Politics

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

Wednesday

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Ten of the worst Tory tax hikes since 2010

It’s Budget day today. With the tax burden predicted to amount to 37 per cent of national income by the next election, the 2019 to 2024 parliament is set to go down as the biggest tax-raising parliament in modern times. A rather impressive feat for a Tory party that likes to paint itself as one of low taxes and financial stability. In fact, under the last 14 years of Conservative government, Mr S has discovered there have been over 1,000 tax rises. While we eagerly await today’s Budget announcements, here is a list of some of the most significant tax hikes introduced under various Tory Chancellors since 2010… Income tax

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Jeremy Hunt play it safe today?

This Budget is probably Jeremy Hunt’s last fiscal event before the election, and the Chancellor will want to at least set a fair wind for the Conservatives to head into polling day. That means giving voters a sense that sticking with the Tories is the safer option, offering them giveaways on tax and the sense that more tax cuts might be to come – as well as avoiding the sort of post-Budget rows that can define a government in all the wrong ways. Hunt is expected to cut National Insurance by a further two percentage points, on top of the 2 point cut he made in the autumn. This is

Charles Lipson

The race for the White House is about to get much dirtier

Super Tuesday is over and so is the primary season. Although some states have not voted yet and a few others have not finished counting, the parties’ nominees are now locked in. They were really locked in several weeks ago. Biden had no serious competition and Trump vanquished his two main rivals in the early voting.  Trump’s chief competitors were Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s UN ambassador. The former president effectively clinched the nomination when he beat both decisively on their most favourable terrain: DeSantis in Iowa and Haley in New Hampshire and her home state. Haley stayed in the race

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Geri Halliwell can never be wrong

Watching the current scandal around Christian Horner play out, I didn’t feel any of the glee I usually do when tabloids dissect the private lives of well-known people. (To be fair, I had zero sympathy for myself when the Daily Mail did it to me, twice – if you dish it out, you’d better be able to take it.) Rather, I felt an emotion that I rarely feel: protectiveness for my adored Ginger Spice – a.k.a Geri Hallwell Horner, wife of the Red Bull boss. It’s a weird one. We’re used to feeling various emotions towards pop stars – lust, love, loathing – but it’s not often that we feel protective of

Tuesday

James Heale James Heale

MPs demand veto on foreign state press ownership

More than 100 MPs have tonight backed an amendment in the House of Lords which would give parliament a veto on foreign states owning UK media outlets. Robert Jenrick, the former Housing Secretary, has organised an open letter among colleagues, following the attempt by the UAE-owned RedBird IMI to take over the Telegraph and Spectator titles. Signatories include  a string of former Cabinet ministers including Sir John Redwood, Therese Coffey, Sir Simon Clarke, Robert Buckland, Stephen Crabb, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers and Sir Geoffrey Cox. Jenrick’s letter to Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, says that: ‘If major newspaper and media organisations can be purchased by foreign governments, the freedom of the press has

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Science minister forced to pay damages

Another day, another government figure in a spot of bother. Michelle Donelan, Science and Technology Secretary, has today had to retract false accusations she made about an academic and agreed to pay the damages and costs. It’s a rather embarrassing case of the science minister unable to get her facts right: sub-optimal to say the least. Last October, Donelan accused Professor Kate Sang, an academic working at Heriot Watt University, of expressing sympathy for Hamas in the aftermath of the 7 October attack. She also accused another academic, Dr Kamna Patel, of sharing extremist material. Both woman, Donelan claimed, had breached the Seven Principles of Public Life and should be

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Would another cut to National Insurance be enough to move the polls?

We’ll know tomorrow afternoon what exactly Jeremy Hunt has included in his Budget, but reports this evening suggest we’re looking at another 2p cut to employee National Insurance: a move that is estimated to put £450 back in the pocket of the average worker, which Hunt will try to sell as a £900 tax cut, if you combine it with the additional 2p taken off NI in his Autumn Statement last year.  The decision to opt for NI will be driven by fiscal restraints rather than political desire. Tory MPs, and workers, have been expecting something bigger than what was already delivered last autumn, and an income tax would have

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What tax cut will Hunt deliver tomorrow?

13 min listen

Kate Andrews speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman as the speculation grows over what taxes Jeremy Hunt will cut in tomorrow’s budget. National Insurance is looking most likely – it’s a giveaway but does it go far enough?

Eliot Wilson

The flaw in the SNP’s plan to ‘build a new Scotland’

The SNP seems determined not to stick to the day job of actually running the country. Scotland’s government this week launched a publication called ‘Building a New Scotland: an independent Scotland’s Place in the World’. It set out policies for something that doesn’t exist – an independent Scotland – in areas in which the devolved administration has no responsibility. Angus Robertson, the party’s constitution and external affairs secretary who launched the report, hardly seemed fazed by those facts: he spoke fluently and familiarly about ‘defence, peace and security’ and Scotland’s role as ‘a good global citizen’, even if his party’s plan is unlikely to ever see the light of day.

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Vulnerable children don’t belong in jail

Britain’s prisons brim with vulnerable people but perhaps the most vulnerable are children. At 30 September 2023, there were 301 children in prison in England and Wales alone. Wetherby Young Offender Institution in Yorkshire is home to 165 of them and a new report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons makes for troubling reading about the conditions inside. There are the usual observations, familiar to regular readers of these write-ups, about broken heating systems and smashed windows, faulty electrics and insufficient time out of cells. But then there is this: ‘We had considerable concerns about the use of all-male teams to cut the clothes of vulnerable girls under restraint and

Jawad Iqbal

Who cares that Rishi Sunak makes his own bed?

