Politics

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

Wednesday

Michael Murphy

Leo Varadkar’s days were numbered

Leo Varadkar’s abrupt resignation today left even his closest allies perplexed. ‘I was very surprised, I didn’t expect it at all’, said his deputy, Micheal Martin, after the announcement. Varadkar said he’s stepping down for reasons that were ‘both personal and political’, to give Fine Gael the best chance of victory. So what made him walk? Varadkar’s government rebuffed people’s concerns with platitudes Varadkar may have thought he was continuing a decades-long progressive trend where liberal Irish governments had the wind at their backs. Divorce and same-sex marriage were legalised after successful referendums, and most recently, a ban on abortions was repealed. Ireland was shedding the small-c conservative, Roman Catholic

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs is getting sadder and sadder

At PMQs we saw the next year of politics condensed into a few seconds. Sir Keir Starmer asked the PM why he declined to call an election. ‘My working assumption is that the election will be in the second half of the year,’ said Rishi. So there it is. A date in October rather than January 2025. And he confidently expects to lose which is why he urged Labour’s Dan Carden to ‘chat with his shadow chancellor about her plan to impose £28 billion of tax rises on everyone.’  Sir Keir harried the PM on Rwanda which he called ‘a gimmick’ constantly. The g-word, clearly favoured by focus groups, was

Elliot Wilson

There’s an important lesson for politicians in the fall of Leo Varadkar

So farewell, then, Leo Varadkar. The Taoiseach says he is stepping down because he is no longer ‘the best person for that job’. But the reality is that Varadkar found out the hard way that delegating decisions to voters can come back to bite. This wasn’t the first time Ireland’s leaders have chosen to hand difficult decisions to voters Varadkar’s fate was sealed earlier this month when his government suffered a crushing defeat in two referendums. Irish voters were encouraged to back changes to the constitution which would clarify the definition of ‘the Family’ to mean ‘whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships’ and omit a definition of

Steerpike Steerpike

Simon Case quits the Garrick Club

Should we expect a flash sale on Garrick Club memberships? The cabinet secretary Simon Case is the second high-profile figure to have quit the exclusive all-male club just hours after earnestly defending his position. The top mandarin follows MI6 chief Richard Moore out the door. The spy chief told his colleagues that he too planned to reform the organisation from within. But something apparently changed overnight that caused those noble ambitions to come apart. Talk about a fast turnaround… Case’s resignation from the club comes after the UK’s top civil servant attempted to make a compelling case for his membership only, er, yesterday. ‘You’ll forgive the impertinence of the question,’

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Lee Anderson’s ‘institutional racism’ takedown

It’s hardly been a week since Lee Anderson defected to the flanks of Reform UK and already the red wall rottweiler is making headlines again. Anderson put Rebecca Knox, chair of Dorset’s fire and rescue authority, on the spot at a Home Affairs Committee meeting today, after she described her own force as ‘institutionally racist’. When Anderson probed what that actually meant, Knox was a little lost for words: LA: So could you please tell me, councillor, what unfair advantages white people have in your force? RK: I would hope none… not advantages. Did I hear you…? LA: Yeah, do they have any advantages? RK: No. LA: So then how

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The hubris of Scotland’s lofty Net Zero targets

Scotland’s climate goals are ‘no longer credible’ and there is ‘no comprehensive strategy’ to move away from carbon to Net Zero. That is the noxious assessment issued today by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the statutory body set up in Scotland to advise national and regional government on emissions policies. Underscoring the gap between rhetoric heard and action seen, the committee delivers an almighty verbal skelping to the SNP and its carefully cultivated image as a green government. Under the SNP’s Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019, ‘the Scottish ministers must ensure that the net Scottish emissions account for the year 2030 is at least 75 per cent

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Jeremy Hunt should listen to James Dyson

