Politics

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

Tuesday

Andy Maciver

The newfound confidence of the Scottish Tories

It is difficult for Scotland’s Conservative and Unionist party to know whether to laugh or cry these days. The last few months have been dominated by the SNP’s implosion – yet the decline of Humza Yousaf’s party could ultimately backfire for the Tories. For now, though Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, has never looked happier. So what might explain his newfound positivity? The Supreme Court’s verdict that the Scottish parliament does not have the jurisdiction to hold a legally recognised referendum on independence last November was greeted with euphoria by the Tories. It means that without a compliant Westminster government, the second independence referendum is dead. And Scottish Tories

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is Germany turning against the EU’s Green Deal?

Last week it was President Macron who was rowing back on green measures. In a speech he asserted that Europe has, for now, gone far enough – if it introduces any more regulations without the rest of the world following suit then it will put investment at risk and harm the economy. This week, the European People’s Party – a centre right grouping which includes the German Christian Democrats, the party of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – seems to be joining in. Germany now seems to be taking over from France as the seedbed of opposition towards zero carbon policies The party is reported to be considering withdrawing

Steerpike Steerpike

Prince Harry loses his police protection legal challenge

It turns out that Home Office can get some things right. The department’s lawyers have today triumphed in their battle to thwart Prince Harry’s legal challenge over his right to make private payments for police protection. Legal eagles for the renegade royal wanted a judicial review of the rejection of his offer to pay for protection in the UK, after his security arrangements changed when the prince stopped being a ‘working royal’ in 2020. But this morning a High Court judge ruled that Harry could not also seek a judicial review over whether to let him pay for the specialist police officers himself. Poor lamb. The decision came after Metropolitan

Jawad Iqbal

Muslim activists can’t cancel The Kerala Story

Britain’s cinemas are in danger of becoming the new front line of protests from angry religious mobs demanding the cancellation of any film that meets with their disapproval. The latest disturbing example of this form of attempted censorship by diktat came when angry Muslim protesters disrupted the screening of a controversial Bollywood film in Birmingham on Friday. Their target was The Kerala Story, a film which portrays the southern Indian state — where just under a third of the population is Muslim — as a hub of Islamist terrorism and forced religious conversions. It has been condemned by some critics as crude Hindu nationalist ‘propaganda’ aimed at destroying ‘religious harmony’. Maybe,

Lucy Dunn

England’s junior doctors to go on third strike this year

England’s junior doctors will go on strike for the third time this year after talks with the government broke down yesterday. The industrial action will last 72 hours, taking place between 14 and 17 June. So far, BMA members have staged two walkouts, one for three days and another for four. In the last strike, which lasted 96 hours, just under 200,000 routine appointments and procedures were cancelled. With a record 7.3 million people on NHS waiting lists, the health service does not have the capacity to deal with staff walkouts. But the BMA has been frank with the government: the union has said it will continue strike action for

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

What we know about the rioting in Cardiff so far

A traffic collision in the Ely area of Cardiff, Wales on Monday evening sparked rioting overnight that continued for nine hours until the police managed to disperse it. At least twelve police officers were injured in the incident. The trigger for the unrest appears to have been rumours spread on social media that a police chase was responsible for the crash, reportedly involving two teenage boys riding an off-road bike or scooter. The police deny that a chase occurred, saying that officers only became aware of the collision after being called to the scene. The crash occurred shortly after 6 p.m. yesterday, with unrest continuing in the area until 3

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Jeremy Hunt is yet to get a grip on government borrowing

All eyes are on tomorrow’s inflation rate figures, which need to start falling fast for Rishi Sunak to make good on his pledge to ‘halve inflation’ by the end of the year. But this morning we got an update on the one pledge from No.10 that was never likely to be made good on: the promise to get national debt falling. This morning’s figures show us the extent to which those numbers are going in the wrong direction. Public sector borrowing in the month of April rose to £25.6 billion, almost £12 billion more than April last year. This makes last month the second-highest borrowing April on record. Rather than

James Heale James Heale

What is Lee Anderson up to?

A new week brings with it a new backbench group. The New Conservatives are a dozen MPs who are drawn from the 2017 and 2019 intakes. They want a fundamental realignment of the party so it better reflects the interests of voters in the Midlands and across the red wall in the north. Prominent members of the group include Danny Kruger, Miriam Cates and Lee Anderson, the straight-talking red wall favourite who previously told The Spectator he backed the return of capital punishment. The presence of Anderson has ruffled some feathers among his fellow Tory MPs In an interview with the Times, Kruger said that while precise policies are still being formulated, the group

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is Macron losing France’s war on drugs?

The story that dominated much of the French media last week was the vicious assault of a shopkeeper in Amiens. A gang kicked and punched Jean-Baptiste Trogneux outside his chocolate shop in a savage attack that left him bruised and nursing a couple of broken ribs. It was, alas, an all too common incident in a country where violent crime has been rising steadily for a number of years.  What made this assault newsworthy was the fact that Trogneux is the great-niece of Brigitte Macron; she and her presidential husband condemned the attack, as did figures from across the political spectrum, many of whom tried to exploit the poor man’s injuries

Daniel Miller

Elon Musk, George Soros and the blurring of life and art

Was Elon Musk antisemitic when he compared George Soros to Magneto, the apparently Jewish, Marvel Comics supervillain? Whatever one’s view on this question, Musk’s comments may be taken as a pointed marker of a time in which life and art are increasingly indistinguishable. Musk claimed in a tweet to his 140 million followers that Soros is akin to the X-Men anti-hero Magneto, of comic book and movie fame. Like Magneto, Musk said, Soros ‘hates humanity’ and ‘wants to erode the very fabric of civilisation.’ Not flattering, but the claim that it’s antisemitic, because the atheist billionaire Soros, aged 90, is ethnically Jewish, bears interrogation. The comparison of Soros to Magneto

