Politics

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

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

EU reports SNP to the police over Brexit stunt

Oh dear. Nothing seems to be going right for the SNP these days. Not only has Nicola Sturgeon lost her finance secretary after he sent inappropriate texts to a teenage boy, but her party is now facing a police investigation in Belgium. The naughty Nats appear to have caused a diplomatic incident after they decided to project a message onto the side of the European Commission building on Brexit night. Sturgeon then tweeted out a picture of the stunt, appearing to suggest that the EU had colluded with the performance by hinting that they had ‘left a light on’ for Scotland. Certainly, that suggestion was enough to confuse one of

Sunday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Sinn Fein surge has stunned Varadkar – and transformed Irish politics

You know the story. A Prime Minister takes a tough line on Brexit talks and holds a snap election thinking voters will be impressed – instead, they don’t care and it ends in disaster. It happened to Theresa May in 2017 and it just has happened to Leo Varadkar. The votes are still being counted, but it’s clear that no party has a majority, or anything close to a majority and that Varadkar’s gamble failed. Support for his Fine Gael has plunged and a stunning Sinn Fein surge has changed everything. It’s not just that Sinn Fein won most of the first preference votes. For decades, Irish politics has been

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Parliament better without Bercow, says minister

Dawn Butler: ‘I’m the most experienced candidate’… Sophy Ridge started her show by speaking to Dawn Butler, one of Labour’s five deputy leadership contenders. Butler, who was first elected in 2005, argued her case for being chosen: “I am the most experienced candidate.”@DawnButlerBrent MP explains her strategy to become deputy Labour leader, claiming that she is the “unity candidate”.#Ridge DB: I am the most experienced candidate. I’ve served under two Labour Prime Ministers and in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, and I am the unity candidate. I’ve got the temperament to work with everybody, and I’ve worked with everybody – all the MPs in Parliament. …Jeremy Corbyn won’t be an issue

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why the government is planning a tax raising Budget

Tory activists are in uproar this morning over varying reports of tax raising measures Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid are considering for next month’s Budget. Plans currently being mooted include cuts to pension tax relief and the introduction of a recurring property tax that could replace stamp duty. Critics have been quick to say that neither proposal fits with what the Tory party traditionally claims to want to do – rather than new taxes and limits Johnson ought to be pushing for tax cuts. However, the view in both No. 10 and No. 11 is that this is the year for tough – and potentially unpopular – decisions. Given the

Steerpike Steerpike

Dawn Butler: Tories ‘bullying’ Bercow by refusing him a peerage

How would you define bullying? Perhaps it involves aggression or intimidation? Or perhaps bullying might include name-calling or the use derogatory language? But according to Labour’s would-be deputy Dawn Butler, bullying goes quite a bit further than that. During an interview with Sky’s Sophy Ridge this morning, Butler told the presenter that she thought the Tories were ‘bullying’ John Bercow by denying him a seat in the House of Lords. The former Speaker is himself currently subject to multiple allegations of workplace bullying, allegations that he denies. Butler told the show: ‘It is the norm that the Speaker of the House is always given a peerage, so I think the

Cerys Howell

Labour’s radicals need to grow up

As the well-worn cliché has it: if you’re not a socialist at 16, you don’t have a heart; if you’re still one at 60, you don’t have a head. The Labour party is on the brink of extinction. To survive, its members must use their heads. At 16, I was a fanatical socialist, reading Lenin, wearing a Chairman Mao hat and marching against the Iraq war. At 19, I went to Cuba. I learned about the revolution and planted crops with farmers, working with Amnesty workers and middle-aged Trots. The year I left university, David Cameron was elected prime minister and, for the first time since I was in primary

Saturday

Yoram Hazony

Guilt by association at Rome’s National Conservatism Conference

This week’s National Conservatism Conference in Rome was an important meeting of national conservatives from all over the world. Sadly, it has been sullied by disgusting attacks from British liberals against the Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski for agreeing to take part. Publications from BuzzFeed to the Guardian pounced on Kawczynski’s decision to appear alongside European leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Italy’s Matteo Salvini as proof of ‘anti-Semitic’, ‘racist’ and ‘homophobic’ beliefs, held not only by Daniel but the political party to which he belongs, the Conservative party. The Tories subsequently proved themselves to be utterly witless in the face of the attack (a point to which I return

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How will the government try and deal with the terrorist threat?

Next week, the government will introduce emergency legislation to stop anyone convicted of terrorist offences from being automatically released half-way through their sentence. But, as Whitehall sources acknowledge, this only tackles one vulnerability in the system. So, as I write in The Sun today, a broader plan to deal with the jihadi threat is being drawn up. One idea under discussion is for a sex offenders’ register for terrorists. This would enable the state to place restrictions on terrorists long after they have completed any prison sentence. These restrictions could include who they are allowed to meet with, where they are allowed to travel to both at home and abroad

Matthew Goodwin

The death of populism has been greatly exaggerated

Have we reached peak populism? This is the question being asked after a recent regional election in Italy delivered a setback to Matteo Salvini, the de facto head of Europe’s populist family. In the affluent and historically left-wing region of Emilia Romagna, Salvini’s right-wing alliance finished more than seven points behind the Left. It wasn’t even close. It is not a surprise that some have breathed a sigh of relief. For much of the past three years, Salvini has seemed unstoppable. While the 46-year-old has miscalculated – like last summer when he tried but failed to bring down the government – he has transformed his ‘Lega’ movement from a small

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The real reason Glasgow’s UN climate summit will be a nightmare

