Politics

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

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Truss gambit outflanks Sunak on China

Talk about a tale of two campaigns. China has been one of the dominant themes this week in the Tory leadership race. Both candidates knocked lumps out of each other in BBC’s Monday debate, with the Foreign Secretary suggesting she could even ban TikTok. But tonight, the issue has reared its head again twice within a few hours. First, Rishi Sunak was left embarrassed by a leaked Treasury paper which suggested he was close to signing a deal with Beijing to ‘deepen trade links’ earlier this year. It boasted 47 pages of ‘policy outcomes’ for closer ties in 20 areas. They included inviting a huge Chinese sovereign wealth fund to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Angela Rayner ally sacked by Starmer

Sam Tarry, who joined today’s picket line at Euston and gave various interviews from there, has been sacked from the Labour shadow transport team and the front bench. However, Tarry has not been sacked for being on the picket line, but for making unauthorised media appearances. Labour’s line is that this isn’t about appearing on a picket line. Members of the frontbench sign up to collective responsibility. That includes media appearances being approved and speaking to agreed frontbench positions.  This morning, Tarry implied that rail workers would not have gone on strike under a Labour government as they would have been offered a more generous pay deal. Given that Tarry

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Has Rishi U-turned on tax cuts?

10 min listen

Having spent the last four debates suggesting that tax cuts are irresponsible and immoral, Rishi Sunak says he will cut VAT on energy bills if he becomes the next prime minister. Those defending him have suggested that this particular tax cut is temporary, it is funded and will help ease the cost of living crisis. Are they right? Katy Balls is joined by Kate Andrews. Produced by Natasha Feroze.

Matt Ridley

Has the lab leak theory really been disproved?

The BBC carried a story this week with the headline ‘Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan market’. Bizarrely the paper in Science they are referring to, by Michael Worobey and colleagues, says no such thing. It says: ‘the observation that the preponderance of early cases were linked to the Huanan market does not establish that the pandemic originated there’. All three of the scientists quoted in the BBC story have been highly dismissive about even discussing the possibility that the pandemic began as an accident in a Wuhan laboratory. Their vested interest is clear: they worry that the reputation of their field of virology would be threatened by

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MPs cheer ‘drag story hour’

Summer recess is here and MPs are competing for the Tory leadership or jetting off on their hols. For some, though, they prefer to remain in their constituencies. Stella Creasy, the right-on MP for Walthamstow Central, chose to go to ‘Drag Story Hour UK’ with her infant son. She wrote on Twitter yesterday that she had ‘a lovely afternoon’ with ‘the wonderful Greta who put so much energy into story telling and entertaining local children.’ Her colleague Nadia Whittome replied by saying ‘this is so wholesome.’ Yet it seems not all in the UK share the enthusiasm for ‘Drag Story Hour,’ which began with drag queens in the US in

James Lovelock

Why are we so afraid of nuclear power? (2021)

The scientist, environmentalist, futurist, inventor and creator of the Gaia hypothesis James Lovelock has died, aged 103. Last October, he wrote the following piece about the importance of nuclear power. May he rest in peace. The climate change summit in Glasgow will have one important part of the discussion missing: the role of nuclear power. It seems the government is in no mood for a discussion with the nuclear industry — every one of its applications to exhibit at the COP26 summit has been rejected. That’s a shame, because there are plenty of myths to be addressed. We could discuss the lessons from the plant at Fukushima, seriously harmed by a tsunami

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The bravery of Allison Bailey

Allison Bailey is a criminal defence barrister at Garden Court chambers in London, a large and important group of lawyers with a reputation as a human rights ‘set’ supporting trans rights. In December 2018, she complained to her colleagues about Garden Court becoming a Stonewall ‘Diversity Champion’. She said that Stonewall advocated ‘trans extremism’ and was complicit in a campaign of intimidation of those who questioned gender self-identity, a claim the charity denies. In October 2019, she was involved in setting up the Lesbian Gay Alliance, a charity to resist ‘gender extremism’. She tweeted about these matters. That led to complaints to her chambers, accusing her of transphobia and other hateful

