Politics

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

Sunday

Kristina Murkett

Britain’s schools are facing an epidemic of bad behaviour

Something troubling is happening in Britain’s schools. This week, the government released its findings from the first national survey into pupil behaviour in classrooms. The results are a hard lesson to learn. But, as a teacher who has witnessed chairs being thrown and pupils urinating on teachers’ cars, it doesn’t come as a surprise. Over 40 per cent of students say that they feel unsafe each week because of poor behaviour, according to the survey. Students have the lowest perception of how well behaviour is going in school. This suggests that teachers and school leaders have normalised lower standards and expectations, to the point that roughly six weeks of lesson time is lost

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland’s migrant hypocrisy

‘Cead Mile Failte’, which means ‘a hundred thousand welcomes’, is a sentiment the Irish have long held dear.  We pride ourselves on our welcoming nature, our music, our famous pub culture and the fact that the average tourist will be almost overwhelmingly love-bombed by locals who are happy to see a new face and will want to regale them with tales of local lore.  But recently it seems that Ireland may have used up its welcomes and is, instead, retreating back into the dark terrain of nativism and suspicion of foreigners.  For a country that liked to boast about its welcoming nature, the last few weeks have seen the rise

Saturday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why did Labour U-turn on its green investment pledge?

14 min listen

Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and former Labour advisor John McTernan about Labour’s announcement that they are watering down their green investment pledge. Is Labour in trouble over this U-turn? And could this be seen as a change in strategy for the party? Produced by Natasha Feroze.

James Heale James Heale

Downing Street hits back in peerages row

Talk about the end of the peer show. Boris Johnson’s allies have spent the past two days spitting blood and crying betrayal, accusing Rishi Sunak of ‘deceit’ over the alleged removal of several nominees from the honours list. But tonight No. 10 has hit back, telling the Sunday Times that such claims are ‘categorically untrue’ and suggesting that Johnson misunderstood the process of awarding peerages. And in a bid to ward off such criticisms, Downing Street has tonight taken the step of publishing the list of names that were approved by the House of Lords Appointments Commission (Holac). These were the seven names that were announced on Friday – Shaun

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Tucker Carlson and the danger of antisemitism

Tucker Carlson is many things but stupid is not one of them. So when he describes Ukraine’s Jewish president (‘a man called Zelensky’) as ‘sweaty and rat-like’, ‘a persecutor of Christians’ and ‘our shifty, dead-eyed Ukrainian friend’, I suspect he knows exactly what he’s doing.  Carlson made the remarks in a monologue on his new show, Tucker on Twitter. Elon Musk’s social media platform signed up the populist broadcaster after his ousting at Fox News. The first episode of Tucker on Twitter has been viewed 111 million times. (Twitter counts a view as a video playing for two or more seconds while 50 per cent or more of the video element is on-screen.) It is

Steerpike Steerpike

Third by-election looms for Sunak after Johnsonite exodus

Not another one. Less than 24 hours after Nadine Dorries and Boris Johnson announced they were quitting the Commons, Nigel Adams has declared that he too is quitting with immediate effect. The longtime Boris backer was reportedly in line for a peerage in Johnson’s resignation honours’ list but did not make the final cut. Now, he is off, preferring like Dorries to quit now rather than stand down at the next election as he had previously claimed. That means of course yet another by-election in Adams’ Yorkshire constituency, with the local Tories in Selby and Ainsty this week selecting local boy Michael Naughton to be his successor. In a statement

Matthew Goodwin

It’s time to move on from Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson, so the joke goes, will always be remembered as the third prime minister to have been brought down by…Boris Johnson. After bringing down his old rival David Cameron by campaigning for Brexit, and then helping to bring down Theresa May by campaigning against her soft Brexit, Johnson then set the stage for his own exit by presiding over the partygate scandal. And now, last night, that scandal culminated in Boris Johnson essentially jumping out of Westminster before he could be pushed – choosing to resign as an MP before the findings of the Commons Privileges Committee, which has been investigating whether he misled parliament, are published. I, for

Euan McColm

The SNP is its own worst enemy

Not so very long ago, Scotland’s nationalist minority was mustering behind a catastrophic plan to treat the next general election as a ‘de facto’ referendum. Having over-promised for years about her ability to deliver a second vote on the constitution, former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon declared that a majority of votes for pro-independence candidates would give her the green light to open secession talks with whoever was prime minister. ‘Hurrah!’ cheered nationalists, ‘This is a brilliant idea.’ Then Sturgeon resigned amid a police investigation into her party and was succeeded by Humza Yousaf, who declared he was not in favour of Sturgeon’s ‘de facto’ referendum idea. No matter the concessions

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Will Putin manage to spin Kyiv’s counter-offensive as a victory?

