Politics

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

Wednesday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Just stop Just Stop Oil

Why block roads? Why make people’s lives miserable? Who do you think this is going to convince? So go the interminable TV-news debates after each disruptive piece of direct action by eco-troupe Extinction Rebellion and the various single-issue offshoots, such as Just Stop Oil, that it has inspired. These past two weeks, Just Stop Oil has been back in the spotlight. It is now into its 12th consecutive day of action in London, demanding the government stop all oil and gas production. Yesterday, its activists blocked roads in Knightsbridge, delaying an ambulance, a fire engine and cars carrying babies to hospital. Today, they’re sitting in the road outside parliament.  Once

Douglas Murray

Is what Conor Burns did really so appalling?

There are times when I feel like certain rakes must have done when they realised that the Regency period was suddenly morphing into the Victorian one. Not that I feel especially rakish. Just that there are times when you see the new rules of sex and think: ‘Well, I guess there’ll be none of that from now on.’ Take the allegations made against Conor Burns MP. Last week, Burns was fired from his ministerial job and had the Conservative party whip suspended. There are efforts to take his name off the list of people put forward for a knighthood in Boris Johnson’s farewell honours list. What is the cause of all

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is it time to sack Andrew Bailey?

Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget was botched and the government has lost control of public spending. But this morning Jacob Rees-Mogg was not wrong to deflect at least some of the blame for current market turmoil on the Bank of England. The bank has been hopelessly behind the curve on inflation – in May last year it was still confidently predicting that the Consumer Prices Index would rise no higher than 2 per cent this year. Shortly before Kwarteng’s budget it showed that it was still lagging behind by raising interest rates by 0.5 per cent rather than the 0.75 per cent which markets had been expecting. If ever there was a public

Steerpike Steerpike

Parliament to host ‘children’s select committee’

Critics moan that parliament is full of children – and next week it certainly will be. For Mr S has learned of a new scheme to champion Westminster’s outreach efforts across the country. The UK Youth Parliament for 11 to 18 year olds was one thing; now Tory MP Anna Firth is hosting the first in-person ‘Children’s Parliament Select Committee’ for those even younger. For next Monday London and Southend school pupils between the ages of seven to eleven will descend on Portcullis House to ask the tough questions of various water companies. Anglian Water, Southern Water and other related businesses are expected to be there and can expect a

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Britain’s shrinking economy adds to market jitters

Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak spent the summer fighting it out in the Tory leadership contest, debating how they would make the economy grow. It turns out that, while that discussion raged on, the economy was contracting: GDP fell in August by 0.3 per cent, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. This is an unexpected dip which is only likely to increase market jitters. September is likely to be a bad month too Production output fell by 1.8 per cent, while services dipped by 0.1 per cent overall: of this, arts, entertainment and recreation activities plunged by 5 per cent in total, making it one of the ‘largest contributors’ to the

Peregrine Worsthorne

What Washington was like during the Cuban Missile Crisis (2002)

On 27 October 1962, US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara stepped out of crisis meetings and looked up at the sky. ‘I thought it was the last Saturday I would ever see,’ he recalled.  This month marks 60 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 2002, Peregrine Worsthorne wrote about what it was like to be in Washington during humanity’s closest shave. Forty years ago the Americans won what I hope will be the nearest thing to nuclear war between superpowers — of which only one is left — ever fought; and the fact that they won it without firing a shot should not diminish but rather increase the extent of the victory.

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget continues to spook investors

If government bond sales by pension funds are the fundamental cause of a potential systemic crisis that could hurt us all, as the Bank of England says, why are pension funds taking so little advantage of the Bank’s offer to buy £65 billion of the bonds? And why are bond prices still falling? It seems to me the only explanation for what is happening is that margin calls on pension funds’ liability-driven investments (LDIs) – or the trillion pounds of their debt that’s secured against UK government bonds – are not, in fact, the main cause of the spike in bond yields, or at least they are only a small

Tuesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The Bank of England’s governor issues a stark warning

Speculation has been growing that the Bank of England might announce an extension of its emergency gilt-buying programme which is set to end on Friday. Despite the Treasury moving forward its ‘medium-term fiscal plan’ announcements from November to the end of this month, gilt yields have been rising yet again this week in the lead-up to the end of the scheme. It seemed likely that the Bank’s gilt-buying programme might be extended for another two weeks as a result, in order to buy time before the Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s announcement on 31 October. But tonight Andrew Bailey put that speculation to bed. Speaking at the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC, the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Meghan Markle’s podcast is about the word ‘crazy.’ And it’s barking mad

‘Calling someone crazy or hysterical completely dismisses their experience,’ says Meghan Markle in her strangely throaty professional podcast voice. ‘It minimises what they’re feeling. And you know it doesn’t stop there. It keeps going to the point where anyone who has been labelled it enough times can be gaslit into thinking that they’re actually unwell. Or sometimes worse to the point where real issues of all kinds get ignored. Well that’s not happening today.’ Cue the intro music – ‘I am woman, I am fearless, I am sexy’ etc. – to the latest episode of Archetypes, the Duchess of Sussex’s Spotify series. ‘I feel pretty strongly about this word crazy,’

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Kwasi Kwarteng’s easy ride

Tory MPs were in an anxious mood as they returned to the Commons this afternoon after weeks of conference recess and government meltdown. Their first session in parliament was, appropriately enough, Treasury questions, where they had a chance to air some of their anxieties with the Chancellor and his team. It could have been a much worse session for Kwasi Kwarteng, given the way things have gone recently. But the number of MPs seeking reassurance won’t have left him feeling very relaxed. Kwarteng told the Commons that his mini-Budget had been ‘really strong’ Kwarteng told the Commons that his mini-Budget had been ‘really strong’ and that MPs constituents would have

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What is the way out for Kwasi?

