Politics

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

Saturday

Justin Bronk

Why Russian tactics won’t win the war

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its second month, the war has settled into a largely attritional struggle – and the picture is very different across the various fronts. Russian forces have been forced on to the defensive in many areas. The Russian ministry of defence has announced that the ‘first phase’ of the invasion is over, to be replaced with a more limited focus on Donbas in the east of Ukraine. The reason for this is simple: Ukrainian forces have not only stopped the Russian advances around Kyiv in the north and Mykolaiv in the south-west but have begun to regain towns and cut key Russian supply routes. In the

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Has Rishi been rumbled?

Poor Rishi Sunak. Within two months the Chancellor has gone from someone confident enough to publicly rebuke the Prime Minister over his choice of words to someone who merely seeks to ape them. ‘I wouldn’t have said it,’ Sunak grandly told a press conference at the start of February when asked about Boris Johnson’s jibe that Keir Starmer had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile. That intervention came just minutes after Johnson had suffered the resignation of his policy chief Munira Mirza, whose husband is a close friend of Sunak’s. Events were on such a trajectory that much of Westminster, possibly including Sunak himself, expected him to be ushering in yet

Friday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

A letter won’t educate Afghan girls

Well, that’ll show ‘em. Liz Truss has released a joint statement with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring themselves ‘united in our condemnation of the Taliban’s decision not to reopen secondary schools to Afghan girls’. Also united are the EU high representative and the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Italy, Japan and Norway. The authorities in Afghanistan issued an order earlier this week suspending the planned return to school of female pupils, citing the need for a decision on uniforms for girls that are compliant with ‘Sharia law and Afghan tradition’. Team Euro-America: World Police say the Taliban’s U-turn ‘contradicted its public assurances to the Afghan people and to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will inflation bring back austerity?

The return of inflation has changed politics, I say in the Times today . Until recently, it was possible to argue that the government should borrow to slashes taxes, or to cover almost any additional spending. It was so cheap to do so that it was almost rude not to, the argument went. Inflation was also dismissed as a dog that hadn’t barked since the early 1990s. Johnson was relaxed, while last September Liz Truss thought that – if necessary – borrowing would be a better way to pay for the government’s social care policy than raising National Insurance. But debt payments are now expected to quadruple. They will absorb an extra £96 billion between

Steerpike Steerpike

Zarah Sultana sweats her seat

Ping! An email lands in Steerpike’s inbox. ‘Will you join me?’ reads the email line. Gosh. Who was this damsel in distress, this online agoniser in search of aid? Step forward none other than Mr S’s favourite student politician, Zarah Sultana. It seems that Coventry’s answer to Citizen Smith is in a bit of a jam, as the ring light-loving leftie apparently needs good comrades to come and help save her seat.  Back in 2017, Coventry South was a solid Labour constituency, re-electing veteran Jim Cunningham with a handsome majority of 7,947 votes. Two years on and the candidacy of Sultana saw that fall to a wafer-thin 401, as the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is Nato still unified?

11 min listen

The Prime Minister has just returned from a Nato meeting in Brussels. So far, the alliance’s members have been unified in their response to Russia, but with President Zelensky now asking for Nato to send tanks to Ukraine, are we going to see cracks emerge? Katy Balls talks with James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Was Biden’s chemical weapons threat a gaffe?

Did Joe Biden mean to threaten Russia with a chemical weapons attack? That seemed to be what he implied at yesterday’s Nato summit when he said Russia using chemical weapons in Ukraine ‘would trigger a response in kind’ from the US. To respond ‘in kind’ means to respond in the same way – i.e. by firing chemical weapons back at Russia. Given that the US committed to destroying its remaining stockpiles of those munitions when it signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, it would seem very unlikely that this is what Biden meant. Or indeed, that he would have any chemical weapons to unleash in the first place. There

Andrew Tettenborn

Don’t prosecute Soldier F

Sometimes old grievances are best laid to rest. That was certainly the view of Tony Blair when his government issued nearly 200 ‘comfort letters’ to Irish nationalist gunmen in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement. But a decision by the Northern Ireland High Court on Wednesday will upend that principle, setting back years of compromise and reconciliation. For some time it has been all but impossible to prosecute IRA men for murders committed during the Troubles. British security forces, however, remain vulnerable, although most are now in their seventies and long retired. One, indeed, died during a trial last year, one suspects partly from the trauma of being dragged through the courts

Steerpike Steerpike

Are standards slipping on the Standards Committee?

Ah, the Standards Committee. Where would we be without the parliamentary watchdog? The 14 men and women who sit on this panel have a noble task: policing behaviour within the Commons by overseeing the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner, Kathryn Stone.  Half the committee are lay members, who cannot ever have been members of either chamber; the others are seven MPs drawn from across the House. But unfortunately it seems that some of these MPs have been exhibiting less than exemplary behaviour that you might expect from those in such an exalted position. Take the committee’s chair, Chris Bryant. He was forced to declare in June that, almost two years late,

Nigel Jones

What Ukraine can teach Britain about patriotism

I live near the small Sussex seaside town of Selsey. It’s the sort of place that gets right up the well-bred nose of Labour’s Emily Thornberry with her famous disdain for flag wagging patriotism. For in normal times the many flagpoles in the tidy gardens of the resort are flying the St George’s flag of England, or sometimes the Union Flag. Not this month however. Suddenly, most of the same poles are sporting the blue and yellow flags of Ukraine. In a touching show of solidarity with that faraway country of which we now know all too much, the patriots of Selsey are putting out more flags to demonstrate their

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Anji Hunter Edition

48 min listen

Anji Hunter is the former gatekeeper to Tony Blair’s Labour government. She was once described as the most influential non-elected person in Downing Street and became one of Blair’s closest confidantes. Acting as an alliance broker, Anji worked across businesses and the media, including Murdoch’s empire. After decades by Blair’s side, Anji moved to the private sector to take up various roles across industries from BP to the Royal College of Engineering. As Boris Johnson welcomes the new Anji Hunter of 10 Downing Street, Samatha Cohen, Anji reflects on what it takes to do her former job – you’ve got to have balls.

