Politics

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

Monday

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Where ‘Rejoiners’ are going wrong

‘Rejoiners’ – who want Britain to once again be a part of the EU – took to the streets of London this weekend. It was a sorry sight. ‘We want our star back,’ the protesters yelled, as they waved EU flags and donned Brussels-branded berets. But who do they think they are actually persuading to change their mind? I think Brexit was a grave mistake and I hope to one day see the United Kingdom enter back into the fold. But the plain truth is that continuity Remain – those campaigners who want the democratic result reversed – are doing the hard work for Brexiteers. It sometimes feels like the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is Sunak helping Starmer on HS2?

13 min listen

Rishi Sunak is on his tour of hard truths, saying the unsayable on areas of policy where he believes his predecessors didn’t want to be honest with the public. First we had the net zero pivot – scaling back the government’s environmental commitments – and over the weekend there has been speculation that HS2 could be the next victim of tough talking Rishi Sunak. What’s the latest? Is Rishi gifting Starmer an easy ride by clearing the weeds on this controversial project?  Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The West and Russia are at war, says Sergei Lavrov

The United States and Britain are at war with Russia. So said the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a UN press conference on Saturday. ‘You can call this whatever you want,’ said Lavrov. ‘But they are directly at war with us. We call this a hybrid war but that doesn’t change the reality.’ Lavrov was answering the question: ‘At what point does this actually become a direct conflict with the United States, not simply a proxy conflict via Ukraine?’ Earlier that day it had been announced that President Biden had agreed to supply Ukraine with long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMS), capable of hitting targets 190 miles away. Ukraine

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron’s political relaunch was a masterclass in self-belief

After months of inbound slings and arrows, Emmanuel Macron, powdered by the star dust of the royal visit, relaunched himself on Sunday night. His presidential address from the Elysée Palace was officially described as an interview but the French journalists who were on set posing the questions were purely props. The star of the show was Macron. Macron ignored and patronised Anne-Claire Coudray, a Grande Dame of French television. ‘Attendez, attendez,’ he ordered her at one point, when she dared to ask him a question. Not that he paid much more attention to the handsomely coiffed Laurent Delahousse, another establishment French TV journalist. The president talked incessantly. He has mastered

Steerpike Steerpike

Johnsons deny sacking their nanny for having a drink with Boris

Childcare can be a contentious issue at the best of times. So Mr S was intrigued to read of reports that Boris and Carrie Johnson have fallen out with their ex-nanny, Theresa Dawes. She claims that she was unfairly dismissed three days into the job after having a drink with the former PM while his wife was still in hospital with their third child. In allegations described as ‘untrue’ by Johnson’s spokesman, Dawes, 59, said that she was given 15 minutes to pack her bags by Carrie Johnson the day after she returned to the couple’s Oxfordshire home this summer. When she went to speak to the former Tory leader

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Sunakism meets the Tory party

As the Liberal Democrats attempt to seize the political agenda at their annual conference in Bournemouth, Rishi Sunak is facing a series of decisions on how far to go with his policy shake-up. Last week, he diluted a number of the UK’s net zero commitments – including delaying the ban on petrol cars by five years. Now, other policy changes are planned as the Prime Minister attempts to pitch himself as the minister for hard truths, a politician who will do things differently by being up front about trade-offs. The snag is that such changes have the potential to be divisive with Sunak’s own side. First up, the HS2 Birmingham-Manchester

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The Pope is wrong to criticise Europe over the migrant crisis

Pope Francis spent the weekend in Marseille where he admonished Europe for their attitude towards migrants. Specifically, the Pontiff took to task those who used words such as ‘invasion’ and ‘emergency’ when discussing the millions of migrants who have arrived in Europe in the last decade. ‘Those who risk their lives at sea do not invade, they look for welcome,’ he pronounced. Those who said otherwise were ‘fuelling alarmist propaganda’ and acting contrary to the teaching of the Catholic church.   The Pope reiterated the Vatican’s four-stage approach to migrants: welcome, protection, promotion and integration, the overriding aim of which is ‘the safeguarding of human dignity’. He continued: ‘Those who

Sunday

Steerpike Steerpike

Lib Dems pay Truss tribute in Glee Club anthem

What is Liz Truss’s legacy? It’s a question that will no doubt entertain future historians. But one thing they will never be able to take away from her is a place in the annals of Lib Dem history. As a former card-carrying member, Truss earned an entry in the party’s infamous ‘Glee Club’ songbook – a collection of tunes sung on the last night of the Lib Dem annual conference. Her 1994 call to abolish the monarchy was subsequently immortalised in a song called ‘The week we went to Brighton’. Sung to the tune of ‘Day Trip to Bangor’ by Fiddler’s Dream it concludes: Didn’t we have a lovely time,

Steerpike Steerpike

Lib Dem conference 2023: in pictures

Is there any greater anthropological experiment than the Lib Dems’ annual conference? Britain’s third party has not had such a jamboree since 2019 and the delegates are determined to make the most of it. Mr S certainly saw some sights at last night’s disco, where Munira Wilson and Wendy Chamberlain were among the MPs to man the decks. ‘You say Brexit, I say bollocks’ was one of the chants of the night, as young hopefuls mingled with old veterans. Never has the Cha Cha Slide been conducted in quite the same way before, with many of the same party animals looking forward to tomorrow night’s Glee Club. As one attendee

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Ed Davey confronted by word cloud

