Politics

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

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Lee Anderson savages Tom Watson over Labour attack ad

Day three of the row over Labour’s backfiring ‘law and order’ advert. The Keirleaders in party HQ have clearly decided that attack is the best form of attack and have been busy creating another graphic, switching their focus from ‘dangerous child abusers’ to ‘dangerous gunmen.’ Labour’s latest post cites figures which show that since 2010 some 937 adults have been convicted of possession of a firearm with intent to harm but have served no prison time. It prompted Tom Watson, Jeremy Corbyn’s onetime deputy, to take an ill-advised pop at the Tory party deputy chairman, writing on Twitter that ‘I’d love to know what @LeeAndersonMP_ thinks of 937 criminals holding

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Independence is no longer the SNP’s chief concern

Humza Yousaf’s government will be defined by two legacies, Nicola Sturgeon’s and his own as health secretary. The Sturgeon legacy can only be understood by looking at the distance between the previous first minister’s rhetoric and her record. Sturgeon was always heavy on mission statements but light on delivery. During the leadership election, Yousaf initially embraced his designation as the ‘continuity candidate’ then pivoted to reject the label. That ambivalence reflects not only the shifting tactics of a troubled campaign but the political realities that the victor would inherit.  Sturgeon was a very popular figure, both within her party and the general public, amassing approval ratings and political capital that

Mark Hollingsworth

What Putin could learn from Stalin

On 29 August 1942, as German tanks reached the Volga river near Stalingrad, Josef Stalin consulted his most senior General, Georgy Zhukov about his strategy. Despite his impoverished background, Zhukov was intelligent, demanding and strong-willed. The general persuaded Stalin to delay counter-attacking the Nazis for a week to allow time for supplies and artillery to reach the Red Army. Five days later Stalin discovered the Nazis had almost reached the Stalingrad suburbs. Incensed, the Soviet dictator ordered General Zhukov to attack immediately. The Soviets did counter attack but Zhukov later objected and argued this tactic was not feasible. Despite his despotic instincts, Stalin accepted the general’s advice and ordered him to

Friday

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Now the SNP’s auditors quit too

The SNP’s week goes from bad to worse. The party’s long-term auditing firm has resigned, according to reports today. Accountants Johnston Carmichael, which has worked with the party for over a decade, said that the decision followed a review of its client portfolio. The firm is understood to have resigned before the arrest of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell on Wednesday, according to the BBC. The SNP must now present their accounts to the Electoral Commission by early July or else face possible sanctions under political funding laws. The nationalists are currently looking for a replacement firm as political parties with an income or expenditure of more than £250,000 are

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Macron has made a fool of himself in China

At least there was no six metre-long table in Beijing separating Emmanuel Macron from Xi Jinping. But their meeting was about as fruitless as the French president’s socially distanced chat with Xi’s ‘best friend’ Vladimir Putin in Moscow last year, shortly before the Russian leader sent his tanks into Ukraine. Macron’s visit to China was a performance, aimed to bolster his credentials as an international statesman at a time of troubles at home There was something very retro about the Macron’s visit to China. It led to a scene almost from centuries ago when foreign plenipotentiaries would trail to the Middle Kingdom bearing gifts and seeking favours from the emperor.

Andrew McQuillan

The intellectual hollowness of Scottish Labour

The implosion of the Scottish National Party has led Scottish Labour to dream again of one day returning to what it assumes is its birth right: the berth at the top of Scottish politics. Many of the banalities and buzzwords in Labour’s most recent manifesto make Humza Yousaf’s blandishments about a ‘wellbeing economy’ sound deep and serious. Humza Yousaf’s increasingly pyrrhic looking triumph in the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon was met with much merriment in Labour ranks; one source quoted in the Times during the leadership contest bluntly said, ‘I hope Humza wins because he is fucking s****.’ Polling since Yousaf’s win has found that the SNP’s lead over

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

The problem with Rishi Sunak’s migrant housing plan

All politics is local, as the old saying goes. It is, of course, an exaggeration. But it contains easily enough truth to merit keeping in mind if you are, say, a government approaching the last year of its mandate and anxiously seeking a path to a new one. One lesson contained within the phrase is that a policy can lumber you with a net loss of votes or seats even if it is found to be nationally popular: it may just be that where it bestows a broad benefit the policy is of low-salience, while where it impacts negatively it becomes the overwhelmingly dominant issue. This might well prove to

Ann Coulter

Democrats are playing Republicans like a fiddle

A few years ago, I posted this riddle on Twitter: What’s easier to roll than an Easter egg? Answer: Donald Trump. Now, I can add: What’s easier to roll than Donald Trump? Answer: Republican voters. Democrats are playing Republicans like a fiddle. The left’s sole objective is to make Trump the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee. He’s already lost three election cycles for the GOP — why not make it four? A month ago, things were looking bad for the Democrats. Immediately after Trump announced for president last November, he may as well have gone into the witness protection program. Even Fox News cut away from his announcement speech. He had to have

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour’s ‘law and order’ attack ad backfires

Oh dear. It seems that Labour have been caught trying to be too clever by half with their latest anti-Tory attack ad. The Starmer army proudly put out a hard-hitting graphic last night, which read: ‘Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t’ alongside a smiling photo of the Prime Minister. The party says that its basis for this tweet is figures from the Ministry of Justice which show that 4,500 adults convicted of sexually assaulting children since 2010 have served no prison time. Such a claim is dubious, to say the least. For a start, Sunak was only elected in 2015 and has

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Kyiv wants to make it untenable for Russia to hold Crimea