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What Suella Braverman needs to do to keep her job

As luck would have it, the Home Secretary was down to answer departmental questions in the chamber this afternoon, and a lot of those questions were on her speeding ticket. ‘I hope this isn’t going to be a repetitive session,’ said Suella Braverman in the Commons, before offering exactly that for an hour.  Braverman had not come with a different answer to every question, regardless of the details each MP was asking for. Instead, she said the exact same thing, in the exact same tone, over and over again. She had been speeding in the summer. She regretted that. She paid the fine and took the penalty. ‘Mr Speaker, last

Steerpike Steerpike

Gary Lineker honoured for his activism by Amnesty

They say genius is never appreciated in its own time. So we can only be grateful that Gary Lineker’s activism is now getting the attention and recognition it deserves. The millionaire motormouth will be awarded a gong on Wednesday from – no joke – Amnesty International, the self-proclaimed ‘world’s leading human rights organisation.’ Ironic, given that UK taxpayers are forced to pay Lineker’s salary via the licence fee, on pain of imprisonment for non-payment of fines… Like the good eco-warrior that he is, Lineker will jet into Rome to collect a ‘sport and human rights award’ by the organisation, which described him as a ‘staunch advocate for the rights of

Yiannis Baboulias

New Democracy’s election success is a turning point for Greece

With early results showing a resounding victory for the centre-right New Democracy (ND) in the first round of elections in Greece, its beaming leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis addressed a cheering crowd outside the party’s headquarters with the words ‘All of Greece has turned blue! Thank you!’. He has every reason to be satisfied. ND not only managed to hold on to its share of the vote from 2019 but to expand it by around 150,000 votes, bringing them to a comfortable 41 per cent. They won every district across the country but one. While just shy of a majority, due to the changes in electoral law introduced by Syriza while in

Lucy Dunn

Will junior doctors accept the Scottish government’s pay deal?

Junior doctors in Scotland have been offered a 6.5 per cent pay rise for this coming year after voting in favour of industrial action over a fortnight ago. Scotland’s health secretary Michael Matheson says he is ‘delighted’ to have reached an agreement with BMA Scotland, but doctors across the country are less enthusiastic.  In Scotland, 97 per cent of the junior doctors who voted in the BMA’s ballot did so in favour of strike action, with a high turnout of 71 per cent. They are looking for full pay restoration, which amounts to a 23.5 per cent pay increase above inflation, or an uplift of just under 35 per cent

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Sunak can’t afford to lose Braverman

Back in the early days of the Blair governments, Alastair Campbell was reputed to have a rule for resignations: once a scandal had been in the news for ten consecutive days, a minister had to go. It was a stupid rule because it merely encouraged parliamentary lobby journalists to keep a story going until the limit was up in the expectation of claiming another ministerial scalp. Since then Alastair has claimed, possibly truthfully, that he cannot remember imposing this rule and had probably come up with it when the Tories were still in power as a means of further stoking up the atmosphere of crisis around John Major. This story

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Has Ukraine launched a ‘special military operation’ in Russia?

While the world is waiting for Ukraine’s spring offensive, something very different happened this morning: an incursion into Russian territory. The soldiers involved are not from the Ukrainian army, but two legions of exiled Russians (including soldiers who defected from Russian forces) allied with Ukraine but are not part of Kyiv’s official military command. While Ukraine is not claiming responsibility, it’s hardly condemning the raid The ‘Russian Volunteer Corps’ and the ‘Free Russia Legion’, both expat legions based in Ukraine, are moving towards Russian towns in the Belgorod region (north of Kharkiv) and have so far claimed to have ‘liberated’ the village of Kozinka and captured the town hall in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer’s plans for NHS reform are easier said than done

For the past few months, Keir Starmer has looked a little like Russel Crowe’s John Nash in the film A Beautiful Mind, wandering around looking everywhere for an original idea. He has baffled the public with promises to make the next Labour government ‘clause IV on steroids’ (there are people who’ve had the vote for a decade who had only just been born when Tony Blair changed the original clause IV, which called for public ownership of industry, and many voters who are still older than that who are a bit hazy on the details too). Today, the Labour leader is offering his best approximation of an original idea that

Nicholas Farrell

Who is really to blame for Italy’s devastating floods?

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni cut short her presence at the G7 summit in Hiroshima this weekend to visit the flood devastated Romagna in north east Italy. In Rome, at about the same time, climate change activists poured black vegetable dye into the Trevi Fountain in protest against government support for fossil fuels, which they say are ‘the cause’ of the floods. One thing is certain: Italy will not stop the destruction wrought by such floods with electric cars, wind farms and heat pumps. Nor, in the short to medium term – and possibly never – will such things on their own prevent climate change either. What Italy needs is

Sunday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Sunak holds Braverman’s fate in his hands

Suella Braverman is in the firing line, following reports the Home Secretary asked civil servants for advice on arranging a private one-to-one driving awareness course to help her avoid a speeding fine and points on her licence. Braverman is accused of breaking the ministerial code by directing civil servants to assist with her personal affairs. In a sign that Braverman could face an investigation into the matter, the Prime Minister is to have a conversation with his independent ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, tomorrow when he returns from the G7 summit. So how much trouble is Braverman really in? Both her critics and supporters have been out in full force