Politics

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

Sunday

Owen Matthews

Pope Francis’s unhelpful Ukraine comments

Pope Francis has made a statement on the Ukraine war that has sparked fury among many of Kyiv’s supporters. Asked by a Swiss television interviewer whether the Ukraine should ‘raise the white flag’ Francis replied, ‘When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate,’ adding that he believed that ‘the stronger one is the one who… thinks of the people, who has the courage of the white flag.’  Blessed are the peacemakers. But Pope Francis was addressing the wrong side After a storm of criticism, the Vatican press service put out a clarification. ‘Pope Francis is not asking

Steerpike Steerpike

Leaked Sturgeon video becomes focus of SNP police probe

As yet another day passes, the good people of Scotland remain in suspense about the outcome of the police probe into the SNP. The three-year long investigation — which has seen multiple arrests, the impounding of a £110,000 campervan, a military-style raid of SNP HQ and the construction of a rather large forensic tent outside the Dear Leader’s own home  — has still not concluded.  In fact, witnesses are being interviewed for the, er, fourth time as police attempt to get to the bottom of fraud claims relating to purchases of a £95,000 electric Jaguar to gardening equipment and women’s razors.  And it now transpires that there is one very particular

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Labour refuses to rule out cuts to public services

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has been clear that Labour will stick to the same fiscal rules as the Tories if elected, and also that they don’t want to raise taxes. Laura Kuenssberg asked Reeves to confirm that this might mean Labour would be forced to make cuts to some public services. Reeves said that the finances a Labour government will inherit would be ‘the worst since the second world war’, but would not confirm that Labour would make spending cuts. She promised an ‘initial injection of cash’ into public services, and said Labour would do a spending review quickly if elected. Health Secretary defends government’s new interpretation of extremism Communities

John Keiger John Keiger

Why is Macron suddenly pro-Ukraine? Fear of Le Pen

Its an old ruse to deploy foreign policy for domestic purposes. France has a long history in that vein. General de Gaulle was adept at using popular domestic anti-Americanism on the world stage to embarrass pro-Nato political forces at home; François Mitterrand exploited the early 1980s Euromissile crisis with the Soviet Union to humiliate and isolate the French Communist party. Emmanuel Macron’s startling declaration that the West should not rule out putting troops on the ground in Ukraine is less a Damascene conversion than a strategy to stymy the Rassemblement National’s runaway 10 point poll lead for June’s EU elections. Macron has doubled down on his new-found international bellicosity by

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Irish voters have refused to erase the family

It’s not been a particularly good weekend for the political establishment in Ireland. Two constitutional changes have been rejected by the electorate, despite being backed by all the mainstream parties – Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour, Greens, Sinn Fein – plus the usual pundits and something called the National Women’s Council (a quango which is meant to represent women but somehow doesn’t). The state broadcaster, RTE, which finds itself in a similar position to the BBC after the Brexit vote, is curiously subdued about the outcome. Nearly 70 per cent of Irish women with children under 18 would stay at home with them Voters were given the option to, as

Monica Porter

The remarkable story of my mother, the heroine of the Holocaust

I’ve always loathed Russia: its regime, its remnants of enduring Stalin-worship, its rulers’ century of malign influence on the world. The cold-blooded autocrat Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine is all too redolent of the USSR, is succeeding in his aim of shattering the security and stability of Europe. I watch clips of Putin addressing vast cheering crowds in Moscow and wonder: what’s wrong with these otherwise sophisticated people? The alternative narratives are mere clicks away on their smartphones, yet they choose to swallow Putin’s dangerous lies and propaganda. Have they learnt nothing from their own history? With the secret police prowling the streets, she needed to deflect suspicion My

Jim Lawley

Do Spaniards have the right to eat in restaurants at midnight?

Yolanda Díaz, one of Spain’s deputy prime ministers, raised eyebrows during last summer’s election campaign when she arranged to be filmed doing the ironing. ‘I love ironing’, she announced virtuously. ‘I spend hours, almost every day ironing’, she went on, warming to her theme. ‘When I get home from work’, she concluded with evident self-satisfaction, ‘I iron my clothes and everyone else’s.’ Now the 52-year-old Labour Minister in Spain’s minority left-wing government has irritated even more people by suggesting that the nation’s restaurants should close earlier: ‘It’s madness to carry on extending opening times; a restaurant still open at 1 o’clock in the morning is not reasonable’, she declared. ‘After

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Alastair Campbell’s Brexit delusion

In these tumultuous times, it’s difficult to be certain of anything for too long. But one thing that’s never going to change is Alastair Campbell’s ever-inflating ego.  The former Labour spinner spoke to BBC journalist Kirsty Young this week for her BBC podcast Young Again, where she dissects the lives of her guests, quizzing them on what they’d do differently. For Campbell, you’d think there would be a fairly obvious, um, Middle East-shaped issue he’d spend most time on… Instead, Tony Blair’s ‘Rottweiler’ used a not insignificant portion of the interview to harp on about how he only wishes he could have done more to save the world. In his typically

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The disgusting defacement of Lord Balfour’s painting

There’s a new movement in town: Philistines for Palestine. Not content with traipsing through the streets every other weekend to holler their hatred for Israel, now ‘pro-Palestine’ activists are taking aim at art. Witness yesterday’s fevered attack on the painting of Lord Balfour at Cambridge university – an act of petulant, self-satisfied philistinism that will do precisely nothing to help people in Gaza.  The slashing of the painting was carried out by a member of a group called Palestine Action. She walked up to the 1914 portrait and sprayed it with red paint before wielding her knife to cut it to shreds. Why target Balfour? Because he played a key

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

How Germany became a security liability

There were lots of smiles and some awkward football banter when German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock met her British counterpart David Cameron in Berlin earlier this week. Cameron was careful to tiptoe around Berlin’s recent security blunders, after an online call between German officials discussing British military activities in Ukraine was intercepted by Russia. Alliances aren’t just about money, they are also about trust and dependability Britain’s former prime minister is good at this diplomatic dance, and he made a valiant effort to not, in his words, ‘play into the hands of some Russian narrative about divisions between allies.’ But it’s hard to paper over the cracks these recent security

Natasha Feroze

Does Britain need new laws to tackle extremism?

