Politics

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

Wednesday

24 Jan 2024

Steerpike

Foreign Office blows £110k on KCL counter-terrorist courses

It was ten days ago that Mr S brought news of the latest controversy to embroil our ancient seats of learning, after a lecturer at a leading London university allegedly suggested Douglas Murray should be ‘suppressed’. Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, was subsequently forced to order a review into the Home Office’s use of external courses after it was claimed that the training sessions, put on by the security studies department of King’s College London (KCL), amounted to ‘indoctrination’. But now some diligent digging in the House of Lords has revealed just how much these courses have been costing the British taxpayer. Dean Godson, the Tory peer and director of

Mark Galeotti

Who shot down the plane carrying Ukrainian PoWs?

It will prove to be a terrible and tragic irony if it turns out that Kyiv shot down a Russian transport aircraft today that was transporting Ukrainian prisoners of war ready to be exchanged. Around 11 a.m. local time this morning an Il-76 transport aircraft crashed in a fireball near the Russian village of Yablonova in the Belgorod Region, some 35 miles from the Russian-Ukrainian border. Everyone on board was killed. It appears that, perhaps alongside a military cargo, the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian PoWs – if the claims of the Russian defence ministry are to be believed. As is always the case in this war, multiple and contradictory explanations

Oscar Edmondson

Does Simon Clarke’s intervention matter?

12 min listen

Tory MP Simon Clarke called for Rishi Sunak to resign last night. In a piece in the Telegraph, he wrote that the Prime Minister was ‘uninspiring’ and ‘does not get what Britain needs.’ Will other Conservative MPs also demand Sunak resign, or will they unify around their leader? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.

Isabel Hardman

When will Starmer and Sunak get with the times at PMQs?

‘Another week with no ideas. Absolutely no ideas for this country and absolutely no plans.’ Either Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer could have hurled that insult across the chamber at Prime Minister’s Questions this week – or indeed any week. Once again, both leaders were arguing over who didn’t have a plan, with a few contemporaneous references thrown in here and there so that viewers tuning in could be confident they weren’t watching a re-run. Starmer made an early reference to the latest unrest in the Conservative party – unrest that’s currently almost more ludicrous than the overall situation, given Simon Clarke remains the only MP marching up the hill

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak slaps down Labour MP over Gaza

A feisty session of PMQs today. As speculation swirls around the future of the Tory leadership, Sir Keir Starmer sought to go for the jugular by channelling Tony Blair in the dying days of the Major government. ‘I’ve changed my party, he’s bullied by his’, he told the House to cheers. But Starmer’s efforts to present his party as cured from the effects of long Corbyn were somewhat hindered towards the end of the session when one of his own backbenchers rose to ask the Prime Minister a question. Labour MP Tahir Ali directed a verbal barrage at Sunak, accusing the Tory leader of having the blood of innocent people

Ross Clark

Hinkley C and the rising cost of net zero

Should we be bothered that Hinckley C nuclear power station has run even further over budget (the latest estimate is £35 billion, nearly twice that quoted when the project was given the go-ahead in 2016) and that its completion date has been put back yet further, to 2031? After all, the whole point of offering French energy giant EDF a guaranteed ‘strike price’ at the then juicy rate of £92.50 per megawatt-hour (at 2013 prices, rising with inflation) was supposed to be to transfer financial risk to EDF and its financial backers. ‘It is important to say that British consumers won’t pay a penny, with the increased costs met entirely

Rory Geoghegan

Why is the British Transport Police launching a bursary for British Africans?

