Politics

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

Tuesday

Andrew Liddle

Does Scottish Labour really want an election?

Given the SNP’s abject disarray, it is no surprise to see Scottish Labour demanding a snap Holyrood election. After all, for the first time in more than a decade it is Anas Sarwar’s party – and not the Scottish Nationalists – who are most likely to gain by the ballot box. Sarwar himself summed up the bullish mood in the party succinctly, telling reporters: ‘I do not fear an election, I relish an election.’ And this is not idle talk; Scottish Labour has lodged a motion of no confidence in the Scottish government that would, in the unlikely event it is approved by MSPs on Wednesday, force the entire SNP

James Heale James Heale

Will the Tories’ mental health focus backfire?

17 min listen

As figures now show there are 2.8 million people claiming out-of-work benefits, Rishi Sunak gave a speech looking at welfare reform. But with more and more people off work for mental health related issues, could the Tories’ focus backfire if the public think they’re trivialising mental health? Also on the podcast, a look ahead to the mayoral elections.  James Heale discusses with Isabel Hardman and Luke Tryl, UK Director at More in Common.   Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

William Atkinson

Tory MPs – not members – should elect the party’s next leader

Since first becoming Chairman of the 1922 Committee in 2010, Graham Brady has overseen the election of three Conservative leaders – Theresa May, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak – as well as votes of confidence in both May and Boris Johnson. Serving as the voice of the Tory backbenches to the party leadership, Brady’s views on the leadership carry more weight than those of most Conservatives. Brady said it was a ‘mistake’ for party members to have the ‘final vote’ As such, Tory members might be a little irritated to hear that Brady thinks it is ‘crazy’ that they can vote on a Conservative prime minister’s successor if they are

Steerpike Steerpike

When will the Telegraph sale be concluded?

To the Commons, where Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer this afternoon gave a ministerial statement on the future of the Telegraph Media Group. It follows this morning’s news that the Abu Dhabi-backed company RedBird IMI will put the Daily Telegraph and Spectator titles back up for sale, after parliament moved to block foreign state ownership of UK newspapers and magazines. Frazer gave the House a brief outline of the government’s unchanged stance and then it was the turn of Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire to demand some answers. After a year of negotiations over the sale, the Shadow Culture Secretary wanted to know when exactly the question of the Telegraph’s ownership would finally be concluded: From the very start, Labour had questions about

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Brexit has not made food unaffordable

Imagine that for the past 30 years all food entering Britain from EU countries had been subject to stringent sanitary checks and that today, for the first time, the government had decided to abolish those checks. It isn’t hard to guess how the Labour party would react. The government, it would be claiming, was throwing our farming and horticultural industries to the wall in the name of an ideological commitment to deregulation. Britain was being opened up to infection from devastating diseases like swine fever and foot and mouth disease – all so that the government’s friends in the food import industry could trim a few percent off their costs

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why Sunak is not for turning in his fight with junior doctors

Those waiting for the local election results before they look for evidence of Rishi Sunak’s fightback are running late: the Prime Minister has spent the past few weeks making announcements designed to keep his party happy and remind them that they’re supposed to be fighting Labour, not one another. There’s the defence spending announcement, the benefits crackdown, and the passing of the Safety of Rwanda Act. None of these are without risk: the plotters have already demanded even higher defence spending, for instance.  Both sides seem to be holding out for the other to fold One of the demands it’s reasonably safe to say Sunak isn’t going to give into

Matthew Lynn

Is Javier Milei’s medicine working?

