Politics

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

Wednesday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Tories’ thoughts are turning to defeat

Ever since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, his aides have worried that May would be the month of mutiny. His mandate over the party has always been weak, since he lost the summer’s leadership race to Liz Truss. He was also certain to preside over heavy losses in the local elections, so the aftermath of that defeat was seen as the ideal time for a rebel to strike. As if to tempt fate, Sunak invited more than 200 Tory MPs for drinks in the No. 10 garden on Monday night. He attempted to lift spirits with jokes at Keir Starmer’s expense. ‘He was meant to be writing a book about his

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What is America’s Grand Strategy?

42 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Michael Anton, professor at Hillsdale College and former member of the National Security Council under George W Bush and Donald Trump. On the podcast Freddy and Michael discuss his speech at the National Conservatism conference about Winston Churchill’s Grand Strategy in an American context. 

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Starmer’s savvy Brexit position

Keir Starmer has made the anodyne demand that Britain seek a ‘closer trading agreement’ with the EU. But why doesn’t he go the whole hog and make it Labour policy to rejoin the single market?  The Labour leader could hardly be accused of seeking to reverse Brexit. Some Leavers, prior to the 2016 referendum, wanted Britain to stay in the single market after Brexit – including Daniel Hannan and, on many occasions, Boris Johnson. So surely rejoining the single market, but staying out of the EU, could be the compromise which would please the greatest number of the public, propelling Starmer into Downing Street as a unifying force? What’s more, he would

Alexander Larman

Meghan’s lecture on ‘service’ is hard to take

Since the publication of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare in January, Meghan has kept an unusually low profile by her standards. Her non-appearance at the coronation earlier in the month was widely interpreted as a snub to the Royal Family, whom she has missed no opportunity to castigate. Now the Duchess of Sussex is making a comeback – but her vapid speech at an awards ceremony in New York last night shows little has changed. Meghan was in town to accept a ‘Women of Vision’ award at the Ms. Foundation for Women’s 50th anniversary event. The Duchess declared that: ‘It’s just never too late to start. You can be the visionary

John Ferry John Ferry

Why is the SNP pushing ahead with its costly ferry fiasco?

In an extraordinary admission this week, the Scottish government has vowed to continue funding the SNP’s ferries fiasco — despite accepting it would be cheaper to scrap the second vessel and commission a new one from scratch.  Economy secretary Neil Gray said a review had found that finishing the second boat, known as Hull 802, does not represent value for money. What’s the background? The Scottish government commissioned two new vessels to serve on Scotland’s west coast in 2015. None have been delivered by the now nationalised Glasgow shipyard that won the contract, while funding for the yard has become something of a financial blackhole for taxpayers. Meanwhile Scottish islanders have at

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Suella Braverman is making Rishi Sunak look weak

The National Conservatism conference is entering its third day in London, and has managed to grab more headlines than the official Conservative conference usually does. Tory party conferences have become so stage-managed that attendees often don’t bother going into the main hall – except for a quiet breather – because they know they won’t learn anything from the speakers. Last autumn, one of the Tory events included a minister and a guest speaker holding an ‘in conversation’ session that appeared to have been pre-written on a script. No wonder the NatCon event is making waves – and has been so attractive to Tory MPs and ministers, including the Home Secretary

John Oxley

Keir Starmer’s housing pledge has trapped the Tories

Sir Keir Starmer has broken cover on planning. In perhaps his most daring policy announcement so far, he has declared his intention to overhaul the planning system to free up more housing. When pressed on the morning media round he was clear – he would take the fight to NIMBYs and wouldn’t yield to backbenchers about developments in their patch. Labour, he said, would be on the side of the ‘builders not the blockers’. The discussion around planning has gradually broken away from interest groups and into the mainstream – and the Labour leader wants to make it a focus of the next election It is a bold move, but

Owen Matthews

Lithuania’s PM: ‘If Russia is not defeated it will come for somebody else’

Vilnius In July, Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte will welcome Nato leaders to Vilnius for one of the most important summits in the alliance’s history. Top of the agenda will be how to help Ukraine push back Vladimir Putin’s forces. But a more thorny problem will be whether to formally offer membership to Kyiv – a move that would make Ukraine’s front lines Nato’s own. Simonyte believes that the war could have been avoided if Nato had accepted Ukraine and Georgia’s membership bids back in 2008. Before Putin invaded Ukraine last year, she says, ‘western leaders and western organisations were ready to abandon their positions every time Russia was pressing’.

Madeleine Teahan

In defence of Miriam Cates

I’m starting to feel sorry for Miriam Cates. Every time she expresses an opinion, her words are either coarsely inflated beyond recognition or fiercely spat back at her.  Her latest remarks on children, some of which were made on a Daily Telegraph podcast and others in a speech at National Conservatism Conference on Monday, have already been branded many things from naïve to ‘chilling’. The Mirror ran a piece mockingly entitled ‘Tory fumes we are not having enough kids in rant at Marxist threat to children’s souls.’ Do women not deserve the option to fully be present in those early years? When asked about the government’s latest plans to allow 30

James Heale James Heale

Truss in Taiwan warns of new Cold War with China

Liz Truss is in Taiwan this week, urging the West to take a stronger stance against China. Her message is clear: Europe’s future is ‘inextricably linked’ to that of the island, you can’t trust Beijing to follow the rules and Britain and its allies must now take action. Citing Chinese naval expansion, military build-up, economic decoupling and diplomatic initiatives, Truss warned that ‘There are those who say they don’t want another Cold War. But this is not a choice we are in a position to make… they have already made a choice about their strategy. The only choice we have is whether we appease and accommodate – or we take action

