Politics

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

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

What was Algeria’s role in the French riots? 

In March 2012 a French Algerian called Mohammed Merah murdered three soldiers and shot dead three Jewish children and a rabbi in southern France; three years later two French Algerian brothers murdered the staff of Charlie Hebdo and later in the year men of Algerian heritage were among the terror cell that slaughtered 130 people in Paris. The two teenage killers of the elderly Normandy priest in July 2016 could also trace their lineage to that region of North Africa, and it is an Algerian woman awaiting trial who is accused of the horrific rape and murder of 12-year-old Lola last October in Paris.  These crimes elicited scant comment from

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

The Church of England is on the brink of a crisis

A bishop said something significant at General Synod last week. I promise you. Something that might even herald a new era of straight-talking, from which revival might spring. We’ll get to this surprising utterance shortly.  First, less surprisingly, the Archbishop of York opened proceedings with a predictable pudding of pious evasion. Unity is a sacred thing, and so the disunity of Christians is an unholy scandal, he said, quoting Pope Francis to this effect. This sounds like harmless ecumenical piety, but in the context it is pretty unhelpful. In fact it’s defeatist. In effect, he was saying that the Church of England is in the position of global Christianity. Its

Tuesday

James Heale James Heale

Illegal Migration Bill survives mammoth voting session

Tory whips and publicans are the only people smiling in parliament tonight, after a mammoth three and a half hour voting session on amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill. The House of Commons bars are now rammed with MPs, who spent the afternoon debating and voting on changes to the government’s plans to ‘stop the boats.’ Divisions began just after ten to five and wrapped up shortly after 8:30 p.m. All the amendments put down by the House of Lords were defeated by the government across 18 divisions, with Steve Baker quoting one MP as saying in the voting lobby that they had ‘enjoyed the first 16’. It is, by

Steerpike Steerpike

Alex Salmond to launch pro-indy TV show

They say all publicity is good publicity. But perhaps that sentiment isn’t shared by those in Bute House at the news that Alex Salmond is launching his own pro-independence TV programme. The former First Minister will become the latest politician to turn TV presenter this week when he launches his new show on Thursday: ‘Scotland Speaks – with Alex Salmond.’ Like a Tartan Tucker, he will be hosting it on social media from Slàinte Media’s brand new Glasgow studio. But with the National having mastered the art of Scexit propaganda, is there really any need for more separatist media coverage? Salmond certainly thinks so. ‘At an important time in Scotland’s story, both

Daniel DePetris

Nato’s members still don’t see eye to eye on Ukraine

US President Joe Biden flew into Vilnius, Lithuania early on Tuesday with a big task ahead of him: to keep Nato as united as possible at a time when the alliance is fractured on a bunch of major issues. Foremost among them is when and how to provide Ukraine a path toward eventual membership. In public, the two-day session will be full of group photos of smiling heads of state and warm words about the alliance’s resolve in the face of Russian aggression. But behind closed doors, where the actual business is done, difficult conversations will certainly be had. While Nato’s 31 member states (soon to be 32 when Sweden’s

Andrew Tettenborn

The BBC presenter feeding frenzy

Rishi Sunak has touched down at the Nato summit, but there’s only one question journalists want to ask him about: the allegations that a BBC presenter paid a young person for explicit photos. The claims are ‘shocking and concerning’, the Prime Minister said, adding that he has been assured the BBC’s investigation will be ‘rigorous and swift’. Yet amidst the ongoing and frantic speculation – and endless chatter on social media – the silence from officialdom, the police and the news media as to who the man at the centre of the story actually is has been deafening. A veritable feeding frenzy continues online, not to mention on foreign websites

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Who’s to blame for rising mortgage costs?

