Politics

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

Wednesday

Andrew Roberts

Farewell to arms: Britain’s depleted military

Ayear ago on Friday, President Vladimir Putin unleashed blitzkrieg on Ukraine. It was an unprovoked assault that has so far led to more than 200,000 people being killed or wounded, but has failed in its intention of establishing Russian hegemony over its democratic neighbour. The West and much of the rest of the civilised world were shocked by the invasion, as well as being horrified and disgusted by the brutality of the Russian armed forces.    So it was with undisguised adulation that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was greeted by a standing-room-only crowd of parliamentarians in a freezing Westminster Hall this month, giving one of the most inspirational addresses to be

Timothy Garton Ash

The need for speed in Ukraine: the West must be bold

Kyiv General Valeriy Zaluzhny, stocky, forceful, apple-cheeked, sits at the desk in Kyiv from which he commands all Ukraine’s armed forces. I ask him what they need from the West. First, air defence. With a twinkle in his eye, he unzips his khaki fleece to reveal a garish T-shirt demanding ‘F-16s!’ Next on his list are long-range missiles such as the American ATACMS and the Franco-British Storm Shadow, so they can hit Russian targets beyond the range of their current armoury. Now the General jumps up, disappears behind a glass-fronted office cupboard into an improvised sleeping area, and returns with another T-shirt, this time calling for missiles. It seems he

Andrew Drury

Shamima Begum is no victim – and I should know

I am a 56-year-old dad of four. I live with my wife and dog in Surrey, where I run a successful building firm. But I also know Shamima Begum, who this week lost her appeal to have her citizenship reinstated, perhaps better than anyone else in Britain – apart from her family. I’ve visited her six times, travelling across thousands of miles and warzones to meet the jihadi bride. That’s because I’m one of the world’s foremost extreme tourists. My holidays have taken me to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, North Korea and Chernobyl. I have infiltrated the KKK, was the first westerner to visit the Black Hawk Down crash

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Putin and the Almighty’s gender self-ID

Vladimir Putin suffered a difficulty of his own making in his big anniversary speech on Tuesday. He was calling for something not far short of total war – a cluster of schemes to house, improve, offer therapy to and reconfigure the command of the armed services, to withdraw Russia and Russians from the global economy and to direct economic activity into areas most likely to defeat western technology. Yet he has always maintained that his country is not at war, and it does not sound very ringing to call (in the phrase which he first used a year ago and repeats today) for a total ‘special military operation’. He therefore

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Will Tony Blair ever give up on ID cards?

Is Tony Blair ever going to give up hope of foisting ID cards on us? As prime minister, he was defeated over the issue – his plans were eventually dropped by the incoming coalition in 2010. He tried again during the pandemic, trying to sell us the idea of vaccination passports. And now he is at it again, this time with his old sparring partner William Hague. Together they have written a paper for Blair’s Institute for Global Change, called A New National Purpose: Innovation Can Power the Future of Britain, making the not-altogether-novel observation that computers can be jolly useful.  There is a very good reason why Britain abandoned

Iain Macwhirter

The SNP leadership race has turned into the mother of all culture wars

Bring back Nicola Sturgeon. The race to replace her as SNP leader and first minister has turned into the mother of all culture wars. Who would have thought that the party of independence would start tearing itself apart over a law on same sex marriage that was passed nearly a decade ago? The early front runner, Kate Forbes, provoked fury among ‘progressive’ SNP supporters on Twitter by saying she opposes gay marriage – something everyone who knows her knew perfectly well. She is an evangelical Christian for heaven’s sake, a member of the Free Church of Scotland. Of course she opposes gay marriage. That along with having children out of wedlock and working

Damian Reilly Damian Reilly

Is Facebook’s verification scheme a scam?

Is Facebook’s scheme, announced over the weekend, to encourage its three billion users to pay $12 (£10) a month to have their accounts verified really just a form of corporate extortion? I ask only because last year someone – I strongly suspect a deranged Novak Djokovic fan – took the time to create a fake Facebook profile featuring me. The photo that accompanies the profile, which is named ‘Damian Damian’, is certainly of me, although Boris Johnson, who I was standing next to when it was taken, has been cropped out. Onto my forehead has been superimposed a fetching pair of devil’s horns and posts include ‘I’m a delusional little

Alexander Larman

Why don’t Harry and Meghan sue South Park?

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are hardly averse to taking matters to court. From their privacy tussles with the Mail on Sunday to the recent revelation that the taxpayer has forked out £300,000 over Prince Harry’s High Court challenge to the Home Office about his security arrangements when visiting the UK (he wanted to pay for police protection for his family, but was informed that the British police were not available for private hire, like taxis), the couple appear to regard legal action as a regrettable necessity that will ensure ‘their truth’ comes out into the world. Yet now, at last, they seem to have reached their limit. When

John Ferry John Ferry

Does Kate Forbes support austerity?

