Politics

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

Monday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Coronavirus is a big blow to the SNP’s ‘Indyref 2’ plans

Amongst the many postponements and cancellations brought about by coronavirus, perhaps the least disappointing, at least for certain sections of Scottish society, was the SNP’s decision to suspend its demand for a 2020 independence referendum. Of course, with the government having maintained its firm opposition to ‘Indyref 2’ from day one, it was highly unlikely that the SNP would have got their way in any case. In essence then, the only immediate consequence is that the SNP’s representatives will simply take some time out before amending the lyrics on the song sheet and striking up again. Expect a post-Holyrood election (2021) poll to be the new demand. With lives and businesses at

Karen Glaser

Relying on students’ predicted grades is a recipe for trouble

My daughter Leah was predicted a 5 in her English Literature exam. In the actual GCSE she sat at our local secondary in 2017, she got an 8, the equivalent of a starred A. I was delighted but not surprised. But while my daughter was able to prove her teacher wrong, what about those who this year will have to rely on predicted grades? For Leah, such a situation would have been dreadful news. Two years after her GCSE English teacher under-predicted her, we found ourselves in the same situation again, but this time there was more than my daughter’s self-esteem to consider. Her academic future was at stake. In

Matthew Goodwin

Will coronavirus revive liberalism – or deliver it a fatal blow?

Politicians, said the historian A.J.P. Taylor, do not create the current of events. They can only float along with them and try to steer. But he was talking about the long contours of European history, not the sudden and shocking arrival of a global pandemic. How to float along and steer through something that looks like an overwhelming tsunami is, largely, unknown. The outbreak of coronavirus has already put much of the world in lockdown. It has pushed the global economy into freefall, killed more than 13,000 people and could yet kill hundreds of thousands more, perhaps millions. It will also have big political effects. Leaders, governments, even ideologies will

Steerpike Steerpike

Carole’s corona conspiracy codswallop

It seems the Observer’s favourite intrepid investigative journalist has been at it again. Yes, Carole Cadwalladr has been tweeting. On Sunday evening, Cadwalladr decided to deviate from telling her half a million Twitter followers that the UK is in the palm of the Russians by explaining that we are now living through an unprecedented era of press control and media manipulation.  Cadwalladr was able to uncover something that no other journalist had yet revealed – that the daily coronavirus press briefings are, in fact, a sham: As you, dear reader, may have guessed by now, this statement is entirely and utterly false. it is untrue. It bears no resemblance to the facts.  The press

Sunday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why hasn’t Boris Johnson announced a coronavirus lockdown?

This weekend has been dominated by photos of people having a jolly good time in groups at the park, or strolling along Columbia Road Flower Market as though nothing has changed. Sunday’s Downing Street press conference was therefore dominated by questions about whether the government would clamp down on this behaviour to stop coronavirus spreading still further. But while Boris Johnson urged people to stop ignoring social distancing rules, telling them that ‘even if you think you are personally invulnerable, there are plenty of people you can infect and whose lives will them be put at risk’, he only suggested that there could be ‘further measures if we think that

Steerpike Steerpike

Who is Labour’s ‘designated survivor’?

With Westminster seemingly awash with coronavirus, the number of MPs and government aides in self-isolation increases by the day. This has led to chatter within government over who ought to step in should Boris Johnson find himself out of action for two weeks with a case of Covid-19. As first secretary of state, Dominic Raab is the minister No. 10 plan to draft in should Johnson fall ill – reportedly to the disappointment of Michael Gove and Matt Hancock. So, what about Labour? Given that the leadership contest doesn’t end til next month, the stand-in leader would have to come from the current shadow cabinet. On the latest episode of The Spectator’s Women

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Are people really panic buying?

We have, of course, been transformed into a nation of hoarders and panic buyers. We know this because everyone keeps telling us. There are the queues around the block, waiting for Asda to open; the tearful nurse on Twitter who couldn’t get any food after a 48-hour shift; anecdotes galore about people loading loo rolls into their trolleys by the tree trunk-load, fighting over each consignment as it arrives. How much more civilised we all were – it has been claimed – during wartime. I’m sure there are people panic-buying and hoarding vast quantities of tinned foods, but is it all quite so bad as being made out? It is

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Shop just for what you and your family needs

Robert Jenrick – We will do ‘whatever it takes’ to support those at risk Sophy Ridge was first joined this morning by the Housing Secretary, Robert Jenrick. With the threat from coronavirus still looming large, Jenrick told Ridge that the Chief Medical Officer was now officially advising around 1.5 million people at particular risk from the virus to remain indoors for potentially as long as three months. He pledged that the government would do its utmost to support them: RJ: We are writing to these people… and we’re asking them, as soon as practical, to stay at home and to do so for a prolonged period, perhaps as long as

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Doctors and nurses deserve to know if the NHS has enough protective clothing

We are relying on courageous NHS staff to help us through this terrible Covid-19 crisis. So many would say we have a duty to listen to their concerns and anxieties. And as you will be aware, and as the chief executive of St George’s University Hospital’s Jac Totterdell has made explicit, lots of doctors and nurses do not feel that they are being given the appropriate protective clothing. A leading consultant has explained the issue to me. It is probably best if I just use the consultant’s own words. ‘All we get are little plastic aprons that don’t cover your arms or neck or back or lower legs. And no

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Should ‘Spanish flu’ have been known as ‘American flu’?

