Politics

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

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Four groups keeping quiet on the SNP’s Hate Crime Act

It’s three days since Scotland’s Hate Crime Act took effect and there is no sign of public outrage dissipating anytime soon. Within the first 24 hours of Humza Yousaf’s hate bill becoming law, over 3,000 complaints were submitted — with the First Minister on the receiving end of more complaints than JK Rowling. Mr S isn’t quite sure how much genuine hate crime has been reported but if there’s one thing the Act has done successfully, it’s stirring up a rather significant amount of hate for itself.  North of the border, the legislation is tearing the country apart. Murdo Fraser, the Scottish Tory MSP, continues to demand answers as to

Dalibor Rohac

The real reason Macron is suddenly talking tough on Russia

What should we make of the recent hardening of Emmanuel Macron’s position on the war in Ukraine? At the beginning of the conflict, France’s president spent countless hours talking with Vladimir Putin; now, he spends his time entertaining scenarios in which French troops could be sent to Ukraine, and calling on other European leaders to stop being ‘cowards’. The Wall Street Journal reports today that Macron used secret conversations with US president Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to get them to change the way they deal with Ukraine. What explains Macron’s new approach? Macron is a master of pursuing contradictory policies at the same time It is possible that the

Duncan Gardham

Did an Iranian hit squad attack a journalist in London?

Counter-terrorist detectives investigating a stabbing of a dissident Iranian journalist in London have discovered that three suspects left the country within hours of the attack. Pouria Zeraati, 36, a presenter for Iran International, was knifed in the leg outside his home in Wimbledon on Friday. The suspects fled the scene to Heathrow before boarding a flight. Police are keeping an open mind about any potential motivation for the attack but the chief suspects are operatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).  Iran has a long history of targeting those they believe are threatening the regime, but the last two years have seen a peak in threats to dissidents living overseas. Since 2022, counter-terrorism police

Charlie Gammell

Iran is dangerous – but rational

We’ve been here before. Iran has been here before. In 2020 its most senior IRGC commander, Qassem Soleimani, was killed in a US air strike on his convoy as they drove out of Baghdad airport. Soleimani was a much mythologised figure across the Middle East, famed for his ability to direct Iran’s regional proxies to do Tehran’s bidding. The world held its breath in anticipation of a terrifying response, a global war, commensurate with the purple prose coming out of Tehran’s military and political organs. And yet not a huge amount happened, save for a few desultory missiles being shot into the middle distance of northern Iraq. And the shooting

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Don’t trust Labour to build houses

Could a promise of more housebuilding win an election, or does the Nimby vote still rule the shires? Labour, it seems, has decided the former. The Times reports this morning that it has settled on a strategy of unashamedly promising more house-building, including on the green belt, after research by an outside organisation revealed that people on the party’s list of most winnable seats are strongly in favour of greater housebuilding. It is a long way from the Labour party of Tony Blair and John Prescott, which seemed to vie with William Hague’s Conservatives as to who could build the fewest homes. Voters will be apt to blame unaffordable housing

John Oxley

Will Keir Starmer be the Yimby prime minister?

Keir Starmer seems intent on exploiting the rising divide between Nimbies and Yimbies as we move towards the general election. With polling showing many of Labour’s target seats are in the most pro-development parts of the country, the party is looking to reject the orthodoxy that blocking housing wins more votes than it loses. Instead, Labour is embracing those who see increased supply as the only way to ease the housing crisis. This year’s election is sure to see housing as a new and stark dividing line between the parties The electoral logic is clear. The cost-of-living crisis, combined with surging rents and house prices, has pushed housing towards the

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP minister under fire for confusing tax claims

Is the SNP on a mission to make itself even more unpopular? Wellbeing economy minister Màiri McAllan is the latest politician to face a backlash after she confused voters with claims about Scotland’s progressive tax system on Twitter. McAllan first insisted that when making comparisons between Scotland and Ireland’s economic growth, the fact that Ireland was ‘(a) independent and (b) in the EU single market’ were ‘key recipes for growth’ and ‘critical to Scotland’s future prosperity’. Quelle surprise. But then McAllan tweeted that:  In the meantime, our progressive tax regime sees most people in Scotland pay less tax than rUK while asking those who can to pay a bit more

Nigel Jones

Does Reform believe in democracy?

For the third time in recent years a party created by Nigel Farage is threatening the Tory party’s fading hopes of re-election. But this time the Tories’ very existence is at stake. Reform UK was founded in 2018 by Farage from the ashes of Ukip – which forced David Cameron to call and lose the 2016 EU referendum – and from the Brexit party, which destroyed Theresa May after she tried to backslide on Brexit. Now the party is in third place in opinion polls and may turn the Tories’ expected defeat at this year’s election into an extinction event. The Tories are so detested that true conservatives will vote

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

What would Marine Le Pen’s critics do if she wins?

