Politics

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

Tuesday

21 Feb 2023

Why did a judge praise the ‘admirable aims’ of Just Stop Oil activists?

When seven Just Stop Oil protesters were convicted of trespassing, the judge in the case had some warm words for those found guilty. District Judge Graham Wilkinson at Wolverhampton Magistrates’ Court praised the activists’ ‘admirable aims’ after they disrupted operations at an Esso fuel terminal in Birmingham last April. Wilkinson told the group during the end of the trial last week that he was moved by their ‘deeply emotive’ explanations. This was a strange thing to say to those whose crime was not entirely victimless: the cost to the Metropolitan Police alone of the Just Stop Oil Protests over the days of the protests exceeded £425,000, to say nothing of

Alex Massie

Kate Forbes’s gay marriage blunder

Mistakenly, I assumed that politicians supporting Kate Forbes’ campaign to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the SNP understood she has certain views which diverge from modern orthodoxy. I assumed her pro-life credentials on the question of abortion could be accompanied by an acceptance that, whatever her personal views, the law – and debate – on abortion was settled. If this was all, I thought, priced-in, I also assumed that Forbes would have a better answer to questions she must surely have anticipated. For reasons that are currently hard to understand, Forbes is engaging in a live experiment to see if you can become leader of a political party without

Steerpike

Kate Forbes’s nightmare 24 hours

It seems that Kate Forbes’ stance on same-sex marriage hasn’t gone down too well with some of her more socially liberal backers. Within 24 hours of announcing her candidacy, the Finance Secretary’s campaign has actually gone backwards, managing to lose four MSPs following an interview in which she said that she would not have supported gay marriage as a ‘matter of conscience.’ That was enough for some of her SNP colleagues at Holyrood. One by one they trooped out on Twitter to deliver their lines of condemnation: As if that wasn’t enough, the candidate herself had to endure a gruelling morning media round today. On Times Radio, she was forced

Gareth Roberts

JK Rowling will stand the test of time

I have a problem with magic. Even as a small child with a big imagination, I found magic very hard to swallow. If a character in a story teleported using a technological aid, that was fine. If a character vanished in a magical puff of smoke after an incantation, I was having none of it. I became aware of the Harry Potter book series quite early for a childless adult. A friend worked in a central London bookshop and was tiring of parents descending in their lunch hours enquiring ‘do you have any of these books by Harry Potter?’ Intrigued, I read the first two – the only two at

Iain MacGregor

Putin’s obsession with Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’ could be his downfall

Ukrainian and Russian forces have been locked in either dogged stalemate or vicious urban fighting for towns and cities in the Donbass and in the north of the country throughout winter. As the bitter Ukrainian winter thaws, the war will soon take on a more deadly momentum as the spring rains of the Rasputitsa give way to better weather for mobile units. This week marks a year since Vladimir Putin’s invasion. The campaign has been calamitous for Russia: 86,000 soldiers have been killed and wounded. The death toll will rise in the coming weeks. Yet Putin’s regime still not only manages to keep a lid on internal dissent, but continues

Monday

20 Feb 2023

Fraser Nelson

Is faith-based opposition to gay marriage a ‘protected characteristic’?

Kate Forbes’s run for First Minister may be short-lived but it will certainly be interesting. Her challenge: she’s a member to the Free Church of Scotland which opposes gay marriage, abortion and gender self-ID. For seven years as a parliamentarian she has avoided saying what she thinks about such issues and for obvious reasons: it would cause her problems. But today she was asked directly and gave a straight answer: she would have voted against gay marriage and would have ‘struggled’ to back Nicola Sturgeon on gender self-ID. I’m a member of the SNP and I believe that no office should be removed from any candidate on the basis of

