Politics

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

Tuesday

23 Jan 2024

Ed West

Britain isn’t a free country

I’m old enough to remember when ‘it’s a free country’ was a phrase people used in conversation. It feels like it was the kind of thing they said regularly, either when someone asked permission to do something or when commenting on some particular eccentricity. Can I sit there? It’s a free country. You want to walk around dressed up as a pirate? Well, it’s a free country. Perhaps it reflected a self-conscious British sense of themselves as freedom-loving people – which isn’t really true, or at least hasn’t been since 1914 – or maybe it was a Cold War thing. But I don’t think I’ve heard the phrase in at least 20 years,

Isabel Hardman

Starmer and Sunak agree for now on Red Sea attacks

What happens if the latest round of strikes against the Houthis don’t deter them? That was the big question as Rishi Sunak made his statement to the Commons on yesterday’s attacks. The Prime Minister stuck to his two key lines from last week, that the strikes were targeted, and that the Houthis’ attacks are no way linked to the war in Gaza – though once again he did update MPs on the latter. He also announced that the government was giving MPs an opportunity for a ‘full debate on our broader approach in the Red Sea tomorrow’. He also listed the other ways in which the US and UK were

Max Jeffery

Are the Houthi strikes working?

12 min listen

The UK launched a new set of strikes on eight Houthi targets last night. Typoon jets dropped £30,000 Paveway bombs on an underground storage site and surveillance and missile capabilities controlled by the Yemeni rebel group. But are the strikes working? The Houthis have continued to attack ships in the Red Sea, and a row has also started about whether government properly briefed Keir Starmer and Sir Lindsay Hoyle. Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman.

Mark Nayler

What Pedro Sanchez should really be apologising for

Spain has approved a pointless amendment to its constitution, replacing the word ‘handicapped’ with the phrase ‘persons with a disability’. Not only did Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez, who never says sorry for genuine oversights, apologise for the delay in making this happen, but he also announced that he regards himself as having thereby paid a ‘moral debt’ to the country. The notion that this semantic tweak represents major constitutional change, let alone some kind of moral progress, is risible. Is this what is really wrong with Spain at the moment? Is this – finally! – the apology from Sanchez that’s been so long coming? Is this the constitutional issue at the centre

Steerpike

Watch: Does this Tory minister think Art Attack is biased?

Is the BBC biased? Some Tories, including transport minister Huw Merriman, think so. But while there is plenty of evidence to suggest Merriman is correct, he might want to use a different example to the one he used when quizzed on the subject of BBC bias this morning. Sky News’ Kay Burley asked Merriman for proof that BBC News gave the Tories a hard time. In response, Merriman appeared to name the former Art Attack presenter Neil Buchanan: ‘So when I worked at the Department of Work and Pensions doing work on Universal Credit there was an individual there who would report on it, Neil Buchanan, who I always felt gave one

Freddy Gray

What went wrong with Ron?

40 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined in New Hampshire by Ben Domenech, editor at large of Spectator World. On the podcast they discuss the pro-Trump establishment of the Republican party; how the Republican cohort have changed since the Obama election and what issues Trump can identify that appeal to voters.

Limor Simhony Philpott

Israel suffers its deadliest day in Gaza

It’s only Tuesday, and already Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had one of the worst weeks since the war against Hamas started last October. Israelis are losing patience with him and his band of self-serving extremist ministers. Netanyahu, whose approval rates were low before the war and have only got lower since it started, is feeling the squeeze. Last night, in the single most deadly incident since the start of the war, 21 Israeli soldiers were killed when buildings collapsed on them following an RPG grenade attack by Hamas in the city of Khan Yunis, southern Gaza. Three soldiers were also killed in a separate earlier incident in the

James Heale

Labour demands answers on Houthi airstrikes

This morning, ministers woke up to the news of a second joint airstrike against the Houthis in Yemen – and some in Westminster have been left reeling that the attacks came as a surprise. Some eight targets were struck, according to the Pentagon, in a UK and US effort to deter continued interference with shipping operations from pirates in the Red Sea. It follows action taken on 11 January. However, unlike before the previous attack, neither Sir Keir Starmer nor Lindsay Hoyle were briefed in advance by the government. The Labour leader backed the first mission, but both the SNP and some left-wing Labour MPs warned of the potential for

Jawad Iqbal

How Modi is tearing up India’s secular state

The religious and political symbolism was unmistakable, as the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi led the consecration of a controversial new Hindu temple in Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh state, built on the ruins of a 16th century mosque. The Babri Masjid was torn down by Hindu nationalist mobs in 1992, sparking riots across the country that killed about 2,000 people, most of them Muslim. In 2019, India’s Supreme Court ruled that a temple could be built on the site, a decision that was roundly criticised by India’s Muslim minority. Modi spoke of India being at ‘the beginning of a new era’ The festering wounds from this long-running dispute reverberate to this day. The

Matthew Lynn

Christine Lagarde is failing again

Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, has one of the most glittering CVs in European politics. The ex finance minister of France, and former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, earns £365,000 a year for running the show at the ECB. But is she any good? An internal poll of staff at the Bank, leaked to the press, suggests not. It found that more than half of employees rated her leadership of the organisation as either ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’. Her own people reckoned she put self-promotion ahead of the institution (‘Quelle surprise’ as they would say in her native country), pushed an irrelevant political agenda,

Kate Andrews

Can Jeremy Hunt really afford more tax cuts?