Mr and Mrs Sunak of Downing Street have given a joint interview to Grazia magazine in which they give answers to the most pressing questions facing the country. They don’t bother sweating the small stuff like the state of the economy, the upcoming Budget, or the election prospects of the beleaguered Tories, but instead share their carefully considered thoughts on dividing up the household chores. Akshata Murty gushes that Rishi’s ‘special skill’ is tidying the bedroom. Rishi is not to be outdone when it comes to spilling the secrets of their home life. He confesses to breaking away from his day job (just the small matter of running the country,

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GB News suffers big losses as TalkTV goes online

What a week for TV broadcasters: it’s been non-stop breaking news about, um, themselves. After BBC Verify’s debacle yesterday, it’s TalkTV that is making headlines today. The television channel, launched to much fanfare in 2022, is moving entirely online from this summer. Staff were informed by email on Tuesday, just a month after the channel’s most famous presenter Piers Morgan announced that his shows would be broadcast solely on YouTube. The station has struggled with fluctuating viewing figures for some time, and it racked up 2 million viewers in December 2023 – significantly less than BBC News’s 11.4 million and falling just behind its main competitor, GB News, which reached

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Tories demand probe into Khan’s ‘night czar’

Following an ill-timed interview with the BBC, Londoners have been reminded of the existence of the capital’s underwhelming ‘night czar.’ Amy Lamé has a claim to being Sadiq Khan’s worst mistake in office, having presided over a disastrous decline in London’s nightlife since taking up the post in 2016. Since then, her pay has been hiked by a whopping 40 per cent, with Mr S revealing last year that her annual salary is now almost £117,000. Talk about money well spent. Lamé’s re-emergence this week has sparked a campaign on social media, with Londoners sharing their #LameLondon snaps to highlight her failures in the job. And if things weren’t bad enough,

Amy Wilentz

Gangs are on the verge of taking over Haiti

Haiti seems to be on the verge of complete collapse. In the past few days, the country’s gangs – which already controlled 80 per cent of the capital city of Port-au-Prince – have waged a serious assault against the government while the de facto prime minister Ariel Henry is in Kenya. On Saturday there was a mass prison break, with around 5,000 former prisoners on the loose, some of them notorious gang leaders. Just in the past few days, there have been attacks against police stations, the port, the police academy, border force officials and the international airport. Threats have been made against the state hospital, which was forced to close, and the national palace. US based airlines have

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Will Jeremy Corbyn sue Nigel Farage?

They say opposites attract but the battle brewing between Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn is evidence to the contrary. The pair have become embroiled in a war of words and now Jezza has got the long arm of the law involved. Last night Corbyn took to Twitter to announce that he was planning to sue Farage. The GB News presenter, he complained, had made ‘a highly defamatory statement’ about the Independent MP, who went on to rage about the ‘disgusting and malicious lies’. Corbyn’s spokesperson has alleged that Farage accused the former Labour leader of ‘subscribing to an antisemitic conspiracy theory’ on his GB News show on Wednesday 28 February.

Andrew Tettenborn

In defence of Judge Tan Ikram

Judge Tanweer Ikram is not your usual judge. Ikram, who has a CBE to his name for services to diversity, has tirelessly insisted that minorities need to see people looking like them in senior positions (he has Pakistani Muslim heritage). Whether you see him as an innovative radical or a dreary progressive, Ikram is now mired in less savoury controversy. Last month, he notoriously gave a 12-month conditional discharge to three women guilty of publicly displaying paraglider images supporting Hamas, a banned terrorist group. It was quickly pointed out afterwards that he had previously ‘liked’ a post on LinkedIn accusing Israel of terrorism in Gaza (something he says he did

Steerpike Steerpike

Rwanda Bill battered in the Lords

If you thought the Rwanda Bill was a headache last year, 2024 is shaping up to be no different. Rishi Sunak’s flagship legislation was debated in the House of Lords on Monday night and the government suffered no less than five defeats at the hands of the unelected chamber. While the amendments are likely to be stripped out in the Commons, defeats of such magnitude are likely to delay the implementation of the scheme… Peers sought to amend the Rwanda Bill in a variety of different ways, by a majority of 102 voting to ensure the legislation is fully compliant with domestic and international law. Another vote, again won by a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

‘Levelling up’ is finished

Just what has the government done to try to retain the Red Wall vote? It seemed when they won a majority of 80 in 2019, thanks largely to a big switch of working class votes in peripheral areas of the Midlands and North, away from the main cities – that Boris Johnson and his ministers got it. There was a very large constituency of former Labour voters which was is fed up of that party’s fixation of the sorts of issues which appeal to metropolitan liberals and they were looking for a new political home. It was a constituency which likes state intervention, but was socially conservative.  Johnson’s government at first seemed

Jane Stannus

Canada’s Orwellian online harms Bill

There’s a way of getting children to eat something they dislike – medicine, for example – where you bury the goods in a spoonful of jam. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are trying this method with their Online Harms Bill C-63. But it may not go down as well as they hoped. The stated intent of the Bill is something every decent person supports: protecting children from online victimisation. Yet behind this noble aim lurks the thought police. This is no exaggeration. This legislation authorises house arrest and electronic tagging for a person considered likely to commit a future crime. It’s right there in the text: if a judge believes there are reasonable grounds to ‘fear’

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Rishi Sunak can’t save Britain

The Tories have hit an all-time low: an Ipsos poll shows the party on a dismal twenty per cent, with the percentage of under-35s intending to vote for them in single figures. Never has a flush looked quite so busted as Rishi Sunak. It was against this bleak backdrop that the Prime Minister’s lectern was trundled on to Downing Street on Friday night. There was something about the suddenness and urgency of this occasion – asking the press to assemble just as the pubs fill up at the start of the weekend – that put a little spring in the heart. After months of blatant antisemitism on the streets, and