Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Thursday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris’s red wall problem

When Boris Johnson met with his cabinet in person for the first time in four months on Tuesday, his aim was simple: to boost morale. He was conscious that the replacement of normal meetings with virtual ones had led to ministers feeling muted. He believed that giving everyone some face-to-face time would help, and pushed hard for an actual meeting. Johnson won that argument, even if the cabinet did have to meet in the faded grandeur of the Foreign Office’s Locarno Suite to allow everyone to be socially distanced. This is not what Johnson’s team envisaged when he won his 80-seat majority in December. They assumed with a majority that

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Could Scotland sink the Johnson dream?

When the cabinet met on Tuesday in the Locarno Suite of the Foreign Office, one item was top of the agenda: the Union. The reason? Over the past four months, support for both Nicola Sturgeon and Scottish independence has risen. There is genuine worry in government that a few wrong moves could see Scotland on a path to independence. ‘It’s the biggest single threat to the stability of this government,’ warns a minister. In order to prevent this a plan is underway. Boris Johnson is visiting Scotland today where he will outline new funding while there will be wider efforts to visibly strengthen ties between Westminster and the devolved governments.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The end of lockdown is just the start of the domestic abuse crisis

The number of people – particularly women – seeking help for domestic violence soared during the coronavirus lockdown. We’ve known that for a while. But there has been an assumption that as lockdown eases, so will the pressure for abuse victims. New figures from the charity Refuge suggest that this assumption is wrong.  There has been an assumption that as lockdown eases, so will the pressure for abuse victims In June, the National Domestic Violence Helpline saw a 77 per cent increase in calls, while there was a 54 per cent rise in the number of women needing a place in a refuge from the last week in June to the

Wednesday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s post-Covid agenda

Boris Johnson’s end of term address to Tory MPs offered a preview of what the government wants its agenda to be this autumn. He told the backbench 1922 committee that his generation had ‘had it far, far easier’ in terms of getting on the housing ladder. He argued that they had to ‘build, build, build’ to ensure that the younger generation had the same opportunities. He emphasised that nothing could be more Conservative than that.  If the virus remains in retreat, the government will be able to turn to this new agenda The Prime Minister’s tone suggests that he is preparing to face down any backbench opposition to the government’s

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Boris and Keir scrap over Corbyn’s legacy

There was an urgent question about jobs at PMQs today. One job in particular. The questioner, Maria Miller, was concerned that she hadn’t yet been hired to head a government department. She made her bid for promotion by strewing petals and scented bouquets at Boris’s feet. She reminded us that on Friday, 24 July, the nation will celebrate the first anniversary of his outstanding leadership. She hailed his genius as a recruiter of cops and nurses. She extolled his mission to tackle ‘the regional inequalities we still have in this country’. And she described his feelgood phrase, ‘levelling up’, as a ‘vision’ which, she hoped, would guide him ‘through every

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Starmer vs Corbyn

14 min listen

Keir Starmer was keen to put clear blue water between himself and Corbyn’s Labour party today, on both the apology to anti-Semitism whistleblowers and the Russia report. Will this cut through to the voters? Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Tracey Brown and Carl Heneghan

Boris Johnson needs to be more open about Covid’s risks

The Prime Minister wants us back to normal by Christmas. If he is serious, then his government needs to take a big step forward in how it communicates evidence on Covid-19 with the public. Every day we get new insights about the coronavirus from research and statistics. Yet, for some reason, the government is holding its cards close to its chest about how it is assessing new scientific developments, and how this may affect policy decisions. Government communications currently seem to avoid telling people where their risks from Covid are actually low. There is a general reluctance to speak openly about how risk is assessed and the trade-offs there are

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Starmer uses PMQs to put distance between himself and Corbyn

In the last Prime Minister’s Questions before the summer recess, Keir Starmer put the most distance between himself and his predecessor to date. On the day the Labour party agreed to pay damages to seven former employees who sued the party in an anti-Semitism row, the Labour leader used his appearance opposite Johnson to make a statement that the party has changed since the days of Corbynism.  When Starmer asked the Prime Minister whether Russia Today’s licence ought to be revoked in light of the ISC Russia report, Johnson suggested he was on tricky ground going on the attack over Russia Today given the number of times Jeremy Corbyn had appeared on it.

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Labour’s Panorama apology spark another civil war?

If anyone thought the Labour party was through with the psychodrama of the Jeremy Corbyn years, they would have been bitterly disappointed by proceedings at the High Court this morning. In court, the Labour Party officially apologised for its own treatment of whistle-blowers involved in a BBC Panorama investigation into the party’s handling of antisemitism cases, which aired in 2019. In an apology read out at the High Court, Labour said it ‘acknowledged’ that previous statements it had made about the whistle-blowers – including accusing them of having ‘political axes to grind’ and being motivated by their opposition to Jeremy Corbyn – were ‘untrue and we redact and withdraw them and

