Politics

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

Monday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron governs Paris but Le Pen rules France

There has never been a more Parisian government than the one selected by Emmanuel Macron last week. Ten of its 15 ministers come from the capital, despite the fact that the Greater Paris region represents 18 per cent of the population.  New prime minister, Gabriel Attal, is a Parisian, the MP for a district in the south of the city. I was one of his constituents for a number of years; he did a decent job and, during political campaigning, I sometimes took a leaflet from one of his minions. They were all very much like Attal: same age, same breeding, same self-assurance.   I’m no longer a Parisian. Last

Steerpike Steerpike

The ministerial casualties from a 1997-style wipeout

It’s blue Monday today for Tory MPs as they read the findings of the Daily Telegraph’s mammoth new poll. The paper splashes today on a YouGov survey of 14,000 people – the biggest such poll since the 2019 election. It points to the Conservatives suffering an electoral wipeout on the scale of their 1997 defeat by Labour. It forecasts that the Tories will retain just 169 seats, while Labour will sweep to power with 385 – giving Sir Keir Starmer a 120-seat majority. Every Red Wall seat won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 will be lost, the poll indicates, and the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will be one of 11 cabinet ministers to

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Why didn’t the British Library pay a ransom to cyber attackers?

‘They’ve turned one of our most important pieces of national infrastructure into an internet café,’ was how my friend Marcus, a scholar of early modern literature, put it to me, talking about the cyberattack that crashed the British Library at the end of last year. He’s not wrong. Since October, when a ransomware attack by the Rhysida criminal gang knocked all the library’s digital services offline, there really hasn’t been much more to the library’s Euston headquarters than a large airy building with a couple of expensive coffee shops. The Integrated Catalogue, which is the means by which readers search the library’s vast collection and call books up from the stacks or down from its

Katy Balls Katy Balls

It’s crunch week for Rishi Sunak

It’s a crunch week for Rishi Sunak as MPs prepare to cast their verdict on his Safety of Rwanda bill. The bill, which aims to get the government’s ‘stop the boats’ policy off the ground by unilaterally declaring Rwanda a safe country, returns to the Commons on Tuesday for its committee stage. There could then be a third reading vote as early as Wednesday night. Unfortunately for Sunak, as many as 60 Tory rebels on the right are getting behind amendments to toughen up the bill and reduce the opportunity for would-be migrants to appeal. This could ultimately lead to a resignation, with Tory party deputy chairman Lee Anderson considering

Ian Williams Ian Williams

China calls the shots in its alliance with Russia

There has been a strange atmosphere at recent top level meetings between ‘best friends’ China and Russia. It is not so much the elephant in the room as the pipeline running through it, with Moscow almost over-eager to talk about what has been billed as one of their most important joint economic projects, while Beijing has been doing its best to change the subject. That project is the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which is supposed to carry 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas a year from the Yamal region in northern Russia to China, by way of Mongolia. It was conceived more than a decade ago

Sunday

Steerpike Steerpike

Civil servants urged to ‘suppress’ Douglas Murray in counterterrorist lecture

For all the talk of a Tory ‘war on woke Whitehall’, more examples just keep cropping up. In an article for Fathom Journal, Anna Stanley, a former civil servant, this week painted a vivid picture about the kind of counter-terrorist training which is being given to her colleagues. Stanley writes that she recently attended a Kings College London (KCL) course called ‘Issues in Countering Terrorism’. It was, in her words, a ‘deeply, existentially depressing experience.’ Examples were reportedly cited on how such educational institutions are delivering what Stanley called ‘politically biased, anti-government training, amounting to indoctrination’. According to her the ‘overriding emphasis’ of the KCL course was that ‘Islamist extremism