Steerpike Steerpike

Liz Truss’s failed Lib Dem bid revealed

She is the current favourite to be our next Prime Minister but Liz Truss hasn’t always been such a staunch Tory. Throughout the current Conservative leadership race, the Foreign Secretary has faced numerous reminders of her student past, back when was a card-carrying Liberal Democrat. There was the footage of a fresh-faced Truss calling for the abolition of the monarchy at the 1994 party conference in front of a watching David Steel. There was the Newsnight package which showed her canvassing Brighton locals that same year. And there have been images of the-then Oxford University Lib Dem president protesting Michael Howard’s Criminal Justice Bill to clamp down on raves that

Steerpike Steerpike

Allison Bailey wins case against her chambers

Away from the Truss/Sunak ding-dong, another long-running drama has come to an end. Barrister Allison Bailey, a friend of JK Rowling, has today won her discrimination case against Garden Court Chambers. An employment tribunal unanimously found that Bailey, a barrister, lesbian, prominent gender critical campaigner and founding member of LGB Alliance, was discriminated against and victimised by her barristers’ chambers on the basis of her gender critical beliefs. Over 30 witnesses were cross examined in a trial conducted entirely over video live-link that attracted hundreds of online observers and many thousands more followed the live tweeting of the case. The litigation was described by Bailey as being part ‘of a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Starmer’s rail strike response shows he’s no heir to Blair

Sir Keir Starmer faces an unenviable choice: whether to sack shadow transport minster Sam Tarry who defied the Labour leader’s instruction not to join RMT picket lines and posed for photos outside Euston station this morning. Fail to sack him and Starmer will undermine his own authority and make himself look pathetically weak. Wield the axe, on the other hand, and Starmer will stir anger well beyond the Corbynite wing of the party, and reveal to the world how deeply knee-jerk support for striking workers still runs within Labour’s ranks. Twenty five years ago Tony Blair convinced the electorate that the trade union movement and Labour’s relationship with it had

Steerpike Steerpike

Remainers tool up for Boris’s departure

Boris Johnson’s imminent departure has been greeted with enthusiasm by all the usual suspects: millionaire celebs, Labour MPs, Tory wets and of course Dominic Cummings. But for one group of sworn Boris-bashers, the departure of their mortal foe offers a useful call to arms: unrepentant Remainers. Perusing the popular ‘Work 4 MP’ jobs site this morning, Mr S was struck by an advert for Best for Britain, the former stop Brexit crusade now rebranded as a ‘civil society campaign.’ Chaired by Kim Darroch, the continuity Remain outfit spent much of 2021 railing against Boris Johnson, pumping out graphics describing the PM as ‘an international stain on our reputation’ and trying to make

Douglas Murray

Why should straight white men ‘pass the power’?

If you happened to be walking through Southwark this week you might have been accosted by a big public sign. ‘Hey straight white men’, the billboard bellowed, ‘Pass the power!’ Similar billboards apparently cropped up in other, equally squalid, parts of London. They are by a black artist from Marseille called Nadina. It will not come as a surprise to anyone who has seen her work to learn that Nadina is self-taught. Her other street art includes posters saying ‘Never forget George Floyd’ and ‘Nobody is free until Palestine is free’. It is brought to us by a gallery run, so far as I can see, by two white males.

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

The decline and fall of Rishi Sunak

Ed Balls, the intellectual powerhouse behind the economics of the New Labour era, was once described as having a brain the size of a planet. He was treated with reverence as a result. Yet when he ran for the leadership of his party he came a poor third, losing to goofy Ed Miliband, a guy who had once served as his office junior. Similarly, one of the reasons Rishi Sunak became the candidate of choice in this Tory leadership race was because of his alleged super-smartness. As a product of Winchester – the public school most associated in elite circles with outstanding mathematical and analytical brains – as well as Oxford,

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Is self-loathing the British disease?

