Politics

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

Saturday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Donald Trump’s ‘hunch’ about coronavirus is likely correct

Donald Trump is in the soup again, this time for appearing to reject the World Health Organisation’s estimate for the death rate from coronavirus (Covid-19): 3.4 per cent. ‘I think the 3.4 per cent is really a false number,’ he said on Thursday before adding that he had a ‘hunch’ that the real death rate is less than one per cent. Twitter, needless to say, immediately went into meltdown, the most polite response was to call him ‘irresponsible’. Trump is not quite the person I would call upon for insight into matters relating to virology. He does, of course, have a reputation for shooting from the hip, yet his reasoning on this is

Friday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Warren’s decision not to endorse a candidate is a kind of endorsement

She wanted to be the Tin Lizzie of the presidential race, chugging to victory as the champion of the middle-class. But her campaign started running out of gas before it could even really get on the straightaway. Today the denouement arrives. Elizabeth Warren will announce that she’s packing it in. Will she endorse either Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden? Or will she, like Barack Obama, wait until the victor has been anointed? Intense and cerebral, Warren came across during the debates not as a nutty professor but a hectoring schoolmarm. She wanted to be Sanders-lite but the left wasn’t buying. ‘Here’s my advice: cast a vote that will make you

Thursday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Planet Corona: is this the tipping point for globalisation?

38 min listen

As the coronavirus sweeps across the globe, it’s causing businesses, consumers, and governments to rethink their globalised lives. Is this a tipping point for hyper-globalisation (1:00)? Plus, is the government slimming down its Budget plans (13:40)? And last, is it harder to be eco-friendly if you are a woman (26:35)?

Steerpike Steerpike

Jolyon Maugham avoids fox-clubbing prosecution

On Boxing day last year the lawyer and Remain-supporting campaigner, Jolyon Maugham, made probably the most unwise decision of his life. He decided, after having an altercation with an animal in his garden that morning, to recount his experience on social media.  At 8am, the campaigner and QC revealed that:  ‘Already this morning I have killed a fox with a baseball bat. How’s your Boxing day going?’ In subsequent messages, Maugham explained that the unlucky fox had become trapped in his chicken coop and, to complete the picture, that he had been wearing his wife’s kimono as he dispatched the desperate animal. Maugham may have thought this was an amusing joke or colourful

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Coronavirus is putting politics on hold

The coronavirus is putting politics on hold. The Budget, as I say in this week’s magazine, will be a much less dramatic event because of it. Given the level of economic uncertainty the virus is creating, it would be sensible to wait for the autumn Budget — when the situation should be clearer — before making big, fiscal policy decisions. The Budget, as a consequence of this, will largely be about ‘delivering’ on the Tories’ manifesto commitments. In Downing Street they know that trust is a huge issue for both the government and Boris Johnson personally, so they want to show that they are keeping their promises. Given that the

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Boris struggles to say if he’ll change nappies

After a prolonged spell of avoiding media interviews, Boris Johnson finally came out of hiding today and appeared on breakfast television. The Prime Minister was interviewed by Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on ITV’s This Morning. And while Boris handled questions on the coronavirus,  flooding and the Priti Patel bullying scandal with relative ease, in the end it was a rather simpler question that seemed to stump the PM.  At the end of the interview, Willoughby and Schofield congratulated Boris – who is famously reluctant to discuss his private life – on the news that he is expecting a child in early summer. The PM said he was ‘very excited’ about the baby’s arrival, but became rather more

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Could coronavirus change British politics?

Even if the Covid-19 coronavirus does not become a mass killer on the scale of, say, the Spanish Flu in 1918, the mere possibility of such severity still carries huge weight. Just the potential for a disastrous pandemic demands a response whose seriousness and nature will have political and social implications. Even in this first week of the full UK response, some of those implications are clearly visible. And some of the inferences and lessons that can be drawn from this week are, to my mind, quite positive – small points of light in a dark and threatening sky, if you like. 1. The State matters Small-state libertarians have always

Wednesday

John Connolly John Connolly

Starmer and Long-Bailey fail to impress on Andrew Neil

At the beginning of the year Lisa Nandy became the first Labour leadership candidate to subject herself to a grilling by Andrew Neil. It took almost two months, but this evening the two other candidates left in the race, Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, finally appeared on the show as well. And while both survived the encounter, neither particularly impressed. Keir Starmer appeared to have trouble defining his political relationship with Jeremy Corbyn. The Holborn and St Pancras MP admitted that Corbyn was a major issue on the doorstep at the last election, but then unconvincingly denied there were any rifts between him and the Labour leader over the party’s Brexit

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why were there so many loyal questions at PMQs today?

