Politics

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

Wednesday

25 Jan 2023

How the Tories can avoid falling into Sadiq Khan’s Ulez trap

Sadiq Khan has an inveterate desire to show Londoners who is boss: the mayor’s latest wheeze is an expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez). Khan is seeking to roll out Ulez to all of London’s boroughs from August – along the leafy lanes of Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire. Aside from ostentatious green zealotry, it’s difficult to see any convincing argument in favour of doing so. These areas already have sparser public transport than the rest of London. Charging hard-pressed residents who are unable to afford a fancy car £12.50 a day for the privilege of driving to the station to catch a sustainable train is a slap

Ross Clark

The retirement age should be 70

Remember the Waspi women, who used to leap up and down outside Tory conferences for the right to continue to retire at 60? They claimed that their carefully laid retirement plans had been thrown into disarray by the government’s decision to equalise women’s retirement age with that of men – even though they had been given two decades’ notice and their careful plans for retirement hadn’t, it seemed, quite extended to bothering to find out at what age they would retire. The ideal should be to water down the concept of retirement altogether The government eventually saw them off, but it is once again risking the wrath of 50 and

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer: ‘We haven’t won – yet’

When Keir Starmer won the Labour leadership in 2020, following the party’s worst election defeat since 1935, many people shook him by the hand, said ‘good luck’ and then added darkly ‘you’re not going to do it in five years’. Just three years later, he has done ‘it’, to the extent that Labour is 20 points ahead in the polls. The insult the Tories levelled at him when he became opposition leader – that he was boring – now looks like an advantage when it is offset by Conservative psycho-drama. Starmer clearly thinks things are going his way. Actually, things aren’t going his way when we meet, because his train

The Spectator

How did ‘mummies’ get their name?

Preserve us The British Museum said it would stop referring to ‘mummies’ and call them ‘mummified persons’ instead, out of respect to their dignity. How did they come to be called mummies in the first place? – The term has been traced back to 1615, and derived from the Latin Mumia, and the Arabic Mumiya, referring either to an embalmed body or the bituminous substance in which they were embalmed. The terms ‘mummified’ and ‘mummification’ did not come into use until the 19th century. Spent Has the Conservative government cut health and social care funding? NHS and social care funding in England at 2022/23 prices: 2008/09 £121.5 bn 09/10 £129.7 bn10/11

Lionel Shriver

The war against words

The University of Washington technology department has banned the word ‘housekeeping’. Not because the ‘problematic’ noun is overtly ist (ableist, sexist, racist, ageist…; by now, you must know the ist list). No, because it ‘feels gendered’. Would that they’d simply banned housekeeping. I hate scrubbing the shower. This month, the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work proscribed the word ‘field’. ‘Field work’ might have unpleasant connotations for the descendants of slaves. (Sorry! Descendants of ‘enslaved people’. Nouns that reference persons – like, you know, ‘doctor’ – are reductive and dehumanising.) A ‘field of study’ is henceforth a ‘practicum’. Presumably we’ll now protect corn crops from ‘pasture mice’ and

Martin Vander Weyer

Where Britishvolt went wrong

As a scattering of snow settles on the desolate site at Blyth in Northumberland that might have become the £3.8 billion Britishvolt battery factory, differences of opinion over the failure of this would-be flagship of the UK’s electric vehicle revolution become clearer. For Andrew Orlowski in the Daily Telegraph, it’s ‘a surprising success’, ministers having rightly declined to inject public funds into a venture with no market-ready technology, no customers and an executive team with a taste for private jets: at least ‘we know we won’t have another DeLorean to rue’. For the Observer, by contrast, it’s ‘a new low for ministers… to boast about cash they saved by not investing

Steerpike

Labour MP probed over lobbying claims

Another day, another sleaze scandal threatening to engulf one of Westminster’s finest. Labour frontbencher Alex Davies-Jones is being investigated over allegations she breached lobbying rules and thus the MPs’ code of conduct too. New Commissioner for Standards Daniel Greenberg, who has been in the job a mere matter of weeks, opened an investigation into the Pontypridd MP yesterday afternoon. He will be examining whether Davies-Jones broke ‘paid advocacy’ rules, using her position in parliament to benefit a company from whom she has received payment or gifts. If the shadow culture minister is found guilty, she risks being suspended from the Commons. According to the Sun, it is understood that Davies-Jones

