Politics

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

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The UN’s climate alarmism has gone too far

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has declared that ‘the era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived’. As if that were not enough, Guterres declared that ‘the air is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable’. Something is raging out of control but it isn’t the temperature: last week’s famous ‘heat domes’ have subsided, with only a few patches of southern Europe over 30ºC this afternoon. It is hyperbole over the climate. What does Guterres – who appeared to be breathing normally as he delivered his speech – hope to achieve by using language that tries to make out that life on Earth is no longer sustainable? We

Matthew Lynn

Why the CEO of Coutts had to go

In the end, the only real surprise was that it took so long. The chief executive of NatWest, Dame Alison Rose, had already been forced to step down after it became clear she had leaked confidential information about Nigel Farage’s personal financial affairs to the BBC. The board has been under sustained pressure all week. And now the man at the very heart of the scandal, Peter Flavel, the CEO of Coutts, has stepped down as well. If the bank is to have any future there is a lot of repair work to be done – and Flavel was hardly the man to lead that That was surely the right

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP civil war spreads to Holyrood

Troublemaking isn’t confined these days to the SNP’s Westminster group. It seems that nationalists north of the border have got the bug for insurrection too. Fergus Ewing, SNP MSP for Inverness and Nairn, has revealed that there is a ‘toxic atmosphere amongst the SNP group in Holyrood’ and that he doesn’t think the Nats stand a chance of winning another indyref just now thanks to the party’s ‘extremist’ policies. The son of late nationalist legend Winnie Ewing told the Holyrood Sources podcast that things are not all hunky dory in Edinburgh:  The atmosphere in Holyrood is not particularly happy now within the SNP group. There’s many people in the cabinet and the leadership that

Steerpike Steerpike

Farage claims another scalp as Coutts boss quits

Two down, one to go. Following the humiliating midnight departure of NatWest chief Alison Rose, Peter Flavel is the next banking boss to fall on his sword. Flavel, the chief executive of Coutts since 2016, this lunchtime announced his immediate departure from the luxury bank as it grapples with the fall out of the Nigel Farage scandal. Flavel said: In the handling of Mr Farage’s case we have fallen below the bank’s high standards of personal service. As CEO of Coutts it is right that I bear ultimate responsibility for this, which is why I am stepping down. Mohammad Kamal Syed, the head of Coutts’ asset management team, will step

Terry Barnes

John Howard is right about British colonialism in Australia

Almost sixteen years after he lost office and his own parliamentary seat, former Australian Liberal prime minister John Howard is still an influential political figure. Idolised by the right and demonised by the left, when Howard speaks, Australians still take notice. When Howard spoke to the Australian newspaper to mark his 84th birthday this week, he told home truths as he sees them, in his trademark plain language style. The focus of Howard’s interview was the Australian Labor government’s drive to change the nation’s constitution to give Aborigines a race-based ‘Voice to parliament’. It is becoming clear that the Voice referendum will be lost or won only narrowly This would

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Mitch McConnell freezes at podium

Congress could never be accused of working well at the best of times. But yesterday Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, appeared to be the literal embodiment of political gridlock when he froze mid-sentence during a news conference. The 81-year-old abruptly stopped speaking during the weekly Republican leadership media session before being led away by colleagues. The longtime Kentucky Senator fell silent and stared straight ahead for about 20 seconds, as colleagues nervously enquired as to his health. ‘You OK, Mitch?’ asked Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, an ex-orthopaedic surgeon. ‘Anything else you want to say or should I escort you back to your office?’ he added. After sitting down

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Netanyahu’s judicial reforms are not the end of Israeli democracy

Watching Israel tear itself apart this week has been like seeing your best friend embarrass himself at a party. The world has looked on while the Netanyahu government, in hock to a small cabal of religious chauvinists, pushed through the first stage of its judicial reform agenda, sparking the biggest street protests the country has ever seen. Whatever happened to the start-up nation? Last night and this morning was the Jewish fast of Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and the subsequent exile from Israel. To mark it, firebrand minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Western Wall to the sound of messianic songs before provocatively

