Politics

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

Thursday

20 Apr 2023

Michael O’Leary’s Brexit jibe is a step too far

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary never has exactly been the master of tact, but will his latest outburst make his customers finally ask themselves: do they really want to travel in his planes? Speaking at a Bloomberg event he asserted that Britain will one day rejoin the single market because ‘in the next five to ten years, quite a number of the Brexiteers will die, as the average age of them is about over 70’. What O’Leary forgets is that people’s attitudes tend to change with age Let’s leave aside, for a moment, whether it is wise to talk about your customers in this way; O’Leary’s remarks are wrong-headed. It is right

Andrew Liddle

The SNP has given Labour a golden opportunity

Humza Yousaf is not a leader with troubles to seek. In the three weeks since his election as First Minister, the SNP has been rocked by a series of arrests and accusations of mismanagement. Meanwhile, the Scottish Nationalists’ poll ratings have continued to slide as Yousaf’s attempts to regain the initiative have inevitably been overshadowed by more negative headlines about his party, government, or both. Rather than a honeymoon, Yousaf has so far endured a holiday from hell. Arguably his most damaging misstep is his lurch to the left on policy. Under the influence of his political partners, the Scottish Green party, Yousaf is determined to squeeze an ever-shrinking tax

Joanna Williams

The truth about Britain’s entitled strikers

Striking was part of my childhood. One of my first memories is of walking through Middlesbrough town centre and seeing people with ‘Coal Not Dole’ badges, holding buckets and asking us to ‘Dig Deep for the Miners’. Long before I left primary school, I knew what it meant to be a ‘scab’ and why it was important never to cross a picket line. I backed the men who looked like my dad, men who worked hard but needed more money for their families, over the bosses that wanted to keep them poor. The world has moved on but the class divide continues and I have not changed sides. At the

James Heale

Tory rebels win concessions on judges blocking flights

Ministers have agreed to back two amendments to its flagship Illegal Migration Bill as part of No. 10’s attempt to ward off the latest Tory rebellion. The first is an agreement to change the law so that judges can no longer block migrant deportations. An amendment will give the Home Secretary the power to ‘disregard’ interim ‘Rule 39’ orders from the European Court of Human Rights – the so-called ‘pyjama injunctions’ suspended the first scheduled Rwanda deportation flight last June late at night. Previously, ministers were only willing to introduce this power to ignore last-minute injunctions if ministers failed to persuade the Strasbourg court to reform its Rule 39 orders. A second concession

Mary Dejevsky

We shouldn’t rest until all ‘smart’ motorways are axed

Six months after he became Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has finally honoured one of the smaller, but more eye-catching, promises he made during his party leadership campaign. He has announced an end to the building of so-called ‘smart’ motorways, citing the economic cost and safety concerns. In doing so, Sunak has halted a near 20-year policy that has been increasingly distinguished not only by its unpopularity among the car-driving public, but by its toll in lives. Thirty-eight people died in the five years to 2020 on ‘smart’ motorways, even though they only make up a small proportion of the road network. If the cost of smart motorways has been judged

Wednesday

19 Apr 2023

Cindy Yu

Is Keir Starmer soft on crime?

14 min listen

Prime Minister’s Questions was a punchy affair today. Rishi Sunak fought back against accusations that the Conservatives have failed on tackling crime, calling Keir Starmer ‘Sir Softy’ to turn the attack back around on Starmer, for his track record as the Director of Public Prosecutions. But was it an effective attack? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Steerpike

Tories fear Commons recruitment crisis

It seems that not even MPs’ offices are exempt from the nation’s employment crisis. Ahead of next year’s general election, Mr S hears that many bright young things on the Tory side are leaving parliament – with their elected members now finding it difficult to hire suitable replacements. Some quitting the Commons fear a Labour landslide; others suggest it’s merely long-serving staff reaching a natural end point after three or four years of service. ‘Large amounts of my mates are actively looking’ for new jobs, said one Portcullis House veteran, with Tory MPs now ‘finding it hard to recruit.’ Another agreed that they had ‘Definitely heard of people leaving parliament en

The Spectator

We’ll miss Rupert Murdoch when he’s gone

The idea that Donald Trump was denied victory in the 2020 presidential election by conspirators determined to fiddle with the electoral system was never more than a fiction dreamed up by a frustrated losing candidate. At such times, the role of the media is crucial. If there were genuine evidence of vote-rigging then it should of course be investigated. But to amplify conspiracy theories for the sake of ratings could have grave consequences. The editorial decision to try to give legs to the stolen election claim is now costing Fox News dearly. This week the company reached a $788 million settlement with Dominion, a company which supplies vote-counting technology for

The Spectator

We’ll miss Rupert Murdoch when he’s gone

Katy Balls

What is the point of Humza Yousaf?

A seized luxury campervan, a raid on a politician’s home and two arrests. The latest twists in Police Scotland’s investigation into how the SNP spent £600,000 of IndyRef2 donations wouldn’t seem out of place in an Ian Rankin novel. Just a year ago, Nicola Sturgeon looked invincible. Now the SNP is in freefall and Humza Yousaf, its new leader, is unable to give a clear answer when asked if his party is currently a criminal organisation. The latest arrest – of the party’s treasurer, Colin Beattie – was on the same day as Yousaf’s supposed policy relaunch day (‘not helpful,’ he said) and more developments are expected from Operation Branchform,

Charles Moore

The common cause of Scottish Unionism

Although it cannot be stated publicly, Labour and the Conservatives have much common cause in Scotland now. They won’t stand down in each other’s favour at the next election; but expect ‘paper’ candidates in constituencies where one is much stronger than the other and the Nationalist is vulnerable. Wavering SNP supporters can be divided into welfare drones (who have benefited under the SNP to the detriment of spending on health and schools), and ‘tartan Tories’, social conservatives who hoped that Kate Forbes would be SNP leader. Labour courts the former, the Tories the latter. Both parties pray that Humza Yousaf, the new First Minister, remains in office. He is the