On the face of it, this morning’s public sector finance update is good news. The government borrowed £7.8 billion in December last year. This is well below the £11 billion that economists had expected and almost half the £14 billion last forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). These are the lowest borrowing figures for December since the pandemic hit. Once again, larger tax receipts helped fill in the gaps: up on the year to £61.1 billion – £3.5 billion higher than December 2022 – though on this occasion they notably undershot the OBR’s expectations by £1.8 billion, suggesting a minor slowdown. A large contributor to lower borrowing figures overall was

Annabel Denham

The Tories’ childcare plans aren’t grounded in reality

Of all the reasons why the Conservatives deserve to lose the next general election, their nonsensical childcare policy is among the most convincing. Labour had needlessly meddled in this sector, with little positive effect on affordability, accessibility, or maternal employment. The Tories could have taken on the vested interests and trades unions, scaled back the state’s involvement, and created a competitive environment with lower costs and greater parental choice. Instead, on assuming power in 2010, they introduced 15 free hours for all 3-and-4 year-olds in England and maintained strict regulatory requirements, including cumbersome record-keeping and mandatory targets. By 2023, government spending on childcare and pre-school had swollen to around £6 billion.

Monday

22 Jan 2024

Katy Balls

Sunak’s Rwanda plan suffers first Lords defeat

Just last week Rishi Sunak held a special Downing Street press conference to warn peers not to ignore ‘the will of the people’ and block his Rwanda plan. Fast forward a few days and Sunak’s warning appears to have fallen on deaf ears, with the Prime Minister suffering his first Lords defeat on the topic before the Safety of Rwanda Bill has even begun its journey through the Lords. This evening peers voted to delay the ratification of the international treaty between the UK and Rwanda, the legally binding agreement signed with Rwanda last month. By 214 votes to 171, peers backed the motion that demands the government delays any

Isabel Hardman

Why the Tories should think twice about pre-election tax cuts

Are Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak asking the right question as they approach the spring Budget? For the Chancellor and Prime Minister, the key issue is ‘how can we cut taxes in a way that will get us credit with voters?’ But polling by YouGov for today’s Times suggests voters might want them to ask a different question about improving public services, with 62 per cent saying that the government should prioritise spending more on public services rather than cutting taxes. Hunt won that argument, but seems to have forgotten about it now he is Chancellor The curious thing is that Hunt used to make a similar argument when he

Mark Galeotti

Why is Zelensky echoing Putin’s rhetoric?

Today is Ukraine’s Day of Unity which necessarily had to be marked with an expression of national pride. However, president Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to issue a decree ‘On the Territories of the Russian Federation Historically Inhabited by Ukrainians’ represented not simply that, but an open political challenge to Moscow, and one which strangely echoed Putin’s rhetoric. The decree begins castigating Russia for oppressing Ukrainians ‘in the lands historically inhabited by them,’ which is defined as the ‘modern Krasnodar, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk and Rostov regions’ – a large swathe of south-western Russia. From this, it demands the creation not just of ‘an action plan for preserving the national identity of

Freddy Gray

Will Nikki Haley pull out on Wednesday?

New Hampshire votes tomorrow and today Nikki Haley has just two planned events. She has a morning meet-and-greet in the city of Franklin and a ‘get out the vote rally’ in Salem this evening. Nobody could accuse Haley of not working hard. She’s famously an industrious woman. But given the make-or-break nature of tomorrow’s vote, her campaign seems strangely lacking in urgency. Yes, she’s spending a fortune on campaign ads. Yes, she’s engaging in slanging matches with Donald Trump, which is a useful fodder for an increasingly desperate media. She’s accused him of being ‘clearly insecure’ and having ‘temper tantrums’ after he mocked her unusual name. But her campaign just

James Heale

Keir Starmer and the return of the culture wars

It’s the question every political strategist asks themselves. What is something that the public wants, is incredibly popular – and free? The answer, of course, is a good old-fashioned culture war. Amid ongoing questions about Labour’s commitment to its £28 billion ‘green new deal’, Sir Keir Starmer’s speech this morning eschewed talk of spending commitments. Instead, speaking at the Civil Society Summit in central London, he opted to defend supposedly ‘woke’ institutions against what he called the ‘weird McCarthyism’ of the Tory party. Starmer’s argument was that the Conservatives have sought to clamp down on opposition voices in office by trying to find ‘woke agendas’ in British civic institutions. Examples include

James Heale

How far will Hunt cut taxes?

14 min listen

Jeremy Hunt said he would look to cut taxes in the March budget. In the Mail on Sunday, he said he would look to emulate the late Nigel Lawson, who as Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor slashed rates. But Hunt has been promising tax cuts, and hardly delivering, for a while. Will this time be any different? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.

John Ferry

The Covid inquiry has damaged Sturgeon’s legacy beyond repair

If you thought senior Conservatives giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry in London was rough then you should watch the footage now emerging from Edinburgh, where the Inquiry’s lawyers have moved to take evidence. It’s a bloodbath. Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and current first minister Humza Yousaf are yet to even take the stand. But already the sessions have revealed a Scottish SNP government embroiled in secrecy, cover-up and the politicisation of a deadly pandemic in the interests of furthering the cause of independence. The latest revelations are startling. On Friday morning, the inquiry established that Sturgeon and other senior Scottish government officials had deliberately deleted WhatsApp messages

Harry Mount

Starmer is wrong to defend the National Trust

Keir Starmer is drawing up his battle-lines for the next election. First, he came for the public schools, pledging to whack VAT on school fees. Now he’s going for the traditionalist wing of National Trust members. In a speech today, he accuses the Tories of ‘waging a war’ on charities and civic society. He claims the Conservatives have denigrated the National Trust by accusing it of pursuing a ‘woke’ agenda: ‘In its desperation to cling onto power, at all costs, the Tory party is trying to find woke agendas in the very civic institutions they once regarded with respect.’ The National Trust was once a byword for high-minded thought So