Politics

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

Monday

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Tory mayoral hopeful denies groping allegation 

Drama tonight at the latest hustings for the Tory mayoral candidate. The Conservative Environment Network were putting the final three candidates through their paces when a story from the Times broke accusing Daniel Korski – one of the favourites in the contest – of sexual misconduct. Daisy Goodwin, the former head of a TV production company, claimed that Korski groped her during his time working in No. 10 under David Cameron. A spokesman for Korski said: ‘In the strongest possible terms, Dan categorically denies any allegation of inappropriate behaviour whatsoever.’ One eyewitness at tonight’s event told Mr S that ‘everyone was looking at their phones’ before an aide beckoned Korski over and he

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What’s the true cost of the Rwanda deportation plan?

What’s the point of the government’s flagship Rwanda deportation scheme if it isn’t going to save money for the taxpayer? That’s a reasonable question to ask after the Home Office finally published its impact assessment on the plans – as yet unrealised – to deport asylum seekers to the East African country. That document revealed it will cost £169,000 per person, and this would only represent a saving for the UK taxpayer if 37 per cent of small boat arrivals were deterred. Home Secretary Suella Braverman published this assessment (which she is legally required to do) with her own written ministerial assessment, in which she also argued that the costs

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Tory MPs embroiled in lockdown breach allegations

Will Partygate claim yet more scalps? For a fortnight now, Sir Bernard Jenkin, the Privileges prober-extraordinaire, has refused to comment on claims that he attended a lockdown-breaking bash for his wife in December 2020. But will that silence continue to hold, given fresh revelations from the Guido Fawkes blog about other attendees at the aforementioned shindig? Sir Bernard was not the only parliamentarian at the drinks gathering, according to the website’s intrepid sleuth-hounds. They report that the MP for Ynys Môn, Virginia Crosbie, was the co-host of the Anne Jenkin birthday drinks party, held in Deputy Speaker Eleanor Laing’s parliamentary offices during the pandemic. Crosbie was at the time serving

Coffee House

Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin breaks his silence

The leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has released an 11-minute audio message after leading a march on Moscow. Here is an edited transcript of what he said: The Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) is probably the most experienced and combat-ready unit in Russia, and possibly in the world. (It is made up of) Motivated fighters, who have performed a huge number of missions in the interests of Russia – in Africa, in Arab countries and around the world. Most recently, this unit has achieved good results in Ukraine. (Yet) As a result of…ill-conceived decisions, this unit was due to cease to exist on 1 July 2023.  A

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is the economy wearing Rishi Sunak down?

10 min listen

As mortgage rates surge and a new Opinium poll finds Labour’s lead has jumped to 18 points, Rishi Sunak appeared on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC show to insist that his plan is the right one. But was his slightly cranky reaction to some of the questions a reflection of how the party is really feeling about its future? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Natasha Feroze.

Annabel Denham

The Bank can’t blame wages for out of control inflation

After a bruising week, perhaps Andrew Bailey could take some solace in Rishi Sunak’s interview with Laura Kuenssberg this weekend. For a start, the Prime Minister threw his support behind the Bank of England governor, after senior figures within the Conservative party accused Bailey of being ‘asleep at the wheel’. But it was also a reminder that, no matter how bad things may seem at Threadneedle Street, they’re probably worse in No. 10. When Bailey hits out at wages, it looks like another desperate attempt to deflect blame away from his own institution Sunak is facing demands for proof that his plan for our economic recovery will work at a

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Why is it so difficult to find MPs who aren’t useless?  

