Politics

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

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Will Charles enjoy a birthday reconciliation with Harry?

Happy birthday, Your Majesty. The King turns 75 today but the celebrations will be muted: Charles is spending the day launching the Coronation Food Project, which is designed to deal with the pressing issue of food shortages throughout the country. He’ll also be hosting a reception for NHS nurses and midwives. For a monarch who has been accused of taking it easy (there was an extended summer break in Scotland), this represents a riposte to his critics. Charles is once again seeking to present himself as a dutiful, committed monarch, getting on with the business of ruling. Yet it is Charles’s private life – particularly his relationship with Prince Harry – that continues to excite most attention and

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Suella Braverman’s downfall is nothing to celebrate

Rishi Sunak’s decision to recall David Cameron from his shepherd’s hut has been hailed as a triumph by centrist dads. They’re convinced that axing nasty Suella Braverman shows that the grown-ups are back in charge. No . 10 insiders are pleased with themselves: one person working in Downing Street told the Sun that the PM’s phone was ‘inundated’ with texts from fellow world leaders welcoming the appointment. But come the next election, Sunak is in for a shock. The decision to axe Braverman marks the beginning of the end for the PM. Whatever the reason for the Home Secretary’s departure, most voters will see that she was forced out for speaking

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The shallow solidarity of saying ‘we’re all Jews’

Over 100,000 French citizens marched peacefully through their cities on Sunday. They did so to show their support for the country’s 500,000 Jews, a growing number of whom have been harassed physically and verbally since Hamas attacked Israel last month.  In the Mediterranean city of Nice many of the 3,000 demonstrators chanted ‘we’re all Jews’, a facile and frankly offensive refrain. It’s become a habit in recent years to virtue signal one’s solidarity with victims of terrorism or religious persecution: not only do we share your pain but also your identity. One suspects that had those non-Jewish demonstrators in Nice been confronted on their way home by a group of Hamas

Jim Lawley

The Catalan volte face that has disgusted Spain

This weekend saw protests across Spain after the acting prime minister, socialist Pedro Sánchez, agreed to a general amnesty for Catalan separatists in return for parliamentary votes to enable him to stay in power. The amnesty will benefit hundreds of separatists facing fines or imprisonment for their involvement in the illegal referendum on independence for Catalonia in 2017, the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence and the concomitant street violence. There have been nine consecutive nights of often violent protest outside the socialist party’s headquarters in Madrid. But Sunday’s demonstrations, convened by the conservative opposition, held at noon in over 50 Spanish cities and attended by hundreds of thousands, were peaceful. At the

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The UK labour market is beginning to cool

Slowly but surely, the labour market in the UK appears to be cooling down. Data from the Office for National Statistics this morning shows the number of job vacancies across the economy fell by another 58,000 between July to September, taking the total figure to an estimated 957,000. This is still far above pre-pandemic levels, but the number has been dropping constantly, and is down again for a sixteenth consecutive period. Meanwhile, both the UK’s unemployment figure and inactivity figure have remained ‘largely unchanged on the quarter’: sitting at 4.2 and 20.9 per cent, respectively. This bodes well for an economy that is trying to dodge the dreaded label of ‘stagflation’. The UK

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin isn’t afraid of Cameron

Considering the obsession Russia has with Britain as the source of all its woes, it is perhaps surprising how David Cameron’s return to politics is being taken. Or rather, how little Moscow thinks it matters. After all, there is a flatteringly pervasive sense that while the United States is the main threat to Russia, Britain is more than just its sidekick. Instead, if Washington has the resources, London has the low cunning. Time and again, the Kremlin claims to see MI6 or the Foreign Office or some other arm of Perfidious Albion behind its reversals. Even the recent allegations that a Ukrainian officer masterminded the bombing of its Nord Stream

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Corbyn refuses 15 times to call Hamas a ‘terror group’

