Politics

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

Tuesday

Daniel French

Vicars against lockdown

Is it time for vicars to speak out against lockdown? As an Anglican priest, I’ve watched in bemusement as some of my colleagues have waded in on Brexit, Black Lives Matter, or Dominic Cummings’s trip to Barnard Castle. But why are many of these same voices silent on an issue that affects far more of us: the Prime Minister’s drastic order for us to stay at home and the curtailing (again) of church services? The church used to pride itself on robust debate. It was a seedbed for intellectual giants who were not afraid to say their mind. But whatever happened to those colourful canons, dotty theologians, and rebellious bishops

Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

Patrick Vallance was right to hedge his vaccine bets

Patrick Vallance has rightly come under fire over the use of statistics during the government’s now infamous lockdown press conference, but we ought to give him some credit for the UK’s preparedness for a Covid vaccine. It was Vallance’s forward thinking that established the taskforce responsible for securing 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine (enough to cover 20 million people) back in May 2020. This taskforce also made the call to spread the UK’s vaccine investment across six suppliers. People will quibble about the number of doses ordered, but thanks to Vallance, the UK is in a position to benefit from whichever vaccine reaches the market first. After months

Matthew Lynn

In praise of Big Pharma

In the last decade, the mega corporation has taken a lot of stick from just about everyone. But hold on. It is just about to rescue us from the worst global crisis since world war two. Drugs giant Pfizer — part of the Big Pharma — has announced that its Covid-19 vaccine was effective in trials. It looks safe as well. It may well be approved before the end of 2020. With luck we should have a few million doses this year, and a billion by next year. AstraZeneca may not be far behind with the Oxford vaccine. And a few more are on the way. With a safe effective

Monday

John Major

‘We are no longer a great power’: The twin hazards of Covid and Brexit

On this day in 1923, Hitler failed to seize power in Germany; in 1938, it marked Kristallnacht and the Nazi assault on Jews; and, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Each of these events impacted on the wider world – and that wider world will now impact on “The State We’re In”. The future of that State requires plain speaking if we are to be honest with our nation. And, of course, with ourselves. The great powers of our age are the United States, China, and the European Union. The world they straddle is fractious. The values of liberal society are stalled, if not in retreat. America and China are

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s sobering press conference

Although the Prime Minister is known to be an optimist, he was at pains to play down reports of a vaccine breakthrough in Monday’s coronavirus press conference. After early findings from stage three of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine trial suggested it could prevent more than 90 per cent of people from getting Covid-19, Johnson warned of the long road ahead. He said that while the search for an effective vaccine had ‘cleared one significant hurdle’ there are several more to go. Johnson’s caution is in part down to the fact that the Pfizer vaccine trials are not over. More data needs to be published, its safety proved and regulatory

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Joe Biden and the weaponisation of Ireland

Joe Biden loves Ireland. He wears his Irish heritage proudly. ‘The BBC? I’m Irish’, he quipped when Nick Bryant asked him if he had a quick word for the Beeb. Which is all very nice. It’s good when people take pride in their heritage, even if it does come off as a bit ‘Oirish’ when Irish-American politicians do it. Expect to see President Biden in a poky pub in Ireland sipping on a pint of the (non-alcoholic) black stuff in front of the world’s media within the year. ‘It’s grand!’, he’ll probably say. Everyone will cheer; I’ll cringe. But for all the harmless craic of powerful Americans being nice to the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Are we on the brink of a Covid vaccine?

14 min listen

The drugs firm Pfizer has announced that its vaccine — currently in stage three trials — is 90% effective. Meanwhile, Britain and the EU are entering the final stage of trade negotiations. Finally, No. 10 is ramping up its inquiry to discover who leaked news of England’s second lockdown. Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. 

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Number 10 are cautiously optimistic about the Pfizer vaccine

There’s been a rare case of Covid-19 good news today with the announcement that the Pfizer vaccine could be 90 per cent effective. Citing early results from the phase 3 trials of the vaccine, the pharmaceutical company said the initial findings marked ‘a great day for science and humanity’. While it’s still early days and the trial is not complete, the news has been cautiously welcomed by the government. Few in government expect an immediate end to social distancing Speaking this lunchtime, the Prime Minister’s spokesman called the results ‘promising’ but warned ‘there are no guarantees’. With limited information available in terms of the full results from the trial so far, they went

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Labour risks learning the wrong lesson from Biden’s victory

‘One election victory does not mean that work is now finished for the Democrats; for us in the Labour party, it is only just beginning,’ Keir Starmer wrote today in the Guardian. Amongst his comrades on the centre-left, he seems almost alone in understanding this point. Biden’s victory was greeted by the British centre-left on social media as the definitive end of an era. Brexit is ‘over’ somehow, or at least, no-deal Brexit has become impossible. The Tories are now supposedly on the brink of being pushed from office by a moderate centre-left wave. Except of course, Starmer is correct – and Labour is in real danger of learning the