Ben Keith

It’s time to end extradition to all human rights abusers

When Dominic Raab stood at the despatch box in the House of Commons this week and announced that the Government had suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong ‘immediately and indefinitely’, he was met with audible support in the Chamber. The decision was brought up again the following day at a press conference with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who gave Raab his full backing on the matter, citing ‘serious concerns’ over Hong Kong’s status. They were right to be impressed. This indefinite suspension of the extradition treaty is a remarkable political gesture that sidesteps traditional diplomatic conventions. While many regimes deny the importance of extradition, Dominic Raab has

Tuesday

James Ball

The Russia report proves it – Britain’s spies have failed

As the long-overdue intelligence and security committee report into Russian interference in the UK is finally published – after a needless and politicised delay – most eyes are (rightly) focused on claims around Brexit, Russian infiltration of the British establishment and killings on UK soil. But there’s a section of the report that, while less immediately startling, must not be missed and it comes as the report discusses potential threats to UK elections, referendums and our broader political process. There’s some reassurance in the fact that our low-tech election system, which is still primarily based on manually counting paper ballots marked by pencil (or pens, if you bring your own),

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Can we finally put the Russia-Brexit conspiracy to bed?

So there you go. There is still no hard evidence that Russia interfered in the EU referendum. What’s more, it would be ‘difficult — if not impossible — to prove’ the existence of Russian meddling. Can we now, please, put the Russia-Brexit conspiracy theory to bed? The quote above comes from the Intelligence and Security Committee’s long-awaited Russia report, published this morning. Some people, especially hard-line Remainers, have been waiting for this report with bated breath. They hoped it would back up their conviction that the mass vote for Brexit in 2016 was essentially the handiwork of pesky Ruskies who infiltrated our public life and brainwashed the electorate into voting

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

It’s time for Remainers like me to stop focusing on Russia

The release of the Russia report has long been a cause championed by some Remainers. The idea took hold that sitting in some select committee chamber was a report detailing how the 2016 EU referendum was influenced by Russian state actors to such a degree that it materially affected the result. The government has been trying to stifle the release of the report for that precise reason; once it sees the light of day, the Russia report will be the thing that turns the tide on Brexit. It will become so apparent that the referendum result happened via bent means, Leavers will have their false consciousness ripped away and leaving

Gus Carter Gus Carter

Five things we learnt from the Russia report

The report into Russian interference in British politics was finally published on Tuesday morning following a nine-month delay. Here are the five most interesting takeaways from the report:  1. The government ‘actively avoided’ investigating Russian interference  During this morning’s press conference, intelligence and security committee member Stuart Hosie made the extraordinary claim that ‘no one in government knew if Russia interfered in or sought to influence the referendum because they did not want to know’. He explained that the British authorities ‘actively avoided looking for evidence that Russia interfered’ in UK elections. The report argues that the UK ‘failed to prepare’ following the Scottish referendum, which is described as ‘potentially the first post-Soviet Russian interference in a Western

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

The weakness of the Russia report

No one comes that well out of the long-delayed Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) Russia report. Well, maybe except for Vladimir Putin. After all, while his Russia is clearly the villain – paranoid, determined to be ‘seen as a resurgent “great power”’ and hostile to the ‘Rules Based International Order’ – there’s a sense of a grudging recognition that it is at least good at what it sets out to do. It is ‘one of the hardest intelligence challenges that there is,’ quick and decisive in its decision-making, ‘world-class’ in its capabilities. One could almost see it being called a ‘swashbuckling’ or ‘buccaneering’ ‘Global Russia.’ Set against this, while the

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The West failed to stop the Holocaust – now we’re failing the Uyghurs

In 1944, Slovak rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl sent the US government a 30-page report detailing an extermination facility in Poland where Jews were being murdered en masse. The document included maps pin-pointing the exact locations of gas chambers and crematoria. Rabbi Weissmandl pleaded: ‘We ask that the crematoria of Auschwitz be bombed from the air… Such bombing will delay the work of the German murderers.’ Franklin Roosevelt rejected the proposal. FDR had no love for Jews but his decision was at least as much about practicalities and in these concerns he was not alone. Further calls came to bomb either the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz or the gas chambers themselves,

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Boris Johnson’s failed command and control administration

Conservatives once knew that command and control didn’t work. Even if they didn’t know it intellectually, one former Conservative minister told me as he looked in disbelief at the chaos of Johnson’s dictatorial administration, ‘they felt it in their bones’. This nominally Conservative government has centralised control, Soviet style, into a triumvirate of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings: two pundits and a maniac. Even if they were the greatest politicians in history – and they are not – they would never have been able to cope with the Covid crisis. As it is, they have been overwhelmed, along with the 60,000 or so of our fellow citizens sent

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

The mystery of the disappearing chief nurse

Why might a top medical adviser be dropped from the government’s daily coronavirus press briefing? This was the question that MPs were keen to answer after England’s chief nurse gave evidence to the public accounts committee on Monday. Ruth May, who was interrogated by the committee chair Meg Hillier, failed to appear at the daily Downing Street presser on 1 June – days after the Dominic Cummings lockdown controversy. Instead, Matt Hancock was joined by epidemiologist John Newton from Public Health England. But those looking for a simple answer to the question of her sudden disappearance may be disappointed. She told the committee: ‘It is indeed true I was dropped from a briefing but