Javier Milei was taking too many risks. Argentina’s president didn’t have enough political support. And his radical version of free market economics didn’t offer any solutions anyway, especially in a world where the state is more crucial than ever. When Milei won the presidency last year there were plenty of predictions that he would fare as well as Britain’s Liz Truss. And yet, there are signs the medicine is starting to work – and that will be globally significant.   Over the past couple of weeks, the data coming out of Argentina has been far better than anyone expected. This month, inflation is forecast to dip below 10 per cent

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland is furious about Britain’s immigration mess

‘We will not be used as a loophole in another country’s immigration challenges.’ Those were the angry words of Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris over the weekend, a further escalation in the war of words between Dublin and Downing Street which have seen diplomatic relations between the two nations reach their lowest point since the darkest days of the fraught and fractious Brexit negotiations. It’s hard to see an amicable solution being forged between the two governments The news that the Irish government now plans to change existing legislation to allow them to return illegal immigrants who arrived in the country from the UK is unlikely to see a warming of

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Penny Mordaunt won’t save the Tories

Rebellious Tory MPs, expecting a trouncing in Thursday’s locals, are apparently mooting a ‘100 days to save Britain!’ emergency turnaround strategy. A new leader, a payrise for doctors, defence spending up to 3 per cent. Having four prime ministers in one parliamentary term would be good for future pub quizzes, but who is apparently choice for that number four slot? Penny Mordaunt. To what problem is she the solution? Her worst quality is that she will follow whatever is fashionable or socially expedient, not her own judgement. Mordaunt is a model example of style over substance. And what style! Because she looks just right – the mane, the steely glare,

Iain Macwhirter

Whoever wins the SNP leadership race, the party loses

None of the candidates for the SNP leadership has declared yet, but it is shaping up to be a classic two horse race between the former leader, and Nicola Sturgeon bag man, John Swinney and the socially conservative former finance secretary, Kate Forbes. But in this race, they are both losers before they start. To turn to a chess metaphor, the SNP is caught in a zugzwang: they have to make a move but every move puts them in a worse position.  Kate Forbes is – shock – a practising Christian First: the veteran ‘safe pair of hands’, John Swinney. He’s the not-so-fresh face of the ‘old guard’ who effectively blocked Humza

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Why are police officers slow to respond to domestic abuse call-outs?

Popping out to buy milk the other night, I saw how women die. My nearest local shop in south-west London, the place I go for last-minute and forgotten groceries, is an M&S at a petrol station. It sells fuel, overpriced food and coffee. It’s open late. As I queued to pay for my semi-skimmed just before 7 p.m., I noticed a couple of police constables – one male, one female – waiting for coffee. Their marked car was parked outside, though not at a pump; they’d evidently stopped just for the coffee. Did the time it takes to get a coffee, pick a snack, and pay for it cost a woman

John Keiger John Keiger

Why Emmanuel Macron wants to give nukes to the EU

Emmanuel Macron is thinking and saying the unthinkable for a French President of the Republic. This weekend he suggested that French nuclear weapons – the holy grail of French security, intended to ensure that France never relives 1940 – could be put at the disposal of the European Union’s defence. For Macron this is a make or break moment for the EU to remain a world power or face oblivion His comments drew strident criticism from across the political spectrum. ‘Macron is becoming a national danger’, claimed the Rassemblement National’s Thierry Mariani. ‘And after France’s nuclear weapon’, he added, ‘it will be France’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Starmer U-turns over Rosie Duffield

Starmer Chameleon does it again. The publication of the Cass review brought about a period of reckoning for politicians previously willing to live in fantasyland — and now it’s Sir Keir who has been forced to swallow his words. After years of flip-flopping on the trans issue, the Labour leader this morning admitted that he does in fact agree with one of his most vocal MPs on women’s rights: Rosie Duffield.  A politician with a penchant for U-turns, Starmer has a long and convoluted history of changing his mind on the trans debate. Sir Keir was staunchly in favour of gender reforms and allowing trans people to self-ID as recently

Debbie Hayton

The NHS has finally seen sense on biological sex

Sex is a biological fact, the NHS declared this morning. Seriously, if the health service was ever in any doubt about that then no wonder that we have ended up in such a mess over sex and gender. Personally, I would ban the word ‘gender’ from law and policy, and return it to what it did best – classifying foreign nouns. The headlines, on the other hand, have pointed the finger at transsexuals. Trans women will be banned from women-only wards, according to the Telegraph. At this stage I need to declare an interest – I have a wife and daughter and I would not be happy about either of

