Politics

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

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

British Council’s Russian détente

It’s all gone a bit Pete Tong down in the Crimea. Russia and Ukraine are tooling up on both sides, with the Western powers claiming there will be ‘unprecedented’ sanctions against Russia if it were to invade. Ben Wallace is set to meet with his Russian counterpart for crisis talks; the UK is among those nations shipping hundreds of anti-tank weapons out to Ukraine. The mood music is grim: the rhetoric sombre.  Yet there are those in London who are adopting a breezier approach to the current quandary. For the British Council, considered by many to be a key soft power extension of UK foreign policy, appears to have taken the prospect of imminent European

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Met Police to investigate parties in Downing Street

Boris Johnson’s team thought that the biggest problem they would encounter this week was Sue Gray’s report into allegations of parties at Downing Street in breach of Covid restrictions. However, they now also have a police investigation to deal with. This morning, the Met Police commissioner Cressida Dick confirmed that the police will investigate parties in No. 10.  Giving evidence to the London assembly this morning, Dick said her force had launched a criminal investigation into the allegations triggered by information provided by the Cabinet Office from Sue Gray’s investigation. Dick said: ‘As a result of information provided by cabinet office and my officers own assessment I can confirm (the) Met is

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Inside Operation Save Boris

Will Boris Johnson still be Prime Minister in a year’s time? It’s the question that haunts Johnson’s closest allies. After news broke on Monday evening of another lockdown event in the form of a birthday celebration in Downing Street when social gatherings indoors were banned, Johnson is once again on the backfoot. With MPs frustrated by the damaging drip-drip nature of the leaks, Johnson doesn’t just need to survive Sue Gray’s report into partygate, he also needs to show his party he can change. When the latest allegations emerged, Johnson loyalists such as Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries were quick out the blocks to say this event simply amounted to cake in the

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris Johnson’s lockdown birthday

‘Wait for Sue Gray’ has been the mantra on every ministers’ lips these past few weeks. But with just days to go before the senior civil servant is due to deliver her findings on ‘partygate’ how much longer can that line continue to hold? For this evening ITV have dropped yet another bombshell: Boris Johnson had a birthday party during lockdown in June 2020 despite rules forbidding social gatherings indoors.  Up to 30 staff celebrated in the cabinet room where his wife surprised him with a cake, with Lulu Lytle — the designer who was doing up the Prime Minister’s flat at the time — among those who came down to the

Steerpike Steerpike

Gavin Williamson’s new gig

With his Whips’ Office in crisis, how Boris Johnson must be wishing he’d kept Gavin Williamson in government. The former Chief Whip was praised for the political intelligence operation he ran during both the 2016 and 2019 Tory leadership elections when he helped secure victories for Johnson and his predecessor Theresa May. Now though Gavin – or Sir Gavin, as he is reportedly set to become – is left lolling on the backbenches, defending himself against attacks from Labour defectors about the methods he employed while in office. Still, the ex-Education Secretary clearly sees his former brief as his calling, given his desire to educate the public on his work in

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Blow for Boris as Treasury minister quits

Some rare fireworks in the House of Lords this afternoon. Lord Agnew, the minister responsible for Whitehall efficiency, has just resigned his ministerial posts after he told peers he was unable to defend the Treasury’s record. Responding to an Urgent Question by Labour, he strongly criticised the UK government’s ‘lamentable track record’ in tackling fraud in a flagship state-backed coronavirus business loan scheme.  The bounce back loan scheme handed out £47 billion, of which £4.9 billion was fraudulently claimed, the Business department estimates. It has a target to recover just £6 million from organised crime over three years. It’s the sheer waste here – billions of taxpayers’ money wrongly handed out –

Steven Fielding

Boris’s partygate troubles mean a welcome dilemma for Starmer

The last time a Conservative government was in the midst of a crisis like partygate, Labour had a choice. Should it stick or twist? Should it passively allow Conservative voters, who had kept the party in power for more than decade, to drift away from John Major, thanks to his troubles over the economy, ‘sleaze’ and the EU, hoping they would remain with Labour come a general election? Or should it make a bold and positive case for why they could actively support Labour?  Both approaches held dangers. Under John Smith, Labour opted to let nature take its course. At the time, it was described as a ‘one more heave’ strategy. It had merit:

