Politics

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

Wednesday

Bernard Haykel

Saudi Arabia’s Israel dilemma

The war in Gaza presents a major challenge for Saudi Arabia. The Saudi leadership is trying to placate two different camps: its own population along with the publics of the Arab and Muslim worlds as well as the US administration and influential westerners. The former are horrified by the killings of Palestinians in Gaza whereas the latter want some acknowledgment of Israel’s right to self-defence. This effort to keep everyone happy was on full display over the past weekend at the joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that was held in Riyadh. At the event, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) gave

Nicholas Farrell

Could Britain learn from Italy’s migrant plan?

Italy has become the first European Union country to bite the bullet and set up a scheme to off-shore migrant asylum seekers to a country outside the bloc. Italy’s right-wing prime minister Giorgia Meloni says she hopes the scheme, signed off in Rome last week with Albania’s left-wing prime minister, Edi Rama, will become a model copied across the EU.  It is similar to the Tory government’s troubled Rwanda scheme, but more practical and less vulnerable to legal challenge. Italy will process asylum requests in Albania where it plans to send tens of thousands of migrants a year. Britain, meanwhile, plans to hand the task of deciding who gets asylum to Rwanda

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Suella Braverman hit Sunak where it hurts

Sacked ministers seldom have nice things to say about the boss but Suella Braverman’s letter to Rishi Sunak is a ferocious assault on the Prime Minister, his character and his style of leadership. If she’d taken a flamethrower to the man he’d have come away less severely burned. She claims they had a deal – a written agreement – that he would pursue certain policies in No. 10 in return for her backing him as leader following the Liz Truss debacle.  According to the former Home Secretary, Sunak undertook to cut legal migration by tightening the rules on international students and driving up work-visa salary thresholds; to legislate ‘notwithstanding clauses’ so that efforts to stop the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is the trade agreement with Florida a Brexit win?

A trade deal with the US has long been a holy grail for Brexiteers, not least because it is something that the EU has failed to achieve. Barack Obama told us we would have to go to the back of the queue, then Donald Trump told us we were at the front of the queue. Unfortunately, though, Trump wasn’t minded to serve anyone before being replaced by Joe Biden, who has shown a similar lack of interest in trade deals. Indeed, Biden has returned the US to an age of protectionism through his bizarrely-named Inflation Reduction Act, which offers grants and subsidies to green industries – so long as they

Katy Balls Katy Balls

‘Your plan is not working’: Suella Braverman goes on the attack

When Suella Braverman was sacked by Rishi Sunak on Monday morning, the departing Home Secretary promised to say more in ‘due course’. Well, just over 24 hours later, that time has come. This afternoon, Braverman has shared on social media a scathing resignation letter in which she suggests the Prime Minister needs to ‘change course urgently’: ‘In October of last year you were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good. It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself. Someone needs to be honest:

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Suella tells Rishi: ‘You have repeatedly failed to deliver’

15 min listen

When Suella Braverman was sacked on Monday she warned that she would have more to say in due course, and she has just released her resignation letter. It is predictably punchy, accusing the prime minister of backtracking on policy promises he made to her and especially on his commitment to stop the boats. Will Sunak come to regret casting Suella Braverman aside? Is this the start of a leadership bid? Cindy You speaks to Katy Balls and Paul Goodman.  Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson. 

Suella Braverman

Full text: Suella Braverman’s scathing resignation letter

Dear Prime Minister, Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave Government. While disappointing, this is for the best. It has been my privilege to serve as Home Secretary and deliver on what the British people have sent us to Westminster to do. I want to thank all of those civil servants, police, Border Force officers and security professionals with whom I have worked and whose dedication to public safety is exemplary. Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time I am proud of

Steerpike Steerpike

The SNP’s ludicrous by-election bill

Another day, another financial catastrophe for the SNP. This time it concerns the recent Rutherglen by-election, which saw the nationalists lose the Westminster seat to Labour in a humiliating defeat. But the by-election wasn’t the only embarrassing loss facing the Nats: their party bank balance took a hit too. It transpires that the SNP spent many thousands of pounds more on their campaign than their competitors. Talk about adding insult to injury… First Minister Humza Yousaf’s party spent £96,000 on their failed by-election campaign, which amounted to a staggering £14,000 more than Scottish Labour. ‘What were they spending their money on?’ laughed one Labour canvasser. ‘They were nowhere to be

Alexander Larman

Will Charles enjoy a birthday reconciliation with Harry?

Happy birthday, Your Majesty. The King turns 75 today but the celebrations will be muted: Charles is spending the day launching the Coronation Food Project, which is designed to deal with the pressing issue of food shortages throughout the country. He’ll also be hosting a reception for NHS nurses and midwives. For a monarch who has been accused of taking it easy (there was an extended summer break in Scotland), this represents a riposte to his critics. Charles is once again seeking to present himself as a dutiful, committed monarch, getting on with the business of ruling. Yet it is Charles’s private life – particularly his relationship with Prince Harry – that continues to excite most attention and

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Suella Braverman’s downfall is nothing to celebrate

Rishi Sunak’s decision to recall David Cameron from his shepherd’s hut has been hailed as a triumph by centrist dads. They’re convinced that axing nasty Suella Braverman shows that the grown-ups are back in charge. No . 10 insiders are pleased with themselves: one person working in Downing Street told the Sun that the PM’s phone was ‘inundated’ with texts from fellow world leaders welcoming the appointment. But come the next election, Sunak is in for a shock. The decision to axe Braverman marks the beginning of the end for the PM. Whatever the reason for the Home Secretary’s departure, most voters will see that she was forced out for speaking

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The shallow solidarity of saying ‘we’re all Jews’