Steerpike

Yousaf fires back at Forbes over gay marriage

It’s less than 24 hours since the SNP leadership election became a three horse race but already there seems to be a disproportionate focus on LGBT issues. Ash Regan was out of the blocks first, saying she would dump Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill if she replaced her as First Minister. Then this afternoon Kate Forbes, a staunch member of the Free Church, threw her weight behind Regan’s stance and added that she would not have supported same-sex marriage had she been an MSP at the time it was debated in the Scottish parliament. And now tonight Humza Yousaf has hit back at Forbes with a barely-concealed jibe at

Steerpike

Kate Forbes: I’m against gay marriage and self-ID

It’s day one of Kate Forbes’ bid to be First Minister and she is certainly making headlines. The Finance Minister has done a round of media interviews today, with much media attention focusing on her stance on social issues. Forbes is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, a bastion of unrepentant Christianity. And she has suggested in several Q&As today that she is not exactly signed up to some of the SNP’s more liberal social policies. Asked if she would have voted for Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, she replied: I have been on record saying that I had significant concerns about self-ID and I would have had

Steerpike

Angela Rayner gets Labour into more trans trouble

Another day, another Labour politician embroiled in a trans tangle. Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy have both had their awkward moments over Scotland’s controversial prisoners policy and the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. And yesterday it was the turn of the party’s attention-loving deputy leader Angela Rayner. ‘Our Ange’ is being groomed by Labour spinners as the plain-speaking Prescott to Keir Starmer’s London-lawyer Blairite shtick. But it seems that all that no-nonsense ‘tell-it-like-it-is’ spiel comes to an end when Rayner gets grilled on the subject of, er, trans rapists. For the Mancunian apparently believes that it ‘doesn’t matter’ whether or not trans double rapist Isla Bryson has a penis. Is that

Isabel Hardman

Are we really seeing a ‘great resignation’?

Do over-fifties need to get back off the golf course and into work? That’s the narrative that ministers have been pushing recently, with Jeremy Hunt saying later life ‘doesn’t just have to be about going to the golf course’. Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride is conducting a review of the factors keeping people out of the workplace in time for next month’s Budget. But a report out today from pensions consultancy LCP suggests ministers might be barking up the wrong tree. LCP’s analysis points out that there are fewer people of working age who are retired now than at the start of the pandemic, and that the missing workers

James Snell

Saudi Arabia must not bring Syria’s Assad in from the cold

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has said the quiet part out loud when it comes to his country’s attitude towards Syria. Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud told the Munich Security Conference that the ‘maximalist goals’ of the past in confronting Assad’s regime were no longer tenable: [We are] going to have to go through a dialogue with the government in Damascus at some point, in a way that achieves at least the most important of the objectives especially as regards the humanitarian angle, the return of refugees, etc. Yet for all these warm words about helping those afflicted by the devastating earthquake in Syria, normalising relations with the Assad regime – giving it what it wants in terms of sanctions relief, funnelling

Freddy Gray

Joe Biden’s long history in Ukraine

It was only a matter of time before Joe Biden made a ‘surprise’ visit to Kiev. In the year since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the choreographed walkabout with Volodymyr Zelensky has become the must-do photo-op for western global leaders. It’s the 21st century equivalent of an audience with the Pope – a symbolic news happening which shocks no one. That’s not to say it’s not important. It signals, yet again, that America – the most powerful military and financial player on planet earth – is firmly behind Zelensky and his efforts to repel the Russian invasion. Biden may not, at this moment, be willing to provide the jets that the

Matthew Lynn

How bitcoin bounced back after FTX

One of the major exchanges has gone spectacularly bust. Billions of investor’s money has been lost. There have been allegations of widespread fraud, and one of the biggest corporate trials in modern history is set to dominate the business pages over the rest of the year. The collapse of the FTX, and the arrest of its high-profile founder Sam Bankman-Fried, was meant to finish off bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrencies. And yet, this year digital money is staging a dramatic revival – and making fools of its critics all over again. When FTX went down, there was no shortage of people telling us, with ill-disguised glee, that bitcoin