14 min listen

Parliament is back today and Kwasi Kwarteng is facing questions from the opposition as well as from those within his party. How much pressure is he under? Also on the podcast, looking ahead to another fiscal event at the end of the month, are we heading for a series of departmental spending cuts? What would our political team announce if they were Chancellor on October 31st? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Steerpike Steerpike

EU chief blasts Brussels’ diplomats

The verdict is in: European Union diplomats are useless. But this isn’t the view of one of the EU’s usual detractors. It’s the assessment of Josep Borrell, Brussels’ very own foreign affairs chief. In a damning briefing to the European External Action Service, Borrell said he was fed up finding out information from newspapers before hearing it from his own officials. ‘Quickly for the European standard means a couple of months,’ said Borrell ‘This is not a moment when we are going to send flowers to all of you saying that you are beautiful, you work very well and we are very happy, we are one big family,’ Borrell said, before launching into his furious rebuke

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour prepares to fire up its election machine

Could a snap election be around the corner? That’s the message Keir Starmer relayed to party staff in a conference call this morning. He told those assembled that the economic turmoil following the Chancellor’s not-so-mini Budget means the government ‘could fall at any time’. As a result, his party needs to be election ready: ‘We have to recognise it is that unstable. We need to be ready. We need to get on an election footing straight away’. This isn’t the first time in recent months that figures in Labour have said they’re on an election footing – it’s a useful line to garner attention and rally the base. But this

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What’s causing the surge in borrowing costs?

When Kwasi Kwarteng stood up to deliver his mini-Budget last month, the assumption by the government was that the markets would jump for joy over its growth strategy. Less than three weeks later, the Bank of England is staging its third intervention to keep the UK’s bond market afloat, warning this morning of ‘material risk’ to the UK’s financial stability if markets don’t calm down soon.  After yesterday’s update – that the Bank would double its purchasing limit of long-term gilts from £5 billion per day to £10 billion as well as extending its gilt-buying scheme past the end of the week to allow banks to protect pension funds –

Anna Arutunyan

Putin’s acolytes are boxing him in

As Russia continues to get routed in eastern Ukraine – losing territory, machinery and personnel to an emboldened Ukrainian counteroffensive – infighting has intensified in the Kremlin. Looking for someone to blame, the various factions are increasingly attacking Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his Ministry, and seeking an escalation of hostilities in Ukraine.  When Russia lost the town of Lyman less than 24 hours after illegally annexing four regions that included it, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov called for a tactical nuclear strike on Ukraine. He also lashed out against the General Staff, and threatened to send Central Military District Commander Alexander Lapin to the front to ‘cleanse his shame in blood’. While

Debbie Hayton

Teachers need help in the transgender debate

Which toilet should a trans pupil be allowed to use? Teachers like me have enough on our plates with the day job, but we must also face questions like this. Whatever our answer, we are bound to annoy someone. Yet for too long, ministers have shied away from offering a helping hand in this toxic debate. Unfortunately, it looks as though Liz Truss’s government is going to continue that unhelpful approach. Schools are in desperate need of clear guidance for helping include transgender pupils without compromising the rights of others. Activist groups have held sway for too long, and – as a teacher – it was a relief to hear the Department

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Liz Truss has a language problem

‘Grow the pie’. Somebody thought ‘grow the pie’ was The Thing, that ‘grow the pie’ was it. That this knockout phrase would silence the army of doubters and bring millions of voters back on side. They were proud of ‘grow the pie’. They thought ‘grow the pie’ was a great idea that people can really relate to and get behind. The same kind of person who thought reviving The Generation Game with Mel and Sue, or that Crown paint advert with the dead-eyed cult singing about ‘Hannah and Dave’ were notions of genius. Grow the pie – biff bang pow, now what’s your comeback to that, eh? Did they test

Emmet Penney

The West is on the road to energy ruin

Since the beginning of the Ukraine war and the sanctions it triggered, energy prices have skyrocketed. Liz Truss has warned that soaring energy bills are a ‘price worth paying’ in order to stand up against Vladimir Putin. President Joe Biden has called this year’s rocketing bills ‘Putin’s price hike.’ Margrethe Vestager, vice president of the European Commission, has encouraged Europeans to take short, cold showers to conserve energy. ‘When you turn off the water, say ‘Take that, Putin!’’ she urged. But are the high prices really Putin’s fault? He didn’t sanction himself, after all. It’s the West that chose to cut itself off from the Russian fossil fuels upon which it had

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Does the ‘anti-growth coalition’ run the Treasury?

‘Permanent revolution’ is the on dit in Whitehall these days – and what it means is that the Truss administration U-turns so often the whole machinery of government is constantly spinning round on its axis. The latest volte-face is the decision to appoint James Bowler, a 20-year establishment veteran, as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. The Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, declared himself ‘delighted to welcome James back to the Treasury,’ which is causing a few chuckles in SW1. The joke in Westminster today is apparently that the anti-growth coalition actually runs the Treasury It’s well-known that Kwarteng’s plan was to shake up the Treasury. Bowler represents precisely the sort of orthodox