Politics

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

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Rising energy bills are a price worth paying to stop Putin

Nato countries are being careful not to do anything that Russia could claim is an act of war. Just look at the reluctance from the US to provide Ukraine with Polish fighter jets. Yet Britain and other Nato members are involved in a huge effort to break Vladimir Putin’s war machine through supplying Ukraine with weapons and imposing financial pressure on Moscow. Russia, a G20 country, has been severed from the world economy. It has now surpassed Iran as the most sanctioned country on Earth and it is beginning to occupy a similar economic position. The speed with which Russia has been hit by these economic measures has been a

Wednesday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Is Boris in denial about the looming economic crisis?

The priority for the UK and other rich democracies is to protect the people of Ukraine from the depredations of Putin’s forces. A close second should be protecting the poorest people in our countries and vital public services from the cancerous impact of soaring inflation, made much worse by the West’s economic warfare against Putin’s Russia. The most basic costs of living are soaring. And that means a devastating recession that has already begun for all those but the richest. This blow to living standards will be the worst in living memory, more pernicious than the impact of either the banking crisis or Covid. Talking to ministers and MPs, it is

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Tom Burgis: Kleptopia

53 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast, I’m talking to the investigative reporter Tom Burgis – just days after the High Court threw out an attempt from a London-based company run by eastern European oligarchs to suppress his book Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World. Tom tells me how massacres in Kazakhstan connect to the City of London, how western legal frameworks struggle to cope with international crime, how international kidnapping can be perfectly legal, why Tony Blair helped launder the reputation of a blood-soaked dictator – and how the conflict in Ukraine is the new front line of an ongoing world war between kleptocracy and democracy.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What’s behind the Tory revolt on refugee relief?

14 min listen

While Europe opens its arms up to the Ukrainians fleeing war, the UK is taking a much slower approach. While people are allowed to come in relatively quickly if they have family here, that definition of family is extremely limited. Our response is causing confusion with the public but seemingly also within the Conservative party. Katy Balls and James Forsyth are joined by Kate Andrews from Calais who has been spending the last two days talking to refugees on the ground looking to seek refuge in Britain.

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The SNP won’t be happy until Boris is charged with war crimes

Blood streams through Ukraine. Tears run through parliament. At PMQs today, numerous members urged Boris to show more compassion towards Ukraine’s refugees. Poland has already taken 1.2 million. Barely a thousand have been received here, as Boris confirmed, but the number will rise sharply. Leading the pro-refugee campaign was the SNP’s Ian Blackford who seems to represent every region on earth apart from his own constituency. In a venomous speech he charged the home secretary, Priti Patel, with imposing a ‘hostile environment’ on refugees for ‘ideological’ reasons. Well, well. No one could accuse the SNP of embracing xenophobia for political gain. Blackford lambasted the government for ‘putting up barriers and

Steerpike Steerpike

Sturgeon: Nato shouldn’t rule out no-fly zone

Fresh from apologising for the persecution of witches in the sixteenth century, Nicola Sturgeon has now jumped on to the next big challenge. You’d have thought the energy, cost-of-living and health crises might keep the First Minister occupied, not to mention the various issues around Scotland’s schools, transport links and criminal justice system.  Not a bit of it. For the nationalist-in-chief has found a new cause to involve herself in: international relations, an area specifically reserved for Westminster. Despite having no powers, mandate or army, Sturgeon today decided to take a swipe at Nato, using an interview with ITV to argue the defence bloc should review the idea of a ‘no-fly zone’ over Ukraine

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Johnson struggles to defend refugee policy

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions clash between Sir Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson focused on the domestic implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Labour leader started by calling on Johnson to force Chancellor Rishi Sunak into a U-turn on his policy of a £200 loan to help with energy prices.  Starmer’s argument was that this loan had been developed on the assumption that prices were going to fall, but Ukraine had changed that. Johnson argued that Starmer would be ‘absolutely out of his mind’ to be arguing that the Chancellor should U-turn on the help he was already offering. That wasn’t what Starmer was saying: he was arguing that

Steerpike Steerpike

Mail man changes his ‘Russian-sounding’ name

Sanctions, boycotts, bans, penalties of all kind: there’s no end to the punishments being slapped on Moscow. But amid the frantic rush of institutions and individuals to distance themselves from Russia, some seem to be somewhat overstepping the mark.  The Cardiff Philharmonic has today cancelled an all-Tchaikovsky programme as ‘inappropriate at this time’; Russian conductor Valery Gergiev was sacked last week by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra for failing to condemn Putin. In Italy, the University of Milano-Bicocca has been forced to backtrack after trying to cancel a Dostoevsky course while at least three MPs in the UK have suggested stripping Russians in Britain of their citizenship. But now one man at the Daily Mail has

Steerpike Steerpike

Ukrainian ambassador: my wife couldn’t get a visa

It’s been a pretty dreadful few weeks for Vadym Prystaiko. Kiev’s man in London has been doing his best to secure extra resources for his country’s struggle against the Russian invasion, though the calls of President Zelensky for a ‘no fly zone’ have gone unheeded. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate, Prystaiko has been summoned for a meeting of the Home Affairs Select Committee meeting, amid the ongoing crisis about visas for Ukrainian refugees. Prystaiko has become something of a familiar figure in parliament in recent days: he received a standing ovation from MPs before last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions and popped up again in the public gallery yesterday’s before

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why is Britain so useless at helping Ukrainian refugees?

