Politics

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

Friday

10 Mar 2023

Steerpike

The BBC’s nightmare hat-trick of blunders

Oh dear. It seems that the BBC press office has had a nightmare 24 hours, with not one but three blunders in rapid succession involving three of their biggest stars – Fiona Bruce, David Attenborough and Gary Lineker. The Lineker row has been dominating the headlines but it’s not the only row consuming the Beeb. On Thursday night, Bruce fronted an episode of Question Time in which the mooted knighthood for Stanley Johnson was referenced. Journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown described him as ‘a wife beater’ prompting her host to explain to the audience that: Stanley Johnson’s wife spoke to a journalist, Tom Bower, and she said Stanley Johnson had broken her nose

Michael Simmons

Sweden, Covid and ‘excess deaths’: a look at the data

Pandemics kill people in two ways, said Chris Whitty at the start of the Covid outbreak: directly and indirectly, via disruption. He was making the case for caution amidst strong public demand for lockdown, stressing the tradeoffs. While Covid deaths were counted daily, the longer-term effects would take years to come through. The only real way of counting this would be to look at ‘excess deaths’, i.e. how many more people die every month (or year) compared to normal. That data is now coming through. Using the most common methodology, Sweden is at the bottom – below Australia and New Zealand, which had plenty of lockdowns but very few Covid

Steerpike

Gary Lineker taken off Match of the Day

Talk about an own goal. It seems that Gary Lineker’s increasingly aggressive anti-Tory tweets have got the multimillionaire into hot water with nervy BBC managers. Earlier this week, Lineker compared the language used by the government over its plan to tackle Channel crossings to ‘that used by Germany in the 30s’. Today it has been announced that the former England star has been asked to step back from presenting Match of the Day until an agreement reached has been reached on social media use. You might be waiting some time Gary… In a statement, a spokesman for the BBC said: The BBC has been in extensive discussions with Gary and

Svitlana Morenets

Ukraine can sympathise with Georgia’s pro-EU movement

Protests that broke out in Tbilisi against adopting a controversial Russian-style law have turned into a pro-European movement with political demands. The law could have seen media and non-government groups which take funding from abroad classed as ‘foreign agents’. Although the Georgian government has released all arrested protesters and dropped the proposed law, which copied repressive Russian legislation and threatened to ban NGOs and independent media from operating in the country, the opposition is now demanding the resignation of the current Georgian government – along with early elections. Looking at the EU flags raised by upset Georgians, Ukrainians are comparing the rallies in Tbilisi with the 2014 Maidan revolution in Kyiv.

James Heale

Will Sunak’s charm offensive with Macron yield results?

Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron held a press conference together at the Élysée Palace today to mark their new deal on stopping the Channel crossings. It is part of the first Franco-British summit for five years and a chance for Sunak to demonstrate his commitment to breaking with the factitious post-Brexit era in UK-France relations. ‘The jury’s still out’ said Liz Truss when asked seven months on whether Emmanuel Macron was a ‘friend or foe.’ ‘Merci, mon ami’ was how Sunak preferred to conclude his charm offensive today. The message was clear: charm is back – and offensive is out. Sunak referred to the ‘shared challenge’ of stopping these boats;

Fraser Nelson

What Matt Hancock should have learnt from Ben Wallace

As Andrew Roberts argues in this week’s issue of The Spectator, it’s quite something for any journalist or historian to have access to so rich a resource as the Lockdown Files. Like the transcript of the Nixon tapes, the WhatsApp messages let you be a fly on the wall, listening to what leaders say when they think that no one will ever listen. I argue in my Daily Telegraph column today that the WhatsApp messages offer a fascinating psychological profile of a group of men who quickly became accustomed to ordering millions of people around like pieces on a chess board. A case study in mistakes made, which cannot be

Steerpike

Welsh Labour’s double disaster in 24 hours

Given the ongoing leadership race, it’s easy to forget that the current SNP government isn’t the only devolved administration which is seemingly hell-bent on embarrassing itself. Over at Cardiff Bay, Welsh Labour are still merrily fiddling while its public services burn – as two incidents within the space of 24 hours have neatly demonstrated. First, there was the farce of a vote in the Senedd in which Labour politicians voted for a parliamentary motion criticising, er, their own roads review which has recommended that the bulk of upcoming roads projects be scrapped. In a debate in parliament on Wednesday evening, successive members of the Senedd stood up to detail the

Lucy Dunn

What would the SNP leadership candidates actually do if they win?