Mortgage costs have reached a 15-year high today, with the average two-year fixed deal hitting 6.66 per cent – the highest level since the summer of the 2008 financial crash. But today’s mortgage news is being pegged to far more recent history, as average deals just topped their peak from last autumn, when Liz Truss’s mini-Budget sent interest rate expectations soaring, and mortgage offers along with them. Truss’s premiership came to an end because so many numbers were spiralling upward, including the cost of government borrowing, mortgage repayments, and the number of Tory MPs who – amid all the chaos – were simply not going to take instructions from her

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories fight over Illegal Migration Bill

The Illegal Migration Bill is back this afternoon for ‘ping pong’ – the final stage of its legislative passage where MPs and peers bat amendments between their respective chambers until a compromise is found. There were 20 such amendments for the government to deal with and there is still a chance that some key Conservatives might rebel tonight. Ministers want to overturn 15 changes. Two of the loudest critics are, inconveniently, former home secretaries Two of the loudest critics are, inconveniently, former home secretaries. Theresa May has criticised the Bill throughout its passage and it is still not clear whether she will vote with the government or rebel tonight. She

Oscar Edmondson

What does Starmer’s Labour stand for?

15 min listen

It has been a mixed start to the week for Labour. Rachel Reeves has been criticised for ‘following the same tram lines’ as the Tories on spending. Meanwhile, Starmer has been boosted by the decision taken by Unite – one of the UK’s biggest unions – to retain close ties with the Labour Party. Do they have a raft of transformative policies that will deliver change? Is the relationship between Labour and the unions as rosy as the Unite vote suggests?  Also today, the Nato summit in Vilnius is underway and the mood seems optimistic after Erdogan agreed to support Sweden’s membership bid. What can we expect from the summit? Oscar Edmondson

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Why are we so obsessed with TV presenters?

The mucky allegations about a ‘household name’ BBC star – who is said to have paid thousands of pounds to a teenager for sexually explicit pictures – has exposed our obsession with TV presenters. We invite these people into our homes every day. Stars we never meet become familiar, a part of our lives and daily routines. Now, for one of these presenters, their world has come crashing down, and we can’t get enough of it. There are plenty of questions hanging over this story: we still don’t know the identity of the presenter concerned, even if social media is awash with a list of suspects. And we don’t know

Steerpike Steerpike

Flashback: Sunak mocks Truss over mortgage rates

It’s a red letter day for Rishi Sunak. No, he hasn’t succeeded in fulfilling any of his five priorities. Instead, the average two-year fixed-rate mortgage has today passed the peak seen in the wake of the Truss government’s mini-budget. Mortgage rates have soared in recent months, following the Bank of England’s interest rate hikes to try to tackle rampant inflation. Two-year fixed deals have now reached 6.66 per cent on average – a level not seen since August 2008. That rate is of course higher than the 6.65 per cent reached on 20 October last year, when Tory MPs were in full meltdown. Back then some Sunak allies were crowing that they had

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Urgency drives the day at the Vilnius Nato summit

Rishi Sunak heads to Lithuania today for the Nato leaders’ summit (which means he will be missing another Prime Minister’s Questions). The trip comes after Sunak met one-on-one with president Biden at 10 Downing Street – a visit which is being heralded in government as a success after the pair avoided amplifying a lingering disagreement over the US government’s transfer of cluster bombs to Ukraine. While Sunak was critical of the use of the weapons ahead of the visit (a legal obligation of the UK government as a result of its membership of the Convention on Cluster Munitions) he chose not to bring it up and reprimand Biden on the

Sasha Lensky

Ukraine’s Nato limbo is set to continue

As the Nato summit on international security opens this week in Vilnius, one obvious issue will be the success or otherwise of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. Apart from the liberation of a few villages, where are the victories earlier forecast by figures like head of military intelligence Kirill Budanov, who predicted the Ukrainian army would be in Crimea by the end of spring? Hopes of a quick push to the Azov sea, inspired by the retaking of Kharkhiv last September, have hit a sandbar this time round: denser Russian defence lines and widespread use of landmines. Come autumn, the weather will be against the Ukrainians too, the muddy season making a counter-offensive more

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Wages are up – but the Bank won’t be happy about it

