Politics

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

Yesterday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Democrats have a Joe Biden problem

The Democrats dare to hope that this week will be a study in contrasts. On their side stands President Joe Biden, the veteran statesman, using all his diplomatic experience to stop a third world war breaking out in the Middle East. On the other, in the dock in Manhattan, sits Donald Trump, facing 34 criminal counts in a case relating to porn stars, adultery and hush money. As Biden urges Israel to ‘think carefully’ as it considers how to respond to Iran’s attack last weekend, Trump is, as ever, ranting away about himself. This speaks to Biden’s 2024 re-election pitch: it’s democracy (him) vs chaos (you know who). Trump can

The Spectator

A smoking ban is pointless and illiberal

Why is Britain poised to ban cigarette smoking, when the habit is already dying out anyway? Smoking is seen by the young as disgusting and outdated. A generation ago, 50 per cent of school pupils said they had smoked at some point. By the time David Cameron came to power, this was down to 25 per cent. It has since halved again, to 12 per cent – of whom just 1 per cent smoke regularly. Vaping among the young presents its own challenges, but smoking cigarettes (at £15 a packet) is in terminal decline. So naturally the state has decided to intervene. Smoking is dying out among the young because

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The dangers of political prosecution

At the start of January, Donald Trump offered up a cheery new year message for Americans. ‘If I don’t get immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity,’ the former president declared on his social media platform Truth Social. With this, he touched on a looming question about 2024: will the presidential race be decided by lawyers and jurors, rather than voters? Trump showed up in court for the first criminal lawsuit against him this week, a case which could in theory result in a decades-long jail sentence. He’s accused of paying hush money to the former porn star Stormy Daniels, then falsifying business records to conceal the information from

Wednesday

James Heale James Heale

Sunak’s Truss problem

11 min listen

The day after her book was published, Rishi Sunak faced down questions from Keir Starmer and Labour members at PMQs about Liz Truss. While he had his replies at the ready, the questions underscored the main issue for Sunak: how should he deal with his predecessor?  Also on the podcast, there is more inflation news for the Government, and how will Starmer deal with internal party discipline? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Time is ticking to save Vladimir Kara-Murza

A year ago today, the Putin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed for 25 years – the longest sentence handed down to a political prisoner in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago. For the last year, Kara-Murza has been held in a prison in Siberia, often in solitary confinement, with only occasional visits from his lawyer, a couple of books and hostile prison guards watching over him. Kara-Murza was arrested in April 2022 and held for over a year in pre-trial detention after being accused of treason and spreading ‘fake information’ about the Russian army. The most alarming aspect of the charges levelled against him

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Rishi gets witty at PMQs

Keir Starmer came to Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) with a spring in his step. He announced that he owned ‘a rare unsigned copy’ of Liz Truss’s memoirs. ‘The only unsigned copy,’ he added with a chortle. Then he asked Rishi Sunak to justify the calamities of Truss’s premiership.  ‘He should spend less time reading that book,’ said Rishi, ‘and a bit more time reading the deputy leader’s tax advice.’ That scuppered Sir Keir’s day in parliament. To wriggle out of trouble he played the class war card, and he accused Rishi, ‘a billionaire prime minister’, of ‘smearing a working-class woman.’  Rishi deserves great credit as a witty, fleet-footed Commons performer.

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Sunak has no excuse to not proscribe the IRGC

Lord Renwick, the Labour peer and former Foreign Office mandarin, used to say that young diplomats of a certain breeding suffered from the ‘Wykehamist fallacy’. This, he said, was the tendency to assume that even the most bloodthirsty despot had an inner civilised chap of the sort one might find at Winchester College. Treat him decently and the inner fair-minded fellow would come out. ‘Actually’, Renwick would point out, ‘they’re a bunch of thugs.’ Given Rishi Sunak’s own schooling, the Wykehamist fallacy came to mind when the prime minister’s spokesman made clear that the government would not be banning Iran’s terrorist arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Surely if

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sunak had a strong comeback to Starmer’s Truss attack at PMQs

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was a classic knockabout between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer clearly written by their respective attack units. Both came armed with the sort of material you’d expect for a scrap: the Labour leader had a ‘rare unsigned copy’ of Liz Truss’s book, while the Prime Minister wanted to talk about Angela Rayner’s tax affairs. There were the familiar lines, too, including Sunak reminding the Commons of Starmer defending Hizb ut-Tahrir, and Starmer talking about his legal expertise. The first question from Starmer was whether Sunak had met anyone with a mortgage who agreed with Truss that her mini-budget was the ‘happiest moment of her premiership’. Labour

Jawad Iqbal

The Foreign Office is in trouble if David Lammy takes charge

The heart sinks at the latest thoughts espoused by David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, on a future Labour government’s foreign policy. Lammy has penned a 4,000 word essay for Foreign Affairs on his vision of pursuing ‘progressive realism’ for Britain on the international stage. It is a less than catchy phrase that amounts to little substance.  According to Lammy, Labour’s foreign agenda will attempt to meld together the policy realism of Ernest Bevin, the post-war Labour foreign secretary who helped found Nato, with the ethical foreign policy of Robin Cook, who served as Tony Blair’s foreign secretary when New Labour took power in 1997. Lammy lays it on thick, praising Bevin for

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Sunak ridicules Starmer over Rayner

The curious case of Angela Rayner’s tax affairs continues to drag on and Rishi Sunak isn’t prepared to let Sir Keir Starmer forget about it. In a new development yesterday, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Steve Watson revealed that ‘there are a number of assertions knocking about’ while another police source told the Times that ‘it’s not a single issue’ that the police are concerned with. Rayner has repeatedly denied she has done anything wrong and has been supported by Starmer (although he hasn’t yet read the legal advice she received on the matter) but that didn’t stop the Prime Minister taunting the Labour leader. Starmer used