Should Hamas stay in power following the 7 October atrocity on Israel? Should the group’s fighters be called terrorists? Two questions that are simple to answer but not, it seems, for Jeremy Corbyn. The former Labour leader refused 15 times to label Hamas a ‘terror group’ in a testy interview last night with Piers Morgan. While Corbyn said of Hamas ‘everyone knows what they are’, he refused repeatedly to use the ‘t’ word to describe the group that murdered 1,400 Israelis:

Nigel Jones

Nigel Farage’s ‘I’m A Celebrity’ appearance could haunt him

After days of speculation, Nigel Farage has finally confirmed that he has accepted ITV’s invitation to go into the jungle and join Ant and Dec and eleven fellow contestants on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!. It’s a decision he may come to regret. Farage says he has been stoutly resisting offers to appear on the show since 2016, but has at last succumbed to their blandishments, chiefly because of the huge fee offered – reported to be up to £1.5 million. But this isn’t just about money: like many politicians, Farage is a showman and he says the show will give him a chance to ‘connect’ with the

Sasha Lensky

Why Putin doesn’t want to negotiate

Discussion of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia has until recently, among most Western governments, been considered something of a no-go area and a sign of wilting faith. Yet with hopes vanishing that any counter offensive will bring a decisive change in the war, and another, headline-monopolising conflict breaking out in Gaza, this taboo in the West looks set to be broken. During a recent prank call to which she fell victim, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni probably spoke for many when she said there was ‘a lot of fatigue’ over Ukraine and that she herself had some ideas for finding ‘a way out’. Perhaps less remarkably, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban

Jawad Iqbal

David Cameron’s welcome return

British politics is a brutal and unsentimental place when it comes to departing prime ministers. After a few valedictory remarks at the despatch box and the odd tearful farewell, the PM heads off to Buckingham Palace to tender their formal resignation to the monarch. And that’s that – apart from the customary arrival of the Downing Street removal vans to clear away their belongings. It is an unspoken rule that no one, most of all their successors in Downing Street, is particularly keen to welcome a former prime minister back to frontline politics. That is why David Cameron’s return to government as Foreign Secretary is such a shock. It is

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Liz Truss lives on: a look at her Growth Commission’s ideas

Liz Truss may be long gone, but one fragment of her premiership still remains: the Growth Commission she set up to advise on her policy for ‘growth, growth, growth’. The think tank, made up of British, US and Japanese economists and not to be confused with a body of the same name set up by the World Bank, today delivers its ‘growth budget’ – which it claims would boost GDP by a cumulative 23 per cent over the next decade, putting an extra £11,000 in our pockets (or £26,000 per household) by 2043. Economic modelling is best taken with a Siberian mine’s worth of salt – the only certainty is

Kristina Murkett

The many problems with Andrea Jenkyns’s letter to Rishi Sunak

Dear the parents/guardians of Andrea Jenkyns (age 49 years and 5 months), I am concerned that Andrea’s most recent piece – her no-confidence letter to the Prime Minister – does not reflect her true abilities, and given her experience as both Secretary of State for Skills and Secretary of State for Education, I suspect Andrea may not be trying her best here. Andrea’s letter starts well: I enjoyed her use of repetition in the short simple sentence, ‘Enough is enough.’ However, I’m afraid this is not enough in itself. In the next sentence she writes, ‘we have a party leader that’ when it really should be ‘we have a party

Monday

Oscar Edmondson

Tory Twitter had a great reshuffle

Outside of Westminster, cabinet reshuffles can be stale affairs. The who’s in and who’s out has a predictable rhythm, as half familiar faces trudge up and down Downing Street. So spare a thought for the social media editor running the Tories’ Twitter account, who has to drum up excitement for even the greyest of ministerial appointments. Today they succeeded in doing just that: by announcing incoming cabinet members as if they were football transfers. ‘NEW: Esther McVey signs for Cabinet. Done deal and starts today,’ screamed the Conservatives Twitter account. ‘AGREEMENT REACHED: Laura Trott takes up a position in the Treasury as Chief Secretary.’ Whoever is in charge seems to

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Sunak face more no confidence letters?

