Politics

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

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Desmond Swayne rails against the ‘Ministry of Fear’

It’s match day in Parliament as MPs gather to vote on Boris Johnson’s ‘Plan B.’ Sajid Javid kicked things off in the Commons with a plea to Tory rebels to back Boris Johnson’s last-minute compromise, there’s still much anger on the green benches, with Mr S hearing further names could be added to the 85-strong list of Conservatives who won’t vote for tonight’s measures.  And such sentiment was given voice early on this afternoon after Sir Desmond Swayne, the maverick member for New Forest West, rose shortly after Wes Streeting’s 40 minute long address gave paroxysms of pleasure to every Britpopping centrist dad. Deploying his usual tact and moderation, Swayne launched into a

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Can the rebels trust Boris’s word?

There’s white smoke blowing over the House of Commons today as Sajid Javid declares ‘Peace in our Time.’ The Health Secretary – Daladier to Johnson’s Chamberlain – has emerged with an olive branch to the dozens of Tory MPs opposed to Covid passes. In a bid to placate potential rebels like Danny Kruger, Javid and Johnson are offering a compromise: they won’t proceed with mandatory jabs and vaccine passports will always carry the option of showing a lateral flow test (LFT). Many MPs remain unconvinced, with many citing the government’s failure to produce evidence that vaccine passports actually work.  Still, the concession by Johnson shows even he recognises the limits of coercion. Yet Mr

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What does a large rebellion mean for Boris?

11 min listen

Christopher Whitty has told the public he expects a ‘significant increase’ in Omicron hospitalisations over the next few weeks. The chief medical officer is concerned about the pressures this new variant will put on the NHS. Could he be overreacting? In contrast, there are encouraging signs coming from South Africa that continue to show that Omicron is less severe than Delta. The Commons vote on vaccine passports is looming where Boris Johnson could face a rebellion larger than his majority. The vote this evening is currently predicted to have over 80 rebels that want to send a message to the Prime Minister:‘The worry is that the vaccine program, something that

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The Independent’s double standards for J.K. Rowling

It’s fair to say that J.K. Rowling’s latest intervention has put the cat amongst the pigeons. The Harry Potter author criticised Police Scotland’s new policy for trans suspects after the force confirmed it will record rapes by offenders with a penis as carried out by a woman if they identify as female, regardless of whether they have legally changed gender. Rowling’s implicit criticism of this move – riffing on Orwell that: ‘War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman’ – has sparked a terrific backlash, with much of it seeming to come from angry, pompous middle-aged men. But leaving aside the Jolyons of this world, the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

What does this South African study reveal about Omicron?

While the government’s policy on Omicron is being driven by modelling suggesting the possibility of a huge wave of hospitalisations in January, some more real-world data has come in from South Africa.  A presentation by the South African Medical Research Council this morning has offered evidence that while Omicron does indeed appear to be more transmissible than the Delta variant, the trajectory of hospitalisations is flatter.  This would appear to confirm earlier data from hospitals in Gauteng province that Omicron is causing a milder disease than previous variants. Indeed, the graph of the latest outbreak shows a marked decoupling on infection figures for hospitalisation and death figures, compared with earlier

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why a large rebellion matters for Johnson

Boris Johnson will this evening face his largest Tory rebellion yet as the issue of vaccine passports comes to a vote in the House of Commons. Today MPs will vote on various aspects of the government’s Covid Plan B proposals — much of which has already come into force. There will be four votes: one on face masks being mandatory in venues like the cinema and theatre; another on daily lateral flow testing to avoid self-isolation if you are a close contact of a positive Omicron case; a third on mandatory vaccination for NHS staff and finally — and most controversially — the introduction of vaccine passports.  The Spectator has a live tally of

Toby Young Toby Young

The good and bad news about the Online Safety Bill

If you care about free speech, the just-published report of the Joint Committee on the Online Safety Bill – a cross-party parliamentary committee composed of six MPs and six peers – is a mixed bag. This is the Bill which began life as a White Paper under Theresa May. Its aim? To make the UK the safest place in the world to go online. It will achieve this by subjecting social media platforms and internet search engines to state regulation, empowering Ofcom to impose swingeing fines on companies that fail to observe a new ‘duty of care’. Let’s start with the good news. The Joint Committee recommends that the current

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The revenge of the Mayites

Mr S has been keeping a close watch on the number of mounting Plan B rebels these past few days and is delighted to see the numbers totting up to more than 80 at the time of writing. But one thing that did catch Steerpike’s eye was the number of onetime Mayites who look set to vote against Boris Johnson’s Covid plan. For the list of mounting rebels includes both May’s former de facto deputy Damian Green and her ex-PPS Andrew Bowie, who last month quit his post as Tory vice chair. Other names include longtime ministers in her government Harriet Baldwin, Greg Clark and Robert Goodwill.  All this just two days after a flurry

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Could the Commons have Covid passes?

Today is the big day. MPs are set to vote on the ‘Plan B’ package of restrictions by 6:30 p.m tonight with many Tories publicly denouncing the winter restrictions as a step too far in a society protected by what Boris Johnson once called the ‘huge wall of immunity’ from vaccines.  The big question of course is how big the rebellion will be – 82 Tories are currently named on the Spectator’s list of self-declared rebels. If all were to vote against, it would be the biggest rebellion of Johnson’s premiership, comfortably beating the 55 who voted against a new Covid-19 tier system for England last December, with another 16 abstentions. Labour votes

Monday

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Sir Humphrey wins again

The antics of the mandarin masters of Whitehall have long been of interest to Mr S. Back in September, Steerpike revealed that the Director for Civil Service Modernisation and Reform was appointed last year without any external or internal competition. This is despite much hot air and hyperbole from the master of spin himself, Michael Gove, the recently-departed minister for the Cabinet Office. For last year, during the heady days of the Dominic Cummings era, there was much talk of a civil service revolution, with plans to move them out of London, hire specialists in place of generalists and purge the ‘confident public school bluffers’ as part of a ‘hard rain’ on SW1.

