Politics

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

Thursday

18 Jan 2024

Steerpike

Starmer flip-flops on his CPS record

He’s at it again. Like those unscrupulous bosses he professes to despise, Sir Keir Starmer enjoys taking the credit when things go right – but is rather less keen to take the blame when things go wrong. A prime example of this was offered today in an interview today with ITV, when he was asked about Rishi Sunak’s PMQs jibe about his legal record and his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013. Sir Keir replied that: If they want to attack me for decisions when I was Director of Public Prosecutions… we had 7,000 staff, we made nearly a million decisions a year. Will there be

Steerpike

Sergei Lavrov: War has had a ‘positive impact on life in Russia’

Just when you thought Putin’s regime couldn’t sink any lower, it somehow manages to. Like something out of George Orwell’s 1984, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov declared that, actually, the Kremlin’s bloody war in Ukraine had had a ‘positive impact on life inside [Russia]’. Speaking at a foreign ministry press conference, Lavrov said this was because Putin’s ‘special military operation’ had united the country and ‘enabled it to be cleansed of all those who felt no sense of belonging to Russian history or culture’ after thousands moved abroad in opposition to the war. It hardly needs saying that the nearly 20,000 Russians detained for protesting against the war, and the

Cindy Yu

Is the ERG a spent force?

12 min listen

After much back and forth, the Rwanda Bill passed last night with only 11 votes against while other critics, such as Lee Anderson who resigned his party role, abstained. Rishi Sunak can celebrate a small victory as it appears that the Brexit ‘Spartans’ of yesteryear are something of a spent force today. Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Steerpike

Now even Humza distances himself from the SNP

You know your brand is struggling when even the boss wants to ditch it. For it seems that hapless Humza Yousaf has ‘done a Ratner’ today by distancing himself from the increasingly-toxic SNP brand. With his party set to lose half their seats to Labour, the flailing First Minister has decided that now is the right time to freely confess that he has ‘never really been comfortable’ with the Scottish National Party’s name. In an interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson on his Political Thinking podcast, Yousaf admitted that he did not like the connotations of the word ‘nationalist’, suggesting that the ‘national’ in the SNP’s name could be ‘misinterpreted’. Gosh,

Katy Balls

Sunak goes on the offensive over Rwanda

Who is to blame if no flights with asylum seekers leave the UK for Rwanda ahead of the election? In a Downing Street press conference this morning, Rishi Sunak tried to suggest the answer would be the House of Lords or Labour rather than his government. In a bid to capitalise on the ‘Safety of Rwanda’ bill passing at third reading in the Commons last night, Sunak urged peers not to ‘frustrate the will of the people’ when the legislation now passes to the Lords: ‘There is now only one question. Will the opposition in the appointed House of Lords try and frustrate the will of the people as expressed

Jawad Iqbal

The clash between Iran and Pakistan is spiralling out of control

Pakistan’s retaliatory military strike on suspected militant bases in Iran – in response to Iranian attacks in Pakistani territory – can only escalate tensions between the two countries. It will also ring alarm bells elsewhere across an increasingly jittery Middle East but also further afield in India and China. The Chinese have friendly relations with both Pakistan and Iran. India, meanwhile, is always on high alert whenever Pakistan’s military forces flex their muscles. All in all, there is a real danger that more and more countries will be sucked into the volatile and unpredictable vortex of the Middle East conflict. The Pakistani military action follows Iran’s attacks on the Jaish ul-Adl, a

Freddy Gray

How the Democrats went from hope to fear

‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ said Franklin D. Roosevelt, famously. The Democrats of 2024 have a rather different message for the world: Be Very Afraid! ‘I’m scared as heck,’ said vice president, Kamala Harris, yesterday, as she discussed the ‘crazies’ who might put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office. Not for the first time, Harris was echoing the sentiments of Michelle Obama, the former First Lady: ‘I am terrified,’ Michelle told a podcast last week. ‘We cannot take this democracy for granted.’ We’re a long way from 2008, when Michelle’s husband won the White House by appealing to the opposite emotion. ‘We choose hope over fear,’

Alexander Horne

Will the Lords block Rishi’s Rwanda Bill?

