Politics

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

Thursday

Andrew Tettenborn

Poland’s relationship with Ukraine reaches breaking point

Poland is Ukraine’s best friend in Europe. But no alliance can ever be entirely unconditional, and this is as true of the Poland–Ukraine bond as of any other. Poland, which has supplied Ukraine with tanks and fighter jets since the start of the war with Russia, has now said it will stop supplying weapons. The reason for the fall out is one that has been simmering for months: Ukraine’s grain. Since Russia withdrew its Turkish-negotiated free pass for grain exported from Ukraine ports in July, Moscow has been targeting Ukraine’s grain infrastructure at Odesa and elsewhere. As a result, while some neutral vessels are still carrying export cargoes (a laden

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Five of the most extreme reactions to Sunak’s speech

So there we have it. Rishi Sunak’s big announcement this afternoon was, er, a not entirely unreasonable five-year delay in the ban on petrol cars and gas boilers. Snap polling suggests it has gone down well with the public, who back the measure by 50 to 34 per cent. But judging from some of the more extreme reactions on Twitter/X, you would think the Prime Minister’s decision to bring the UK into line with the EU on a 2035 ban for internal combustion engines amounted to a massacre of the firstborn. Below are five of the more excitable responses to Sunak’s announcement today… ‘Totally evil’ For calm and reasoned moderation,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sunak’s climate climbdown puts Labour in a pickle

Rishi Sunak hadn’t wanted to announce the first part of his ‘vision’ for government this way. He was bounced into the press conference on a new approach to net zero by a massive leak. Towards the end of the Q&A session, the Prime Minister said, slightly testily, that he hoped ‘now people, rather than looking at the speculation, but having now seen what I’ve actually said and the detail of what I was saying can digest it, absorb it, and I think it will command very broad support, not just in our party but also in the country’. Sunak struggled with accusations that he ‘watered down’ the UK’s commitments on

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Oh, how Emmanuel Macron wishes he was a king!

King Charles arrived in Paris today on the first stage of a three day state visit to France, a country his mother adored. The French media view the trip as a chance to repair Anglo-French relations, which according to the front page of Liberation have been ‘strained since Brexit’.   The general tone of the French reporting is that this is solely the fault of those 17.4 million fools who, to paraphrase Emmanuel Macron, fell for the ‘lies and false promises’ of the Leave campaign.   In Liberation’s opinion, Brexit has proved a ‘catastrophe, notably economically’ with inflation and the cost of living soaring. It’s true that Britain is not

Annabel Denham

The BMA isn’t striking to protect patients or the NHS, just itself

What a fall from grace. Three years ago, the British Medical Association (BMA) could barely put a foot wrong. It could moralise over Tory failures – austerity, health inequalities, poverty, chronic underfunding of the NHS, mishandling of the pandemic – and even Tory politicians would quietly nod along. Its members were national heroes, even angels within the country’s national religion. And, importantly, most people believed the BMA was a medical body. Now, people will be far more aware that the BMA is a militant trade union for doctors, representing their financial interests above the welfare of patients or the reputation of the institution they purport to protect. It wields enormous power, exploiting

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris leads Tory backlash against Rishi’s net zero climbdown

It’s back to the good old days of Tory wars. Rishi Sunak hasn’t even got to the microphone to unveil his plans to delay a number of net zero commitments and already a conservative rebellion has begun. Boris Johnson is the most senior voice to raise concern with Sunak’s plan. The former prime minister has released a statement in which he says ‘we cannot afford to falter now or in any way lose our ambition for this country’. While Johnson refrains from personally criticising Sunak, the implication is clear when he says that businesses must have confidence in the government’s net zero policy. As for unlikely figures in the Sunak

Steerpike Steerpike

Rees-Mogg slaps down Boris

Talk about politics making strange bedfellows. It seems some unlikely alliances are being formed on this wet Wednesday afternoon, following the news that Rishi Sunak plans to water down his Net Zero commitments this evening. On the Tory side, two of Liz Truss’s former supporters – Chris Skidmore and Simon Clarke –were straight out of the blocks to attack Sunak’s plans. They were joined by Zac Goldsmith, an ardent Boris-backer who told Newsnight that Sunak was ‘dismantling credibility’ by backtracking on government’s net zero plans, and that this would be looked back on as a ‘moment of shame’. Johnson himself has now come out today and said: It is crucial

John Ferry John Ferry

Has Humza Yousaf misled the Scottish parliament?

