Politics

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

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Rayner outsmarts Dowden at PMQs battle of the deputies

Few politicians have looked more pleased with a joke than Oliver Dowden did with his first offering at Prime Minister’s Questions today. He was deputising for Rishi Sunak, who is in Berlin, while Angela Rayner stood in for Keir Starmer. Labour’s deputy leader decided to address the police investigation into whether she broke electoral law on, telling the chamber: ‘I know the member opposite is desperate to talk about my living arrangements. But what the public wants to know about is what this government is doing about their living arrangements.’ She asked about when ministers were really going to ban no-fault evictions. Dowden then produced his joke, with a very

James Kirkup James Kirkup

How to defuse the pension timebomb

Another day, another smart report arguing for higher payments into our pensions. Standard Life and WPI Economics have published a paper saying that minimum contribution rates into workplace pensions must rise. Today, workers contribute a minimum of 5 per cent of their salary to their pensions while their employer pays in 3 per cent. Not enough, the report says. Both rates should rise immediately to 6 per cent. Otherwise, it is said, millions of today’s workers will face poverty in retirement. Pension contributions should rise. They should already have risen, in fact This is entirely sensible and right and in line with the consensus among pensions experts and pensions industry

Iain Macwhirter

Free the Greens from the SNP’s clutches!

I have not been entirely flattering about the performance in government of the Scottish Green party ministers, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater. I have accused them of being responsible for most of the policy failures that have defined Humza Yousaf’s annus horribilis. Everything from the Deposit Return Scheme for bottles and cans to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill; the Hate Crime Act to the ban on wood burning stoves.   But it is time for me to put the record straight and say that the Greens aren’t all bad. Some of my friends have been Green and a few even remain in the party – though with increasing annoyance at its policies on

Alexander Horne

The Rwanda Bill won’t survive contact with reality

After significant wrangling in parliament, the government has finally passed its Rwanda Bill – while managing to resist any significant new amendments from the Lords. It is reported that the Bill is likely to gain royal assent this week and that the government has already identified individuals for removal. Given the scheme appeared dead in the water last year, Rishi Sunak may see this as a triumph. He now has this hugely contentious legislation in place, can finally ratify his treaty with Kigali, and is in a position to carry out his Rwanda plan. All eyes will now turn to the courts, to see whether Sunak can actually get removal flights off the ground before the

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Greens grilled on ‘zero murders’ pledge

To the fantasy land of the Greens, where no promises are off the table — no matter how surreal. Just 48 hours after the Scottish branch embarrassed themselves over the Cass report, now it’s the turn of their London counterpart. Step forth Zoe Garbett, the party’s pink-haired nominee for the capital’s mayoralty, who is running on a platform of… ‘zero murders’. Yes, that’s right, if the Greens win, they claim they can end homicide in the capital within ten years. Garbett was rightly grilled on her ludicrous promise last night during LBC’s ‘London Mayoral Debate’. After a somewhat incredulous Tom Swarbrick asked Garbett: ‘You’ve suggested that you would like to

Steerpike Steerpike

Yousaf faces rebellion from Forbes backers

Will Humza Yousaf ever catch a break? The short answer is: not anytime soon. Last week was dubbed the First Minister’s worst in the job – which is saying something, given the chaos that has engulfed his party over the past year. And if Yousaf had hoped for improved fortunes this week, his wishes were in vain. The pesky Greens are still causing the Nats a headache over the Bute House Agreement and Patrick Harvie’s barmy army could well vote themselves out of their coalition next month. Tuesday’s statement on the Cass review has raised yet more questions about the Scottish government’s tartan Tavistock problem – and now hapless Humza

Euan McColm

Humza Yousaf and his ridiculous, feigned outrage

Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf is a politician with two settings. If he’s being asked about a difficult issue – the Police Scotland investigation into SNP finances, for example, or his government’s failure to deliver its policies – he does a reasonable approximation of sincerity, all soft voice and sad eyes. You can see the parts moving but, credit to the man, he gives it a go. At all other times, Yousaf is in outrage mode, shuddering with fury at this or that decision of the UK Government. The First Minister maximises the opportunities for public displays of anger by – in common with all populist nationalists – absolving himself

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Have Londoners forgotten how to stand up to anti-Semites?

There are some among the tens of thousands who march through London each week who genuinely seek peace in Gaza. There are others who march because they are anti-Semites. They hate Jews and want them eradicated. They sing songs about genocide and they brandish Swastikas and sport stickers celebrating the massacre of 1,200 Jewish men, women and children by Hamas terrorists on October 7th last year. This is not the first time that anti-Semites have paraded their bigotry through London. But the difference between now and 1936, when Oswald Mosley led his black-shirted British Union of Fascists through the capital’s streets in what came to be known as the ‘Battle of Cable

Francis Pike

Narendra Modi is unbeatable

Voting in India’s national elections started last Friday. It will take six weeks to complete, which is less of a surprise when one considers that in a population of 1.4 billion people there are 969 million voters, 2,600 political parties, 28 states and 780 languages. It is a logistical task of dazzling scale, not only for India’s election commission but also for its political leaders. Why then, in January, did Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi kick off his re-election campaign to secure his record third five-year term of office in the remote northern city of Ayodhya? This city, in a district with only a few million inhabitants, is a pinprick

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Does Labour really love the St George’s Cross?

Following last night’s mammoth parliamentary ping pong session, a funny thing happened early this morning. As various members of HM Press Gallery began to stir themselves today, the social media feeds of various Labour candidates began to be bombarded with graphic after graphic of the English flag, emblazoned with a message wishing one and all a happy St George’s day. Clearly, the free thinking men and women of the Starmer army had all got the message from on high. And then the great Keirleader himself published a rather snazzy video, waxing lyrical — in true Shakespearean style — about what England means to him. Eat your heart out Prince Hal.

