Politics

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

Monday

25 Mar 2024

Is the UK’s China policy about to change?

What difference is the revelation that China was behind two cyber attacks – on the Electoral Commission and UK parliamentarians – really going to make when it comes to the government’s approach to Beijing? Oliver Dowden told MPs today that the two attacks ‘demonstrate a clear and persistent pattern of behaviour that signal hostile intent from China.’ But he came in for criticism for the scale of the government response – just two individuals and one entity associated with the attack have been sanctioned, and there is a promise to continue to ‘call out’ this activity in the strongest terms. The Chinese ambassador is also being summoned to respond to the

Limor Simhony Philpott

The UN’s ceasefire call will only strengthen Hamas

The UN has passed a draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to last until the end of Ramadan in two weeks’ time, possibly leading to a permanent ceasefire. The resolution was backed by Russia, China and by the 22-nation Arab Group. This is the first time that the security council managed to pass a ceasefire resolution, after all the others were vetoed. The UN resolution is highly unlikely to result in the release of hostages by Hamas The non-binding resolution calls for the ceasefire ‘to be respected by all parties’ and demands ‘the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.’ It does not call for Hamas to

Freddy Gray

Why do Trump’s enemies always overreach?

37 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to editor-at-large of the Wall Street Journal Gerry Baker about why the media’s wrong reporting of Trump’s ‘bloodshed’ comments have played to his advantage; why America has lost trust in its institutions; and whether voters think the economy was better off under Trump.

Steerpike

Steve Bray is silenced, finally

It must be a hard job being the Metropolitan Police. Too hardline and you risk howls of protest from the left; too soft and you’re lambasted by the right. So Steerpike is pleased to bring his readers news of a policing decision that will please all inhabitants of the Westminster village, regardless of their political affiliation. For six long, miserable years, Steve Bray – the Hiroo Onoda of the Remain campaign – has tormented those who work in and around Whitehall, blaring out music from his loudspeakers on Wednesday mornings before PMQs. But last week the artist known as ‘Stop Brexit man’ met his comeuppance after the Met sent some

Katy Balls

Scott Benton triggers another by-election

10 min listen

Former Conservative MP Scott Benton has resigned, triggering a by-election in Blackpool South. The outgoing MP had the Tory whip removed after suggesting to undercover reporters that he would be willing to break lobbying rules for money. Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale and Katy Balls about the likelihood of another Tory election defeat in Blackpool South, plus whether the Conservatives are pivoting on their China stance following an alleged cybersecurity threat.

Steerpike

Blackpool by-election battering looms for Rishi

So. Farewell then Scott Benton. The disgraced Blackpool South MP today becomes the disgraced former Blackpool South MP after he announced plans to quit the House of Commons. In April last year Benton lost the Tory whip after being filmed in an undercover Times sting in which he offered to lobby for gambling industry investors. Since then Benton has vigorously protested his innocence but, with a by-election via the recall process looking likely, he has now decided to jump before he was pushed. In a statement he wrote that: It’s with a heavy heart that I have written to the Chancellor this morning to tender my resignation as your MP.

Duncan Gardham

Why Islamic State is fixated with Russia

Islamic State (IS) has released a graphic video showing gunmen storming the Crocus concert hall near Moscow in an attack that killed at least 137 people. The footage corroborates the terrorist organisation’s claim of responsibility. The most likely culprit is the organisation’s offshoot based in Afghanistan. For years, IS-Khorasan Province (IS-K) – a branch of IS based in Afghanistan – has been fixated with Russia. It holds Moscow responsible for destroying its power base in Syria by backing president Assad, and accuses the Kremlin of having Muslim blood on its hands. President Putin is a regular target in its propaganda. President Putin is a regular target in IS’s propaganda IS said

Eliot Wilson

Can Britain afford Trident?

