Politics

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

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Scottish government’s website collapse

Nicola Sturgeon today released her ‘roadmap’ for easing the lockdown in Scotland, after the first minister decided to pursue a separate strategy to Boris Johnson when it comes to lifting restrictions on freedom of association and movement. In an announcement, the first minister said that Scotland would pursue a ‘four-phase’ route out of lockdown, with some restrictions lifted next week, such as allowing people to meet others from another household outside. But, rather unfortunately, the majority of the guidance was unavailable to read, as the Scottish government’s website helpfully crashed soon after Sturgeon’s announcement, with thousands of users unable to access the new guidance. Happily though the SNP MP Carol Monaghan

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Coronavirus’s forgotten victims

I am hearing stories about people with disabilities that make me feel ill. Visitors to care homes (parents and siblings, usually) tell me they cannot go inside. Fair enough, given the risks of coronavirus spreading you might say. But some homes are not allowing parents to wave at their children through the window or meet them at a safe social distance when they are released from lockdowns lasting 23 hours a day for a brief walk, assuming they are allowed a walk at all. Severely autistic people, who understand little, think their parents are dead or have abandoned them. They are injuring themselves and falling into deep depressions. My sources

Steerpike Steerpike

Hancock’s day in court

As if Matt Hancock didn’t have enough on his plate. In a bid to declare the lockdown unlawful, lawyers for the multi-millionaire Simon Dolan have lodged a formal challenge at the High Court in London, with Hancock and education secretary Gavin Williamson both named as respondents. In a statement released this morning, Dolan said:  The claim argues that the lockdown measures are unlawful because they breach the European Convention on Human Rights, that the five tests for terminating lockdown are too narrow, and the measures taken by Government are disproportionate. At the heart of this historic case is the protection of freedom and liberty for 66 million people. We are challenging a catastrophic set of

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Should we be using GPs to track and trace?

A simple and compelling point was made on Peston by former WHO director Anthony Costello last night: the UK already has a potentially world class network for track and trace in its GP surgeries. But these are being sidelined as outsourcing giants Serco and Sitel have been hired to organise clinical and non clinical people to sit at the end of a phone to have conversations with symptom sufferers to get them tested, trace who they’ve been with and (presumably) monitor their progress. According to Costello, GPs are not even allowed to order a Covid-19 test for patients (those patients have to do it for themselves). Now it may be

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

In defence of free markets in the time of coronavirus

One of the dominant political themes of the moment is that the big state, alongside either a high tax and spend economic model or massive borrowing, is here to stay. Those who advocate for even slightly more of a market economy and less state largesse apparently belong to a bygone age. This narrative is being advanced by both left and right, Labour and the Conservatives. The Labour Party have obvious reasons to argue for a bigger state given this is one of the main reasons they exist, but the Conservative Party have begun to talk the economic language of Labour as well. This began under Theresa May’s leadership and continues

Steerpike Steerpike

New Yorkers rally against lockdown

Here in the UK, Britons are regularly told that the country’s handling of coronavirus is mocked right across the world. There have been countless round-ups of international press cuts in which Boris Johnson has been heavily criticised – even if the author is often a Brit known to harbour little admiration for the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, so-called liberal lights such as Emmanuel Macron and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are praised for their response – even if the death toll also makes for a bleak picture. So, in the interest of international balance, Mr S was intrigued to see an article in the New York Post suggesting that Cuomo’s current handling

Toby Young Toby Young

Liberal fears are contagious

It has become a commonplace among social psychologists that one of the characteristics that unites conservatives is our sensitivity to disgust. A succession of experiments carried out over the past ten years seems to show that a person’s political views are linked to how disgusting they find the idea of, say, touching a toilet seat in a public lavatory. The more repulsed you are, the more likely you are to hold conservative positions on issues like gay marriage, immigration and abortion. These findings have been lapped up by liberal social scientists since they confirm their view of conservatives as uptight control freaks whose love of hierarchy and tradition is rooted

John R. MacArthur

Is Trump more left-wing than Biden?

Just when it seemed that Donald Trump had finally committed political suicide — his notion of injecting disinfectant to cure coronavirus marking only one of his recent reckless absurdities — he says something off the cuff that makes one lament the sight of so much raw political talent going to waste in the cause of solipsistic mania. A leftist anti-Trumper I may be, but I’ve been strangely impressed by the President’s capacity for perfectly credible, progressive–sounding political analysis, especially on the trade issues that sometimes bring together on common ground right-wing nationalists and left-wing defenders of labour rights. That an estimated eight million Obama voters chose Trump in 2016, and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brexit is back – and Covid has transformed negotiations

We will know in the next few weeks if Britain is to leave the European Union without a trade deal. The ‘high-level’ meeting in June has been earmarked by the UK and the EU as the moment when they decide whether to take the negotiations to the next stage or not. If there is to be a deal, then the contours of it will need to start to become clearer at this meeting. If they don’t, then both sides will need to decide whether their time would be better spent preparing for trading on WTO terms than in unconstructive negotiations. The Covid pandemic, far from pausing the talks, has made

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Keir Starmer’s big weakness was exposed at PMQs