Joe Bedell-Brill

Cameron says ‘military action was only option’ in Yemen

David Cameron: western strikes on Houthi rebels are ‘a very clear message’ This week the US and UK launched military strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, following repeated Houthi attacks on Red Sea cargo ships. Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, David Cameron suggested the strikes sent a message that western countries were prepared to ‘follow our words and warnings with actions’. Kuenssberg questioned whether the strikes would have much impact, given the Houthi rebels’ declaration that they will step up their own attacks. Cameron pointed out that Houthi attacks have been escalating since November, and said military action was the only option.  Cameron: South Africa’s genocide case against Israel is ‘nonsense’

Steerpike Steerpike

Keir Starmer’s morning of U-turns

Another day, another U-turn from Keir Starmer. Or to be precise, two new U-turns from the Labour leader before midday. Appearing on BBC1’s Laura Kuenssberg show this morning, Starmer tried to make clear his support for the UK military strikes on the Houthis after Sunak sanctioned action on Thursday. However, the part of the interview that has grabbed the most attention relates to two pledges he made during his campaign to be Labour leader. Asked about his plans for a Prevention of Military Intervention Act which would mean military action could only be taken if ‘you got the consent of the Commons’, Starmer decided to water down his pledge. He

John Keiger John Keiger

France is tiring of Macron’s gimmicks

President Emmanuel Macron and his freshly installed Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, appointed a new French cabinet this week. It is little more than a reshuffle – and unlikely to lead to sunlit uplands for Macron’s beleaguered presidency. Of particular significance are the two centre-right ministers whose appointment testifies to the continuing rightward drift of the Macronist project in search of that elusive parliamentary working majority. At the same time, and despite all denials, policy is also being drawn rightwards towards the agenda set by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s Rassemblement National on immigration, crime and policing. But the desired effects of the fresh cabinet are already proving vain (as I wrote earlier this

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

‘I still need to live’: Christian preacher Hatun Tash on the plot to kill her

When Hatun Tash went missing before Christmas her friends and family had good reason to be worried. In recent years, Tash has moved house dozens of times and been repeatedly warned by police about threats to her safety. She has been stabbed and wrongly arrested. Tash has been harassed on the street and followed by strange men outside her home.  Tash, who is 41, has been targeted because she is a Christian preacher who used to be a Muslim. Last week, an Islamist terrorist who tried to buy a gun to kill her had his jail sentence increased. Edward Little, a 22-year-old Muslim extremist from Brighton, will now spend at

Louise Perry

Britain is soft on crime

I’m not actually a journalist, although I’m often described as such. Along with all the other critics, polemicists, and columnists, I should more accurately be described as a ‘commentator’, since my job is to sit around and opine.  Real journalists do exist, but they are a dying breed. When newspapers and magazines started to move online at the beginning of this century, it was discovered that the public weren’t very interested in journalism. Outlets realised that it was the commentary that actually attracted clicks, along with porn and funny cat videos, and so the commentators were rewarded while many of the journalists lost their jobs.  Over the last two decades,

Phillips O'Brien

Does Rishi Sunak care about Ukraine?

I’m told that these days you can still buy pastries which look like Boris Johnson, or drink beers with Boris Johnson’s face on the label, in Kyiv. There is even a Boris Johnson street somewhere in southern Ukraine. Though it has been described as ‘nondescript’ it’s still a sign that Britain’s early support for Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, lives on in the imagination of many Ukrainians.     The tragedy is that those with the greatest ‘imagination’ about the subject are probably in the UK itself.    For all the triumphalism, back-slapping and self-congratulation, the UK is one of the least generous supporters of Ukraine

Michael Martins

When will Kamala Harris come clean?

The world has changed since Kamala Harris ran for president in 2019. The US has withdrawn from Afghanistan (a decision she supported), war rages in Ukraine (as western funding and materiel commitments face domestic opposition in the United States and the EU), and tensions remain high in the Middle East as conflict continues in Israel/Palestine, catalysed by Hamas’ attack on 7 October.  But for all the attention paid to the US presidential contest (set to have its first caucus vote next week in Iowa), and its implications for American foreign policy, little has been paid to vice-president Harris’ foreign policy ambitions. Given how much power the White House has to

