Politics

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

Wednesday

8 Feb 2023

James Snell

The charm of Volodymyr Zelensky

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is in Britain for a surprise visit. ‘Freedom will win – we know Russia will lose,’ he told a joint session of Parliament in Westminster Hall this afternoon. This address is the first he has given in Westminster since a video message in March 2022, when the situation for his country was vastly grimmer than it is now. Last year, when he addressed MPs, Zelensky had just rejected a British attempt to evacuate him and his family from Ukraine. He was under threat of assassination; and his country’s capital faced siege and – as Foreign Office officials still insisted – the brand of Russian destruction like that suffered by the

Rod Liddle

The electorate’s strange sense of entitlement

How are you coping during this cost- of-living crisis? Have you made your way to the food bank yet? I am interested to find out. On Tuesday I listened to an edition of Radio 4’s You and Yours for which listeners were invited to call in and explain how they were managing in these desperately bleak times. A good dozen or so shared their experiences with the presenter Winifred Robinson – and all but one dutifully explained that they were about to embark on a nice holiday. Further, of those going away for a bit, all but two were taking a holiday abroad – the Algarve, Benidorm, Catalonia were some

Isabel Hardman

Sunak and Starmer talk tough on Putin at PMQs

Prime Minister’s Questions was very much not the main event today, with MPs looking forward to Volodymyr Zelensky’s address in Westminster Hall afterwards. Keir Starmer kept his questions to the theme of UK political unity in supporting Ukraine in their fight against Russia, while SNP leader Stephen Flynn used his two questions to ridicule the interventions made by Liz Truss. Starmer appeared to have three aims with his questions. The first was to leave Zelensky in no doubt that Labour was as supportive of his fight against Putin as the Conservative party. He used soaring rhetoric about standing on the shoulders of giants to ‘support Ukraine’s fight for freedom’ and

Stephen Daisley

Rishi’s cabinet reshuffle won’t rescue him

The philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard famously claimed in a 1991 book that The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Baudrillard wasn’t suggesting that Desert Storm literally did not occur. Rather, he proposed that, in both its battlefield prosecution and the mediation of events through CNN, the conflict was a simulacrum of a war, the work of ‘a gigantic apparatus of simulation’. In short, we saw the symbols and signifiers of war but not a war itself. While postmodernism is not something to be encouraged, allow me to make a Baudrillardian claim of my own: The cabinet reshuffle did not take place. Consider the evidence. There weren’t any great comings or goings.

Katy Balls

Will Zelensky secure fighter jets from the UK?

Volodymyr Zelensky has just addressed a packed Westminster Hall thanking Britons for their ‘grit and character’. Ukraine’s triumph would be the ‘greatest victory of our lifetimes’, he said, and show ‘the new reality of the free world’ – that ‘any aggressor is going to lose’. He pleaded with MPs for fighter jets, presenting them with the helmet of one of Ukraine’s most successful pilots. On it was written: ‘We have freedom, give us wings to protect it.’ He finished his speech saying: ‘I will be leaving parliament today, thanking you in advance for powerful English planes.’ Boris Johnson – who has focused most of his post-No. 10 interventions on Ukraine

Isabel Hardman

Should ex-MPs get a medal for their service?

Should ex-MPs get a medal thanking them for their service? That’s the suggestion of the Commons Administration Committee, which has today published a report called ‘Smoothing the cliff edge’ about what happens when MPs leave parliament, either of their own accord or because voters have turfed them out. It’s an interesting piece of work, with the central thesis that the current treatment of ex-MPs could be putting off the very best from going into politics in the first place. It says: The evidence we heard and the academic research we consulted showed us that if we do not provide sufficient support to MPs when they leave parliament, this could deter

Fraser Nelson

Liz Truss: what really happened

The parable of Liz Truss is, by now, world famous. A free-market idealogue was elected leader by the radical wing of her party, then trashed the economy by enacting her deficit-financed tax cuts. She invoked Hayek and Thatcher and was cheered on by their admirers. But her mini-Budget terrified the market and she had to quit – after doubling everyone’s mortgage rates. In the end, it was not the experts she was rebelling against, but economic reality. She had applied 1980s economics to the 2020s and it had ended in disaster, for her and for her country. As prime minister, Truss was stunned by the potency of this narrative. Not

James Heale

Lee Anderson: ‘Capital punishment? 100% effective!’

