Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
14 min listen
Rishi Sunak is facing his first Tory Commons rebellion on the issue of UK house building targets. Could this be game over? Also on the podcast, after Chloe Smith announced that she will be leaving politics at the next election, could more follow her out of parliament? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
During his first visit to Kyiv last Saturday, Rishi Sunak pledged a new tranche of British military aid to Ukraine. Unlike previous UK support, this new package was entirely focused on air defence: £50 million for anti-aircraft guns (almost certainly purchased via a third party as the UK military does not currently use them), radars, and counter-drone electronic warfare systems. The Prime Minister’s pledge follows a promise made by the UK to provide an additional 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles for Ukraine’s armed forces a few weeks ago. It’s no mystery why air defence has become a key priority. Since October, Russian missiles and drones have pummelled Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and power
Chloe Smith is just 40 years old, an age at which people normally start to think about entering the Commons. But today, with five election victories in her Norwich North seat under her belt, she announced she’s leaving. The former work and pensions secretary said in a statement: ‘I hope I’ve been able to make a difference, locally and nationally. In 2024, after fifteen years of service, it will be the right time to step back, for me and my young family.’ It’s been quite a stint for Smith, who mentioned ‘tough personal times’ in her announcement: she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020 and got the all-clear last
BBC Scotland’s news department has issued what must be one of the strangest clarifications in the Corporation’s history. It’s not a correction of a factual error or a retraction of an inaccurate or misleading item. It’s a statement justifying their journalists’ decision to report a major news story to the public, accurately and with all relevant parties given a right of reply. The statement reads: That is, BBC Scotland felt the need to explain itself for doing journalism. The story was about a sensitive document BBC journalists had got their hands on. These were the draft minutes of a meeting of Scotland’s top NHS executives in September. The news value
Owen Paterson – there’s a name Mr S hasn’t heard in a while. It was just over a year ago that the former Environment Secretary became embroiled in the infamous lobbying scandal which led to his resignation, the North Shropshire by-election and the beginning of the end of Boris Johnson. But now, after a year in political obscurity, Paterson is back and with a vengeance. The former Tory MP has now launched a case against, er, Rishi Sunak’s government at the European Court of Human Rights, complaining about the House of Commons process which found against him. Paterson argues that his right to privacy under the European Convention of Human
What was Ipsa thinking? That’s the question MPs are asking today after it emerged that the parliamentary spending regulator has decided MPs can claim for their office Christmas parties on expenses. There’s never a good time to make that kind of decision, but particularly not when their constituents aren’t even turning their heating on or using their ovens. Ipsa issued the guidance in one of its regular bulletins, telling members that they could claim for food, decorations and non-alcoholic drinks for an ‘office festive event’ but that it needed to ‘represent value for money, especially in the current climate’. I’ve spoken to Ipsa, and they say the guidance was issued
The OECD has marked Britain down as the only G7 country (and the only major country bar Russia) expected to suffer a shrinking economy next year. But how accurate are its predictions? A year ago, it predicted that inflation in the UK would peak at 4.9 per cent in the first half of this year before falling back to 2 per cent by the end of next year. The economy was going to grow by 4.7 per cent this year followed by a further 2.1 per cent in 2023. The government would bite off any hand that offered that now. It can be excused for failing to predict the Russian invasion
A few vague promises about upgrading skills. And something or other about promoting innovation and raising productivity. Sir Keir Starmer did not exactly set the world alight in his speech to the CBI today. Given that he is twenty points ahead in the opinion polls, and sometimes more depending on the latest Tory implosion, perhaps he felt he didn’t need to. Instead the Labour leader seemed content to confirm a point that was already obvious to anyone: the Prime Minister doesn’t have a plan for growth. And the prime-minister-in-waiting doesn’t have one either. Rishi Sunak’s talk to the CBI yesterday was not exactly a hard act to follow. Over 40
For Scotland to stay at its current levels of health in 20 years’ time it would have to entirely eradicate cancer. That’s according to the Burden of Disease study published this morning by Public Health Scotland. The report found that although the country’s population is projected to fall in the next two decades, its annual ‘disease burden’ – the impact of morbidity and mortality on population health – is forecast to increase by some 21 per cent. ‘In order to achieve a similar level of disease burden as 2019’, they say it would need to be reduced by 17 per cent by 2043 – ‘which is equivalent to eradicating the entire disease burden of cancer in
Are the final obstacles in the way of a comfortable Labour victory at the next election being swept away? The dirty little secret of British politics is that there is now a large amount of consensus on most big policy issues between the two main parties: the differences are largely in the detail. The most recent citadel to fall is what one might call the cultural issues of immigration and national identity. Labour appears to be flirting, again, with Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour, the left on economics/right on culture combination, which was also the mood music of the 2019 Tory blue-collar conservatism election. Democracy is having its wicked way and its magical force-field is