Some of Britain’s police chiefs are in a total pickle when it comes to race, not least as a result of them rushing to embrace critical race theory and anti-racist ideology in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the United States in 2020. Whether actually captured, or simply pretending to be, they have committed policing to a political course that risks ending very badly. The latest development has seen a police force agreeing to fund a bursary for a law student, but only if they are ‘British African’. At a time when many of our public institutions are happy for you to identify however you like, something tells me

Isabel Hardman

Simon Clarke isn’t the only Tory MP unhappy with Sunak

Simon Clarke’s detonation last night didn’t come as a huge surprise. The Tory whips had already pre-briefed a group of MPs that the Daily Telegraph piece calling for Sunak to go was incoming, and asked them to get out and fight Clarke’s comments. For all the whips’ efforts, there are other Conservative MPs who are planning to join Clarke It also didn’t come as a huge surprise to the Tory MPs who are deeply unhappy with the way the party is being led. Many of them have been privately complaining for a long time that there is no clear plan from the Prime Minister. They have been left trying to

Patrick O’Flynn

Clarke’s bid to oust Sunak has flopped – for now

It was ‘the knife of the long knight’, joked one social media wag about the bid by the unfeasibly tall Sir Simon Clarke to oust Rishi Sunak from 10 Downing Street. So lanky was he as a youth that Clarke was nicknamed ‘stilts’ in his schooldays. Conventional wisdom at Westminster will tell you this morning that his attempted coup is nonsense on stilts as well. Certainly, there has thus far been a notable lack of colleagues replicating his call for Sunak to stand down. And yet, in recent years Westminster conventional wisdom has often got things wrong. Just because there is no sign of Clarke’s media-based revolt catching fire right

Steerpike

Keir Starmer turns his guns on Lee Anderson

What is a woman? It’s a question Sir Keir Starmer has sometimes struggled with in the past. So it was perhaps no surprise then that the Labour leader chose not to pontificate on the subject when he addressed the women’s lobby drinks. Instead, Starmer opted to focus on warm words for his hosts and look ahead to the forthcoming election, full of glamours like endless vox pops, ‘24/7 Conservative strategy relaunches’ and ‘coffee – so much coffee’. But it wasn’t all politics of course. Sir Keir told the attendant hacks that he is keeping abreast of popular culture via the hit TV series The Traitors on BBC One. For those unfamiliar

Kate Nicholls

Why won’t the SNP do more to save Scotland’s pubs?

One of life’s simple pleasures is meeting up with friends at the local pub, catching up (or venting about the stress of a tough week) over good food and a couple of drinks. But unfortunately it’s becoming more and more difficult to do just that. Much-loved community assets, like the local pub, find themselves closing at a quicker rates than we have seen for years, particularly in Scotland. Why is this the case? There are a number of contributing factors, including the legacy of the pandemic, a barrage of rising costs and the impact of a cost-of-living crisis on consumer spending. But the real nail in the coffin has been

Gavin Mortimer

France’s new PM Gabriel Attal is already fighting fires

Gabriel Attal has only been in his job for two weeks but the youngest prime minister in the history of the Fifth Republic is already facing a series of crises. The most pressing issue for the 34-year-old premier is the farmers’ protest, which began last Friday when a blockade was erected on the A64 motorway west of Toulouse. Early yesterday morning a car drove into the blockade, killing a farmer and her 12-year-old daughter. Details of the crash emerged throughout the day: it was not a deliberate act, the driver and the occupants were foreign and were confused by the protest. Then it was revealed that the three people in

Freddy Gray

Donald Trump swallows New Hampshire

Donald Trump has, like a boa constrictor, squeezed the life out of the Republican primary cycle. Last night, he swallowed New Hampshire and possibly Nikki Haley too. Haley did better than many of the late polls suggested. But that’s not saying much. She won 44 per cent of the vote, finishing 12 points behind Trump. She now has the momentum to move on to South Carolina, where she is thirty points behind in polls. But if she couldn’t win here in New Hampshire, where independents can vote in the Republican primary, it seems unlikely she can win anywhere. Or, as one Trump campaign official at his campaign’s election night watch party in Nashua put

Iain Macwhirter

The SNP’s juryless trial plan is falling apart

The SNP government has rarely demonstrated great respect for legal precedent or the rights of the individual. When Humza Yousaf was justice secretary back in 2020, he forced through the most illiberal curbs on freedom of speech in British history with the Hate Crime (Scotland) Act. This criminalised ‘stirring up hatred’, even in the privacy of one’s home. So it is perhaps not surprising that, as First Minister, Yousaf now seems bent on abolishing the right to trial by jury, one of the oldest legal protections against arbitrary injustice. The Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, before Holyrood’s justice committee this week, will introduce a pilot of judge-only trials in