All Sir James Dyson wanted was to do what hundreds of business people and lobbyists have done before him: spend a little time with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and have a good old moan – initially about research and development tax relief but then extending to other subjects such as corporation tax, high levels of public spending and – according to reports – the number of diversity managers in the NHS.  But Jeremy Hunt’s reaction seems to have taken him aback. Apparently exasperated by Dyson’s list of complains at a Downing Street meeting last week, the Chancellor told Dyson that if he didn’t like the government he should seek

Gray Sergeant

China’s threats to Kinmen should be taken seriously

When two Chinese fisherman died last month trying to flee Taiwan’s coastguard, Beijing laid the blame at Taipei’s feet and demanded an apology. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also spied an opportunity to advance its territorial claims. China has been targeting Kinmen, an island controlled by Taiwan, more aggressively over the past few weeks. The CCP stated that ‘there is no such thing as “prohibited or restricted waters”’ – saying that the waters around the island had been used as traditional fishing grounds by both sides. On the morning of 19 February, four Chinese coast guard vessels patrolled around Kinmen’s restricted waters. Personnel boarded and inspected a Taiwanese tourist boat that had ‘veered slightly of course’. The next day, a

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Sunak or Starmer ever say anything new at PMQs?

Rishi Sunak will have been grateful to have got through Prime Minister’s Questions today with little criticism – at least from his own side. The session opened with a loyal planted question on the inflation figures, which allowed Sunak to tell the Commons that ‘our plan is working’ and underline that this was the steepest fall since the 1980s.  Once that was over, the session then descended into a pretty run-of-the-mill grudge match between Sunak and Keir Starmer, with the latter listing things that weren’t working and asking why the Prime Minister wasn’t calling an election. Sunak’s responses contained some minor developments in his attacks on Starmer for defending Hizb

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Leo Varadkar resigns following crushing referendum defeat

The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is to step down as Ireland’s prime minister and as the leader of his party, Fine Gael. In an announcement this lunchtime in Dublin, Varadkar said he would quit as party leader with immediate effect, but stay in the role of Taoiseach until his successor is appointed. Explaining his decision, Varadkar cited ‘personal and political reasons’: ‘After careful consideration and soul searching, I don’t feel I’m the best person for the job anymore’. Varadkar encouraged people to vote to expand the definition of the family Varadkar – who first became Ireland’s Taoiseach in 2017 – went on to say that there is ‘never a right time

Steerpike Steerpike

David Lammy’s Thatcher u-turn

As Labour prepares for power, the party’s leading lights are busy u-turning: not least on their views on Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady is Labour’s inspiration du jour, much to the anger of the party’s lefties. First, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones claimed that Thatcher oversaw a decade of ‘national renewal’. Then shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves chose to pitch herself as a modern day Iron Lady at Tuesday’s Mais lecture. And now shadow foreign secretary David Lammy has been busy singing Thatcher’s praises, with Lammy telling Politico that the Tory leader was a ‘visionary leader for the UK’. But Lammy has not always been keen to

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Did Jeremy Hunt reduce inflation?

12 min listen

Inflation has fallen to 3.4 per cent, it was announced this morning. Jeremy Hunt said it was a sign that the government’s economic plan is working. Is he right? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP ministers caught up in racism row

Oh dear. As the Conservatives struggle to put the remarks of their biggest donor to bed, the governing party north of the border now has its own racism row to deal with. This week’s pro-indy ‘Scotonomics’ festival is being co-hosted in Dundee by founder Kairin van Sweeden, a former SNP councillor accused of racism last year. The unenviable speaker line-up also includes two SNP politicians, wellbeing economy secretary Mairi McAllan MSP and energy minister Gillian Martin MSP, who have found themselves in a spot of bother after it emerged who the event host was. The festival’s founder and former SNP councillor was forced to quit the party last year after

Monica Porter

Is Viktor Orbán really anti-Semitic?

