Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
21 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to journalist and author Niko Vorobyov who wrote Dopeworld: Undercover in the secret war on drugs. 90 years after Prohibition ended, what are some of the biggest misperception about that era? And what has been the legacy of repealing the 18th amendment?
Surprise! Surprise! Hunter Biden faced new charges on Thursday, after the Department of Justice accused him of failing to pay $1.4 million (£1.1 million) in taxes between 2016 and 2019, while living an extravagant lifestyle. According to the indictment, filed in California, Hunter faces three new felony and six misdemeanour tax offences which could see him face 17 years in jail if convicted. Meanwhile, Hunter’s ‘stonewall strategy’ continues. He told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that he won’t to comply with their subpoena for a closed-door deposition. Hunter’s refusal was delivered by his formidable attorney, Abbe Lowell. Lowell is smart, tough and relentless. He’s a ‘let’s fight’ litigator, replacing
34 min listen
Jacqui Smith was born in Malvern, where she joined the Labour party aged 16. After graduating from Oxford, Jacqui moved to London and worked briefly as a parliamentary researcher but trained to be a teacher and became head of economics. The temptation to electoral politics eventually pulled her back. Having failed the first time, Jacqui became the MP for Redditch in 1997 – labeled one of ‘Blair’s babes’. Within two years, Jacqui joined the government, and under Gordon Brown, she became the first female Home Secretary, a post she later described as a ’poisoned chalice’ to her successor. She resigned over a dispute related to parliamentary expenses, spending a few
39 min listen
In her cover piece for the magazine this week, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls writes that whilst Keir Starmer’s accession seems certain, his agenda is less so. She tries to piece together what a Labour government would look like and which areas they will chose to prioritise. Katy joins the podcast alongside Paul Mason, the journalist who is seeking a Labour seat at the next election. They debate: does Keir Starmer stack up? Also on the podcast: Journalist and scriptwriter Gareth Roberts writes in the magazine this week about the fading art of the pantomime dame and pleads with us to take the politics out of drag. He is joined by The
What does Boris Johnson want to come out of the Covid Inquiry? At the end of his second day of evidence today, the former prime minister claimed that it was social care reform and an investigation into how Covid originated. He told the room that in case he didn’t give evidence again (which he may well have to do as the inquiry is split into modules), he wanted to make an important point: I do think that when you come to the issues of health and social care are absolutely critical, and the government that I led was embarked on a big programme to try to bring them together. I
Rishi Sunak is pinning his hopes on emergency legislation, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, to ‘Stop the Boats’. But within hours of the Bill’s publication yesterday, immigration minister Robert Jenrick walked out. Last month, home secretary, Suella Braverman, was fired. To lose one minister may be regarded as misfortune, but to lose two means something is up. What is going on? At the heart of the attempt to ‘Stop the Boats’ lies a very simple problem. If this Bill is to succeed, it needs to correct every weakness that the Supreme Court identified when it rejected the government’s last attempt to legislate on this issue. Last month’s ruling was
That Russia’s security services have been targeting British politicians and other high-profile figures won’t come as a surprise. But the scale of the accusations levelled today at the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) by the British government is still shocking. GCHQ has said that, since 2015, Russia has carried out hundreds of hacks against MPs, journalists and civil servants. Former trade secretary Liam Fox and the ex head of MI6 Richard Dearlove are among the victims. British intelligence revealed a surprising amount of detail about the FSB unit responsible for this hacking activity. The group allegedly goes by the name ‘Star Blizzard’ and belongs to the FSB’s Centre 18. This
There is no getting around the death of Barbara Rymell. When I read the Telegraph’s story about this 91-year-old who died while care home staff struggled to speak English to a 999 operator, it sounded too tailored to anti-immigrant prejudices. Surely this was nothing more than sensationalist reporting. Then I read the Regulation 28 report issued to the Home Office and the Department for Health and Social Care. The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 requires coroners to report any circumstances which they believe could create ‘a risk of other deaths’. The report in the Rymell case, prepared by the senior coroner for Somerset Samantha Marsh, does indeed raise concerns about the English language skills of care home
And back to the SNP’s Scotland, which is not quite the land of milk and honey that the Nats would like to make out. It turns out that former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and the majority of her ministers refused to use government-issued mobile phones during her time in office. Cover-ups? Surely not! Government officials confirmed to the Times that the former first minister and her most senior colleagues used only personal devices to call or text workmates. It reports that, in fact, only a quarter of those ministers in post between February 2020 and January 2022 were recorded as having official phones. Interestingly, 26 of the 30 ministers currently
In 2019, France’s president Emmanuel Macron famously called Nato ‘braindead’. Think what you will about the health of the defence alliance, but it is increasingly the European Union, not Nato, that seems paralysed, unable to think more than just a step ahead. The EU has been trundling along in this state for some time now. On the European Commission’s recommendation, EU leaders are due to make a decision next week about opening accession negotiations with Ukraine. Yet, little groundwork has been laid to turn even this initial step into a success. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has already fired his opening salvo, refusing to even discuss the issue and threatening to derail