David Cohen

New Zealand’s PM is a welcome change from Jacinda Ardern

Chris Hipkins can afford to feel pleased with his first days in office as Prime Minister of New Zealand. In his inaugural press conference, Hipkins came across as thoughtful and intelligent. In a welcome change from his predecessor, Jacinda Ardern, he was also gratifyingly dull. Hipkins has vowed to shift his focus back to basics, concentrating on the cost-of-living crisis and tackling crime. Gone are some of the more contentious policies, such as unemployment insurance, espoused by Ardern. ‘Over the coming week,’ he said, ‘the cabinet will be making decisions on reining in some programmes and projects that aren’t essential right now’. A bit more tedium at the top might

Tuesday

24 Jan 2023

Svitlana Morenets

Zelensky’s corruption crackdown is working

Ukraine has been shaken by a wave of corruption scandals in recent days. Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff, six deputy ministers and five regional governors all left their posts today after a string of controversies left their positions untenable. Some were fired by the President, others left of their own accord – the number may yet grow. The first scandal broke on Sunday after Vasyl Lozynsky, Ukraine’s deputy minister of infrastructure, was accused of receiving a bribe worth £285,000 to procure generators at an inflated price for the government’s war relief efforts. Then Oleksiy Symonenko, a deputy prosecutor general, was caught holidaying in Spain despite Zelensky’s restriction on fighting-age men

Gabriel Gavin

Has a Quran-burning protest ended Sweden’s Nato dream?

A crowd gathered outside Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm on Saturday afternoon to watch far-right politician Rasmus Paludan burn the Quran. Paludan, who leads the anti-Islam ‘Hard Line’ Danish party, was watched by dozens of photographers, police officers and bemused passers-by. Paludan is no stranger to controversy: he has previously been convicted under racism and defamation law. This latest stunt was called to show his party’s opposition to immigration and, he says, to stand up for free speech. Now, though, the stunt has become a diplomatic crisis for Sweden – and there are fears that its bid to join Nato could go up in smoke. Sweden is in the middle of trying to end

Hardeep Singh

India’s war on the BBC

BBC documentary India: The Modi Question, the second part of which airs tonight, has had a muted reaction in Britain. But the same cannot be said for India, where the country’s government has invoked emergency laws to block the broadcast of the programme. The Modi Question focuses on the trouble that broke out in the western Indian state of Gujarat back in early 2002: at least 1,000 people, many of them Muslim, died during the riots. The violence erupted after 59 Hindu pilgrims, including women and children, died on a train that had been set on fire. The incident was blamed on members of the Muslim community – and the

Alexander Larman

Why does Princess Eugenie want her son to be an activist?

The furore surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has made it easy to forget about the other younger members of the Royal Family. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, have been relatively peripheral presences on the world stage until now. Damned by association with their disgraced father, the pair have kept a relatively low profile. It’s something of a surprise then to see Eugenie not only appear at the World Economic Form in Davos, but give an interview there in which she offers trenchant views on the climate crisis. Her son August, she declares, ‘is going to be an activist from two years old.’ Some

Nick Tyrone

Why aren’t the Lib Dems doing better?

This weekend, the Liberal Democrats announced that they are mounting a ‘blue wall’ offensive, a campaign aimed at affluent voters in Tory-held seats located in the south of England. The theme of this campaign will be the Tories’ handling of the NHS, which the Lib Dems have done local polling on and discovered might be a vote winner in these areas. ‘Might be’ is key here because if you look at nationwide polling, you have to wonder how many seats the Lib Dems are actually capable of winning, even if the Conservatives do fall apart before the next general election. Rishi Sunak hasn’t turned the polls around for the Tories

Cindy Yu

Does Zahawi have to resign?

