Politics

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

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can Boris weather this new storm?

The row over MPs’ outside interests has landed Boris Johnson in one of the most uncomfortable positions a prime minister can be in: he has to choose between being on the wrong side of public opinion and his own backbenchers. What makes matters worse is that his own misjudgment got him into this position. Even a ministerial loyalist admits that: ‘It’s up there with the biggest mistake.’ The government’s attempt to block the standards committee’s guilty verdict against Owen Paterson and change the rules surrounding MPs’ conduct was so brazen that it has, inevitably, created a row about second jobs for MPs. If Paterson had, as the committee recommended, been

Wednesday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is Britain a corrupt country?

13 min listen

Boris Johnson today has said that Britain is not a corrupt country, but what does it mean that he felt the need to say that? On today’s Coffee House Shots, Fraser Nelson points out that there is no clear firebreak to the present string of sleaze stories; and James Forsyth estimates that around a quarter of MPs have some kind of external earnings. So what more will come out of the woodworks? Cindy Yu talks to Fraser, James and Katy Balls.

Yiannis Baboulias

How Turkey is fuelling the Belarus-Poland migrant crisis

In the cold, damp forest lining the border between Poland and Belarus, thousands of refugees flown over from the Middle East have waiting to cross into the EU for days. Belarusian riot police are shoving them away from their gates and towards Poland, where only more forces await. The Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has recently been in conflict with the EU, which has imposed sanctions on his regime after last year’s contested elections which many believe to have been rigged. Lukashenko is pushing refugees towards Poland to be pawns in a fight, with the backing of Putin. The refugees find themselves between a rock and a hard place: in front

Steerpike Steerpike

The next big hunting battle

In his memoirs, Tony Blair did not have much good to say about his government’s seven-year long struggle to ban fox hunting. The former PM, writing in 2010, admitted he deliberately sabotaged the 2004 Hunting Act to ensure there were enough loopholes to allow hunting to continue. Confessing that he initially agreed to a ban without properly understanding the issue, Blair wrote: ‘If I’d proposed solving the pension problem by compulsory euthanasia for every fifth pensioner I’d have got less trouble. By the end of it, I felt like the damn fox.’ Yet while the Act applies to England and Wales – with similar legislation passed in Scotland in 2002 – no such ban

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Does Joe Biden understand inflation?

I have a horrible feeling that the Biden presidency may come to be defined by a single quote which will echo down the ages, featuring not just in economics textbooks but becoming a byword for hubris of all kinds. Speaking of his $1.75 trillion ‘Build Back Better’ plan, the President declared last week: ‘Seventeen Nobel prizewinners in economics have said that my plan will ease inflationary pressures’. Not so fast, Mr Biden. Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) for October rose to 6.2 percent, higher than expected and the highest rate since 1990, the very beginning of the low inflationary era. For all

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

The sinister targeting of Israel’s ambassador at the LSE

A mob waving flags and chanting slogans hounds a Jewish leader, forcing her to be bundled into a car and driven off for her own safety. These were scenes that might have been expected on 9 November 1938, when the ‘Kristallnacht’ pogroms raged across Nazi Germany, marking the beginning of the Holocaust. Instead, they took place 83 years later, on 9 November 2021, outside that august institution, the London School of Economics, in the heart of the British capital. The recent BBC series Ridley Road smugly suggested that antisemitism in this country was confined to decades past; real life is far more worrying. Antisemitic, you say? That’s a bit strong. The baying

Steerpike Steerpike

Welsh Labour politician: Poor people don’t go to football games

Wales doesn’t get much love from the national press these days. Among the three devolved assemblies, Cardiff Bay is very much the odd man out, not sharing the historic tensions of Stormont or the modern ones of Holyrood. The Labour government there has been in power since the Senedd’s creation; Plaid Cymru’s big push for independence fell flat in May, with the nationalists gaining just one seat despite excited expectations. But while Mark Drakeford was praised for his handling of the Covid pandemic – being comfortably re-elected off the back of it – in recent months his administration’s authoritarian measures have begun to grate somewhat. The controversial introduction of vaccine passports