The Ukrainian counter-offensive has duly started and, needless to say, there is a rush to judgement. It is going to play out over the coming weeks, even months, though, and at present we are still working off partial and often deceptive information. But, while there is relatively little one can say about the events unfolding on the battlefield, there is more to be said about the way they are being spun. After weeks of diversionary actions and then days of feints and probes, the fighting has begun in earnest. It is focused on the rubbled ruins of what were once Bakhmut, the towns of Avdiivka and Marinka towards the city

Alexander Horne

Boris Johnson has finally run out of luck

Last night, Boris Johnson unexpectedly resigned from the House of Commons. His graceless and indignant resignation statement made clear that he blamed the Privileges Committee for his departure, arguing that he had been forced out of parliament over partygate. The committee had written to Mr Johnson in advance of the publication of its report, outlining its proposed criticisms. It seems pretty clear that Johnson seems to have jumped before he was pushed. Yet, if one looks more closely at Johnson’s account of events, it contains a some significant inaccuracies which go far beyond the usual rough and tumble of politics. Johnson’s decision to stand down is a tacit admission that

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Italy’s crackdown on cyclists is a step too far

What are the politics of your bicycle? An interesting question. I’d like to say that mine is an expression of a basically conservative temperament, with its ability to endow individual liberty, its lack of imposition on established cities and countryside, and its preservation of fine and noble sporting traditions.  On the other hand, the bicycle has a long progressive heritage. The suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst was a keen member of a socialist cycling club, known for its group renditions of ‘England, arise! The long, long night is over’. And as the gauche but committed cyclist Jeremy Corbyn demonstrated, ‘socialism can only arrive by bicycle’, in the famous words of Chilean politician

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The nasty side of Pride

For a month that’s supposed to be all about love and acceptance, Pride has a pretty nasty streak. Maybe that’s what one of the mysterious colours on its indecipherable flag represents: the cruelty community. Consider Oxfam’s Pride animation, which it tweeted out earlier this week. Alongside all the usual Pride platitudes – we must love and respect LGBTQIA+ people, the cartoon characters say – the video went in for some Terf-bashing too. If Pride is about love, why does it feel so intimidating? ‘Terf’ stands for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’, but really it means ‘witch’. It’s a slur hurled at women who think sex is real. Who think people with penises

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Sunak’s migrant muddle exposes his flaws

Why do very smart people so often do very stupid things? Possibly it is because they cannot see how their actions look to those not similarly bestowed with such cerebral gifts. Yet when you are an elected politician, it is the average Joes who ultimately get to decide your fate. The latest case in point is Rishi Sunak’s decision to grant an effective amnesty to up to 54,000 migrants who entered the UK illegally before March 2023.  Yet another promise of jam tomorrow is meant to sweeten a meal of mud pie today. That simply won’t work Unlawful arrivals after that date will in theory soon be subject to a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is Justin Trudeau right to blame Canadian wildfires on climate change?

Planes grounded in New York, people told to stay indoors – and an actress forced to leave the stage on Broadway because of the smoke. Canada is ‘on fire’ and New York is choking from the drifting smoke – and it is all the result of man-made climate change. We know this because Justin Trudeau and other have told us so.  ‘We’re seeing more and more of these fires because of climate change,’ tweeted Trudeau this week, ‘We’ll keep working – here at home and with partners around the world – to tackle climate change and address its impacts.’  US vice president Kamala Harris added her ha’porth of wisdom of wisdom by

Michela Wrong

Michela Wrong, Emily Rhodes and Cindy Yu

21 min listen

This week: Michela Wrong asks whether anywhere is safe for Kagame’s critics (00:58), Emily Rhodes charts the rise of fake libraries (07:54), and Cindy Yu reviews a new exhibition at the British Museum on China’s hidden century (15:25).  Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson. 

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Was Boris doomed anyway?

Boris Johnson has stepped down as the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip with immediate effect, but is it a case of jumping before he was pushed? With the threat of a by-election looming over him after the Privileges Committee recommended a ten-day suspension for his conduct over partygate, it appears Johnson was not willing to gamble on the good will of his constituents to see him through. Last year in January as a local reporter I spoke to Johnson’s constituents to see what they thought of him. This was several weeks after the partygate scandal had broken and, with the Omicron variant of Covid still spreading throughout the country,

Euan McColm

Free tuition SNP-style is not all it’s cracked up to be

There is something rather odd about the SNP’s decision to attack Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer over the issue of university tuition fees. Higher education is, after all, a devolved matter. No prime minister, whether Labour or Conservative, will ever have a say in how Scotland delivers for students. Despite this, the SNP is currently focussing attention on Starmer’s position vis-a-vis the cost of going to university. In 2020, Starmer promised to scrap tuition fees in England —  now, according to the Nats, he is ‘set to abandon his promise’.  So keen is the social media-savvy SNP to see this message spread that at the start of last month, it pinned

Robin Ashenden

The Kakhovka dam and the cheapness of western rhetoric

Following the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in Ukraine, politicians in the West have followed the familiar dance of condemnation. ‘If it’s intentional,’ said PM Rishi Sunak, it would be ‘the largest attack on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine since the start of the war’ and represent ‘new lows’ in Russian aggression. France’s President Macron described it as ‘an atrocious act, which is endangering populations.’ Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany, talked about the importance of continuing to ‘support Ukraine for as long as necessary’, while the EU spluttered that ‘attacks on critical civilian infrastructure may amount to war crimes.’ If it’s proved beyond doubt that Russia is culpable for the

Friday

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

The truth about Boris Johnson’s ‘betrayal’ myth

These are testing times indeed for longstanding members of the ‘Boris Johnson is nothing like Donald Trump’ fraternity. Once again, the British blond bombshell is at the centre of a giant political controversy in lock step with the American one. And once again he seems perfectly happy to make politics all about himself. As a longtime Brexiteer, I am one of those who will always be grateful to Johnson for the courage, vision and single-mindedness he showed in getting Brexit over the line following its attempted betrayal by Theresa May and hundreds of MPs in the ‘rotten parliament’ of 2017-19. Boris recognised that British democracy was in very great trouble. He