Politics

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

Thursday

Julian Jessop

Of course we can afford to cut taxes

The latest data on the UK’s public finances have provided more ammunition for those arguing that the government cannot afford to cut taxes. However, the economic reality is far more nuanced – especially when it comes to interest payments. The bad news is that the government borrowed another £14 billion in May, £3.7 billion more than forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). This reflected both lower-than-expected tax receipts, despite the increase in National Insurance contributions, and higher spending, including £7.6 billion in debt interest costs. This means that the government has already borrowed £35.9 billion in the first two months of the new fiscal year, or £6.4 billion

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

MPs should watch Rees-Mogg’s EU law dashboard closely

Jacob Rees-Mogg this week unveiled something that has variously been mocked as either a ‘vanity project’ or the Johnson administration’s equivalent of the Major government’s Cones Hotline. The Cones Hotline was a policy designed to tackle the great social evil of traffic cones loitering without intent – and became emblematic of that government’s tiredness and lack of proper ideas.  The Brexit Opportunities Minister has come up with a ‘retained EU law dashboard’, which he told MPs yesterday was ‘of both political – and in my view – historic constitutional importance’. The dashboard allows the public to see which out of more than 2,400 pieces of EU legislation have been kept

Steven Barrett

Raab’s Bill of Rights unpicks Blair’s messy reforms

For years, the Human Rights Act has cast a shadow over British politics. Its supporters claim, in the absence of a single written document in Britain’s constitution, that it upholds key freedoms; its detractors say it has been misused and hands too much power to the courts over elected politicians. Soon, this debate may be over: Dominic Raab’s Bill of Rights kills off the Human Rights Act. ‘The Human Rights Act 1998 is repealed,’ paragraph 2 of Schedule 5, of the Act says. Under the old Human Rights system, the courts were allowed to ‘interpret’ any Act of Parliament ‘in line’ with Human Rights legislation. That was always a conceptual

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Biden’s racial ‘equity’ plan is bound to backfire

‘America is a nation that can be defined in a single word,’ said the proud Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden, standing outside the White House earlier this year. ‘Alsdfnalcaofjlksfa.’ We shouldn’t laugh. The poor man has a speech impediment. Still, that ‘Alsdfnalcaofjlksfa’ word will strike many Americans as an amusingly apt description of their country in 2022. It sums up Joe Biden’s whole administration: nonsense pretending to be clear leadership. America is, as everyone knows, in an inflationary crisis. The cost of petrol has reached such highs that Biden has called on Congress to suspend gas (petrol) tax for three months. That will do nothing to address the energy supply shortage that

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What counts as a bad result for Boris in the by-elections?

The polls are open for the Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton by-elections. The results are due in the early hours of Friday – with the Tories at risk of losing both of them. The votes have long been seen as a crunch point for Boris Johnson’s premiership – even though the fact that there was a confidence vote just weeks ago means that it is unlikely to lead to another. To hold another vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, MPs would have to change the rules and no-one expects them to try to do this so soon after the last one. Expectations are so low that if they manage

Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Hunt loses (again)

It was with great excitement that Steerpike learned that Jeremy Hunt had (finally) made public what many had privately long-suspected: he’s running. Yet the more Mr S read of the politician’s bid for high office, the less it sounded like the Tory Remainer that we all know and love. For Hunt’s prospective manifesto included support for gun rights, stricter border controls and an end to taxpayer-funded abortions. Has the Surrey MP undergone a sudden right-wing conversion? Sadly for those hoping for such a political metamorphosis, it appears not. For Jeremy C Hunt is one of the candidates who has been running in the Republican primary for a congressional seat in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is Boris able to stand up to Sunak?

The latest inflation figures have sent Tory MPs into a tizz again, unsurprisingly. There are a number of things that they’re upset about: the first is the ongoing refrain that their party should be cutting taxes, not imposing the highest tax burdens in living memory. Another is that Universal Credit is largely ‘an unfinished project’, in the words of one Red Wall backbencher who sees the impact of the malfunctioning benefit on his constituents. What both of these complaints have in common is that MPs feel the Treasury is deliberately pursuing the wrong policy: arguing that now isn’t the time to cut taxes and choosing to spend money on grants for

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Where’s Boris’s plan to stop the economic chaos?