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Harry and Meghan, the term ‘Megxit’ isn’t sexist

Just when you thought Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s collective victim complex couldn’t get any more vast and cavernous, up they pop again to make clear, in pained tones, just how persecuted this multimillionaire formerly royal couple believe themselves to be. We already knew that their allies think ‘Megxit’ was all about racism. That their departure from the monarchy, freeing them up to cut lucrative deals in the United States, was forced by their supposedly racist treatment by the tabloids. Now we learn it was also all about misogyny, and that the term ‘Megxit’ is itself shot through with hatred for the Duchess of Sussex. Speaking this week on an online

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson will struggle to contain this sleaze row

A week ago today, Tory MPs were getting increasingly nervous about Downing Street’s plan to stay the guilty verdict against Owen Paterson. Despite warnings from various senior MPs, the government pressed on – and the result has been a firestorm about second jobs, with Geoffrey Cox now facing Labour calls for an inquiry into his conduct. We are a week in and the scandal shows no sign of abating It is hard to see how Boris Johnson gets off the hook he has caught himself on. If he tries to resolve this scandal with a set of strict new curbs on outside interests he will infuriate a considerable number of his

Steerpike Steerpike

Prince Harry: I predicted the Capitol coup

Prince Harry is a man of many talents. He’s an eco-obsessed ethical banker whose firm invests in the oil and gas industry. He’s an audiobook entrepreneur with a company that doesn’t produce any content. And he’s a privacy-obsessed recluse, except for when he’s making yet another public speech on his chosen issue of the day. But among his many gifts is something hitherto unknown: it appears that Harry is something of a psychic.  For today the exiled royal has revealed that he predicted the January 6 attack on the US Capitol building. Speaking at a panel on misinformation – a subject close to Harry’s heart – the erstwhile aristo claimed that he presciently predicted the

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Is climate change scepticism growing in Japan?

Fumio Kishida, the newly-installed Japanese prime minister, could have been forgiven for giving COP26 a miss. The opening ceremony in Glasgow coincided with the general election he was fighting back home. But Kishida, having won the election, did make the trip, where he gave a speech broadly but not unreservedly supportive of international efforts to cut Co2 emissions. The reward for his restrained tone and tepid assurances? Japan was named ‘fossil of the day’ by the Climate Action Network group, an ‘honour’ bestowed on countries deemed insufficiently devoted to the cause. Kishida’s specific crime was that while he did promise substantial financial aid to developing nations in Asia to work

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Abolish the Lords!

So three million quid gets you a seat in the House of Lords? That’s according to the latest revelations about our sleazy second chamber. According to a Sunday Times and Open Democracy investigation, people who give big bucks to the Conservative party are virtually assured a seat on the red benches. Wealthy benefactors seem to be ‘guaranteed a peerage if they take on the temporary role as the party treasurer and increase their own donations beyond £3m’, the report says. It stacks up. Fifteen out of 16 Tory party treasurers have been offered a seat in the Lords. And 22 of the party’s main financial backers, including those who have

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Passholder privilege: the MPs turned consultants

Westminster is full of stories at present of politicians cashing in. But while much of the attention thus far has focused on the excesses of current MPs like Andrew Mitchell and Geoffrey Cox, will it soon be the turn of former MPs to be in the firing line? Already, questions have been asked as to whether Owen Paterson will request the parliamentary pass to which he is entitled – something denied by friends of the (now former) MP for North Shropshire. The passes give access to the Palace of Westminster, without having to register any kind of outside interests. Perfect then for a political consultant. And now research by Mr S has found that no

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Hoyle’s mix-up in race debate

Oh dear. It’s not been the best of weeks for Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle. First, there was the debacle over the Standards Commissioner all of last week. Then Hoyle’s plans to review existing standards procedures leaked on Sunday – something no doubt of deep embarrassment to the Speaker, in light of his constant criticisms of ministers briefing policy to the press before Parliament. And now, Hoyle has made something of an unfortunate gaffe in a parliamentary debate on the racism row at Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Attempting to call Labour MP Imran Hussain, the sexagenerian Speaker mixed him up to instead produce the fictitious MP ‘Mohammad Hussain’ – prompting muted rebukes from

Matthew Lynn

Has JP Morgan changed its tune on Brexit Britain?

