Politics

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

Wednesday

30 Oct 2024

Steerpike

What’s the real reason behind the Tory leadership delay?

At long last, the Conservative leadership race is about to come to an end. After four months of hustings, debates and backroom deals, voting ends tomorrow in the Tory membership round. Yet despite the ballot closing at 5 p.m. Thursday, the result will then not be announced until late Saturday morning. It has got some in the party asking: why the delay? As one MP put it to Mr S: It means we’re going to announce our new leader in an empty conference room on a weekend. No one’s going to be there! The official line is that a two day gap was required so votes can be counted on

Katy Balls

Labour’s low growth Budget

15 min listen

Rachel Reeves has announced that taxes will rise by £40 billion in Labour’s first Budget for 14 years. The headlines include: an increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions from April to 15 per cent, raising £25 billion; that the freeze on income tax and National Insurance thresholds will not be extended past 2028; that the lower rate of capital gains tax will be raised from 10 per cent to 18 per cent, and the higher rate from 20 per cent to 24 per cent; that fuel duty will remain frozen for the next two years; and the introduction of VAT on private school fees from January. The Chancellor didn’t want

Isabel Hardman

Rishi Sunak enjoyed his last Commons hurrah

Rishi Sunak’s final act in the Commons as leader of the opposition was one he clearly enjoyed. The outgoing Conservative leader had what is normally the unenviable task of responding to the Budget just minutes after it had been delivered, before the small print reveals the real story. Rachel Reeves had helped him quite a bit with this, though, by announcing or hinting at a lot of what was to come over the past week or so. Sunak could also dodge the demands of Labour ministers to offer an alternative plan, as he’s off in just a few days and will be replaced by a new leader who will at

Kate Andrews

Labour’s Budget will crush growth

Rachel Reeves didn’t want to surprise anyone with this Budget. She didn’t want to shock the markets, nor did she want any accusation that she had played fast and loose with the public finances. So by the time the Chancellor stood up in the Commons today, the bulk of her big decisions were already public knowledge, with just the details to come. Still, that won’t make today’s fiscal event any less memorable – or painful. This Budget ushers in a new era: one where the tax burden sits at its highest level since the war, where tax hikes push more people out of the labour market, and where growth forecasts

Steerpike

Labour’s pint promise is small beer

There were few silver linings in today’s Budget announcement – but one measure the Labour lot are rather keen to harp on about is the cut to draught duty by 1.7 per cent. What exactly does this work out at? Er, a rather measly one penny off the cost of a pint. How very generous… While the announcement received one the most enthusiastic cheers in the chamber, it seems that industry experts are not quite as thrilled about the move. Rachel Reeves was rather fast to glaze over the fact that the Labour government will raise alcohol duty rates on products like spirits and wines in line with the retail

Isabel Hardman

Rachel Reeves’s ‘stability Budget’ contained few surprises

All the political framing of the past three months has been around Rachel Reeves’ first Budget. Black holes have been ‘discovered’, public services have been found to be in a worse state than expected, and Liz Truss has been exhumed at every opportunity (or at least, when she hasn’t been inserting herself into the political narrative). Today’s speech from Rachel Reeves contained quite a few attempts to deal with the failures of that framing, too. She repeatedly insisted that she was keeping the promises in Labour’s election manifesto, after weeks of confusion about what ‘working people’ are. She also repeated her party conference phrase that her optimism for Britain ‘burns

Isabel Hardman

Rishi Sunak says farewell to Keir Starmer

When Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, he and Keir Starmer had some of the most repetitive and uninformative sessions at Prime Minister’s Questions. Today was his final stint as leader of the opposition in this forum, and the session was charming. It covered the coast-to-coast route, which travels through his Richmond constituency, the importance of cricket in schools, AI and tolerance. Even the question covering the thorniest topic, Northern Ireland, was polite: Sunak merely pointed out that it was a special part of the UK which required great care, and asked Starmer not to neglect it. The Prime Minister agreed. Starmer paid tribute to Sunak’s service, hard work and decency,

Duncan Gardham

Why has Southport not been declared a terror attack?

