Politics

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

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is a Brexit deal within reach?

Trade talks between the UK and the EU are in a better place than they have been at any point since they started back in March. Now, in one way this is not impressive — the diplomatic equivalent of being the tallest mountain in Holland. For the first three months of these negotiation both sides were bullish, restating their maximalist positions, and coronavirus forced the negotiations online, making diplomacy and quiet compromise trickier. But now an intensive series of talks have been agreed, some of which will be face to face. Both sides appear to be in earnest about trying to break the deadlock. The British side is, privately, far

Wednesday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Sturgeon is failing Scotland’s students

There is a crisis brewing in Scottish education. Not the long-running crisis of attainment gaps, falling exam performance and limited external oversight. The emerging crisis is about getting children inside the classroom in the first place. Scotland’s schools have been closed for 90 days now in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and are not due to return for another 55, and even then only part-time. This ‘blended learning’ approach will see pupils split their week between in-school learning and remote working from home. What that split will look like will vary from council to council. Schools in Edinburgh will only allow one-third of students to attend classes while in Fife

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Keir Starmer has no idea how to use normal language

A testy, ill-tempered PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer began by welcoming the anti-viral breakthrough achieved by British scientists. He got an instant slap-down. ‘I’m glad he’s finally paying tribute to the efforts of this country in tackling the coronavirus,’ said Boris, finding Sir Keir guilty of anti-British sentiment. The PM was road-testing a new jingoistic approach today. He believes his handling of the pandemic is the greatest achievement since the invention of the steam engine. And the furlough is the jewel in this glorious crown. ‘Eleven million jobs protected by a scheme unlike anything anywhere else in world!’ he enthused. Perhaps Sir Keir would be asked to ‘take a knee’ for

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Hancock’s social distancing slip up

Oh dear. It seems Matt Hancock has forgotten his own rules. Shortly before PMQs this afternoon, the Health Secretary was spotted slapping a chum on the back in a blatant breach of the two-metre distancing regulations.  Less than a minute later, Hancock again disregarded his ministry’s own guidance when he leaned in to have a chat with another MP. Perhaps Hancock could use the Ferguson defence and plead immunity given the fact he has already had the virus. Then again, that didn’t end too well for professor lockdown… UPDATE Hancock has now released a statement apologising for the breach, saying:  I’m so sorry for a human mistake on my part. Like

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is Boris Johnson’s week starting to look up?

21 min listen

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Boris Johnson cornered Keir Starmer on the Labour party’s ambivalent position on schools reopening. After a bumpy start to the week, is the Prime Minister’s luck turning? Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson about this, the 1922 committee meeting, and Westminster reopening.

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Boris should keep calm and ignore the polls

When those words and phrases of the year lists come out there is bound to be a place in them for ‘the new normal’. It is a phrase that invites us to expect that short-term shifts in how things are will become new long-term equilibriums. A socially-distanced lifestyle; governments being able to borrow vast sums very cheaply; face masks on public transport: these are just a few of the things that have in 2020 been labelled ‘the new normal’. For Brits who craves some stability in turbulent times it can be a comforting concept. For many Conservative politicians, ‘the new normal’ seems to have begun a year or so ago

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is Boris brave enough to break his triple lock pension pledge?

It would not have been obvious to those drafting the Conservative manifesto last autumn that they were planting a very large bomb beneath the government. After all, the triple lock had already featured in three general election campaigns and had yet to cause the public finances a problem. But the very special circumstances of the Covid-19 crisis have lit the fuse. The inevitable explosion is either going to cost dearly the Conservatives’ reputation in the eyes of pensioners – or else widen an already gaping public deficit, as well as offend millions of younger people who might already be seething at what they see as intergenerational unfairness. The problem is

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Boris’s car rear-ended in protest bump

Boris Johnson’s ministerial Jaguar was involved in a pile-up outside parliament earlier this afternoon. It seems a protester on Parliament Square tried to halt the PM’s cavalcade as he was leaving via Carriage Gates after PMQs. According to the Mail‘s John Stevens, No. 10 is saying that there are currently no reports of any injuries. 

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The strange revision of a Scottish scientist’s schools advice

Let’s play spot the difference. Here is a tweet posted on Tuesday afternoon by Professor Devi Sridhar, a member of the Scottish Government’s Covid-19 Advisory Group: Now, here is a tweeted posted by Professor Sridhar on Wednesday morning: The tweets are separated by 15 hours. What happened in that time to prompt Edinburgh University’s Chair in Global Public Health to issue an apparent reversal of her considered opinion? Nicola Sturgeon has been under fire for the delay in reopening Scottish schools, with parents unhappy that children will not return to the classroom until August 11, and even then on a part-time basis. In Edinburgh, just one third of pupils will

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris scores a first PMQs victory over Starmer

For the first time since Keir Starmer became Labour leader, Boris Johnson clearly bested him at PMQs. Johnson, backed up by Tory MPs who were determined to make as much noise as possible in the socially distanced chamber, pushed Starmer to explicitly declare that it was safe to return to schools. Starmer was reluctant to do so, and Johnson kept hammering the point. This took the wind out of the Labour leader’s sails who failed to land any blows on Boris Johnson despite the government’s difficulties in recent days. The backbench questions didn’t produce any particularly awkward moments either. So after a difficult 48 hours, Boris Johnson came through PMQs

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Did Boris have beef with the wrong MP?