Who is the worst man in Britain? According to the Daily Mirror, it’s the 56-year-old former coal miner and Tory MP Lee Anderson, who clinched the award a year ago after criticising England’s footballers for ‘taking the knee’. How did Anderson, who this week was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Tory party, respond to the accolade? ‘I immediately rang my parents to thank them for all their support. It’s the first time anyone from my family has been voted the worst man in Britain, so I tried to win it two years on the trot.’ Since his election in December 2019, Anderson has emerged as the pugnacious ambassador for the Red Wall intake of Conservative MPs. He

Douglas Murray

Where have all the grown-ups gone?

Last week 100,000 civil servants from 124 government departments went on strike. This fact prompts a number of questions, not least – who knew there were so many government departments? Also, when was the last time anyone saw that number of civil servants? Since Covid, the most noteworthy thing about the civil service has been that it has completely inverted its working week. Alongside those members who never turn up to the office, a goodly portion have managed to arrange it so that they spend a couple of days a week at their desk and a five-day stretch at home recuperating. Meaning that last week civil servants finally went back

Martin Vander Weyer

Time for cautious optimism, not FTSE jubilation

What comfort can we draw from the FTSE 100 Index’s all-time high of 7905 last Friday? Yes, in a limited sense, it’s a reason to be cheerful: first, because it’s a boost to the value of pension and tracker funds; second, because it fits the current narrative of gloom receding, in which inflation has probably peaked, interest rates look set to follow soon and the Bank of England says the coming recession will be shallower than first thought. But the new top is less than a thousand points above the ‘dotcom bubble’ record of 6930 at the turn of the millennium, so no spectacular reward for long-term equity holders. And

Gavin Mortimer

Will the Prevent review change our fear about ‘Islamophobia’?

The bombshell official review into the Government’s anti-radicalisation Prevent programme will land on desks in Whitehall today – but will, as politicians like to say, any lessons be learnt? Its author, William Shawcross, is reported to have been bold in highlighting the deficiencies of the scheme, which, he says, has ‘failed to tackle the ideological beliefs behind Islamist extremism with potentially serious consequences’. The review was commissioned three years ago by Priti Patel, a woman who styled herself as a no-nonsense home secretary, but who proved nothing of the sort. Her successor, Suella Braverman, also likes to talk tough. Shawcross’s report has set her the challenge of proving her resolve

Patrick O’Flynn

The unstoppable rise of Kemi Badenoch

The old socialist Ian Mikardo used to say that a political party was like a bird in that it needed a left wing and a right wing in order to fly. The guiding principle of Rishi Sunak’s mini-reshuffle seems to be that the Tory party needs a Blue Wall and a Red Wall in order to sustain a parliamentary majority. The appointment of Chelsea and Fulham MP and former George Osborne protégé Greg Hands as party chairman is about the most Blue Wall thing ever. Giving him the plain-speaking Ashfield MP Lee Anderson, a former coal miner, as deputy, could hardly be more Red Wall. If the Conservatives are turfed

Matt Purple

Joe Biden got the reception he deserved at his State of the Union speech

At first, it sounded like Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address was going to be another snoozer. Out of the gate came clanging all the usual paeans to bipartisanship: ‘To my Republican friends,’ Biden said, ‘if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress!’ Given that just five months ago Biden was pronouncing Trump supporters ‘a threat to this country’, that seemed a bit rich. Sure enough the fake bonhomie didn’t last. What unfolded over the next hour and a quarter was the weirdest, most disorienting State of the Union address I’ve ever seen. The president kept

Isabel Hardman

Does Rishi’s reshuffle show he’s given up on the Red Wall?