Axel Rudakubana, the alleged Southport killer, has been accused of possessing a terrorist document, yet the police still insist there is no evidence of a terrorist motive. How can both be the case? The document Rudakubana is accused of downloading is a version of the 180-page ‘al-Qaeda training manual’. It is also known as the ‘Manchester manual’ after it was found for the first time by police on a computer in a flat in Cheetham Hill, Manchester in May 2000, more than a year before 9/11. How can both be the case? Scotland Yard arrested a man called Abu Anas al-Libi, who rented the flat, as part of an investigation

Coffee House

As it happened: Rachel Reeves raises taxes by £40 billion in Labour’s first Budget

Taxes will rise by £40 billion following Labour’s first Budget for 14 years. The Chancellor announced: • An increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions from April to 15 per cent, raising £25 billion • That the freeze on income tax and National Insurance thresholds will not be extended past 2028 • That the lower rate of capital gains tax will be raisedfrom 10 per cent to 18 per cent, and the higher rate from 20 per cent to 24 per cent • That fuel duty will remain frozen for the next two years • The introduction of VAT on private school fees from January

Andrew Watts

Who do US psychics predict will win the election?

A week away from the American election, and the polls cannot tell us who will be president. But can they ever? A poll is, as the pundits always remind us, a snapshot of public opinion, not a prediction. Nate Silver himself said that anyone dissecting an individual poll is ‘just doing astrology’. So what predictions are actual astrologers making about the election? She looks relieved when she draws the High Priestess: a trump card, but possibly not a Trump card Under the electoral college system, nationwide data is not as important as predictions for the swing states, so I look for astrologers in the seven states which will decide the election.

Daniel McCarthy

Vibes don’t matter. Donald Trump is still the underdog

Hillary Clinton has a simple but bitter lesson to teach Donald Trump’s supporters in 2024: the best way to lose an election is to assume you’ve already won it a week before it happens. The MAGA movement – aiming to Make America Great Again, namely by Making Trump President Again – has never been more confident. Opinion polls have Trump faring much better against Kamala Harris than he ever did against Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020. Indeed, the polling averages actually place Trump ahead, which wasn’t the case at this point in either of his earlier elections. And since the polls underestimated his share of vote the

Euan McColm

The gross hypocrisy of the SNP

If there’s one thing the SNP truly excels at, it’s maintaining double standards. The extraordinary case of the Scottish government and the missing legal advice makes clear just how hypocritical the SNP is when it comes to conduct in public life. Scottish nationalists are swift to condemn opponents at the slightest whiff of impropriety but, as this matter demonstrates, when it comes to their own morality, they’re more easy-going. Back in 2021, then first minister Nicola Sturgeon was cleared of breaching the Scottish parliament’s ministerial code over her involvement in the case of complaints made by female civil servants against her predecessor, the late Alex Salmond. Inevitably, opposition parties demanded

Steerpike

Reeves snubs Thatcher Chancellor pic for ‘Red Ellen’

To the subject of office decor, with Rachel Reeves now in the spotlight for matters other than her Budget. It now transpires that the Chancellor has made some rather controversial alterations to her workspace’s wall art — in replacing a portrait of Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor with a founder of the, er, British Communist party. Good heavens. The swapping out of Nigel Lawson’s portrait for one of Ellen Wilkinson was revealed after the Treasury published a picture of Reeves in her No. 11 study ahead of Budget day. While it had been reported that the Chancellor had removed Lord Lawson’s portrait over the summer, there had been no confirmation over what