It’s a sign, possibly, of my increasing age and bad temper that I find myself harking back to an imaginary past in which tradesmen could be relied upon to know what they were about. A time when people took pride in their work. You know the sort of thing: back in the good old days a plumber or electrician  would diagnose and fix the problem on the first call-out; you didn’t have to spend six months trying to get your builder to come back and reopen all the windows he painted shut; and if you got a brutal warlord marching on the capital with 25,000 hairy-bottomed ex-cons, he wouldn’t leave his coup

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Khan shells out £200k on grass

Breaking: Sadiq Khan is a big fan of grass – and not the kind you can decriminalise. The Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority have been forced to shell out a whopping £200,000 to re-turf Parliament Square Gardens – a site often favoured by the unwashed masses of eco-protestors like Extinction Rebellion. City Hall cited the impact of ‘continued high footfall’ as one of the reasons why the grassed area struggled to recover last autumn, alongside the ‘hot weather and hose pipe ban’ that summer. A breakdown of figures in response to a Freedom of Information request seen by Mr S showed that the re-turfing of Parliament Square

Jade McGlynn

Prigozhin offered a terrifying glimpse into Russia’s future

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion against the Russian military and political leadership may have stopped some 200 km short of Moscow, but its reverberations will be felt in the Kremlin for a long time. The  march, and the images of people in Rostov cheering Wagner fighters and hissing at the police, was a rare and unwelcome insight into what Russian politics could look like after Putin is gone.  Those who greeted the Wagnerites with baked goods and refreshments suggested that the fighters were ordinary folk like us, from the ‘narod’ (people). This speaks to Prigozhin’s perceived authenticity in Russia – an attribute in short supply in Russian politics generally – and also to the deliberate detachment

John Keiger John Keiger

Will Macron be forced to break his pledge and raise taxes?

The inevitable is at last beginning to dawn on Emmanuel Macron. The extravagant spending spree initiated after the violent and year-long 2018 ‘gilets jaunes’ protests will have to be reversed. With the coffers empty, France is not only at the mercy of international finance, she is now highly vulnerable to the next social or political crisis Overgenerous Covid and energy subsidies are expected to push the budget deficit to 4.9 per cent of GDP with the French debt to GDP ratio at 114 per cent, the largest absolute debt pile in the EU and one of the largest in the world. Unlike Italy’s debt, most of France’s is foreign-owned, so

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

What explains the remarkable rise of Germany’s AfD?

A common stereotype about Germans is that they love to complain – and there is certainly a kernel of truth to that. Grumbling is part and parcel of everyday German life, often with complete strangers. But on my recent trips to Germany, I felt that general expressions of dissatisfaction have acquired a new sharpness. Whole communities seem angry and disillusioned with the status quo.   More and more Germans seem to have turned their backs on mainstream politics. According to a survey released last week, the ruling coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberals (FDP) would now only accrue 38 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile, the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD)

Sunday

Konstantin Sonin

The Wagner uprising has left Putin isolated

Both Vladimir Putin and the mercenary Wagner Group have been dramatically weakened by yesterday’s attempted coup. Wagner’s nominal leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, goes into exile while his group will no doubt lose its privileged status. Putin, meanwhile, has been publicly and massively humiliated, a dangerous position for an autocrat. Firstly, Putin’s famed security forces proved completely helpless during a mutiny. Secondly, the mutineers – whom he called ‘traitors’ and promised to severely punish – will go unpunished. Putin had to make major concessions to bring an end to the coup, although what those concessions include is not yet clear. What is clear is that he was unable to crush the most

Owen Matthews

Prigozhin has made Putin more dangerous than ever

As rebel tanks trundled up the highway towards Moscow yesterday morning, Vladimir Putin labelled the mutinous mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin a ‘traitor’ – and vowed to crush him. But hours later Putin capitulated, allowing Prigozhin to retire to an honourable exile in Belarus and pardoning the 25,000-strong Wagner force which had spent the day in open, armed rebellion against the Kremlin’s authority. For Putin, who had built his image as Russia’s strongman protector, the particular humiliation of allowing an armed general to cross back over the Rubicon unscathed must have stung deeply.  Of course, things could have ended far worse for Putin. The alternative to letting Prigozhin escape and his

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Watch: Ben Elton attacks Sunak’s ‘word salad’

