Politics

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

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The true test of the Budget

British politics has not lost its flair for the dramatic. If it was not enough to have Sajid Javid resign as -chancellor less than a month before the -Budget, Wednesday’s statement was delivered against the backdrop of a global economic crisis. Coronavirus is causing a shock to both demand and supply. We have not had a crisis like this in decades, and there is no obvious immediate solution for national or -global policy-makers. The £30 billion of emergency measures the new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced in the Budget are not the last set of actions we will see in response to coronavirus. The government is still waiting to see how

Thomas Fink

How British science can flourish after Brexit

I’m a Texan as well as a physicist so I hope it doesn’t sound boosterish if I say that no nation has contributed more to basic science than Britain. No other country has such an uncanny aptitude for it. I’m not sure what combination of poetry and pragmatism makes this possible, but I don’t need to go far to find evidence. A few streets from where I work in Mayfair lies the Royal Institution, which earned more Nobel prizes in science than all of Russia. Or consider Newton, Darwin, Faraday, Maxwell, Rutherford, Hardy, Dirac, Fleming, Crick, Higgs, Hawking and Wiles. All are bywords for British originality. They have something else

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

America has a choice between two kinds of crazy

‘We are the United States of Amnesia,’ said Gore Vidal in 2004. These days, it’s more the United States of Dementia. In 2020, the country seems determined to choose between two elderly men who, it is fair to say, are some distance from sanity. Joe Biden, the 77-year-old who even aides admit has lost his ‘cognitive fastball’, has somehow emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Assuming that his candidacy or health don’t implode somehow between now and the party convention in July, Biden will face Donald Trump at the ballot on 3 November. America’s choice, then, is between two kinds of crazy. The electorate can take the Republican red pill

John R. Bradley

Crude tactics: Russia and Saudi Arabia are at war over oil prices

It all started at what every-one thought would be a routine meeting between Opec and non-Opec nations in Vienna. There were the usual fake smiles and firm handshakes in front of the cameras from the dignitaries. Bored journalists roused themselves to prepare to write stories they expected never to be read, before they could at last head to the pub. And then, out of nowhere, came a bombshell. Downward pressure on oil prices from the coronavirus panic was posing an obvious risk to Saudi Arabia’s still heavily oil-dependent economy. And this is what a cartel like Opec is for: to agree to release less oil into the market, pushing the

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

In praise of Labour’s coronavirus response

It is not often these days that one gets a chance to praise the Labour party. Even with Jeremy Corbyn soon on his way out, the party has learned nothing from its election drubbing and seems determined instead to make the same mistakes. But it has, somewhat remarkably perhaps, covered itself in glory this week. And it would be wrong to pass up the opportunity to praise Corbyn for the way his party has so far responded to the coronavirus outbreak. Perhaps you have not noticed how they have reacted to the crisis? In which case, that in itself speaks volumes. Because you will no doubt have seen the way Piers Morgan has responded

Warwick Lightfoot

Rishi Sunak’s Budget is a watershed moment

There are three dimensions to a UK budget: the political theatre, its underlying economics, and the measures themselves. My view is that the new Chancellor’s Budget speech was the most effective financial statement of any Chancellor since Nigel Lawson, for whom I worked as a Special Adviser. Rishi Sunak had a command of the economics, mastery over the detail to the measures and brought a political brio – not seen for 30 years or more – to the statement. The Budget offers an empirical, Conservative response to the circumstances of early 2020s. Understandably, however, some people are asking: what is Conservative about spending and borrowing hundreds of billions of pounds?

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Local elections postponed until next year

The government has bowed to the inevitable and announced that May’s local and Mayoral elections have been postponed. With the Chief Scientific Advisor saying that the coronavirus peak is 10 to 14 weeks away, it was hard to see how you could have had an election campaign within that period. As I said in the Sun last Saturday, Whitehall has been braced for a delay to these elections for a while now. They will now not take place until 2021, meaning that there’ll be no immediate electoral test for the new Labour leader. These elections won’t be the last event to be postponed. The current thinking among those leading the government’s

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Laurence Fox’s triumph against the mob

A small victory for common sense was chalked up this morning when actors’ union Equity apologised for denouncing the anti-woke actor Laurence Fox. After Fox’s appearance on Question Time in January – in which he scandalously suggested that maybe Britain isn’t a rotten, racist country that had driven out the wonderful Meghan Markle – the Twitter account of Equity’s minority ethnic members committee denounced him as a ‘disgrace to our industry’. The tweets were later deleted, and Equity has now said they were a ‘mistake’, clarifying that it had never intended to suggest that Fox ‘should be denied the ability to work’ over his opinions. That an actors union even

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory MP’s wife slams Nadine Dorries over coronavirus

