Politics

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

Sunday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Net zero has doomed Europe’s car industry

The decision of the European Commission to delay, for three years, tariffs on car exports between Britain and the EU is the harbinger of a more constructive relationship between the two. But is it going to save the European car industry? Probably not. It is net zero targets, not Brexit, which are condemning mass-market car production in Europe to possible extinction. Until this week’s decision, car manufacturers faced a cliff edge. Unless they could show that at least 45 per cent of a vehicle, by value, had been made in Europe, that vehicle would face a 10 per cent tariff if exported from Britain to the EU or vice versa. What might have

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Tory plotters sink Sunak?

After months of tedium, Sunday newsrooms everywhere rejoiced at Robert Jenrick’s resignation on Wednesday night. Finally, a return to the greatest hits: Tory splits and fevered speculation of a leadership contest. Leading the way is the Mail on Sunday which brings news of yet another food-themed conspiracy. Boris Johnson saw off the ‘pork pie plot’ but Rishi Sunak is reportedly facing the ‘pasta plotters’ who are ‘cooking up a scheme’ to oust him at a Covent Garden Italian eaterie. Penne Mordaunt for leader, anyone? The paper declares tonight that a ‘determined cabal of MPs and political strategists’ have been meeting at the legendary Giovanni’s restaurant, a stone’s throw away from

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The SNP should have listened to Kate Forbes

Kate Forbes has called on the Scottish Government to accept Friday’s judgment on its controversial gender legislation. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill introduces ‘self-identification’, an approach which removes medical experts and other safeguards from the process, and lowers the age at which a person can change their legal sex to 16. It was passed overwhelmingly by the Scottish Parliament last December but blocked from becoming law by Scottish Secretary Alister Jack under a never-before-used power contained in the Scotland Act. Jack had received legal advice that the legislation would not only affect Scotland but equalities law across the UK. The SNP-Green Holyrood government petitioned for judicial review and yesterday the

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Naga Munchetty’s X-rated jibe at Boris

Pity the poor staff and stars of Have I Got News For You. Having propelled Boris Johnson to fame in the early noughties, HIGNFY has spent much of the past three years desperately trying to rectify its mistake. The likes of Carol Vorderman or Clive Myrie are among those who have taken pops at the former premier, who seems to be a particular target of the show’s ire. Further proof of this was offered on Friday when Naga Munchetty made an X-rated dig about the onetime Tory leader. The BBC Breakfast star – who has previously had her own brush with the Corporation’s censors – cited evidence heard by the Covid Inquiry, quoting one news

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MSP lodges Taylor Swift motion

They say that politics is showbiz for ugly people. And up in Holyrood they’re doing little to dispel that impression with the latest initiative put forward by Labour MSP Monica Lennon. She’s using a parliamentary motion to raise awareness of an important issue. What is it? Scotland’s tanking education ratings? The ever-spiralling problem of drug deaths? No, it’s a hagiographic paean to, er, Taylor Swift. What a good use of time… Hailing the pop sensation on Twitter, the self-professed Swiftie posted her motion, requesting that: ‘Parliament congratulates Taylor Swift on being named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023’ and ‘acknowledges that the singer-songwriter has spoken with pride about

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

The US Senate is playing into Putin’s hands

The news this week that Republicans in the US Senate had voted together to block a supplemental funding bill that included provision for $61 billion for Ukraine was greeted with predictable dismay in Kyiv and glee in Moscow. Ostensibly this was a bid to force the White House into prioritising more spending on securing the Mexican border. However it also reflects a real sense on the part of some within the GOP that the United States is either throwing good money after bad in maintaining support for the conflict, or continuing to subsidise a backsliding Europe that really ought to be taking the lead on this crisis. After all, while

James Heale James Heale

Do the Tories have a death wish?

13 min listen

Nick Robinson asked Suella Braverman on the Today programme this week whether the Tories had a death wish. She said no. But why is the party, when it’s doing so badly in the polls, fighting among itself? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls ands Craig Oliver, former director of communications in No. 10.

Steerpike Steerpike

Jenrick takes aim at Rishi’s Rwanda fix

After three days of speculation, Robert Jenrick has finally broken cover. In this morning’s Daily Telegraph he sets out in an 1,800-word article, the reasons why he resigned from government on Wednesday, why he thinks the Rwanda Bill will fail and what his broader concerns are about high levels of migration. On Sunak’s flagship legislation, Jenrick expresses doubt that ministers will really use powers to ignore Strasbourg interim measures grounding flights. He writes that ‘the new Bill replicates the provisions under the section 55 of the Illegal Migration Act, which enables ministers to use their “discretion”, but in practice I know the instances this will be used is vanishingly rare,

James Heale James Heale

James Heale, Michael Simmons and Mary Wakefield

18 min listen

This week: James Heale reads his politics column on Sunak’s migration minefield (00:55), Michael Simmons says that Scotland’s ‘progressive’ teaching methods have badly backfired (05:53), and Mary Wakefield asks: why can’t I pray in Westminster Abbey? (11:40) Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Jawad Iqbal

Joe Biden is all at sea on Israel’s war in Gaza

No amount of presidential bluster or White House spin can disguise the fact that the Biden administration appears increasingly clueless about what to do about the war in Gaza. Having tied US policy to Israel’s war aims – specifically the destruction of Hamas – US president Joe Biden now finds himself in a tight spot as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise. It is not entirely his fault: backing Israel – both militarily and  politically – is  a longstanding pillar of US Middle East policy, regardless of which political party is in power. Biden was merely reaffirming this when he stood behind Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ in the wake

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Brighton says ‘no’ to Eddie Izzard