Rishi Sunak will have been delighted last night to see his Rwanda Bill pass in the Commons, by 320 votes to 276. An expected Conservative rebellion was quelled, with only 11 Conservative MPs voting against the measure and no amendments accepted. The vote exposed the posturing of the Conservative rebels. Fifty nine Conservative MPs were prepared to back an amendment tabled by Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, which would have meant that ‘interim measures’ made by the European Court of Human Rights would automatically be treated as not binding on the UK. But, when it came to the crunch, the vast majority of Conservative MPs could not bring themselves to

Steerpike

Lee Anderson: Laughing Labour MPs stopped me voting against Rwanda Bill

Tory MP Lee Anderson’s name was a curious omission from the list of rebels who voted against Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Bill. Anderson’s absence was surprising given that this week he resigned as deputy chair of the Conservative party over the legislation to ‘stop the boats’. ‘I don’t think I could carry on in my role when I fundamentally disagree with the bill. I can’t be in a position to vote for something I don’t believe in,’ Anderson said on Tuesday. But last night, having walked into the ‘No’ lobby to vote against the Bill, the Red Wall MP changed his mind – and decided to abstain. Why? Because, he said,

Patrick O’Flynn

Why did Tory MPs trash the Rwanda Bill – and then vote for it?

There is a scene in the film Reservoir Dogs where three gangsters are pointing guns at each other and one suggests they should put down their weapons and ‘settle this with a conversation’. Instead the trio create the ultimate bloodbath by all pulling their triggers. The absence of trust can do that to people. Just look at the goings on in the Conservative parliamentary party this week. Not content with spraying reputational ketchup over Rishi Sunak by trashing his Rwanda Bill as a mendacious con job which he must know won’t work, the Tory right has gone on to shred its own credibility by, in the main, tamely assenting to

Stephen Daisley

Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Bill is a sham

In voting through the government’s Rwanda Bill, Conservative MPs have made a declaration: they want to reduce illegal immigration but they don’t want to take any of the hard choices required to do so. The final version of the Bill is the worst of both worlds, tailored to the sensitivities of the Tory left and yet still wide open to legal challenge. The chances that anything more than a token number of illegal immigrants are transferred to Rwanda between now and the election, whenever that is, are extremely slim. Those who faithfully parrot the Number 10 line will regard the Bill’s passage as a political victory for Rishi Sunak. He

David Shipley

Why do we send the wrong people to prison?

In prison, I met a lot of men who said they shouldn’t be there. They presented detailed mitigations, and listed all the flaws in the prosecution’s evidence. The truth is though, that most of us had been sentenced for crimes we’d committed. There were very few men inside who shouldn’t have been there. Mark, though, did not belong in prison. I first met Mark in HMP Wandsworth when he became my fourth cellmate. He was a quiet lad, with dark floppy hair which he hid behind, avoiding my gaze. It didn’t take long to realise something was very wrong with him. We watched the news; we watched the soaps: Mark

Douglas Murray

The long-overdue banning of Hizb ut-Tahrir

Well, better late than never, I suppose. This week the Home Secretary James Cleverly announced that the government has finally decided to ban the Islamic extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. For some readers this may sound like a familiar story. In the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 terror attacks in London, the then prime minister Tony Blair declared that ‘the rules of the game are changing’. One of his most ardent promises was that he would ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group which was already banned in many Islamic countries that might be said to have a wiser attitude towards the extremists in their midst than we do. It is hard

Rod Liddle

The West must stop playing Mr Nice Guy

Iwas intrigued to learn from our Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, that we are now in a ‘pre-war’ phase and that there is an almost inevitability of eventual conflict with one or two of the world’s superpowers. I read his comments on the same day that the German newspaper Das Bild reported that Russia was planning to invade western Europe within 18 months. This is all very worrying, not least because Grant Shapps is our Defence Secretary. I don’t think I’d trust Grant to provide military back-up for a whelk stall, but then I suspect that his likely successor, John Healey, will be no more effective. The problem both men have

