Politics

Liz Truss – It is ‘highly likely’ that Russia will invade Ukraine January may be Eastern Europe’s coldest month, but most Ukrainians are unwilling to accept Vladimir Putin’s gigantic bear hug for comfort. Last week, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss claimed to have seen intelligence suggesting a Russian plan to install a puppet government in Kyiv, and diplomatic efforts have not yet managed to take the chill off the situation. Truss was interviewed by Sophie Raworth, who asked her how likely it was that the situation could escalate: LT: We think it’s highly likely that [Putin] is looking to invade Ukraine… There is a real threat of invasion, but we don’t

It’s no secret that the polls do not look good for the Prime Minister at the moment. The most recent Ipsos Mori political monitor, released this week, shows that seven in ten Britons are now dissatisfied with the job Boris Johnson is doing. The PM’s numbers now are similar to Theresa May’s just before she left office in 2019, Tony Blair’s in January 2007 and the types of figures registered by Gordon Brown throughout 2008 and 2009. In this context, some six in ten Britons think the Conservatives should change their leader before the next general election (up from 42 per cent last July), including more than one in three

The news that the highly influential third-generation member of the Le Pen family, Marion Maréchal, will not be backing her aunt Marine for the French presidency is ‘brutal, violent and painful’, in Marine’s words. But beyond its emotional impact on the Le Pen family, for whom politics, betrayal and intrigue have always been of Shakespearean dimensions, this is potentially an earthquake in French politics. For the 32 year old intellectual branch of the family has hinted that she may join Éric Zemmour’s campaign. Far more important than its impact on the presidential race is the potential to achieve what was the quest of General de Gaulle in 1958 and more

The current impotence of the Prime Minister can be measured in many forms. But one of them is just how few Cabinet ministers are willing to go out and give Boris Johnson their full-throated support on various media platforms.  It’s telling that of the 30 or so ministers attending Cabinet, only two seem to be shouldering most of the responsibility: Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries. But while Mogg tends to focus his energies on traditional broadcasters, Dorries prefers taking to Twitter to proclaim her loyalty and decry the waverers. Unfortunately, the recently-appointed Culture Secretary appears to be embracing her social media brief a little too enthusiastically. Not only did she retweet comedian Joe Lycett’s