Politics

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

Thursday

Lucy Dunn

NHS waiting lists are still far too high

The NHS waiting list has fallen, although not by much. The number of patients waiting has fallen from 6.5 million to 6.44 million, while the number of ‘waits’ for procedures and treatments has fallen by just 60,000, from 7.77 million to 7.71 million. On the face of things, this sounds like good news: it is the first fall in the waiting list since November last year. But look a little closer and there isn’t all that much to celebrate. There are still half a million more waits now than at the start of the year.  Today’s numbers are bleak. A number of NHS targets are being missed: most concerningly, waits of

Katy Balls Katy Balls

‘I am working night and day’: Rishi Sunak on Jilly Cooper, immigration – and his plan for the next election

This Christmas, Rishi Sunak will be reading Tackle!, Jilly Cooper’s new bonkbuster. Cooper sent the Prime Minister a signed copy after she discovered – through The Spectator – that he is a fan. Tackle! is about an equestrian-turned-football manager who inspires a ragtag team to unexpected victory. ‘If you want to score, you’ve got to be a player,’ declares the cover. ‘It is literally on my bedside table,’ says Sunak when we meet in his office in 10 Downing Street. ‘This is the first year in a long time that I have actually read some fiction,’ he says. ‘I read these lovely books, which is good escapism for me.’ One

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Interest rates may start to fall – but not yet

The Bank of England has held interest rates at 5.25 per cent for the third consecutive time. This was the expected outcome of the Monetary Policy Committee’s latest vote, but it wasn’t unanimous. There were six MPC votes to hold rates but three to raise it to 5.5 per cent. No one voted to cut. This speaks to the biggest challenge the Bank faces right now: how to balance getting the inflation rate back to target without tipping the economy into recession. But markets expect the next movement to be downwards – so much so that mortgage rates are already falling in anticipation. The MPC today urges markets not to get ahead of themselves

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Brace yourselves for the Great American Election Freak-Out of 2024

‘If Trump wasn’t running,’ said Joe Biden last week, ‘I’m not sure I’d be running.’ That’s a curiously uninspiring remark for an American leader seeking re-election to make. Yet ever since 2019, Biden’s pitch for the presidency has been essentially negative: if you don’t support me, you’ll get him. The trouble for Joe is that, as we approach the start of another election year, it’s beginning to look as if he can’t stop Trump. Brace yourselves, then, for the Great Election Freak-Out of 2024. For Democrats, the numbers are alarming. Biden’s job-approval rating has just dipped below 40 per cent again; in December 2019, at the same stage in his

Quentin Letts

48 ways the Tories could win

Conservative strategists gawp at their end-of-year opinion-poll ratings like European space officials watching another Ariane rocket plop into the ocean off French Guiana. Fret not! To misquote Emperor Hirohito, electoral fortunes may have developed not necessarily to their advantage, but extinction could yet be averted by adopting the following measures:

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: resignations, wars and kangaroo courts

January The government stopped a Gender Recognition Bill passed by the Scottish parliament becoming law. Isla Bryson, now a transgender woman, was convicted of having raped two women; the 31-year-old was sent to a women’s prison, then transferred to one for men. A Met Police officer, David Carrick, aged 48, pleaded guilty to 24 charges of rape. Nadhim Zahawi was sacked as Conservative party chairman. Strikes by railway workers, Underground drivers, ambulance drivers, nurses and hospital doctors continued on and off all year. Ukraine struck a building in Donetsk housing Russian forces. A Russian missile destroyed a block of flats at Dnipro. Jacinda Ardern suddenly resigned as prime minister of New

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Hunter Biden’s MAGA attack won’t throw Republicans off the scent

