Politics

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

Wednesday

22 May 2024

The general election has ruined prospects of an early rate cut

Would waiting another few months to call a general election have improved the Conservatives’ prospects? Rishi Sunak didn’t touch upon this in his speech today, announcing a general election for 4 July, but it seems likely that their broad assessment was no. One of the big reasons for waiting until the autumn was the possibility of another fiscal statement. Jeremy Hunt’s March Budget left plenty to be desired by many Tory MPs, who wanted income tax cuts and changes to inheritance tax. The hope was that the public finances would improve in the spring and summer, offering up another chance to craft a tax-cutting narrative – and to give more

James Heale

Starmer pitches stability

Within 20 minutes of Rishi Sunak announcing plans for a July election, Keir Starmer was up delivering his response. The Labour leader’s first pitch of the campaign could be summed up in six words: stop the chaos, vote for change. It is a neat encapsulation of Starmer’s four-year-mission as Leader of the Opposition – making his party electable again by fashioning it as the safe, reliable, respectable mainstream of British politics. Central to Labour’s election campaign will be contrasting Sir Keir’s leadership with the three Tory premiers he has faced across the despatch box. Over the next six weeks, he and his shadow cabinet will hammer home to voters the

Steerpike

Might Sunak actually win? A history of election miracles

Is it madness to call a general election when you’re 20 points behind in the polls? That depends on whether the pollsters and pundits are any more reliable now than when they promised us that Brexit would flop, that Hillary would win and that David Cameron had a 0.5 per cent chance of winning the general election. The last ten years have seen a stream of against-all-odds election victories — and Rishi Sunak’s only hope is that he can pull off one of these miracles. Here are four that he might have in mind… 1. David Cameron’s 2015 majority Such is the hubris of the pollsters that in 2015 they

Keir Starmer

With this election we can stop the chaos

The Prime Minister has finally announced the next general election. A moment the country needs and has been waiting for. And where, by the force of our democracy, power returns to you. A chance to change for the better. Your future, your community, your country. Now it will feel like a long campaign, I’m sure of that. But no matter what else is said and done, that opportunity for change is what this election is about. Over the course of the last four years, we’ve changed. The Labour party returned once more to the service of working people. All we ask now, humbly, is to do exactly the same for

James Hanson

Why didn’t Rishi wait?

So there we have it. Westminster’s favourite parlour game has finally concluded. We now know the date of the general election, 4 July. As his political capital continues to seep away, Rishi Sunak has decided to play one of his last remaining jokers – the right to call an election before he’s constitutionally obliged. But given the Conservatives remain more than 20 points behind Labour in the polls, the question remains: why didn’t Rishi wait? Much as Boris had a ‘countdown to Brexit’ clock installed in CCHQ in 2019, Sunak might as well install a ‘countdown to California’ clock in No. 10 Let’s be blunt. Barring some kind of miracle,

Rishi Sunak

Why I’m calling a general election

In the last five years, our country has fought through the most challenging times since the second world war. As I stand here as your Prime Minister, I can’t help but reflect that my first proper introduction to you was just over four years ago. I stood behind one of the podiums upstairs in the building behind me. I told you that we faced a generation defining moment and that we as a society, could not be judged by some government action, but by the small acts of kindness that we showed one another. You met that challenge and then some, and I have never been prouder to be British.

Katy Balls

Sunak takes his biggest gamble yet: a July election

Rishi Sunak has chosen to go for a summer election. The Prime Minister has confirmed in an address to the nation this evening that the 2024 general election will be held on July 4. A new parliament will be summoned on 9 July and the state opening will be on 17 July. His announcement comes after speculation since this morning that Sunak was planning to roll the dice and go to the polls in the summer rather than wait for the autumn. Notably, No. 10 chose not to dampen down the speculation – and when asked at lunchtime Sunak repeated his old line that the election would be held in

Stephen Daisley

Stop children from suffering when their parents go to jail

Writing about the impact on children of having a parent in prison, you always hit the same brick wall: no one knows how many children have a parent in prison, including the Ministry of Justice. The MoJ estimates that ‘approximately 200,000 children’ have a parent in or heading to prison. Ministers have commissioned a review which is due to provide an updated figure on 13 June. The charity Prison Advice and Care Trust, pulling together various strands of MoJ statistics, suggested something in the ballpark of 100,000, though they only counted male prisoners. Meanwhile, Crest Advisory, a criminal justice consultancy, puts the figure much higher, at 312,000. If this lack of reliable data makes it difficult

Steerpike

Cameron snubs Albania for impromptu cabinet meeting

Dear oh dear. Rishi Sunak failed to quash election speculation in this afternoon’s Prime Minister’s Questions and now lobby hacks are desperately trying to figure out whether a big announcement really is looming. In their hunt for clues, a number of journalists have drawn attention to the cancellation of two rather high profile events as Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps hurry back to Westminster for an impromptu cabinet meeting this afternoon. Shapps has delayed a political visit to Eastern Europe for this afternoon’s meeting – which sources have told the Guardian is rather unusual given ministers are able to request a pass not to attend. But if political

Cindy Yu

Is an election about to be called?

