Politics

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

Thursday

22 Feb 2024

Russians feel bleaker than ever after Alexei Navalny’s death

The news about Alexei Navalny’s death came as a shock to anti-Putin Russians like myself – he’d been a central figure of opposition in Russia for more than 15 years. Yet in other ways, not a surprise at all – for three years he’d been in the claws of a regime with a long-established history of getting rid of its better-known opponents. Navalny himself was realistic about his chances, saying in court he was ‘under the total control of men who adore applying chemical weapons to everything, and no one would bet three kopecks on my life now.’ But still, with Navalny you held onto the irrational hope it might

Jawad Iqbal

Why do football managers like Thomas Tuchel always get the blame?

Bayern Munich’s decision to part ways with their coach Thomas Tuchel is a rather bizarre form of managerial sacking. Tuchel is leaving the job but will be allowed to stay in charge until the end of the season. This can only make a team that is in free fall more unstable. In a statement on the club’s website, Jan-Christian Dreesen, the Bayern chief executive, said: ‘In an open, good conversation we came to the decision to mutually end our collaboration in the summer.’ This is the same Dreesen who told reporters hours earlier that Tuchel would not be dismissed anytime soon. Tuchel was singing the same tune about an end

Katy Balls

Could Britain have a farmers’ revolt?

Nine years ago, when Rishi Sunak was campaigning to be the Conservative candidate for Richmond in Yorkshire, he knew his background wouldn’t work in his favour. Here was a millionaire City slicker – fresh from a spell in Silicon Valley – standing in a rural safe seat against local rivals. William Hague, who was retiring from the seat, told him he’d need to do a crash course in country living. Sunak replied that he’d milk some cows right away. Now, the Prime Minister takes great pride in his familiarity with rural issues. He cites hill farming as a passion and boasts to friends of his ‘deep knowledge of sheep’. The

The Spectator

Citizens’ assemblies are a dreadful idea

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is a government-in-waiting desperately searching for ideas. It says much about the leader of the opposition that arguably the biggest proposal he’s put forward comes not from him but from his chief of staff, Sue Gray. She, it seems, is enthused about the idea of citizens’ assemblies, and wants more of them to look into issues such as constitutional reform, devolution and housing. That is one step on from Tony Blair’s focus groups, with randomly selected members of the public placed one step closer to power and adopting the role of government advisers. So-called citizens’ assemblies are not an extension of democracy but an attempt

Wednesday

21 Feb 2024

Katy Balls

Lindsay Hoyle has lost control of the Commons

Ahead of the SNP’s opposition day debate calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the expectation was that it could herald Keir Starmer’s biggest rebellion to date. Labour MPs – including some frontbenchers – warned that they would back the SNP motion unless Labour moved its position. Instead, the House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle’s decision to defy convention and allow a vote on a Labour amendment to the motion (on top of a government amendment) has led to chaotic scenes in the chamber that have been more dramatic than those during the Brexit wars. Starmer had tried to quell the likely Labour rebellion by putting forward an amendment to

Steerpike

Watch: Tory MP blasts Speaker over ceasefire debacle

The chaos of the Brexit days has reignited in parliament tonight. The drama broke out after Speaker Lindsay Hoyle selected a Labour amendment calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, despite the Clerk of the House’s warning that doing so went against parliamentary convention. Hoyle reportedly wanted to offer a wider debate, in light of concerns about MPs safety. In response, the government pulled its own amendment and the SNP joined in with the anger. The Speaker attempted to placate MPs by returning to the Commons to apologise – but sorry wasn’t good enough for some MPs. The SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn wondered whether Hoyle could stay in his job.