Supermarket shelves are bare. There may not be enough turkeys for Christmas. Wages and prices are rising. And the government is sinking into a pit of sleaze. As if that were not enough, the EU is about to launch a full-scale trade war against the country.  Following the day-to-day news, you could well be forgiven for thinking the British economy was sinking into permanent chaos, doomed to replay the dark days of the 1970s. But hold on. Amidst all this gloom, the world’s biggest and most powerful investment bank, JP Morgan, says now is the time to be buying British.  JP Morgan has not always been a fan of the

Steerpike Steerpike

Standards chief slaps down shadow Home Secretary

International espionage: what a glamorous life it all must seem. You join the service, hoping to match wits with Her Majesty’s foes, full of dreams of Bond-like action sequences and Le Carré-esque intrigue. And instead you end up having to write to Labour MPs, begging them to stop sending you so many irrelevant letters for their own political purposes.  For Jonathan Evans, the former Director-General of MI5, that is indeed the sad fate that has befallen him. Having held the post of Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life since 2018, Lord Evans has been bombarded in recent months with a flurry of letters from Labour shadow ministers, urging him to probe

Posie Parker Posie Parker

Jess Phillips and Labour’s ongoing women problem

Last week, Intelligence Squared put on a debate called ‘Is Labour unelectable?’ Unsurprisingly, Labour MP Jess Phillips spoke against the motion – yet in doing so she managed to prove exactly why Labour are in fact hopelessly sunk. The key moment was when Spiked’s Ella Whelan challenged Phillips for having quote tweeted and then promptly deleted an article that was supportive of Kathleen Stock, the philosophy professor hounded out of her job for her audacious view that women deserve some of their own spaces.  ‘This is worth a read. Thoughtful and gentle,’ said Phillips on Twitter, though apparently she quickly decided it wasn’t worth a read and removed the tweet. Some

Louise Gray

Why are COP26 delegates turning their noses up at haggis?

As if negotiating a global climate deal into the early hours was not enough, delegates at COP26 have to worry about whether the haggis, neeps and tatties they enjoyed for lunch is destroying the planet. The COP26 menu tells delegates that each serving of the traditional Scottish dish generates 3.4kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). It is the heaviest carbon footprint on the COP menu, worse even than the Scottish beef burger (at 3.3kg CO2e). Unsurprisingly, many climate-conscious delegates in Glasgow are turning their noses up at the Scottish national dish, and not just because they realised it was lamb offal. Perhaps they have good reason to be snobby? As an animal product, haggis takes

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Should MPs have second jobs?

14 min listen

The Owen Paterson affair has is shining a light on the extra cash MPs earn on top of their £80,000 salary. One MP, Geoffrey Cox, earned nearly £1 million from outside legal work. But is there an argument to be made for allowing elected officials to receive a second income? Max Jeffery is joined by Katy Balls and James Forsyth. On the podcast, James says: ‘On principle, I think MPs continuing to earn money from their former professions or former trades is acceptable. They’re not trading on the fact that they are an MP.’

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Tory MPs are furious at ‘missing-in-action’ Boris

Why did Boris Johnson avoid the Commons chamber on Monday? The official reason for the Prime Minister skipping an emergency debate on MPs’ standards is that he has a pre-planned visit. The problem for Johnson is that many of his MPs are taking it as another sign that he is missing in action when it comes to the escalating row over Tory sleaze, following the botched attempt to spare former MP Owen Paterson a 30-day suspension. While opposition MPs had plenty to shout about in that debate – with Labour leader Keir Starmer accusing the government of ‘giving a green light to corruption’ – it’s the Tory benches where Downing Street