Kirk J. Torrance

Why the SNP lost its supporters — and how it can win them back again

Since 2011, the SNP has undergone a meteoric rise from underdog to Scotland’s natural party of government. It’s a transformation I helped design, through innovating the digital strategy of the party. However eight years of Nicola Sturgeon’s rule has fostered an era of indolence and self-deception over policy and independence. As Humza Yousaf embarks on his ‘summer of independence’ campaign (which started in Dundee this past weekend), it becomes ever more important to reflect on the stagnation of support for independence. Instead of good governance and progress towards independence, it appears some SNP politicians have relished the trappings of power more than in serving the electorate who put them there.

Wednesday

Natasha Feroze

NatWest boss Alison Rose resigns. Why now?

12 min listen

Natasha Feroze speaks to Kate Andrews and Fraser Nelson about the sudden decision for the NatWest boss Alison Rose to hand in her resignation. Prompted by the Nigel Farage Coutts bank account scandal, the bank’s CEO faced mounting pressure to resign after late last night No.10 said they had serious concerns over the bank’s actions. But why does the government play a role in this decision? And will there be more resignations to come?

Michael Collins

Ian Botham should take cricket’s problems more seriously

Lord Botham – chair of Durham County Cricket Club and a life peer appointed by Boris Johnson in 2020 – has challenged the findings of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report, which highlighted cricket’s elitism and class-based inequalities, as well as widespread discrimination in terms of ethnicity and gender. Admitting that he had only read ‘bits’ of it, Botham nonetheless dismissed the report as ‘nonsense’, which he claims he ‘threw on the floor’. Ironically, the report was only published online. One assumes he has a well-stocked printer. Botham’s main complaint seems to be that he wasn’t central to the process. ‘No one’s interviewed me, no one asked me for my thoughts’,

Edward Howell

What has North Korea done with Travis King?

Silence is not a common feature in the North Korean regime’s playbook, and this year is no exception. Only this past week, North Korea’s flurry of ballistic missile launches has been complemented by a cornucopia of threats from senior officials – including Kim Yo-jong, the sharp-tongued sister of Kim Jong-un – who have upped the ante in their anti-US rhetoric. The ruling regime repeated that dialogue with the United States is off the table. Not only that, the North Korean defence minister also warned that the deployment of a US ballistic missile submarine – the USS Kentucky – to South Korea could ‘fall under the conditions’ for the isolated state

Fredrik Erixon

What does the European centre-right stand for?

Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), dropped the bomb last weekend. In a TV interview, Merz opened the door for collaboration with Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the nationalist-populist party that is home to Germany’s cabal of crackpots and right-wing extremists. He didn’t say what form such co-operation would take, but talked about finding ways to run local councils when the AfD won democratic elections – which happened a few weeks ago when Hannes Loth won a mayoral race in a small town in Saxony-Anhalt. The reactions to Merz’s comments came thick and fast. Politicians from the left questioned his democratic credentials. He’s the ‘wrecking ball of

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How Labour won back Britain’s millionaires

The battle for the next Labour manifesto is already under way. ‘I will stay up to 2 a.m. if I need to,’ warned one member of the shadow cabinet ahead of last week’s national policy forum meeting in Nottingham. The trade unions and grassroot members were pushing for radicalism, Keir Starmer for moderation. The squeals of the Labour left are seen as useful by Starmer’s team Starmer misses no opportunity to make the point that realism, not revolution, is the path to power. He was quick to blame the party’s narrow defeat in the Uxbridge by-election on Sadiq Khan’s support for the extension of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone. ‘In

James Heale James Heale

Susan Hall: Sadiq Khan is a misogynist

‘I love a fight. I was going to say debate, but it’s more of a fight to be honest.’ Susan Hall is looking forward to taking on Sadiq Khan at the London mayoral hustings. When we meet for her first interview after securing the Conservative nomination, it is five days after the Uxbridge by-election. Hall is buoyed by an unexpected Tory triumph, thanks to discontent with Khan’s plans to extend the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez). ‘Out on the doorstep,’ she tells me: ‘I thought the questions would be all around Boris but I had nothing. It was all around the Ulez expansion.’ She hopes to replicate a similar result

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Will Sunak’s identity makeover pay off?