Steerpike Steerpike

Serpentine swimmers slap down Matt Hancock

Oh dear. As part of his comeback tour, Matt Hancock is trying every trick to aid his post-Gina rehabilitation. There has been talk of a self-justificatory book, cringeworthy Twitter clips of him doing meet and greets, an appearance at the Capital Jingle Bell Ball in a dreadful turtleneck, backbench interventions and even talk of him mounting a leadership bid. But it seems one of Hancock’s stunts has backfired somewhat, after the master of the breast stroke was last week spotted taking a dip in the open-water swimming site of the Serpentine. For while Hancock, a guest of member and fellow former minister Lord Bethell, was keen to milk the conveniently-placed photographer’s snaps for all

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

How damaging are Nusrat Ghani’s claims?

16 min listen

Over the weekend the MP Nusrat Ghani accused the government of sacking her because allegedly her Muslim faith was an issue, and they thought she didn’t defend the Conservative party’s charges of Islamophobia more. In the week of the release of the infamous Sue Gray report into Partygate how are the Tories dealing with these two scandals? ‘The whip’s office is caught between Sandhurst and a HR department.’ – James Forsyth Cindy Yu is joined by James Forsyth and Katy Balls to unpack the weekend’s revelations. And if you are interested in learning more about Nasrat Ghani’s Journey to become an MP do listen to Katy’s interview with her from

Katy Balls Katy Balls

When will Johnson discover his fate?

As concerns rise in government over the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Boris Johnson is facing problems both abroad and domestically. The UK is withdrawing staff from the British embassy in Ukraine while ministers are attempting to manage expectations over how far the government will go in the event of an incursion — with a military response viewed as very unlikely. But back home, this is viewed as the week that could decide the Prime Minister’s fate over partygate.  As for the contents of the report, the scope of the inquiry has been widened out once again While there is still no confirmed date for the publication of Sue Gray’s report

Steerpike Steerpike

Where next for ‘party Marty’?

Westminster is gearing up for ‘Sue Gray week’ as the top civil servant is due to finally release her long-awaited findings into ‘partygate.’ There’s been much speculation as to how bad the forthcoming report will be for Boris Johnson and his gang, with both political appointees and civil servants expected to be implicated. TheTelegraph reports that Downing Street police officers have been interviewed about what they saw on the nights in question while the Sunday Times claims that Johnson’s former aide Dominic Cummings will be grilled today. While Mr S awaits the publication of the report’s findings with interest, it’s clear that one or two people’s careers in Whitehall have already been badly hit by

Matthew Lynn

The WFH bubble has burst

We would work over Zoom. We would all exercise on our Peletons. We would order in organic vegetable boxes, stream live shows, and network globally from our kitchens. At the height of the pandemic, with most of the major economies locked down, a group of work-and-live-from home companies boomed. And yet, right now that is starting to turn. The headlines might be dominated by stories of a stock market crash. In fact, however, something else is happening. The WFH bubble is bursting. There are a whole series of reasons why the stock market has turned very wobbly this month. Inflation is soaring and central banks, led by the Federal Reserve,

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Downflood: the Good Ship Boris is sinking

In Sebastian Junger’s book The Perfect Storm, there’s a near-matchless description of how big boats go to the bottom. ‘The crisis curve starts out gradually and quickly becomes exponential,’ Junger writes of a boat wallowing and taking on water in a big sea: The more trouble she’s in, the more trouble she’s likely to get in, and the less capable she is of getting out of it, which is an acceleration of catastrophe that is almost impossible to reverse… If there’s enough damage, flooding may overwhelm the pumps and short out the engine or gag its air intakes. With the engine gone, the boat has no steerageway at all and turns

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Dominic Raab: ‘Serious consequences’ if Russia invades