And so the backlash begins. On Monday evening Andrea Jenkyns MP submitted a letter of no confidence in her ‘Machiavellian’ Prime Minister. It comes at the end of Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle, which saw then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman sacked and, startlingly, former Prime Minister David Cameron return to government. Will the drama never end? Jenkyns’s letter slammed Sunak for sacking Braverman, with Boris Johnson’s former education minister raging that ‘enough is enough’. The MP continued in a rather, er, rambling fashion:  If it wasn’t bad enough that we have a party leader that the party members rejected, the polls demonstrate that the public reject him, and I am in full agreement.

Steerpike Steerpike

Cameron dodges the question on Greensill

Well, well, well. It may have been seven years since David Cameron was last involved in frontline politics, but he’s certainly not forgotten the skill of a political interview. Quizzed this evening by BBC political editor Chris Mason, Cameron managed to, er, dodge just about every question he was asked when it came to the Greensill scandal. Two years ago, Cameron made approximately £8.2 million promoting finance business Greensill Capital, which later collapsed as criminal inquiries into its alleged fraud began. Prior to the company’s collapse, Cameron had intensively lobbied civil servants in 2020 to allow Greensill to lend up to £10 billion in emergency Covid loans. But when quizzed

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

David Cameron? Seriously?

All political careers end in failure but few return to prove it a second time. David Cameron, forced to resign after his defeat in the EU referendum, has been brought back, given a peerage and appointed foreign secretary. His appointment followed the sacking of Suella Braverman as home secretary and James Cleverly’s sidewards move to replace her.  Expect Rishi Sunak’s stenographers in the press to gush over this masterstroke. A heavy-hitter in the cabinet. An experienced pair of hands at the Foreign Office. A return to serious, grown-up politics. Labour will be rattled now! Any such talk will be guff. This is not genius, it’s desperation. The Prime Minister wanted

Steerpike Steerpike

Scottish nationalists hail Cameron’s return

Out with the old and in with the even older. With Lord Cameron today making his return to government as Foreign Secretary, Mr S was intrigued to glean the reaction north of the border. It mustn’t be forgotten, after all, that Cameron is the only UK Prime Minister to have allowed the Nats their hallowed independence referendum, gambling the fate of the union… As Tory politicians murmur about their, er, mixed reaction to Cameron’s return, some Scottish nationalists have been far more effusive. Speaking exclusively to Steerpike, former first minister Alex Salmond admitted that Cameron’s return to government ‘now provides an opportunity for the independence movement’. The current Alba party

James Kirkup James Kirkup

In defence of David Cameron’s comeback

David Cameron is back. This will make some people unhappy, because they dislike the man. Common reasons for disliking Dave include Brexit and austerity. But there’s also the Greensill lobbying and just the general, all-pervading shiny-faced smugness of a man who, one suspects, never really gave a toss about any of it and was just playing at politics to show how clever he is. You might infer from the words above that I am one of those who dislike Cameron. I certainly have reasons to do so, and reasons that are a little more personal than the ones I’ve listed above. My feelings about David Cameron have informed a great many

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Lord Cameron a ‘useful idiot’ for the CCP?

Let the great kow-tow begin – again. David Cameron, the new Foreign Secretary, is well-known for his attempt to create a ‘golden era’ in Anglo-China relations when prime minister. This essentially meant turning a blind eye to Chinese misdeeds and espionage on the condition that Beijing kept pumping money into the British economy.  But it’s his China-related activities out of office that invite even more scrutiny, especially now that he’s back in government.  Just a few weeks ago, in September, the former prime minister flew to Sri Lanka to speak in support of Colombo Port City project, a controversial venture that is meant to establish Colombo as a Chinese-funded rival to Singapore