The labour market continues to show signs of becoming less tight – but this won’t be fast enough for the Bank of England’s liking. The UK unemployment rate rose to 4 per cent – up 0.2 per cent on the quarter. But this relatively small change is indicative of more people moving off the economic inactivity list, which fell by 0.4 per cent between March and May: a change that the Office for National Statistics largely attributes to men in this latest update.  Meanwhile the number of job vacancies in Britain fell for the twelfth time in a row: down 85,000, but still sitting at 1,034,000. Vacancies are now significantly

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Tory MP defends Harriet Harman

Boris Johnson might have shuffled off the parliamentary stage but there was still one last drama to play out last night. The House of Commons met to debate the ‘special report’ prepared by the Privileges Committee into the MPs who criticised their integrity when they probed the former Prime Minister. Amid the usual partisan taking points, Mr S was struck by a speech by one of the more thoughtful members of the 2019 intake, Laura Farris. With tears forming in her eyes, the Newbury MP spoke out in defence of the committee’s chairman Harriet Harman who was unanimously elected to the post in June 2022: To contextualise the appointment of

Matthew Scott

The police haven’t learned from the Carl Beech fiasco

It has been announced that ‘Opertion Soteria’ is to be extended from five pilot areas to every police force in the country. Operation Soteria is the name given to a supposedly new method of investigating rape and other serious sexual allegations. A report into the results of the Soteria pilots, written by the academics who were largely responsible for devising Operation Soteria in the first place, concluded, perhaps unsurprisingly, that they had been a great success. The Soteria approach may indeed increase the rape conviction rate, but it will do so by convicting more innocent people In Hellenistic religions, a soteria was a ‘sacrifice or series of sacrifices performed in expectation of… deliverance from a crisis.’ The crisis from which Operation Soteria is supposed to deliver us is an epidemic of rape. Whether

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris’s allies defend their attacks on the Privileges Committee

The House of Commons often rises early these days, with little in the way of legislation to keep MPs busy. Ministers spend more of their time answering repetitive urgent questions than they do piloting bills through the Commons. So it was an odd sensation to see MPs debating something at length, with detailed speeches and an extensive debate. Ah, of course – they were talking about themselves: what else? Yesterday afternoon’s debate was on the Privileges Committee special report on the ‘campaign’ against that Committee by supporters of Boris Johnson. The debate had a motion laid by Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt which said ‘where the House has agreed

David Shipley

The hopeless cycle of addiction – and drug running – behind bars

It’s my seventh night in HMP Wandsworth at the start of my 45-month sentence for fraud. I live on A Wing now, with a new cellmate, John, a heroin addict. He’s an older guy, short, very slight, sores all over his face, neck and hands. Prison is full of men like John: addicts who get sentenced to a few weeks, or months, in prison. Some are regulars, welcomed back by guards and prisoners. One man completes three sentences while I am imprisoned there. What good does it do banging men like this up? John is 52 and the best part of his life – which he has spent mostly in

Monday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is Jeremy Hunt following in Gordon Brown’s footsteps?

Anyone fancy having a flutter with 5 per cent of their pension fund on unlisted start-ups? It is not necessarily a bad idea – it is only 5 per cent, after all. As part of a portfolio which is balanced by more bread and butter investments it need not be reckless. At best, you might just pick a future Microsoft or Google – and at worst, well, the other 95 per cent of your investments could smother your losses. But it seems that we are not really going to have the choice – at least not those of us who have defined contribution pension funds. The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, used

Steerpike Steerpike

Claims about BBC presenter ‘rubbish’ says young person’s lawyer

Allegations about a BBC presenter paying £35,000 for sexually explicit photos are ‘rubbish’ according to the lawyer of the young person involved. In a legal statement released tonight they claim that the child’s mother has made inaccurate statements to the Sun newspaper about the nature of the relationship between the unknown Corporation star and their client. The statement says that the young person sent a denial to the Sun on Friday evening saying there was ‘no truth to it’. However, the ‘inappropriate article’ was still published, the lawyer says. In their letter, they write that: ‘For the avoidance of doubt, nothing inappropriate or unlawful has taken place between our client