Politics

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

Saturday

17 Feb 2024

If Donald Trump is re-elected, thank Letitia James

‘Donald Trump may have authored the Art of the Deal,’ said the New York Attorney General Letitia James, doing her best resolute voice. ‘But he perfected the art of the steal.’ There speaks the voice of American justice: biased, politicised, odiously trite. ‘Today, we proved that no one is above the law,’ said James, which is what every Trump prosecutor has said, over and over, for years now. ‘No matter how rich, powerful, or politically connected you are, everyone must play by the same rules.’ Despite all the strong words and massive fines, Trump’s candidacy is growing in strength That’s garbage and everybody knows it. The rules don’t apply to

Cindy Yu

Do accents still matter in politics?

14 min listen

The new MP for Kingswood has been under fire for apparently changing his accent over the course of his political career. Does this matter? And if so, what does this tell us about British politics today? Cindy Yu talks to James Heale and author and former cabinet minister, Nadine Dorries. Produced by Cindy Yu and Patrick Gibbons.

Theo Hobson

Why won’t Justin Welby call out Russia’s Patriarch Kirill?

Justin Welby has just visited Ukraine. While there he spoke clearly against the false religion that underlies Russia’s ideology, and called Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox leader, a heretic, a war-criminal and a perverter of the Christian gospel. Alas, only the first sentence is true. Welby has never, as far I can see, called out his Russian counterpart. He doesn’t want to be undiplomatic, I suppose. True, Welby has condemned the invasion in clear terms; almost two years ago he was quick to call it ‘an act of great evil’. He then had a video call with Kirill (with Pope Francis also on the line) where he called the war

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump ordered to pay $350 million in fraud case

Donald Trump may be spending much of his time complaining that Nato members aren’t paying their bills, but he has been compiling his own. The latest is a whopping $350 million (£278 million) judgment courtesy of Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron, who came down with a decisive thud on Trump’s business dealings in his civil fraud trial. Engoron not only demanded that Trump cough up the $350 million, but also banned him from any business activities in New York over the next three years. Eric and Don Jr. got dinged for $4 million (£3.2 million) each. Donald Sr. plans to appeal the ruling. But he has thirty days to post a

Nick Cohen

Muslims won’t be fooled by George Galloway any more

It is a measure of how conspiracy theories have triumphed in the darkest corners of the left that, when the Labour candidate for Rochdale started banging on about Jews, his rivals in the George Galloway campaign thought he was making a smart political move. Azhar Ali had been taped putting forward two anti-Jewish fantasies. In these paranoid circumstances, Galloway and his supporters think his victory is inevitable First, he declared that the Israeli state had allowed Hamas to massacre Jews. Ali was not quite engaged in the modern equivalent of holocaust denial – that would have meant pretending the massacres never happened. Instead, Israel was meant to have ‘deliberately’ permitted the mass murder,

Nigel Jones

David Cameron and the long history of the posh Arabist

Anyone with a smattering of knowledge of Britain’s troubled history in the Middle East will be unsurprised by Lord Cameron’s increasingly pro-Palestinian pronouncements on the Gaza war. Twice in recent days Cameron has called on Israel to ‘pause’ its offensive against Hamas in Gaza, and he says he has personally challenged the Israeli government and urged it to abide by humanitarian law. He has also reiterated Britain’s support for a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem and the endless feud between Israel and her implacable Arab enemies. Ever since T.E. Lawrence went around Paris in flowing Bedouin robes putting the case for a united Arab nation to the peacemakers of

Mark Galeotti

What Tucker Carlson gets wrong about Russia

‘I have seen the Future and it works,’ proclaimed leftist American journalist Lincoln Steffens after visiting Bolshevik Russia in 1919. By then, of course, the Cheka, or All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption, was already summarily executing presumed enemies of the people in droves. Now, conservative pundit Tucker Carlson is admiring Vladimir Putin’s Russia with equivalent admiration, but a rather different agenda. Fresh off his fawning interview with Putin, in a series of video shorts, Carlson has marvelled at the Moscow metro, rated the fare at Vkusno – i tochka (‘tasty – and that’s it’), the chain that replaced McDonalds, as just as good, and expressed performative shock at the

Gavin Mortimer

France’s anti-democratic streak

For the past week the airwaves in France have eulogised Robert Badinter, a name unfamiliar to many outside the Republic. He was the Justice Minister under François Mitterrand and the man who oversaw the abolition of the death penalty in 1981. On Wednesday Emmanuel Macron presided over what was billed as a national act of remembrance. Badinter, who died aged 95 last week, will be laid to rest in the Panthéon alongside the other heroes of the Republic. What most of the eulogies omitted was the fact that Badinter – universally respected as a man of conviction and humanity – abolished the death penalty against the wishes of the majority.

Friday

16 Feb 2024

Steerpike

Scottish Labour leader decries flip-flopping

Irony alert up in Scotland. Conference season is upon us again, with Anas Sarwar’s Labour party hosting their three-day soiree in Glasgow. It’s significantly busier — and bigger — than last year’s event, with one veteran declaring to Mr S: ‘This looks like a party preparing to win an election.’ And it was in that spirit that Sarwar gave his keynote speech this afternoon, with the Scottish Labour leader taking aim at the SNP’s recent U-turns. He told the party faithful: ‘It’s hard to keep track of their strategy. First it was “the general election will be a defacto referendum”. Then they scrapped the de facto referendum. Then it was

Freddy Gray

What do Republicans think of Lord Cameron?

30 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Americano regular Jacob Heilbrunn about Lord Cameron’s recent visit to DC, where he persuaded Congress to pass a bill sending aid to Ukraine. Jacob and Freddy also discuss why Jacob thinks Biden’s mental capacity is over exaggerated, and what Nato could look like under Trump, and the latest on his charges.

