Politics

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

Thursday

Kirk J. Torrance

Why the SNP lost its supporters — and how it can win them back again

Since 2011, the SNP has undergone a meteoric rise from underdog to Scotland’s natural party of government. It’s a transformation I helped design, through innovating the digital strategy of the party. However eight years of Nicola Sturgeon’s rule has fostered an era of indolence and self-deception over policy and independence. As Humza Yousaf embarks on his ‘summer of independence’ campaign (which started in Dundee this past weekend), it becomes ever more important to reflect on the stagnation of support for independence. Instead of good governance and progress towards independence, it appears some SNP politicians have relished the trappings of power more than in serving the electorate who put them there.

Wednesday

Natasha Feroze

NatWest boss Alison Rose resigns. Why now?

12 min listen

Natasha Feroze speaks to Kate Andrews and Fraser Nelson about the sudden decision for the NatWest boss Alison Rose to hand in her resignation. Prompted by the Nigel Farage Coutts bank account scandal, the bank’s CEO faced mounting pressure to resign after late last night No.10 said they had serious concerns over the bank’s actions. But why does the government play a role in this decision? And will there be more resignations to come?

Michael Collins

Ian Botham should take cricket’s problems more seriously

Lord Botham – chair of Durham County Cricket Club and a life peer appointed by Boris Johnson in 2020 – has challenged the findings of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report, which highlighted cricket’s elitism and class-based inequalities, as well as widespread discrimination in terms of ethnicity and gender. Admitting that he had only read ‘bits’ of it, Botham nonetheless dismissed the report as ‘nonsense’, which he claims he ‘threw on the floor’. Ironically, the report was only published online. One assumes he has a well-stocked printer. Botham’s main complaint seems to be that he wasn’t central to the process. ‘No one’s interviewed me, no one asked me for my thoughts’,

Edward Howell

What has North Korea done with Travis King?

Silence is not a common feature in the North Korean regime’s playbook, and this year is no exception. Only this past week, North Korea’s flurry of ballistic missile launches has been complemented by a cornucopia of threats from senior officials – including Kim Yo-jong, the sharp-tongued sister of Kim Jong-un – who have upped the ante in their anti-US rhetoric. The ruling regime repeated that dialogue with the United States is off the table. Not only that, the North Korean defence minister also warned that the deployment of a US ballistic missile submarine – the USS Kentucky – to South Korea could ‘fall under the conditions’ for the isolated state

Fredrik Erixon

What does the European centre-right stand for?

Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), dropped the bomb last weekend. In a TV interview, Merz opened the door for collaboration with Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the nationalist-populist party that is home to Germany’s cabal of crackpots and right-wing extremists. He didn’t say what form such co-operation would take, but talked about finding ways to run local councils when the AfD won democratic elections – which happened a few weeks ago when Hannes Loth won a mayoral race in a small town in Saxony-Anhalt. The reactions to Merz’s comments came thick and fast. Politicians from the left questioned his democratic credentials. He’s the ‘wrecking ball of

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How Labour won back Britain’s millionaires

The battle for the next Labour manifesto is already under way. ‘I will stay up to 2 a.m. if I need to,’ warned one member of the shadow cabinet ahead of last week’s national policy forum meeting in Nottingham. The trade unions and grassroot members were pushing for radicalism, Keir Starmer for moderation. The squeals of the Labour left are seen as useful by Starmer’s team Starmer misses no opportunity to make the point that realism, not revolution, is the path to power. He was quick to blame the party’s narrow defeat in the Uxbridge by-election on Sadiq Khan’s support for the extension of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone. ‘In

James Heale James Heale

Susan Hall: Sadiq Khan is a misogynist

‘I love a fight. I was going to say debate, but it’s more of a fight to be honest.’ Susan Hall is looking forward to taking on Sadiq Khan at the London mayoral hustings. When we meet for her first interview after securing the Conservative nomination, it is five days after the Uxbridge by-election. Hall is buoyed by an unexpected Tory triumph, thanks to discontent with Khan’s plans to extend the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez). ‘Out on the doorstep,’ she tells me: ‘I thought the questions would be all around Boris but I had nothing. It was all around the Ulez expansion.’ She hopes to replicate a similar result

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Will Sunak’s identity makeover pay off?

