Politics

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

Monday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The vaccine goalposts have shifted

Matt Hancock provided a vaccine update on Monday, explaining that the chances of a drug being ready by early next year are ‘looking up’. With trials pending in the UK, USA and Brazil, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine could be approved this year, although the Health Secretary he conceded it would more likely come in spring 2021. He added that doses are already being manufactured so that it will be ready to roll-out the moment it does receive approval.  We’ve heard this all before. At the height of lockdown, Oxford professor Sarah Gilbert – head of one of the teams developing the vaccine – told the Times that a vaccine would be ready by September: ‘It’s not

Identity politics and the erosion of liberalism

A new kind of politics has taken root, righteous intimidation. Occasional outbursts of violent outrage are not new, but today righteous intimidation has become the deliberate first choice of many campaigners. Climate campaigners shut down newspapers by blockading printworkers while race campaigners deface and tear down statues. Twitter mobs try to get people sacked, silenced, or arrested for voicing opinions they don’t like. Their motives are the same as violent mobs: not content with a vigorous exchange of views, they seek to suppress opponents. Just as the politics of righteous intimidation is getting up to full steam, the government has established the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) to investigate disparities between

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will the hardline Brexit approach work?

10 min listen

Boris Johnson last night issued a warning to the European Union that Brexit negotiations must be concluded by October 15 or Britain will walk away. Will this focus minds, or might it spell the end for the talks? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about the government’s hardline approach.

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Why Boris thinks no deal might be worth the pain

You may wonder why on earth a Tory government led by Boris Johnson, the heirs to Thatcher for goodness sake, are sacrificing the prospect of a trade deal with the EU because they want the right to subsidise British industry. If the Tories and Thatcher stood for anything, it was rolling back the role of the state in the private sector. Well, all that is stuff for the GCSE history syllabus, and turns out to be irrelevant to today’s politics. Because if the government of Boris Johnson has an ideology, it is that of Dominic Cummings and his Vote Leave crew. And Cummings’s passionate conviction is that Johnson’s government MUST

James Kirkup James Kirkup

No, Marcus Rashford didn’t ‘slam’ a Tory MP over child hunger

‘Rashford slams MP’s tweet about feeding children’ That was a headline last night on the BBC News site. It neatly captures a tale that sums up just about everything that’s wrong with politics and journalism today. The ‘story’ – also in most newspapers today – is that Kevin Hollinrake, Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton, wrote the following on Twitter: ‘Where they can, it’s a parents job to feed their children’ He was writing in response to another tweet asking why it has taken the efforts of Marcus Rashford, a campaigning footballer, to put the issue of child hunger on the agenda. In turn, Rashford wrote a tweet directed to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s Brexit deadline

After months of coronavirus leading the news agenda, Brexit is back. The Prime Minister has overnight promised to quit the trade talks in five weeks if no agreement is in place. Meanwhile, figures in Brussels are voicing disbelief at reports the UK government is drawing up legislation that will override the withdrawal agreement’s Northern Ireland protocol. Boris Johnson has said there needs to be an agreement by the European Council on 15 October – otherwise, it would not be possible to bring any such agreement into force before the end of the year and therefore little point in continuing discussions: If we can’t agree by then, then I do not see

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is Britain a nation in fear of safetyism?

It should come as no surprise that Britain’s city centres remain, in the words of CBI chief Carolyn Fairbairn, ‘ghost towns’, and nor is it a shock to hear a civil service union boss shoot down Boris Johnson’s plea for public sector workers to head back to the office. Safety first, said the union man, echoing the caution of his teaching counterparts. As Trevor Kavanagh wrote in the Sun last week, Britain is ‘a scaredy-cat nation of masked hypochondriacs who won’t leave home for fear of dropping dead’. A poll last month bore this out, revealing that while two thirds of workers in France, Spain and Italy were back at

Sunday

Bruce Anderson

Can Simon Case restore stability to the heart of government?

Boris Johnson does not get everything wrong. The appointment of Simon Case to be head of the civil service at such a young age is bold and imaginative. Those who have observed his performance in senior roles all seem to regard him highly. But there could be two problems, both related to his youth: he has never run a large organisation and he has never really experienced failure. By the time that most officials and politicians reach his level of seniority, they usually know what is meant by ‘after such knowledge, what forgiveness.’ They are aware that what goes up can also come down; that an idea which, on the

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Boris Johnson’s careerist cabinet problem

Last year Boris Johnson won three notable domestic political victories. His hot streak began when he romped home in the Tory leadership contest and culminated with his decisive general election win. Between those two landmark moments was an event that served as a bridge between them – a decisive purge of the pro-Remain centrist tendency inside the Conservative parliamentary party. Many of the leading names in Tory circles for the past 20 years were bounced out of the party and then the Commons over their Brexit-blocking antics. Suddenly the game was up for Philip Hammond, David Lidington, David Gauke, Amber Rudd, Justine Greening, Rory Stewart, Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin, Ken

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: This week is ‘moment of reckoning’ for EU trade deal