Isabel Hardman

Sunak’s ‘Sir Softy’ attack on Starmer flopped at PMQs

Keir Starmer had a much better Prime Minister’s Questions than Rishi Sunak today. The main reason for this was that the Labour leader had come with a clear thesis about the Tories breaking public services and Sunak not noticing. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister had brought along a bizarre insult for his opponent. While Starmer ridiculed the claim by Conservative party chair Greg Hands that public services are in ‘good shape’, Sunak derided the opposition leader as ‘Sir Softy’. At one point he claimed ‘that’s why they call him Sir Softy’ – even though ‘they’ could only possibly refer to the aides he had been preparing for the session with, and

Brendan O’Neill

How dare William Hague lecture the Women’s Institute on trans rights

I see it is acceptable again for men to tell women what to do. And to snap ‘Get over it!’ if any of the little dears dares to quibble or speak back. How else do we explain William Hague taking to the airwaves to wag a patriarchal finger at the Women’s Institute and instruct it to welcome transgender women into its ranks? Lord Hague was asked about infighting at the WI, between a leadership that wants trans women on board and ‘rebel members’ who think it’s odd and wrong to let biological males join a famously female-only organisation. Hague was unequivocal. The pesky WI insurgents who outrageously believe that people

Andrew McQuillan

Is Chris Heaton-Harris the worst Northern Ireland secretary yet?

Amidst the veneration of the Belfast Agreement taking place at Queen’s University this week, there has been a less than subtle message: that the DUP should get back to work and re-join the devolved executive at Stormont. One of the many banging that particular drum – and unlikely to feature in any Orange parade this July – is Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland Secretary. Heaton-Harris’s speech to those gathered in Belfast yesterday was a browbeating performance par excellence which has raised unionist hackles rather than assuaged them. But while his speech grabbed the headlines for this reason, it also contained an extraordinary appraisal of the history of Northern Ireland and bizarre

Matthew Lesh

Why WhatsApp could quit the UK over the Online Safety Bill

WhatsApp, Signal and five other messaging services have joined forces to attack the government’s Online Safety Bill. They fear the bill will kill end-to-end encryption and say, in an open letter, that this could open the door to ‘routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages’. The stakes are high: WhatsApp and Signal are threatening to leave the UK market if encryption is undermined. This intervention comes as the Lords begins their line-by-line committee stage scrutiny of the Bill today. Encryption provides a defence against fraud and scams; it allows us to communicate with friends and family safely; it enables human rights activists to send incriminating information to journalists. Governments and politicians even

John R. MacArthur

Meet the aristocrat plotting Macron’s downfall

Vitry-le-François Can a modern revolution emanate from the political centre or, more unconventionally, from the heart and mind of an aristocrat who places republican values above factional allegiance? This was the question that propelled me more than a hundred miles east of Paris – while another day of mass demonstrations unfolded in the capital and across France – to the post-industrial town of Vitry-le-François to meet Charles de Courson, the French parliamentarian descended from Norman nobility who nearly succeeded in bringing down the government of President Emmanuel Macron with a no-confidence vote on 20 March. The interparty revolt led by De Courson’s small group of nonaligned deputies in the National

Rod Liddle

I shed a tear for the SNP

For people who take politics seriously and very earnestly, such as myself, the present debacle within the Scottish National party is surely a time of great sadness and disappointment, rather than of jumping up in the air, screaming ‘Ha ha ha, suck it up, you malevolent ginger dwarf!’ and breaking open the champers. Gloating in such a manner is odious and juvenile and so I simply shook my head sadly and even shed a tear when I heard that the party’s treasurer, Colin Beattie, had been arrested. In fact I spent most of the day beneath a shroud of tears, having learned that the mega campervan parked outside Peter Murrell’s

Kate Andrews

Stubborn inflation rates spell trouble for Rishi Sunak

The rate of inflation has come down, barely. This morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics shows inflation fell to 10.1 per cent on the year in March, down from 10.4 per cent in February. The rate remains in the double digits, where it has hovered since September 2022. Today’s update takes the rate back down only to where it was in January. A trend has emerged with inflation data in the UK. As predicted across the board, energy prices are falling at significant pace, with the largest ‘downward contributions’ in March coming from a drop in motor fuel prices – which fell by 5.9 per cent in the year to

Anna Arutunyan

Russian patriotism isn’t what Putin thinks it is

With Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine showing no signs of reaching a conclusion, a recent study by the country’s main state-run pollster, VTsIOM, revealed that 91 per cent of Russians consider themselves patriots. On the face of it, these numbers seem to vindicate two camps with a strikingly similar worldview. On the one hand, there is Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, desperate to prove that he is fighting this war in the name of all Russians; and on the other, a growing handful of those in the West who claim to be supporters of Ukraine and Putin’s foes, but who insist with equal vehemence on the populist fallacy that it is not

Luke Tryl

Labour’s attack ads may already be backfiring

‘Poor taste,’ said Julie, ‘Really desperate,’ added Shawn. Mark thought it was ‘A low blow’ and Becky was simply ‘gobsmacked’. That was the verdict of our focus group participants in Erewash in Derbyshire last week when they were shown Labour’s controversial advert suggesting Rishi Sunak did not believe that those convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison. Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has defended the advert and suggested ‘There’s more to come’. But based on the feedback of voters, if these adverts are to mark the start of a more aggressive approach, the spinners at Labour HQ might want to think again. Because this was not a group