Politics

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

Thursday

18 May 2023

Britain should get out of the electric vehicle business

A frantic round of last-minute lobbying is already underway. Officials are trying to stitch together a deal. And the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is pushing hard to find a compromise that works for both sides. There are lots of negotiations over ‘rules of origin’ for electric vehicles that will allow Vauxhall to keep its plants open. But hold on. Although we should expect a deal to be done, as it usually is between the UK and the European Union, that should not obscure the bigger point. We are not going to be big players in EVs, and there is no point in trying to become one now. We are not

Steerpike

Corbyn keeps Momentum among local Labour faithful

The Corbynites might have been routed but there’s still one area where they hold sway. In Islington North, the home patch of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour members are still staying loyal to their local MP and former party leader. The magic Grandpa has sat for the seat for 40 years but was blocked from standing as a party candidate earlier this year. Yet that didn’t stop members of Islington North CLP overwhelmingly endorsing Corbyn last night in an act of open defiance. By a whopping 98 per cent they passed a motion at its monthly general meeting: This CLP would like to thank our sitting MP J Corbyn for his commitment

Steerpike

Cambridge Footlights launch ‘sensitivity reading’ service

Here’s something that will make John Cleese splutter on his cornflakes. The Cambridge Footlights – whose alumni include Peter Cook, Clive James and David Mitchell – is now recruiting for a new ‘sensitivity reading’ service to ensure that ‘all student comedy’ is as ‘inclusive and welcoming as possible’. This is ‘to check for potential oversights regarding racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and ableism, or any other kind of sensitive or upsetting material’ to suggest ‘things that could be rephrased or improved, or things that should be cut.’ The new ‘optional request for any student-written comedy’ will involve a member of the Footlights Committee offering to vet submissions and conferring with

Wednesday

17 May 2023

Max Jeffery

Would Starmer really build more houses?

13 min listen

Keir Starmer promised in an interview with the Times today that as prime minister he would back the ‘builders not the blockers’. But is it all bluster? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman.

Isabel Hardman

The myth of the beautiful green belt

What a nonsense debate the fight over the green belt has become. Today Keir Starmer has been – rightly – stoking it up arguing that councils should be given the freedom to build on green belt land. The Labour leader told the Times: ‘It cannot be reduced to a simple discussion of will you or will you not build on the green belt. This is why it’s important for local areas to have the power to decide where housing is going to be.’ The green belt holds a special, if strange, place in the British psyche. Its primary function is to prevent urban sprawl, rather than safeguard particularly green and

Sam Leith

Anthony Ossa-Richardson & Richard J Oosterhoff: The Cosmography and Geography of Africa

53 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast, we’re talking about a very new version of a very old book. Leo Africanus’s The Cosmography and Geography of Africa was the first book to introduce Africa to the people of Western Europe. Part Baedeker, part-natural history, part-memoir, part-history book, it dominated the Western understanding of that continent for hundreds of years. Anthony Ossa-Richardson and Richard J Oosterhoff have just published the first new English translation in more than 400 years, and they talk to me about its tangled manuscript history, its mysterious author, and what it gets wrong about giraffes.

Lloyd Evans

PMQs was a battle of the understudies

The party leaders were absent today so the understudies stepped in. Angela Rayner filled the vacuum that is Sir Keir Starmer, while Oliver Dowden performed for Rishi Sunak. Rayner had prepared for the encounter by spending the entire morning in hair and make-up. Result, a sharp off-white jacket and matching slacks. And her famous ginger locks spilled out luxuriously over her padded shoulders. An eye-catching display, certainly, but perhaps not the right wardrobe for the deputy leader of the people’s party. She looked like a Miami sales assistant who flogs yachts to billionaires. She was gracious in welcoming Dowden to the despatch box and joked that he was the ‘third

Lara Brown

The ‘marking boycott’ is yet another betrayal for students

Students have had a rough deal over the past years. They’ve had their degrees interrupted by Covid and teaching strikes, they’re set to graduate into an economic crisis, and they’re saddled with record amounts of debt which they’ll repay earlier and for longer. So for many, the proposed ‘marking boycott’ might feel like the last straw. In April, the University and College Union, which represents academics and university support staff, announced that they planned to stop ‘all summative marking and associated assessment activities/duties’, including ‘assessment-related work such as exam invigilation and the processing of marks’. This decision has left students in limbo, with no idea whether their work will be

George Trefgarne

Will Rishi Sunak admit the truth about Net Zero?

Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, popped up on television at the weekend to explain that the cost of installing a heat pump is only about £3,000, the same as a gas boiler. Hmm. Good luck with that. That number is only true once a £5,000 grant from the government (of which only 90,000 are available) has been considered. It ignores all the costs of insulation and pipework. A friend of mine with a heat pump says about £15,000 is a more accurate number. A lower carbon economy is a good thing, but the Net Zero policy as legally implemented in the UK has been a disaster Inflation, largely a consequence

Katy Balls

How Keir Starmer plans to snatch the centre ground from the Tories

Tories have spent the week giving speeches about what it means to be a conservative at the National Conservatism conference in Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre. However, another speech on conservatism could reveal more about what the next ten years will look like in UK politics. Over the weekend, much of the news agenda was centred on Saturday’s Conservative Democratic Organisation. On the same day, Keir Starmer gave a speech at the Progressive Britain Conference, which received far less attention. The Labour leader was quick to dispute the conclusion of many pollsters that the local election results suggest the party would fall short of a majority: ‘Even by Westminster standards – the

Debbie Hayton

Is Sadiq Khan right about the UK’s LGBT rights regression?