Tories in Red Wall seats are in a mixed mood after Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle. They are pleased that Lee Anderson has been made deputy chair of the party, though this is in part to counterbalance the appointment of a south-west London MP as party chairman. There are also some wry smiles from Conservatives who had been planning a rebellion to force Rishi Sunak’s hand on the European Convention on Human Rights: Anderson would have been a key figure in this revolt, which is presumably a good reason for giving him a government job. The Conservative party is adopting a defensive crouch to stem losses in its heartlands at the next

Kelvin MacKenzie

Dominic Raab is no bully – and I should know

When I read the charges of bullying levelled against the justice secretary Dominic Raab it raised a wry smile. You call that bullying? Being icy with staff? Expecting high standards? Not recognising Nish Kumar? Instead of facing a KC-led disciplinary inquiry I would promote Raab with a handsome bonus. If you want to meet real bullies, despots or taskmasters could I suggest you go into the news business. I was certainly one of them. Being a decent brownnoser during my time editing the Sun, I found agreeing with a raging Rupert Murdoch that I was an incompetent idiot wasn’t always the answer he was looking for. In fact, it would sometimes make

Tuesday

7 Feb 2023

Steerpike

The slow death of the media Blairites

How can you tell a political movement is well and truly dead? Easy – the Times newspaper finally drops said movement’s advocates from its opinion pages. It’s a process that can take time, as we’ve witnessed with the painfully slow demise of Britain’s media Blairites. RIP. Steerpike was as sad as anyone to learn last month that David Aaronovitch has left the Times, having spent almost two decades farting out his centrist dad radicalism from the paper of record. We can all take comfort in that fact he will have a new Substack, natch, and he continues to be a voice for the voiceless on Twitter. Just yesterday, for instance,

Stephen Daisley

It will take more than a scolding from Salmond to see off Sturgeon

Watching Alex Salmond rail against Nicola Sturgeon for sidetracking the Scottish independence movement with gender identity ideology is both uncanny and oddly nostalgic. Salmond was Sturgeon’s mentor and is largely responsible for putting her in the post she now holds. For ten magical years between 2004 and 2014, they were the dream team of Scottish politics. Together they wrested control of Holyrood from Labour, lead a nationalist march through the institutions and civil society, and convinced 45 per cent of Scots to vote for secession. They made history and came damn near close to unmaking the United Kingdom. Now Salmond has scolded his protege in a Burns Supper speech in Dundee that

Steerpike

Lee Anderson named Tory deputy chair

Talk about a broad church reshuffle. Having appointed the socially liberal London MP Greg Hands as the chairman of the Tory party this morning, this afternoon Rishi Sunak named Red Wall right-winger Lee Anderson as his new deputy too. The move has sparked something of a mixed reaction: his friends in the 2019 intake are delighted while one Tory staffer complained to Mr S that just five years ago he was taking the Labour whip under Jeremy Corbyn. Anderson’s new gig binds the most vocal Tory critic of small boat crossings to the government’s side, days before the Home Secretary unveils her flagship legislation. He is also popular on the

Nigel Jones

Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle won’t save him

Winston Churchill had a stamp on his office desk reading ‘Action this day’ with which he marked documents demanding immediate attention from his officials and ministers. It seems that Rishi Sunak has exchanged this stamp for one reading ‘Inaction this day’ to judge by his government’s paralysed inactivity in the face of pressing events. His answer to the multiple strikes, walkouts and disputes plaguing Britain is, erm, carrying out a mini-ministerial reshuffle of the same tired old faces. Such a massive irrelevancy is unlikely to impress public opinion or do anything to close the Tories’ 20 point lag behind Labour in the opinion polls. Nor are many of the appointments

Max Jeffery

What’s behind Rishi’s reshuffle?

13 min listen

Rishi Sunak announced a reshuffle of his cabinet this morning. Among other changes, Greg Hands will become the Tory party chair, and Michelle Donelan will become the culture secretary. Why is Sunak making these changes just 18 months before an election? Will they make any real difference to how his government works? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Max Jeffery.