Interest payments on the national debt rose 70 per cent last month to £7.6 billion (compared with a year earlier) – largely because of the impact of inflation on income paid to holders of index-linked gilts, which are inflation-protected government bonds. More worryingly, this was 49 per cent more than the official forecast made in March by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). It suggests the OBR’s forecast that the government will have to pay £87.2 billion in interest payments (a colossal sum) may be too low, especially since the ONS is not factoring in the most recent inflation figures in its calculations of the monthly bill. Little wonder Rishi Sunak says ‘rising

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Putin’s billions: have sanctions backfired?

When Vladimir Putin sent his tanks into Ukraine on 24 February, he did so under the assumption that the West was too ruptured and disjointed to pull together a unified response. It was the first of many miscalculations. That same day, Boris Johnson promised ‘massive’ economic sanctions that would ‘hobble’ Russia’s economy to the point of shutdown. ‘Putin chose this war,’ said Joe Biden that evening, as the United States announced its own sanctions on Russia’s top banks. ‘Now he and his country will bear the consequences.’ The global economic response to Russia’s aggression has been stronger than anyone predicted. Russia’s most notorious oligarchs have had their assets seized and

Anshel Pfeffer

The odd couple: Israel and Turkey’s tentative alliance

 Jerusalem On Friday night, when the Israeli government usually shuts down for Shabbat, the Prime Minister’s office issued an emergency briefing. An attack on Israeli tourists in Istanbul was ‘imminent’, it said. Israelis in Turkey were ordered to stay in their hotel rooms for fear of assassins, sent by Iran. There was no attack that night, as it happened, but the threat to the many Israelis in Turkey remains. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has become increasingly enraged by Mossad’s assassinations of IRGC officers in Iran, and decided that the best and easiest way to get revenge is to target the thousands of Israelis in Istanbul. Both Turkish and Israeli

Andrew Cockburn

Why economic sanctions never work

The purpose of economic sanctions was aptly summarised back in 1960 by a US State Department official in a secret memo on Cuban sanctions ‘to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.’ Twenty years later, the CIA concluded that ‘economic sanctions… have not met any of their objectives’. Worse, the measures strengthened the regime, providing Castro with ‘a scapegoat for all kinds of domestic problems’. That pattern has endured. Sanctions result in hardship for the sanctioned population, as exemplified by the half-million toll on Iraqi children during the 1990s, while the sanctioned nation’s ruling elite escapes unscathed and diverts any possible local disaffection among the immiserated populace against the

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Who monitors the moralists?

If anyone was suitable to be the Prime Minister’s adviser on ministerial interests, it was Lord Geidt. Self-effacing, professional, unself-righteous but thoroughly proper, he could be relied on to do his job without an eye to attracting headlines, gaining Remainer revenge and similar modern temptations to which some officials succumb. Yet last week he resigned. It seems a good moment to ask whether the job is doable. Many will say that it isn’t, and blame Boris Johnson. It is undoubtedly true that any system based on rules comes under strain when confronted with Boris’s work methods. Last week, a horse called Etonian ran at Ascot. A newspaper reported that he

Dalibor Rohac

Appeasing Putin isn’t the answer

Oddly enough, a visitor to Kyiv these days is unwittingly reminded of Israel, of all places. With sunbathers on the beach by the Dnipro, busy (though not completely full) restaurants and cafés, and hipsters and skateboarders, it is sometimes hard to wrap one’s head around the fact that this is a country at war. Yet the war is omnipresent. Each day is punctuated by air raids, mostly ignored by the locals. Roadblocks and checkpoints around the city are being fortified instead of removed in anticipation of another possible attack on the capital. Just twenty minutes from downtown, one can see the devastation of Irpin, where Russians spent weeks shelling apartment

