Politics

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

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris the builder mustn’t buckle over planning reform

The government will pass the test it has set itself: schools in England will return next week. Pupils may well have to wear masks at times, but they will be back in the classroom. Yet ministers privately acknowledge this isn’t the real challenge. The bigger question is what effect the return of schools has on the prevalence of the virus and what happens to education in the case of further local outbreaks. The exams grading debacle and the various other summer U-turns have been damaging. As one minister concedes: ‘There’s only a limited amount of time before the “incompetence” label sticks. It hasn’t yet — but we can’t afford many

Wednesday

John Connolly John Connolly

Will the next U-turn be on face masks at work?

13 min listen

The government reversed its position on masks in schools late yesterday evening, announcing that secondary school pupils in local lockdown areas would be mandated to wear face coverings in communal areas. Could masks in offices be next? John Connolly speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about why the government keeps changing its mind.

Emma Byrne

The new cladding scandal that could bankrupt a generation

Within the next year or two, I could go bankrupt. My mistake: to join a government-backed affordable housing scheme and purchase a one-bedroom flat in east London. For the past four years, it has been my pride and joy — not to mention my savings, my pension and my financial future. I was grateful for the government’s help in getting a foothold in the city. But now another government policy is hurtling towards me, against which I have no defence. Nor do potentially tens of thousands of first-time buyers and the owners of affordable housing in my position. It might be the next big scandal to hit the government. It’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MP brands Brexit voters ‘fat old racists’

One of the reasons the Red Wall fell so decisively in favour of the Tories was that Labour failed to understand Brexit voters. That at least is a common theory put forward as to why Boris decisively trounced Corbyn last December. And it certainly seems to tally up with what some current Labour MPs make of Britain’s decision to vote to leave the EU – and why, as a result, Brexiteers turned their backs on Corbyn’s party. In a now-deleted tweet sent late last night, Labour’s Neil Coyle took to Twitter to brand Brexit voters like his parliamentary colleague Jacob Rees-Mogg ‘absolute s**tbag racist w***ers’.  Coyle, the MP for Bermondsey, added: ‘I

Calvin Robinson

My students shouldn’t be made to wear face masks

Has anyone who is recommending the use of masks in schools ever spent any significant amount of time working with young people? It seems unlikely. Children simply will not wear their masks correctly, if at all. Girls will constantly be adjusting them; boys will be flicking them across the room and pulling each others’ elastic bands. They’ll all be pulling them down to their necks at break time, resulting in pieces of food and drink being spilt inside. That, and the fact that they’ll be wearing them around their necks, mirroring the behaviour of adults they see on public transport, further trapping bacteria. If anything, face masks will be detrimental

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will the next U-turn be on face masks at work?

There’s a new trend emerging when it comes to Covid-19 policy: where Scotland leads, England follows. In recent weeks, decisions taken by Nicola Sturgeon have – eventually – been adopted by the UK government for England: first, the U-turn on how A-level and GCSE results would be attributed, and today another U-turn on face masks in schools. When Scotland announced face masks would be made mandatory for pupils earlier in the week, the government remained adamant that this would not be required in English schools. But within days, the advice quite substantially changed, now requiring secondary school students in local lockdown areas to wear them in the corridors and communal areas. The

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Has this Brazilian city reached herd immunity without lockdown?

Throughout the Covid crisis, the international response to the disease has rested on a simple assumption: that none of us have any resistance to it, being caused by a novel virus. Therefore, if allowed to let rip through the population, the virus would exponentially spread until around 60 – 70 per cent of us had been infected and herd immunity was reached. This was the assumption behind Neil Ferguson’s paper in March, claiming that Covid-19 would kill 500,000 Britons if nothing was done and 250,000 of us if the government carried on with the limited mitigation polices it was then following. Yet real world data has challenged this assumption. First

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris hires (another) personal trainer

‘Don’t be a fatty in your 50s’, that was the advice Boris Johnson had for his colleagues following his recovery from coronavirus. It seems he’s taken that comment to heart – the PM has signed up a new PT to help him shift the pounds.  The Evening Standard reports that celebrity trainer Harry Jameson has been spotted alongside the 56-year-old Prime Minister while out on a jog in Westminster this morning. Jameson is known for his work out sessions with Love Island presenter Laura Whitmore as well as Rocky IV star Dolph Lundgren (Mr S has resisted the temptation to make a joke about a ‘rocky’ few weeks).   The question is, what happened to all of Boris’s other personal

Steerpike Steerpike

Wanted: MoD diversity boss, £110,000-a-year

Diversity and inclusion is, apparently, ‘mission critical’ to the Ministry of Defence. That’s right, up there with keeping our troops safe or even, believe it or not, defence of the realm. Which is why the MoD is now looking for a new director of diversity and inclusion. In fact, the role is so ‘mission critical’ that the successful candidate will be paid at least £110,000 — more than a major, colonel or brigadier.  And what will this new ‘mission critical’ diversity director actually be doing? Ensuring that HM army, navy and airforce ‘at all levels, appropriately represents UK society’ and that the MoD is ‘recognised as a force for inclusion in wider society’. Mr S would

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

What is the point of Boris Johnson’s Tory party?

It was way back in 2003 that the journalist Peter Hitchens first declared the Conservative party to be ‘useless’. Peter’s thesis was that the Tories had become incapable of fighting effectively for any significant conservative cause, and were in any case usually unwilling even to try and therefore should be disbanded. In a series of columns over several years embracing issues from the EU to mass immigration to law and order and cultural matters too (they certainly repay reading again) he sustained what was at the time a lonely barrage on the right.  His thinking certainly greatly influenced my own decision to join forces with Nigel Farage and Ukip while

Tuesday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Where is Dominic Cummings?

Some in Westminster have been missing Dominic Cummings. It turns out he had an operation in late July, which he delayed a year ago when Boris Johnson persuaded him to become his chief aide, and has been convalescing in the north of England since. He returns to normal duties at No. 10 on Monday. Whitehall source tells me he has not been working and was not looking at emails or messages. I imagine it has been an unmitigated joy for him to switch it all back on again — especially to read the reported remarks of his father-in-law about the PM’s alleged (and denied) early retirement plans. 

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is Boris being too defensive on the culture wars?

15 min listen

Reports on Sunday suggested the BBC was going to drop ‘Rule, Britannia!’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ from its Last Night of the Proms schedule because of the songs’ associations with slavery and colonialism. Boris Johnson hit back at the broadcaster today, however, calling for an end to ‘this general bout of self-recrimination and wetness’. But was the Prime Minister’s response strong enough? Cindy Yu speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Duel Britannia: The myth of Britain’s culture war

Can I make a confession? I’m not really interested in the Last Night of the Proms. I don’t think I’ve ever watched it. I don’t really know the words to ‘Rule Britannia’. Or the other one. Does that mean I hate Britain and all it stands for? Does it mean I am callously indifferent to Britain’s shameful history of imperialism and oppression? Of course not. It means I’m like the overwhelming majority of people in this country — of all ages, races, backgrounds — who don’t get very excited about this stuff. We are the civilians in the culture wars, and we are many. Yes, I know a lot of

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Why Keir Starmer no longer needs to fear the left of his party

John McDonnell, Corbyn’s right hand man for four and a half years, was full of praise when asked about the official opposition’s handling of the Covid crisis. ‘Keir’s got this exactly right’ the ex-shadow chancellor told John Pienaar. But many of Corbyn’s loyal supporters didn’t agree; sparking an internal Labour argument between the party’s warring sides. It is tempting to point to the scrap and claim that it is yet more evidence of the difficulties Starmer faces to get Labour winning again, as the party’s internal battles never seem to end and in fact, are now being fought out between ever smaller factions. But another, more positive way for Starmer

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s culture war strategy

Boris Johnson’s approach to the culture war is to wait for the other side to overreach – talk of taking down Churchill’s statue, no singing of Rule Britannia at the Proms – then pile in. So, today he has waded into the row about the BBC’s decision to only have instrumental versions of Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory at the last night of the Proms this year, declaring that ‘it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general fight of self-recrimination and wetness.’ The advantage of this approach for him is that he only weighs in

Michael Crick

The BBC has lost touch with real diversity

The BBC has announced plans to invest £100 million pounds in ‘diversity’ for its television output. Bravo. I’m a great believer in diversity. A thriving, vibrant democracy needs as much diversity as possible in public discourse – a plurality of voices, of outlook and of background.  But I suspect that the BBC is thinking of ‘diversity’ in only the narrow, fashionable sense of today – in gender, race and sexuality, but little else. Of course, BBC TV output should reflect society in these respects. It’s made huge progress, for example in its news bulletins where the gender and ethnic background of presenters and reporters roughly seems to reflect the proportions

Geoffrey Owen

How the UK can become a science superpower

Boris Johnson wants the UK to be a science superpower. Part of his plan is to set up a new funding agency, loosely based on the much-praised Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the US. This agency, strongly pushed by the Prime Minister’s adviser Dominic Cummings, will back high-risk, high-payoff projects with minimal bureaucratic control. But there is another part of the science and innovation landscape where at least as much attention is needed as any new proposed agency. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) was set up in 2017 to bring together all the government bodies that use public money to support research and development. These are: the seven research

Robin Aitken

My Unionist faith is wearing thin

How does a believer lose the faith? It might begin with some quibble about a point of doctrine: the Virgin Birth, for instance. The believer struggles intellectually but cannot accept the dogma. What starts as a quibble then turns into an obstacle; as the doubt grows, the whole belief system starts to unravel. One day it dawns on them that they no longer believe. Reader, I am myself undergoing such a struggle to maintain my political faith in Unionism. I have been an instinctive, largely unquestioning Unionist ever since I became politically aware. The roots of my faith are simple enough: Scotland and England can do more together than individually.

Monday

Paul Wood

Trump should pardon Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden says that he didn’t mean to end up in Russia when he fled after leaking secrets from his job at the United States National Security Agency (NSA). He writes in his autobiography, Permanent Record, that he agonised about where to go. Europe was impossible because of extradition. Africa was a ‘no-go zone’ because the US ‘had a history of acting there with impunity’. Eventually, he went to Hong Kong and after hiding out there for a short time, he made a dash for Ecuador in hope of getting asylum. But the US cancelled his passport and, in what we’re told was an unfortunate coincidence, he got stuck in Sheremetyevo airport

John Connolly John Connolly

Can Gavin Williamson reopen England’s schools?

13 min listen

Boris Johnson has returned from his holiday to embark on a media campaign promoting September’s schools reopening. With Scottish pupils already back – and the initial signs of their return looking positive – can Gavin Williamson stage a successful reopening, or will the beleaguered education secretary face another fiasco? John Connolly speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.