Politics

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

Tuesday

25 Apr 2023

Cindy Yu

Could the UK’s new China policy prevent a second cold war?

What a difference a year makes. Three prime ministers ago, in April 2022, Liz Truss gave a characteristically punchy speech at Mansion House as Foreign Secretary. Grouping Beijing with Moscow into a club of ‘aggressors’ with ‘malign tactics’, she reiterated her pledge to create a ‘network of liberty’, bringing together like-minded, liberal and democratic countries to face down ‘the bullies’. Tonight’s speech from her successor at the Foreign Office signalled a significant softening. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tilted towards strategy and pragmatism, reiterating the message of last month’s updated Integrated Review. He called for engagement, but only on the basis of British national interest, while arguing that security should still

Lucy Dunn

SNP Westminster leader says the party must ‘do better’

Is the truth about the ignorance of key SNP figures being exposed? Or is the party’s ‘inner circle’ even smaller than first thought? It certainly appears to have been the norm for senior figures to only become aware of party dealings after the fact. First Minister Humza Yousaf has said he didn’t know about the purchase of a £110,000 motorhome until after he became SNP leader. Former treasurer Colin Beattie initially said he didn’t know about the buy, despite his name appearing on the SNP’s 2021 balance sheet (though he has, this evening, clarified that he ‘became aware of the transaction via the 2021 annual accounts’ – still indicating that

Steerpike

Labour’s sewage scheme backfires

It seems that the Starmer army have once again been caught trying to be too clever by half. Earlier today, Labour sought to exploit Tory woes over sewage by tabling a motion in an opposition day debate. The motion called for the government to set a target for the reduction of sewage discharges, implement financial penalties and carry out an impact assessment of such discharges. Stung perhaps by the debacle of October – when an opposition day debate ultimately precipitated Liz Truss’s resignation – the government opted to not object to those arguments. However the Labour motion included a fourth part that would have given the opposition the ability to

James Heale

How did Beattie miss a £100,000 motorhome?

10 min listen

Colin Beattie, the SNP’s former treasurer, said today that he ‘didn’t know’ about the party’s purchase of a motorhome worth £100,000, the vehicle at the centre of an ongoing police probe into SNP finances. What’s going on? And as the military begins to evacuate British citizens from Sudan, did the Foreign Office react fast enough? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.

Iain Macwhirter

Humza ‘useless’ Yousaf is living up to his nickname

It’s often said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first turn mad, which may or may not apply to the Scottish National Party. But the deities always find it easier to punish hubris when those guilty of it turn themselves into figures of fun. And, when it comes to that, Humza Yousaf is your man. The First Minister is a virtuoso of bathos. He can hardly open his mouth without saying something that turns a serious matter into an unintentional gag. When the SNP national treasurer, Colin Beattie, was arrested last week, on the day of the new First Minister’s big ‘vision’ speech to Holyrood, Humza told

Brendan O’Neill

Diane Abbott and the trouble with the ‘hierarchy of racism’

The radical left have a new favourite phrase: ‘hierarchy of racism’. This is when one form of racism is treated more seriously than another. Such racial favouritism infuriates online leftists. It is anathema to the noble cause of anti-racism to elevate one ethnic group’s suffering over another’s, they cry. All racism is bad, they’re forever reminding us. But here’s the thing: they only ever use that phrase ‘hierarchy of racism’ when it’s anti-Semitism that is being talked about. I guarantee that every time you hear a Corbynista or some other virtual radical bemoan the treatment of certain kinds of racism as more concerning than others, it’s because anti-Jewish hatred is

Isabel Hardman

Would Labour really tackle the strikes better than the Tories?

