Politics

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

Friday

7 Jun 2024

The Green party is terrifying

Is the Green party the most controversial force in British politics? It’s certainly giving Reform a run for its money. In the past few months, the Greens have suspended a former London Assembly member and two-time London mayoral candidate after he lamented that colleagues had denounced the Cass Review. After the local elections, one councillor sparked outrage by shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ to celebrate his victory. At the weekend, it was reported that three candidates for the party were no longer standing amid suggestions they made racist comments. What do traditional Green voters – those primarily driven by environmental concerns – make of these developments? Now there’s the backlash to their scandalous maternity policy. In

Matthew Scott

The Tories don’t have a plan for the criminal justice system

The Conservative party fought the 2019 general election with a manifesto commitment to establish a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice. The promise was welcomed by almost everyone involved in criminal justice. But despite repeated attempts over the last four years to hold the government to its word, notably by the former Prisons Inspector Lord Ramsbotham, the promise was simply broken. There has never been any government apology or explanation; just vague mutterings about the pandemic making things rather difficult. On the bright side, the government did lend parliamentary time to a law that now makes it easier to prosecute, and if necessary imprison, those who feed other people’s cats Meanwhile the

Isabel Hardman

Sunak apologises for leaving D-Day commemorations

Rishi Sunak has just apologised for missing the international D-Day event in Normandy to fly back early to the UK for an interview with ITV. There has been a mixture of outrage and total bewilderment about why the Prime Minister chose to leave after the British event, putting foreign secretary David Cameron in his place, and do an interview that isn’t even being broadcast until next week. He posted on Twitter: The 80th anniversary of D-Day has been a profound moment to honour the brave men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our values, our freedom and our democracy. This anniversary should be about those

Stephen Daisley

Why is Douglas Ross standing for parliament again?

Not content with being a referee and leader of the Tories in Scotland, Douglas Ross seems bent on making himself even more unpopular with the punters. In doing so, he has alighted upon David Duguid, the Conservative MP for Banff and Buchan since 2017, who wrestled that once true-blue redoubt back from the SNP after 30 years of Nationalist incumbency. Duguid, who served as a minister under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, was preparing to stand again, under his seat’s new name of Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, when he was struck by illness and spent four weeks in intensive care. He says he’s on the road to recovery and

Thursday

6 Jun 2024

Steerpike

Why did Sunak leave the D-Day commemorations early?

Politics took a back seat on Thursday as the great and good of the British establishment marked the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer took a break from election campaigning to head to Normandy, where they joined the King and other world leaders in commemorating the occasion. But when the time came for the official photographs in the afternoon with Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, it was Lord Cameron, not Rishi Sunak, who did the honours for Britain. So why was the Foreign Secretary left to pose for pictures with the three heads of government, rather than the Prime Minister? The answer

Lara Prendergast

The Farage factor

45 min listen

This week: The Farage factor. Our cover piece looks at the biggest news from this week of the general election campaign, Nigel Farage’s decision to stand again for Parliament. Farage appealed to voters in the seaside town of Clacton to send him to Westminster to be a ‘nuisance’. Indeed, how much of a nuisance will he be to Rishi Sunak in this campaign? Will this boost Reform’s ratings across Britain? And could it be eighth time lucky for Nigel? The Spectator‘s political editor Katy Balls joins the podcast to discuss, alongside former Clacton and UKIP MP, Douglas Carswell (2:32). Then: Gavin Mortimer reports from France ahead of the European and local

Angus Colwell

When did Gareth Southgate get quite so ruthless?

Gareth Southgate, England’s semi-intellectual, waistcoat-strapped manager, knows he’s on his last chance at Euro 2024. He’s failed to bring a trophy home three times now and four will be unacceptable. This perhaps explains his newfound ruthlessness: he’s cut his most heroic failures from the squad who will travel to Germany. Jack Grealish, who brought good vibes but not a trophy, is gone. Jordan Henderson, who was kept around to set a good example, is no longer needed. Mason Mount, the teachers’ pet, didn’t make the cut. Nor did Marcus Rashford, the nation’s favourite player-activist. Harry Maguire, a Dunkirk boy for a squad trying to ape Normandy, is not worth the injury risk. ‘It’s coming home’ will have to mean it this summer

Isabel Hardman

Alex Salmond: We are not splitting the SNP vote

Is Alex Salmond feasting on the misery of an SNP that, having hit its high watermark, is now having to work hard to hold onto its Westminster seats? Not at all, according to the Alba leader, who told Andrew Neil on Times Radio today that he was in fact trying to help the cause of his former party by going after pro-independence voters who would otherwise have stayed at home. In so doing, of course, he was not-so-subtly suggesting that the SNP aren’t giving voters a reason to turn out at all. There’s 20 per cent of people who are either going to stay at home or going to vote

Steerpike

Could Labour change its tune on Trident?

As election day looms closer, parliamentary candidates continue to wreak havoc on party campaigns. This time Labour is in the spotlight over the issue of national security, defence and, specifically, its position on Trident — one of the issues on which the public rate the Tories over Starmer’s army. Sir Keir Starmer promised his party would ensure a ‘nuclear triple lock’ — which would maintain Britain’s continuous at-sea deterrent (CASD). The Labour leader is keen to hammer home how his party’s stance on nuclear weapons has changed since the Corbyn era, after Jezza caused controversy with his unwavering opposition to nukes. But one potential future cabinet minister, candidate for Sheffield Heeley

Iain Macwhirter

What could explain Douglas Ross’s Westminster U-turn?