This week’s Prime Minister’s Questions had Tory MPs bursting out of their seats to ask Boris Johnson some lovely easy questions. There were more than usual whose contribution to the session was merely to ask him to agree with them that he had the right priorities and was doing a great job.  Claire Coutinho, recently-elected as Conservative MP for East Surrey, gave the Prime Minister a chance for a breather right after his stint sparring with Jeremy Corbyn with this question: ‘My constituents in East Surrey care enormously about climate change. Does my right hon. Friend agree that yesterday’s news that the UK’s carbon emissions have been reduced by a

Matt McDonald

Bye bye Bloomberg

‘I’m a believer in using data to inform decisions,’ Michael Bloomberg said in a statement as he ended his campaign. ‘After yesterday’s results, the delegate math has become virtually impossible – and a viable path to the nomination no longer exists.’ And like that, he’s gone. Perhaps the most extraordinary story of the 2020 campaign so far, Michael Bloomberg’s candidacy, has ended. He seemed to have it all: unlimited funds, vast amounts of data, all the political consultants money could buy. But he’s had to give in and endorse Joe Biden, accepting that the former vice president is a much more attractive candidate to voters. Bloomberg didn’t even follow the ‘how

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Boris bats off Priti protests

The PM defended his Home Secretary as opposition members tried to force her resignation, live on TV, at PMQs. Priti Patel, in a muted fuchsia dress, sat on the Treasury bench nestled snugly between Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Prime Minister. This casual arrangement cannot have been more deliberate. Here she is, announced the seating-plan, and here she stays. Jeremy Corbyn tried first. He demanded ‘an independent investigation into the home secretary’s conduct led by an external lawyer.’ He also wanted ‘a date when the findings will be made public.’ Boris ducked this blatantly. ‘The home secretary is keeping this country safe. She believes in stopping the early release of offenders…

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Leadsom delivers a parting shot at Bercow

Andrea Leadsom has just given a rather long and very comprehensive personal statement in the Commons following her sacking in last month’s reshuffle. She took no parting shots at Boris Johnson at all, preferring instead to focus any anger on former Speaker John Bercow, with whom she had a very long-running feud. Why did she bother giving a personal statement at all if it was just to look back on the past few years at work? Someone with very little knowledge of what has happened in Westminster in the past few years might have been forgiven for thinking that Bercow was the one responsible for her leaving government, rather than

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Christina Lamb: how rape is used as a weapon of war

38 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast, my guest is the veteran foreign correspondent Christina Lamb. Christina’s new book, Our Bodies Their Battlefield: What War Does To Women is a deeply reported survey of rape as a weapon of war, described in our pages by Antony Beevor as the most powerful and disturbing book he has ever read. From the fates of Yazidi and Rohingya woman at the hands of IS and the Burmese military, to the German victims of the Red Army and the Disappeared of the Argentinian Junta, Christina looks at the past and present of this phenomenon and talks to me about why it’s so little reported or

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why the Tories won’t give Priti Patel up without a fight

Another day, another set of allegations against Priti Patel. When the Home Secretary’s top civil servant Sir Philip Rutnam resigned over the weekend, he used a public statement to accuse Patel of intimidating behaviour towards staff. Since then, more allegations have surfaced over her behaviour dating back to roles in other departments. Today The Sun reports claims of bullying by Patel while at DfID with an unnamed senior official now allegedly planning to testify against her in the upcoming employment tribunal and Cabinet Office inquiry. While Patel denies any wrongdoing, there’s now talk in Westminster of whether Patel can stay in her role given that this story looks set to run and run.

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Corbyn snaps a selfie with new Tory MP

Nothing brings people together quite like a late night kebab. That was certainly the lesson that Mr Steerpike learnt on Tuesday evening when the Westminster Village descended on the British Kebab Awards. The annual meat-based bash saw politicians, hacks and restauranteurs rub shoulders at the Park Plaza hotel in Waterloo.  But Mr S wasn’t the only one who felt a sense of gastronomic geniality. Jeremy Corbyn, the outgoing Labour leader, was spotted snapping a selfie with his new Tory colleague Dehenna Davison. Mr Corbyn seemed unaware of the fact that the new MP was one of the so-called ‘Red Wall’ Tories. Davison managed to deprived the Islington socialist of the traditional North East Labour

Christopher Meyer

The civil service definition of bullying has changed over the years

In my 37 years in the Diplomatic Service, I neither witnessed nor experienced what I considered to be bullying.  There were senior officials who took regular pleasure in finding fault with a cutting remark. Others swore like troopers. I was the speechwriter to three Foreign Secretaries. One of them told me, with a sardonic laugh, that my latest draft was ‘as useful as a dead fish’.  But never in a month of Sundays did I think any of this to be bullying. The Foreign Office had exacting standards and you expected to be held to them. Still less was it grounds for complaint if the minister rejected your advice, even