Debbie Hayton

JK Rowling is right to call out Police Scotland’s transgender nonsense

How should police record a rape where the culprit has male genitalia? The answer might appear to be straightforward: a man is responsible. Yet in Scotland, where the SNP’s obsession with avoiding offence appears to trump reality, things could soon be more complicated. Police Scotland have said that they may log rapes as being carried out by a woman if the alleged culprit identifies as such. This absurd situation was revealed by Gary Ritchie, assistant chief constable, who set out scenarios where this might happen. It includes ‘where a person born male obtains a full gender recognition certificate (GRC) and then commits rape’ and ‘where a person born male but who

Matthew Lynn

Joe Biden is running out of other people’s money

Abba have reformed. Nato is working out how to deal with an aggressive Russian president. And there are shortages of everything. There were already plenty of clues, but now it is surely official: the 1970s are back. The United States has recorded its highest inflation rate for 32 years, with a 6.8 per cent rate that far surpassed anything even the most pessimistic forecasters expected. In truth, Joe Biden is about to turn into the new Jimmy Carter, a lame duck Democratic president presiding over a failing economy – and the crisis is entirely of his own making. We already knew the US was witnessing a bout of inflation. Even

Claire Fox

Kill the bill: why Boris’s crime law isn’t fit for purpose

Boris Johnson is rightly facing the wrath of Tory MPs over the proposed introduction of vaccine passports, but another piece of legislation put forward by the government should also trouble us. Critics of Boris Johnson’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, often focus on its scale. They have a point. The Bill is simply enormous: made up of 13 parts, 179 clauses and hundreds of pages, parliamentarians of all stripes have treated it as a Christmas tree, hanging on it an endless array of special interest amendments. But size isn’t the Bill’s biggest problem. Even if heavily amended, this act – which is going through parliament today and is set to become law

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Boris’s booster jab plan comes at a price

If you haven’t yet been approached about having a Covid booster jab, your phone is about the spring into life – and it is unlikely to let you forget it until you agreed to have your third dose of the vaccine. The Prime Minister’s announcement on Sunday evening that every adult is to be offered a jab by the end of December, as opposed to the end of January as previously planned, will mean averaging a million jabs a day – even more than the peak of the inoculation programme in the spring. But there is a price to pay, and health secretary Sajid Javid admitted as much on this

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Plan B rebels have safety in numbers

In rebellion, there is safety in numbers. At some point, if enough backbenchers are going against the party whip there is a limit to what those enforcers of party discipline can threaten. There is also the fact that after such a large rebellion, there must be an attempt to bring the party back together: which means there can’t be a blanket bar on promotion for rebels. The Tory uprising against the government’s Covid Plan B has easily passed this tipping point: the whips can’t blackball 75 MPs. This means rebellion is more likely to grow than shrink. The whips can’t blackball 75 MPs. This means rebellion is more likely to grow

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Johnson is imperilled. So why are his enemies helping him?

It’s a topsy turvy world when your friends and allies do you all kinds of damage and then your enemies and detractors accidentally ride to the rescue. But that’s what’s going on in the life of Boris Johnson. His lax approach to the conduct of his own circle is a major factor in his popularity slump. Whether that be backing Owen Paterson, wilfully being taken in by partying Downing Street staffers or over-indulging his wife’s focus on animal rights, utopian environmentalism and support for the Stonewall agenda.  Yet now the cavalry has appeared over the brow of the hill and it is made up of people who wish to bring him down.

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris Johnson is becoming a risk to his own Covid rules

‘It feels like a tipping point. Trust in Boris is collapsing. It could be fatal’. So spoke a senior Tory, who hitherto has been a great cheerleader for the Prime Minister. Sunday night’s address to the nation by Boris Johnson won’t, he says, change the perception of Tory MPs that his recent performance has been wholly inadequate. That feeling may in fact be reinforced by Johnson’s choice of simply speaking sombrely down the barrel of a camera lens rather than holding a press conference and taking questions. The point is that — by design — there was no media challenge after Boris Johnson broadcast, in which he said he wants all adults to

Steerpike Steerpike

Defra’s trophy-worthy blunder

The Sunday People is not normally top of Steerpike’s reading list but Mr S was intrigued to see it yesterday trumpeting an exclusive. The newspaper has declared victory in its long-running campaign for an end to the import of hunting trophies. For George Eustice is now backing its bid to end the trade in such objects, with the Environment Secretary quoted as promising ‘one of the toughest bans in the world.’  It breathlessly reports that there will be up to seven years in jail for those caught smuggling skins, heads and other body part ‘souvenirs’ to Britain, with the ban to cover some 6,000 animals deemed under threat from the trade, including the ‘big five’ of lions,

Coffee House

Who said they would vote against vaccine passports?

Note: This article was written in advance of Tuesday’s vote. For a full list of those who actually did – or didn’t – rebel to vote against vaccine passports, please click here. On Tuesday, a vote will be held on Boris Johnson’s new Covid restrictions to tackle the Omicron variant. They will include vaccine passports for large gatherings, compulsory face masks in more places,  and people being asked to work from home when they can (but told they can still go to parties). When the health secretary Sajid Javid introduced the measures in the Commons this week, he was greeted with jeers and calls for him to ‘resign’ from his own party members. There is now a