Ian Williams

Why billionaires are fleeing China

‘To get rich is glorious’ is perhaps the most over-used slogan attributed to Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who reformed China and opened its economy up to the world. There is no evidence that he actually said it, but regardless it seemed to capture the mood of that era. In the China of Xi Jinping, to get rich is decidedly dangerous, which may account for why the number of super-rich (or at least those admitting to it) is in sharp decline, with many now clambering for the exit to protect their wealth and their liberty. According to a rich list compiled by Hurun, a research group, the number of dollar

Katy Balls

Three tests for Reeves’s first Budget

It’s Budget day in Westminster. The question being asked by Labour MPs: can Rachel Reeves pull it off? This lunchtime, the Chancellor will stand at the despatch box and pitch Labour’s first Budget for 14 years as necessary tough choices to ‘fix the foundations’ while also ensuring ‘working people don’t face higher taxes in their payslips’ (see Mr Steerpike for who Labour’s working people definition misses out). Reeves will use a report by the Office for Budget Responsibility to argue that the Tories left such a bad economic inheritance she had to take action. The Tories will try to argue in turn that Labour planned a tax raid (to the

Patrick O’Flynn

Will there be a surprise in Rachel Reeves’s Budget?

Most chancellors pull a rabbit out of a hat during their Budget statements – something to delight their own MPs and leave the opposition feeling outmanoeuvred. Such has been the atmosphere of doom and gloom generated by Rachel Reeves in advance of hers that there is a temptation to envisage her plonking a boiled bunny on the Commons despatch box and exclaiming: ‘It’s Halloween tomorrow, so grab a load of that!’ And yet Ms Reeves will surely at least attempt to conjure up the vista of some sunlit economic uplands after four months of exaggerated complaints about the financial inheritance passed down by the Tories. Better resourcing of ‘Our NHS’

Limor Simhony Philpott

Israel is right about UNRWA

The Israeli parliament resumed its work on Monday after a long recess, and one of the first items on the agenda was voting on a bill that enjoyed rare widespread popularity. The bill decreed that Israel will severe ties with the UN relied and work agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), which will heavily restrict the organisation’s ability to operate in Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. It passed with a majority of 92 for and 10 against, with even opposition members of the Knesset supporting the bill. The bill was criticised by the UN, which threatened to suspend Israel’s membership. It was also criticised by Israel’s allies, including the US, UK

Ross Clark

Why this Budget could be worse than you fear

It is tempting to think of this Budget as a triumph in expectation management. Rachel Reeves’s minions have briefed us on so many potential tax rises that surely the actual speech, when finally delivered, can’t be as bad as feared. Having been conditioned to expect the worst, we will all end up feeling pathetically grateful to Reeves for having spared us. But having run through a few figures I am not so sure. Rather, I fear we may be in for whatever is the opposite of a rabbit out of the hat – a toad out of the hat, perhaps. Over the past few days we have been told to

Tuesday

29 Oct 2024

James Heale

Teen accused of Southport murders facing terror charge

The teenager accused of murdering three girls in Southport in July is now facing two further charges. Axel Rudakubana, 18, already faces three charges of murder, 10 charges of attempted murder and one charge of possession of a knife. But today the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that he has also been charged with the possession of an al-Qaeda training manual and production of the poison ricin. Rudakubana is due to appear tomorrow at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, with his trial expected to begin in January. Both the ricin and the study of the training manual were found as part of searches of the suspect’s house in the Lancashire village of

Stephen Daisley

Is Russell Findlay the Kemi Badenoch of Scotland?

When Russell Findlay stood to be Scottish Conservative leader, he talked the familiar language of ‘change’. I predicted that this would translate to a rightwards shift for the party and his first major speech in the job confirms it. Findlay is not entirely comfortable with the ‘right wing’ label – he is a Tory, after all – but it is the readiest descriptor of the positions he is setting out. Since he took over in September, the Tories have become the only party in the Scottish parliament to oppose free bus travel for asylum seekers, additional aid for schools in Africa and early prisoner releases to tackle overcrowding. Findlay says: