Politics

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

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Andy Street’s success is part of the English political realignment

Andy Street won the West Midlands mayoralty in 2017 by the slimmest of margins, with 50.4 percent of the vote to Labour’s 49.6 percent in the second round. He has been re-elected by a far more comfortable margin: 54 percent in the second round, and was within eight thousand votes of winning on the first round. Street’s success is part of the broader English political realignment. Just look at his vote share in the Black Country. But he also has a distinct political style, emphasising his business experience – he’s the former boss of John Lewis – and a more consensual approach. Voters have clearly decided that they prefer this

Katy Balls Katy Balls

No SNP majority, now what?

13 min listen

Scotland will have a pro-independence majority at Holyrood, but the SNP has fallen short of an overall majority. What does this mean for the party, its leader Nicola Sturgeon, and the campaign for a second independence referendum? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Stephen Daisley. James Forsyth: ‘In a way, this is why this (election) is a bad proxy for the question of independence opinion in Scotland, because there are obviously three sizeable, pro-Union parties in Scotland: Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats. And on the pro-independence side, there’s the SNP, there are the Greens, who are interestingly, a poll during the campaign suggested that most Green voters weren’t actually

Theo Davies-Lewis

Welsh Labour proves again it’s a distinctive, winning brand

After the news of a Tory landslide in Hartlepool was announced early Friday morning, senior Welsh Labour figures were worried. The scale of defeat in the North of England was worse than expected, and represented nothing short of a disaster for Keir Starmer’s leadership. Could the same fate be expected for Labour’s Red Wall in North and South Wales, which started to crack in the 2019 general election? The answer, in short, is no. Welsh Labour stormed to a breathtaking victory in the Senedd election, gaining a seat from its 2016 hall to win thirty of the sixty places in Cardiff Bay. There was a Tory whimper but no bang:

Steven Fielding

Keir Starmer can’t afford to wait for the Tories to defeat themselves

‘We’re trapped between the two worlds,’ said a Labour worker during the last days of the party’s ill-fated Hartlepool by-election campaign. She meant Labour was strapped for cash, lacking the many small donations that came with Jeremy Corbyn and the big donors who backed Tony Blair. Her comment, however, had a wider relevance. In trying to keep hold of younger, middle-class metropolitan voters who already supported Labour while also attracting back older, small town working-class voters who have abandoned the party over recent elections, the various contests held on Thursday showed Keir Starmer was unable to do either. With the Brexit divide still reinforcing ongoing demographic trends that have seen

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Leading article, Fiona Mountford, Laurie Graham and Isabel Hardman

24 min listen

On this week’s episode, Fraser Nelson starts by reading our leading article: the Prime Minister promised ‘data, not dates’, so should we reopen before 21 June? (01:15) Fiona Mountford is on next, saying she’s had enough of corporate faux-friendliness. (07:20) Laurie Graham reads her piece afterwards, wondering what to put in her Covid time capsule. (13:00) Isabel Hardman finishes the podcast by reading her notes on Dandelions – perhaps the ‘cheeriest of wild flowers’.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is Keir Starmer destined to become a ‘Kinnock-esque’ figure?

Sir Keir Starmer is planning a policy review as part of his plans to ‘change’ Labour after the dismal Super Thursday results. This sounds, to put it mildly, like a rather small response to a rather big problem. Talking to MPs and campaigners over the past 24 hours, I have noticed a shift in the way many of them describe Labour’s challenge. The Hartlepool result has underlined that the party’s recovery hasn’t yet started, and that it is going to be a very, very long time before that recovery can take the party back into government. Starmer could become a Kinnock-esque figure, who might merely prepare the ground for another

Khalid Mahmood

Hartlepool shows Labour has lost its way

The election of a Conservative MP in Hartlepool for the first time in the constituency’s modern history is yet another wake-up call for my party. Peter Mandelson once enjoyed a 17,500 majority here. Now the Tories are deep into what was once safe Labour territory – the industrial heartlands of the North – with a 7,000 majority of their own. In the West Midlands it looks again like Labour will lose out on the mayoral race and more. What has gone wrong for the Labour party and our wider movement? My view is simple: in the past decade, Labour has lost touch with ordinary British people. A London-based bourgeoisie, with

Friday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Does the UK’s ‘green list’ for travel make sense?

International travel is back on the menu, in theory. From 17 May the ‘stay in the UK’ restrictions are lifting and residents can legally leave the country once again. But the number of destinations where you won’t have to quarantine on return is limited, and travelling anywhere will require jumping through several hoops. At today’s No. 10 press conference, Grant Shapps revealed the first 12 countries that will be placed on the ‘green list’, which includes Portugal, Iceland and Israel. It’s a return to the traffic light system and most countries are ranked ‘amber’, which will require a ten day quarantine at home upon return. ‘Red’ countries will still require hotel quarantine,

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why is Liz Cheney still a Republican?

19 min listen

They saved her once, but it seems that the Congressional Republicans patience with Representative Liz Cheney has run out. The founder of the GOP said ‘a house divided cannot stand’, but maybe it’s not a divided as the media makes it out. Freddy Gray speaks to Grace Curley, host of The Grace Curley Show.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Does Keir Starmer have a plan to ‘reconnect’ with voters?