Scottish Tory Leader Douglas Ross has a side hustle as an assistant referee for the Scottish Football Association. Now, Scotland’s opposition parties are showing him the red card for his last minute decision to stand as parliamentary candidate for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East constituency. It’s a ‘stitch up,’ says the SNP. Ross is being cast as ‘shameful’, ‘nasty’ and the leader of a ‘morally bankrupt’ party for apparently elbowing aside former Tory minister, David Duguid, who’d said he was expecting to stand in the seat. Duguid has been in hospital with a spinal illness. But last night the Scottish Conservative Party Management Board announced that his ‘recovery would be put at

Ross Clark

What happened to the ‘gigafactories’?

Remember all those ‘gigafactories’ that were going to decarbonise our road transport and create many thousands of green jobs into the bargain? Now comes yet one more sign that all is not going according to plan. The Automotive Cells Company (ACC), a joint venture between carmakers Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz, and energy company Total Energies, has suspended work on two plants that it was constructing at Kaiserslauten in Germany and Termoli, Italy. It already operates one factory in France which was opened last year. Ostensibly, the retrenchment is just temporary while the company investigates alternatives to the nickel-based batteries it was planning to manufacture there. Then again, it could be an admission that

Freddy Gray

What will Trump 2.0 do to the economy?

24 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Christopher Butler who is executive director at Americans for Tax Reform to discuss what Trump’s trade policy might look like in a second term. Should economists be worried about a 10 per cent tariff?

Lisa Haseldine

Olaf Scholz unveils Germany’s deportation plans

‘Anyone who threatens our freedom and disturbs our peace should be afraid.’ That was Olaf Scholz’s message today as he stood up in the Bundestag to announce that foreigners who commit serious crimes in Germany are no longer welcome in the country – even if they are refugees or asylum seekers. The Chancellor announced that the German Ministry of the Interior is drawing up plans to make it easier to deport foreign-born dangerous individuals and serious criminals to their home countries, even if they come from warzones or countries controlled by authoritarian regimes such as Afghanistan and Syria. ‘Such criminals should be deported – even if they come from Syria

Andrew Tettenborn

Sunak’s crime crackdown won’t pay off for the Tories

The Tories are pledging to reshape our homicide laws if they win re-election. There could, as in many US states, be first-degree murder for intentional killing, second-degree murder for manslaughter because of diminished responsibility or death arising from a deliberate wrong. Rishi Sunak is also promising to get tough on domestic abuse, with a minimum tariff for murder in the home. The crackdown will form a key part of the Conservative manifesto. The plan is far from foolproof You can understand Sunak’s thinking. The hospital order imposed on Nottingham triple killer Valdo Colocane earlier this year after he admitted manslaughter owing to diminished responsibility raised eyebrows among those who looked

Katy Balls

Has there been a CCHQ candidates stitch up?

14 min listen

Conservative grassroots are up in arms over the installment of Tory party chairman, Richard Holden, as the candidate for Basildon and Billericay, a safe seat. The local association was given a shortlist of one by CCHQ. Katy Balls talks to James Heale and commentator and Conservative peer, Paul Goodman. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Ross Clark

The trouble with the Tories’ ‘Family Home Tax Guarantee’

There is a very big problem with Jeremy Hunt’s Family Home Tax Guarantee, though which he promises a Conservative government would not increase the number of council tax bands, carry out a council tax revaluation, cut council tax discounts, impose capital gains tax on sales of main homes or increase the level of stamp duty. It reminds voters of all the times that the Conservatives have jacked up property taxes in the past 14 years. No-one paid more than 4 per cent on any sale. George Osborne soon changed that When David Cameron become Prime Minister in 2010, stamp duty was levied at 1 per cent on homes sold for between

Ian Acheson

Tougher sentences won’t stop women being killed

Manifestos come and go but women continue to be murdered by men they know in grotesquely high numbers. According to the Times, the Conservatives are set to crack down on femicide in their manifesto, with the minimum sentence for murders that take place in the home raised from 15 to 25 years. Will this make any difference? Of the 590 recorded homicides in England and Wales alone in 2022-23, 174 of these were women – with a significant proportion murdered by their partners in their homes. There is something undeniably horrifying about these deaths. The women, often killed by knives, die in a familiar surrounding where they should expect to be safest, at

Steerpike

Labour candidate’s D-Day blunder

It’s been a long hard slog for Keir Starmer and his team as they work to prove that he leads a Changed Labour party (honest). But in a bid to prove his patriotism, has one Starmtrooper now taken it too far? Mr S has previously been impressed with Keir Cozens, the well-connected candidate for Great Yarmouth, who has made a name for himself with his snazzy Labour posters and slick graphics. But now it seems Cozens has overreached himself with his latest social media effort. In his bid to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Cozens shared a graphic of soldiers about to land in Normandy emblazoned with his own

Steerpike

Scottish Tory leader ousts unwell colleague as candidate

Back to Scotland, where some rather strange events are unfolding. The leader of the Scottish Conservatives Douglas Ross — who most recently was the MP for Moray, alongside being MSP for the Highlands and Islands — this morning brought media from across the country together for an emergency announcement. After months of pledging to step down as a Tory MP, Ross has revealed he will now stand in the new seat of Aberdeenshire North and Moray East. But Ross’s announcement has been met with a rather large backlash — not least because his party has effectively deselected his colleague David Duguid, who is currently in hospital with a spinal illness.

James Heale

Why Tory MPs are angry with their chairman

Today is the deadline for Conservative candidates to be selected – and one man made it just under the wire. Richard Holden, the party chairman, was last night selected for the constituency of Basildon and Billericay after an acrimonious selection process. Under party rules, if a seat is vacant within 48 hours of the nomination deadline, then the party can propose just one name. Holden was thus the only candidate put to local members. The two-hour long meeting was restricted to the association executive, with ordinary members unable to attend. Compounding the anger towards Holden is that he is the party chairman and thus held to a different standard Andrew