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Sunak and Scholz gear up for an awkward meeting in Berlin

Rishi Sunak arrived in Poland today to announce a £500 million boost in aid to Ukraine, using the trip to Warsaw to also finally put a timeline on increasing Britain’s defence spending. By 2030, the Prime Minister pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP. His announcements come ahead of a much anticipated meeting with German chancellor Olaf Scholz tomorrow – one which may prove to be more awkward than either leader had originally anticipated. This morning, Berlin briefed out its displeasure at Westminster’s heel-dragging on UK spending contributions to European security. ‘There does not seem to be any plan to increase defence spending at all,’ a senior

Jawad Iqbal

Campus Gaza protests are crippling US universities

University campuses across the United States are facing a growing wave of student-led protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Campus officials have responded by taking unprecedented measures, including calling in the police, to try to clamp down on the unrest and contain an increasingly chaotic situation. The end result? Some of America’s most prestigious educational institutions look less like places of learning and more like crime scenes. At Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, hundreds of people gathered on campus yesterday, refusing to leave. Police, some in riot gear, arrested nearly 50 protesters. Similar student demonstrations have paralysed campuses at the University of California in Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of

Eliot Wilson

Why did it take Rishi Sunak so long to up defence spending?

Britain is putting its defence industry on a ‘war-footing’, the Prime Minister has said, as he vowed to boost spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030. It was only a matter of time that Rishi Sunak made such an announcement. After all, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illustrated a simple truth: that the world is more dangerous now than for a generation, and nations will need to increase their defence spending if they want to protect themselves and their interests. Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat had all expounded this view from within government, and now it seems the PM has given his seal of approval. The money

Steerpike Steerpike

Why is Labour so ‘angry’ about our next man in Washington?

Civil service appointments rarely generate much excitement in Westminster. But it’s not every day that Britain’s most senior diplomatic posting comes up for grabs. The Financial Times this week reports that our next man in Washington is going to be national security adviser Sir Tim Barrow. The Brexit-era veteran is set to succeed Dame Karen Pierce in the States later this year. One Tory MP praises him as ‘a serious figure’; another describes him as being in ‘very much the old mould of ambassadors – competent but not inspiring.’ Barrow will take up his new post in December or January – a timeline that has not gone down well with Labour. Critics argue that the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Rishi Sunak vows to boost defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP

After finally getting his Rwanda legislation through the Lords, Rishi Sunak is in Warsaw today to meet with Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. There, the Prime Minister is expected to announce that Britain will spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030. Previously the government line has been that the Tories will increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent ‘as soon as economic conditions allow’. The pledge would mean the UK would be committed to spend £70 billion more on core defence spending over seven years than it does currently.  The expected announcement comes after Sunak has faced criticism from his own side on the issue. Tory MPs have

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Prisons have lost the war on drugs

Aldous Huxley’s dystopian best seller Brave New World, published back in 1934, envisaged a society where stability was enforced by a numbing drug called ‘soma’. Constant consumption of soma, mandated by the state, dulled the senses, vanished despair and discouraged rebellion. I was reminded of this by comments made by some of the Times‘ new crime commissioners as they launch a year-long project to fix our broken criminal justice system. They were speculating as to why we weren’t seeing a national jail insurrection similar to what happened here in the spring of 1990 when multiple prisons across the country exploded in violent disorder. After all, many of the precursors that

Ross Clark Ross Clark

What happened to the Tory promise to balance the budget?

There is one big reason why a summer general election is unlikely, however tempted the Prime Minister might be to try to take advantage of the first migrant flight to Rwanda. Read between the lines and it is clear that Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt want to hold another ‘fiscal event’ before going to the polls. Nibbling away at a few more taxes, they appear to believe, will give them the best chance of clinging to power, or at least limiting the electoral damage to the Conservatives. They must be hoping that few people will notice the public borrowing figures. This morning it was revealed that last month the government

Terry Barnes

Australia doesn’t need a Ministry of Truth

Two unrelated acts of stabbing violence, first the random murderous rampage of a knife-wielding man in Sydney’s Bondi Junction, followed by the livestreamed knife attack on an Assyrian Christian bishop in his church, have led to a crackdown on freedom of expression in Australia. Misinformation and disinformation, our politicians have concluded, caused these grim incidents. Unpalatable as they are, online outpourings of bile and deliberate falsehood need to be seen to be disbelieved. Australia’s Liberal party, supposedly representing the country’s centre-right voters, has indicated it will back Australia’s Labor government in imposing a legislated regime to ‘combat’ misinformation and disinformation online. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has indicated that he

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Sunak’s Rwanda Bill finally passes parliament

13 min listen

After eight hours of debate on the Rwanda Bill, peers finally threw in the towel shortly after midnight. And with that, the Rwanda Bill became law, pending Royal Assent from the King. The two chambers have been engaged in a mammoth game of ping-pong for the past week, culminating in yesterday’s showdown on two final amendments. What comes next?  Kate Andrews speaks to James Heale and Katy Balls.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Steerpike Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon dodges scrutiny, again

If there was ever an immutable truth in Scottish politics, it is that Nicola Sturgeon never misses an opportunity to talk about the joys of independence. So it’s curious, then, that after being presented with the perfect chance to do exactly that, the Dear Leader has suddenly pulled out. What could have changed her mind? To mark the 25th anniversary of devolution next week, Sturgeon was due to give evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee in Westminster. But the former First Minister has now cancelled the session, following the arrest of her husband Peter Murrell four days ago. In typical Sturgeon style, she kept the public in the dark about the decision, with Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservatives’