Politics Archives

Wednesday

23 Dec 2020

What will Farage’s sidekick do next? An interview with Richard Tice

Richard Tice is tall and lean, has a hint of Imran Khan around the eyes, and the ladies on reception in the office building where we meet seem to like him. Were Jilly Cooper to write a political novel then he would be its hero rather than anti-hero. Tice was, after all, the clean-cut one in the ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’, a band whose line up was completed by Arron Banks, Andy Wigmore and Nigel Farage. Tice is the chairman of the Farage-led Brexit party, a title he is finding irksome this afternoon as he would much rather by now be chairman of Reform UK, the new identity he and

Douglas Murray

Most-read 2020: What isn’t being said about the Reading attack victims?

We’re closing 2020 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 9: Douglas Murray on June’s Reading attack Imagine if on Saturday evening a white neo-Nazi had stabbed three men to death. Imagine, furthermore, if in the wake of the killings it had turned out that all three of the victims were gay. Or ‘members of the LGBT community’, to use the lexicon of the time. And then imagine if two days later nobody in the UK or anywhere else was very interested in any of this. So what if the victims were all gay? Why bother sifting around for motives. What are you trying to say?

Tuesday

22 Dec 2020

Isabel Hardman

Will Boris be blamed for Kent’s queues?

13 min listen

At yesterday’s press conference, Boris Johnson said there were just 170 lorries queuing in Kent to cross the Channel. Today, there are expected to be around 1,500. The government is continuing discussions with France to get freight moving again, but will Boris be blamed for the hold-up? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Katy Balls

Is England heading for a Tier 4 lockdown?

Is England heading for a new year lockdown? That’s the suggestion in several papers today after chief scientific officer Patrick Vallance used a government press conference on Monday to declare that measures would likely ‘need to be increased’ in areas not currently under Tier 4. This comes after Matt Hancock suggested those parts of England currently facing the toughest restrictions — London and the South East — could remain under restrictions for months to come until the vaccine has been sufficiently rolled out. Now conversation in government has turned to which areas will join them. As things stand, 16.4 million people are in Tier 4, 19.7 million in Tier 3, 16.1 million

James Forsyth

Will Britain’s fishing offer break the Brexit deadlock?

On Sunday night another Brexit deadline passed; the European Parliament had said it would need to see a deal by then if it was to pass it by the end of the year. But the negotiations are still going on. Multiple papers are this morning reporting a new British offer on fishing. The Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief Daniel Boffey says it involves a five-year transition for the industry. It remains to be seen if this will be enough to pave the way for a deal. Those who understand the French position well think that Emmanuel Macron will want more than what London is reported to have offered and that he

Monday

21 Dec 2020

Katy Balls

Will the Covid variant derail an Easter easing?

13 min listen

Speaking alongside Patrick Vallance and Grant Shapps, Boris Johnson said we could expect ‘a very, very different world for this country from Easter onwards’. But will the new Covid strain derail the easing of restrictions? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth.

Jamie Njoku-Goodwin

Why a spring return to normal might still be possible

The new mutant strain of Covid-19 is concerning and is likely to make the next few months particularly difficult. But here’s the good news: its emergence doesn’t necessarily mean that the government’s previous optimism about a spring return to normal is off the cards During this Covid-19 outbreak, a common mistake has been to adopt a binary outlook: things are either good or bad, ‘getting better’ or ‘getting worse’. But pandemics are not linear – they are curves. Things can be getting better in the long term, but worse in the immediate short term. The events of the last few days are a good example. It’s worth then seeing the decision to ‘cancel Christmas’ and the

Nick Cohen

Why Boris Johnson can’t solve the UK’s crisis

The Brexit and Covid crises have merged into one. As of today, 21 December, France has blocked trucks from crossing the Channel as fears about a new strain of Covid — ‘the Kent virus’ to coin a phrase — sweep the continent. Perishable food was rotting, approach roads were jammed… it was as if we were living under a wartime blockade. By the time you read this, the French may have shifted from an outright ban to stringent health checks on exports and imports, but the pressure will still be on. In less than a fortnight, on 1 January, we will have the real Brexit. It will be either without

Ross Clark

Could disruption in Dover lead to empty supermarket shelves?

The Port of Dover has been closed, with freight as well as passengers unable to cross the Channel, due to the new strain of Covid concentrated in London and the South East. So how long before supermarket shelves are empty? A lot depends on the behaviour of British consumers. As has been proved on a number of occasions, such as with lavatory paper at the beginning of the spring lockdown and with petrol during the fuel protests in 2000, you don’t need an actual shortage of goods to result in apparent shortages – panic-buying can lead to empty shelves within hours, if people are minded to stock up their freezers

Matthew Lynn

No-deal Brexit planning has been a lifesaver

The port of Dover has been closed down. The Eurotunnel isn’t carrying any freight for a couple of days. The lorries are already starting to back up in Kent, the supermarkets are working out where they can get fresh supplies from, and flights have been suspended, with the British likely to find they are turned away from most of our neighbouring countries. If you had blanked out all the other news you might think that after some terminal row about herring, Brexit had actually been brought forward by ten days, creating the kind of chaos that even the most swivel-eyed Remainer could scarcely have imagined possible. And yet, of course,