Isabel Hardman

Lindsay Hoyle apologises amid Commons chaos

The Commons has gone into meltdown this evening over the Speaker’s handling of the Gaza ceasefire motion, with the Speaker expressing ‘regret’ for the way the debate ended up. SNP and Tory MPs stormed out at one point, and MPs voted on whether to close the chamber to the press and public as part of the row about the selection of two amendments to the SNP motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. It was defeated with just 20 MPs voting in favour. The vote was delayed because Tory MPs staged a sit-in in the No lobby. The motion as amended by Labour was then passed on the nod, without a

Lloyd Evans

Parliament’s Gaza vote won’t help anyone

The big issue at PMQs today was the motion calling for an end to hostilities in Gaza. In itself this is extraordinary, bordering on the outright barmy. The British mandate in Palestine expired in 1948 but many MPs seem to imagine that this troubled corner of the Middle East is part of their constituencies. The derangement is strongest on the left where people who disparage everything the Empire once represented seem to pine for its reinstatement as soon as they find a hotspot they want to rescue. Some commentators wondered if ‘Batman syndrome’ would strike Sir Keir Starmer but he refused to don the cape and tights today. Instead he

Steven Fielding

Starmer doesn’t need to be loved to win the next election

Conservatives are currently reassuring themselves that a general election defeat is not inevitable because, as Nadine Dorries put it recently, ‘There is no love for Keir Starmer on the doorstep’. This line has been heard many times since the by-election defeats in Wellingborough and Kingswood last week. In the aftermath of those by-elections, the Conservatives pointed to the low voter turnouts and argued that Labour wasn’t adding any more votes to their 2019 totals. Some even said that so modest was Labour’s majority, that had Reform not stood in Kingswood, the Conservative candidate would have retained the seat. There are even more crumbs of comfort for the Tories to glean

Katy Balls

Has Lindsay Hoyle overstepped?

12 min listen

Sir Keir Starmer can breathe a sigh of relief this afternoon, thanks to Lindsay Hoyle. The Speaker has selected Labour’s amendment on a Gaza ceasefire, which means that a likely mass rebellion from Labour MPs will be averted. SNP and Tory MPs are furious at Hoyle, and say that he has tried to rewrite the rules. What’s going on? Katy Balls speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Patrick O’Flynn

Lindsay Hoyle has become a menace

The Labour party is not very good at electing prime ministers but it is very good indeed at electing House of Commons Speakers. Lindsay Hoyle is the fourth in a row to have been a Labour member, though it should be noted that John Bercow was nominally a Tory when he was installed and didn’t formally join the People’s party until after he stood down. Hoyle has discovered that he rather enjoys the limelight and the sound of his own voice While Bercow took the Speaker’s chair at the behest of many Labour MPs who understood the loathing felt for him by some of his Conservative colleagues, Hoyle attracted substantial

Kate Andrews

Jeremy Hunt’s cash boost isn’t quite what it seems

Jeremy Hunt needed some good news this morning, when the monthly public sector finance update was released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Having promised meaningful tax cuts last month – and then rowed back expectations this month – the Chancellor was hoping for a notable surplus and reduction in borrowing to give himself a bit more room within his fiscal rules to cut tax. January delivered. The ONS reports a surplus of £16.7 billion in January 2024 – not only double the surplus of the same month last year, but a record-breaking surplus (in nominal terms) since records began. Receipts jumped up to £111.4 billion – almost £4 billion more

James Heale

Hoyle helps Starmer by selecting Labour ceasefire amendment

Sir Keir Starmer can breathe a sigh of relief this afternoon. The Speaker has selected his party’s amendment on a Gaza ceasefire, after an hour of frenzied lobbying from the Labour Whips’ Office. Lindsay Hoyle told MPs that he has selected both the Labour and government amendments as this is an issue where they will want to consider a wide range of options. It means that a likely mass rebellion from Labour MPs will be averted – as happened the last time the SNP tabled an opposition day debate on Gaza in December. The Scottish nationalists are furious at Hoyle’s decision to select the Labour amendment. They claim it is

Isabel Hardman

Why is Labour going after Kemi Badenoch?