21 min listen

Michael Gove is expected to announce a tougher definition of extremism in response to a rise in radical ideology, since the Israel-Gaza war. Are new laws really needed? Or could the current laws, if enforced properly, be the best way to tackle a decline in social cohesion? Natasha Feroze speaks to David Shipley, a film producer and writer and Professor Jonathan Githens-Mazer from the University of Exeter who specialises in counter-terrorism and extremism. 

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Only Nigel Farage can save us now

When the Prime Minister cannot be bothered to listen to the Budget it sends out a pretty big signal to the country that there’s nothing much in it. Rishi Sunak spent long chunks of Jeremy Hunt’s latest financial statement on Wednesday chatting away to Treasury Chief Secretary Laura Trott. It was a wholesome scene reminiscent of one of those joint social evenings that neighbouring boys’ and girls’ schools in pleasant Home Counties towns sometimes put on for their sixth-formers. Compared to listening to Hunt, it must have been a gas. Sunak’s semi-disengaged demeanour was emblematic of the Conservative benches in what was supposed to have been a key week in

Laurie Wastell

Labour’s ‘equalities’ dystopia

With Sir Keir Starmer creeping closer to No. 10 every day, attention is rightly being paid to the radicalism of Labour’s agenda. Many have pointed to the awful prospect of its Race Equality Act, which would entail vast social engineering by state bureaucrats in pursuit of racial ‘equity’. Labour backs a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ that arguably equates criticism of Islam with racism – amounting to something like a blasphemy law. Meanwhile, its chilling plans for a ‘trans-inclusive’ ban on conversion therapy could criminalise clinicians not taking an ‘affirmative’ approach to patients who present with gender dysphoria. In other words, Labour could make it illegal not to set vulnerable young patients on a path towards experimental drugs

Robin Ashenden

Lost friendships are a painful price of the Ukraine war

One thing you learn about war, if you are close enough for it to touch you, is that it splits the atom. Situations and relationships that have grown over time and seem to have deep roots – a life in fact – can be blown apart in a day. Now, over two years on from the start of Vladimir Putin’s ‘special military operation’ (which came at a time when I was living in Rostov-on-Don, an hour or two from the Ukrainian border), I’m still in touch with several Russians I knew back then. We find common ground, avoid certain topics and continue the conversation. But other friendships were killed stone dead,

John Foreman

Russia will not attack Nato

There is a lot of war fever about. In January, Grant Shapps, Britain’s tiggerish defence secretary, said the UK was in a ‘pre-war’ period. The West’s adversaries in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are mobilising, he said. Not wanting to be outdone, Shapps’s Labour shadow John Healey wrote in the Daily Telegraph: ‘If Putin wins, he will not stop at Ukraine.’ Timescales for when this conflict will come vary. Shapps said it could come within the next five years, whereas the estimates of European politicians range from three to eight years. Nato’s top military official warned that Europeans must be ready for a conflict with Russia within two decades. An

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Pro-Palestine protestor tries to derail ‘Social Fabric’ summit

A rich irony today at the ‘Restitch’ conference. A pro-Palestine protestor was forcibly removed from the stage as she attempted to derail Security Minister Tom Tugendhat’s speech with questions about Israel — at Restitch, ‘The Social Fabric Summit’. What better example of how ragged the community cloth of Britain has become, eh? The conference saw think tanks across the political spectrum unite, as Onward, Labour Together and Create Streets invited delegates to Coventry to enjoy a series of talks on social cohesion. As Tom Tugendhat walked to the podium, he was joined by an unexpected guest — in the form of a face-masked woman grasping a Palestinian flag. Labour and

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Why Germans don’t want to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine

Yet again the question of whether to send arms to Ukraine is plaguing Olaf Scholz’s chancellorship. The issue was once more thrown into sharp focus when Russian intelligence leaked a discussion by Bundeswehr officials on the probability of sending long-range Taurus missiles to Kyiv. A recording of the conversation was splashed across the world by Russian state media.  Scholz has spent the past week trying to get a grip on the debate over Taurus missiles and shut it down, even fielding questions from plucky students on a school visit as to why he had yet to relent: ‘I am the chancellor and that’s why’. But it seems the true reason

Eliot Wilson

Will Republican leaders apologise over ‘Stakeknife’?

‘Stakeknife’, a double agent who was an informant for the British Army while working within the innermost counsels of the Provisional IRA, probably cost more lives than he saved. That is the damning verdict of Operation Kenova, which has spent seven years – and £40 million – probing whether Stakeknife was effectively permitted to kill while the security forces watched on. Stakeknife’s identity has never been officially confirmed but it is accepted he was a Belfast man called Freddie Scappaticci, who died last year. Interned in 1971 along with figures like Gerry Adams and Alex Maskey, he was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) by 1974 and