There’s an ongoing debate in the media as to whether or not president Trump is being ‘racist’ by repeatedly referring to Covid-19 as a ‘Chinese’ virus. ‘It’s not racist at all,’ Trump insisted at one press conference. ‘It comes from China, that’s why.’ This is at least objectively true – unlike the case with Spanish Flu, which didn’t come from Spain at all. In fact the 1918 pandemic – which killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people around the world – most likely originated in the flat, treeless cattle country of Haskell County, Kansas, west of Dodge City. But it was never known as American Flu. Why? The strange

John Keiger John Keiger

Coronavirus means the EU will never be the same again

The European project was built on the idea of rendering future war among European states impossible. The EU is programmed to avoid armed conflict among its member states, a situation that would blatantly undermine its very essence. But who could have predicted that an epidemic would shake its foundations. In the space of a couple of weeks fundamental tenets of the EU project have received a body blow and may not recover from the coronavirus epidemic. The European Stability Pact requires member states to respect a three per cent budget deficit. France was about to breach that anyway and has used Covid-19 as a cover to go much further, as

Saturday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

What’s wrong with wanting to escape to the Scottish Highlands?

Could I take this opportunity to advise people to self-isolate in the Highlands of Scotland? Not many people around – and good walking country. I mention this because SNP MSP Kate Forbes has urged people from virus stricken areas not to come visit. You are risking lives, she says.  The virus spreads because we are a highly urbanised country and piled too closely to one another. The more we can disperse and self isolate, the less likely the virus is to spread. Public-spirited politicians should be urging us to get the hell out of urban areas. If you decide not to relocate, temporarily, to the Highlands, at least remember that

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Big businesses face a defining moment in this coronavirus crisis

No one would ever have expected a Conservative Chancellor to announce that the state will pay 80 per cent of people’s wages up to the average income. It is something that even Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t have dared propose before this crisis hit. But the alternative to the package that Rishi Sunak announced last night was mass unemployment. This would have caused huge hardship and meant that even once this virus had passed, the economy would have taken months to get back in gear. Expensive as it is, this package makes a V-shaped recovery more likely. Businesses have been offered unprecedented levels of help by government. They must now pass that

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Coronavirus has even kept the sex-strikers at home

When we left this Britain on Thursday last week, life was almost as usual. Shops and restaurants were open. The Battle Observer was reporting that environmentalists, angry that East Sussex County Council’s pension funds are invested in fossil fuels, were organising a one-day protest demanding a ‘sex strike’. No one, they insisted, must have sexual intercourse with any of the county’s 50 elected councillors ‘until they agree to stop funding climate change’. As a campaign, this latter-day reworking of Lysistrata had the merit that most people would probably agree to its conditions, whatever their views on climate change. We returned home on Monday, however, to read that the protest had

Sajid Javid

Sajid Javid: Why can’t my mum buy groceries?

As every Chancellor knows, behind every figure in the Treasury lie thousands of human stories. At times like these, saving lives is the first, unmitigated priority. This means releasing whatever resources the NHS requires. Hospitality, retail, the self-employed: otherwise healthy enterprises of every description are facing an existential threat. Supporting businesses with government-backed loans is a good start, but it won’t be enough. Temporary tax cuts are also needed: ‘No need to pay’ rather than ‘Time to pay’. If we want the economy to surge back once the danger has passed, these measures will need to be rolled out soon and at top speed. The economic package thus far is

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Brexit, Boris and the battle to be Labour leader: Lisa Nandy interviewed

The Labour leadership contest has been going on for so long that two of its candidates, Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey, have taken to counting down the hours they have left. The race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn started in early January, and will finally finish on 4 April. When we meet, Nandy is feeling run-down — not because of coronavirus, but the sheer length of a contest that she had initially thought should run beyond May’s now-cancelled local elections. She regrets calling for that now. A long contest should have helped the Wigan MP. When it started, she was not as well-known as the other candidates, and needed time to

Friday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The Sunak supremacy

In some ways, it’s easy and even important to keep Rishi Sunak’s performance in announcing his coronavirus job retention scheme in perspective. It should, after all, be pretty easy to be popular in politics when you are offering to spend literally limitless amounts of money protecting people from economic hardship. A cynic would also say that it’s relatively easy to look grave and statesmanlike when you’re standing next to a prime minister who can still look more inclined to play Prince Hal than Henry V. But even taking those things into account, I still consider Sunak’s performance one of the most impressive I’ve seen from a British politician in more

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Inside Rishi Sunak’s wage guarantee

In his third Covid bailout in just over a week, Chancellor Riski Sunak has shifted his focus from businesses to employees with an unprecedented three-month commitment to cover the bulk of pay for workers facing redundancy. He’ll cover up to 80 per cent of all salaried workers’ wages (up to £2,500 per month, around the UK’s medium income). This is a blanket pledge, an unprecedented intervention on the part of the government that will see the state pay private businesses – big and small – to retain their employees for the foreseeable future.  The ‘Job Retentions Scheme’ is not targeted specifically at vulnerable sectors – presumably because any targeted scheme requires some form of means testing,