Hunter Biden was lost and now he’s found. That was the subtext of the president’s prodigal son’s speech outside Congress yesterday. ‘For six years, I have been the target of the unrelenting Trump attack machine shouting ‘Where’s Hunter?’,’ Hunter Biden told reporters. ‘Well, here is my answer, I am here.’ If Hunter’s statement was meant to put the Republicans on the back foot, it did not work. House Republicans James Comer and Jim Jordan vowed instead to launch contempt of congress proceedings against Hunter. Hours later, the thin Republican majority in Congress voted to formalise its impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. The impeachment inquiry process, Republicans insist, will give Congress

Steerpike Steerpike

Another by-election looms for Rishi

Poor Rishi Sunak just can’t catch a break. Every time he tries to establish a new narrative, one of his MPs triggers a by-election that gets us talking about the same old Tory woes. Today it’s the turn of Blackpool backbencher Scott Benton. He was the MP caught on camera by the Times in April, allegedly boasting about lobbying ministers for cash to a gambling firm. Since then he has sat as an independent MP, pending an investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and subsequent approval by the Standards Committee. Today their verdict was published and it doesn’t make for happy reading. Benton is facing a 35-day suspension from

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Kemi Badenoch blasts Labour MP in gender spat

Kemi Badenoch isn’t exactly known for beating around the bush, and her spat with a Labour MP at this evening’s Women and Equalities Select Committee was no exception. After Kate Osborne accused the Business Secretary of using ‘inflammatory language’, and likening ‘children and young people coming out as trans to the spread of a disease’, Badenoch didn’t hesitate to hit back, saying: KB: I never said that. That is a lie. KO: Well… KB: That is a lie. And I think you should withdraw that statement. That is a lie. You are lying. You are lying. KO: I’m not lying to you… KB: You are. I have never used the word

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Thank God for Christmas, and a break from PMQs

Christmas at PMQs began with a call for the government to scrap its in-house astrology team.  Greg Smith, a Tory backbencher, said he was fed up with the Office of Budget Responsibility whose latest forecast ‘was £30 billion out.’ Smith wants ‘lower taxes’ and he suggested that ‘we need a better system of financial modelling.’ In other words the OBR’s staff should be confined to a maximum security care-home for incompetent economists. He’s got a point. The OBR’s latest predictions are that Christmas Day will fall ‘in late December’ and that ‘the present decade is likely to end by 2030.’ Mind you, the OBR were right when they foresaw that

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The ECHR has become a danger to Europe 

Rishi Sunak will never stop the boats, just as Giorgia Meloni won’t nor Emmanuel Macron, not that the president of France seems inclined to do so.   No president or prime minister will be able to take back control of their borders until, as O’Flynn states in today’s Coffee House, they leave the European Court of Human Rights. The Court, aided and abetted by its allies in individual countries, is now wilfully interfering with government policy. And in the process it is endangering the lives of Europeans.   You may remember an article written in these pages a week ago by Andrew Tettenborn, professor of law at Swansea Law School. It was titled ‘If

Steerpike Steerpike

Has Gary Lineker breached BBC social media rules?

Dear oh dear. Gary Lineker’s acerbic antics are coming back to bite him. The BBC’s incoming chairman Samir Shah has suggested that the football star did indeed breach the corporation’s social media guidelines this week, after the bullish Beeb pundit took to mocking Tory MPs on Twitter/X. The future chairman of the BBC told MPs at a select committee that he didn’t think it was ‘helpful’ that Lineker had signed an open letter calling to scrap the government’s Rwanda scheme: ‘It becomes another turn of the wheel of the story about Gary Lineker and the BBC.’ And who isn’t fed up with the Lineker show by now… Shah’s comments come

Joanna Williams

Why are MPs endorsing Stonewall’s rainbow laces campaign?

Our Members of Parliament are not short of stuff to do. There’s immigration – of the legal and illegal varieties – an economy on life support, post-lockdown problems with education, mental health and getting people back to work, as well as the NHS collapsing under the weight of its own waiting lists. Yet, remarkably, ten of our trusted representatives have found time amid their crushing schedules to become part of a charity’s marketing campaign. The Labour party features heavily, with Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Stella Creasy, Angela Eagle and several others putting in an appearance; Alison Thewliss and Kirsten Oswald from the SNP are game, and so, too, are a number of

Terry Barnes

Why is Australia turning its back on Israel?