After claiming that Labour is on the same side as criminal people-trafficking gangs, Rishi Sunak clearly owes a rival party leader an apology. The person he should be saying sorry to is not Keir Starmer but Boris Johnson. When Johnson struck a low blow against Starmer for having failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile while DPP, Sunak swiftly joined the pious outrage club against the then prime minister. ‘I wouldn’t have said it,’ he claimed, at what was a moment of particularly intense political peril and personal crisis for Johnson. Never mind that Johnson had thrown his below-the-belt punch immediately after Starmer had mounted an extraordinarily unpleasant attack on him that

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Where has Xi Jinping’s foreign minister gone?

This is the week that James Cleverly planned to be in Beijing to ‘engage, robustly and also constructively’ with China’s communist leaders. But the Foreign Secretary put his trip on hold because the man he planned to engage went missing. Since 25 June foreign minister Qin Gang has vanished without trace, leaving Cleverly twiddling his thumbs and the world wondering what on earth is going on at the top of the Chinese Communist party. The whole bizarre spectacle underlines the challenges of engaging with a system that is so deeply opaque. The mystery deepened on Tuesday when state media reported that Qin was being replaced by his predecessor Wang Yi

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Nigel Farage snaps at ‘condescending’ Nick Robinson

Nigel Farage blasted Nick Robinson for his ‘condescending tone’ during a fiery interview on the Today programme. The BBC host asked the former Ukip leader whether he was planning a political comeback following his run-in with Coutts bank. But Farage lashed out at Robinson, telling him he was ‘sick to death’ of his line of questioning: ‘I’m really not going to have this. I am sick to death of your condescending tone. No, no actually you weren’t. What you should say to people is, “you’re the only person in British history who has won two national elections leading two different parties.” Let’s try that for size shall we.’ Farage was

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

What the French media can learn from the Farage banking scandal

Geoffroy Lejeune knows how Nigel Farage feels. Like the former Ukip leader turned TV host, Lejeune’s ‘values’ have made him persona non grata among France’s progressive elite. The 34-year-old journalist was last month appointed editor-in-chief of Journal du Dimanche (JDD), France’s only dedicated Sunday newspaper with a circulation of 140,000.  Newspaper staff were outraged. They downed tools, and have been striking now for five weeks. The papers’ journalists remain ‘more determined than ever’, they say, to continue their industrial action.  The real danger to democracy aren’t the likes of Lejeune or Farage, whatever their opinions may be The problem is Lejeune’s politics. He is described as ‘far right’, and counts

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will the NatWest debacle end the ‘debanking’ scandal?

The NatWest saga is fast becoming a textbook example of what some consider to be an ‘establishment’ attack on minority (and often right-leaning) viewpoints. The fast U-turn from the NatWest board which now sees Dame Alison Rose out of a job (Mr Steerpike has the details here) confirms that this was not a nuanced or two-sided debate that the bank originally tried to make it out to be. It’s no surprise, then, that the government has been fairly robust in its growing condemnation of NatWest’s actions. No. 10 insisted last night that it had serious concerns about the bank’s actions, and ministers have been saying it was ‘right’ for Rose to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

NatWest faces questions over backing Alison Rose

A week is a long time in politics and a day is a long time in banking. On Tuesday afternoon, NatWest chief Dame Alison Rose admitted that she had ‘made a serious error of judgment’ and was the BBC source who discussed Nigel Farage’s bank details with Simon Jack at a charity dinner. The senior journalist had left the dinner with the impression that the Coutts bank account closure was down to a lack of funds rather than politically motivated. It later transpired through a subject access request by Farage that this was wide of the mark and the bank had been discussing his political views and the ‘reputational damage’