One person dominated Prime Minister’s Questions, and it wasn’t Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer. It was Kemi Badenoch, who appears to be going deeper into her battle with former Post Office chair Henry Staunton. Starmer decided to deepen the row further today, while Sunak notably didn’t make all that much effort to defend Badenoch beyond what was absolutely necessary. The Labour leader made the focus of his questions about Badenoch, only widening it to the compensation payments for victims of the infected blood scandal towards the end. He asked: Would the Prime Minister be prepared personally to repeat the allegation made by his Business Secretary that the former chair of

Matthew Lynn

London has France to thank for its Brexit win

The City of London would be hollowed out. Bankers would have to retrain as burger chefs. And Paris and Frankfurt would emerge as the twin centres of the European financial markets, leaving London as little more than a backwater. Of all the predictions made by some Remainers during Brexit, there was one that kept re-emerging: that financial trading would inevitably move to the other side of the Channel. It’s clear that this doom mongering was overblown. A deal has finally been struck between EU chiefs and the bloc’s member states that will keep the City of London in business for several years to come. According to Politico, following pressure from

Freddy Gray

Should Julian Assange be extradited to America?

27 min listen

Freddy speaks to philosopher Slavoj Zizek ahead of what we understand will be Julian Assange’s final court appeal against extradition back to the US. The WikiLeaks founder has been wanted by the US authorities after he leaked tens of thousands of highly sensitive documents. On the podcast they discuss the parallels between Assange and Navalny, whether the West is beginning to behave more like the Soviet Union than we ever have, and if WikiLeaks was behind the election of Donald Trump.

Brendan O’Neill

Prince William should keep quiet about Gaza

‘William: Fighting in Gaza must be brought to an end’, bellows the Daily Telegraph‘s front page today, next to an image of a distressed-looking Prince of Wales. Call me a Cromwellian, but what century are we in? I thought the days of British royals haughtily issuing moral instructions, least of all to foreigners, were behind us. I find William’s intervention in the Gaza crisis deeply troubling. To be fair to him (briefly) he didn’t quite order the Israelis to quit their pursuit of Hamas. But he did signal his moral revulsion for the war. And that raises serious questions about the role of the royals. Do we really want our

Ross Clark

The failed Trident missile launch is a big embarrassment for Britain

With Keir Starmer having rid the Labour party of its Corbynite doctrines, Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent would not be expected to feature much in the coming general election campaign. But will that change after the failed test firing of a Trident missile, for the second time in a row? The missile, which was launched from HMS Vanguard off the east coast of the United States in January, was intended to travel to the edge of space before landing in the middle of the Atlantic. Instead, it plopped straight into the sea. We should know a bit more about the incident today when defence secretary Grant Shapps – who was on board

Daniel Thorpe

Is Orban’s family policy coming unstuck?

Hungary’s governing Fidesz party is in crisis over an issue it has staked its credibility on: the defence of the traditional family. One of the ministers who pioneered Viktor Orban’s family policy and served as president of Hungary, Katalin Novak, has been forced to resign over a paedophile scandal. Novak resigned on 10 February after a story revealed she had pardoned a man convicted of covering up sexual abuse cases of children at a state orphanage. Judit Varga, the former minister of justice, who signed off the pardon last April, was also forced out. Varga had been due to lead Fidesz’s list in the upcoming European parliament election. Fidesz pro-family

Steerpike

Tucker Carlson’s spat with Boris Johnson turns nasty

It’s fair to say today that Boris Johnson and Tucker Carlson don’t like each other much. After the invasion of Ukraine, Boris, the former journalist and Prime Minister, accused Carlson, the journalist often tipped to be a future president of the United States, of ‘intimidating’ Republicans who might otherwise help the West stand up to Russia. He’s called Carlson a ‘tool of the Kremlin.’ Carlson, for his part, has called Johnson a ‘terrified old woman.’ Carlson called Johnson a ‘terrified old woman’ Things have only got nastier. Earlier this month, Boris suggested Carlson’s now infamous interview with Vladimir Putin was straight out of ‘Hitler’s playbook’. Carlson, never one to shrink