A slanging match has broken out between Nadine Dorries and the wife of a Tory MP. Dorries, who was diagnosed with coronavirus earlier this week, was criticised by Nevena Bridgen, the opera singer wife of Andrew Bridgen, who is currently in self isolation. Nevena Bridgen accused the health minister of putting her family at risk: ‘He can’t get the test now! I have the baby and a 75 years old mother jeopardised. You were treated but no one is coming to help us!’ Dorries then hit back, saying that while the pair were in the same room, they were not close or even on the same table: So much for the Conservatives coming together in a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Boris Johnson is following science in his coronavirus response

Boris Johnson, according to a large Twitter mob this morning, is a reckless libertarian – ignoring the drastic but effective measures being taken against coronavirus in other countries – in the same spirit he once praised the mayor in Jaws who kept the beaches open in spite of swimmers being eaten. A large body of opinion appears to be on the side of Jeremy Hunt, who questioned the government’s strategy on Channel 4 news last night. But there is a fundamental problem with this narrative – and not just that many of the same people now praising Hunt were lambasting him several years ago as a charlatan, ignoring the advice

Patrick Vallance

How ‘herd immunity’ can help fight coronavirus

This is an edited transcript of the interview with the chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance on the Today programme this morning.Justin Webb: We can talk now to Sir Patrick Vallance, who is the government’s chief scientific advisor and is on the line. Good morning to you. Sir Patrick Vallance: Good morning. JW: Could we start with sports events, which is what causes a lot of people to raise their eyebrows. And obviously we have the Cheltenham Festival, the big rugby match in Cardiff, 75,000 people tomorrow. What’s your thinking, at the moment, that they should go ahead? PV: Well, our reasoning is based on which interventions are going to have the

Thursday

Daniel DePetris

Donald Trump’s coronavirus flight ban shows he is out of ideas

The United States, and indeed the rest of the world, is going through the worst public health pandemic in living memory. Entire countries are closing their doors to new travellers; shutting themselves down until further notice. The NBA (National Basketball Association) has postponed the rest of the season due to the coronavirus outbreak. America’s health care system is in significant danger of being overrun, overextended, and unprepared for the stream of infected patients. Americans at risk of contracting the virus are not getting tested fast enough because testing kits aren’t widely available. Panic is beginning to settle in; walk to the corner grocery store and you will find empty hygiene

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Britain isn’t opting for a coronavirus lockdown

In a sombre news conference in Downing Street, Boris Johnson has warned that coronavirus is causing the ‘worst public health crisis for a generation’ and that many families will lose loved ones before their time. Flanked by the chief scientific adviser and chief medical officer he announced a new series of measures including that people with fever or a persistent cough should self-isolate for a week. However, the UK will not be shutting schools or banning flights. Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, explained that the aim is to try and delay the peak of the disease and then stretch it out over a longer period so the NHS is

Robert Peston Robert Peston

The price we’ll pay for halting coronavirus

As I have repeatedly mentioned, the view of the chief medical officer Chris Whitty, which has shaped the Government’s response to Covid-19, is that the virus is the equivalent of unstoppable bad flu. But to make policy on that basis is to impose an epidemiological judgement on what is a social, ethical and political issue. The fact is that for most British people, 20,000 people or so dying each year from flu is just one of those horrible facts of nature. But that does not mean all, or any of us, will or should accept as a fait accompli that 100,000 or more have to die so that we can

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Oil wars: is this the real threat to the world economy?

36 min listen

This week kicked off with an incredible fall in oil prices globally, so what on earth happened (00:50)? We also talk about the Budget, where Rishi Sunak set out in more detail how the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda will look (10:20). Finally, should we be doing more science research for curiosity’s sake (23:05)?

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Electoral Commission calls for cancellation of local elections – what next?

After the World Health Organisation labelled the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, countries across the globe have been responding with varying strategies. A common theme in every country, however, is the cancellation of events. This afternoon the Electoral Commission recommended that the UK government postpones the May elections until the autumn: ‘The risks to delivery that have been identified are such that we cannot be confident that voters will be able to participate in the polls safely and confidently.’ As James reported in the Sun on Saturday, this option has been discussed in Whitehall. But until now the government has been reluctant to take such a big step on the local elections – which will

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris Johnson is taking a gamble with his coronavirus strategy

There is no question more important for all of us than whether Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock are right that there is no alternative to letting coronavirus run its course in the UK, and to control the peak of the epidemic so that it falls in summer when the NHS may have the capacity to cope (see my earlier note for more on their policy). This may well be a rational approach, supported by the chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser – Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance – underpinned by some sophisticated modelling on how viruses spread through populations. But rational is not the same as optimal,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Can the EU really complain about Trump’s ‘unscientific’ travel ban?

Yes, of course Donald Trump’s ban on travel between the US and the Schengen zone is an over-reaction to coronavirus, which will do far more harm to the economy than it will to protect the health of Americans. But it is pretty rich for the EU to be bleating about others banning things without scientific justification.  The EU has protested bitterly about the American ban, complaining it was introduced unilaterally without consultation. Guy Verhofstadt tweets: ‘Instead of a travel ban for Europeans Trump should make a decent health care system that works for Americans.’ The usual anti-Trumpites have weighed in with their ha’porth of wisdom, with Simon Schama calling the