When Keir Starmer went on the offensive at Prime Minister’s Questions earlier this month over the issue of small boat crossings, it was taken as a statement of intent: the Labour leader was willing to go on the offensive over topics on which his party had traditionally been vulnerable in the eyes of the electorate. This morning, Starmer laid out his vision for immigration more generally. Speaking at the CBI conference in Birmingham, the Labour leader has warned that the days of ‘cheap labour’ and ‘immigration dependency’ must end: ‘Our common goal must be to help the British economy off its immigration dependency. To start investing more in training up
Chelsea Manning, who leaked hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic records about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to Wikileaks, is revered by some. ‘The biggest hero that ever lived,’ says Vivienne Westwood. To others, like Donald Trump, Manning is an ‘ungrateful traitor’ who should still be in jail. To Trump’s fury, one of Barack Obama’s final acts as president was to release Manning. The former US army intelligence analyst is using that freedom to tour the world on a speaking circuit – but there’s something the former US soldier is not so eager to talk about: sex and gender. A day after Manning was sentenced back in 2013, Bradley became Chelsea. ‘I am a female,’ Manning said
On the Sunday that Britain honoured its war dead, France remembered its fallen from the terrible evening of 13 November, 2015. One hundred and thirty Parisians were massacred at various venues across the capital. A subsequent investigation revealed that two of the Islamist terror cell had entered Europe from the Middle East by blending in among migrants. A year after the Paris atrocity, Monika Hohlmeier MEP, the European Parliament’s chief negotiator on a new European terrorism law, outlined the EU’s determination to keep its citizens safe from future attacks. Hohlmeier placed particular emphasis on tightening the ‘great deficiencies that became visible at the EU’s external borders over the last months’. Frontex, the
Oh dear. The nationalists are at it again. In the past 48 hours, two examples have shown how –despite being Scotland’s main governing party for the past 15 years – old habits die hard in the SNP, where protest and grievance are the de facto response to any minor irritation. First, consider the BBC News story that NHS Scotland chiefs had discussed abandoning the founding principles of the health service by having the wealthy pay for treatment. The basis for the story could not have been stronger: mention of a ‘two-tier’ health service had appeared in draft minutes of a meeting of the country’s NHS leaders in September. Yet that
What a year it’s been for Jeremy Hunt. Just four months ago, he was running to be Tory leader on a platform of lower taxes. Back then he was urging his party to cancel Rishi Sunak’s planned rise in corporation tax and instead reduce the rate from 19 per cent to 15 per cent. Now of course it is Sunak in No. 10, with Hunt next door hiking the tax up to 25 per cent next April. Such tax rises have, unsurprisingly, alienated much of the Tory right, including Hunt’s erstwhile ally Esther McVey. As Christopher Montgomery of the Critic notes, back in July Hunt wanted to make the Brexiteer his
Are we heading for a return to Brexit wars? It’s been the theme of the week so far after the Sunday Times splashed on a report that senior government figures plan to put Britain on the path towards a Swiss-style relationship with the European Union. A backlash quickly ensued, with Tory MPs privately sounding the alarm. Former leader of the Brexit Party Nigel Farage threatened a political comeback if it proved true. Little wonder then that since the weekend, there has been a concerted effort in No. 10 to pour cold water on the reports. As one minister puts it: ‘We need to do a much better job of promoting
The Autumn Statement was truly awful: no rabbits, no silver linings and no growth. But amid the many groups suffering this Christmas, spare a thought for high-earners — those much-despised but ever-necessary wealth creators. The 45p top rate of tax now applies to anyone earning over £125,140, with fiscal drag pulling many more in. The energy profits levy will increase total oil and gas tax from 65 per cent to 75 per cent in January (initially 40 per cent) with corporation tax to go up from 19 per cent to 25 per cent. Soaking the rich might be good politics, but Steerpike understands that hiking taxes hasn’t been pain-free so
The past few days have seen some welcome candour about the NHS in England and Scotland. English Health Secretary Steve Barclay has been preparing the English public for long waits that will still be a major issue at the next election. NHS Scotland, meanwhile, has been discussing the possibility that a ‘two-tier NHS’ might end up being the norm. Barclay is also keen to scrap as many targets as possible in the health service, which is in part an admission that many of the most high profile ones haven’t been met for years. It is also a sign of an important shift in the treatment of the health service by
Will NHS Scotland withstand the winter? According to draft minutes of a meeting of CEOs from each health board in September, there is growing concern the health service will not be able to operate normally over the winter months. It ‘is not possible to continue to run the range of programmes’ it reads, before stating that ‘unscheduled care is going to fall over in the near term before planned care falls over’. The warning fits a pattern. Over the summer, the Milton Keynes University Hospital Foundation Trust boss Joe Harrison made headlines when he told a meeting with the Health Service Journal that ‘we’re in danger of all sitting around the campfire
13 min listen
Over the weekend, government briefings that they will be looking towards a Swiss-style arrangement with the EU reignited the Brexit rows. Dormant Brexiteers like Nigel Farage and the European Research Group resurfaced, making it clear that they would not accept a so-called ‘Chequers 2.0’. On the record, the government has been keen to reject this briefing. So what really happened? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Cindy Yu.