It has come down to a classroom contest. The swot versus the wag. The smart Alec against the rugger captain. The chemistry nerd who wants to join the cool kids behind the bike-sheds. Sir Keir has been praised for his ‘forensic’ attacks on Boris at PMQs. What is ‘forensic’? ‘Forum’ means a market-place and later it referred to an arena where trials were held. ‘Public square’ more or less covers it. And though Starmer is adept at court-room dissections he’ll never appeal to the throng. He isn’t box-office. His great distinction is also his curse. He’s like the prosecutor in a fraud trial methodically piling up an impenetrable tonnage of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson is facing a rebellion over lockdown

Today is the last day of the hybrid parliament. When MPs return after recess on 2 June, it will be to a traditional House of Commons – albeit with social distancing and limits on how many people can enter the Chamber. This is being seen as a victory for the Tory whips. But the whips should be careful what they wish for. Tory MPs are, at the moment, spread out across the country but I suspect bringing them all to Westminster will lead to more vocal demands for a greater easing of the lockdown. Tory MPs are becoming increasingly panicked about the economic consequences of the lockdown. One senior Tory

Katy Balls Katy Balls

PMQs: Boris Johnson is having to adapt to a new opponent

A sign that Downing Street is having to adapt to a new opponent in Sir Keir Starmer could be found in today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. After two successive PMQs in which Boris Johnson was accused of being out of his depth by critics and even some supporters, there was a concerted effort to try and show he was in control. In the socially distanced Commons chamber every seat that was allowed to be used by a Tory MP was taken. Those assembled made a concerted effort to make supportive noises when Johnson spoke and disapproving ones when Starmer stood. It was a tense outing for all concerned. At one point Health Secretary

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Could negative gilt yields be Boris Johnson’s magic money tree?

A few months ago, Boris Johnson fought a general election saying that there was no ‘magic money tree’ and accusing Jeremy Corbyn of naively believing otherwise. This morning, something strange sprouted from the economic undergrowth, looking very much like a magic money tree. Britain sold its first long term bonds with negative yields: ie, sold at an average of -0.003 per cent. This dip below zero means investors are knowingly making a loss – paying more overall for the bonds than what their investment will return.  The yield may be only a fraction below zero, but its cross into negative territory marks a difficult moment for the prevailing economic narrative:

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The SNP’s media war conceals their Covid failures

Sarah Smith is the Scotland editor of BBC News. On Monday night’s Ten O’Clock News, she was in the middle of a ‘live’ from Glasgow on Scotland’s divergent lockdown arrangements when she said this: Nicola Sturgeon has enjoyed the opportunity to set her own lockdown rules and not have to follow what’s happening in England or other parts of the UK. If you don’t see it, that’s probably because you’re in the pay of MI5 too. Smith’s choice of words made her meaning unclear. Did she mean Sturgeon was taking the chance to make her own decisions? Or that she was fortunate or glad to be doing so? Was she

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Stanford study suggests coronavirus might not be as deadly as flu

One of the great unknowns of the Covid-19 crisis is just how deadly the disease is. Much of the panic dates from the moment, in early March, when the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a mortality rate of 3.2 per cent – which turned out to be a crude ‘case fatality rate’ dividing the number of deaths by the number of recorded cases, ignoring the large number of cases which are asymptomatic or otherwise go unrecorded.  The Imperial College modelling, which has been so influential on the government, assumed an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.9 per cent. This was used to compute the infamous prediction that 250,000 Britons would

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Tougher terrorism laws are popular. But will they actually work?

Social media is predictably swamped by the usual well-heeled, left-wheeled liberal rights activists decrying the major changes to terrorism laws introduced by Justice Secretary Robert Buckland this morning. The new Counter Terrorism and Sentencing Bill entering Parliament today delivers swingeing changes to the sentencing, risk assessment and supervision of this countries violent extremists. Fatal defects in the system had become all too apparent in two acts of jihadi terrorism that straddled last Christmas. The murderous rampage of Usman Khan, who killed two young people involved in an educational charity supporting him when on licence from prison, was followed by Sudesh Amman’s dramatic assault. His attack on shoppers in Streatham after authorities

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is the government blaming the scientists?

With ministers and officials involved with the country’s coronavirus strategy braced for an eventual public inquiry, this week we’re being given a glimpse of how it might play out. During a morning broadcast round on Tuesday, Work and Pensions Secretary Thérèse Coffey set the cat among the pigeons when she was asked about mistakes the government may have made. It’s clear that this is a row No. 10 does not wish to be having right now Coffey replied by saying ministers can ‘only make judgments based on the advice’ they are given. She went on to say that on issues such as testing capacity, if the scientific advice at the

Jim Sillars

Beware Scotland’s hate crime bill

Burns, Hume, Adam Smith, and others who shone in that remarkable intellectual period in Scotland’s history, were not the cradle of the Enlightenment; but it is indisputable that they were major contributors to its emergence and influence. Now, north of the border, the Scottish government has set out to divorce us from the heritage those minds gave us: to be unafraid of, indeed willing, to discuss, probe, dispute ideas and thoughts in the liberating realm of fearless free speech. Scots are now locked in a woke chamber: virtue signalling, pandering to perceived victimhood, punishing any who assert biological fact, placing a halter of criminality on free thought when articulated by

Tuesday