Have the SNP leadership candidates learned from the mistakes of their first televised debate? Kate Forbes, Humza Yousaf and Ash Regan competed to trash the SNP’s legacy when they went head-to-head earlier this week. Last night’s Channel 4 clash was tamer: the trio were at pains to defend their party’s record in government. But while the atmosphere was more civil, viewers didn’t learn a huge amount more about the candidates’ plans for Scotland. Kate Forbes was quick to plaster over Tuesday’s wounds, saying that it has been a ‘privilege to serve alongside Humza Yousaf in government and to serve under Nicola Sturgeon’ – though she did not apologise to Yousaf,

Ines Wittke

Why Britain isn’t ready to rejoin the EU – yet

Is Brexit starting to unfold? Some Remain supporters think so. Poor economic performance, supply chain issues, and our inability as a country to fill jobs in sectors that were traditionally performed by cheap EU labour continue to dominate the headlines. But, despite the hopes of some Remainers, this doesn’t mean Britain is ready to rejoin the EU. It is true that a large percentage of the public seems to have shifted from thinking the country would benefit economically from Brexit, to thinking we are now worse off. According to polling by Public First on attitudes to Brexit, this shift is even present among Leavers: 64 per cent said they thought the

Mark Galeotti

How Russia is dodging sanctions

They might not be the quick knock-out blow their champions misleadingly claimed they’d be, but sanctions are having a serious effect on the long-term viability of the Russian economy. However, we should never underestimate the Russians’ capacity to find rough and ready workarounds. Back in Soviet times, I was regaled with stories of Lada cars being fixed with sticky tape and cast-off hosiery. Likewise, people would find ways around onerous bureaucracy and uncaring officialdom, whether turning to the black market or stealing from the state (as one told me, ‘only a fool buys a light bulb if he works in an office and can steal one’). The West needs to

Katy Balls

The problem with Boris’s honours list

There are plenty of Boris Johnson hangovers to give Rishi Sunak a headache these days. The privileges committee investigation into whether the former prime minister misled parliament will soon be in full swing. This doesn’t just mean that ‘partygate’ will be back in the news. If the committee finds Johnson guilty then Sunak could face the unappetising prospect of deciding whether to whip his party to vote either way in relation to any recommended punishment (such as a suspension) and what to do himself. For now though, it’s another Johnson legacy issue in the news: his resignation honours list. As I first reported in January, those privy to the full

Ross Clark

Ministers can’t blame Putin for the disaster that is HS2

And I thought the SNP were destined to win the award for this year’s most pathetic excuse – after Scottish transport minister Jenny Gilruth blamed the party’s failure to dual the A9 on Putin’s war in Ukraine. Then UK transport secretary Mark Harper turns up and tries to use the very same excuse for HS2’s soaring costs. The Birmingham to Manchester section of the high-speed line will be delayed for two years, he said yesterday, because ‘Putin’s war in Ukraine has hiked up inflation, sending supply chain costs rocketing.’ HS2 has turned out to be an extremely expensive turkey because it was misconceived from the start Much as I despise

Kate Andrews

GDP grows by 0.3% – but the UK economy remains stagnant

This morning’s release from the Office for National Statistics shows the UK economy grew by 0.3 per cent in January – an improvement on December 2022 figures, which saw the economy contract by 0.5 per cent. There are no revisions to the last update: the UK still avoids the technical definition of recession, and January’s growth was higher than expected (the consensus was that it would be 0.1 per cent). But overall, the economy remains stagnant: the three months to January produced precisely zero growth. What really sticks out in today’s release is just how dependent the UK economy is these days on one-off interruptions. January’s rebound is largely credited to the return of