Tuesday

23 Jan 2024

Steerpike

Tory WhatsApp group rows in behind Sunak

It’s a fun night on Tory WhatsApp tonight. Sir Simon Clarke – a cabinet minister under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – has tonight issued a call in the Daily Telegraph for Rishi Sunak to resign. But over on the Tory WhatsApp group of MPs, there is little sign that the parliamentarians are bolting just yet. Jackie Doyle-Price, a stalwart supporter of Liz Truss, was first to row in, writing on the group that the ‘one thing that the public expects of a Conservative government more than anything else’ is ‘behaving like grown ups.’ Noting that ‘the best thing any of us can do about tonight’s report is not engage

Katy Balls

Former minister calls for Sunak to go – or face ‘election massacre’

Here we go. Ever since 11 Tory MPs voted against the Safety of Rwanda Bill last week, talk has resurfaced that the party has a death wish. The problem is that different MPs define that as different things. While a mass of Conservative MPs say the rebellion over Sunak’s plan to stop the boats amounts to self-destructive behaviour, the rebels argue that sticking with Rishi Sunak as leader when the party’s polling is so bad that it amounts to self-harm. Tonight one such rebel has gone public with these thoughts. Step forward Simon Clarke. Clarke – who served in Liz Truss’s cabinet – has written an column for Wednesday’s Telegraph

Edward Stringer

We need to deal with the Houthis’ puppet-master: Iran

Predictably, the US/UK military coalition that attacked Houthi forces twelve days ago has been in action again. ‘Predictably’ because the initial strike was always unlikely to dismantle the Houthis now extensive capacity to attack shipping in the Red Sea. But, more importantly, because it is currently in their interests to keep up the belligerence, as it is very much in the interests of their main backer: Iran. And not just Iran. Those questioning the financial wisdom of using high-tech western missiles costing millions to defeat rudimentary rockets and drones costing thousands aren’t quite drawing the right equation. If a million-dollar missile saves a billion-dollar ship then it is worth it

Steerpike

Sturgeon: ‘Don’t worry about protocol’

Oh dear. It seems the blessed Nicola has slipped up again. Away from the high sea shenanigans of the fuity Houthi rebels, up in Edinburgh the extent of Sturgeon’s secret state is well and truly being exposed. Today the Scottish Covid Inquiry published text messages from the former First Minister to her onetime advisor, the sainted Devi Sridhar. They show that, at the height of the pandemic in summer 2020, Sturgeon was advising Sridhar to contact her by channels which would not fall under Scotland’s freedom of information laws and therefore could not be made public. In one text from 4 June, Shridar texted to ask Sturgeon ‘I’ve done a

Brendan O’Neill

It’s not Palestinian blood that is cheap, Humza Yousaf

Sometimes a politician says something that makes you wonder if they’re living on a different planet. This week it was Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf. He said there is a dearth of political concern for the poor people of Gaza. It feels like ‘Palestinian blood is very cheap’, he said. It seems to me that it isn’t concern for Muslim life that motors the protesting classes – it’s contempt for Israel I’m sorry, what? There have been more public displays of sorrow for the people of Gaza than for any other people caught up in a war as far back as I can remember. Solidarity with Gazans is virtually mandatory

Ed West

Britain isn’t a free country

I’m old enough to remember when ‘it’s a free country’ was a phrase people used in conversation. It feels like it was the kind of thing they said regularly, either when someone asked permission to do something or when commenting on some particular eccentricity. Can I sit there? It’s a free country. You want to walk around dressed up as a pirate? Well, it’s a free country. Perhaps it reflected a self-conscious British sense of themselves as freedom-loving people – which isn’t really true, or at least hasn’t been since 1914 – or maybe it was a Cold War thing. But I don’t think I’ve heard the phrase in at least 20 years,