Dominic Raab – ‘Serious consequences’ if Russia invades Ukraine The Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab took to the TV studios this morning after another turbulent week for the government. Perhaps the most pressing issue on the agenda is deciphering the motives of Vladimir Putin, as a reported 100,000 Russian troops envelop Ukraine’s eastern border. Trevor Phillips asked Raab what was being done in the West to try and face Putin down as the icy Ukrainian winter threatens to heat up: There will be very serious consequences if Russia takes this move to try and invade, but also install a puppet regime… It will involve a range of financial and economic

Steerpike Steerpike

Science Museum axes slavery exhibits

An iconoclastic spirit has swept much of Britain’s institutions over the past two years. Just last month Mr S revealed that a painting of a fictitious scene from the American Civil War had been removed from Liverpool University’s library, despite it having hung there for decades. And it seems the university is not alone in its efforts, with Steerpike discovering that London’s Science Museum has removed no fewer than eight exhibits for historical or political insensitivity reasons. Among the items are three objects from the vast collection of pharmaceutical entrepreneur Henry Wellcome, including two nineteenth century slave whips and a German man-catcher which pulled riders off horseback. All were removed after curatorial work uncovered that

Bruce Anderson

It’s time for Boris Johnson to go

The partygate farce drags on. Do we have a government, sustained by a dominant political party or do we have an ill-run children’s playground? The PM has suffered a humiliating loss of authority, which is surely irreversible. He is no longer the First Lord of the Treasury. He has become the first laughing-stock of state. In one respect, Boris Johnson was always an improbable Prime Minister. From Attlee onwards, all post-war premiers could have claimed to be serious people. History might question whether that was really true of Harold Wilson or Tony Blair but at various stages they both dominated British politics. At least for a season, to use a

Steerpike Steerpike

Was this MP sacked for her ‘Muslimness’?

It’s a bad time to be a Tory whip. Facing briefings of incompetence and allegations of blackmail, backbencher Nus Ghani has overnight added fuel to the fire by claiming she was sacked from her ministerial post because her Muslim faith was ‘making colleagues uncomfortable’. A few hours after the Sunday Times reports surfaced, Chief Whip Mark Spencer stepped forward to reveal himself as the MP about whom such charges were levelled. Ghani, of course, made history in January 2018 as the first female Muslim Minister to speak from the House of Commons dispatch box. A staunch Brexiteer and critic of China, she was surprisingly sacked from her transport brief in the February 2020 mini-reshuffle despite

Ben Sixsmith

‘West Elm Caleb’ and the vindictiveness of a social media feeding frenzy

The saga of ‘West Elm Caleb’ will make you wish that you had never used the internet. It will make you wish that you had never heard of the internet. It is the sort of thing that would make Ted Kaczynski feel vindicated, if his prison guards forced him to look at social media as some kind of esoteric punishment. I will keep the background short and sweet, or, rather, short and sour. On TikTok, last week, various women in New York uploaded videos about a young man, Caleb, who had both ‘love bombed’ and then ‘ghosted’ them — or, in other words, made it seem as if he was intensely

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Sage ‘scenarios’ vs actual: an update

Given that lockdown was very nearly ordered on the advice of Sage last month, it’s worth keeping an eye on the ‘scenarios’ it published, and how they compare to the situation today. Another week of data offers more food for thought. This week was the period when deaths were supposed to be peaking – so given that no extra restrictions were ordered, it’s interesting to compare the peak the models predicted for this week with what actually happened. Deaths were said by Sage to peak at anything from 600 to 6,000 a day (the latter figure, predictably, hogged the headlines). But on Saturday 262 deaths were reported in England, and

Saturday

John Ferry John Ferry

The paradox at the heart of Nicola Sturgeon’s green ‘revolution’

In some ways it was refreshing to see the radical left brought to heel by the realities of government. Having spent years campaigning to ‘ditch neoliberal economics for good’, this week saw the Scottish Green Party celebrate Shell and BP winning contracts to exploit Scotland’s offshore wind potential for the enrichment of their shareholders. Far from being a strike against neoliberalism, the Greens have provided a ringing endorsement of capitalism’s place in the transition away from fossil fuels. This came on the back of the ScotWind Leasing project, which has seen the Scottish government auction off seabed plots for major offshore wind projects around the Scottish coast. In the first