of a mid-term review of the union’s budget.

Brussels cancelled plans for behind-the-scenes “pre-talk talks” to discuss how the negotiations could be handled in anger last month when Britain vetoed the shuffling of the EU budget to priority areas, such as the migration crisis.

The British government claimed pre-election purdah rules blocked any key decisions being made before the general election on 8 June, enraging the commission, whose plans are now stalled.

The lack of contact between the two negotiating teams is the reason Brussels intends to ringfence an additional week after the election result for further informal preparations before the negotiations start in earnest.

The first meeting between Barnier and the Brexit secretary is likely to be held in the recently-opened Europa building, a £283m transparent structure housing a large glass egg where key EU meeting rooms are accommodated. Its unworldly appearance has led to the building being nicknamed the Space Egg.

The EU wants negotiations to be divided into four-week cycles, each focused on a key issue. Week one would involve political preparation, followed by a week where documents would be disclosed by both sides.

The third week would see Barnier and the Brexit secretary sitting down to talk, mainly in Brussels but also, potentially, in London. In the final week, Barnier would report on the results of the negotiations to the 27 member states and the European parliament.

The EU’s negotiator wants to reach agreement on citizens’ rights, the UK’s divorce bill and on the border of Ireland in a first phase of talks he hopes will be concluded by the end of 2017.

The European council, whose members comprise the 27 EU states, will decide by consensus on whether sufficient progress has been made for talks to progress, according to the commission’s negotiating directives, to be signed off by EU ministers next Monday.

If it is deemed appropriate by the EU 27 leaders, Barnier will spend from December 2017 to the spring of 2018 negotiating the scope of a future trade deal with the UK. He will also discuss the transitional arrangements necessary for the period between the UK leaving the single market and the customs union in March 2019, and any EU-UK trade deal being finalised and ratified some years ahead.

Barnier’s timetable allows for the approval of a withdrawal deal, including transitional arrangements, by EU institutions and member states.

Only two years of withdrawal negotiations are allowed under article 50 of the Lisbon treaty. May notified the European council of the UK’s decision to leave the EU on 29 March this year, nine months after last June’s referendum.

However, the commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, fears Barnier’s timetable will be derailed. David Davis, the current Brexit secretary, has already warned that the EU’s stubborn refusal to talk about a trade deal at the same time as the divorce terms, including the estimated €100bn divorce bill, “will be the row of the summer”.