‘If there’s one thing Eddie Izzard can’t be faulted on, it’s enthusiasm,’ Steerpike opined this week on the news that the comedian and actor, who also self-identifies as Suzy, is standing to become the Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion – only a year after trying, and failing, to do so in Sheffield Central. There’s been a few raised eyebrows in my adopted hometown of Brighton & Hove (so good they named it twice) about the fact that Her Ladyship (I’m not going to call Izzard Her, but I don’t mind going that extra mile, as befits such an expensively-educated type) has promised grandly to make Brighton their ‘main home’ –

Edward Howell

Why Kim Jong-un keeps crying

Crying in public is something we tend to associate with the North Korean people rather than their rulers ­– who are often described as having a near god-like status. Who can forget, following the death of Kim Jong-il in 2011, how the streets of Pyongyang were lined with weeping mourners? So perhaps it was surprising to see Kim Jong-un crying in public this week, in a televised announcement to the mothers of North Korea. But while this may seem perplexing, the Supreme Leader’s message was as clear as ever: that loyalty to the Kim regime is paramount. Kim was speaking at North Korea’s National Conference of Mothers. As this week’s meeting

Daniel Rey

What Hugo Chávez failed to understand about Karl Marx

It’s 25 years this week since Hugo Chávez – an inspiration for leftwingers like Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn – was elected president of Venezuela. Chávez may not be the person primarily responsible for his country’s descent into dictatorship, anarchy and humanitarian disaster (that would be his hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro) but the foundation was laid by his unrestrained populism.  That populism had two pillars: socialism and nationalism. Chávez claimed inspiration from Karl Marx and, particularly, from the Venezuelan independence hero Simón Bolívar. During his 14 years in power, Chávez tried to combine these two influences to create a socially equal and sovereign Venezuela. He called his project ‘Bolivarian Socialism’.

Friday

Matthew Goodwin

How mass immigration is worsening the housing crisis

Sometimes, what matters in politics is how one issue merges with another to produce an explosive reaction. In the 2010s, it was the fusion of immigration with the European Union which collided to pave the way for Nigel Farage, Brexit, and then Boris Johnson, dramatically expanding the amount of space for these populist revolts. But what about the years ahead? The 2020s and the 2030s will likely see immigration become steadily linked with a very different issue – housing – in a way that will produce a similarly explosive result. The blunt reality is that millions of ordinary people up and down Britain are utterly fed-up with how immigration is

Steerpike Steerpike

Starmer caught in Thatcher U-turn

Stop the presses: Starmer Chameleon has U-turned once again. In predictable fashion, he last night sought to row back on his praise for Margaret Thatcher less than a week after he hailed her ‘natural entrepreneurialism’ in the Sunday Telegraph. In a speech which justified his critics’ claims that he changes his rhetoric to match his auspices, Starmer told a Scottish Labour gala dinner in Glasgow: She did terrible things, particularly here in Scotland which everybody in this room, myself included, profoundly disagrees with. Trying to square this week’s views with last weekend’s column, Starmer pleaded that ‘the point I was trying to make…is that there are some political leaders who

Iain Macwhirter

It’s time for Humza Yousaf to end this gender bill farce

The first minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, has a painful choice following his latest defeat in the Court of Session today over the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. Yousaf had challenged the UK government’s use of Section 35 to block the gender bill because it could undermine UK-wide protections for women. This futile exercise has already cost £230,000 in costs, and public patience is wearing thin on a bill that is opposed by two out of three voters in Scotland Now either Yousaf perseveres with this profoundly unpopular legislation on Self-ID for trans people, or he abandons his coalition arrangement with the Scottish Green party. Under the terms of the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is terrorism really a mental health problem?

When news first broke of the terrorist attack last Saturday in Paris, the French government rushed out a statement describing the suspect in custody as a French citizen born in France. His name was given as Armand R.   More details gradually emerged and the picture painted of the man accused of stabbing to death a German tourist was what every western government dreads – that of a man who bit the hand that fed him. It is a story not too dissimilar to that of Salman Abedi, who detonated a bomb at the Manchester Arena in 2017, killing himself and 22 others. Abedi was born in Manchester to Libyan parents who

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: SNP MSP’s bizarre poem riff

Back up to Holyrood, where the nationalists never fail to entertain. To cover up for the absence of any real policy delivery by her party, SNP MSP Kaukab Stewart has decided to, er, rap. The Glasgow MSP was speaking in the Chamber yesterday evening about an amendment made to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Bill. She told an unenthusiastic audience that ‘once a teacher, always a teacher’ before launching into a poem she had ‘penned and dedicated’ to the children listening. Mr S hates to burst the SNP’s bubble of self-delusion but he imagines children across Scotland have a number of things they’d rather do than,

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is Rishi’s Rwanda Bill doomed?

10 min listen

Rishi Sunak is stuck in a migration quagmire and will be spending the weekend drumming up support from MPs ahead of the vote on his amended Rwanda bill on Tuesday. He will be hoping for a Christmas miracle in the form of support from both One Nation MPs and those on the right of the party. Will Tuesday’s vote be a de facto confidence vote in the prime minister?  Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale. 

Steerpike Steerpike

Prince Harry loses (again)

Good old Prince Harry has done it once again. In spite of all his strenuous efforts to avoid press intrusion, the renegade royal can’t stop making the headlines. The prince this morning lost his bid to have the Mail on Sunday (MoS) publisher’s defence to his libel claim thrown out of the courts. Lawyers for Associated Newspapers (ANL) slammed Harry’s case, saying it was ‘wholly without merit’ and ‘built on sand’. Ouch. The Duke of Sussex is suing ANL over an article published in 2022 on his legal challenge against the Home Office after his security arrangements were changed. Harry’s legal team have called the piece an ‘attack on his