Steerpike Steerpike

Truss bestseller sold out on Amazon

She’s produced a bestseller! Liz Truss’s new book has been out for less than 72 hours and it’s already sold out on Amazon. It’s currently reprinting but will be due back in stock early next week. Golly. Ten Years to Save the West is part-memoir, part-political vision, documenting not only Truss’s 49 days in office but the twists and turns of her own political journey in and out of No. 10. At the time of writing, Mr S notes that Truss’s colourful new tell-all has taken first place in Amazon’s ‘biography and memoir’ bestseller chart — and it is the fifth most popular book being bought on the site overall.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Inflation is down again – but don’t expect interest rates to follow suit

Interest rate cuts are beginning to look like a mirage: the closer we seem to get to them the more they seem to recede into the distance. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey may have hinted this week that UK rates could soon be cut regardless of what happens in the United States, where strong jobs data is putting off the Federal Reserve from cutting rates, but this morning’s inflation data will not encourage an early cut. While the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) did fall in March, from 3.4 per cent to 3.2 per cent, this was less than the fall which was expected. The rise in road fuel prices

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is Andy Street heading for defeat?

Next month’s local elections will be the last significant encounter with voters before a general election, likely later this year. So far, the talk is that heavy losses for the Tories are ‘priced in’ – with the party expected to lose about half of the Tories up for re-election. As I previously reported, senior conservatives are talking up the fate of the two metro mayors – Andy Street in the West Midlands and Ben Houchen in Tees Valley – as what will decide if it goes from being a bad night to a terrible one. As one former cabinet minister puts it: ‘Andy losing the Midlands is very difficult. Ben

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why is the mayor of Tehran welcome in Brussels but not Nigel Farage?

‘How do you think this looks to the rest of the world?’ asked Nigel Farage as police attempted to shut down the National Conservatism conference in Brussels on Tuesday. Belgian politicians won’t care what it looks like. This is the most undemocratic country in western Europe. And while the mayor who tried to ban the conference obsesses about what he calls ‘the far-right’, Islamism continues to thrive in Belgium’s left-wing eco-system. For a decade, France has regarded its neighbour as the ‘home of radical Islamists’, and nowhere more so than in Brussels, from where sprang the Islamist terror cell that murdered 130 Parisians in November 2015. ‘Molenbeekistan’ was how the

Steerpike Steerpike

Police probe Rayner over multiple allegations

Another day, another development in the curious case of Angela Rayner’s tax affairs. Mr S last week reported that Rayner became the subject of a formal police investigation. Initially, this was thought to focus on a potential breach of electoral law. But it has subsequently emerged in the Times that the force investigating Rayner is also looking into whether she paid the correct capital gains tax on the sale of her former Stockport home. It never rains but it pours… On Tuesday, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Steve Watson revealed on a local radio station that ‘there are a number of assertions knocking about’, and that the

Debbie Hayton

JK Rowling has exposed the weak spot in the SNP’s misogyny law

When will the Scottish government get on with the day job? Hot on the heels of his controversial Hate Crime Act, Humza Yousaf has now promised a misogyny law that will apparently protect members of both sexes. The First Minister insisted that ‘anyone affected’ by misogyny would be covered, whatever their biological sex. This includes, of course, transgender women. One wonders if the SNP is so detached from reality that it does not know the difference between men and women, or they are so deeply in the pockets of an activist lobby that they pretend not to know. Either way, it is bad for women and bad for Scotland. Once

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Truss turns on foes at book bash

After the longest promotional tour in history, Liz Truss finally held her belated book launch party. Less than an hour after voting against her successor’s smoking ban, Truss welcomed the good and the great of Tory politics to mark the advent of her new tome Ten Days to Save the West. In a wide-ranging speech, the onetime premier turned on her (many) foes and lamented the downsides of life in Downing Street, including the infamous flea infestation, ‘not to mention all the other creatures that were hanging around in No. 10’. Ouch.  Running through her political enemies, Truss made a passionate case for people to buy her book. ‘I do

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Liberty is dying under the Tories

It seems political consensus isn’t dead. It’s simply been hibernating, waiting for a kind of crackdown on personal liberty that is so popular that it brings everyone together. That moment came this evening, when MPs voted on the second reading of the government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which will not only ban whatever flavoured vapes ministers deem too fun, but will also ban anyone born after January 2009 from ever legally buying cigarettes and other tobacco-based products in the UK.  How did the Tory party find itself leading this charge against personal freedom? A total of 383 voted in favour of the Bill, with 67 voting against. (The Spectator has the full list here).

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Parliament votes for smoking ban

In the past few minutes, the Tobacco and Vapes Bill has passed its second reading by 383 votes to 67, with at least six Conservative ministers voting against the legislation. It was a free vote, but it is still a striking thing to see a cabinet minister – in this case Kemi Badenoch – going against the line set by the Prime Minister. Katy covers Badenoch’s announcement that she wasn’t joining her boss in the ‘aye’ lobby here, saying it will still disappoint No 10, and send a reminder to the party and membership where the Business Secretary stands on liberty.  We have a full list of the MPs who

Coffee House

Full list: every MP who voted against Sunak’s smoking ban

Tonight saw the second reading of the Sunak administration’s flagship Tobacco and Vapes Bill. As expected the government easily won the vote by 383 votes to 67, thanks to Labour’s support of the legislation. However some 59 Tories chose to cast a vote of protest against plans to introduce a generational ban on smoking, with dozens more abstaining. Below you can find a full list of those who voted against Sunak’s smoking ban by their various party affiliation. Conservative (59): DUP (7) Independent (2):