Steerpike Steerpike

Why Alison Rose had to quit as NatWest chief

Last night, the board of NatWest announced that it had ‘full confidence’ in Dame Alison Rose as its chief executive. But just after 2 a.m. it announced she was leaving by mutual consent. Rose had admitted she was the source of the inaccurate briefing to the BBC about Nigel Farage’s Coutts account and she apologised. The NatWest board had thought this would be enough for her to cling on. But in a matter of hours, and just after midnight, they thought otherwise. So what changed? There seems to be a difference of views between NatWest – which thought her apology would be enough – and the government, which thinks the

Tuesday

Euan McColm

Labour’s self-ID mess

Scottish Labour lined up behind the SNP’s bungled attempt to reform the Gender Recognition Act last year and in doing so the party set itself firmly against the majority of voters. Around two-thirds of Scots are opposed to the SNP’s gender bill, but Labour chose to ignore their views and back the nationalists’ controversial legislation instead. When Scottish Secretary Alister Jack intervened to block reform of the gender bill by Holyrood — on the grounds that changing the law in Scotland would negatively impact on the UK-wide equality act — the Labour party found itself unable to cash in. While the Scottish Tories loudly proclaimed their support for the majority

Iain Macwhirter

Humza Yousaf’s attempts to woo Scottish business have fallen flat

The latest shock to hit the nationalist blogosphere is the revelation that the First Minister Humza Yousaf has recently broken bread with the billionaire Sir Brian Souter, the Stagecoach bus magnate. The encounter took place at a prayer breakfast last month and is regarded by some as a sign that Yousaf is trying to build bridges with the business community. No one knows what transpired in Yousaf’s meeting with the independence-supporting philanthropist. It may simply have been an attempt by the First Minister, a practising Muslim, to show his ecumenicism. Souter, after all, attends the evangelical Church of the Nazarene in his home town of Perth. However, there may also

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Will the Tories learn from Coutts’ mistake in taking on Nigel Farage?

Not for the first time in his colourful life, the perennial rebel Nigel Farage has the establishment on the run. This time it is the financial establishment and its media allies. The former Ukip leader has already garnered apologies over conduct or coverage from NatWest, which owns Coutts bank, the high-profile podcaster and former BBC man Jon Sopel, the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack and the chief executive of BBC News Deborah Turness. Farage is currently circling NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose in the manner of a hungry shark who has scented blood in the water. Not his, but hers. Dame Alison appears to be Farage’s prime suspect in

Steerpike Steerpike

BBC issues another grovelling apology

Sorry doesn’t seem to be the hardest word over at the BBC. The Corporation has had to issue another grovelling apology – after a BBC reporter asked Morocco’s captain Ghizlane Chebbak whether any of the Women’s World Cup Squad are lesbians. In Morocco, it is illegal to have a gay relationship. Do you have any gay players in your squad and what’s life like for them in Morocco? Same-sex sexual activity is punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment in Morocco, which is the first Arab nation to quality for the Women’s World Cup. A Fifa official intervened following the question: ‘Sorry, this is a very political question so we will just stick

Steerpike Steerpike

Sadiq turns up the pressure on Starmer over Brexit

All is not well in Labour land. After last week’s row over Ulez, the dispute between Sadiq Khan and Keir Starmer shows no sign of relenting. This time, the casus belli is, surprise, surprise, Brexit. In a veiled swipe at his boss, Khan criticised the UK’s policy towards Europe in comments to (who else?) the New York Times – the biggest Brit-bashers this side of the Baltic. In an article, titled ‘In the U.K, a Disaster No One Wants to Talk About’ Khan chimed in with his two pennies’ worth to the world’s worst newspaper. The Mayor moaned how: ‘I’m frustrated that no one’s talking about it’ and described Brexit

Steerpike Steerpike

Dead outnumber the living among SNP donors

It’s a safe bet to say that, with her spectacular implosion at the beginning of the year, Nicola Sturgeon may have sounded the death knell for the SNP. But it appears that, when it comes to the independence party’s support base, that might be much more literal than anyone had imagined. Analysis of SNP donation figures reveals that in the last five years of Sturgeon’s tenure a whopping 91 per cent of funds given to the party came from the wills of deceased supporters. In the five years to February of this year, bequests to the SNP raised £1.82 million for the party coffers. Overall, the party raised just £2