The Lib Dem conference is well underway and the party has a spring in its step. After four by-election gains in this parliament, there’s much excited talk in the conference bars about the party doubling their MPs next year. So what’s behind the orange surge? Clearly, er, not their less-than-charismatic leader. Sir Ed Davey was wheeled out on the BBC this morning for his annual hit interview. And Victoria Derbyshire opted to use the occasion to show the Kingston MP just what voters think of him. Davey was confronted by a striking ‘word cloud’ of the words most associated with him. They are, in descending order, ‘Don’t know’, ‘no idea’

Jane Stannus

Canada’s parents are taking to the streets

In the biggest demonstration since the Freedom Convoy, large numbers of Canadian families and supporters took to the streets across the country on 20 September to assert the rights of parents as primary educators and protectors of their children with the slogan, ‘Leave our kids alone!’  The ‘1 Million March 4 Children’ was spearheaded by Muslim Canadians in response to increasingly aggressive policy and curriculum changes in publicly funded schools, pushing radical gender ideology and putting content before children that protesting parents say is indecent or age-inappropriate. Turnout was impressive, with many thousands of participants in over 100 cities and up to 10,000 marchers reported at the largest gathering in Ottawa. Yes, it was the biggest

Sergey Radchenko

Zelensky is in a serious bind

The recent spat between Kyiv and Warsaw over grain – with Ukraine suing Poland at the WTO – has come at bad time. In normal times, a trade dispute (however meaningful for those directly affected) would barely register. At a time of mortal danger, however, rifts between allies are grounds for profound concern.   For Poland’s right-leaning Law and Justice Party (PiS), banning the sale of Ukrainian grain is an electoral matter. With a mid-October parliamentary election it may well lose, the populist PiS wants to appease Poland’s rural constituencies (the party’s base) by being seen to be protecting farmers from a deluge of foreign grain. Responding to Ukrainian criticism in his speech to

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why is Sunak cutting a tax only paid by the rich?

Last week, Rishi Sunak struck a blow for ordinary people against the elitist project that is net zero, assuring them that a government led by him will not be loading them with tens of thousands of pounds in costs for fitting heat pumps, forcing them to buy an impractical electric car or stinging them in taxes for flying off on holiday. The opposition, at least in the shape of Ed Miliband, fell right into his trap. As polls have shown over and over again, public support for net zero tends to melt away very fast when it comes to asking them about issues which threaten to affect them personally.     So

Oscar Edmondson

Is it time to take the Lib Dems seriously again?

20 min listen

Conference season has kicked off this weekend with the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth. Buoyed by their success in the recent by-elections, could the Lib Dems be the kingmakers at the next election? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Stephen Bush, associate editor at the Financial Times.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Olaf Scholz’s failing coalition is leaking support to the AfD

Germans are increasingly fed up with their hapless chancellor Olaf Scholz and his traffic light coalition. Just a quarter of voters believe the government has any long-term goals for the country, according to research conducted for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy. Seven in ten voters said they associated the coalition with poor decision making and infighting. The Green-SPD-FDP coalition has had a rocky time since it came to power less than two years ago. Scholz has had to wean the country off Russian oil and gas, deal with an economic recession and manage the dilemma of whether or not to send weapons to Ukraine. It has regularly

Damien Phillips

How to take on Opec’s oil barons

Beyond the environment, one of the most persuasive arguments for reducing western nations’ dependence on fossil fuels is the extraordinary power that our current arrangements give to authoritarian and aggressive regimes. How many times have noble sentiments from British and allied politicians about human rights and the international order been undermined by the need to cosy up to Saudi Arabia? How much western treasure has, indirectly and despite sanctions, been poured into Vladimir Putin’s war machine? In contrast, those governments have no such gap between their economic and geopolitical positions. Ever since forming the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) in 1960, the likes of Saudi Arabia and Iran –

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

The excruciating pain of being a Manchester United fan

Can there be a more wretched existence in football than being a Manchester United fan? Well, yes, would be the instant retort from legions of supporters around the country whose teams never get anywhere near the glamour palace of the Champions League; for whom grim, gritty survival in crumbling urinals is the order of the day. But at least those fans have the dignity and fellowship of the underdog, of hope, or a local derby drubbing of a hated rival, a cup tie giant-slaying. United fans have almost none of these thrills. For a club as proud as Manchester United, nothing less than domestic and European glory will really do,

Mark Solomons

Get a grip, YouTube hustlers. Don’t watch football with the camera on

Once upon a time, football fans used to come home from seeing their side lose, and they would shrug their shoulders, kick the cat or get roaring drunk. But now, a new generation of self-obsessed morons are taking out their angst by switching on a video camera, putting on the latest multi-sponsored £100 football shirt of their team and, literally, screaming into the microphone. Welcome to the world of fake outrage spouted by, predominantly, young and often photogenic YouTubers and vloggers. Unsurprisingly, it is the ‘big’ clubs that attract the most prominent of this new breed: mostly Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal.  After United lost 4-3 away to Bayern Munich

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Lib Dems split on the Rejoin question

It’s the first day of conference season and the Liberal Democrats are keen to make the most of it. This year their slogan is ‘For a fair deal’. But is renegotiating the Brexit deal really what they’re all about? Ahead of this weekend’s conference Sir Ed Davey was keen to put such talk to bed, claiming that rejoining the EU was ‘off the table’ and that his party wanted to instead focus on issues of greater concern to the public. Not all of his front bench seem to have got the message though. Speaking on the first day of the party’s annual conference in Bournemouth, the Lib Dem foreign affairs

James Heale James Heale

What’s next for the Murdoch empire?

19 min listen

Rupert Murdoch stepped down as chairman of News Corp and Fox News this week. But is this really the end of Murdoch’s career? ‘I can guarantee you that I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas’, he wrote in a statement. And what will the media tycoon’s legacy be? James Heale speaks to Andrew Neil, chairman of The Spectator, and former editor of the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times.