Much of the criticism directed at Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s long-serving populist prime minister, is richly deserved. Orbán poses as the bête noire of the EU, despite Hungary being a net recipient of EU largesse. Another source of the opprobrium directed against Orbán is his opposition to aiding Ukraine in its existential war against Russia. This is downright indecent for someone who, as a handsome young political firebrand in 1989, helped to end Soviet control of Hungary. Has Orbán forgotten, now that he is grey-haired and rather porky, what it means to yearn for your country’s freedom and independence? Continued access to cheap Russian gas and oil just isn’t a good

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Inflation drops to its lowest level in two years

Inflation has slowed once again, to 3.4 per cent in the 12 months to February, down from 4 per cent in January. This takes the inflation rate to its lowest level in two and a half years, and keeps inflation on track for the Bank’s target of 2 per cent this spring. The fall in the headline rate was slightly bigger than expected – economists had forecast 3.5 per cent – driven by a fall in food prices, which slowed from 7 per cent on the year to January to 5 per cent in February. Restaurant and cafe prices also contributed to the falling rate: down to 6 per cent

Rachel Reeves
Paul Mason

Five takeaways from Rachel Reeves’s Mais speech

We live in an age of stunts and soundbites so it was refreshing to hear a politician stand up and, for the best part of an hour, explain their political philosophy to an audience savvy enough to shred it. That’s what Labour’s Rachel Reeves did at last night’s Mais lecture.  She summoned the ghosts of heterodox leftists Karl Polanyi, Joan Robinson and Marie Curie to explain that Britain stands on the brink of a global economic regime change just as big as the one begun in 1979, that the Tories have left us bystanders, and that Labour is the only party that can make it happen.  Though she didn’t mention

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

How big will Rachel Reeves’s state be?

Every year the Mais lecture, hosted by Bayes Business School, gives its speaker a chance to lay out their vision for the economy. It’s how we knew Rishi Sunak would prioritise fiscal prudence over tax cuts long before he entered Number 10. Last night it was Rachel Reeves’s turn.  The message seemed to be: build up the state to get it out of the way As expected, there were no big policy announcements about what Labour might do in power. But that wasn’t the point of the speech. Reeves formally committed to keeping Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal rule, to get debt falling as a percentage of GDP in a rolling five-year forecast. This

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Football is in enough trouble without a ‘regulator’

Unlike David Cameron – who famously got in a muddle about which team he supported – Rishi Sunak is a genuine football fan. But this makes the government’s latest wheeze of introducing a football regulator hard to take. Sunak says the outfit will help to prevent the ‘financial mismanagement’ of ‘unscrupulous owners’. It is, he says, a ‘historic moment for football fans’. Not everyone is convinced. The Premier League is one of Britain’s most famous exports. Millions of people around the world follow teams like Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool. Its success is because these clubs have been left relatively free to conduct business: snapping up the best players and

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Does Rachel Reeves have the answers?

Rachel Reeves has given her much-anticipated speech about what she’d do as the first female chancellor in history. As briefed, her Mais lecture was a look at Labour’s ‘securonomics’ economic policy, with promises to beef up the Treasury, as well as analysis of Nigel Lawson’s 1984 Mais lecture, and an insistence that ‘I don’t want to make this a party political speech any more than you want me to’. Both Reeves and the Conservatives are dodging questions Some of the most striking lines were the ones where she reflected on Labour’s own record in government, telling the audience that ‘the analysis on which [New Labour’s policies were] built was too

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

How to fix the elites

Few things get the British quite as worked up as private schools. To the left, they are factories of inequality that turn scions of privilege into the elite of tomorrow. To the right, they are an expression of parental choice and part of Britain’s schooling heritage. To ambitious mothers and fathers, they are a way to boost the professional and social chances of their offspring. To many others, they are the source of every smarmy, over-confident midwit ever encountered in life.  Their fees are also exempt from VAT, which is a sore point for a lot of people. Not because it means the exchequer loses out on a great deal