Politics

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

Wednesday

21 Aug 2024

Putin is biding his time to seek revenge for Kursk

Vladimir Putin, it seems, is procrastinating. Just when the war in Ukraine was going his way and the Russian army doing what it does best – pummelling its way forward like a leaden-footed but seemingly unstoppable heavyweight boxer – Kyiv has sneaked in a powerful side punch. By launching an incursion into the Kursk region, Ukraine has not only breached the borders of Mother Russia – the inner sanctum of what is still a regional empire of control and influence – but also opened a second front. For days Ukrainians braced for a spiteful rejoinder. Perhaps Putin would lash out with withering rocket attacks, a devastating bombing raid against a

Cindy Yu

Labour cronyism claims continue

13 min listen

The government seems to have appointed another party-political advisor to the civil service – this time Labour Together’s Jess Sargeant to the role of deputy director at the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Constitution Group. Is the Labour party just as prone to a bit of cronyism as they accuse the Tories of having been? Cindy Yu talks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Lisa Haseldine

Ukraine’s drone attack on Moscow piles the pressure on Putin

In the early hours of this morning, Ukraine hit Moscow with ‘one of the largest’ drone attacks against the Russian capital since the war began two and a half years ago. According to Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin, air defence forces shot down a number of drones – later confirmed to be 11 – between 3 a.m. and 4:45 a.m. ‘This is one of the largest attempts to attack Moscow with drones in all time,’ Sobyanin claimed. There have been no confirmed casualties or damage yet. Still, Kyiv’s attack managed to cause far-reaching chaos across Moscow, with three of the capital’s airports, Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky, forced to temporarily restrict flights

Ross Clark

Labour is losing fiscal credibility

Just how much longer will the government be able to sustain its assertion that the Conservatives left behind a £22 billion hole in the public finances? Confirmation that ministers are continuing to blame their predecessors for out-of-control public finances – and for expected tax rises in October’s budget – was provided this morning by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, who reacted to July’s grim borrowing figures by stating: ‘Today’s figures are yet more proof of the dire inheritance left to us by the previous government. A £22 billion black hole in the public finances this year, a decade of economic stagnation, and public debt at its highest level

Steerpike

Tories demand Treasury impartiality probe

Whitehall has received a lot of attention of late, what with interesting civil service appointments prompting claims of cronyism. And now Mr S can reveal that the Tories are calling for a civil service probe – and a ministerial apology – over impartiality concerns. The shadow minister to the Cabinet Office, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, has today written to Lord Livermore, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, over fears that he may have ‘inadvertedly misled the House’ after he was quizzed about whether a party political document was uploaded to the official government website. Oh dear… Lord Livermore was this month questioned about the publication on the gov.uk website of the Chancellor’s statement on public

Katja Hoyer

Has Germany run out of money to give to Ukraine?

Germany is Ukraine’s biggest military donor in Europe. On paper, it appears determined to ensure that Vladimir Putin’s act of aggression does not pay off. But now a German newspaper has seen documents suggesting Berlin wants to halt new support for Kyiv. According to the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Finance Minister Christian Lindner sent a letter to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Defence Minister Boris Pistorius to inform them that ‘new measures’ in aid of Ukraine’s struggle to survive may only be approved if ‘funding is secured’. Lindner urged both his colleagues to ‘ensure that the set upper limits are adhered to.’ The opposition has accused Scholz of playing party-political games

John Keiger

Does France need a government?

France has been without an official government for seven weeks, the longest in the history of the Fifth Republic. A caretaker prime minister and government have been running the country for what President Macron declared the ‘Olympic truce’. That truce is now over, yet the President is in no hurry to appoint a new prime minister. One can understand why. A clear majority of French voted for alternatives to Macronist policies in the European and legislative elections, something the President refuses to accept. Whichever government is eventually appointed will unpick much of the President’s policies over the last seven years. And given that the locus of power will shift from

Steerpike

BBC blasted over Sir Brian’s ‘partisan’ badger doc

The Beeb is developing a habit of being the news rather than making it – and the upcoming release of Sir Brian May’s badger documentary this Friday is no exception. The public service broadcaster has been slammed for allowing a BBC 2 programme to air after it emerged that the Queen guitarist will this week release a tell-all about badger culling. In the show, the longtime animal rights activist will attempt to make the argument that killing badgers to stop the spread of TB is like, er, burning witches to ‘protect your crops’. May has warned viewers that his findings are ‘pretty shocking’, adding the story ‘will outrage viewers more

Matthew Lynn

Rachel Reeves has already run out of cash

It was easy to mock it as a piece of political grandstanding. On taking office, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves almost immediately discovered a ‘black hole’ in the public finances, and started warning of tax rises in the autumn. To many of her opponents, it looked like pure opportunism. And yet, now it turns out that she was right. The latest data on public finances show that the British government really is running out of cash. There is just one snag. Everything Reeves’s colleagues are doing will make that even worse, and her threatened tax rises won’t raise anything close to enough money to make the numbers add up. The public

Ross Clark

Keir Starmer is being humiliated by the rail unions

The foolishness of the government’s appeasement of the unions is becoming clearer by the day. The 15 per cent pay rise for train drivers had hardly been signed off when Aslef announced a further set of strikes on LNER trains over rostering. Now, it is the turn of the Transport and Salaried Staff Association (TSSA), which represents office workers and senior staff in the rail industry. They are demanding not just a pay rise but also a 35-hour working week and 38 days’ holiday a year – a full ten days above what most people are awarded under their employment contract. Any genuine private industry which carried on like this,

