Politics

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

Tuesday

6 Jun 2023

Steerpike

Humza Yousaf brings back Alex Salmond’s spinner

Even with the force of the mighty SNP establishment behind him, Humza Yousaf’s premiership is still struggling. So when your own side fails you, who better to call in than your arch-nemesis’s second-in-command? Kevin Pringle, Alex Salmond’s one-time spin doctor, has today been conscripted to help keep Yousaf’s sinking ship afloat. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer… The man who helped Salmond’s SNP win a landslide victory in 2011 is to become Yousaf’s official spokesman: quite the choice for Nicola Sturgeon’s preferred successor. It’s perhaps rather fortunate for the First Minister that Pringle’s areas of expertise include ‘crisis comms’. For all his past successes with Salmond, he is

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s AI attack strategy comes unstuck

What’s wrong with the government’s AI strategy? Labour has been claiming today that it is ‘already out of date’, with shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell arguing that developers should be licensed by the government before they can work on advanced AI. Powell has suggested that an arms-length body could run the licensing regime in the same way as medicines and the nuclear industry are governed. But when she pitched up on the World at One this afternoon, she didn’t sound fully up-to-date herself. There needs to be more of a narrative from the opposition than just ‘we would do this better’ Sarah Montague asked quite reasonably why, if Labour was

Edward Howell

Kim Yo-jong is fast becoming North Korea’s propaganda puppeteer

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Such is the axiom underpinning North Korea’s (DPRK) approach towards its nuclear and missile development. The hermit kingdom’s acceleration in its nuclear and missile capabilities demonstrates how Kim Jong-un is working down his wish list of expanding his country’s conventional and unconventional weapons, which he declared in January 2021. Since then, the world has witnessed launches of solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), combat drones, and, most recently, military reconnaissance satellites. Last Wednesday’s launch of a Chollima-1 rocket was nothing to celebrate. It failed to ignite before hurtling into the Yellow Sea, which separates the Korean Peninsula from mainland China. For North

Coffee House

Full text: Prince Harry’s tabloid hacking witness statement

Prince Harry is in the High Court today, being cross-examined as he sues the publisher of the Daily Mirror over alleged phone hacking (you can follow proceedings throughout this afternoon here). Here is his witness statement: I, PRINCE HARRY, DUKE OF SUSSEX, of [address available to the trial judge] WILL STATE AS FOLLOWS: My Background My Relationship with the Tabloid Press My Associates 18. During the Relevant Period, I was in regular contact and often exchanged voicemail messages with the following individuals: a. HRH The Prince of Wales, my brother. He is now first in line to the throne and, due to his position, the press have always been very interested in

Steerpike

Boris backers vote against Ferrier’s suspension

So. Farwell then. Margaret ‘plague’ Ferrier. The least-loved Covid carrier in all of Westminster today suffered the ignominy of watching her colleagues vote to turf her out of parliament. Back in March, the Commons’ Standards Committee recommended that she should be suspended for breaching lockdown rules. And this afternoon MPs voted 185 to 40 to approve a motion supporting her 30-day suspension: a vote that will almost certainly lead to a by-election in her Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency. Labour looks set to take the seat in what would be a timely boost to Anas Sarwar and Keir Starmer. But the ramifications of today’s vote might not be confined to

Coffee House

As it happened: Prince Harry cross-examined on phone hacking accusations

Prince Harry has finished his first day being cross examined in the High Court as part of his case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN). The Duke of Sussex – the first member of the royal family to give evidence in court in more than 130 years – says reporters used unlawful means, including phone hacking, to get stories about him. Harry will be back in the witness box tomorrow. Here’s what has happened today so far: • According to Harry, attributing a source as a ‘pal’ is a classic hallmark of phone hacking • Harry alleges the tabloids spied on him on his Australian gap year using a private investigator