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Rory Stewart has avoided the traps Boris’s critics usually fall into

In this week’s TLS Rory Stewart reviews Tom Bower’s biography of Boris Johnson. He doesn’t say much about the actual book, but it’s one of the most important articles on the prime minister I’ve read for a long time. Just now, in place of ‘the prime minister’ I wrote ‘Boris’, deleted it, then wrote ‘Johnson’ and deleted it. This sums up the issue: does one buy into the charm, or conspicuously resist it? Just in the act of naming him, neutrality feels impossible: one is either too matey, or too frosty. This stands for a wider decision: does one smile at his wit, or does one wag one’s finger? Few

Jonathan Saxty

The limits of a ‘free-market Brexit’

The UK must not be frightened of harnessing the power of the state as the country negotiates life after Brexit. Many people who remember the 1970s – a time when the British state seemed incapable of doing anything productive while the country suffered the indignity of going cap-in-hand to the IMF – often balk at such a suggestion. Many of the same people came of age in the 1980s, and associate the private sector with growth and opportunity, while the public sector was forever tainted with the stench of poor productivity, unemployment and power cuts. Yet this Anglo-centric view misses what was going on in the rest of the world

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Raab ‘excited’ to work with Biden

Dominic Raab – ‘I’m excited’ about working with President Biden On the morning after Joe Biden was declared President-elect, the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab offered his congratulations to Mr Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris. Raab told Sophy Ridge that the Biden administration would find plenty of common ground with Boris Johnson’s government: DR: The things that President-elect Biden wants to achieve internationally… not just security and counter-terrorism in the Middle East, but coronavirus and returning to the Paris Climate Agreement – these are all things which… we’ll have a huge amount to co-operate on and I’m excited about working with the new administration. We’ve got ‘full faith’ in

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Boris Johnson’s ‘method’ isn’t working

Is the Boris Johnson ‘method’ reaching the end of the road and if it is, can the Prime Minister find a new one – or is he altogether done for? The method, by all accounts deployed across more than one facet of the Prime Minister’s life, involves issuing a series of charmingly delivered apologies for things not having turned out as he’d led his audience to believe they would. Each apology is immediately followed by a new pledge that matters will take a decisive turn for the better very soon. And thus does the PM buy himself more time in which to extricate himself from scrapes. On Thursday he was

Saturday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris congratulates Biden

After days of government ministers declining to take a public stance on the US election, Boris Johnson has congratulated Joe Biden on his victory. The Democrat’s lead in Pennsylvania prompted several US networks to call the election for Biden and the Prime Minister then released a statement on social media: Johnson’s message of congratulations came after Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon sent their own messages of support. It also comes despite Donald Trump and his team insisting that the result is not final and suggesting they will contest it. That Johnson has chosen to mark Biden’s victory regardless shows that the UK government believes there

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Joe Biden wins the election

Four days after a (much closer than predicted) election, American networks have called the race for Joe Biden, who has secured more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win the race. CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News (and now the BBC) project Joe Biden will become the 46th President of the United States, as vote counting in Pennsylvania gave the Vice President a big enough lead for them to say with confidence he had won. The additional 20 electoral votes from the swing state bring Biden to a total of 273. Based on current projections, Biden only needed one of the outstanding states (including Georgia or Nevada) to cross the finish line. In addition

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What will Boris make of a Biden win?

President Donald Trump sees himself as a great friend to the UK: he backed Brexit, likes Boris, and has personal ties to Britain as well. He’s proud of his Scottish heritage, and long before he was running the nation, he was running golf courses in his mother’s home country. But it’s not obvious the UK government always appreciates the President’s expressions of support. The Johnson team made nothing of Trump’s endorsement for the Tory candidate during the 2019 general election. The government is notably squeamish whenever the President lavishes his praises. Perhaps this comes down to cultural differences, but it’s hard to overlook out the nervousness that accompanies a statement from

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Why I voted Biden

If the prospect of Joe Biden as fills me with such foreboding, why did I vote for the guy? I’ll spare you the standard foam-at-the-mouth diatribe about Trump being a threat to democracy itself and keep it short. The man’s incompetent. And Biden has upsides. His health care plan beats no health care plan. A president who has occasional verbal lapses beats a president who can’t talk at all. Biden might halt the attrition of qualified civil servants from every branch of government, while improving his country’s international standing — at least from knee-high to mid-thigh. Biden’s very dullness could restore a sense of order; rather than ‘Build back better’,

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Can the NHS cope with Covid?

25 min listen

At Thursday’s coronavirus press conference, Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of the NHS, said a second wave ‘is real and it’s serious’, as he warned that 11,000 people were already in hospital with the virus. Is the NHS able to cope with another spike in infections, and has the government adequately prepared for winter? Kate Andrews speaks to Fraser Nelson and Dave West, deputy editor of the Health Service Journal.