Zoe Strimpel

How Hamas radicalised Israel’s liberals

I have visited Israel three times in the past year. The first trip was in the spring, just as the anti-government protests – triggered by Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to control the Supreme Court – were beginning. The day before we travelled, protestors forced Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport to close, and a general strike was announced. Every Saturday night, out went the protestors – mostly liberal and secular, but not entirely, so widespread is frustration with the government. ‘You could not be seen sitting and drinking wine on a Saturday night’, Moran Alon, the owner of the Nilus bar in Tel Aviv told me. ‘People would wonder: why aren’t you at

Fred Sculthorp

Why France can’t save us

From an early age, my grandparents tried to save me the pitfalls of a lower middle class English existence by initiating me into the joie de vivre of France. Across the channel I would be ferried, left to the continental sophistication in a Calais bistro some 20 minutes from the ferry terminal. There I would watch my grandfather scoff a bowl of moules and cheap rose and flirt with the waitress. My grandma would beam upon the scene. This was the first of many escapades to the continent, a saving grace for the mediocrity and dullness that stalks the English petit bourgeoisie.  We might like to joke about invading our

Saturday

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Taiwan’s voters defy Beijing

Taiwan’s voters have defied Beijing’s threats and intimidation and elected as president the most independence-minded of the candidates for the job. After a typically boisterous election, Lai Ching-te of the China-sceptic Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) declared victory Saturday evening, having received just over 40 per cent of the vote in Taiwan’s first-past-the-post system. ‘We’ve written a new page for Taiwan’s history of democracy,’ he told reporters, after winning by a bigger margin than expected. Hou Yu-ih from the more China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) came second with 33.4 per cent, while Ko Wen-je of the populist Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) received 26.4 per cent. There was no immediate reaction on Saturday from Beijing, which had denounced Lai, 64, as a dangerous separatist and ‘a troublemaker through and through’. The Chinese Communist party

James Price

In defence of Brewdog

Brewdog, the Scotland-based brewery that has exploded into an international business in the last 15 years, is never far from the headlines. It held a competition to brew the world’s strongest beer and created another named Speedball after the drug cocktail of cocaine and heroin. The company has been happy to not so much court controversy as to seek it out.  Playing to the gallery is always a high-risk approach. Take, for example, Brewdog’s opposition to the World Cup being hosted in Qatar in late 2022. The beer company promised that various profits would go to human-rights charities but was criticised when it transpired that they were selling their produce in Doha.

James Heale James Heale

Why few voters like Sunak

14 min listen

New polling from JL Partners shows how Rishi Sunak has changed, in the eyes of the public. They found that while Sunak was initially seen as a direct ‘breath of fresh air’, he is now frequently described as ‘out of touch’, ‘spineless’ and ‘false’. To discuss what went wrong for the PM, James Heale and Katy Balls are joined by James Johnson, the co-founder of JL Partners.

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

There’s another dodgy data scandal brewing

The government is reeling from the Post Office Horizon scandal. ‘Lessons must be learnt’, goes the cry around Westminster. But a computer scandal with striking similarity to the bugs in the Horizon system has been brewing under the Department for Work and Pension and HMRC’s noses for over a decade.  When Universal Credit was introduced to reform and modernise the benefits system in 2013 it needed a data system to drive it. HMRC came up with the solution. The taxman billed its new ‘Real Time Information’ system as the ‘biggest change’ to the tax system since PAYE began in 1944. Employers were mandated to report their worker’s pay every time

Daniel DePetris

How the Houthis can frustrate the West

On Thursday, the United States and the United Kingdom launched two rounds of strikes against 72 Houthi targets in Yemen – a turn of events that is unsurprising given the joint statement issued to the Houthis a week prior, which read like an ultimatum. The Houthis have attacked civilian vessels in the Red Sea 27 times since 19 November, most recently less than 24 hours before the American and British bombs started falling. John Kirby, Joe Biden’s national security spokesman, told reporters a day later on Air Force One that ‘valid, legitimate military targets’ were struck and that Washington would do what is necessary if the Houthis continued on their present course.  This isn’t