After claiming that Labour is on the same side as criminal people-trafficking gangs, Rishi Sunak clearly owes a rival party leader an apology. The person he should be saying sorry to is not Keir Starmer but Boris Johnson. When Johnson struck a low blow against Starmer for having failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile while DPP, Sunak swiftly joined the pious outrage club against the then prime minister. ‘I wouldn’t have said it,’ he claimed, at what was a moment of particularly intense political peril and personal crisis for Johnson. Never mind that Johnson had thrown his below-the-belt punch immediately after Starmer had mounted an extraordinarily unpleasant attack on him that

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Where has Xi Jinping’s foreign minister gone?

This is the week that James Cleverly planned to be in Beijing to ‘engage, robustly and also constructively’ with China’s communist leaders. But the Foreign Secretary put his trip on hold because the man he planned to engage went missing. Since 25 June foreign minister Qin Gang has vanished without trace, leaving Cleverly twiddling his thumbs and the world wondering what on earth is going on at the top of the Chinese Communist party. The whole bizarre spectacle underlines the challenges of engaging with a system that is so deeply opaque. The mystery deepened on Tuesday when state media reported that Qin was being replaced by his predecessor Wang Yi

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Nigel Farage snaps at ‘condescending’ Nick Robinson

Nigel Farage blasted Nick Robinson for his ‘condescending tone’ during a fiery interview on the Today programme. The BBC host asked the former Ukip leader whether he was planning a political comeback following his run-in with Coutts bank. But Farage lashed out at Robinson, telling him he was ‘sick to death’ of his line of questioning: ‘I’m really not going to have this. I am sick to death of your condescending tone. No, no actually you weren’t. What you should say to people is, “you’re the only person in British history who has won two national elections leading two different parties.” Let’s try that for size shall we.’ Farage was

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

What the French media can learn from the Farage banking scandal

Geoffroy Lejeune knows how Nigel Farage feels. Like the former Ukip leader turned TV host, Lejeune’s ‘values’ have made him persona non grata among France’s progressive elite. The 34-year-old journalist was last month appointed editor-in-chief of Journal du Dimanche (JDD), France’s only dedicated Sunday newspaper with a circulation of 140,000.  Newspaper staff were outraged. They downed tools, and have been striking now for five weeks. The papers’ journalists remain ‘more determined than ever’, they say, to continue their industrial action.  The real danger to democracy aren’t the likes of Lejeune or Farage, whatever their opinions may be The problem is Lejeune’s politics. He is described as ‘far right’, and counts

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will the NatWest debacle end the ‘debanking’ scandal?

The NatWest saga is fast becoming a textbook example of what some consider to be an ‘establishment’ attack on minority (and often right-leaning) viewpoints. The fast U-turn from the NatWest board which now sees Dame Alison Rose out of a job (Mr Steerpike has the details here) confirms that this was not a nuanced or two-sided debate that the bank originally tried to make it out to be. It’s no surprise, then, that the government has been fairly robust in its growing condemnation of NatWest’s actions. No. 10 insisted last night that it had serious concerns about the bank’s actions, and ministers have been saying it was ‘right’ for Rose to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

NatWest faces questions over backing Alison Rose

A week is a long time in politics and a day is a long time in banking. On Tuesday afternoon, NatWest chief Dame Alison Rose admitted that she had ‘made a serious error of judgment’ and was the BBC source who discussed Nigel Farage’s bank details with Simon Jack at a charity dinner. The senior journalist had left the dinner with the impression that the Coutts bank account closure was down to a lack of funds rather than politically motivated. It later transpired through a subject access request by Farage that this was wide of the mark and the bank had been discussing his political views and the ‘reputational damage’