Dominic Raab – This week is ‘the moment of reckoning’ for EU deal The Sunday interview shows return this week to general fanfare across the nation… The first government guest to join Sophy Ridge was the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was asked about the prospect of the UK reaching a satisfactory trade deal with the EU by the end of the year. James Forsyth has written this week about how Downing Street puts the likelihood of a deal down to 30 to 40 per cent, but Raab professed a greater optimism that an agreement could be reached, citing the thorny subject of fisheries as one of the few remaining

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

A new era dawns on Butler

It feels good, doesn’t it? Hearing Labour say something sensible for a change. Last night, eco agitators Extinction Rebellion targeted newspaper printworks hoping to disrupt the distribution of papers like the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph.  How did the Corbynite backbencher Dawn Butler respond to this attack on free expression, which has so far seen over 60 people arrested? That’s right, by applauding.  But it seems that someone in Keir Starmer’s office has reminded Dawn that the party is under new management – her ill-judged intervention has now been deleted. In fact, the party has gone one step further and released a statement condemning XR:  A free press is vital for

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will state aid sink a Brexit deal?

10 min listen

The deadline for a Brexit deal is fast approaching, but the level of subsidies paid to companies and industries could prove a stumbling block. Will state aid – which makes up just 0.34 per cent of the UK’s GDP – scupper an agreement with the EU? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The complaint from MPs that ought to worry Boris Johnson

When Boris Johnson addressed MPs on Wednesday, the hope in government was that the Prime Minister’s multiple appearances would rally the troops. First at PMQs, then before the 2019 intake, before addressing the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers. With MPs returning from the summer holidays fed up after a string of policy U-turns and constituent complaints, many needed a jolt of optimism ahead of a tricky few months.  His appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions did the opposite. ‘He was all over the place,’ sighs one veteran MP. Several Tory MPs privately complain that it was discourteous of Johnson to turn up at the despatch box having not done his homework. And while Boris

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will the Tories accept tax rises?

15 min listen

Rishi Sunak has faced a backlash this week over proposals to increase taxes to pay for the UK’s coronavirus response. Can the chancellor push the changes through, and how will the party react? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The biggest obstacle to a Brexit deal

Downing Street now thinks that the chances of a Brexit deal are down to 30 or 40 per cent, I say in The Times today. The sticking point is, rather surprisingly, state aid. Since Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979, the UK has been sniffy about the idea of government ‘picking winners’. It doesn’t use much state aid (less than half the EU average, according to the Commission’s figures), but the Johnson government doesn’t want to commit itself to something similar to the EU’s regime – it wants to use the power of the state to develop what it sees as the industries of the future. One figure with intimate knowledge of the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Europe’s ‘second wave’ has fizzled out

Has the Covid ‘second wave’ already run out of steam? On 9 July, just when Britain was reopening the hospitality sector and other businesses, the World Health Organisation announced that the pandemic was ‘accelerating’. Much of the coverage in Britain also implies that we are possibly in the early stages of a second wave. But that talk is lagging behind the data. Globally, the number of new recorded cases peaked on 31 July at 291,691 and has shown a slight downward trend ever since. In terms of deaths, they peaked at 8,502 on 17 April and have also been on a slight declining trend ever since. On the worst day

Douglas Murray

In defence of Tony Abbott

You sometimes wonder whether we live in an adult country anymore. For the last two days the broadcast media has been obsessing about whether Tony Abbott is a fit and proper person to be a trade envoy for the United Kingdom. Since he is a former Prime Minister of Australia, a distinguished statesman and a great friend of the United Kingdom you might have thought he would be eminently suited for the role. But Kay Burley of the Sky News network, among others, has announced that Abbott is (in her eyes) guilty of wrong-think. You don’t need to see the clips. You could come up with the list yourself. You

Matthew Lynn

Rishi Sunak needs to learn to add up

It is, by any measure, a heck of a lot of pizza. The ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme turns out to have been a huge success. We learned today that is was used more than a 100 million times in August. In many cities, it was virtually impossible to get a table from Monday to Wednesday. Plenty of restaurants were grateful for the sudden boom in business, and no doubt a few were saved from closure. There is a problem, however, and it is a significant one. It turns out that we have a Chancellor who struggles to add up, and Treasury officials who don’t know much about basic

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Keir Starmer’s hypocritical attack on Tony Abbott

One of the most impressive qualities of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership so far has been his ability to land blows on the government without seeming political. He’s a lawyer with the demeanour of a bank manager: he’s just telling you how things are. That has served him well in his broadsides against ministers’ handling of Covid-19. But in his rounding on the Prime Minister’s preferred trade envoy, Tony Abbott, he has faltered. The charge that the former Australian PM’s views make him unsuitable for the role sounds like something cooked up by younger, less worldly advisors and foisted upon the Labour leader. I like to tell myself the same thing

Steerpike Steerpike

Kay Burley’s bizarre takedown

What a scandalous idea, drinking with someone you might disagree with. Rather than grilling the transport secretary over his own views, Sky’s Kay Burley instead decided to attack Grant Shapps over whether he would ‘have a drink with’ Tony Abbott because of his perceived ‘homophobia’. Which seems an odd line of questioning given the fact Burley is a well-known Westminster partygoers and has no doubt attended the odd do alongside someone she disagrees with.  In fact, Burley was once spotted leaving Piers Morgan’s Christmas drinks after what looks to have been a night of unconstrained revelry. All fun and games, and Mr S would never criticise someone for enjoying the