Politics

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

Tuesday

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

Monday

Oscar Edmondson

Tory Twitter had a great reshuffle

Outside of Westminster, cabinet reshuffles can be stale affairs. The who’s in and who’s out has a predictable rhythm, as half familiar faces trudge up and down Downing Street. So spare a thought for the social media editor running the Tories’ Twitter account, who has to drum up excitement for even the greyest of ministerial appointments. Today they succeeded in doing just that: by announcing incoming cabinet members as if they were football transfers. ‘NEW: Esther McVey signs for Cabinet. Done deal and starts today,’ screamed the Conservatives Twitter account. ‘AGREEMENT REACHED: Laura Trott takes up a position in the Treasury as Chief Secretary.’ Whoever is in charge seems to

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Sunak face more no confidence letters?

And so the backlash begins. On Monday evening Andrea Jenkyns MP submitted a letter of no confidence in her ‘Machiavellian’ Prime Minister. It comes at the end of Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle, which saw then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman sacked and, startlingly, former Prime Minister David Cameron return to government. Will the drama never end? Jenkyns’s letter slammed Sunak for sacking Braverman, with Boris Johnson’s former education minister raging that ‘enough is enough’. The MP continued in a rather, er, rambling fashion:  If it wasn’t bad enough that we have a party leader that the party members rejected, the polls demonstrate that the public reject him, and I am in full agreement.

Steerpike Steerpike

Cameron dodges the question on Greensill

Well, well, well. It may have been seven years since David Cameron was last involved in frontline politics, but he’s certainly not forgotten the skill of a political interview. Quizzed this evening by BBC political editor Chris Mason, Cameron managed to, er, dodge just about every question he was asked when it came to the Greensill scandal. Two years ago, Cameron made approximately £8.2 million promoting finance business Greensill Capital, which later collapsed as criminal inquiries into its alleged fraud began. Prior to the company’s collapse, Cameron had intensively lobbied civil servants in 2020 to allow Greensill to lend up to £10 billion in emergency Covid loans. But when quizzed

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

David Cameron? Seriously?

All political careers end in failure but few return to prove it a second time. David Cameron, forced to resign after his defeat in the EU referendum, has been brought back, given a peerage and appointed foreign secretary. His appointment followed the sacking of Suella Braverman as home secretary and James Cleverly’s sidewards move to replace her.  Expect Rishi Sunak’s stenographers in the press to gush over this masterstroke. A heavy-hitter in the cabinet. An experienced pair of hands at the Foreign Office. A return to serious, grown-up politics. Labour will be rattled now! Any such talk will be guff. This is not genius, it’s desperation. The Prime Minister wanted

Steerpike Steerpike

Scottish nationalists hail Cameron’s return

Out with the old and in with the even older. With Lord Cameron today making his return to government as Foreign Secretary, Mr S was intrigued to glean the reaction north of the border. It mustn’t be forgotten, after all, that Cameron is the only UK Prime Minister to have allowed the Nats their hallowed independence referendum, gambling the fate of the union… As Tory politicians murmur about their, er, mixed reaction to Cameron’s return, some Scottish nationalists have been far more effusive. Speaking exclusively to Steerpike, former first minister Alex Salmond admitted that Cameron’s return to government ‘now provides an opportunity for the independence movement’. The current Alba party

James Kirkup James Kirkup

In defence of David Cameron’s comeback

David Cameron is back. This will make some people unhappy, because they dislike the man. Common reasons for disliking Dave include Brexit and austerity. But there’s also the Greensill lobbying and just the general, all-pervading shiny-faced smugness of a man who, one suspects, never really gave a toss about any of it and was just playing at politics to show how clever he is. You might infer from the words above that I am one of those who dislike Cameron. I certainly have reasons to do so, and reasons that are a little more personal than the ones I’ve listed above. My feelings about David Cameron have informed a great many

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Lord Cameron a ‘useful idiot’ for the CCP?

Let the great kow-tow begin – again. David Cameron, the new Foreign Secretary, is well-known for his attempt to create a ‘golden era’ in Anglo-China relations when prime minister. This essentially meant turning a blind eye to Chinese misdeeds and espionage on the condition that Beijing kept pumping money into the British economy.  But it’s his China-related activities out of office that invite even more scrutiny, especially now that he’s back in government.  Just a few weeks ago, in September, the former prime minister flew to Sri Lanka to speak in support of Colombo Port City project, a controversial venture that is meant to establish Colombo as a Chinese-funded rival to Singapore

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The dying days of Rishi Sunak’s black hole government

In my admittedly sketchy understanding of it, black holes are formed when something becomes so massive that it collapses in on itself (am I getting this right, Carlo?) … and then keeps collapsing, over and over again, until it becomes infinitely tiny and inside-out and even the rules of physics cease to apply. This applies to supermassive celestial bodies, but also to supermassive shambles, such as we are to observe through our telescopes when we point them in the direction of the Conservative Party. Every zeptosecond brings a further wrinkle in political spacetime, and every zeptosecond sees the governing party, like a black hole, sucking harder than Newtonian physics ever thought possible.

