Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
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Natasha Feroze speaks to Kate Andrews and Katy Balls about today’s inflation figures, stuck at 8.7 per cent despite predictions it would fall. As a flagship policy of Rishi Sunak’s to half inflation, what options does the Prime Minister have?
Pakistan is familiar with political unrest. No prime minister in its independent history has completed a full term in power; some of its most popular leaders have been assassinated or executed. Even so, the events of last month were extraordinary. On 9 May, in response to the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan on corruption charges, thousands of protestors stormed buildings belonging to the country’s all-powerful military and set the army headquarters alight. More than 40 people died in the clashes with the army and police, and approximately 10,000 officials and supporters of Khan’s party, Pakistan Movement for Justice (PTI), were arrested. The country was on the edge of
The Nazi occupation of Greece decimated its finances, left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and all but destroyed the country’s ancient Jewish communities. Some Greeks, including the country’s former president Prokopis Pavlopoulos, think Germany should pay reparations. At the feet of the Parthenon last week, a cache of lawyers met to discuss the pressing need for Greece and Poland, another erstwhile victim of the Nazi yoke, to receive its dues. Germany, so far, is playing hardball. This month’s conference was the culmination of a coordinated six-year effort to open up direct avenues of inquiry with the German government regarding Nazi-era reparations – an avenue Athens itself tried and failed
Threadneedle Street will have all the economic limelight this week as the Bank of England sets interest rates tomorrow. With this morning’s grim inflation update, a rate rise looks all but certain. But this morning, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released an update on Rishi Sunak’s third pledge: to get debt falling. The figures show another target quickly escaping Sunak. Public sector borrowing in the month to May rose to some £20 billion, almost £11 billion more than the same month last year. That makes it the second most expensive May on record. Meanwhile, in the first couple of months of this financial year, the government borrowed just under
Inflation figures out this morning make for grim reading: the headline rate didn’t budge, sticking at 8.7 per cent on the year in May. Far worse, core inflation (which excludes food and energy) rose once again, to 7.1 per cent on the year in May, up from 6.8 per cent in April. This latest update from the Office for National Statistics carries far more weight than your usual monthly report. With mortgage costs spiralling into a crisis, the Bank of England will have been looking for any excuse to stick to a dovish interest rate hike or to even hold rates, as the Federal Reserve did last week for the first time
Even with Nicola Sturgeon politically hors de combat, Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf has made it clear he intends to forge ahead with her plans to hold a second independence referendum. The Scottish government has produced its blueprint for the future constitution that could flow from such an independence vote. Any voter contemplating taking up Humza’s offer and voting Yes in a possible Indyref2 would do well to read this document closely. They could be letting themselves in for a great deal more than they thought. Put simply, the plan is to make the SNP’s soft-left Bruntsfield-style ideology an almost irremovable feature in Scottish public life. A lot will be familiar. The incredibly generous
Just as a stopped clock shows the correct time twice a day, so president Joe Biden, amidst the plethora of gaffes that regularly issues from his lips, occasionally utters the plain and unvarnished truth. So it was at a Democratic fundraiser in California yesterday when Biden called China’s president Xi Jinping ‘a dictator’. Explaining why he gave the order to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon that entered US airspace in February, the president said that Xi had been ‘embarrassed’ because the balloon had been blown off course and ‘he didn’t know it was there’. US diplomats, like secretary of state Anthony Blinken (who has just inconclusively met Xi in
Scottish government minister, Lorna Slater, has managed to survive a vote of no confidence tabled by Conservative MSP Liam Kerr. The circular economy minister, and co-leader of the Scottish Greens, has faced heavy criticism for her handling of Scotland’s controversial deposit return scheme in recent months. To make matters worse, hours before politicians voted on Kerr’s motion, Slater was this afternoon forced to admit that the company running the scheme, Circularity Scotland, had appointed administrators. Though Slater saw off the vote, with 55 MSPs voting for the motion while 68 voted against it, her reputation did not escape unscathed from the rather unedifying debate. The anger at deposit return scheme-related
Penny Mordaunt might be the media darling since wielding the Coronation sword but it wasn’t always this way. The Leader of the House has had a fair few run-ins with the Four Estate in recent years, including last summer’s leadership election. So it was with great enthusiasm that Mr S attended tonight’s Parliamentary Press Gallery summer reception where Mordaunt was billed as the star speaker. Welcoming ‘friends – and Lord Frost’, Mordaunt introduced herself as ‘one of the handful of Conservative MPs not to have their own show on GB News.’ The former magicians’ assistant was quick to work her magic, referencing the infamous lobby briefing at which Mrs Thatcher’s
As Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is once again in court, facing charges that could extend his time in prison by 30 or more years, he is showing that he is not giving up his uneven but unyielding challenge to the Putin regime. When Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021 after recovering from a government attempt to poison him, it was to no one’s surprise that he was immediately arrested and sent to prison for nine years on spurious parole violation charges (which included the surreal accusation that he was in breach for not reporting to the police while he was in a coma). Since then, he has faced