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Danny Kruger is right: marriage is the bedrock of society

It didn’t take long for Danny Kruger to get jumped on for stating the obvious. His observation yesterday that ‘The normative family, the mother and father sticking together for the sake of the children, is the only basis for a safe and functioning society. Marriage is not only about you, it’s a public act to live for the sake of someone else’, would once have come into the class of things so obvious as to not need saying.    It tells you a lot about where we’re at now that this is daringly controversial, divisively edgy. But then once the social consensus was shared by all parts of the political

Tuesday

Winston Marshall

Niall Ferguson: Why AI won’t kill you and what Sam Altman got wrong

33 min listen

Celebrated historian Niall Ferguson, author of 17 books including Civilisation, a biography of Kissinger, a biography of the Rothschild family and Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe comes into to discuss AI. He recently wrote that the AI doomsdayists, including those behind the petition for a six month moratorium on AI development, should be taken seriously. But some of them think humanity’s end is around the corner. Niall and Winston discuss whether or not they are correct.

Angus Colwell

Why are the Nat Cons so serious?

The problem with socialism, the saying goes, is that it takes up too many evenings. Well, the National Conservatism conference, or NatCon, is currently detaining ‘delegates’ for 12 hours at a time, for three days in a row. We’ve had long agonised debates about protectionism vs free trade, communitarianism vs individualism, Ukraine support or Nato scepticism. When did the right get so sincere? NatCon is an American import, and it feels like it. The programme uses the language of ‘plenaries’ and ‘keynote addresses’. It has that American feel of ‘movement conservatism’ – mixing the over-intellectual with the underwhelming.  The problem for a lot of conservatives today is that they can’t

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Rishi’s ECHR battle at the Council of Europe

11 min listen

The Prime Minister has gone to Iceland today to see the Council of Europe, where he has been talking about immigration and the ECHR with other European leaders. On the episode, Katy Balls explains his mission to get other leaders on board with the UK’s hardline approach to immigration. Cindy Yu also talks to James Heale about the second day of the National Conservatism Conference and Michael Gove’s recommendation for conservatives. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Suella Braverman and the dirty secret about white guilt

The chattering classes are mad at Suella Braverman again. What’s she done this time? Brace yourselves: she said racial collective guilt is a bad idea. She said we should not demonise an entire race just because some members of that race did something bad. She said we should never engage in racial shaming. Is there no end to this woman’s nastiness? I’m old enough to remember when comments like these would have been utterly uncontroversial. When they would have been treated as decent and progressive, in fact. Right-thinking people once railed against the ideology of collective racial punishment, against the ugly idea that the sins of the individual should be

Iain Macwhirter

Why is Nicola Sturgeon wading into the jury-less trial debacle?

Nicola Sturgeon’s sheer brass neck never fails to amaze. A politician whose party is under police investigation, and whose husband has recently been arrested, is hardly best placed to start talking about scrapping juries in criminal trials. It’s a bit like Boris Johnson, at the height of partygate, speculating about the breaking up of the Metropolitan Police. Sturgeon’s first venture into policy advice since her resignation came in a column in the Guardian supporting First Minister Humza Yousaf’s proposed Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill. This bill, which she sponsored before she resigned in February, calls for a trial of judge-only specialist courts for sexual offences. The right to

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Britain is becoming Brussels on Thames

Whatever happened to Singapore on Thames? Weren’t we, after leaving the EU, supposed to be forging a future as a deregulated, low-tax, business-friendly enclave situated 20 miles off Calais? It isn’t quite looking that way at the moment. We are reinventing ourselves as Brussels on Thames – only more so. Do our bureaucrats really need to come down so heavily on big players in the realm of cloud computing games? Our corporation taxes are rising at a time others are static or falling, we keep inventing new regulations which far outdo EU regulations – such as that allowing new employees to demand flexible working. We are ploughing ahead with green

Danny Kruger

How the Conservatives can win again

There is a tension at the heart of conservative thinking today – one that the Conservative party must address if it wants to win again at the next general election. The National Conservatism conference, being held in Westminster this week, is a bold attempt to speak to this internal struggle: how to strike the right balance between the right to be free and the right to belong.  Karl Marx was right in the 19th century when he said that capitalism causes all that is holy to be profaned and all that is solid to melt into air. John Gray was right in the 1980s when he said Thatcherism would eat

Robin Ashenden

Should we ignore Putin’s criticism of the West?

Not much happens in Russian families without the say so of the babushka. Russia’s high divorce-rate, and a situation where fathers are often absent and the mother out at work, makes it normal for grandmothers – who often hold the family purse-strings – to raise children themselves. This doesn’t, of course, mean that the younger and older generation see eye to eye: babushka tends not to use the internet or understand modern technology, and might hold conservative opinions radically different from the grandchild’s. Yet there is often a spirit, in the political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann’s words, of ‘hopeless obedience’ to her. Something similar is at play in the way many

Steerpike Steerpike

Greens side with Tories over Labour (again)

Another set of local elections offers another chance to expose the fallacy of the ‘progressive alliance.’ Every so often, misty-eyed centrists of a certain age like to wax lyrical about Labour, the Lib Dem’s and Greens joining together to kick those wicked Tories out of office. A Marvel Universe for moderates, if you like. Sadly for such commentators, political reality has a nasty habit of shattering these illusions. Every election produces unlikely bed fellows, offensive to those of a progressive disposition and this year is no exception. For up in Lancashire, the Greens have opted to back the Conservatives on Hyndburn Council, after this month’s elections left Labour and the