Politics Archives

Sunday

18 Oct 2020

Sunday shows roundup: Burnham – tier three will ’cause real harm’

Andy Burnham – Trapping us in tier three will ’cause real harm’ The government’s standoff with regional leaders in the north west was played out on television this morning. Andrew Marr spoke to Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who has been the most prominent voice in resisting the highest level of coronavirus restrictions being imposed on the county. Citing Greater Manchester’s adherence to local lockdown measures for just under three months, Burnham argued that adopting the tier three controls was unrealistic without added economic support for his constituents: AB: Protecting health is about more than controlling the virus… Peoples’ mental health is pretty low… What I would say

Dr Waqar Rashid

The end of the Sage supremacy

Something very significant happened during Boris Johnson’s national address this week. It was not the announcement of the new three tier local risk-based system of restrictions – imaginatively titled medium, high and very high. It was what didn’t happen. The Prime Minister resisted applying a ‘circuit break’ national lockdown which it now transpires was being pushed by the government’s scientific advisors (Sage). In doing so, he rejected this most blunt of tools as a means of controlling this pandemic. I do not know how close the Prime Minister was to calling for a national lockdown. But the over-reach from his scientific representatives Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, during their televised

Saturday

17 Oct 2020

John Connolly

Introducing the Northern Research Group: the trade union for Tory MPs

Boris Johnson has not had the easiest of relationships with the north lately. While the Prime Minister started his premiership promising to ‘level up’ northern regions, during the pandemic he’s ended up spending more time clamping them down, as Covid restrictions have been introduced across swathes of the north, and he’s clashed with local MPs and regional mayors. So you’d imagine he was not exactly enthused when it was announced last week that a new group of Tory MPs were banding together to form a ‘Northern Research Group’ (NRG) to make sure the ‘levelling up’ agenda was not forgotten. These days ‘Research Group’ tends to spell trouble for the government.

Patrick O’Flynn

Burnham’s gamble could collapse around him

If they were to give out awards for best use of an anorak to communicate stroppy defiance then Andy Burnham would be about to break the stranglehold of former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher. In a city where it rains on more than 150 days a year, it is perhaps unsurprising that the anorak has become the garb of the everyman. And it was surely no accident that Greater Manchester’s Mayor was clad in one as he spoke out on Thursday against Whitehall’s plans to put his region into the highest tier of lockdown controls. After successfully launching his theme on the BBC’s Question Time last week (when he told viewers

Friday

16 Oct 2020

Cindy Yu

Spectator TV: Boris ‘needs to look after us, bluntly’ urges northern Tory MP

Despite being barely two months old, Spectator TV — The Spectator‘s latest broadcast venture — is already making headlines from New York to New Zealand. Andrew Neil‘s interview with Dr David Nabarro of the World Health Organization was raised in the House of Commons and even tweeted by Donald Trump. In this week’s episode, Andrew Neil is joined by feminist activist and former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali to discuss Emmanuel Macron new bid to tackle Islamic extremism. However, she has her reservations about the French President’s plans: Leaders have failed constantly, and they’ve failed in four ways. They failed to make it very clear what Islamism is; they’ve allied with the wrong people; they’ve failed to

John Connolly

Boris Johnson piles the pressure on Andy Burnham

In a press conference this afternoon, Boris Johnson stepped up his war of words with Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, after the government failed to reach an agreement with the region about moving into Tier 3 coronavirus restrictions again today. The Prime Minister first singled out for praise the Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and local leaders in Lancashire, for ‘working constructively’ with the government and entering into Tier 3 restrictions this week. In contrast, he said the government has not yet managed to reach an agreement with Greater Manchester. The Prime Minister then stressed the ‘grave’ situation in the area, with cases doubling every nine days,

James Forsyth

Boris’s Covid strategy could lead to stricter lockdowns

Boris Johnson will hold a press conference later this afternoon to discuss the new local restrictions — and how they’ll work. Even if he wanted to do a national circuit-breaker lockdown it is now almost politically impossible for him to do so given that Keir Starmer has now called for it, I say in the Times today. One cabinet minister who knows the Tory parliamentary party better than most warns: ‘If they do it after all this, they’ll be in absolutely the worst possible place.’ ‘It will be very different to March. That community spirit has just gone’ Rejecting the idea of what would, in effect, be a second national

Nick Tyrone

Boris isn’t bluffing about a no-deal Brexit

Since Boris’s thumping general election win in December, I’ve lost count of the number of people – both Remainers and Leavers – who tell me that no deal just won’t happen. Boris needs a deal, they insist, and the EU will bend a little here and there to give the Prime Minister a ladder to climbdown. Yet I’ve always been convinced that no deal is far and away the most likely outcome of the EU negotiations in 2020. Today’s warning from the PM – in which he talks down the prospects of a deal – make me even more sure this is the case. Why am I convinced no deal is so likely? Firstly, the

Katy Balls

Are we heading for no-deal again?