Thursday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Did the spring statement go far enough?

12 min listen

Well the papers haven’t been too kind about Rishi Sunak’s spring statement. To unpack if it truly deserves this level of vitriol Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth about the UK’s economic future as well as Nato’s more unified front.

William Moore William Moore

Turkey’s dilemma

39 min listen

In this week’s episode: could President Erdogan broker a peace deal between Putin and the West?  For this week’s cover piece, Owen Matthews has written about how Turkey’s President Erdogan became a key powerbroker between Vladimir Putin and the Western alliance. On the podcast, Owen is joined by Ece Temelkuran, a political thinker, author, and writer of the book How to Lose a Country. (1:13)Also this week: a look at Tina, the drug devastating the gay community.Dr Max Pemberton has written about Tina, a dangerous drug often used at chemsex parties. Max joins us now along with Philip Hurd, a chemsex rehabilitation professional and trustee of Controlling Chemsex. (14:02)And finally:

Steerpike Steerpike

Ferries boss sinks under MPs’ fire

The best dramas in British broadcasting are only found on one channel these days. Parliament TV has hosted its fair share of unsavoury characters over the years but today a new villain joined the rogues’ gallery. Step forward P&O Ferries chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite, who joins the likes of Philip Green, Fred Goodwin and Mike Ashley in being hauled up before a select committee for a ritual grilling. Hubris, folly and lashings of corporate jargon were on the menu today as Hebblethwaite – whose firm sacked 800 staff last week – was duly sliced, diced and skewered before a panel of distinctly unimpressed MPs. Joint committee chairman Darren Jones got things off to a flying start when the Labour

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The SNP’s ferry mess

Eight years ago, and with the independence referendum one month away, the Clyde’s last commercial shipyard went into administration. The collapse of Ferguson’s not only threatened the jobs of 70 shipbuilders: it was an inconvenient symbol of industrial decline right as the SNP was trying to parlay rhetoric about an independent Scotland being ‘one of the world’s wealthiest nations’ into a Yes vote on polling day. The Scottish government intervened and quickly arranged for a billionaire adviser to then First Minister Alex Salmond to buy Ferguson’s. One year later, the Scottish government awarded Ferguson Marine, as it now was, a £97m fixed price contract to build two ferries but the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Can we trust economic models?

Rishi Sunak shared a delightful moment of honesty on the Today programme on Thursday. Mishal Husain asked him how households will cope if, as the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast, energy bills rise by a further £830 a year – on top of the rises already due to take effect in April. No, no, no, said the Chancellor, you can’t believe the OBR forecast on energy prices: ‘They just take what the market expectation is at a given time, and since they closed their forecast actually the forecast for energy bills in the autumn has come down by £400.’ It was a fair point. Except, if the Chancellor doesn’t think

Debbie Hayton

At least Boris Johnson knows the difference between men and women

As a paid-up member of the Labour party, it’s rare that I agree wholeheartedly with a Conservative politician. But Boris Johnson has spoken some much-needed common sense in the gender debate. ‘When it comes to distinguishing between a man and a woman,’ the PM told MPs yesterday, ‘the basic facts of biology remain overwhelmingly important.’ Boris is right: biology does matter. I’d actually go further and say that the basic facts of biology are all that matters. Like other sexually dimorphic species we are male or female, and that alone distinguishes men from women. We all know this but – in an astonishing departure from reality – these basic truths are denied by

Steerpike Steerpike

Rishi Sunak and the art of politics

The sound of chinking glasses and merry laughter greeted Steerpike yesterday as he made his way through the Westminster village. Rishi Sunak might have placed an edict on Treasury staff holding their traditional office drinking session while watching him deliver his spring statement but clearly some just decamped to SW1’s watering holes instead. What better way to greet the biggest fall in living standards in any single financial year. One baby-faced apparatchik was overhead remarking: ‘That went alright, didn’t it?’ Less than 24 hours on, Mr S isn’t so sure that’s the judgement of the commentariat…. Still, at least the Treasury gang appear to have kept their drinking relatively under control,

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is Sunak’s spring statement starting to unravel?

The Chancellor woke this morning to a grim set of headlines as the newspapers chew over his spring statement. Despite dangling the carrot of an income tax cut by 2024, most papers focus on the OBR’s projection that inflation will lead to the biggest fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s. While left-leaning papers such as the Guardian accuse Sunak of forgetting the poorest in society, the papers on the right aren’t that much better for him. The Express asks about the ‘forgotten millions’, while the Telegraph roundly criticises his economic package. The Daily Mail has run with a slightly more welcome tone for Sunak but ultimately calls for more tax cuts