Ross Clark

Sadiq Khan’s free school meals plan is fatally flawed

Sadiq Khan said told Radio 4 listeners this morning that, while he was grateful for the free school meals he received as a child at his primary school in Tooting, he felt stigmatised by having to queue up and eat separately from children whose parents were paying for their meals. If that is what his school was really doing then it is a pretty horrible way to treat children – and create class divisions where they don’t need to exist. Sorting out payments for school lunches can, of course be handled away from children’s noses, so none of them know who is eating for free. But does Khan’s childhood embarrassment really

John Sturgis

Nicola Bulley and the debacle of Lancashire police’s investigation

The storm that has engulfed Lancashire Police – after the force revealed that missing mum Nicola Bulley had ‘issues with alcohol’ – has been a long time brewing. Since February 29 2012 to be precise. The Leveson Inquiry into press wrongdoing was in full flow when, on that leap year day 11 years ago, the Met Police made a public admission: they had indeed loaned an old police horse to Rebekah Brooks. This was perfectly normal, they argued. The horse needed somewhere to live and the News UK chief paid for its upkeep. But the episode came to symbolise what the press’s many critics had long insisted was a too-cosy relationship between

Stephen Daisley

Humza Yousaf looks like Nicola Sturgeon 2.0

Humza Yousaf, the frontrunner to succeed Nicola Sturgeon, formally entered the race this morning. The venue was humble: Clydebank Town Hall. The town once took pride of place in the British shipbuilding industry, but was hit hard by the closure of the yards. Although it has benefited from regeneration in recent decades, deprivation remains a stubborn feature of life there. Clydebank was also home to the Singer sewing machine factory, where Yousaf’s grandfather worked when he brought his family to the UK from Pakistan in the 1960s. The venue may have been humble but the staging was slick. Standing before a row of signs reading ‘Humza for Scotland’ and ‘I’m

Katy Balls

Is there a campaign to stop Forbes?

14 min listen

Scotland’s finance secretary, Kate Forbes has formally declared her campaign to be leader of the SNP. Currently the bookies’ favourite – what direction would she take the party in? Also on the podcast, will there be more news on the Northern Ireland protocol this week?

Steerpike

Is Robertson quitting with a pop at Forbes?

At the beginning of the SNP leadership race, the two favoured candidates to succeed Nicola Sturgeon were Kate Forbes and Angus Robertson. Today the former has declared while the latter has declined to stand. But has Robertson decided to forego the race with a not-so subtle pop at his rival? Mr S couldn’t help but notice that in his letter declining to stand, Robertson wrote that: As the father of two very young children the time is not right for me and my family to take on such a huge commitment. I look forward to working with the next SNP leader and First Minister to deliver progressive policies and economic

Mark Galeotti

Macron is right about the danger of Russia after Putin

France’s President Macron has raised hackles time and again with his interventions on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. For all his grandstanding bombast though, he has often raised the policy dilemmas that the West really ought to be discussing. Most recently, he warned, while returning from the Munich Security Conference, that active efforts to topple Vladimir Putin would be a mistake, because someone more dangerous would succeed him. Discussions about Russia’s future after Putin – and the advisability of outright seeking to unseat him – are in many ways a touchstone about attitudes towards Russia. For those who believe that, because they are not resisting, the majority of Russians are actively

Patrick O’Flynn

Tory MPs are holding Rishi Sunak hostage over Brexit

The Tory Left wants Rishi Sunak to take a leaf out of Theresa May’s book by unilaterally giving up British leverage in a dispute with Brussels. Where May boxed in her country and her successor by accepting the UK must do nothing in pursuit of Brexit that would lead the EU to think it needed to impose a ‘hard border’ on the island of Ireland, the issue now is the passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill which is currently paused in the House of Lords. The Bill, which would give the Government legal power to walk away from onerous aspects of the Protocol, has undoubtedly helped concentrate minds at