Politics

Now it gets messy. Lord Ashcroft’s poll putting support for Scottish independence at 52-48 (the cursed percentages) is the first to register a majority for separation since March 2017. It is, of course, a single poll; we have been here before. But recent polls have shown a gradual uptick in support for secession and if this survey is followed by others we will have a trend on our hands. In that case, though Boris Johnson will take a lot of the flak, it is more likely to be the Brexit he embodies than his newborn premiership that shifted the dial. Scotland voted overwhelmingly to Remain in the EU and now

Talk of an early election has been on the rise in recent months as the Brexit arithmetic has looked increasingly shaky. This week it has hit fever pitch. Boris Johnson announcing extra funds for the NHS has been read as a sign the party is getting campaign ready while party chairman James Cleverly set the cat among the pigeons at the weekend after he used a broadcast interview to say only that the Tories would not ‘initiate’ a general election. The verdict: an early election is beginning to be seen as inevitable. On Radio 4’s Westminster Hour on Sunday night, Conservative MP Tim Loughton said that even if the Tories

Niall Paterson stood in for Sophy Ridge this morning, interviewing the Conservative party chairman James Cleverly. Paterson asked Cleverly whether billions of pounds worth of spending pledges outlined by new PM Boris Johnson meant that the government was considering an early general election. Cleverly insisted that the government would not be pursuing this course of action, despite a vanishingly small majority in the House of Commons: NP: Tell me there isn’t going to me a general election this year. JC: …We are not going to initiate a general election. We have elections all the time… What we’ve got is a new Prime Minister who, during the leadership campaign, made a

I don’t pretend to have had extensive discussions about religion with our new Prime Minister, but I did have a couple of brief ones when he edited my first Spectator articles. We once discussed Christian and Muslim ideas of martyrdom, and he was suddenly reminded of a hymn he liked at Eton which he proceeded to sing to me down the phone.  His tone towards religion in general was, as you’d expect, a bit guffawing: here’s a prime site for flippant jokes and the puncturing of earnestness. But, knowing that I took religion seriously, and seeing that we had an article to discuss, he was a tad constrained. The intellectually

10 days in to Boris Johnson’s premiership and the big change is, as I say in The Sun this morning, that the government machine now thinks no deal really might happen. Those involved in no deal planning meetings say that there is now an intensity to them that there never was before. Rather than querying whether no deal is desirable, officials are getting on with preparing for it. Ministers are also bound into this strategy. One of those who served in both May’s Cabinet and the new one says that under the previous Prime Minister Sunday’s Cabinet conference call would have led to a long discussion about the merits of

As the Liberal Democrats celebrate their win in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, other parties are licking their wounds. The Tories narrowly missed out and now must deal with the realities of being the governing party with a working majority of one. Labour meanwhile came a distant fourth – only just managing to hold on to their deposit. Corbynistas have struggled to keep their vitriol in check since Jo Swinson was elected as the leader of the Liberal Democrats and today was no exception. Did Labour join in the celebrations (along with the Remain alliance) that the Tories had lost a seat? Think again. Instead the Corbyn outriders were out

As the UK government ramps up its no deal Brexit planning, is there any chance of a compromise with the EU on a deal? In this week’s magazine, James Forsyth looks at how seriously Brussels is taking Boris Johnson’s threats. He suggests that until parliament signals it can pass a deal, the EU is ready to hold out. On the podcast, Katy Balls talks to James and Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, a Senior Research Fellow for the Centre for European Reform. Agata tells us that the EU is adamant about its united position. Negotiations are about: ‘standing behind Dublin, sending the message to smaller and newer states that if they were in need, they could expect similar solidarity from

Were there a Most Beautiful Parliamentary Constituency in the UK award, Brecon and Radnorshire would be a very plausible contender. But Conservatives may be struggling to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of this large chunk of rural mid-Wales today. The by-election there overnight has reduced Prime Minister Johnson’s effective parliamentary majority – that is, including the DUP – to a single seat. A difficult parliamentary situation for the government just got ever-so-slightly worse. So much for the honeymoon period… In truth, the by-election result should not have been much of a shock. Brecon and Radnor has not, historically, been particularly fertile territory for the Conservative party. The seat was actually held