Nick Tyrone

Boris now faces a terrible choice over Brexit

Ten thousand lorries usually travel through the port of Dover in the run-up to Christmas. Now, Dover is completely shut. Over the weekend, this crucial supply chain into Britain has stopped. In the coming days, as Brits stock up ahead of Christmas, there is likely to be some pressure on UK supply chains. And as James Forsyth writes on Coffee House, the coming weeks will inevitably mean a crisis for Britain. As such, it begs the question: can Boris really go for a no-deal Brexit now? Can he go through with it at a time when political crises are piling one on top of each other? Despite the potential risk, I’m

Steerpike

Neil Ferguson’s mysterious membership of Nervtag

It seems like a lifetime ago when the Imperial College academic Neil Ferguson was caught breaking lockdown rules to meet his married lover. Since then, a whole series of mad, bad and downright nonsense regulations have come and gone. At the time though, the breach was taken very seriously by both the government and Ferguson himself, who had been the main champion of strict lockdown rules being instated in Britain. On 5 May, Ferguson promised to stand down as a government advisor, saying he regretted ‘undermining’ the government’s harsh measures on social distancing. His decision was backed by the government. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said Ferguson had made ‘the

Patrick O’Flynn

Smarmy Starmer is not making himself popular with anyone

The verdict of the Twitter jury is in, articulated in a single, now viral tweet by broadcaster Matthew Stadlen: ‘Keir Starmer would have been – and would be – a far better Prime Minister than Boris Johnson during this pandemic.’ It is a theme that Starmer has naturally been keen to develop, leading him to make excoriating criticisms of Boris Johnson in a press conference at the weekend. The Starmer thesis is that Johnson is so anxious to be liked that he ducks out of taking tough decisions until it is too late. The Labour leader cites examples that include the lateness of the original lockdown, an allegedly late-in-the-day decision

Robert Peston

Covid and Brexit are about to collide

We are back in a full-scale economic crisis. In London and the south east, the richest part of the UK and engine of the economy, normal commerce has been suspended by the imposition of Tier 4. And the decision of much of the EU and a growing number of rich countries to put the whole UK into quarantine is devastating for trade. What are the immediate priorities? Probably the most important one is basic: the creation of a facility to give rapid Covid-19 tests to all lorry drivers leaving the UK so that the transport of freight can be restarted as quickly as possible. Second, to end the cancerous uncertainty for

James Forsyth

Britain faces a crisis over the coming weeks

This country faces a crisis over the next few weeks. Covid cases are rising rapidly in the UK — there were more than 35,000 new cases yesterday, the largest number recorded during the pandemic and almost double the number a week ago. It seems likely that this rapid rise is, in part, a result of the new variation of the virus which does seem to be more transmissible. It is hard not to think that more of the country will be put into Tier 4 restrictions at the next review. It’ll be surprising if England gets through January without another lockdown. Concern over this new variant of the virus has

Hardeep Singh

Victims of grooming gangs have been failed again

The Home Office’s report into the characteristics of group-based child sexual exploitation was keenly awaited by victims of grooming gangs. Sadly, for many of these people, it has left them disappointed. When Sajid Javid commissioned the review he promised there would be ‘no no-go areas of inquiry’. His successor as Home Secretary, Priti Patel, says in the report itself that ‘victims and survivors of these abhorrent crimes have told me how they were let down by the state in the name of political correctness. What happened to these children remains one of the biggest stains on our country’s conscience.’ But victims I’ve spoken to suggest political correctness remains an issue. The report, they say, obfuscates

Sunday

20 Dec 2020

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: New Covid strain ‘out of control’, says Hancock

The Health Secretary joined Andrew Marr the day after Boris Johnson outlined a new fourth tier of restrictions. Tier 4 is designed to clamp down on a new mutation of the coronavirus that has been surging across the south east of England, and the news has wrought havoc on many families’ Christmas plans. Hancock told Marr that people should assume they were carrying the virus as a default: MH: The new variant is out of control… and this news about the new variant has been an incredibly difficult end to frankly, an awful year. It’s important for everybody to essentially act like they might have the virus. That’s the way

Katy Balls

Matt Hancock suggests Tier 4 could stay until vaccine ‘rolled out’

As 16.4 million people wake up to the first day of Tier 4 restrictions, many are asking for how long the draconian measures will be in place. While the restrictions will be reviewed at the end of the month, the Health Secretary said they could be in place for much longer than a few weeks. Speaking on Sky News, Hancock suggested areas could have to remain under Tier 4 until the vaccine has been rolled out. Asked whether people in Tier 4 should expect to remain in Tier 4 until a vaccine is rolled out, he told Sophy Ridge: ‘Well we’ve really got to get this under control. And the cases in the Tier

Ross Clark

How sure can we be that the Tier 4 lockdown will work?

How certain should we be of the government’s claim that the new variant of SARS-CoV-2 is 70 per cent more transmissible than the previous common strain falls apart? I ask not because I have any information that would contradict the Prime Minister, but because it has become a repetitive feature of this crisis: that the piece of science which leads the government into a sudden change in policy ends up looking a little flaky. It happened with Professor Ferguson’s famous prediction of 240,000 deaths unless the government introduced the first lockdown – Imperial published similar figures for Sweden which were later shown to vastly overstate deaths, throwing serious doubt upon its model. It happened, too,

Saturday

19 Dec 2020

Katy Balls

Was the change in Christmas rules inevitable?

12 min listen

Christmas has been cancelled, after all. In London and parts of the South East, new Tier 4 restrictions mean that households will not be able to mix indoors; whereas in the rest of the country families can only get together on Christmas day. Does this government suffer from consistently over-promising? Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.