Over 100,000 French citizens marched peacefully through their cities on Sunday. They did so to show their support for the country’s 500,000 Jews, a growing number of whom have been harassed physically and verbally since Hamas attacked Israel last month.  In the Mediterranean city of Nice many of the 3,000 demonstrators chanted ‘we’re all Jews’, a facile and frankly offensive refrain. It’s become a habit in recent years to virtue signal one’s solidarity with victims of terrorism or religious persecution: not only do we share your pain but also your identity. One suspects that had those non-Jewish demonstrators in Nice been confronted on their way home by a group of Hamas

Jim Lawley

The Catalan volte face that has disgusted Spain

This weekend saw protests across Spain after the acting prime minister, socialist Pedro Sánchez, agreed to a general amnesty for Catalan separatists in return for parliamentary votes to enable him to stay in power. The amnesty will benefit hundreds of separatists facing fines or imprisonment for their involvement in the illegal referendum on independence for Catalonia in 2017, the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence and the concomitant street violence. There have been nine consecutive nights of often violent protest outside the socialist party’s headquarters in Madrid. But Sunday’s demonstrations, convened by the conservative opposition, held at noon in over 50 Spanish cities and attended by hundreds of thousands, were peaceful. At the

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The UK labour market is beginning to cool

Slowly but surely, the labour market in the UK appears to be cooling down. Data from the Office for National Statistics this morning shows the number of job vacancies across the economy fell by another 58,000 between July to September, taking the total figure to an estimated 957,000. This is still far above pre-pandemic levels, but the number has been dropping constantly, and is down again for a sixteenth consecutive period. Meanwhile, both the UK’s unemployment figure and inactivity figure have remained ‘largely unchanged on the quarter’: sitting at 4.2 and 20.9 per cent, respectively. This bodes well for an economy that is trying to dodge the dreaded label of ‘stagflation’. The UK

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin isn’t afraid of Cameron

Considering the obsession Russia has with Britain as the source of all its woes, it is perhaps surprising how David Cameron’s return to politics is being taken. Or rather, how little Moscow thinks it matters. After all, there is a flatteringly pervasive sense that while the United States is the main threat to Russia, Britain is more than just its sidekick. Instead, if Washington has the resources, London has the low cunning. Time and again, the Kremlin claims to see MI6 or the Foreign Office or some other arm of Perfidious Albion behind its reversals. Even the recent allegations that a Ukrainian officer masterminded the bombing of its Nord Stream

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Corbyn refuses 15 times to call Hamas a ‘terror group’

Should Hamas stay in power following the 7 October atrocity on Israel? Should the group’s fighters be called terrorists? Two questions that are simple to answer but not, it seems, for Jeremy Corbyn. The former Labour leader refused 15 times to label Hamas a ‘terror group’ in a testy interview last night with Piers Morgan. While Corbyn said of Hamas ‘everyone knows what they are’, he refused repeatedly to use the ‘t’ word to describe the group that murdered 1,400 Israelis:

Nigel Jones

Nigel Farage’s ‘I’m A Celebrity’ appearance could haunt him

After days of speculation, Nigel Farage has finally confirmed that he has accepted ITV’s invitation to go into the jungle and join Ant and Dec and eleven fellow contestants on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!. It’s a decision he may come to regret. Farage says he has been stoutly resisting offers to appear on the show since 2016, but has at last succumbed to their blandishments, chiefly because of the huge fee offered – reported to be up to £1.5 million. But this isn’t just about money: like many politicians, Farage is a showman and he says the show will give him a chance to ‘connect’ with the

Sasha Lensky

Why Putin doesn’t want to negotiate

Discussion of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia has until recently, among most Western governments, been considered something of a no-go area and a sign of wilting faith. Yet with hopes vanishing that any counter offensive will bring a decisive change in the war, and another, headline-monopolising conflict breaking out in Gaza, this taboo in the West looks set to be broken. During a recent prank call to which she fell victim, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni probably spoke for many when she said there was ‘a lot of fatigue’ over Ukraine and that she herself had some ideas for finding ‘a way out’. Perhaps less remarkably, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban

Jawad Iqbal

David Cameron’s welcome return

British politics is a brutal and unsentimental place when it comes to departing prime ministers. After a few valedictory remarks at the despatch box and the odd tearful farewell, the PM heads off to Buckingham Palace to tender their formal resignation to the monarch. And that’s that – apart from the customary arrival of the Downing Street removal vans to clear away their belongings. It is an unspoken rule that no one, most of all their successors in Downing Street, is particularly keen to welcome a former prime minister back to frontline politics. That is why David Cameron’s return to government as Foreign Secretary is such a shock. It is

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Liz Truss lives on: a look at her Growth Commission’s ideas

Liz Truss may be long gone, but one fragment of her premiership still remains: the Growth Commission she set up to advise on her policy for ‘growth, growth, growth’. The think tank, made up of British, US and Japanese economists and not to be confused with a body of the same name set up by the World Bank, today delivers its ‘growth budget’ – which it claims would boost GDP by a cumulative 23 per cent over the next decade, putting an extra £11,000 in our pockets (or £26,000 per household) by 2043. Economic modelling is best taken with a Siberian mine’s worth of salt – the only certainty is

Kristina Murkett

The many problems with Andrea Jenkyns’s letter to Rishi Sunak

Dear the parents/guardians of Andrea Jenkyns (age 49 years and 5 months), I am concerned that Andrea’s most recent piece – her no-confidence letter to the Prime Minister – does not reflect her true abilities, and given her experience as both Secretary of State for Skills and Secretary of State for Education, I suspect Andrea may not be trying her best here. Andrea’s letter starts well: I enjoyed her use of repetition in the short simple sentence, ‘Enough is enough.’ However, I’m afraid this is not enough in itself. In the next sentence she writes, ‘we have a party leader that’ when it really should be ‘we have a party