Sir Keir Starmer has just accepted that Labour needs to ‘change’ and ‘reconnect’ with voters, following the Hartlepool by-election result. In a rather stressed and evasive TV interview, the Labour leader repeatedly said his party needed to change, but refused to say whether there would be a reshuffle, or indeed what the party’s message would be. He insisted that this went ‘beyond’ a reshuffle or other questions of personnel. The reason that Starmer was asked so often about whether there would be a reshuffle is that many in his party are pressing for a number of big changes. The three people in the firing line are shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds,

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Starmer’s dire post election interview

Having claimed earlier in the week that would he take ‘full responsibility’ for Labour’s election results, it took until 4 p.m. for Keir Starmer to emerge and face the media on what went wrong in Hartlepool. In contrast to a jovial Johnson who got to do his piece to camera in front of a twenty foot blow up Boris with a newly-elected Tory MP in Teesside, Starmer had to do his in his London office – hardly a surprise given there were few newly gained seats for him to visit. A grim-faced Starmer give a painful five minute long interview that reminded Mr S of Ed Miliband’s infamous ‘get round

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Meet the most popular politician in the country: Ben Houchen

As local election results pour in across the country, it’s the Tees Valley count that is making waves. Ben Houchen has been re-elected as Tees Valley mayor with 73 per cent of the vote. To put things into perspective, Houchen won 39.5 per cent of the vote in 2017. His re-election had been priced in after the Tories’ success in the Hartlepool by-election. However, the size of his mandate has taken even Houchen’s supporters by surprise. So what’s gone right? When the Tees Valley mayoralty was created, the general consensus was that Labour would win it. When Houchen won, it came as a surprise and was seen by some as a result of Theresa

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Education, not class, is Britain’s real political divide

Social class is dead. Education is the political dividing line that matters. This has been apparent since (at least) the 2016 EU referendum, although it has not been recognised by enough people who do and write about politics. The results of this week’s elections should drive the point home. According to early analysis of polling by elections demigod Sir John Curtice, there are some parts of England where the Labour party actually made some modest gains in yesterday’s elections. In places – mostly urban – where a high proportion of the population has a university degree, Labour got a small positive swing. Meanwhile, Sir John reckons, council areas with a

Matthew Lynn

Merkel is right to reject Biden’s vaccine patent plan

She handed the vaccine procurement process over to the European Union. She didn’t invest much in new production. And she allowed an American multinational to take control of a brilliant discovery by a small German biotech company. Angela Merkel, the out-going German Chancellor, has not had much success battling the Covid-19 crisis, and her handling of vaccines has been a catastrophe from start to finish. But she has finally got one thing right: she is defending the patents that protect the pharmaceutical industry. In the last week, president Biden has signalled that the United States is ready to back suspending patents on Covid vaccines. The president of the EU commission, Ursula

Steerpike Steerpike

Hartlepool meltdown: best of the left round-up

Oh dear. Labour’s loss of Hartlepool on a 16 point swing to the Tories has not gone down well with Keir Starmer’s most vocal critics. Lloyd Russell-Moyle was first out of the blocks this morning, tweeting shortly after midnight that ‘Good to see valueless flag waving and suit wearing working so well… or not?’ Fellow members of the Socialist Campaign Group have piled in too, with Corbyn-era frontbenchers quick to offer their expert analysis as to why Labour lost a seat they had held since its creation.  Onetime shadow Lord Chancellor Richard Burgon declared ‘We are going backwards in areas we need to be winning. Labour’s leadership needs to urgently change direction’ while his

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Brexit Britain: the opportunities and pitfalls for British healthcare

31 min listen

If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, the past year would have likely been dominated by a familiar topic – Brexit. The decision to leave, we’re told, presents the UK with endless opportunity in a variety of sectors, including healthcare and life sciences. But it hasn’t been the easiest year, with supply chains and the Northern Ireland Protocol already under strain. So what are the opportunities to boost Britain’s healthcare now that it has left the EU, and where are the pitfalls? Kate Andrews is joined by Antonis Papasolomontos, Director of External Affairs at Abbvie, Sarah Neville, Global Health Editor at the FT, and Jeremy Hunt, Chair of the Health

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What the Hartlepool loss means for Starmer

14 min listen

The local election results are coming in over the weekend, but the bombshell came early with Hartlepool going to the tories in a massive 16-point swing. Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about how much the red wall has left to give.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Boris shouldn’t take the red wall vote for granted

There are two popular reactions to the Hartlepool by-election, which one you favour depending largely on your political tribe. The first holds that the white working class has reacted against a woke, metropolitan Labour party and its knee-taking leader, Keir Starmer. The second holds that the town’s racist and xenophobic population are still fearful that their beloved Brexit might yet be undone, and were desperate to vote against a Labour candidate who had backed Remain. Both of these narratives in fact boil down to pretty much the same thing: that the people of Hartlepool are a sad and angry bunch who tend to vote against things rather than vote for

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Labour is doomed whether Starmer stays or goes

So the Conservatives have won the ‘pools, as we used to say of jackpot winners before the advent of the National Lottery. The Hartlepool constituency, known before 1974 as ‘the Hartlepools’ in recognition of the distinct settlements of old Hartlepool and West Hartlepool, has just secured its place in British political folk lore. It isn’t just the fact of a red wall brick turning blue at a by-election some 11 years into Tory-led governments that is remarkable, but also the crushing extent of the Conservative victory. While by-elections are often remembered as flashes in the pan – with shock results reversed at subsequent general elections – that is because they are

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Can Starmer reverse the horror of Hartlepool?

The Tory victory in Hartlepool, with a swing of 16 per cent and the biggest increase in a governing party’s vote in any by-election since 1945, is a terrible blow to Labour hopes that the choice of Sir Keir Starmer would soon stem their rot. What happened in what was a safe Labour seat — it was Peter Mandelson’s in New Labour’s heyday — is that voters who backed the Brexit party in 2019 switched to the Tories. According to the election analyst Matt Singh, if that sort of shift were repeated in other seats where the Brexit party made an impact then more than 20 Labour MPs would lose