Another day brings with it another difficult morning with Rishi Sunak. With Labour’s lead now stretching to 18 points, the Prime Minister did a tetchy interview with Laura Kuenssberg saw the pair clash over inflation and mortgages. And Sunak will no doubt be delighted to know that the person whose reaction which Kuenssberg sought straight after the interview was none other than longtime Labour supporter and donor Ben Elton. He was sat in Kuenssberg’s studio and let rip on the Prime Minister when the BBC presenter asked him for his thoughts on her interview: It’s not so much depressed sad, I mean, if anybody was still watching after that, extraordinary

Katy Balls Katy Balls

‘We’ve got to hold our nerve’: Rishi Sunak’s BBC interview

As mortgage rates surge and a new Opinium poll finds Labour’s lead has jumped to 18 points, Rishi Sunak appeared on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC show to insist that his plan is the right one. The interview was pre-recorded in the Downing Street garden yesterday, with Sunak commenting on the – now failed – attempted coup by Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and previewing his government’s long-term NHS workforce plan. However, the main portion of the at times, scrappy interview was spent on inflation and the consequences for mortgage holders. Despite all the current problems, Sunak insisted that he would win the next election Kuenssberg repeatedly asked Sunak whether he would

Saturday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Did Putin’s allies flee Moscow?

As soon as the Wagner coup started, Ukrainian social media was full of memes of Vladimir Putin saying ‘I don’t need ammo, I need a ride’ – the inverse of Volodymyr Zelensky’s quip when tanks moved towards Kyiv. But is there any truth in it? Did Putin – or his allies – flee Moscow at news of trenches being dug around the capital, while the Wagner Group were 200km away? The Kremlin says not, but there was plenty of suspicious activity to suggest otherwise. The independent Russian investigative media organisation Important Stories reported some notable movement: Putin’s personal jet plane, an Ilyushin Il96-300-PU, took off in the direction of St

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Watch: French crowd demand Macron quits

Ah, the perils of hosting an international jamboree. You know what it’s like: you stump up for the hotel rooms, roll out the red carpet, shake hands with an assortment of autocrats, only for your own unappreciative electorate to let you down once again. Such misfortune befell Emmanuel Macron this week, when he invited the leaders of the Global South to Paris to hobnob, ching-wag and pontificate on debt relief and climate change. The Republic’s young sons and daughters expressed their dislike of the incumbent President at a concert on Thursday night, held to mark the grandly-named ‘Summit for a New Global Financial Pact’. Between performances from Billie Eilish and

Paul Wood

Prigozhin’s bid for death or glory

Up until this point, it was possible to believe that Putin was tolerating, or even orchestrating Yevgeny Prigozhin’s increasingly outspoken attacks on the military leadership and ‘the elites’ in Moscow. Vladimir Putin himself didn’t seem especially pleased with his generals. Only a few days ago, he turned his back on his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, at a ceremony to give medals to injured soldiers. The fact that this was broadcast on state television makes it all the more likely that this was a deliberate, icy snub. Putin is said to like to pit his subordinates against one another, the better to stop an obvious successor from emerging. But Prigozhin’s attacks

Lucy Dunn

Humza Yousaf’s independence plan is a desperate power grab

During her eight years as Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon perfected the art of false promises. She consistently told SNP supporters that a second independence referendum was within reach, but the truth was that she had no power to deliver one. All Sturgeon was able to do was lead her troops halfway up the hill before having to bring them back down again. ‘Continuity candidate’ Humza Yousaf, the SNP’s new leader, seems to think that this is a strategy worth copying. In a speech at the party’s independence convention in Dundee, Yousaf unveiled his new Indyref plan. His latest brainwave appears to be, on the face of it, a complete

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why did Wagner get so far?

13 min listen

Fraser Nelson is joined by Svitlana Morenets and Mark Galeotti as Vladimir Putin faces an armed insurrection from the Wagner mercenary group – what could happen next?