Politics

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

Monday

Lisa McKenzie

What Keir Starmer doesn’t understand about the Red Wall

The polls are tightening but Labour remains the odds-on favourite to triumph in the next general election. Keir Starmer’s party enjoys a 15-point lead in the polls over the Tories. But those who think the election is in the bag for Labour, should take a visit to the Red Wall. Voters here are disappointed by the failed promises of the Tories. But they are equally scornful of a Labour party they think has much in common with those in power. The jaded feelings about the Conservatives are easy to understand: the Tories look tired and have run out of ideas after 13 years in power. But the lack of enthusiasm

Sunday

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Tories should make ‘significant gains’ in local elections, says Starmer

This week both parties have been attempting to manage expectations ahead of the imminent local elections. The Secretary of State for Transport Mark Harper has been reiterating the worst-case prediction that the Conservatives could lose up to 1000 seats. But Keir Starmer told Sophy Ridge he thought the Conservatives should be making ‘significant gains’, given their result in the last local elections in 2019 was their second worst ever: ‘Are you embarrassed when you look at that map?’ Mark Harper was questioned by Laura Kuenssberg over his record with the HS2 rail project, which has been plagued by soaring costs and delays. She asked whether the railway would end up

John Curtice

Are the Tories heading for a night of a thousand losses?

It’s easy to spot when a party thinks it is going to get the thumbs down from voters in the annual round of local elections each May. It tries to up everyone’s expectations of just how badly it will do. It does so in the hope that the results themselves are not actually as bad as ‘forecast’, so that the party can say it is, therefore, in a better position than everyone thought after all. For this year’s elections taking place on Thursday, the Conservatives have adopted this stance. Its spokespeople have been happy to repeat an academic analysis of a couple of months ago. This suggested that, given where

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Blairite ‘nepo babies’ are the worst of the lot

When the singer Lily Allen found herself flak-catching recently, she was quick to point out she was the OK kind of nepo-baby, because: ‘The nepo-babies y’all should be worrying about are the ones working for legal firms, the ones working for banks, and the ones working in politics, if we’re talking about real world consequences and robbing people of opportunity’. But Allen misses the point. People feel cross about the showbiz nepo babies – those who have made it thanks to their parents’ fame – because being an actor, model or TV presenter seems far cushier than being a lawyer or a politician. In those jobs, you have to at

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Why Keir Starmer may have already blown the next election

On any objective assessment, things are not going well for Rishi Sunak. Despite being praised for bringing a sense of calm back to the process of government, the criteria by which he asked to be judged tell us that he is a failure. His five key objectives for the year, chosen allegedly on grounds of their achievability, are simply not on course. The small boats full of illegal immigrants continue to land on England’s southern coast in roughly the same preposterous numbers as arrived last year; the NHS remains a horror show of delays. Even his economic metrics are refusing to come right, especially the one about halving the rate

Mark Hollingsworth

Like Putin’s Russia, Bulgaria has become a mafia state

In a historic speech to the US Congress on 12 March 1947, President Truman addressed the menacing spread of Communism and the Soviet take-over of Eastern Europe. Known as the ‘Truman Doctrine’, he portrayed the battle lines for the Cold War as a struggle between autocracy and democracy – something which resonates uncannily today in Ukraine. The Soviet ‘way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority’, declared President Truman. ‘It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections and the suppression of personal freedoms…The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms’.

Saturday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The Guardian’s shameful double standards

The Guardian thinks of itself as Britain’s fearless liberal conscience, trigger-sensitive to racist ‘dog whistles’ in the language and editorial judgements of everyone except itself. It takes a special interest in cartoons published by right-of-centre newspapers which are accused of bigotry.  When the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun ran a cartoon depicting Serena Williams throwing a tantrum, the Guardian reported that News Corp had ‘come under global condemnation for publishing a racist, sexist cartoon’, supplementing multiple news stories with several condemnatory op-eds. Other newspapers who have found their cartoons scrutinised for racial undertones by the Guardian include the Times, the New York Post, the Australian, the Boston Herald, and Charlie Hebdo.  So how exactly did Martin Rowson’s latest cartoon manage to slip past editors? Ostensibly a comment

Boris Ryvkin

Xi Jinping is acting like Stalin

The General Secretary of China’s Communist Party is a different kind of leader. Now in his third five-year term, Xi Jinping believes that time is running out for him to secure his legacy as Mao Zedong’s true successor. He spent a decade dismantling the technocracy and politburo consensus government ushered in by Deng Xiaoping after Mao’s death, rolled back the authority of local party nomenklatura in favour of more centralised control from Beijing, and worked to subordinate China’s economy to the Communist Party’s (meaning Xi’s) political priorities. In abandoning the ‘to get rich is glorious’ social contract of the post-Tiananmen Square era, Xi has come to bury Deng and not

Nigel Jones

Is Joe Biden really fit to run in 2024?

Kim yo-Jong, the powerful and influential sister of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, has launched a savage personal attack on US President Joe Biden after he signed a new nuclear cooperation deal with America’s ally South Korea. The female Kim said that 80-year old Biden was ‘in his dotage’, calling him an ‘old man with no future’ who was unable to complete his term of office, and ridiculed his threat to destroy North Korea should it launch a nuclear strike against the US or its allies. Beyond the war of words over nukes, however, the question that must be raised is: why does it take a leader of a brutal

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is Joe Biden a good Catholic?

