Politics

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

Wednesday

13 Jan 2021

Donald Trump is impeached again – what now?

Tonight Donald Trump became the first president in the history of the United States to be impeached twice. He was first impeached in 2019, accused of pressuring the President of Ukraine to provide information on his political challenger Joe Biden. This evening, Trump was impeached again on the grounds of ‘incitement of an insurrection’ last Wednesday, when his address at a rally led to a violent mob storming the Capitol building to try to stop Biden’s formal confirmation as president. While the vote in the House of Representatives was mostly split along party lines, ten Republicans broke from the party to support Trump’s impeachment, including Rep. Liz Cheney — the third-highest ranking Republican in the

Katy Balls

Can Labour win back trust on the economy?

What’s the Labour party’s biggest weakness at the ballot box? After the last election, Brexit and Corbyn were credited by Tory MPs with helping them win the biggest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher. But now the UK is out of the EU and Keir Starmer in charge, there’s an argument that it’s now the economy that is their biggest weakness. A YouGov poll over the summer found that while Starmer’s personal approval ratings are promising, only 19 per cent of voters believe that Labour to be best at handling the economy, compared with 37 per cent who say the Tories are. Given that six in ten voters view the economy as their

Isabel Hardman

What we learnt from the PM’s Liaison Committee hearing

Boris Johnson has previously enjoyed Liaison Committee hearings rather too much, trying to get through the long session with select committee chairs using humour and optimism. Both were in rather short supply on Wednesday, as you might expect given the UK’s current predicament in the pandemic. The Prime Minister covered a lot of ground, and not just when it came to coronavirus. On the pandemic, he warned that the ‘risk is very substantial’ that hospital intensive care capacity is ‘overtopped’. He also said that the government did not know whether the vaccines stop transmission of the virus as well as reduce the severity for each person, or indeed whether the

Lloyd Evans

Starmer is yet to learn the art of PMQs

Where to begin? That was one of most absorbing PMQs of recent times. Three top moments: the Speaker rebuked the PM for improper language. The Labour leader was humiliated by one of his own backbenchers. And Ian Blackford asked a good question. That’s right. It finally happened. The SNP leader in the House of Commons — the great windbag of the Western Isles — made history by raising a sensible point. The Scottish shellfish industry, he said, has been shafted by Brexit. The problem? Red-tape. Last Monday a hapless trawlerman had to watch while his £40,000 haul turned rotten on the dockside as a posse of EU form-fiddlers fretted over

Katy Balls

Is Marcus Rashford a more effective opposition leader than Starmer?

13 min listen

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, has said today that a national voucher scheme for free school meals would return on Monday, after pictures of the food packages being given to children were widely circulated online. Footballer Marcus Rashford said the Prime Minister promised ‘that he is committed to correcting the issue’. Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Steerpike

Alan Rusbridger’s curious Russia Today appearance

Alan Rusbridger’s book ‘News and how to use it’ is intended as a guide of ‘what to believe in a fake news world’. Which makes the former Guardian editor’s appearance on Russia Today (RT) somewhat curious. RT is the Kremlin’s state-controlled TV network. It has a history of downplaying stories that paint Russia in a bad light. It also has a habit of reporting with relish stories that make western countries look bad. In 2019, RT was fined £200,000 by Ofcom after an investigation found that the channel had failed to preserve due impartiality in seven news and current affairs programmes. According to David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker: ‘RT is

Katy Balls

No. 10’s approach to new restrictions

Cappuccino lovers beware. As ministers pressure Boris Johnson to consider tightening up the current lockdown, tougher messaging are emerging as the more likely option. Although Keir Starmer used the first Prime Minister’s Questions of 2021 to try and get on the front foot arguing that it was clear that tougher restrictions than the ones currently on offer were required — asking why, if the infection rate was higher than in March, the restrictions to tackle it were looser – Johnson responded by going on the attack. He replied that if Starmer had had his way the country would have been in a 12 month continuous lockdown. Johnson said that he would not — and had not

Steerpike

Watch: Lindsay Hoyle ticks off Boris Johnson

A feisty exchange took place at Prime Minister’s Questions today, on the subject of free school meals, after widely-shared images showed children being provided with substandard food packages. Keir Starmer went on the attack, and suggested that the meagre meals were in line with the government’s current guidance. But it was Boris Johnson who provoked the ire of the Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, after the PM suggested that Starmer’s stance on the matter was hypocritical. The remark led to the visibly angry Speaker giving Johnson a dressing down, with Hoyle calling on the PM to withdraw the remark. Watch here:

Steerpike

Watch: Labour MP pushes for prisoners to skip the vaccine queue

Who should get the vaccine first? Those most likely to die from Covid, you would have thought. Luckily the Corbynite twenty-something Zarah Sultana was on hand to question such ill thought out assumptions. During a science and technology select committee hearing earlier this morning, the Coventry South MP quizzed the vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi over the government’s decision to prioritise the old and infirm. Instead, the government, according to the socialist MP, should consider doing the ‘humane’ thing by prioritising ‘disenfranchised’ prisoners as it would be ‘good for public health’. Zahawi politely suggested that it was perhaps best to stick to the current plan, vaccinating those most at risk of, you know, dying…

Fraser Nelson

Wanted: a broadcast producer for The Spectator

The Spectator is growing – and hiring. In the last few months we have launched SpectatorTV which sits with our suite of podcasts. With 1.5m downloads and a growing audience for our videos, we’re looking to expand. So far all of our videos and podcasts are produced by two people: Cindy Yu and Max Jeffery. We’re looking for a third person. You will be working with The Spectator’s team of about two dozen journalists in our offices in 22 Old Queen St. We’re looking for someone who knows current affairs well enough to suggest interviewees and who can pick out the interesting nuances in a news story that make for