Regardless of one’s views on climate change, one should welcome the fact that Boris Johnson removed Claire Perry O’Neill from her post as president of this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP 26), which will be held in Glasgow. He is at last trying to exercise the power of patronage. Ms Perry O’Neill is a George Osborne protegée, anti-Boris and anti-Brexit. She stood down at the end of the last parliament. She is also a keen self-publicist. Given that international climate conferences are chiefly forums in which governments strike attitudes, it was highly unwise to let her strike the Glasgow ones. She was almost bound to be disobliging to the

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Britain leaves the EU, coronavirus evacuations and a great day for Trump

Home The United Kingdom quietly left the European Union at 11 p.m. GMT on 31 January. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said in a speech about trade negotiations: ‘We have made our choice — we want a free trade agreement, similar to Canada’s but in the very unlikely event that we do not succeed, then our trade will have to be based on our existing withdrawal agreement with the EU.’ Britain would also pursue trade deals with other countries. The government brought forward from 2040 to 2035 a ban on selling new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars. David Cameron, the former prime minister, declined an offer from Boris Johnson to

The Spectator

Boris must have the courage to spell out the true cost of ‘net zero’

After being sacked as the chairman of the COP26, the UN climate conference which is to take place in Glasgow later this year, Claire Perry O’Neill did not lose any time in settling scores. Boris Johnson, she said, does not ‘get’ climate change. In a sense she is right — but not in the way she thinks. The once-sceptical Prime Minister has been acting with the zeal of the converted on climate change and is all set to achieve ‘net zero’ UK climate emissions by 2050. Whether he ‘gets’ what this promise will require is another matter. This week, for example, he posed with Sir David Attenborough in the Science

Toby Young Toby Young

Labour won’t win voters back by denigrating Britain’s past

They never learn, do they? Lisa Nandy, the dark horse candidate in the Labour leadership race, has demanded the word ‘empire’ be expunged from OBE honours and replaced with ‘excellence’ because the reference to Britain’s imperial past offends people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME). This would mean its full name would become the Most Excellent Order of British Excellence. ‘The self-confident, empowered country I will lead will be one that is different,’ Nandy announced at a hustings in Bristol. ‘Where people like Benjamin Zephaniah can accept the Order of British Excellence, not reject the Order of the British Empire. That celebrates those who built us, not seeks

Peter Jones

The ancients would have thought Boris was deluded

The gloom that envelopes the Labour party stands in strong contrast to the confidence and hope that the Prime Minister exudes. But is he wise so to exude? Most ancients regarded hope as a delusion. Achilles in the Iliad argued that the best man could hope for was a life of mixed good and evil. The farmer-poet Hesiod described how all the world’s evils flew out of Pandora’s jar (not box), leaving only hope inside. But did that mean hope was available to mankind, or kept from him? Hesiod went on to emphasise its double-edged nature — it could energise the active man or delude the idle. Greek tragedy usually

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Terror is the toughest issue facing the Tories

A prisoner is released early and just days later attacks people. It then emerges that he was known to still be a danger to the public before he was let out. Normally at this point in the story one would be expecting ministerial resignations. But in the case of Sudesh Amman, the Streatham attacker, we are not. Why? Because the law meant that there was no alternative to him being released. The government is now in a mad scramble to prevent this from happening again. Emergency legislation is being rushed through parliament to stop terrorists from being automatically freed from prison halfway through their sentence. Historically, one of the Tories’

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Boris has fallen into a trap by sucking up to David Attenborough

Regardless of one’s views on climate change, one should welcome the fact that Boris Johnson removed Claire Perry O’Neill from her post as president of this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP 26), which will be held in Glasgow. He is at last trying to exercise the power of patronage. Ms Perry O’Neill is a George Osborne protegée, anti-Boris and anti-Brexit. She stood down at the end of the last parliament. She is also a keen self-publicist. Given that international climate conferences are chiefly forums in which governments strike attitudes, it was highly unwise to let her strike the Glasgow ones. She was almost bound to be disobliging to the

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Let’s not forget the unintentional heroes of Brexit

A week on from Brexit day, it is worth stopping and reflecting on just how Britain’s departure from the EU actually came about. We’re familiar of course with those from the Leave side who contributed to Brexit. But what about the unintentional heroes of Brexit, those who ensured accidentally that Britain really did leave the EU? On the day we were supposed to leave the EU last March, I bumped into an important member of Tony Blair’s social and political circle in the lobby of a St James’s club. “Are the Tory Spartans holding firm? Are they going to stop May’s deal going through?” he asked. “Yes, quite comfortably I

Friday

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Has George Osborne hit ‘peak job’?

Ever since leaving parliament, George Osborne has been piling up jobs almost as fast as he piled up the national debt when in office (nine, at the last count) But he might soon have an easier balancing act, with his editorship of the Evening Standard in question. The rumour from Derry Street is that the typically chummy relationship between Osborne and Evgeny Lebedev has been strained since Christmas. What could have led to a cold spell? Disagreement over Putin? Boris? London’s upcoming mayoral election? Mr S hears that a rather more mundane incident could be to blame. In the run up to Christmas, the Standard published pictures of Lebedev alongside

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What to expect from Boris Johnson’s cabinet reshuffle

On Thursday, Boris Johnson will reshuffle his cabinet for the first time since winning a majority of 80. Soon after the election result, there was talk of a Valentine’s Day massacre in which multiple ministers would lose their jobs. However, in recent weeks there have been suggestions that it won’t be as drastic a reorganisation as first expected. This is in part because the accompanying Whitehall reorganisation has been scaled down – though some departments are still to be merged. While conversations over the reshuffle are ongoing, certain themes have emerged. Since MPs returned to Parliament from the Christmas recess, No. 10 have used the threat of a looming reshuffle