Politics

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

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The horrifying cost of Hancock’s Covid testing targets

The Telegraph’s splash of leaked WhatsApp messages about Matt Hancock and care home testing is a devastating reminder of the cost of those early decisions taken in Covid. The plight of care homes in lockdown is one of the worst aspects of the pandemic. The sheer scale of the deaths among this vulnerable population and the way the homes were forced to shut the doors to relatives for months has left tens of thousands of people traumatised. The cost of missing a target remains far lower than the cost to care homes of a pandemic they were never really protected in Any insight into why certain big – disastrous –

Steerpike Steerpike

Five things we’ve learned from Hancock’s lockdown files

It’s not just the spectre of Brexit that is haunting Westminster. Overnight the Telegraph has released a smorgasbord of stories based on a cache of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps during the Covid pandemic. Some 100,000 messages were handed to the newspaper by the co-author of his diaries Isabel Oakeshott. Below are some of the stand out news lines on day one of the ‘lockdown files’… Hancock rejected Whitty’s advice on care home tests So blares the Telegraph splash headline today. The paper reports that the then-Health Secretary did not follow advice from Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty to test all residents going into English care homes for the coronavirus. He instead

James Kirkup James Kirkup

There’s still a hint of life in the Tory party

Westminster is a place of consensus, orthodoxy and prevailing wisdom. At any given moment, there is the Narrative, the story that everyone – or close to everyone – believes, or pretends to. The Narrative can ignore objective facts, but also change quickly when finally confronted with realities too big to overlook.  I reckon the last big shift in the Narrative happened sometime on the Monday of Tory conference in October. In a few hours, it dawned on a lot of people that not only was the Liz Truss premiership doomed, but the Tories were very likely to lose the next election.  Since then, journalists, lobbyists, civil servants and even unworldly

Tuesday

Iain Macwhirter

The Windsor Framework isn’t the blessing Scottish nationalists think it is

Is the Windsor Framework a get-out-of-jail card for Scottish nationalists? The excitement expressed in SNP circles at Rishi Sunak’s Protocol breakthrough yesterday was palpable. For if remaining in the EU single market while staying in the UK is good for Northern Ireland, surely this could be the case too for an independent Scotland? Isn’t this the ‘best of both worlds’ scenario that Nicola Sturgeon always asked for: borderless trade with the UK after Scotland joins the EU single market? A bonanza for Scottish businesses, who would be able to access markets in Europe free from Brexit red tape? Perhaps even a ‘Holyrood Brake’ to ensure that the Scottish Parliament can

Lucy Dunn

Will Kate Forbes scrap Sturgeon’s National Care Service?

Kate Forbes has finally managed to shake off questions about equal marriage. The SNP leadership contender has been busy instead talking about Scotland’s crumbling health service – and how she’d fix it. It’s looking like Forbes, if successful, will scrap the Sturgeon-Yousaf National Care Service, back an independent inquiry into Scotland’s healthcare system and enter into considerations about the long-term future of the NHS. Will any of this help turn around a failing health service? Forbes said today during her speech at Reform Scotland’s event, a health service inquiry would be an ‘excellent idea’. She said it would look at the ‘short, the medium and the long-term future of the

Steven Barrett

Is Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal all it’s cracked up to be?

Rishi Sunak’s ‘deal’ on the Northern Ireland Protocol is finally out. My first impression is that it is no ‘deal’ at all: the version of the text published by the government is a document with no legal effect that is possible to enforce. It’s a wish list of vague commitments. The document is patronising in places: it refers to ‘saving money on a pint of beer, buying Cumberland sausages in a supermarket or visiting a garden centre for seeds and plants’. But there are also deeper concerns. Take paragraph 52:  ‘We also recognise, as we have done since 2020, that the Government needs to ensure that we monitor and tackle risks of

Steerpike Steerpike

Has the BBC misgendered Isla Bryson?

Is even the BBC starting to accept reality on questions of sex and gender? The Corporation has often been woker than woke, not least thanks to militant internal staff groups seemingly ready to persecute colleagues who don’t adhere to doctrine on trans matters. But the case of the Scottish double rapist Isla Bryson/Adam Graham has loosened the grip of trans orthodoxy on many previous believers. Several politicians, including candidates to replace Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader, have said they accept that Bryson is not a transgender woman but is actually a man who claims he is trans. Bryson was today sentenced to eight years for two rapes.  The BBC’s online report of

Joanna Williams

Labour’s ‘menopause action plan’ is an insult to women

Only once have I been asked if I would like to be photographed with my head sticking out of a giant bleeding vagina, but the memory has stuck with me. It was at a book festival in Gothenburg and I was there to promote a Swedish translation of my book, Women Versus Feminism. Despite the language barrier, I was pretty certain the six-foot stand-in vulva was intended to promote period awareness. As a middle-aged woman, I felt I was already quite period-aware and so I politely declined the selfie. Unfortunately, the vagina’s handlers were reluctant to accept this excuse. Not the middle-aged bit – that was self-evident. It was the

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP’s solution to infighting: ban the journalists

Those cunning geniuses at SNP HQ have done it again. Fed up with Forbes, Yousaf and Regan committing news at every turn, the spin doctors at Gordon Lamb House have come up with an ingenious plan to stop their candidates’ gaffes, attacks and infighting being reported. Their solution? Ban the journalists. Brilliant! This latest wheeze was announced today following yet another Ash Regan attack on the SNP government, this time over the A9 dualling failure. A party spokesman confirmed that the media will not be allowed to attend the party’s nine leadership hustings events. They argued that: It is the members who will be voting for the next leader of