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why Britain’s Rwanda Bill has rattled Emmanuel Macron

Britain’s Rwanda Bill has exposed the deep divisions in France between how the people and the political elite regard mass immigration. Asked if they would like France to adopt a Rwanda-style bill, 67 per cent of the French canvassed replied favourably to the idea. This figure is no surprise: for years, polls on the subject of border control have returned results that show two thirds to three-quarters of the French are worried by mass immigration and its consequences. Emmanuel Macron had a different take on the Rwanda Bill. In a speech at the Sorbonne on Thursday, the president declared that he was opposed to ‘this model that some people want

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Deputy FM accidentally announces leadership bid

It’s a gaffe a day with the SNP. Even with hapless Humza stepping down, the Nats are still slipping up. This time the deputy first minister Shona Robison is in the limelight, after Yousaf’s second-in-command made an on-air blunder just hours after the First Minister announced he would be quitting his job. In the world’s shortest-lived leadership bid, Robison confidently told Sky News on Monday night that ‘yes’, she would be in the running for the top job. ‘You are in the running?’ presenter Mark Austin replied incredulously. ‘No — sorry,’ Robison corrected herself after a rather awkward pause. ‘No I am definitely not in the running.’ Mr S can

Matthew Lynn

The truth about Ireland’s £600 million Brexit ‘bonanza’

Ireland is reaping the benefits of a Brexit bonus to the tune of €700 million (£600 million). It is not hard to understand why hardcore Remainers are gleefully reporting the news that the government in Dublin is collecting huge extra revenues, much of which comes from imposing tariffs on British goods. What is being reported as a ‘Brexit bonanza’ for the Irish isn’t quite what it seems ‘The level of customs duties has effectively doubled in recent years compared to the previous decade, reflecting the transformation of Great Britain into a third country in 2021,’ says the Irish Revenue Commissioners. British companies suffer, and a foreign government makes lots of

Lucy Dunn

Fergus Ewing: How Kate Forbes can save the SNP

Following Humza Yousaf’s resignation as First Minister, a fresh leadership contest could soon be on the cards. His would-be successors face an uphill task: after 17 years in government, the SNP looks discredited and divided in the face of a resurgent Labour party. In a dizzyingly short space of time, Yousaf’s party has been reduced from being the hegemonic force at Holyrood to a shadow of its former self. Can the slide be reversed? Veteran nationalist Fergus Ewing is one of those who thinks it can. The outspoken Highlander, and one of Holyrood’s very first MSPs, backed Yousaf’s fateful decision to end co-operation with the Greens but disagrees with how

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The benefits bill won’t improve without an NHS turnaround

How much can Mel Stride really do to cut the benefits bill? In the Commons today, the Work and Pensions Secretary argued that the ‘disability benefit system for adults of working age is not consistently providing support in the way that was intended’, and that it was now time for a ‘new conversation’ about how the system should work. He spoke in much more compassionate terms than on some of the media rounds that he and Rishi Sunak have done. But repeated questions from across the House, including from one of his Conservative predecessors in the Work and Pensions department underlined that one of the most-trailed aims of this green

Iain Macwhirter

Did Nicola Sturgeon kill Humza Yousaf’s Alba deal?

After the tears, the recriminations. Just who scuppered the putative deal between Humza Yousaf and Ash Regan MSP that could have saved Yousaf’s bacon? The Alba leader, Alex Salmond, told the BBC’s World at One that Humza Yousaf had been on the phone to Regan at 7.30 a.m. today to say that her terms were ‘very reasonable’. It was, Salmond implied, a done deal.  Sturgeon was not going to be content with any kind of deal that gave Salmond indirect influence over the fate of the Scottish National party Clearly, others in the SNP thought differently, and five hours later, Humza Yousaf was making a tearful farewell to Bute House. In his