Alexander Horne

Margaret Ferrier’s Commons ban could complicate partygate for Boris

Margaret Ferrier has received a 30-day suspension from the Commons for breaching the Code of Conduct for MPs when she broke Covid rules. As the suspension is for longer than ten days, she is now at the mercy of a recall petition and by-election: it’s almost certain that the constituents of Rutherglen and Hamilton West will soon have a new MP. Unusually, 40 MPs voted against the suspension (185 voted in favour), and a high number of abstentions were recorded. Ferrier was sentenced to 270 hours of unpaid work in September last year after she pleaded guilty in a Scottish court to culpable and reckless conduct. Having discovered she was

Lucy Dunn

Young people are being failed by Scotland’s mental health services

Has there ever been a positive sentence that contains both ‘the SNP’ and ‘waiting lists’? New data reveals that under Scotland’s SNP government list lengths for children and young adults’ mental health services have risen this year, leaving just under 8,000 young people in limbo. Waiting lists nosedived in 2022, going from over 10,000 people long to around 7,500. But the trend hasn’t continued, leaving First Minister Humza Yousaf’s new government with more problems. While 7,701 young people wait for treatment, the number of referrals is rapidly rising. In the last year, over 500 more young people have been referred to mental health services; those from the most deprived parts

Steerpike

Kemi Badenoch clashes with Brexiteers

Some vintage blue-on-blue today over at the European Scrutiny Committee (ESC). Kemi Badenoch, the Business and Trade Secretary, was up before MPs to face a grilling on her department’s Retained EU Law (REUL) bill. The legislation was introduced under Liz Truss when Jacob Rees-Mogg was Business Secretary, with the aim of removing all EU legislation from the UK by the end of 2023. Badenoch though has championed a different approach: ditching the sunset element from the bill after it went through the House of Commons. Her department has instead provided parliament with a list of all REUL that the government intends to repeal. Some, like ESC chairman Bill Clash, have claimed

Alexander Larman

Prince Harry’s bruising time in the High Court

Prince Harry is on a mission. ‘How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before someone can put a stop to this madness’?’ Harry asks of journalists in his witness statement in his case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN). After the prince became the first member of the royal family to give evidence in court in 132 years this morning, he was asked what he meant and whether he was there to ‘put a stop to this madness’. ‘That is my hope,’ he replied. The royal claims MGN used unlawful methods, including phone hacking, to get stories dating back to the 1990s about him. ‘I would constantly be leaving

Cindy Yu

Can Sunak and Biden crack AI regulation?

12 min listen

The Prime Minister will be flying stateside tonight to visit Joe Biden. Top of the agenda will be AI regulation and Britain’s role in it (they may also talk about Ben Wallace’s bid to become the next Secretary General of Nato). It’s a tricky issue and famously fast moving, so can the two leaders crack it? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and James Heale. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Katy Balls

Rishi’s US charm offensive

As Rishi Sunak faces concern at home that his five priorities are slipping out of reach, he is flying to Washington tonight for another foray on the world stage. The Prime Minister will spend two days in the USA where he will meet President Joe Biden for his first bilateral in America (and the fifth since he entered No. 10). While Boris Johnson made his dislike of the phrase ‘special relationship’ well known, Sunak has no such qualms – though one government aide suggests that it still may not appear in his lexicon: the Prime Minister prefers instead to refer to America as the UK’s greatest ally. While the Windsor

Steerpike

Sue Gray expected to be cleared for Labour job

What a surprise: the ultimate Whitehall insider looks set to be cleared by Whitehall. Sue Gray, the keeper of ministers’ secrets, caused outcry back in March when it was revealed she was lined up to become Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. How, asked outraged Tories, could a supposedly impartial mandarin defect from being the government’s sleazebuster-in-chief to go and work for the opposition? Surely such a move ought to be against the rules? Well, er, no it turns out. For the Times is reporting today that Starmer will be able to appoint Gray in the autumn, after watchdog Acoba – the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments – recommended Gray should