‘I will lead by example in adhering to this Code and knowing it is an incredible privilege to serve the people of Scotland. I know that Ministers will do likewise,’ is how First Minister, Humza Yousaf, ends the foreword to the latest edition of the Scottish Ministerial Code, published in July.   Just a couple of months later and Yousaf appears to have potentially broken the Code, which stipulates ministers must ‘give accurate and truthful information to the Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity’.   As revealed in an investigation by These Islands, Yousaf made a false statement in relation to Scotland’s renewables energy capacity back in June. At First Minister’s Questions (FMQs)

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Sunak’s new strategy: hard truths

The last time Tory activists and MPs gathered for their annual party conference, it didn’t end well. Liz Truss had barely checked in to her hotel before she faced a full-on attack from Michael Gove, who started a rebellion against her proposed tax cuts live on air. Truss U-turned on her mini-Budget and cabinet discipline quickly collapsed. ‘It was the worst four days of my life,’ recalls a former Truss aide. Sunak sees the conference as a potential moment of catharsis that could lead to a Tory recovery Rishi Sunak hopes to improve on this admittedly rather low mark. He sees the conference in Manchester as a potential moment of

The Spectator

Rishi Sunak is right to reconsider his green pledges

The old carmakers were slow to realise the potential of electric cars and didn’t innovate. So Elon Musk, an internet tycoon, bought Tesla and stole a march on an entire industry. The internal combustion cohort then rushed to catch up: Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo and Ford all committed to go electric-only by 2030. The problem is that electric cars are expensive, so most drivers still prefer cheaper petrol ones. Ministers came up with a plan to deny people the choice, to pass laws that would ban the sale of new petrol-based cars. Britain has led the world in decarbonising its economy. No other G7 country has done more This always

Christopher Caldwell

The enormity of the migrant crisis will upend European politics

When hundreds of mostly African migrants escaped from the transfer centre in Porto Empedocle, Sicily, last weekend and began roaming the town’s bakeries and shops begging for food, the mayor took to social media to explain. There were 2,000 migrants squeezed into a facility meant for 250, he told terrified locals. The conditions were inhumane. The repeated attempts to escape were inevitable. On the island of Lampedusa, 11,000 migrants had arrived in the space of five days. There were 6,000 migrants in a facility meant for 600. The Sub-Saharan Africans were fighting with the North Africans. ‘To get food is a problem,’ one migrant told a television interviewer. ‘If you

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Richard Madeley clashes with Guyana’s president over reparations

The president of Guyana will take centre stage at the United Nations today – but before doing so he had to take on ITV’s Richard Madeley. President Irfaan Ali, who has said descendants of European slave traders should offer to pay reparations to right historical wrongs, came to blows with the Good Morning Britain host during a debate on slavery. Ali said that Britain needed to realise it ‘still benefits from the greatest indignity to the human being’. But his comments went down badly with Madeley, who questioned why ‘someone who maybe had an ancestor seven or eight generations ago should have to pay for what an ancient ancestor did’.

James Heale James Heale

Why Sunak wants to dilute net zero

13 min listen

Rishi Sunak is set to give a speech this week outlining changes to the government’s environmental policies. The plans to phase out new petrol and diesel cars, and gas boilers, will likely be delayed. What does the Prime Minister stand to gain? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.