Happy International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. The occasion has probably passed most people by – but the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was quick to wave the rainbow flag this morning. Khan said it was ‘unacceptable’ that the UK has fallen to 17th place in a European league table of LBTQ+ rights. ‘LGBTQ+ people’s fundamental rights are under attack around the world,’ he warned. Khan continued: ‘If we’re not vigilant, the progress that has been made in the past century can be reversed. I urge the Government to take the concerns of the LGBTQ+ community seriously. My message to the LGBTQ+ community in London and around the world

Stephen Daisley

Nat Con won’t save conservatives

Nat Con is the talk of Twitter, a dubious accomplishment for any movement seeking popular relevance. Progressives are having a grand old time taking offence at every tweet out of the event while others are gleeful at the prospect of the Tory party heading down an electoral dead end. Some right-wingers appear to share that fear while others are unimpressed by the lack of philosophic coherence at a conference mish-mashing natcons, tradcons, Brexit populists and some of the more hard-headed market liberals. There is some legitimacy in all these critiques but none of them touch on a more fundamental problem. Allow me to sum it up with my take on

Steerpike

Oliver Dowden rains on Angela Rayner’s parade

He’s been writing PMQs lines for 20 years but today, at long last, Oliver Dowden got the chance to deliver them himself. With Sunak globe-trotting, his deputy relished the chance to face off against the Stockport scrapper, Angela Rayner. Labour’s deputy leader got some laughs with her reminder that after last year’s locals, Dowden had quit his then post as party chair, saying of 300 losses that someone needed to take responsibility. Who, Rayner asked, would be doing so this time after more than a thousand? As the jeers died down, Dowden hit back: Can I just say, it really is a pleasure to see the right honourable lady here today.

Isabel Hardman

Oliver Dowden’s textbook turn at PMQs

Oliver Dowden had 20 years and four Tory leaders to prepare him for his understudy moment at PMQs. He’s helped a series of leaders work out their attack lines, their defences and their jokes – so it’s unsurprising that his chance at the despatch box sparring with Angela Rayner was so textbook that he should probably offer it in a seminar on a Skills in Politics Course for aspiring Tory leaders. It was anatomically perfect: there was the opening joke about the opposition (‘I was, though, expecting to face the Labour leader’s choice for deputy prime minister if they win the election, so I’m surprised that the Lib Dem leader isn’t taking

Fraser Nelson

Migration nation: Brexit has meant more immigration than ever

Manchester is desperate for workers. There are 40,000 jobs advertised in the city at the moment, at every pay grade. Ann Summers wants a stockroom assistant (£10.70 an hour), or you could invigilate exams at £14 an hour or post videos on TikTok for £20 an hour. Sellcheck Chemicals is offering up to £75,000 a year for a sales manager (‘No biology background needed, no previous experience necessary’). Even the army is offering trainee officers £34,000 after their first year. But ask any employer in the city what it’s like hiring and they’ll tell you: it’s a battle. What’s strange about this is the fact that though all these jobs

Katy Balls

Tories’ thoughts are turning to defeat

Ever since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, his aides have worried that May would be the month of mutiny. His mandate over the party has always been weak, since he lost the summer’s leadership race to Liz Truss. He was also certain to preside over heavy losses in the local elections, so the aftermath of that defeat was seen as the ideal time for a rebel to strike. As if to tempt fate, Sunak invited more than 200 Tory MPs for drinks in the No. 10 garden on Monday night. He attempted to lift spirits with jokes at Keir Starmer’s expense. ‘He was meant to be writing a book about his

Freddy Gray

What is America’s Grand Strategy?

42 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Michael Anton, professor at Hillsdale College and former member of the National Security Council under George W Bush and Donald Trump. On the podcast Freddy and Michael discuss his speech at the National Conservatism conference about Winston Churchill’s Grand Strategy in an American context.

Ross Clark

Starmer’s savvy Brexit position

Keir Starmer has made the anodyne demand that Britain seek a ‘closer trading agreement’ with the EU. But why doesn’t he go the whole hog and make it Labour policy to rejoin the single market? The Labour leader could hardly be accused of seeking to reverse Brexit. Some Leavers, prior to the 2016 referendum, wanted Britain to stay in the single market after Brexit – including Daniel Hannan and, on many occasions, Boris Johnson. So surely rejoining the single market, but staying out of the EU, could be the compromise which would please the greatest number of the public, propelling Starmer into Downing Street as a unifying force? What’s more, he would

Alexander Larman

Meghan’s lecture on ‘service’ is hard to take

Since the publication of Prince Harry’s memoir Spare in January, Meghan has kept an unusually low profile by her standards. Her non-appearance at the coronation earlier in the month was widely interpreted as a snub to the Royal Family, whom she has missed no opportunity to castigate. Now the Duchess of Sussex is making a comeback – but her vapid speech at an awards ceremony in New York last night shows little has changed. Meghan was in town to accept a ‘Women of Vision’ award at the Ms. Foundation for Women’s 50th anniversary event. The Duchess declared that: ‘It’s just never too late to start. You can be the visionary

John Ferry

Why is the SNP pushing ahead with its costly ferry fiasco?

In an extraordinary admission this week, the Scottish government has vowed to continue funding the SNP’s ferries fiasco — despite accepting it would be cheaper to scrap the second vessel and commission a new one from scratch. Economy secretary Neil Gray said a review had found that finishing the second boat, known as Hull 802, does not represent value for money. What’s the background? The Scottish government commissioned two new vessels to serve on Scotland’s west coast in 2015. None have been delivered by the now nationalised Glasgow shipyard that won the contract, while funding for the yard has become something of a financial blackhole for taxpayers. Meanwhile Scottish islanders have at