Steerpike Steerpike

Six questions David Cameron can now answer

David Cameron left 10 Downing Street with indecent haste. Britain had voted for Brexit and we were about to discover a scandal: he had instructed the civil service not to do any preparatory work in the event of a Yes vote. This led to a crushed timetable that destabilised his successors as he ran for the door. Cameron then further broke the normal conventions of public service by resigning and forcing his constituents into a by-election rather than serving them for a full term as he promised. (Nadine Dorries is the only other MP in recent years to have bolted when her career headed south).  Cameron’s hiding from the public

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

How light filled the first Roman Churches: a conversation with Dr Elizabeth Lev

15 min listen

When I was in Rome last month, I watched the ‘synod on synodality’ fizzle out while the Marko Rupnik sex scandal took another sinister turn (and various Catholic journalists shamefully tried to suppress the story). But don’t worry: this episode of Holy Smoke is devoted to more uplifting matters. I visited the ancient little church of Saints Cosmas and Damian on the edge of the Forum, which incorporates the remains of a pagan temple and a secular Roman basilica or meeting place. The contrast between the darkness of one and the light of the other had powerful theological significance for those Roman Christians who were encouraged to build their first

James Heale James Heale

Sunak’s reshuffle: refresh or rewind?

15 min listen

It’s reshuffle day in Westminster. Suella Braverman is out as Home Secretary, replaced by James Cleverly, with former prime minister David Cameron making a shock return to parliament in the vacant Foreign Secretary slot. It’s the first time since 1974 that a former PM has been appointed to the cabinet. Can Rishi Sunak really still claim to be the candidate to end the ‘thirty year status quo’? Will he regret bringing Cameron back? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Rishi Sunak will regret bringing back David Cameron

So farewell then to the great realignment: Suella Braverman out of a great office of state and David Cameron back into one. As electoral signals go, this one hardly needs much decoding. The alliance of social conservatives that fell into the Tory lap without them really understanding why has been spurned. The boarding school boys are back in charge and the possibilities of the Conservative party embracing much conservatism is at an end. Everything that has happened since 2016 has in effect been wiped in the Westminster equivalent of a Bobby Ewing shower scene. It just needs Cameron to stare at us quizzically as if puzzled at our collective double-take

The Spectator

David Cameron back and Suella Braverman sacked: as it happened

6.07pm Steerpike: Andrea Jenkyns hasn’t taken Suella’s sacking well. The MP has submitted a letter of no confidence in the ‘Machiavellian’ Rishi Sunak to 1922 chair Sir Graham Brady, writing that ‘enough is enough’, since ‘Suella… was the only person in the cabinet with the balls to speak the truth of the appalling state of our streets.’ Enough is enough, I have submitted my vote of no confidence letter to the Chairman of the 1922. It is time for Rishi Sunak to go and replace him with a 'real' Conservative party leader. pic.twitter.com/yJmGc14d75 — Andrea Jenkyns MP 🇬🇧 (@andreajenkyns) November 13, 2023 5.37pm Steerpike: It may have been seven years

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Celtic’s Remembrance Day shame is the final straw

A portion of the crowd at Celtic’s Parkhead stadium booed the minute’s silence for Remembrance Sunday. It was abandoned after 30 seconds. This latest embarrassment comes just a week after the club suspended the season tickets of over 250 of its most zealously committed fans – a faction of ultras known as the ‘Green Brigade’. The members of this querulous group which occupies the north curve of Parkhead have been causing trouble/engaging in principled activism (depending on your take) for years, with the latest issue being the repeated display of pro-Palestinian flags and banners at matches, despite warnings from the club to desist. The two events were probably connected. The

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

How Sunak can use Braverman’s biggest weakness against her

So Suella is going to get whacked then. One discerns this from the behaviour of senior ministers sent out on the airwaves this weekend. Grant Shapps rolled out the classic ‘a week is a long time in politics’ gambit when asked if the Home Secretary would still be in post next weekend. Veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer expressed his frustration that rows connected with Braverman had distracted from Remembrance ceremonials. All this came hard on the heels of Jeremy Hunt’s icy declaration on Friday that ‘the words she used are not words that I would have used’. When the temperature around a senior colleague drops so far and so fast it