Crimea matters to Russians – whether they adore or abhor Vladimir Putin – in a way none of the other claimed or occupied Ukrainian territories do, and as such the peninsula’s fate will probably be central to any eventual resolution of the current war. That some Ukrainian sources are now talking about a military reconquest in the summer campaign season and others of diplomatic solutions suggests the possibility of movement. Whatever the official line, there are also many in Kyiv who are uncertain if they really want Crimea To be sure, there is no fundamental shift in Kyiv’s official position, that Crimea – like all the occupied territories – must

Iain Macwhirter

Scotland’s sentencing nightmare

Not content with putting trans rapists in women’s prisons the Scottish government is now accused of keeping heterosexual rapists out of prison altogether. A furious row has broken out after 21-year-old Sean Hogg was given a community payback sentence by a Scottish judge after being found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl in a country park in 2018. This bizarre situation has arisen from those good intentions which so often pave the path to perdition What does the SNP have against women? cried rape victims. JK Rowling reached for her keyboard to condemn ‘progressive Scotland’ for failing to protect women’s safety. ‘Young Scottish men’, she told her 14 million followers on

Kevin Toolis

The Good Friday Agreement and the amnesia over the Troubles

It was an overcast Sunday morning in January 1983 and two IRA gunmen were waiting outside Belfast’s St Brigid’s church. After attending mass, judge William Doyle was settling into the driver’s seat of his green Mercedes. He was hoping to escape the congregation throng when two Provisional IRA killers, wearing duffel coats with their hoods up, fired at point blank range through the side driver’s window. As the gunmen fled, they passed Doyle’s daughter, Liz, who saw them hand their weapons to a girl walking a dog. In the chaos, the gunmen and the girl disappeared. The judge’s brother Dennis, a doctor who was also at mass, immediately started CPR

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Are Germany’s Greens on borrowed time?

Have cracks started to show in Germany’s traffic light government? Less than 18 months after chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SDP) formed a coalition with the Green and Federal Democratic (FDP) parties, collaboration and harmony have been replaced by division – not least when it comes to the push for net zero. Scholz summoned his coalition partners to a three-day summit last week. Their mission? To hash out policy differences that had been hanging over the government for several months. Emerging from 30 hours of negotiations, however, the SDP, FDP and Greens seem further apart than ever. The main point of contention for the three parties is, perhaps surprisingly,

Thursday

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Humza Yousaf turns on Sturgeon

For all his praising of Nicola Sturgeon’s governance and Peter Murrell as an ‘election winner’, it now looks as though continuity candidate Humza Yousaf is cutting ties with the SNP establishment. Questioned on the raid of his predecessor’s house and the party’s Edinburgh headquarters, Yousaf has, for the first time, dared to criticise his former boss. Speaking to journalists at his official residence Bute House today, Yousaf commented that he was ‘very, very clear that the governance of the party was not as it should be’ and that ‘a review of transparency…is clearly needed’. Questioned on how the new First Minister will keep an eye on party finances, he replied:

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Why don’t Brits love Starmer?

11 min listen

Rishi Sunak’s personal poll ratings are on the up, by why don’t the public love Keir Starmer? We talk through the latest polling. And Mark Spencer, now the farming minister, has been cleared by an investigation into whether he made Islamophobic investigations to fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani. Is the row over?  Max Jeffery is joined by James Heale and James Johnson, the co-founder of polling firm JL Partners. Produced by Max Jeffery.

William Moore William Moore

The lost shepherds

40 min listen

On the podcast this week: In his cover piece for the magazine, journalist Dan Hitchens examines whether Archbishop Justin Welby and Pope Francis can heal the divisions threatening to tear apart the Church of England and the Catholic Church. He is joined by Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley to ask whether these two men – once heralded as great unifiers by their respective Churches – can keep their flocks in order. (01:05)  Also this week:  In his column, The Spectator’s associate editor Douglas Murray questions whether the English countryside can be considered exclusionary, after the news that the green and pleasant land will be studied by ‘hate crime’ experts. He is joined by the explorer

James Heale James Heale

Tory MP Mark Spencer spared over Islamophobia claims

Sir Laurie Magnus, Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser, has delivered his long-awaited report into Mark Spencer’s alleged Islamophobic comments. Spencer, the farming minister, faced claims from fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani that he had told her that her dismissal as a minister in 2020 was partly due to concerns about her ‘Muslimness’. But Sir Laurie has concluded that it is not possible to determine what the then-chief whip said, and criticised ‘shortcomings’ in Spencer’s response. Sir Laurie said: Despite a review of considerable evidence, it has not been possible to draw a clear picture of what was discussed between Mr Spencer and Ms Ghani during two meetings which both agree took

Steven Fielding

Why Starmer’s lack of vision might not matter

Tradition dictates married couples receive gifts made of leather on the third anniversary of their union. Labour leader Keir Starmer – whose party enjoys a sustained 15-20 per cent poll lead over the Conservatives – has marked his third anniversary in office this week by receiving an old-fashioned leathering in the press. ‘His party remains a mystery to voters’, according to the Guardian, which chose his anniversary to issue one of its regular ex-cathedras criticising Starmer for his dullness, lack of ambition and the absence of the ‘vision thing’. The paper was not alone: the Times revealed that nearly half of voters were not sure what Starmer stood for, while

Ben Domenech

Trump’s indictment has broken America

It was a bright blue-skied July day in 1861, so the Washington elite decided to have a picnic and take in a battle. They brought sandwiches and opera glasses to admire the scene of Union recruits, who had signed up for 90-day enlistments, march by in their unblemished uniforms to put the rebels down. But the Confederates at Bull Run had other ideas. They brought reinforcements – and by the afternoon, a rout was on. Union soldiers threw down their weapons and fled, as picnicking senators tried ineffectively to block the road and threatened to shoot deserters. They came out expecting a lark, and instead saw the nation torn asunder. This