After the resignation of Robert Jenrick last night, Rishi Sunak sought to get on the front foot this morning with a press conference in No. 10. The Prime Minister cut a somewhat frustrated figure as he defended his new Rwanda legislation, insisting that it ‘blocks every single reason that has ever been used to prevent flights.’ ‘The only extremely narrow exception will be if you can prove with credible and compelling evidence that you specifically have a real and imminent risk of serious and irreversible harm’ Sunak told reporters. If the government face challenges from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, Sunak repeated that he would not allow
The SNP makes quite the fuss of its dedication to openness and transparency from political leaders. Voters deserve to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about those in power. And woe betide anyone who dares not to adhere to this principle. Take former prime minister, Boris Johnson, for example. During his time in office, the Scottish nationalists rarely stopped demanding he publish all manner of information. The SNP’s commitment to ‘full transparency’ and the public’s right to know is not, it turns out, absolute It was essential, claimed the SNP, that details of Johnson’s responses to a police questionnaire about lockdown-breaking parties be made public
Is the licence fee worth it? Mr Steerpike thinks it might be if Maryam Moshiri presents the news more often. The BBC news anchor was caught out this morning holding her middle finger up at the camera at the start of the hourly bulletin. Moshiri has since claimed that it was a ‘private joke with the team’: I was pretending to count down as the director was counting me down from 10-0.. including the fingers to show the number. So from 10 fingers held up to one. Oh dear. She may have more than a few disgruntled viewers after today’s programme, but there were some supportive comments at least. Specsavers
The post of Immigration Minister in 2023 has the potential to be as much of a poisoned chalice as the role of Brexit Secretary in 2018. Robert Jenrick’s departure last night created a difficult problem for No. 10. Anyone succeeding him would need to be unshakeable on immigration: a ‘sound as a pound’ right-winger, in the words of one Brexiteer. This morning we have our answer: Tom Pursglove, perhaps the most right-wing member left in Sunak’s government takes up the newly-created post of Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery. In a classic bit of Whitehall jiggery-pokery, Jenrick’s role has been split in two. Pursglove takes the legal brief while Michael
On Wednesday, the government finally published its promised ‘emergency legislation’, after the Supreme Court ruled in November that the Rwanda scheme was unlawful. The new legislation follows the agreement of a new treaty with Rwanda on Tuesday which aimed to ‘strengthen the UK-Rwanda Migration Partnership’ and deal with the serious problems identified by the Supreme Court. Rishi Sunak has made the small boat crossings into a totemic issue but it has now rather spun out of control. Some might argue that the main ‘emergency’ the legislation is really designed to address is a crisis in the Conservative party over the issue of migration. The new legislation may not have been
17 min listen
Kate Andrews speaks to James Heale and Katy Balls about Robert Jenrick’s resignation last night and whether this is another sign of Tory party implosion.
Where does the Tory party sit after Robert Jenrick’s resignation over the Prime Minister’s Rwanda policy? Jenrick’s decision to quit yesterday meant Rishi Sunak’s attempts to sell his Rwanda plan fell into disarray within an hour of the policy being revealed. No further resignations have followed yet, but the bigger problem for Sunak is what does the right of the party do now: will they refuse to support his Rwanda Bill? And if Sunak fails to change course, will this group of MPs decide they have no confidence in the Prime Minister? Suella Braverman gave a hint of the next steps this group are planning when she appeared on Radio
When he found out that a career-minded MP called Rishi Sunak had come out in favour of leaving the EU, David Cameron turned to George Osborne and declared: ‘We’ve lost the future of the party.’ Almost eight years later, Sunak should be turning to his own wing man – Oliver Dowden perhaps or even Cameron himself – and saying the same thing about the resignation of Robert Jenrick as immigration minister. Because Jenrick quitting over the Rwanda Bill not being strong enough is an equally telling moment. The 41-year-old Jenrick comes from the same well-mannered, centre-right Tory tradition as Sunak. He is in politics for the long haul and undoubtedly
Robert Jenrick resigned as immigration minister this evening over the government’s plan to amend the Rwanda scheme. Here is the Prime Minister’s response to Jenrick’s resignation letter: Thank you for your letter and your service in Government. Your hard work has helped us cut boat crossings by more than a third. You have strived to cut the asylum backlog and return hotels to their communities. Your resignation is disappointing given we both agreed on the ends, getting flights off to Rwanda so that we can stop the boats. I fear that your departure is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. It is our experience that gives us confidence
Rishi Sunak used his appearance before the 1922 committee this evening to tell MPs – once again – that the choice facing them was ‘unite or die’. He argued that the only choice facing the Tory party was to get behind his Rwanda ‘Plan B’ or to lose to Labour. Alas that message appears to have held little to no sway with his former ally Robert Jenrick, who has this evening resigned from government. After rumours swirled this evening, Jenrick has confirmed he has stepped down from his post stating: ‘I cannot continue in my position when I have such strong disagreements with the direction of the Government’s policy on