14 min listen

This morning government minister Chris Philp gave a less than convincing defence of former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi as the row over his tax affairs continue to cast a cloud over Rishi Sunak’s government. Does he have to go? Also on the podcast, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy will lay out Labour’s foreign policy plans today at Chatham House. What can we expect? Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and Stephen Bush. Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson.

Steerpike

Ex-MP Jared O’Mara accused of fiddling expenses to fund cocaine habit

All rise! Just over three years after quitting parliament, Jared O’Mara now finds himself in court rather than the Commons. The former Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam stands accused of making fake expense claims during his time in Westminster to fund a ‘significant cocaine habit’. On the first day of his trial at Leeds crown court, the jury heard how O’Mara is accused of trying to swindle £30,000 of taxpayers’ money to fund his ‘heavy addiction’. According to the prosecution, O’Mara tried to pass off the claims as payments related to a fictional charity called ‘Confident About Autism South Yorkshire’. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority(IPSA) was quick to flag the payments and rejected them

Steven Heydemann

Erdogan’s plan for war, and peace

There are ‘global issues that we both have on our plates’, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, mysteriously, when he met with his Turkish counterpart last week. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, standing by Blinken’s side, thought the same. ‘We will focus on areas of partnership in bilateral and regional issues.’ Diplomacy as usual, then. Behind the boring platitudes lies a serious rift between Turkey and the United States. In late December, Syrian and Turkish defence ministers met in Moscow in the first proper meeting between the two governments in a decade. There are plans for another meeting between foreign ministers that could lead to a direct meeting between Turkey’s

Katy Balls

Is Rishi Sunak changing his tune on Nadhim Zahawi?

A week is a long time in politics. Last Wednesday, Rishi Sunak stood at the despatch box and defended Nadhim Zahawi over his tax affairs. During Prime Minister’s Questions, Sunak said that when it came to reports that Zahawi had to pay millions to Revenue and Customs to settle a tax dispute, his party chairman had ‘already addressed this matter in full’. Only now Zahawi is not only facing an investigation by the Prime Minister’s new independent ethics adviser, but the line coming from No. 10 also appears to be changing. Yesterday at a lobby briefing, the Prime Minister’s spokesperson appeared to suggest that Sunak was not aware when he

Steerpike

Is it time for Nadhim Zahawi to come clean?

It’s a new day and once again the news is dominated by Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs. Rishi Sunak has asked his independent ethics advisor (all politicians need outside advice when it comes to ethics, after all) to launch an investigation into Zahawi after the Tory chairman admitted making a ‘careless and not deliberate’ tax error. That ethics probe doesn’t appear to have stopped the awkward questions, however. Crime minister Chris Philp appeared on the Today programme this morning; after being grilled about Zahawi’s conduct, he told presenter Mishal Husain: ‘I don’t know precisely what form that carelessness took – neither do you’. The Tory chairman has released a rather paltry

Kate Andrews

Government borrowing hits £27.4 billion

Rishi Sunak ruffled his own party’s feathers last week when – in reference to last autumn’s market turmoil – he told an audience in Lancashire: ‘You’re not idiots, you know what’s happened.’ This was quickly interpreted as the Prime Minister branding the MPs and business leaders calling for immediate tax cuts as ‘idiots’, sparking not only backlash but also another round of debates on a topic that has been dividing the Tory party since last summer. Just how quickly and aggressively can the party start to cut the tax burden down from its 72-year high? Today’s public sector finance update for the month of December certainly doesn’t settle this debate,

Gavin Mortimer

How did this killer asylum seeker hoodwink the authorities?

In 2018, a 16-year-old boy called Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai shot dead two men in Serbia with a burst of eighteen bullets from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. Four years later he murdered again – inflicting a fatal stab wound on 21-year-old Thomas Roberts. Roberts, whose ambition was to join the Royal Marines, was killed because he had tried to break up an argument between Abdulrahimzai and another man on a street in Bournemouth. Abdulrahimzai was yesterday found guilty of murder. During the trial, consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Gauruv Malhan said the defendant exhibited characteristics consistent with borderline personality disorder. After the verdict, Abdulrahimzai was described by the Crown Prosecution Service as a ‘violent