Nicholas Farrell

Italy can’t handle the migrant crisis alone

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to Lampedusa at the weekend – at the invitation of Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – is a clear sign that the Euro establishment has abandoned its Pontius Pilate policy on the illegal migrant emergency in the central Mediterranean.  In the past week, around 12,000 migrants have arrived in several hundred small boats on the tiny Italian island that lies between North Africa and Sicily. They join the 129,869 migrants who have already reached Italy by sea this year – double the number last year over the same period. This year’s total is likely to exceed the 2016 record of 181,436.  Von der Leyen dropped everything to come to

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

‘Associate membership’ of the EU would be a disaster for Britain

The idea of the United Kingdom becoming an ‘associate member’ of the European Union is a non-starter because it would settle nothing and satisfy almost nobody politically. For Brexiteers it would involve a future British government – presumably one led by Sir Keir Starmer – breaking its word by setting off on a mission to take the country back to full EU membership and from there to the inner-core of the eurozone. Rather than settling Britain’s future relations with Europe, it would tip the country back into uncertainty and angst For ardent Rejoiners it would be a nicotine patch measure. They would have their noses pressed up against the window

Nigel Jones

Germany’s Ukraine tank blunder is embarrassing for Berlin

Ukraine is reported to have rejected a consignment of Germany’s Leopard 1 tanks – on the grounds that they are technically flawed, and that Ukrainian engineers lack the skills and training to fix them. Embarrassingly for Germany, this is the second time that Ukraine has turned its collective nose up at a delivery of German armour. When the first ten tanks – the advance guard of a total of 110 Leopard 1s that Berlin has agreed to supply to Kyiv – arrived in Ukraine, they too were found to be unsuitable for deployment on the front line. This despite the desperate need for armour to break through Russia’s defence lines

The Spectator

What if David Cameron had been offered EU ‘associate membership’ in 2016?

It can’t be coincidence that led Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron to unveil their proposals for a new class of associate membership of the EU while Keir Starmer was visiting the latter in Paris. In the Labour leader, they are presumably hoping they will find a receptive ear. With a UK election due next year and Starmer the most likely victor, Britain might yet be caught again in the EU’s tractor beam before it has really had a chance to establish itself on an independent basis. But if the German and French leaders think they are being helpful to Starmer they may end up disappointed. Ever since he became Labour

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Inflation is slowing but don’t rule out another interest rate hike

Jeremy Hunt has been warning for weeks that inflation could rise over the summer due to an increase in fuel prices. Economists said much the same: the consensus was that the headline rate would jump to 7.1 per cent on the year in August. But this morning the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that the rate of inflation continued to slow last month: rising to 6.7 per cent on the year in August, down from 6.8 per cent in July. This is a rare occasion where ministers have under-promised on the inflation figures, triggering headlines like ‘surprise fall.’ In truth, it’s the smallest of dips – and prices are still going

Steerpike Steerpike

‘Environmental vandalism’: Sunak’s net zero u-turn sparks fury

Rishi Sunak hasn’t even formally announced his plans to water down the government’s net zero pledges, but already the backlash has begun. Tory peer Zac Goldsmith, who stormed out of Sunak’s government this summer, described the u-turn as a ‘moment of shame’ for Britain. He called for an ‘election now’ and said the PM’s time in office will be remembered ‘as the moment the UK turned its back on the world and on future generations’. Labour’s Ed Miliband accused the PM of being ‘rattled’ and ‘out of his depth’ after it emerged the PM was considering postponing a ban on petrol cars and gas boilers. Miliband said the Tories have

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The flaw in Rishi Sunak’s plan to water down net zero

Rishi Sunak will reportedly make a speech later this week watering down some of the targets the government has set itself on achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, although that target itself will not be touched). The proposed ban on new petrol and diesel cars will be put back by five years to 2035, which would bring Britain in line with the EU. The ban on new oil-fired boilers will be put back from 2026 to 2035, thus relieving the Conservatives of the prospect of mass grumbling in one of their natural constituencies, rural areas. Even in 2035, it seems, the target will be to reduce installations only by