Politics

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

Thursday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How the rebels plan to finish off Boris

The Tory party knows it has a problem with plotting. Of its last nine leaders, six have faced a leadership challenge of some sort. The current rules for removing a leader are designed to constrain the party’s appetite for regicide – no one can be challenged unless 15 per cent of the MPs write demanding a no-confidence vote, and the incumbent benefits from a second layer of protection: win, and they can’t be challenged again for a year. The purpose of this year of grace is to ensure that rebels can’t keep coming back until they have finished off a wounded leader. But this being the Tory party, the rules

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Boris’s cheerers will feel cheated if he goes

It was reported gleefully that Boris Johnson was booed as he entered St Paul’s Cathedral for the Jubilee Thanksgiving service last Friday. This was true but – as the BBC did add, though sotto voce – he was also cheered. Listening to the recording, I thought the cheers were a bit louder than the boos, but obviously neither has any statistical significance. What the mixture may indicate, however, is a problem which will arise if – which is likely, but by no means certain – he does have to leave office in the coming months following his weak victory in the no-confidence vote. The cheerers will feel cheated. The myth

Steven Fielding

Keir Starmer isn’t working

Silence. That is what we heard during Gloria de Piero’s recent focus group which she held for her GB News show in her old constituency of Ashfield, one of many Red Wall seats that fell to the Conservatives in 2019. Most participants had been Labour voters up to that election but felt the party had somehow let them down and ceased to represent the working class, especially with Jeremy Corbyn as leader. De Piero found them most talkative about how Boris Johnson had once appeared to be a different kind of politician, one whose promises they had believed but who they now felt had let them down, thanks to partygate.

Wednesday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Did Boris Johnson survive PMQs?

10 min listen

Boris Johnson was surrounded by opposition at the despatch box when he faced the Labour leader at PMQs today. Did Keir Starmer make the most of his opportunity to score points against the Prime Minister’s disappointing result in the confidence vote the night before? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth.

John Bell

The Brexit Horizon debate is bad news for scientists

The UK and EU are currently locked in a debate about Britain’s participation in the Horizon Europe science funding programme, with the EU blocking the UK from taking part due to concerns about the Northern Ireland protocol. The situation is very disappointing for scientists. Eighteen months ago, when the Brexit deal was signed in good faith, the UK government signed up to participate in the programme. This would have been a good thing. But it has now been turned into political football. As a result, 18 months later, scientists don’t know where they are. We’re apparently not in the programme, it looks like we’re out. But this row is running

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Rishi Sunak promises more tax cuts… just not yet

After Boris Johnson faced a confidence vote by his own MPs, the Prime Minister has come under pressure to bring in changes to his government. This ranges from talk of a reshuffle to shaking up the No. 10 operation yet again. But the issue which has the broadest support among MPs calling for change is a desire for Johnson to cut taxes. MPs from across the party – from the One Nation wing’s Damien Green to the ERG’s Steve Baker – have suggested this ought to be done sooner rather than later. However, it appears they will have to wait a little while longer. This evening Rishi Sunak spoke to

Debbie Hayton

Emily Bridges is right about transgender cyclists

Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges doesn’t ‘want special treatment from anyone’. In an ITV interview, Bridges said:  ‘I just want the same opportunities as my fellow female athletes’. As someone who transitioned a few years before Emily, I’d say Bridges is right: transgender people should not need special treatment. We are human beings, just like everyone else. In the UK, at least, trans people have specific and additional protections against discrimination and harassment. But these only become relevant if someone treats us less favourably because we are transgender. That has happened to me very rarely. So who is to blame for this unfortunate situation? Yet in the debate about whether Bridges

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Boris let slip his re-election strategy

PMQs started with a bump. The Speaker called Dame Angela Eagle whose tone was acidic but quietly conversational. ‘This week’s events demonstrated just how loathed this Prime Minister is,’ said the dame. ‘And that’s only in his own party.’ A decent gag that won big laughs – and not just from the opposition. But Boris didn’t crumple. Anyone who hoped to see him slouching like a wounded elephant to the bone-yard was disappointed. His brush with death has sharpened his relish for the fight. ‘I thank her very much for her question. And in a long political career – so far! – I have picked up political opponents all over.