The debate about NHS strikes is turning into one of those ‘am I being unreasonable?’ threads on Reddit and Mumsnet, where posters jump all over each other to point out the way someone has messed up in a relationship. Health Secretary Steve Barclay is still hoping to win the war of attrition between the government and healthcare workers by appealing to the unions to be reasonable and constructive. Barclay made that argument again today when taking departmental questions in the Commons, but his announcement last night that he would be taking the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to court in a bid to stop that union’s strikes showed that it

Steerpike

The SNP’s civil war erupts in Westminster

It seems that the acrimonious civil war embroiling the SNP isn’t merely restricted to Scotland. For amid growing questions about the party’s finance structures, a new front has opened up down in London, with Stephen Flynn, the party’s leader at Westminster, turning on his predecessor Ian Blackford. Flynn admitted to Good Morning Scotland on Monday that his group of 45 MPs is currently struggling to appoint auditors, following the decision of the party’s long-time accountants Johnston Carmichael to cut ties. That is significant because the SNP must submit an auditor’s certificated by 31 May or risk losing its annual sum of more than £1 million of ‘Short money’ – taxpayer

Stephen Daisley

China is right to chuckle at Britain’s foreign policy

The Foreign Office has seven ministers, 16,000 employees, an £11bn credit card and one of these days it might get itself a foreign policy. If the trailed excerpts of James Cleverly’s speech to the Lord Mayor’s Easter Banquet are to be believed, the Foreign Secretary will articulate the government’s pivot back towards Beijing. Cleverly will reportedly declare that ‘no significant problem… can be solved without China’. He will say that while ‘it would be clear and easy – perhaps satisfying – for me to declare a new cold war and say that our goal is to isolate China’, it would be ‘wrong’, ‘a betrayal of our national interest’ and even a ‘wilful misunderstanding of the modern world’. This

Steerpike

SNP treasurer in the dark about motorhome purchase

It’s a day ending in y, which means another bad 24 hours for the SNP. And as the party’s leading lights all turn on each other like rats in a sack, this morning it was the turn of the party’s former treasurer Colin Beattie to come out swinging. Beattie said earlier that he was not aware of the purchase of the £110,000 motorhome supposedly bought for a second referendum campaign, back when he was in charge of the party’s finances. Cornered by journalists in Holyrood today, Beattie floundered when faced with a simple question ‘Did you know about the motorhome purchase and did you sign it off?’ The beleaguered beancounter

Joanna Williams

Labour’s ‘lessons for boys’ plan is a sinister sideshow

What are schools for? The answer used to be obvious: school was where children went to learn how to read, write and count, while the lucky ones picked up some history, algebra, chemistry and literature along the way. But not any more. Nowadays, academic subjects have become a sideshow to the main event: changing children’s attitudes and values. Whether it is relationships and sex education classes that teach children there are 73 genders, citizenship lessons that preach the importance of fair trade, or personal, social and health education workshops on white privilege, today’s schools seem more concerned with coercing children into accepting a particular set of beliefs than they are

Steerpike

Doubts raised over Diane Abbott’s Observer excuse

Oh dear. It seems that Diane Abbott’s antisemitism apology – dashed off on Sunday morning in a failed last-ditch attempt to stave off her suspension – has backfired somewhat spectacularly. The Jewish Chronicle has today published an article which calls into question Abbott’s account of how her letter downplaying racism against Jewish people came to be published by the Observer. The former Shadow Home Secretary claimed that an initial draft of her letter was sent erroneously to the newspaper. But the JC says that Abbott’s letter was sent to the Observer twice from the MP’s own email account a week before it was published. The letter was identical each time

Euan McColm

Lord Frost has offered the SNP a lifeline

First Minister Humza Yousaf met with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last night for the first time since he took over from Nicola Sturgeon almost a month ago. Amongst other things, Yousaf ‘raised concerns’ about ‘UK government attacks on devolution’, including recent comments from a certain Lord David Frost in the Telegraph, who wrote: ‘Not only must no more powers be devolved to Scotland, it’s time to reverse the process.’ But it’s pro-Union politicians who are really up in arms after the Tory peer’s calls that some of the Scottish government’s devolved powers be rolled back. The former Brexit negotiator’s clumsy intervention has been a lifeline to Yousaf in the middle

Isabel Hardman

Can the Foreign Office avoid the mistakes of Kabul in Sudan?

