Politics

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

Thursday

21 Sep 2023

Steerpike

Kemi Badenoch goes for Zac Goldsmith

If you want a bruiser, send for Badenoch. Following Rishi Sunak’s net zero announcement yesterday, the Business and Trade Secretary was deployed to do the morning media round. Asked about Zac Goldsmith’s criticisms of the move, she told Nick Ferrari on LBC that the peer ‘is somebody who cares very much about the environment, he is a friend of mine, but the fact is he has way more money than pretty much everyone in the UK.’ Punchy stuff… And Kemi had clearly had her cornflakes, judging from another punchy exchange on Sky News. The Saffron Walden MP clashed with host Jayne Secker over the decision to delay the 2030 ban

Theo Hobson

Why don’t we talk more about sexual morality?

The Russell Brand story shows, once again, how sexual morality is only usually debated in relation to allegations of abuse made against male celebrities. I’m tired of the way this happens – and think it’s a pity that ethics around sex aren’t talked about more widely. The status quo means that the scope of the discussion is narrow, and its tone self-righteous. To widen the scope is dangerous, of course. It means admitting that our culture is in a major muddle about sex, and it’s a muddle that affects us all: there’s no enlightened camp. We don’t know what sex is. Can it be safely separated from committed relationships? Can

Kate Andrews

Can Rishi Sunak afford a pre-election tax cut?

Will the government have room for tax cuts before an election? Politically, it’s thought to be non-negotiable that they must. Having put the tax burden on course for a post-war high by the end of this Parliament, Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt are going to have to relieve some of that pressure on taxpayers before going head-to-head with Labour next year. But will the public finances allow for it? On the surface, today’s update from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) appears to offer up some good news: public sector net borrowing in August came in at £11.6 billion. That’s £3.5 billion higher than August 2022, but £1.4 billion below the Office for

Steerpike

Listen: Rishi Sunak clashes with Nick Robinson over net zero u-turn

Rishi Sunak defended his net zero u-turn during an acrimonious interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson on the Today programme. The Prime Minister, who yesterday pushed back the ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2035, insisted that: ‘I believe in net zero and I want to deliver it’. But Sunak came in for a tough time answering questions about plans to scrap proposals – including a meat tax – which have never been formally announced: Nick Robinson: ‘Hold on a second, PM. You stand up with the authority of Prime Minister in this building and you say you’re scrapping a series of proposals and when I ask you

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

20 Sep 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘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