Watching Kate Forbes this week struggle to reconcile her social conservatism with her ambition to be First Minister of Scotland has been excruciating. But it has also deflected attention away from another important aspect of her politics: her economic conservatism. As well as sitting on the right on issues such as gay marriage, Forbes also gives every indication of being a fiscal conservative who is comfortable with austerity. Exhibit one is her role sitting on the SNP’s 2018 Sustainable Growth Commission. The Commission’s report was pitched as a realistic roadmap to independence. Unlike the land-of-milk-and-honey narrative that was sold to Scots in 2014, this group would face economic reality square

Steerpike Steerpike

Grandees attack the Guardian over its Corbyn leader

It seems the wokest paper in all the west has blundered once again. Last Wednesday the Guardian published a leader column on ‘Labour and antisemitism’ in which the bastion of right-on liberalism opined on the party’s record under Jeremy Corbyn. It opined that: Mr Corbyn has a formidable record fighting against racism and in speaking up for many persecuted peoples, but in this case he was too slow and too defensive. To show how much better he was than some of his critics allowed, he should have tried harder to engage with their criticisms. But it seems that not all of the Graun’s readers share their paper’s view of the

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Kate Forbes isn’t homophobic for opposing same-sex marriage

Let me get this right. In Scotland’s political class it is de rigueur to believe that someone with a penis can literally be a woman but it is the height of bigotry to think marriage should be for heterosexuals only? It is good and ‘progressive’ to say that men, even rapists, should be put in women’s prisons if they claim to be women, but it is a cancel-worthy speechcrime to say marriage should be between men and women only? Scotland, you are so lost. We need to talk about the persecution of Kate Forbes. It is revealing so much about our febrile and unforgiving political climate. For me the big

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Sir Jim or the Sheikh for Man Utd? Either will be better than the Glazers

‘Greenwashing vs Sportswashing’, as Sky Sports put it, is a curious way to characterise the emerging £6 billion takeover tussle for Manchester United between industrialist Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani from Qatar. The latter might feel that his emirate – contrary to expectations, shall we say – has been not just sportswashed but drycleaned, pressed and showcased on the red carpet as host of last year’s World Cup, which ended without significant disruption by human rights or anti-corruption activists. Following that with membership of the rogues’ gallery of Premier League owners – recently joined by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia as majority owner

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Nicola Bulley and the shame of the TikTok ghouls

Ghoul – ‘a person morbidly interested in death or disaster’ – is such a descriptive word. There are a lot of them about these days; all too many emerged in the aftermath of the disappearance of Nicola Bulley. In this tragic case, involving a 45-year-old woman who went missing three weeks ago while walking her dog, we have seen the inevitable grisly conclusion of the ghoul mentality. A body found this week in the River Wyre in Lancashire has been identified as that of Nicola Bulley. But even now, the ghouls who have followed this case continue to speculate wildly about what happened. I’m sure that some of the people

Lucy Dunn

What do SNP members think of Kate Forbes’s views?

Kate Forbes’s religious views have sparked a backlash among her SNP colleagues. The party leadership contender’s announcement that she would not have supported gay marriage ‘as a matter of conscience’, led to four of her MSP colleagues distancing themselves from Forbes. And there could be more departures yet: earlier today, Forbes also let slip that she is personally opposed to childbearing out of wedlock. She said: ‘[Having children outside of marriage] is something that I would seek to avoid for me personally, but it doesn’t fuss me, the choices that other people make. In terms of my faith, it says that sex is for marriage and that would be the

Tuesday

James Heale James Heale

Damian Green’s rejection is a sign of things to come

Much has been written about Damian Green’s failure on Saturday to be selected for the new Weald of Kent seat. It was swiftly hailed as the ‘grassroots revenge’ of pro-Boris forces within the party. Theresa May’s onetime deputy was described as a ‘prominent anti-Boris activist’ responsible for forcing him ‘out of Downing Street’ last July. The newly-formed Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) was quick to trumpet the result. Its chairman David Campbell-Bannerman said that ‘Those who turned on Boris Johnson are being punished – this deselection is hard evidence of this being real.’ Party chair Greg Hands tweeted his ‘full support’ of Green, declaring that ‘we stand behind our MPs.’ The

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Can progressives handle Christian politicians?

The SNP leadership contest should not be about Kate Forbes’ religious faith but that issue has quickly come to dominate. The 32-year-old is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, a small outfit that hews to Scripture on the sanctity of marriage and life. Now that she is running for SNP leader, she is being asked whether she would have voted to permit same-sex marriage had she been an MSP at that time.  She says ‘no’, but that she would do nothing as First Minister to roll back rights already established. She has spoken about how her Christianity instructs her to love her neighbour and how that would drive

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Time is ticking for Sunak to resolve the Protocol

Today was supposed to be the day when Rishi Sunak presented an agreement which resolved the issues over the Northern Ireland Protocol to his cabinet. That was the plan, at least, when the Prime Minister flew to Belfast on Friday for talks with the parties at Stormont. But today’s cabinet came and went and no agreement was on the long table for ministers to read. The readout from the meeting included a mere holding line: ‘The Prime Minister told cabinet that intensive negotiations with the EU continue on resolving the issues caused by the way the Protocol was being enforced and that he was seeking to address three main areas

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is Rishi Sunak repeating May’s mistakes?

14 min listen

Today was meant to be the day that Rishi Sunak presented his Northern Ireland Protocol plans to parliament, instead he told the cabinet that intensive negotiations continue with the EU. Is he doomed to repeat Theresa May’s Brexit mistakes? Will he need the backing of the DUP for any agreement? Also on the podcast, as prospective SNP leader Kate Forbes continues to defend her views on gay marriage, can her campaign survive? Cindy Yu speaks to Isabel Hardman and Patrick O’Flynn.  Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson. 

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Would Biden punish Sunak for pulling out of the ECHR?

The US government has warned British security officials that the ‘five eyes’ intelligence-sharing agreement may be at risk if the UK imperils the Good Friday Agreement by pulling out of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). I understand that this point has been made recently, and fairly clearly, in talks between the UK and US sides. Rishi Sunak has been holding open the prospect of withdrawing from the ECHR if it frustrates his plans to deport asylum seekers who enter the UK illegally. But this would blow a hole in the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), which says that citizens of Northern Ireland will receive human rights protections based on