33 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Ed Condon who is the editor of The Pillar. On the podcast they talk about Biden’s Catholicism; how it plays out in his politics and whether it will be a big part of his presidential campaign. 

David Loyn David Loyn

Is the West preparing to sell out the Afghan people again?

While the Taliban continues to double down against women in Afghanistan, the UN appears to be wanting to normalise relations with them. Women in the country are already blocked from almost all jobs and all education. Yet a week after the extremist group barred females from working for the UN, the organisation’s deputy secretary general Amina Mohammed said it was now time to take ‘baby steps’ towards ‘recognition (of the Taliban)’.   As UN spokespeople tried to limit the damage, protests poured in from Afghan opposition groups. One statement from a wide group of Afghan artists and human rights activists slammed nearly two years of ‘futile regional and global diplomacy’

Iain Macwhirter

Humza Yousaf’s illiberal campaign against juries

The leader of a governing party that seems to be spending most of its time helping police with their inquiries would, you might have thought, be a little wary of launching one of the most radical changes to the justice system in 800 years – but not Humza Yousaf. The politician who gave us the illiberal Hate Crime Act, which makes ‘stirring up hatred’ even in the privacy of one’s home a criminal offence, is now threatening to abolish jury trials in Scotland. Since Magna Carta was issued in 1215, those accused of serious crimes in Scotland have had the right to be judged by a panel of their peers,

Kim Thomas

The troubling truth about ‘gender affirming’ mastectomies

When Sinead Watson had a double mastectomy in June 2017 at the age of 26, she was initially ‘quite euphoric.’ Although born female, she had been taking testosterone for two years and was using the name Sean. The mastectomy, or ‘top surgery’, was the last step on her transition. ‘I was so glad that I’d finally got it done – no more binders, no more being paranoid that I was a man with boobs –  so I did feel really good about it,’ she says. After the surgery, however, she discovered she had no sensation at all in her chest area, something that continues to this day. ‘I realised after

Steven Fielding

Can Labour’s ‘no money’ note still work magic for the Tories?

It’s back! The scrap of paper left in 2010 by Labour’s outgoing chief secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne for his successor, that half-jokily, semi-sympathetically stated ‘I’m afraid there is no money’ is once more in the news. When the recipient of the note, Liberal Democrat David Laws, made its contents public it was widely taken to confirm the incoming coalition government’s claim that Labour had irresponsibly left the country’s finances in a mess. It was concrete, and apparently irrefutable, evidence of the need for the swingeing austerity later imposed by Chancellor George Osborne. The note also helped Osborne deflect responsibility for austerity onto Labour. Like King Arthur’s mythical sword

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

‘Calculated’ Sturgeon knows what she’s doing, says Scottish Tory leader

There’s not a day that goes by in Scottish politics without the woes of the Sturgeon-Murrell empire being discussed in full. Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross didn’t hold back when asked about whether he felt sorry for Nicola Sturgeon during what feels like the SNP’s perpetual state of crisis. Mr S caught the slightest of smirks cross the politician’s face before he conceded: ‘No.’ Did he believe Sturgeon’s performance in Holyrood on Tuesday, on the afternoon of former treasurer Colin Beattie’s bombshell comments on Scotland’s most infamous motorhome, was sincere? I thought it was very interesting that after a similar event like this with Colin Beattie, which was probably going

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Sharp quits, what next?

11 min listen

Richard Sharp has quit as chairman of the BBC, following an investigation into whether he properly disclosed his role in enabling an £800,000 loan to Boris Johnson before his appointment. What will happen next?  Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman.  Produced by Cindy Yu and Max Jeffery.

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Can Ukraine afford to keep paying its soldiers a fighting salary?

What salary should a soldier receive in a war-torn country? Obviously, there is no number that can make up for the sacrifice Ukrainians make on the frontline. But a proper salary is still necessary. When Russia invaded last year, Volodymyr Zelensky increased the payment for the military to seven times of the average salary in Ukraine. ‘We will pay 100,000 hryvnias (£2,200) monthly to military personnel who hold weapons… so that they know that the country is grateful to them. And so it will be until this war ends,’ Zelensky said. The war, as it has turned out, is well into its second year – and the Ukrainian President is faced

Patrick West

Can under-25s be trusted?

The government’s proposal to overhaul and tighten betting laws, ostensibly to target problem gamblers, has understandably raised concerns about government interference and nanny-state overreach. Yet viewed from a wider perspective, we should welcome these initiatives and for the precedent they could set: they could be the final recognition that young adults do not reach maturity until the age of 25.  As part of its gambling curbs the government will place ‘enhanced’ checks on the finances of under-25s, amid concerns that they’re less able to ‘regulate’ their impulses and make rational decisions. For example, the under-25s will have stakes limited to a maximum of between £2 and £4 for online slot

Steerpike Steerpike

Fury at Rishi Sunak’s Scottish media snub

Could the Scottish Conservatives’ party conference have been timed any better than bang in the middle of the SNP’s implosion? Mr S can only imagine the glee with which Douglas Ross’s party planned its 2023 Glasgow conference, the country’s ruling party having handed their opponents an entire dossier of material to orchestrate their ousting. And Prime Minister Rishi Sunak even managed to fly up from Westminster to help open the two-day affair. The PM didn’t disappoint the crowds: Sunak milked the nationalists’ downfall for all the comedic value it was worth. ‘Nicola Sturgeon quit Bute House to take up driving lessons!’ he called in faux bemusement at his 300-something audience.