In the days after the 7 October attack on Israel, Australia vowed to stand with Israel. It appears to have forgotten that pledge. When the United Nations General Assembly voted in October in favour of an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza, Australia abstained because the motion failed to explicitly mention, let alone condemn, Hamas. James Larsen, Australia’s representative to the UN, said he could not support the resolution because its failure to name the 7 October culprits meant it was ‘incomplete’. Last night, the UN General Assembly again voted resoundingly in favour of a ceasefire. This time, Australia abandoned its principles, broke with the United States and the United Kingdom, and

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why did Sunak sound so tetchy at PMQs?

The last Prime Minister’s Questions of the year always has a festive, pantomime tone to it. That doesn’t mean it is always a cheery, comfortable experience for a prime minister, though, and it wasn’t today. At least Rishi Sunak could come to the chamber with the knowledge that his Rwanda legislation had passed its first hurdle in the Commons, rather than on the back of an angry and sizeable revolt by Tory MPs. The PM received loud cheers from Conservative MPs as he stood up. He even cracked a joke about there being a ‘record number of families’ under the Conservatives – reference to the hilarious new mafia-style branding for

Steerpike Steerpike

Sunak’s popularity hits record low

It never rains but it pours. Every time poor Rishi Sunak seems to catch a break, bad news appears just around the corner. Less than 24 hours after the government won the Rwanda vote last night, the Prime Minister’s popularity has reached a record new low. Sunak is now as unpopular as his onetime-boss-turned-nemesis Boris Johnson. Talk about a comedown… Some 70 per cent of people have an unfavourable view of Sunak, new YouGov polling shows – a result which now matches the unfavourability rating of his party. Sunak’s net favorability score has dropped ten points since November to, er, minus 49. By comparison, Johnson’s was minus 46 immediately after

James Heale James Heale

Who will replace Mark Drakeford as first minister?

Mark Drakeford has announced this morning that he will stand down as Welsh Labour leader, triggering a leadership contest for a new first minister. The veteran politician pledged at the most recent Welsh elections in 2021 that he would step down mid-parliament. He has chosen to do so today on the fifth anniversary since he was sworn in as FM. Drakeford’s resignation follows growing pressure on him to announce his retirement plans. Welsh Labour is arguably Britain’s most successful electoral force, governing Cardiff Bay since the advent of Welsh devolution some 24 years ago. But in recent weeks, Drakeford has been the subject of some rare negative briefings in the

Matthew Lynn

Will Javier Milei’s ‘shock therapy’ work?

The Argentinian peso has been devalued by 50 per cent overnight. Controls on exports have been scrapped, and the country’s ministry of culture is to be closed down. The health, labour, social development and education departments are also facing the chop. Argentina’s president Javier Milei – who vowed to deliver economic ‘shock treatment’ in his first speech on Sunday after formally taking office – has started a radical overhaul of the economy and begun what is by far the most interesting experiment in economics in the world right now.  True, Milei may not have gone as far as some people might have expected. The plan to replace the peso completely

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: James Cleverly fumbles Rwanda victory lap

It was a good win last night for the Prime Minister and Home Secretary James Cleverly. The government managed to keep the number of Tory abstentions down in order to enable the Rwanda Bill to progress to its next stage. But on this morning’s media round, Cleverly has not been quite as fluent as last night’s whipping operation. On Good Morning Britain, Cleverly faced a barrage of questioning from Ed Balls — and struggled to hold his own, tripping over his words like nobody’s business. When asked for specifics on the bill, the Home Secretary appeared more than a little, er, discombobulated… Then came the turn of Sky News. But