11 min listen

Westminster is awash with rumours today that the Prime Minister is about to call an election. On this episode, Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson about where this speculation is coming from and how seriously to take them. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Lloyd Evans

PMQs: we saw a glimpse of Labour in power

The party leaders conformed to type at PMQs. Rishi Sunak declared that Britain is experiencing an economic boom. ‘Inflation is back to normal,’ he announced about six times. It felt like about 60. Sir Keir Starmer reminded us that he used to run the CPS which is one of his favourite boasts. But it was odd to hear it wedged into a formal statement about the infected blood scandal – an astonishing piece of forensic acrobatics. Worthy of an award. That was the end of the gloomy bit. Then came the note of joy. ‘This country is waiting for a Labour government to bring down NHS waiting-lists’ Sir Ed Davey

Julia Lewis

The ban on XL Bully dogs still doesn’t go far enough

On Monday, a woman was mauled to death in London by her own two ‘exempted’ XL Bully dogs. By the time armed police and paramedics arrived at the shocking scene at her home in Hornchurch she was reportedly already dead. Her two sons had found her lying in the hallway and tried CPR but it was too late. Angeline Mahal, who was in her 50s, is the second person killed by XL Bully dogs since the ban on owning the breed without an exemption certificate was introduced in February. The first was Esther Martin, 68, who was killed by XLs belonging to her late daughter’s partner in Essex on 3 February, two

Patrick West

Why is it acceptable to mock the working class?

You may laugh. You may have gasped in disbelief. But yes, it’s true, we now have a new socio-economic classification, known collectively as the ‘working class, benefit class, criminal class, and/or underclass’. This, is at least, is the latest addition to the list of ‘traditionally disadvantaged groups’ especially welcomed by The Camden People’s Theatre, North London, in a job advert – alongside the more familiar(-ish) categories of ‘D/deaf and/or disabled’, ‘neurodiverse’, ‘LGBTQ+’ and that other newby for our times: ‘global majority’. This new umbrella category was made known on X by charity worker Anne-Marie Canning on Monday, and the advert has since gone viral, attracting much derision, not least for

Isabel Hardman

If only Starmer had answered his own questions at PMQs

Is Rishi Sunak going to announce the election date later today? Speculation was – once again – so rife that the Prime Minister might be about to make some kind of announcement that the question came up at Prime Minister’s Questions. And he didn’t answer it. When SNP Westminster group leader Stephen Flynn asked him, Sunak replied that there would be a general election in the second half of the year – which we already know because he cannot now call one for sooner than July anyway. Keir Starmer did not ask about the election. The Labour leader focused on the recommendation in this week’s infected blood inquiry report that

Iain Macwhirter

The SNP vows to make poverty history – again

There is a weary inevitability about Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, promising to ‘eradicate child poverty’ as his ‘single most important objective’. We’ve been here before. Both Humza Yousaf and Nicola Sturgeon promised to do exactly the same. Indeed, those of us with long memories recall the Scottish Labour minister, Wendy Alexander, vowing in 1999 at the dawn of devolution that ‘the Scottish parliament will abolish child poverty’. It hasn’t: exactly the same proportion of children, a quarter, are in poverty today as was the case 25 years ago. No amount of sophistry can obscure the reality that Scotland is treated more generously in public spending than much of the rest of the UK

Patrick O’Flynn

Voters want safe streets, not small changes to inflation

For Rishi Sunak, today amounts to another instalment of the fantastic success story of his premiership: that ‘the plan is working’. A new key statistic about the rate of inflation shows that consumer prices are rising much less quickly. Taming inflation is the singular success among the five key targets he set out at the start of last year. It is easy to see why a numbers man like the PM would get excited about this. Inflation is at a bit over 2 per cent, compared to average wage growth of nearly 6 per cent. As Mr Micawber famously put it: ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and

Steerpike

Watch: Former Post Office chief breaks down at inquiry

The Post Office inquiry rumbles on and now it’s the turn of former chief executive Paula Vennells in the hot seat. It’s the first of her three days of hearings and already the former boss is not having a good time of it… Vennells was quizzed on her leadership during the scandal, and how much she really knew of the institution’s troublesome Horizon IT system that was incorrectly registering losses at post office branches across the UK. While the system’s failings were not sufficiently flagged, anxious subpostmasters across the country desperately tried to make up for unexplained deficits by piling in their own life savings, with some Post Office workers

Katy Balls

Is Rishi Sunak about to call an election?

Will Rishi Sunak call an election today? That is the rumour ripping through Westminster. Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions this lunchtime, Sunak did little to quell the speculation. When asked by the SNP’s Stephen Flynn whether the rumours were right that a July election announcement was imminent, Sunak replied ‘spoiler alert’, before repeating his usual line that an election will be held in the second half of the year. Of course that does not rule out a July election – nor does it confirm it. This isn’t the first time there has been talk of an early election. So, what’s different now? There have been rumours for some time that

Steerpike

Watch: ‘Bionic MP’ welcomed back to parliament

It’s a momentous day for Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay. Today the Tory politician returned to the Commons following a prolonged battle with sepsis after being admitted to hospital with the life-threatening condition last September. After becoming suddenly unwell overnight, the politician was rushed to A&E where he developed disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). In a bid to save his life, all four of his limbs were amputated. In a video taken at his bedside by his wife and shared in today’s Telegraph, Mackinlay was filmed before the extreme surgery, telling the camera that ‘this is the last time that these old things [his limbs] which have served me well for 57

Steerpike

Wallace turns his guns on the Foreign Office

Uh oh. This time, it seems, mandarins at the Foreign Office have finally gone too far. In a scathing piece penned for the Telegraph, former defence secretary Ben Wallace has opened fire on civil servants after the Foreign Office drew up a statement on the death of Iran’s president. Ministers have refused to use wording supplied to them to call the demise of a man dubbed the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ a ‘tragedy’. And Wallace has more to say on it all too… Taking to the paper today, Wallace questioned: ‘In what world was it the correct thing to do to stand in silence for the Iranian president?’ Turning to longer-standing