Steerpike

Boris haunts Rishi at Macron summit

It’s Rishi Sunak’s big moment today as he tries to cut a new deal with the French to stop the small boats crisis. The Prime Minister will meet with President Emmanuel Macron later today at the Elysee Palace alongside senior ministers in the first Anglo-French summit for five years. Such shindigs never happened under Sunak’s predecessor Boris Johnson – the man whose tenure created so many of the problems still occupying ministers’ time. And that impression of Sunak being haunted by the past won’t be dispelled by his latest social media gaffe. The Prime Minister took to Twitter this morning to eulogise the ‘deep’ partnership between the UK and France,

Thursday

9 Mar 2023

William Moore

Don vs Ron: the fight for the American right

29 min listen

In the cover piece of this week’s magazine, deputy editor Freddy Gray writes about the fight for the American right: it’s Don (Trump) vs Ron (DeSantis). Who will win? On the podcast, Freddy is joined by Amber Athey, Washington editor of The Spectator‘s world edition. (00:37) Political editor Katy Balls writes in this week’s magazine that small boats are a big election issue. Rishi Sunak has promised to stop the illegal crossings, but what will it cost him? Katy is on the podcast with Spectator contributor Patrick O’Flynn. (10:49) And finally, would you let a man with an axe into your house for the sake of art? Cosmo Landesman’s father did, and he

Steerpike

Gary Lineker doubles down on his Tory attacks

No red card for Gary Lineker, it seems. The Sun reports this afternoon that the outspoken TV presenter is staying put after comments he made comparing the rhetoric around the government’s new illegal migration policy to 1930s Germany. It appears Lineker has avoided even so much as a slap on the wrist, with a BBC source claiming that: We have spoken to Gary and he won’t face any disciplinary action. From our perspective the situations has been resolved now and we want him to get back to what he’s best at, which is being a brilliant sports presenter. The Beeb’s support seems to have only emboldened Lineker in his attacks

Iain Macwhirter

Whoever wins the SNP leadership race, independence has already lost

‘Now is not the time,’ successive Tory prime ministers told Nicola Sturgeon following her persistent calls for another independence referendum. It’s simply too soon after the last one, they said. In August, the Scottish secretary, Alister Jack, caused fury in nationalist circles after he stated there would need to be at least 60 per cent support for independence in opinion polls before the UK government would respond to further Section 30 referendum requests. Strange, then, that this Tory message appears to be exactly what the SNP leadership candidates were parroting in Tuesday night’s now infamous STV debate. So transfixed were commentators by the blue-on-blue attack lines – or perhaps ‘yellow-on-yellow’

Svitlana Morenets

The rationale for Putin’s latest attack on Ukraine

It has long been suspected that Russia was going to mount a renewed military offensive in Ukraine as spring approached. This fear was realised overnight. From midnight to 7.a.m., Ukraine suffered one of the worst barrages of Russian bombing this year: some 81 missiles were fired at residential buildings and critical infrastructure from air, land and sea, including several hypersonic Kinzhal missiles. Some 34 missiles were intercepted in total, Ukrainian authorities said. Ukraine was not able to down many, as it does not yet have the Patriot system that can intercept them. The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Valeriy Zaluzhny, said eight Iranian-made drones were also launched; four were

Steerpike

Twelve of the worst moments of the SNP race (so far)

There’s still nearly three weeks to go in the SNP leadership race and already the clown-car moments are clocking up. A new Ipsos Scotland poll is out today which shows that Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes neck and neck, with the pair on 33 per cent and 32 per cent respectively, followed by Ash Regan on a distant third with 10 per cent. Below is a list of the lowlights so far… Regan invokes 1776 The contest got off to a fairly inglorious start when Ash Regan referred to the American War of Independence as she proof that referendums were not the only way to secede from the UK. Appearing

Cindy Yu

Is Labour saying anything new on childcare?

17 min listen

The shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson is giving a speech to centre-right think tank Onward today, all about childcare. But is the party actually saying anything new on the issue? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and the FT‘s Stephen Bush. Produced by Cindy Yu.