The prime minister is in Cumbria today, visiting Barrow-in-Furness to announce a ‘national endeavour’ to support the defence and civil nuclear industry. This includes a partnership with companies including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, EDF and Babcock to invest more than £760 million in skills, jobs and education over the next six years. The Barrow Transformation Fund will receive £20 million from the government immediately, then £20 million a year for the coming decade. Barrow is important because it is where the Royal Navy’s new Dreadnought-class ballistic missile nuclear submarines are being built. BAE Systems Submarines also built the Astute-class nuclear-powered attack submarines, of which four are in service with three more

Ross Clark

The pension triple lock is a drain on the taxpayer

Jeremy Hunt’s promise that the Conservative manifesto will protect the ‘triple lock’ on the state pension is a desperate measure to appeal to the one group of the population whom the Conservatives feel they can rely on. But taxpayers will not be thanking him in a few years’ time. On the contrary, by keeping the triple lock – which increases state pensions by either the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), average earnings or 2.5 per cent, whichever is greatest – Hunt has abdicated any remaining fiscal responsibility and condemned the public finances to further ruin. The triple lock is already costing taxpayers £10 billion a year. Since 2011/12 when the triple

Alexander Larman

Will the slimmed-down monarchy cope without Kate and the King?

The reaction to the Princess of Wales’s courageous and affecting video, in which she discussed her cancer diagnosis, was largely as might be imagined. Most people, including those who had previously exhibited confusion or scepticism about the various failings in the royal family’s communication strategy, found it both shocking and deeply moving, and commended Kate for her candour. However, there remains a small but vocal minority who seized upon the statement to lambast her further. What this story has inadvertently done is to reveal the weakness of the slimmed-down monarchy We do not need to give the deluded and vicious the oxygen of publicity, but nonetheless, once the initial burst

David Loyn

How Islamic State rose from the ashes to attack Moscow

Since America’s disastrous scuttle from Kabul in August 2021, there had been rising concern that Afghanistan would once again become a crucible of international terrorism. The claim by the Islamic State group to have carried out the Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow appears to have justified that fear. An Islamic prophecy says that when the Mahdi, the messiah, returns to herald the end of the world, he will come bearing black flags in the land of Khorasan The four gunmen – who are said to have walked casually as they fired into the crowds, leaving more than 130 people dead – were citizens of Tajikistan, which borders Afghanistan to the

Steerpike

Flashback: Rayner claims WASPI pensions were ‘stolen’

Come with Mr S on a trip down memory lane, to a long-forgotten era known as, er, the last parliament. Back then, Labour were all too keen to be all things to all men (and women). A prime example of that was the campaign by Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) to give compensation to women born in the 1950s who claim they were not properly informed of changes in the state pension age. In the heat of the 2019 election campaign, Labour jumped on the WASPI band wagon. They effectively committing to signing a blank cheque worth billions by signalling their support for the campaign without doing the sums.

John Ferry

The SNP’s star economist eviscerates the case for independence

He’s only gone and done it again. Mark Blyth, born in Dundee but now professor of international economics at the prestigious Brown University in the United States – the man who was wooed by the Scottish government to join its economic advisory council in 2021 in the obvious hope he would lend credibility (and maybe a touch of stardust) to its case for secession – has eviscerated the economic arguments for splitting from the UK. What was meant to be a PR triumph for the SNP completely backfired As a quick recap, not long before Blyth took up his role formally advising the Scottish government, video emerged of him criticising

Sam Leith

Why bullies win

Remember when Friends Reunited was a thing? Twenty-something years ago, before Facebook even existed, this primaeval social networking site connecting people with their old schoolmates was the most searched thing on the UK internet. It is, now, at one with Nineveh and Tyre. In fact, the only truly memorable thing it achieved was to inspire a black-hearted spin-off site called ‘Bullies Reunited’. That site purported to help reconnect the pre-teen thugs of yesteryear with their sniggering accomplices, or the boys and girls whose knees they’d skinned, pigtails twisted or Y-fronts wedgied to shreds. It was a joke, but a good one. The nastiest, most aggressive, most tantrum-prone ten-year-olds grew up