John Curtice

It gets worse and worse for Rishi Sunak

Sixteen months ago Rishi Sunak was installed as Conservative leader and prime minister in the hope that he would be able to turn his party’s fortunes around in the wake of the damage inflicted on the party’s popularity by Liz Truss’ ‘fiscal event’. However, Thursday’s by-elections confirm the message of the polls that Mr Sunak has made little or no progress in bringing that hope to fruition. True, at 21 points the fall in Conservative support in Kingswood since 2019 was less than the drops in the three by-elections the party lost to Labour last year in Mid-Bedfordshire, Selby and Tamworth. But it was still no better than the drop

Sergey Radchenko

Hope for Russia has died with Navalny

It was brave. It was foolhardy. It was almost unbelievable. After his near-fatal poisoning by the Russian Federal Security Service, Alexey Navalny returned to Russia. He was taken away as he disembarked from the plane in Moscow, and thrown into prison on a made-up pretext. After three years of torture, Navalny has been done away with. The Russian prison authorities have reported his death from an unspecified cause. Putin’s regime has murdered another opposition leader, and not just any. Navalny, like no one else in Russia, stood for the unlikely promise of change. His charisma, his humour, his clarity of vision, and, above all, his awe-inspiring disdain for Putin’s gangster

Owen Matthews

The tragedy of Alexei Navalny

I knew and greatly respected Alexei Navalny. The news (as yet not independently confirmed) that he died in prison came today as a physical blow – sickening, but at the same time tragically unsurprising. Navalny’s passion, his intelligence and his refusal to make compromises with the Putin regime made him a colossus in a world of opposition politicians filled with moral pygmies. The Soviet Communist party once claimed to be the ‘intelligence, the honour and the conscience’ of the Russian people. But that title properly belongs to Navalny, whose life and career were living proof that Putin had not yet entirely extinguished Russians’ spirit of freedom and defiance, even in

Lisa Haseldine

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny dies in prison

Just over three years after he was imprisoned in Russia, the Putin critic Alexei Navalny has died. The news was announced by the local administration of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service shortly before 2:30 p.m. Moscow time. In a statement, the prison service said: ‘In correctional colony No. 3 the convict A.A.Navalny fell ill after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness. All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out, but did not yield positive results. Emergency doctors confirmed the death of the convict. The causes of death are being established.’ It was not stated when Navalny is reported to have died. Navalny’s team say they have yet to receive any official

John Curtice

Labour triumphs in by-election brace

12 min listen

Labour has the won two by-elections in Wellingborough and Kingswood, overturning big Conservative majorities in the process. Party chairman Richard Holden has brushed the results off as typical midterm by-elections where voters what to give the government a kicking. Does this argument stack up? And what can Reform take from the results? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Heale and pollster John Curtice.

Svitlana Morenets

Will the Ukrainian army retreat from Avdiivka?

The battle for Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast is a bloodbath. The city, which is also called the ‘gateway to Donetsk’, is semi-surrounded. Some 50,000 Russian troops are trying to advance from three sides while they keep the main supply route into the city under artillery fire. At least 15 per cent of Avdiivka has been captured – and battles are being fought in urban areas. ‘We are forced to fight at 360 degrees against more and more brigades that the enemy is bringing in,’ said Andriy Biletskyi, commander of the 3rd Assault Brigade, which was deployed to rescue Avdiivka last week. Russia has sufficient manpower and artillery superiority, so its

Steerpike

Peter Bone’s partner vows to stand again

She may have lost the Wellingborough by-election by more than 6,000 votes but Tory candidate Helen Harrison is determined to show there’s no dampening her quest to become an MP. Exiting the vote count after the by-election results were announced, Harrison declared she would ‘absolutely’ run again and stand at the general election. Pressed by journalists on why she thought she didn’t win this time, Harrison acknowledged that ‘I think that Reform is a bit of a threat to us Conservatives’ but deflected the question when asked if she thought Richard Tice’s party was the reason she lost, saying ‘there are probably lots of different issues as to why I

Patrick O’Flynn

The Tories should be worried about Reform

And with one bound he was free. In fact let’s make that two. A pair of whopping by-election wins in seats the Tories held at the last general election with five-figure majorities have brought to a close a torrid fortnight for Labour leader Keir Starmer. His U-turn on green policy can now safely gather dust, or perhaps moss, in the public mind. The Rochdale anti-Semitism row is more serious. But Starmer reached the right position in the end and unless the Conservatives can exploit it by performing strongly in the Rochdale by-election at the end of the month (spoiler alert: they won’t) it will come to be seen as a

Katy Balls

The Justine Greening Edition

33 min listen

Justine Greening was born in Rotherham, the daughter of a steel worker and first in her family to go to university. Campaigning for the Conservatives, she won back a Tory stronghold from Labour in the 2005 general election becoming MP for Putney. She began politics in opposition, but became a Cabinet Secretary in David Cameron’s government, and remained there for Theresa May’s premiership as Education Secretary. Now having left Parliament, Justine is never far from politics – she founded the Social Mobility Pledge and now even runs her own podcast.

Nick Tyrone

After last night Sunak is heading for electoral wipeout

And so Keir Starmer’s bad week comes to an end, just like that. Labour has won two by-elections in a single night in seats that had Tory majorities of over 10,000 after the 2019 general election. The heat now returns to Rishi Sunak, as inevitably it was always going to. To be fair, no one expected the results of these by-elections to be any different. For that we should credit No. 10 with decent expectation management, if nothing else. In fact, let’s not credit No. 10 with anything else here: most of the way these by-elections were run looked shambolic from beginning to end. There are many things to pick