11 min listen

Boris Johnson today told Brits to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, saying the European Union were ‘not willing’ to offer a Canada-style trade agreement. Is this really the end of the talks, or is progress being made behind the scenes? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson talks down the chances of a Brexit deal

In recent months, Boris Johnson and his team have been keen to suggest there is a hard deadline when it comes to agreeing a Brexit deal. The Prime Minister argued last month that both sides ought to walk away from the talks and prepare for no deal if there was no agreement by the EU summit on October 15. With last night’s summit coming and going with no agreement made, the chances of a deal appear on the surface to have fallen significantly. With EU leaders calling for the trade talks to continue, Johnson has this morning offered a rebuke. Speaking from Downing Street, the Prime Minister said that after little progress at

Thursday

15 Oct 2020

Isabel Hardman

Angry Burnham takes on No. 10

Keir Starmer has made life difficult for Boris Johnson this week with his demand for a circuit-breaker lockdown. But the Labour leader’s colleague Andy Burnham is currently presenting a far greater threat to the Prime Minister. On Thursday, the Mayor of Greater Manchester gave a furious speech in which he accused the government of being ‘willing to sacrifice jobs here to save them elsewhere’ while treating his area like ‘canaries in the coalmine for an experimental regional lockdown strategy’. The government, he argued, was treating the North with ‘contempt’ by telling regional leaders there wasn’t enough money to protect jobs during the new restrictions while spending large sums on consultants

John Connolly

Why has Boris’s Covid strategy backfired in the North?

11 min listen

Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, today slammed the government for attempting to put the region in the highest tier of Covid-19 restrictions, saying the North would not be a ‘sacrificial lamb’. Why has the three-tier system backfired on the government? John Connolly speaks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth.

Cindy Yu

The next president: what would a Joe Biden premiership look like?

38 min listen

Americans look like they’re going to put Joe Biden in the White House – so what would his premiership look like? (00:45) Plus, Boris Johnson’s impossible bind on coronavirus (13:55) and how should you sign off an email? (28:35) With editor of the Spectator’s American edition Freddy Gray; Biden biographer Evan Osnos; political editor James Forsyth; editor of Conservative Home Paul Goodman; Evening Standard columnist Melanie McDonagh; and etiquette expert William Hanson. Presented by Cindy Yu. Produced by Cindy Yu, Max Jeffery and Sam Russell.

Stephen Daisley

Unionists must stop playing by separatists’ rules

Whenever a new poll on Scottish independence is published, my phone begins buzzing so frantically it starts to register on the Richter scale. London-based editors want to know what it means. London-based politicians want to know what can be done to stop it meaning what they fear it means. The polls are not great for the Union these days and Wednesday’s, showing support for Scexit at 58 per cent, is further proof of the threat facing the United Kingdom. It’s only natural that this alarms instinctive Unionists but their Unionism could be a little more attentive. The United Kingdom has been under threat for years now, at least since the

James Forsyth

Boris’s Covid balancing act is getting harder

I’m pro-cake and pro-eating it’, Boris Johnson used to quip. But now he is in a hideously difficult position as he tries to balance the needs of public health and the economy. He is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, I say in the magazine this week. Starmer’s decision to call for the circuit-breaker lockdown which Sage recommended but Boris Johnson rejected has further raised the stakes; it marks an end to the major parties’ consensus on how to handle Covid. If the death toll this winter is high, Labour will claim that had Johnson ‘followed the science’ and gone for the circuit-breaker option, fewer people would

Steerpike

Met police drops Covid MP case

The Metropolitan police has just released a statement announcing that the force is halting its investigation into MP Margaret Ferrier for breaching Covid legislation. The shamed former SNP politician travelled between London and Glasgow after receiving a positive test result for Covid-19. In the statement, the police said: on detailed examination of [the Health Protection Regulations 2020], and following legal advice, it was concluded that this regulation is applicable only after the 28th September 2020. In this case the test occurred prior to the 29th September 2020 and therefore the regulation does not apply.As such, there will be no further action in relation to this investigation from the Metropolitan Police. We are in liaison

Tom Goodenough

The real north-south Covid divide is in London

From Friday night, southerners are set to be cooped up in their homes because of high Covid rates in the north. I’m talking, of course, about the decision to impose tier two restrictions on London. The capital’s nine million people will be banned from socialising indoors with people they don’t live with and commuters urged to stay off public transport. It’s clear that the rising rate of infection in London meant that something needed to be one. But treating the capital as one is a big mistake. Nine out of the ten boroughs with the highest infection rates in the capital are north of the river. And the eight boroughs

Theo Davies-Lewis

Wales is beginning to split from the rest of Britain

‘I believe in the United Kingdom and in a successful United Kingdom’. For a committed unionist, Labour’s first minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, has done more than most to fan the flames of nationalism during Covid-19. In taking a markedly more cautious and communitarian approach to the pandemic compared to Downing Street, Drakeford has managed to both improve his approval ratings and inadvertently led the resurgence of our long-forgotten independence movement. Wales is definitely not the same place it was six months ago. The Welsh government’s latest divergence from Westminster is its most dramatic yet: it has announced a travel ban from Covid hotspots across the UK into Wales. There is genuine anxiety in

James Forsyth

There are no good choices for Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson used to be defined by his commitment to having his cake and eating it. But now he isn’t having any cake, let alone getting a chance to enjoy it. He is in a hideously difficult position as he tries to balance the needs of public health and the economy. There are no good choices. He is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Since the end of the first lockdown, the government’s policy has been to try to control the virus without shutting down the economy. This is becoming increasingly difficult. Sage minutes — which, in a very poorly timed release, were published just after the

Martin Vander Weyer

Why now is the perfect time to invest in art

The Bank of England has told commercial banks to prepare for the possibility of negative interest rates. This last hypothetical spanner in the toolbox of monetary stimulus — since rates are stuck close to zero anyway and quantitative easing through bond-buying programmes has diminishing effects — sounds weird and worrying but has already been in use in Europe for some time. Its intended effect is to push the commercial banks to lend more to business by penalising them for depositing cash with central banks. But what on earth does it mean for personal savers? The fact is that all monetary policy since 2008 has been designed to stimulate moribund economies