John Keiger

Keir Starmer should think twice before shunning Marine Le Pen

Riding high in the polls with a 20-point lead, the Labour party is preparing for government. Across the Channel with a 10-15 point poll lead in the June European elections and predicted victory in the 2027 presidentials, the Rassemblement National is making tentative preparations for government too. Two years after forming his cabinet, Sir Keir Starmer’s cross-Channel interlocutor will be either Marine Le Pen or – should her ineligibility be declared in the forthcoming October trial for alleged misuse of European parliamentary assistants – the RN’s star president Jordan Bardella. David Lammy, who is given to intemperate language, should avoid insulting the future French government Labour’s election manifesto is yet

Samuel Rubinstein

The real problem with Jonathan Glazer

Every year the Oscars unleashes some kind of political controversy, and this year’s revolves around Jonathan Glazer’s speech denouncing Israel. Glazer, the director of the acclaimed Holocaust film The Zone of Interest, used his moment in the spotlight to rail against ‘the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people’. An open letter has sprung up to rebuke him, and even the film’s executive producer has distanced himself from Glazer’s remarks. Some argued that Glazer unwittingly betrayed his own film’s core message. In fact, Glazer’s comments flow naturally from the film itself, and from the very problem of focusing a Holocaust film on the ‘banality of evil’. The protagonist of The Zone of

Sunday

24 Mar 2024

Stephen Daisley

Why did the SNP make allowances for Spain during Covid?

The Covid Inquiry’s recent Scottish sojourn brought several weeks of bad headlines for the SNP. One revelation got less attention than others but struck me as more significant than most, so I wrote about it for Coffee House. That revelation was an email chain dug up by the inquiry dating from the first summer of the pandemic. It contained a discussion about which countries should be added to the list of ‘travel corridor’ nations. In one email, a senior civil servant argued for Spain to be added to the list because ‘there is a real possibility they will never approve EU membership for an independent Scotland’ otherwise. If that seems

Fraser Nelson

Will Sunak renege on ‘foreign powers’ owning newspapers?

Last week, a rebellion in the Lords drew a government pledge to ban foreign governments and their proxies from owning British newspapers and magazines. It was a historic moment for the defence of press freedom in the era of acquisitive, well-connected autocracies. It will have global significance. But the devil was always going to lie in the detail, and that will come in the third reading of the Digital Markets Bill due Tuesday. The risk is that ministers may row back and allow the Emiratis to become part-owners of this magazine and the Telegraph by keeping a low stake of 5 per cent or even 1 per cent. This would still grant them

Jawad Iqbal

The West must wake up to the threat of Islamic State-Khorasan

It is time to wake up to the growing international threat posed by Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the group believed to be behind Friday’s terror attack on a Moscow concert hall that left more than 130 people dead. For far too long this Afghanistan-based offshoot of Islamic State, formed in 2015, has been underestimated. Ignoring it is no longer a safe or wise policy option. Alarm bells have been sounding for some time now about the growing threat posed by IS-K IS-K has been growing in strength in Taliban-led Afghanistan ever since the Americans pulled out of the country in 2021. It has been successful in attracting a growing number of

Joe Bedell-Brill

Hunt: Tories will keep the triple lock on pensions

Jeremy Hunt: Russian government creating a ‘smokescreen of propaganda’ On Friday night, a terrorist attack at a large concert in Moscow led to at least 133 deaths. Russian officials vowed revenge and suggested Ukrainian involvement, despite Islamic State claiming responsibility. On Sky News this morning, Trevor Phillips asked Jeremy Hunt how much Russia’s version of events could be believed. The Chancellor said it was always a tragedy when innocent people lost their lives, but that the UK had ‘very little confidence in anything the Russian government says’. He suggested they were creating a ‘smokescreen of propaganda’ to justify their invasion of Ukraine. Hunt guarantees Tories will keep triple lock on