Poor Alistair Carmichael. The Lib Dem MP was only standing up for beef farmers in his constituency, raising a problem with the UK labelling regulations. But it appears that Boris Johnson didn’t recognise the Orkney MP, lambasting him for his supposed support for an independent Scotland. Yes, that would be the same Alistair Carmichael who served as Scotland Minister in the coalition government and has led the Lib Dem charge against a second independence referendum. Woops!

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Hoyle hits out at John Bercow’s ‘retrograde’ Trump ban

Since becoming the new Speaker of the Commons, the softly-spoken Lancastrian Lindsay Hoyle has sought to distance himself from the tenure of John Bercow. While the latter spent his days constructing long monologues and pontificating from the Speaker’s chair, Hoyle has instead focused on limiting his own contributions in the Chamber and attempting to be an impartial arbiter of Commons debates. Despite this change in approach (and the fact that he ran for Speaker as the anti-Bercow candidate) Hoyle has generally avoided criticising his predecessor directly. Mr S wonders though if that now might be about to change. This week, Hoyle was interviewed by chief executive of the rugby league

Tuesday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Was the government’s free meals U-turn inevitable?

15 min listen

After the highly publicised campaign by the footballer Marcus Rashford, the government has U-turned on the question of free school meals in the summer. Was it inevitable, and what does this move mean for public spending? Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Kate Andrews about this as well as the Foreign Office merger and the Oxford drug breakthrough.

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

We need to talk about Munira Mirza and Priti Patel

We need to talk about Priti Patel. Specifically we need to talk about what happened to her last week. In an emotional statement in the House of Commons, Patel talked about some of the racist abuse she has experienced, from being called a ‘P**i’ in the school playground to being depicted as a cow with a ring through its nose in the Guardian. (Patel is a Hindu, and the cow is a sacred symbol in Hinduism.) She did so in response to the claim made by Labour MP Florence Eshalomi that the government doesn’t understand the problem of racial inequality. After recounting her run-ins with prejudicial hatred, Patel said: ‘I

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Free school meals and the anatomy of a U-turn

No. 10’s screeching U-turn on food for low-income kids over the summer will not do the government or ministers serious harm with the wider public. That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. First, the public. They are not on Twitter. This fact cannot be repeated enough around Westminster. In a finding that should be tattooed on the flesh of every politician and journalist in and around Westminster, the latest Reuters digital news report finds that only 14 per cent of the UK population say they get news from Twitter. The hours of Twitter frenzy that precede the U-turn will have gone largely unnoticed by most people. The BBC (including its

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Are Britain’s employment figures too good to be true?

Lining up graphs of the UK’s growth figures last week and its employment figures this week, you would struggle to believe the data was from the same decade, let alone the same month. Despite the economy contracting by a quarter in March and April, unemployment figures haven’t budged: 3.9 per cent ending the month of April, unmoved from the quarter before, and more remarkably only up 0.1 per cent from the previous year.  The employment rate remains surprisingly high too: 76.4 per cent, down 0.1 per cent on the previous quarter. Despite the shuttering of the economy, employment and unemployment continue to hover at record highs and lows, like they

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why Boris U-turned on free school meals

This lunchtime Boris Johnson performed a U-turn on free school meals over the summer holidays. Following a campaign led by the England striker Marcus Rashford calling for the free school meal voucher system for low-income families to be extended over the summer, a ‘Covid summer food fund’ is to be set up which will see those eligible get a six-week voucher. For many the big question isn’t ‘why has the government U-turned?’ but ‘why did the government take so long to U-turn?’. An increasing number of Tory MPs had come to see it as inevitable as the story looked set to dominate the news and attract criticism from all sides. The popularity of the personality

Alexander Pelling-Bruce Alexander Pelling-Bruce

Are the police still impartial?

The only silver lining of Churchill’s encasement is that he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of seeing thugs perform Nazi salutes in front of him. It’s a toss up whether this was more grotesque than the hoodies of the week before who threw bikes and bottles at police. Rightly, there was the proper police presence over the weekend to prevent widespread crime and disorder. But why did police surrender to one mob and not the other?  The job of police is to uphold the law. But is that always still the case? When officers failed to prevent the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol they ignored Robert Peel’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The thinking behind the Foreign Office DfID takeover

When Boris Johnson was Foreign Secretary he was constantly irritated by how small the department’s budget was, and how the Department for International Development had so much more money than the Foreign Office. After the 2017 election, he used Theresa May’s weakened position to get some joint Foreign Office-DfID ministers appointed. But even this didn’t fully address his concerns.  So, it was always likely that as Prime Minister he would want to bring DfID fully into the Foreign Office, all the DfID junior ministers are already double hatting. I suspect that the aid charities will not like this move at all. But bringing DfiD into the Foreign Office will make

Steerpike Steerpike

Coffey’s rash intervention

Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford has caused a bit of a storm in the Westminster bubble this morning – the 22-year-old’s plea to the PM to extend free school meals into the summer holiday has not gone unnoticed.  As Katy Balls writes this morning, there is a growing feeling among Tory backbenchers that the cost of the scheme is small compared to the negative PR generated from falling out with a world-class footballer.  But it seems the secretary of state for the department of work and pensions didn’t get the memo. Thérèse Coffey decided to fact check one of Rashford’s tweets, pointing out that it’s illegal for water companies to cut off customers’