Katy Balls

Regicide is in the air for the Tories

An election year, a tired government accused of being in power too long, and a bickering party. This was the backdrop to the coup against Gordon Brown in 2010 when Geoff Hoon – the defence secretary under Tony Blair – and his fellow ex-minister Patricia Hewitt called for a secret ballot. The coup was a miserable failure and became an example of how not to do it. Hoon conceded in less than 24 hours that they had failed and it was ‘over’. What went wrong? At the time it was attributed to a combination of bad timing, half-hearted plotters and the failure of the most credible candidate (David Miliband) to

Wednesday

17 Jan 2024

Isabel Hardman

Only 11 Tories vote against Rwanda Bill

As expected, the Commons has backed the Safety of Rwanda Bill at third reading by 320 votes to 276. Just 11 Tory MPs voted against, with the full list below. This afternoon, the noise from the rebels became rather more muffled, with the ‘five families’ of right-wing backbenchers announcing that the majority would be supporting it. The final attempt from former immigration minister Robert Jenrick to toughen the Bill up failed, which was expected too, but 61 Tory MPs did still rebel on his amendment, which aimed to block so-called ‘pyjama injunctions’ from European judges. Labour’s Stella Creasy clashed with a number of Tories, including Suella Braverman and Danny Kruger

James Heale

Rwanda rebels fold to guarantee Sunak victory

The Rwanda Bill will tonight pass its Third Reading in the House of Commons, after right-wing rebels threw in the towel. Speaking after a meeting of the so-called ‘five families’, rebel sources confirmed that a majority of members from the European Research Group (ERG) and Common Sense Group (CSG) will be voting with the government tonight. A minority are expected to vote against the legislation on principle. Estimates for the number of Tories who are likely to oppose the government on its flagship legislation are in the region of 10 MPs; rather than the 30-odd which would be put the legislation at risk of a humiliating defeat. Around 40 Conservative

Lloyd Evans

Rishi Sunak’s nightmare PMQs

Wow. For Rishi fans, that was one to forget. The Tory leader lacked his usual fluency and focus at PMQs today. Instead of a hungry whippet leaping out of the traps, we watched a fretful hare being chased around the circuit. If mockery won votes, this was a landslide Rishi’s sub-par effort coincided with a rare display of competence from Sir Keir Starmer who, for once, used clever tactics at the despatch box. He cooked up a difficult to answer question and asked it again and again. Why doesn’t he do that every week? Rishi kept parroting the same non-answers which made him look feeble. The issue was Rwanda, and

Steerpike

Watch: Braverman schools Stella Creasy on Nato

Oh dear. It seems that the right-on Member for Walthamstow is wrong again. Watching the Rwanda Bill debate this afternoon, Mr S was struck by an exchange between Stella Creasy and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The latter was in full flow, decrying the indignities of Westminster’s subservience to Strasbourg’s judges when Creasy rose to intervene. Braverman duly paused her remarks on the importance of respecting the 2016 referendum result to graciously give way. So, what was the point that Creasy urgently needed to make? That, er, the ECHR was just like the defence alliance Nato: I just wonder if she could clarify, because she’s got a concern there about a

Euan McColm

Is the SNP changing its tune on free university places?

The SNP’s much trumpeted policy of free university tuition allows ‘radicals’ to indulge their fantasies of Scotland as a fair and compassionate country. Nationalist politicians sell the scheme as a way of opening up higher education to those who might previously have been priced out of post-school study. The reality is that the wealthiest are the scheme’s big winners: a higher proportion of children from better off backgrounds go on to university. Is the SNP now having a long overdue rethink? Appearing before Holyrood’s finance committee on Tuesday, deputy first minister and finance secretary Shona Robison said 1,200 spaces for Scottish students would not be funded next year. When Labour