Politics

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

Friday

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Are the Tories really on the side of Britain’s farmers?

It might seem hard to believe it was just a matter of months ago that senior Treasury advisor Tim Leunig made headlines when he suggested in leaked emails that Britain doesn’t need farmers. The ‘food sector isn’t critically important to the UK’, he wrote. Then Covid-19 descended, and the British farming industry was deemed vital again. With supermarket shelves empty due to panic buyers, we were reminded how important it is that we are able produce at least a proportion of the food we need at home. The Prime Minister took to pointing out the strength of our ‘farm to fork’ supply chain that kept supermarkets stocked. It’s strange, then, that

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Piers Morgan changing his mind on lockdown?

It was the plot-twist in the Covid drama nobody expected. At the start of the pandemic, Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan quickly became the self-appointed Robespierre of the lockdown movement. Anyone who broke the rules, or did not support tighter restrictions, was in his eyes a killer, responsible for untold deaths as the virus spread. But is Morgan now realising things are more complicated than that. This week Morgan criticised Labour’s Barry Gardiner for breaking lockdown to attend a non-socially distanced Black Lives Matter protest. Then Guido Fawkes revealed that Morgan’s son had attended a Black Lives Matter demo in London. At the moment it is still forbidden to congregate

Roger Awan-Scully

Welsh Tories are misreading the mood on Covid

Responding to the Covid-19 pandemic has imposed great strains on governments and leading politicians. But, initially at least, the reaction of publics in much of the world was a supportive one; in a time of peril, many of them ‘rallied to the flag’. In some places, though, it was not entirely clear to which flag people should rally. Where there are devolved or regional governments of different parties to the national government, it was not obvious who might benefit from any public goodwill – or later on, from a possible backlash if the public judged government handling of the crisis to be inadequate. In Scotland, the evidence thus far seems

John Hayes

Abortions for minor disabilities need to stop

There is no doubt that the way disability is regarded in Britain has changed for the better. People with disabilities now enjoy legal protections that 25 years ago were absent. Yet for all the progress, there remains a glaring omission: a shameful contradiction in the legal framework that gives life to disability equality. Since 1990, we have differentiated between those diagnosed with disabilities and their non-disabled contemporaries by allowing people with disabilities to be aborted right up to birth, whereas there is a time limit of 24 weeks for the non-disabled. You might think we would have addressed this by now, given the increasingly positive shared view of disability. Most people rightly

Thursday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Our duty to Hong Kong: time to grant citizenship

40 min listen

As China looks to push through its national security law, is it time to offer Hong Kongers a way out? (01:00) And with the Black Lives Matter protests continuing to rage in America, can they unseat Donald Trump? (15:30) And last, do animals have culture? (29:10)

Matthew Lynn

A no-deal Brexit won’t mean a shortage of medicines

Covid-19 has hit us harder than just about any country in the world. Lockdown has been eased chaotically, and no one has any idea what the rules are any more. And now, on top of everything else, it looks as if we are about to run out of medicines if the government doesn’t mange to reach a trade deal with the European Union by the end of the year. According to the Financial Times today, the UK is running dangerously low on stockpiles of essential pharmaceuticals, and might well run out just as a second wave of the coronavirus hits, probably next winter. We need to import lots of medicine

James Forsyth James Forsyth

In many ways, the Covid inquiry has already begun

It is inevitable that there will be a public inquiry into the government’s handling of coronavirus at the end of all this – the death toll demands it. There is, as I say in the magazine this week, an interesting question about what kind of person should chair the inquiry. Leveson was a judge, Chilcot a former civil servant—and this showed in the kind of inquiries they led. There’s a view in government that, in the words of one secretary of state, ‘a lawyer would be the worst person to chair it as they will take it down the blame route’. In many ways, the government is conducting a rolling

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Newsnight’s dodgy coronavirus data

Last week, the BBC show Newsnight found itself in hot water, after its presenter Emily Maitlis was rebuked by the BBC for not showing due impartiality, when she opened the show with a broadside against Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson. You would think, therefore, that the programme would be on its best behaviour at the moment, and would make sure that it was reporting the facts correctly. Apparently not though. Yesterday evening, the programme included a segment in which it suggested that the UK’s daily death toll from Covid-19 was higher than every other country in the EU combined. The programme even displayed a graph prominently, to highlight the UK’s

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Watch: Badenoch bites back

Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch was having none of it in the Commons chamber this morning. SNP MP Alison Thewliss asked the minister about the ‘no recourse to public funds’ policy, which Boris Johnson was quizzed over at the liaison committee last week.  Safe to say, Badenoch wasn’t particularly happy with the line of questioning, accusing Thewliss of ‘confected outrage’ for social media clicks. Ouch. 