A well-known French radio comedian recently suggested an armed revolution in the event Marine Le Pen is elected President in 2027. Mahaut Drama made her comments not in jest, but during a debate at a left-wing media festival in Paris entitled ‘How to fight the far right’. Envisaging a Le Pen victory, Drama said: ‘What do we do? Do we have armed factions too?… Should we start a revolution?’ She continued: ‘If there are people who are prepared to be brave to that extent, I can only encourage them’. Drama’s remarks, which were broadcast to a wider audience last week on the internet, outraged Le Pen’s National Rally party. Their

James Heale James Heale

Sunak ‘appalled’ by British deaths in Israeli strike

The death of three British citizens in an Israeli strike has prompted fierce condemnation from the UK government. In a phone call on Tuesday night, Rishi Sunak told his counterpart told Benjamin Netanyahu that he was ‘appalled’ by the attack, which killed seven aid workers in a World Central Kitchen convoy. Sunak said that ‘far too many aid workers and ordinary civilians have lost their lives in Gaza and the situation is increasingly intolerable.’ He is now urging the Israelis to launch a ‘thorough and independent investigation into what happened.’ The three men killed – James Henderson, John Chapman and James Kirby – were all Armed Forces veterans and their

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Don’t feel too encouraged by police leniency with JK Rowling

Police Scotland, who are responsible for enforcing Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act, have found no criminality in a series of tweets posted by JK Rowling. On Monday, the day the Scottish law came into effect, the author, a gender-critical feminist, tweeted about a number of men who call themselves women – and insisted they were still men. In doing so, she said that, if this was a crime, she would ‘look forward to being arrested’ under the Act, which carries prison sentences of up to seven years. I would say this took some balls on her part but such metaphors are probably best avoided given the subject in hand.  Responding to the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Have pollsters been overstating Trump’s lead?

17 min listen

Freddy speaks to pollster Cliff Young about Biden’s recent gains.  Is Florida becoming more of a swing state again? Does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. take more votes away from Biden or Trump? And how much pressure do pollsters feel to get things right?

Steerpike Steerpike

Damning poll reveals SNP supporters don’t think Yousaf is up to the job

In a week that will prove testing for Humza Yousaf as public outrage over his hate crime bill continues, there is a tiny glimmer of hope for the beleaguered First Minister. A new poll has suggested that out of all the leaders of Scotland’s political parties, Yousaf is the public’s top choice for First Minister. That is, however, where his good news ends. The poll, conducted by Find Out Now for Alex Salmond’s Alba party, surveyed just under 2,000 Scots about their preferences for First Minister. But while Yousaf ranked first, only a quarter of all voters picked him — and fewer than half of SNP supporters felt he was

Joanna Williams

Rishi Sunak can’t lecture Humza Yousaf about free speech

Good on Rishi Sunak. At long last we have a Prime Minister who has come out swinging in defence of free speech. When JK Rowling shared her opposition to Scotland’s new hate crime legislation yesterday, Sunak was quick to defend her right to speak out. If the PM truly believes that the Conservatives are the protectors of free speech then he’s been asleep at the wheel Rowling declared that: ‘It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man.’ And

David Shipley

Drugs are costing the lives of too many prisoners

In prison, drugs kill. HMP Parc, a private prison in Wales managed by G4S, has seen six inmate deaths over a period of three weeks. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO), the official body tasked with investigating deaths in prisons, soon realised that ‘at least’ two of those deaths were drug-related. Imprisoned at HMP Wandsworth, I shared a cell with a regular spice smoker The PPO believe that these deaths involve ‘spice’ combined with ‘another family of drugs’. Spice is a synthetic cannabinoid, popular in prison because it comes in the form of a liquid which can be impregnated on innocuous looking paper, making it easy to smuggle in. When

Steerpike Steerpike

Rishi Sunak slams Scotland’s Hate Crime Act

Scotland’s Hate Crime Act has got off to a rather rocky start, to put it mildly. On Monday, when the bill came into force, renowned author JK Rowling took to Twitter to reiterate her concerns about how expressing gender critical views (namely, that biological sex is a reality) could be an offence under the new bill. Cue the pile on. And now even the Prime Minister has waded into the row. Taking Rowling’s side, Rishi Sunak proclaimed last night that ‘people should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology’ while a government source told the Mail that with the bill comes the ‘potential for seriously chilling effects on

Ross Clark Ross Clark

House prices aren’t falling any time soon

The thing about having three prominent house prices indices, all of which publish monthly figures, is that they are forever telling conflicting stories. Indeed, today’s Nationwide index, itself, nods in two different directions: prices were down 0.2 per cent in March, but the annual gain in prices was up from 1.2 per cent in February to 1.6 per cent in March. So is the housing market up or down? The first thing to note is that the Nationwide index is seasonally-adjusted – a process which is always at risk of giving a perverse outcome because it assumes that the same pattern of housing market activity will be repeated every year.

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Keegan in spat with BBC presenter over childcare policy

Easter recess may be in full swing, but government ministers aren’t getting a break. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was sent out on the morning round today, to talk about the Tories’ free childcare expansion package. Eligible working parents of two-year-olds can now receive 15 hours of government-funded childcare a week during term time. From September, this will extend to working parents of all children older than nine months, before all eligible families will be able to receive the full rollout of 30 hours a week a year later. But the government and its opposition are feuding over the plans. Labour has taken issue with the scheme, querying how the proposals

Charles Lipson

Joe Biden’s terrible Easter

Among the many political advantages of the presidency, surely one is the ability to extend warm wishes to Christians, Jews and Muslims on their holidays. It’s a golden opportunity to invite a few for pictures at the White House and explain how much the holiday has always meant to you. Easy-peasy. For a Catholic president such as Joe Biden, expressing solidarity with co-religionists on Easter ought to be a well-practiced routine.  Which voter group does the White House think its exclusionary message appeals to?  It took genuine incompetence and obtuseness for the Biden White House to muck up the chance to reach out to fellow Christians on the holiest day