Whatever one thinks of the government’s plans to send refugees to Rwanda, it was amusing to see this country’s left suddenly finding all sorts of reasons why only the UK – ‘a cake-filled, misery-laden, grey old island’ according to Emma Thompson, patron of the Refugee Council – would do as a final destination for these poor people. It was especially ironic that the place which the great and the good decreed unfit for humane habitation was a country of which liberals have historically approved: France. The phrase ‘French flu’ was coined in the 1950s to describe the cultural cringe of British progressives towards France as the source of all things

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Starmer now sack Rayner’s ally?

Labour might be keen to portray themselves as a government-in-waiting but today’s rail strikes show the problems that still remain. Sir Keir Starmer told his party’s MPs that they should not join the industrial action by the RMT yet his shadow transport spokesman Sam Tarry has directly defied his orders to do a round of media interviews from the picketline, in support of the union. He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain today: ‘If we don’t make a stand today, people’s lives could be lost. Some of the lowest-paid workers are on strike today in the rail industry, safety critical workers, workers who make sure our railways get people to work and

Matthew Lynn

Rishi Sunak’s energy bill u-turn is too little, too late

A tweak to the landfill tax perhaps? A minor adjustment to the airport levy? Rishi Sunak no doubt stayed up late into the night sifting through all the most minor tax cuts he could offer before re-launching his campaign with a dramatic u-turn. In the end, he plumped for axing VAT on energy bills, promising to scrap it for a year. Sunak’s campaign insist it will save the average household an estimated £160 as prices go up. The trouble is, it is too little, too late: if Sunak wanted to cut taxes he needed something far bigger and bolder. Sunak has gone for the most minor tax tweak imaginable, making himself

Amber Athey

Mr Trump goes back to Washington

Former president Donald Trump returned to Washington, DC for the first time since leaving office last night. He did not like what he saw. During his keynote address at the America First Agenda Summit held at the Marriott Marquis, Trump derided the filthy homeless encampments that have popped up throughout the city and called for a return to ‘law and order’. These tent cities, Trump said, are ‘all over some of, I think, the most beautiful public spaces in the world’. Indeed, if you drive through downtown DC or catch a train out of Union Station, you will encounter the haphazard tents and the desperate drug-addicted and mentally unwell folk

Joanna Williams

The truth about trans teaching in schools

The LGBT advocacy group Stonewall has come in for criticism over recent months with many big name organisations – including the BBC and the cabinet office – withdrawing from its diversity champions programme. Yet rather than toning down its controversial claims and divisive rhetoric, the charity insists on doubling down. It now seems to have children firmly in its sights. ‘Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity,’ Stonewall recently declared. ‘Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender. LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people!’. Following a huge backlash to that tweet, Stonewall clarified that it

Tuesday

Coffee House

Truss-Sunak debate suspended early after host faints

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss’s second head-to-head debate was suspended after half an hour due to presenter Kate McCann fainting. TalkTV has confirmed she is OK. Refresh this page for further developments. 7.30 p.m. – Sunak and Truss go home Katy Balls writes… The debate is over. The guests are going home. Rishi Sunak outlasted Liz Truss mingling by about ten minutes, but to be fair to the Foreign Secretary it is her birthday. 7.08 p.m. – Debate presenter fainted TalkTV statement: ‘Kate McCann fainted on air tonight and although she is fine, the medical advice was that we shouldn’t continue with the debate. We apologise to our viewers and listeners.’ 6.56

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Can Rishi turn things around?

10 min listen

Yet another post debate poll, out today, shows that Tory members believe Liz Truss performed better in Monday evening’s BBC debate. With the next week pivotal according to received wisdom (members are expected to vote soon after they receive their ballot papers), can Rishi Sunak turn things around in time? Katy Balls discusses with James Forsyth. Produced by Cindy Yu.