James Forsyth James Forsyth

British politics is stuck

One of the favourite phrases of British political commentators is ‘oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them’. As with all clichés, there is a certain amount of truth to it. But both the Tories and Labour seem intent on testing the maxim to destruction: despite everything the Tories appear to be doing to ensure they lose the next election, Labour is still only ahead by single digits in the opinion polls. No incumbent party in the western world is finding the present set of circumstances easy. The Covid shutdowns, overly loose monetary policies and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have sent inflation soaring. In France, Emmanuel Macron has no way of

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

In defence of striking

Here’s something I’ve learned over the past few days. The right loves the working classes when they’re voting for Brexit, but it hates them when they go out on strike. When they strike, they’re wreckers, a pox on the nation. They’ve clearly been led astray by their smooth-talking union bosses. So what if there was a democratic secret ballot in favour of the strike action they’re taking – these low-information workers clearly did not understand what they were voting for. The left, meanwhile, loves the working classes when they’re out on strike, but of course it hates them when they’re voting for something like Brexit. When they strike, they’re heroic,

Mary Dejevsky

Boris, Zelensky and Britain’s new special relationship

Boris Johnson has been accused of shamelessly using the war in Ukraine for his own political ends. The timing of his contacts with president Volodymyr Zelensky suggests there is plenty of evidence to support this claim. At the end of last week, within hours of his ethics adviser’s resignation, Johnson ducked out of a planned meeting with Northern MPs in favour of a day-trip to Kyiv. The timing of Johnson’s conversations with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, have certainly rung alarm bells. All too often, Downing Street’s announcements about his telephone chats with Zelensky have usefully diverted attention from the particular difficulty Johnson was facing at the time and on to his role as

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Wallace takes a pop at Penny

Like the first swallow of spring, the sound of chinked glasses in the sun signals the beginning of summer. It’s the annual party season and Mr S has been doing the rounds this week. Normally, buying and selling is left to the City but if Steerpike had to invest sums in anyone it would be Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. If Steerpike had to invest sums in anyone it would be Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. Yesterday he was spotted tossing shrimp on the barbie with Aussies in Kensington; today he was the keynote speaker at ConservativeHome in Westminster. To a well-attended crowd, Wallace joked that ‘I’m not Michael Gove – well,

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Macron’s state of denial

Crisis? What crisis? Emmanuel Macron emerged from his bunker tonight to speak to France for the first time since his party’s humiliation in Sunday’s legislative elections. In an eight minute television address – the briefest I can recall from the usually loquacious president – he had absolutely nothing substantive to say. There was not an ounce of contrition. Indeed he claimed that his portmanteau party Renaissance, née La République En Marche, had actually won the election by remaining the largest group in the Assembly. This is despite losing 150 of his deputies and his presidential majority. But there were plenty of bromides and temporisation. He said the situation would be clarified

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Are the latest inflation figures worrying for the government?

9 min listen

The latest figures suggest that inflation has risen at the highest rate in 40 years. Now at 9.1 per cent, it’s not all bad because the rate at which inflation is increasing has in fact slowed down. However, on the podcast, our economics editor, Kate Andrews suggests we are nowhere near the peak yet. How worried should the government be over these figures? Also on the podcast, the strikes took centre stage at PMQs today, how much trouble is Keir Starmer in with Labour over the strikes?

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Starmer fluffed his chance to land a deadly blow on Boris

It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? The deadly hammer blow that ends Boris’s career will be delivered by voters in the crucial Yorkshire and Devon by-elections. But hang on. The deadly hammer blow was supposed to fall two weeks ago when he narrowly survived the no-confidence vote. Then again, the hammer blow was due to knock him dead when Plod gave him a fine for toasting his staff during lockdown. And that’s after he survived the deadly hammer blow that struck as soon as the cops began probing criminality at Number 10. Spare a thought for the poor guy wielding the deadly hammer. Soon he’ll die of exhaustion. The Commons has tired