Some MPs were in tears yesterday when President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the House of Commons, and understandably so, given the soaring rhetoric and bravery of a man who knows his days on earth could be numbered.  One kind interpretation is that the caseworkers at the Home Office haven’t been trained sufficiently for them to use the initiative But across Westminster over the past few days, MPs and their constituency teams have also been crying tears of frustration at the Home Office’s handling of the visa application process. Not only has there been intense confusion between the different arms of government about how many routes there are for refugees – with

Steerpike Steerpike

Eight embarrassed Bercow backers

The verdict is in and it’s not good for John Bercow. Yesterday finally saw the publication of the independent expert panel report into his behaviour as Commons Speaker, with 21 separate allegations of bullying being upheld against the former Buckingham MP. The conclusions of the report were damning: Bercow was judged to be a ‘serial bully’ and a ‘liar’ who ‘repeatedly and extensively’ bullied staff and exhibited ‘behaviour which had no place in any workplace.’ It will be seen as vindication for the members of staff who spoke out against Bercow for years before yesterday’s publication. It’s also damning of those who continued to prop up and cheer on the former Speaker in

Julius Strauss

Putin is bored

At the beginning of this year, Vladimir Putin was sitting comfortably in the Kremlin: his legacy so far a steady leader who had saved his people from the helter-skelter of robber capitalism in the 1990s and given them a modicum of stability and pride. He must have known that if he waged war on a country of 45 million brother Slavs, he risked losing it all. Liberty and life are now less certain. So why did he do it? Having spent four years in Moscow and more than two decades of Russia-watching, I have never believed that Putin was a chess grandmaster. While his apologists in the West lauded his

Tuesday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Online scams: how best to fight back?

28 min listen

During the pandemic, we spent more time online than ever before and this has seen a boom in online fraud. It’s estimated that scam adverts have tricked 1 in 10 people on the biggest online platform into paying for fake products. In 2020, almost 150,000 fraud cases were recorded with losses reported of up to £500 million.For the scammers, they will do anything to convince you to key in your card details and this problem has shown no sign of slowing down. The online safety bill is expected to pass Parliament in March 2022. As things stand, the government hasn’t included online fraud as a type of harm when it

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Zelensky’s address was strange, but sensational

This afternoon, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the House of Commons. A single flat-screen TV broadcast his speech to a packed chamber. Zelensky appeared in plain green fatigues next to Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag. He looked pale, tired, fearless and determined. Squads of foreign killers are roaming his homeland trying to find him. His words were spoken in English by a translator who probably had no advance sight of the text. The halting, ungrammatical phrases made the address strangely powerful. ‘I would like to tell you about the 13 days of war. The war that we did not start.’ Zelensky’s goal is simple. ‘We do not want to lose what

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Zelensky’s Churchillian address to the Commons

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was greeted with applause and a standing ovation this evening when he appeared before the House of Commons. The Ukrainian president – who addressed MPs by video link – gave a short but impassioned speech. He said that he was addressing the UK parliament ‘as a citizen, as a president of a big country, with a dream’ – comparing his country’s fight against Russia to the British war effort against Nazi Germany: ‘You didn’t want to lose your country when Nazis wanted to take your country.’ He drew parallels between the UK’s decision to fight then with Ukraine’s now – offering an update of the circumstances

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour flounders to define the word ‘woman’

Happy International Women’s Day! To mark this auspicious occasion, the Radio 4 programme Woman’s Hour today hosted a conversation between presenter Emma Barnett, former Home Secretary Amber Rudd and the Labour shadow minister for women and equalities, Anneliese Dodds.  Unfortunately, amid all the amicable chatter about why Dodds’ post does not have a full-time dedicated Cabinet minister, Barnett decided to raise a difficult question for any right-on Labour MP. Referencing the query of one listener called Jill, Barnett asked the Labour chair if a future government led by Keir Starmer would legislate to define what a woman actually is. Dodds squirmed for several minutes to answer the question, tying herself

Steerpike Steerpike

The six most damning revelations from the Bercow report

At long last, the bullying report into John Bercow is out. After two years of claims and counter-claims, an independent panel has delivered its findings after Bercow appealed against the initial report by Kathryn Stone, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Mr S has been slowly making his way through the brutal 89-page review alongside Bercow’s 87-page defence. The conclusions themselves are conclusively damning, with the former Buckingham MP being described as a ‘serial bully’ and ‘serial liar’ who ‘repeatedly and extensively’ breached ethics rules. But below are some of the other lowlights from the probe, which looks set to kibosh any remaining hopes Bercow had of getting a peerage… The range of accusations The

Sam Holmes

Will Zelensky’s intervention change the mood among MPs?

13 min listen

Former Speaker of the House, John Bercow has been banned from the Commons after the publishing of a review that reveals the extent of his bullying behaviour towards members of his staff. How will Labour react to this after welcoming him in with open arms? Also, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will today address a number of UK MPs and is expected to ask for more aid on all fronts: sanctions, humanitarian and military. But just how much more can the UK offer without causing an escalation in Putin’s brutality? And finally, one look at the Spectator’s Data Hub will show a shocking rise in the price of gas in the

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Why is Britain reluctant to open its doors to Ukrainians?

Among opposition politicians there is a new question being asked of the war in Ukraine: why has the UK not taken in more refugees? A mere 50 visas were initially issued by the Home Office. Meanwhile, Poland had taken in more than a million Ukrainians, Hungary 180,000, Slovakia 128,000 and even little Moldova 83,000. Labour shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, whose now-ancient personal offer to accommodate refugees in one of her own homes remains mysteriously unmentioned, hit out at a Home Office update that 300 family scheme visas had in fact been issued. She branded the revised number ‘shockingly low & painfully slow’. Never mind that the countries listed above actually