Lee Cohen

Kamala Harris would be bad news for Britain

With the Democratic National Convention taking place this week, it’s crucial to consider the potential consequences for Britain and global stability if Kamala Harris emerges victorious in the presidential election in November. The past four years have not been kind to the special relationship. After Donald Trump’s warmth towards Britain, Joe Biden’s tenure called into question the commitment Democrats have to America’s alliance with the UK. Often seen as one of the most anti-British presidents, Biden’s approach to Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement, and his handling of Afghanistan all suggested that he felt some hostility towards the UK and cast doubt on his dedication to the special relationship. His reluctance

Steerpike

Labour cronyism claims continue

Another day, another drama. The spotlight is back on Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot as accusations of cronyism continue to fly in. Now it transpires that yet another civil service appointee has rather strong political links to Starmer’s army. Ex-Labour Together campaigner Jess Sargeant has been appointed to a top civil service job, with Politico suggesting she will play a leading part on the issue of Lords reform. Alright for some… As revealed by Guido Fawkes, Labour-sympathetic Sargeant has bagged a deputy director role with the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Constitution group only eight months after she moved to ‘Starmerite central’ Labour Together. Before that, Sargeant was an Institute for

Brendan O’Neill

Yvette Cooper’s chilling crackdown on ‘harmful’ beliefs

Why is there not more disquiet over Yvette Cooper’s promise to crack down on ‘harmful’ beliefs? To my mind it ranks as one of the most chilling political pledges of the modern era. The thought of a Labour government, or any government, imperiously decreeing which ideas are ‘harmful’ and which are benign leaves me cold. It’s a first step to tyranny and it needs to be walked back. A war on ‘harmful’ beliefs would give the government a blank cheque to demonise views that are old-fashioned, possibly unpopular or just not very PC The Home Secretary has commissioned a rapid review of ‘extremist ideologies’ as part of a new government

Edward Howell

Kim Jong Un will take no blame for North Korea’s floods

The sight of a grimacing Kim Jong Un on board an inflatable rubber dinghy is not what one would expect from the leader of a country which has repeatedly threatened to ‘annihilate’ the United States. As floods ravage across provinces along North Korea’s border with China, the North Korean leader has leapt upon the occasion to berate his officials for mismanagement, reinforce state ideology, and emphasise that under the protection of the Supreme Leader, all will – eventually – be well. While the devastating flash floods of July and early August primarily affected areas in the northern part of the country, the consequences have been felt across the hermit kingdom.

Eliot Wilson

There’s no such thing as ‘proper Conservatism’

The contest to be the next leader of the Conservative party, which has six entrants and will last until November, by necessity involves a great deal of reflection. It could hardly be any other way, in the wake of the party’s worst defeat in its 200-year history: every aspirant is right to understand that there can be no realistic hope of recovery without understanding how Conservatives came to such a calamitous and precipitous failure. This fixation with ‘proper Conservatism’ manages to be simultaneously meaningless and noxious One of the most common themes, which was being thrown around well before the general election, is that the party has lost its ideological

Tuesday

20 Aug 2024

Steerpike

Now Ross brands Scottish Tory colleagues ‘calculating b**tards’

As the UK Tory leadership contest rumbles on, north of the border the Scottish race is hotting up. Last week saw a rather dramatic few days in which four of six contenders called for the competition to be paused and the party’s deputy leader quit her post after ‘disturbing claims’ about outgoing leader Douglas Ross emerged. It transpired that Ross attempted to shuffle out a prospective parliamentary candidate so that he could be selected to contest a Westminster seat in the 2024 election. The Telegraph report also claimed that the Scottish Tory leader wanted to ditch the top job over a year ago – and instead coronate current leadership candidate

Tom Slater

Why is the Welsh government so worried about racist buildings?

It’s hard to keep up with what is racist these days. It used to be straightforward. You know, discriminating against, hating or depriving rights to certain groups for no other reason than the colour of their skin. But that quaint definition just won’t do anymore. Nowadays, the countryside is racist, maths is racist, telling a Japanese person you like sushi is racist, wearing a sombrero if you’re not Mexican is racist, compliments are racist, babies are racist. To that yawning list we can now add… buildings. Particularly those in Wales, it seems. The Welsh government has pledged to ‘eradicate’ systemic racism by 2030, and apparently it’s starting with those notorious bigots,

James Heale

Can Starmer reinvigorate Welsh Labour?

12 min listen

Keir Starmer has been meeting the new First Minister Eluned Morgan as part of a two day trip to Wales. While the trip included a visit to a wind farm, Starmer quickly faced questions about the fate of steel workers in Port Talbot. What does this challenge tell us about Starmer’s Industrial Strategy and his relationship with the devolved nations? Could Welsh Labour soon face the same anti-incumbency threat that the Conservatives and the SNP faced? James Heale is joined by Tom Baldwin, Starmer’s biographer, and Ruth Mosalski, political editor at WalesOnline. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Ian Williams

Labour are bowing to China’s influence

The new Labour government is supposedly committed to ‘defend[ing] our sovereignty and our democratic values’, as its manifesto put it, but it appears to have stumbled at the first hurdle, delaying a key measure for countering the influence of hostile states, which MI5 has described as essential for Britain’s national security. The foreign influence registration scheme (FIRS) would for the first time force anyone in the UK acting for a foreign power or entity to declare their activities. It was due to be implemented later this year, part of a new National Security Act that represents the biggest revamp of the UK’s espionage laws in more than a century. FIRS would

Steerpike

Left-wing media’s double standards on show at DNC

To the Windy City, where the Democratic National Convention is in full swing. In the early hours of this morning, outgoing President Joe Biden bid an emotional farewell to conference delegates to pave the way for Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign, and former US leader Barack Obama is due to speak today. But besides the big names of the moment, Mr S spotted something rather interesting about just how the DNC has been received in comparison to its Republican counterpart by some of the noisiest voices in UK media… When a selection of British politicians decided to make the transatlantic voyage to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention last month, not