Michael Simmons

Rishi Sunak needs to do more to stop the boats

Is Rishi Sunak stopping the boats? He’d certainly like us to think so. He spent much of yesterday in Dover parading the news revealed on The Spectator data hub last week that small boats crossing the Channel were down a fifth compared with the same time last year. By the end of May, the Ministry of Defence had detected 7,610 migrants crossing the channel in small boats. In the same months last year it was 9,607. A clear success then. But is a 20 per cent reduction really job done? Or is Sunak standing on deck with the mission accomplished banner flying before the war is won? For starters the weather has

Svitlana Morenets

Key Ukrainian dam destroyed as counter-offensive begins

Hours after the Ukrainian army finally launched its long-awaited counter-offensive, the Nova Kakhovka dam has been blown up – which Zelensky blamed on ‘Russian terrorists’. It belongs to the fifth largest hydroelectric plant in Ukraine, in the occupied part of the Kherson region, which was completely destroyed in the explosion. The flooding has been immediate: more than 80 settlements are in danger (with 16,000 people at risk) including Kherson itself. Kyiv has started the evacuation of the villages and towns located downstream of the Dnipro river. Whether Moscow will do the same for the people it now claims as Russian citizens remains to be seen. As expected, Russia has denied

Jake Wallis Simons

What’s the point of tilting the statue of Vienna’s antisemitic mayor?

Tilting a statue. That’s the solution now. At least, that’s what a jury appointed by Vienna city council has recommended as the best way to deal with a controversial likeness of Karl Lueger, the early 20th-century mayor who shaped the modern city, but also happened to be an antisemite. Dr Lueger was a social reformer, changing the face of Vienna with new hospitals, schools and state-owned abattoirs, as well as better water, gas and electricity infrastructure, transport systems, a green belt and a distinctive architectural aesthetic. But he was also an ultra-conservative Catholic populist, who regularly indulged in Jew-baiting. He can be judged by his fans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler

Daniel Rey

Book banning has come back to bite US conservatives

If you thought American book-banning couldn’t get any more ridiculous, think again. A school district in Utah, one of the most religious states in the country, has banned the Bible. The Bible – fundamental to the state’s Protestant, Catholic and Mormon churches – is to be removed from elementary and middle school libraries for containing ‘vulgarity or violence’. The authorities for the school district of Davis County, just north of Salt Lake City, upheld a parental complaint that the Bible contained ‘incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide’. The parent, who attached an eight-page list of verses unsuitable for children, wrote: ‘Get this PORN out of our schools.’ The

Nigel Jones

Have we betrayed the D-Day generation?

Today is the 79th anniversary of D-Day, 6 June 1944, when Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe and the end of the Second World War. Despite the fears of prime minister Winston Churchill and others that the Anglo-American and Canadian landings would be a bloody fiasco, victory was achieved. A beachhead was secured, and the minutely planned Operation Overlord eventually secured a peaceful Europe, albeit at a fearful cost: 4,414 Allied servicemen died on that day alone. Naturally, the steady subsequent attrition of the years means that there are hardly any survivors left from that historic day. As a result, it

Ross Clark

A universal basic income wouldn’t help unemployed Brits into work

If you think nothing works in Britain now, just wait. Wait, that is, until a future government (I’ll guess a Labour one, but can never tell with the Conservatives any more) introduces a universal basic income – that is a guaranteed, unconditional income for everyone, regardless of means, and regardless of whether they are working, looking for work or completely hostile to the concept that they should ever be expected to earn their keep. Some on the left have been plugging away at the idea of a basic income for years, but the left-wing think tank Autonomy has now announced a pilot scheme by which 30 volunteers will be randomly

Monday

5 Jun 2023

Steerpike

Saint Jacinda becomes a dame

‘I was in two minds about accepting this acknowledgment,’ says the now Dame Jacinda Ardern, reflecting on how ‘humbled’ she feels today to receive the Dame Grand Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. ‘For me this is a way to say thank you – to my family, to my colleagues, and to the people who supported me to take on the most challenging and rewarding role of my life.’ Rewarding, eh? Note Dame J’s use of the world ‘acknowledgment’ – rather than, say, honour – a deft nod to her republicanism. It also, with less subtlety, reveals a certain arrogance. Is it really ‘humbling’ to be merely ‘acknowledged’?