Coming soon to the Edinburgh Fringe: Evita without the self-awareness. Nicola Sturgeon trialled her one woman show today with an impromptu press conference at Holyrood, following her shock arrest less than a fortnight ago. Bravely, the former First Minister gave the performance of a lifetime, sticking to her Dalek-like insistence on her innocence while, er, managing to give away nothing new on the grounds that she is ‘heavily constrained’ by the police investigation. ‘I have done nothing wrong!’ she proclaimed, adding that she had ‘searched her soul’ on whether to step down as an SNP member but that, shock, horror, she had decided not to do so. How long did
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In last night’s vote on the Privileges Committee’s report into whether Boris Johnson misled parliament, just six MPs backed the former prime minister. What’s the reaction in Westminster today? Also on the podcast, after shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves rowed back on Labour’s £28bn green projects pledge, why are both parties in such a mess on energy? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
Is Mark Zuckerberg losing his touch? Having just thrown tens of billions at his weird virtual-reality ‘metaverse’, only to see it flop with users, the Meta CEO and co-founder of Facebook appears to be spying another questionable new venture. It’s reportedly called Threads, a cloying techspeak name for what is essentially a rip-off of Twitter. You might think that the last thing the world needs is another Twitter, den of sanctimony and cancellation that it is. But not our Zuck. Threads appears to be an attempt to capitalise on the unease over at Twitter Towers, as advertisers and high-profile users alike have been rattled by Elon Musk’s unpredictable new leadership
Jeremy Hunt was bombarded by MPs worried about the ‘mortgage timebomb’ when he took Treasury questions in the Commons today. Everyone on all sides was concerned, and offering their own ideas of what to do and who to blame. One problem for the Chancellor is that ‘everyone’ includes members of his own party, many of whom are pushing him to do something ‘more Conservative’. The main ‘more Conservative’ policy that Tory backbenchers were promoting was mortgage interest relief. Jake Berry suggested it, arguing that without this kind of support, all the other money spent by the government would be wasted if people lost their homes. Other Conservative backbenchers including Jonathan
To Dean’s Yard, for the second best party of the summer season. The Tory establishment assembled last night for ConservativeHome’s annual bash, hosted in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. It was this august event which kicked off last year’s summer madness: a point not lost on this year’s star speaker. James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, took to the lectern to deliver a veritable tour d’horizon. In a speech which encompassed everything from Ukraine and the Spanish Civil War to Jeremy Corbyn and Joseph Bazalgette, Cleverly riffed on music festivals, London refuse policy and even ConHome’s sponsors WaterUK and the RSPB. ‘Nobody is expecting tonight’s speech to be the starting gun
Keir Starmer has vowed to create a ‘squaddies tsar’ if he wins the election. This ‘Armed Forces Commissioner’ would represent the military and their families and sit outside the military chain of command. But it’s here that the problems start. The Labour leader says this issue is personal to him because his uncle served aboard HMS Antelope in the Falklands War. But Starmer could do with turning to another military reference point – the 1998 film, Saving Private Ryan – to appreciate why such a ‘tsar’ could cause trouble. ‘I don’t gripe to you, Reiben,’ captain Miller explains as his soldiers traipse through the French bocage. ‘I’m a captain. There’s a
Emmanuel Macron never does anything by chance, so why did he allow himself to be filmed downing a beer in one on Saturday night? The clip, which has gone viral, has angered puritanical progressives. Green MP Sandrine Rousseau has branded Macron’s behaviour ‘toxic masculinity’. The president of the French Republic slaked his thirst just before midnight in the dressing room of the Toulouse rugby team in the Stade de France. Toulouse had beaten La Rochelle to win the French rugby championship, an event at which Macron had been introduced to the players before kick-off. He ducked out of a similar invitation in April at the final of the French football
After Spotify sacked/let go/‘mutually agreed to part ways’ with, in the words of one of its executives, those ‘f-ing grifters’ Harry and Meghan, there have much discussion about where it all went wrong for the podcasting pair. The general consensus is that the Sussexes may have overestimated public interest in anything they have to say beyond self-pitying tittle-tattle. Their recent statement that they’re not even going to do that any more makes you wonder what else they have stocked up in their ideas cupboard, and why the world would want to pay it their attention. The duff duo haven’t even been paid the full $20 million (£16 million) they signed
MPs have just voted 354 to 7 in favour of the Privileges Committee report’s finding that Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament over partygate, and that he should be banned from having a former members’ pass. At some points in this evening’s lengthy debate, it appeared that there wasn’t going to be a vote, and even when there was one, there were significant absences as the Commons is on a one-line whip. But in the end, a division was forced in order to flush out how many supporters Johnson still had who thought it was worth going over the top. Johnson, meanwhile, is speaking at a dinner on democracy Most of
It was rare to find anyone willing to stand up and defend Boris Johnson in parliament this afternoon. But cometh the hour, cometh the Mogg as the Honourable Member for the eighteenth century arose to deliver his best defence of his former boss. Jacob Rees-Mogg described it as a ‘deliberate attempt to take the most unfavourable interpretation that the committee can of Mr Johnson’s activities.’ The Tory backbencher jested that the panel of MPs of acting like ‘an Elon Musk particle’ inserted into ‘Mr Johnson’s brain’ and ridiculed them for refusing to allow criticism in the chamber: For some reason the Privileges Committee thinks it’s in communist China, and that