A British evacuation of Sudan began last night after a 72-hour ceasefire was agreed. Ministers, however, are anxious about the possibility that the fighting will start up sooner. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said it was ‘impossible for us to predict how long this opportunity will last’. Britons will need to travel to an airfield outside Khartoum themselves, as no escorts are available, and are being told only to travel when contacted. It is a precarious situation. It is also easy to see superficial parallels with the chaotic evacuation of Kabul in 2021. Cleverly, though, said ‘this situation is fundamentally different to the situation in Afghanistan’, adding ‘we have established contact

Steerpike

Will James Cleverly stand with Hong Kong?

Another day, another speech on China. Tonight it’s the turn of Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, speaking in all his finery at the Lord Mayor’s Easter Banquet at Mansion House. Clad in his best glad rags, Cleverly is expected to argue that isolating China would be against the UK’s national interest. The two nations instead ought to work together to solve ‘humanity’s biggest problems’, with Cleverly arguing it would be ‘wrong’ to ‘declare a new Cold War’ but urging Beijing to honest about the ‘biggest military build-up in peacetime history’. Jolly good luck convincing Xi Jinping’s jingoistic goons on that… One aspect of Sino-British relations which trailed versions of Cleverly’s speech

John Armstrong

Climate activism must not be allowed to undermine climate science

Student activist Edred Whittingham baffled the snooker world last week by jumping onto the green baize at the Snooker World Championships in Sheffield and detonating a package of orange chalk across the table in a bid to end global warming. A few days earlier, the German government had baffled scientists by shutting down their three remaining nuclear power plants; this despite a despairing open letter from scientists, including two Nobel Laureates, explaining the plants’ potential to reduce Germany’s carbon footprint by up to 30 million tons of C02 per year. As these stories show, there is no shortage of good intentions to save the planet, but there remains scope for

Monday

24 Apr 2023

Freddy Gray

Why did Rupert Murdoch fire his most successful host?

Ever since it began in 2016, Tucker Carlson Tonight has been easily the most interesting news show on American television. It was never, as Carlson’s many detractors claim, Trumpist propaganda. On the contrary, Carlson was a rare bright spot of originality in a boringly partisan media landscape. And now he’s gone: fired directly by Rupert Murdoch, I’m reliably told, with no reason given, just a few days after Fox News paid out $787 million to settle with Dominion Voting Systems. ‘It was the older Aussie,’ says my source: ‘the 92-year old-who just called off his engagement and settled for 800 million so that he wouldn’t have to go to

Steerpike

Was Tucker Carlson getting too big for his boots?

All change at Murdoch Towers: Tucker Carlson has hosted his last primetime show at Fox News. His departure was clearly a shock: his 8 p.m. show was being trailed on Fox and Friends this morning. In a rather neutral press release, the network announced that: Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor. The reasons for Carlson’s shock departure are unclear – Steerpike understands from a source with knowledge that no reason was given. Rumors had been circulating in the Fox offices that a big dismissal could follow the $787

Steerpike

Michael Gove ‘desperate’ to star on Strictly

Is Michael Gove planning to dust off his dancing shoes? Eighteen months after the Levelling Up secretary was spotted throwing shapes in a Scottish nightclub, it seems that the 55-year-old Aberdonian has high ambitions for his return to the dance floor. According to his former wife, journalist Sarah Vine, Gove is ‘desperate’ to take a spin around the ballroom on the BBC hit show Strictly Come Dancing. Speaking today on GB News, Vine hinted that her ex-husband might enjoy the limelight of the small screen and added, ‘Well, he would, because there’s endless videos of him dancing.’ Vine didn’t say what she thought of Gove’s chances of taking home the glitter

Steerpike

Cabinet Office spends £140k on new anti-bullying platform

So. Farewell then. Dominic Raab. The Justice Secretary might be gone but the debate about office behaviour rumbles on. And, with exquisite timing, Mr S spotted that one government department is doing its own bit for Whitehall workplaces by today publishing details of a £140,000 contract for IT services for a new ‘Bullying harassment and discrimination reporting platform’ for civil servants. The new service will allow staff to anonymously report incidents and is going to be run by Culture Shift, a company which promises to give ‘organisations the insight they need to monitor and prevent bullying and harassment in educational institutions and workplaces.’ It claims to enable organisations to take