Steerpike

Hancock’s power trip

When will the lockdown end? That’s a question of increasing concern to Tory MPs with Mark Harper of the Covid Recovery Group pushing for restrictions to be lifted from 8 March – three weeks after the deadline to vaccinate the most vulnerable. However, Mr S would caution against planning any socialising for that week. In this morning’s media round, Matt Hancock did not take kindly to suggestions restrictions could be eased by this point. When Sky News presenter Niall Paterson asked the Health Secretary what the timescale was for lifting restrictions, he replied that he had not given one. When Paterson said that some of Hancock’s parliamentary colleagues had, he replied: ‘Well great,

Jacob Rees-Mogg

Parliament matters more than ever after Brexit

My contention in this speech is that it is our constitution that makes us prosperous and that returning powers to Westminster from Europe will boost our economic growth. But explaining why our nation has been so successful over the centuries relies first on recognising the existence, and then identifying the nature, of an unseen dark matter which lies at the heart of British governance. I fear this missing link, this secret ingredient, has not received sufficient acknowledgement – despite its presence being detected by many members of the Study of Parliament Group over the years. It will certainly help rebut Lord Hailsham’s assertion that governments in Britain tend towards undermining

Ian Acheson

Northern Ireland is still plagued by terrorism

It’s slow business for global terrorists these days with all the targets banged up under Covid house arrest. But there’s one place in the United Kingdom where it has been pretty much business as usual for violent extremism. Northern Ireland’s police service has just released its security assessment for 2020. This contains some startling information for a place with roughly the same population as Hampshire. Last year there were 39 shooting incidents and two security related deaths, the same number as in 2019. The number of bombings – which include viable devices defused by the army – actually rose year on year to 17, with 8 happening in Belfast. Imagine

Rakib Ehsan

What lessons can we learn from the case of Khairi Saadallah?

Khairi Saadallah is a name that should not be forgotten in a hurry. Found guilty of the murders of James Furlong, David Wails, and Joe Ritchie-Bennett, Saadallah was yesterday given a whole-life jail term for the June 2020 terrorist attack in Reading’s Forbury Gardens. He will never leave prison. We shouldn’t, though, remember Saadallah’s name because of his crimes, but in order to learn lessons from the catalogue of blunders that left him free to kill. While the whole-life prison sentence handed is welcome, the case of Khairi Saadallah represents a fundamental failure of epic proportions in the British justice system. Saadallah was previously convicted for a string of knife-related offences and racially-aggravated

Tuesday

12 Jan 2021

Steerpike

Priti’s lockdown muddle

At tonight’s Covid press conference, the Home Secretary Priti Patel sought to defend the coronavirus restrictions against suggestions that the law was confusing and hard to follow. She said: ‘The rules are actually very simple and clear. We are meant to stay at home and only leave home for a very, very limited number of reasons’. What were those reasons? A list followed, including: ‘outdoor recreation but in a very, very restricted and limited way, staying local, I’ve said that several times over the last week.’ Except, outdoor recreation was specifically deleted as a deemed reasonable excuse to leave home by the regulatory amendments bringing into effect the national lockdown.

Katy Balls

Priti Patel’s enforcement warning

As the government’s ‘enforcement week’ rumbles on, Priti Patel addressed the nation on Tuesday evening over the need for the public to play by the rules. While the Home Secretary was keen to praise the vast majority of people who have followed the lockdown rules so far, she said a minority were ‘putting the health of the nation at risk’ by flouting the restrictions. With the daily death toll at 1,243 (the number of people who have died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test in the UK), Patel stressed that the pandemic was at a very dangerous point and everyone would need to play their part — whether voluntarily or not. The

Isabel Hardman

Ministers can no longer ignore the problems Covid has exposed

Tuesday’s cabinet meeting discussed the usual topics of Covid and the Brexit transition period, but at the end, Boris Johnson told ministers he had asked Sir Michael Barber to conduct a rapid review of government delivery ‘to ensure it remains focused, effective and efficient’. Downing Street’s readout of the meeting said the Prime Minister told his colleagues that ‘it remains important to ensure that work continues to ensure that we build back better from the pandemic’. Barber, currently chair of the Office for Students, set up the first ‘delivery unit’ in Downing Street in 2001, and has even written a book on How to Run a Government. He will be

Ross Clark

Measuring the impact of stay-at-home lockdown measures

With Covid-19 cases still rising a week into the third lockdown (and after several weeks of Tier 3 restrictions in London and the South East) the questions are inevitably being asked: why isn’t lockdown reducing transmission of the virus and do we need even more stringent rules, whatever they might be? While some studies claim to have quantified a beneficial effect from lockdown measures during the first wave of Covid-19, a study at Stanford University questions this. Dr Eran Bendavid and Professor John Ioannidis studied the imposition of ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions’ (NPIs) in ten countries and have reached the conclusion that while less-restrictive NPIs (which include social distancing and appeals to

Isabel Hardman

Do Covid rules need to be clearer?

11 min listen

Boris Johnson has been criticised for taking a bike ride in the Olympic Park, seven miles away from Downing Street. Should the government make the Covid rules clearer? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Steerpike

Alok Sharma’s difficult job adjustment

It can be hard work adjusting to a new position. Just ask Alok Sharma, who was appointed as full-time President of the UN climate change conference, COP26, last week. Sharma had been running the conference alongside his role as Business Secretary of State, but it was felt that the climate shindig, which will be the diplomatic event of the year, needed a minister’s full attention. So Sharma became full-time president and Kwasi Kwarteng was promoted to Business Secretary. Could Sharma be having a little trouble letting go though? Mr S spotted that in today’s Cabinet meeting, which took place on Zoom, the COP26 president still appeared to be sporting his