Michael Gove

How the Tories should address Britain’s future

Michael Gove gave a speech at the thinktank Onward for the launch of its Future of Conservatism project today. Here is the text of his speech in full: The essence of Tory modernisation is to be true to the core principle of Conservatism – to deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. Conservative modernisation means applying enduring Conservative principles to our changing times and adapting policy to an altered world. The problems faced by Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson – and indeed George Osborne and David Cameron – are different from the crises and challenges we face today. Today I want to outline

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The Tories should be planting some bombs for Labour

The recent self-defenestration of Nicola Sturgeon led to a rash of columns listing her dazzling lack of actual achievements, many of which added the caveat that she was the consummate, in fact the most successful, politician of her generation. These statements seemed somewhat contradictory at first glance. But then the reader remembered – oh, yeah, right – the other politicians of her generation.  Looking back over the last 13 years of Tory governance, it’s hard to find anything to stick laurels on. Brexit was an achievement, yes, but that was foisted on the Tories by an uncooperative public, and the Tories tried their damndest to wriggle out of it even

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: civility campaigner tells journalist to ‘shut up’

A rich irony today on the BBC. Jacqui Smith, the former Home Secretary, popped up on Politics Live to talk about the important of civility in public life. She is the chair of trustees for the Jo Cox Foundation, which has today launched a civility commission to crack down on abuse in public life. It was therefore slightly ironic that the onetime Labour MP chose to exhibit less than perfect standards when debating with her fellow panellist Isabel Oakeshott the merits of Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework. The exchange went thus: Smith: We were told that this was all sorted, that we were now in the sort of open waters of

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Scotland’s bottle return scheme shows devolution is broken

Alister Jack may be about to take another stand against reckless policy-making at Holyrood. According to reports, the Scottish Secretary may deny the Scottish government’s deposit return scheme (DRS) a trading exemption under the UK Internal Market Act (UKIMA). The DRS will see 20p added to every single-use packaged drink sold in Scotland, with consumers able to recoup the money by returning their used bottles and cans to retailers or reverse vending machines.  Any drinks producer that hasn’t signed up to the scheme by midnight tonight risks being unable to sell their products in Scotland. Drinks industry and retail bodies have protested a lack of information from scheme administrator Circularity Scotland

James Heale James Heale

Rishi Sunak is not out of the woods yet

The reaction to Rishi Sunak’s Protocol changes has so far been at the upper end of expectations in No. 10. It gets a thumbs up from the Fleet Street papers – including the still-influential Daily Mail which has tended to splash positive stories about Boris Johnson. It has received warm words from a raft of pro-Brexit grandees like Michael Howard, David Davis and Liam Fox. And crucially it has not attracted the ire which accompanied previous deals like the Chequers Agreement of 2018. Indeed, at the time of writing, no Conservative MP has publicly said that they will vote against it. As those in No. 10 are all too aware,

Colin Freeman

Inside the court of King Zelensky

The first hint that my audience with Volodymyr Zelensky might not be what I’d hoped for came with the emailed invite. A few days before I’d been told I’d made the shortlist for a select presidential news conference marking the anniversary of the war. Not quite an exclusive interview, granted, but given current Zelenskymania, a decent second best. Images of a cosy roundtable in the secret presidential bunker beckoned. Alas, when the email from his office finally arrived, it was notably bereft of the cloak and dagger one might expect. No orders to leave my phone at home. No secret rendezvous with a blacked-out van. Just an order to report at

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Sunak makes the case for single market membership

Tuning into Radio 4 today, Mr S was surprised to hear a well-spoken but unlikely voice making the case for membership of the single market. In his usual polished tones, the Prime Minister told the Today programme that: Northern Ireland has this very special position where it has access to the UK market, has access to the EU market, which makes it an incredibly attractive place to invest for businesses and that’s sitting there waiting to happen if we can move forward and get the government up and running here. Rishi Sunak, a Brexiteer, eulogising the benefits of being in the single market? Had Steerpike heard wrong? Apparently not because

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Ten handy phrases for bluffing your way through the ‘Windsor Framework’

For amateur talking heads, the words ‘protocol’ and ‘framework’ have always been troubling. Such terms suggest muddling technical detail, constitutional complexity, and the need to actually read obscenely long and boring documents about trade. No thanks.  Veteran bluffers know, however, that confusion creates opportunity. Recall the golden rule of political commentary – everybody is blagging all the time, so don’t hold back. The Windsor Framework comes with a thousand opportunities to sound well-informed without even having to absorb the press releases. Here’s how.  Confrontational bluffers can try: ‘It’s time for the DUP to grow up and join the grown-ups.’  1) ‘Sometimes politics does work’  The experienced waffler knows which way

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Has Rishi Sunak pulled this off?

15 min listen

James Heale speaks to Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls about some of the key points in the Windsor Framework. Having reached an agreement with the EU, can Rishi Sunak do the same with both the Tories and the DUP?

John Curtice

Will the SNP’s chaotic leadership race ease Starmer’s path to Downing Street?

Nicola Sturgeon’s shock resignation has left Labour feeling hopeful. Might this be their chance to make significant gains north of the border at the next general election? Even before the First Minister’s unexpected announcement, the Scottish Labour party was already running at 29 per cent in polls of Westminster vote intentions, 10 points up on its tally in 2019. Instead of being in third place (and 26 points behind the SNP), it now occupied second place – ahead of the Conservatives and only 14 points behind the SNP. True, at that level of support the party might still gain no more than half a dozen seats at the expense of