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Piers Morgan clashes with Rudy Giuliani

It was not a very good morning on Good Morning Britain. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani did an interview with Piers Morgan, and to say it did not go well is a major understatement. After some initial back-and-forth between Giuliani and Morgan, the conversation descended into a shouting match between Morgan and Rudy about guns, violence and policing in America. ‘You sound completely barking mad, do you know that?’ said Morgan. At which Rudy went bananas, and attacked Morgan for having failed as a journalist in America — a reference to Morgan’s unsuccessful stint as a CNN anchor. Things went from bad to worse as Rudy berated Piers Morgan for ‘helping

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s proud history of standing up for Hong Kong

This week in 1989, the Chinese authorities massacred protestors in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. I was editing this paper. It struck me that the people of Hong Kong would suffer huge collateral damage. The Spectator should campaign for them, I thought, and draw attention to the dangers of trusting China to honour the 1984 Sino-British Agreement which Mrs Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping had made to provide for the handover to China in 1997. So we turned the leading article into a two-page affair (a thing unheard-of) and devoted the whole cover to a drawing by Nick Garland of Britannia and the British lion, both kowtowing. The headline was ‘Our Betrayal of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Whitehall on trial: how the government is preparing for the Covid inquiry

During the pandemic, Nicola Sturgeon has developed a reputation for announcing things just before the UK government does. But there has been no Downing Street follow-up yet to her announcement last week at First Minister’s Questions that there will be a full public inquiry into Scotland’s handling of the crisis. This silence should not, however, be taken as a sign that there won’t be a UK-wide inquiry as well as a Scottish one. Staff inside No. 10 accept that there will have to be one: when 50,000 people are confirmed or suspected to have died from a new virus, a private ‘lessons learned’ exercise won’t be enough. They are also

The Spectator

American police should not be above the law

In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, a black entrepreneur had his bar destroyed before he even had a chance to open its doors for the first time. In Richmond, Virginia, a mob set light to a building, then blocked firefighters who were trying to save a child from the flames (-thankfully the child survived). These actions, repeated in cities all over America, are harmful in two ways: night after night, rioters are trashing their own backyard, destroying private property and putting innocent lives at risk. They are also diverting attention away from the legitimate grievances of peaceful protestors, whose efforts are far more laudable than looting. America’s law-and-order system

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Our duty to Hong Kong: the case for granting full British citizenship

When the fate of Hong Kong was last seriously considered by a British prime minister, the world looked very different. It was argued — naively — that not much would change when the colony was handed back to China in 1997. A deal had been struck. Beijing would run defence and customs control, but otherwise Hong Kong would still be self-governing. It was always unlikely that China would honour this promise, but the pretence was useful to a Tory party terrified of admitting the alternative: that Britain had a moral duty to let the Queen’s subjects stay British. Which meant allowing them to settle in the UK if they wished.

Wednesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Can the government deliver apprenticeship guarantees?

What exactly is an apprenticeship guarantee? That’s the major question to come out of Wednesday night’s Covid press conference after Boris Johnson committed to offering an apprenticeship to all young people:   I think it is going to be vital that we guarantee apprenticeships for young people. We will have to look after people across the board, but young people in particular, I think, should be guaranteed an apprenticeship. While the commitment was there, the detail was not. Is this really a guarantee for all young people? In the first quarter of this year, over 350,000 people aged 16 to 24 were unemployed (excluding those in full-time education); another 1.5 million aged 18 to 24-year-olds were

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Tory MPs might not like No. 10’s quarantine policy – but the public do

Boris Johnson is in the firing line today over his government’s plan to impose a two-week quarantine for anyone arriving in the UK from Monday. The Prime Minister’s policy was criticised by both Labour and Tory MPs during PMQs. When Home Secretary Priti Patel confirmed the details in the Chamber this afternoon, former ministers Liam Fox, Theresa Villiers, and 1922 committee chair Sir Graham Brady were among those who questioned the timing and the effectiveness of the new measures. With a growing backlash building among MPs and industry, Patel is under pressure to publish the scientific advice behind the decision. However, there is one group that appears to be on No. 10’s side: the general public. In

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Starmer is struggling against Boris at PMQs

A testy, ill-tempered PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer accused Boris of presiding over a corona-shambles. The PM fired back and asked the Labour leader to show ‘signs of co-operation’ with the government’s efforts. Sir Keir was able to cite a ‘sign of co-operation’. A letter written to the PM two weeks ago about helping to reopen schools. He hadn’t received a reply. ‘I’m surprised he should take that tone,’ said Boris aggressively. ‘I took the trouble to ring him up and we had a long conversation in which I briefed him about all the steps we were taking…He thoroughly endorsed our approach.’ Sir Keir sniffed grandly that the letter had been

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs is increasingly tetchy

The clashes between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer are becoming increasingly bad-tempered. Starmer’s strategy is to ask Boris Johnson a series of questions to which there are no good answers. Boris Johnson, informed by focus group research showing that voters don’t want to see a return to partisan politics, responds by accusing Starmer of not being constructive and of undermining public confidence. The result is testy exchanges that don’t shed a huge amount of light on the situation. Interestingly, Boris Johnson took a more emollient tone with Jeremy Hunt than he did at the liaison committee last week, when the former health secretary asked a question. Having said last that

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris’s PMQs ‘earpiece’ fake news

Was Boris Johnson wearing an earpiece during PMQs? Of course not. But that didn’t stop some of those who should know better suggesting otherwise. Former media editor of the Times Raymond Snoddy shared a claim that ‘it seems entirely possible the PM is in fact having radio prompts to attempt to make him appear competent’. Stand-up comedian Alastair Barrie also joined in: ‘This needs some serious retweeting. Johnson using an earpiece at #PMQs the day after The Telegraph reported he’s taken ‘direct control’,’ he wrote. While Labour MP Bill Esterton wrote: ‘Suggestions that Johnson had an earpiece in for #PMQs. If he was receiving help, it didn’t show.’ Mr S suggests