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Boris can’t wish the tax burden away

After an uncomfortably close confidence vote for the Prime Minister on Monday, Boris Johnson’s premiership still hobbles along. But for how much longer? It seems the PM’s latest strategy is to find favour with his party again by promising bread-and-butter Tory policies: mainly tax cuts. Speaking to Tory MPs just hours before this week’s confidence vote, Johnson was making all the right noises: to boost the economy post-pandemic, he said, it was time to ‘drive supply side reform on Conservative principles and to cut taxes and to drive investment in the UK.’ Since the vote, Johnson has continued to harp on about cutting taxes, reportedly telling the Cabinet that cuts

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer’s PMQs performance was oddly flat

It’s not unusual for a Labour leader to attack the government over the NHS at Prime Minister’s Questions. Neither is it a topic of low salience at the moment, given the size of the backlog. But it was nonetheless Sir Keir Starmer’s subject choice today was curious because it was precisely what Boris Johnson wanted to talk about, rather than the things he is trying to move on from. It’s ‘health week’ in the Downing Street grid, and apparently in Starmer’s too. Starmer did not make these points well. Far from pointing out the Tories’ own goals, he allowed them to score a few more To be fair to the Labour

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The utter shamelessness of Britain’s rail unions

In what other industry could demand collapse by a tenth and yet the staff still think that they have a right to an above inflation pay rise and no job losses? Rail privatisation was supposed to put an end to union militancy and to relieve taxpayers of the financial risk of running the railways. Patently, it has achieved neither objective. Three national rail strikes have been declared for later in the month, to compound strikes on the London underground. Meanwhile, taxpayers will contribute £16 billion this year to propping up an industry in which demand for its services have collapsed. In the week to 22 May (before the effect of

Matt Purple

Welcome to the age of post-Covid nihilism

Washington, DC Amid the recent orgy of violence across America, it was the carjackings that finally got me. Lost amid all the mass shootings and gang slayings of late has been another wave of crime: vehicle thefts. In Washington DC, carjackings in 2021 were up by a third over 2019, while in nearby Alexandria a motorist made national news after he shot two boys at a gas station who were trying to lift his car. In Chicago, 1,900 vehicles were jacked just last year, which is eye-wateringly high even by that city’s grim standards. There is an inhumanity at work in this country that’s as stark as anything I’ve seen in

Steerpike Steerpike

Vardy backs Carrie

Carrie Johnson hasn’t been seen much around Westminster recently, as her embattled husband tries to rescue his flailing premiership. But last weekend, the couple dressed up in their finery to mark the Platinum Jubilee. While the pair faced a, er, mixed reaction when they appeared at the thanksgiving service at St Paul’s, it seems that Carrie’s Labour red outfit won her one fan at least.  For underneath a picture of the Johnsons on Instagram, another famous wife voiced her approval. Rebekah Vardy – partner of footballer Jamie and currently embroiled in the ‘Wagatha Christie trial’ – posted on Carrie’s account: ‘You look stunning Carrie’ replete with a heart and two kisses. It’s

Oleksiy Pluzhnyk

Why Ukrainians like me still love Boris Johnson

When Boris Johnson and Ukraine’s president Zelensky walked through the streets of our capital in April, they came across a man. Astonished and emotional, he begged Zelensky:  ‘Please tell Boris that we will be grateful for the rest of our lives. Britain saved us. God, I’m so happy…My children and grandchildren will remember this forever. This memory will live through the centuries.’ These words sum up how many Ukrainians feel. For all his troubles at home, Boris Johnson remains more popular in Ukraine than many of our own politicians, with the possible exception of Zelensky himself. During the first day of the war, shocked and bound by fear in the face of

Andrew Lilico

What Boris needs to do to survive

Most people date the beginning of Boris Johnson’s current woes to the start of the partygate scandal, and especially to the revelations from 10 January 2022 onwards about the ‘bring your own booze’ event that Johnson himself had attended. But Johnson’s problems can also be seen as having started at an earlier date and from a different source. In mid-December Lord Frost resigned from Johnson’s Cabinet, rejecting the additional restrictions proposed in response to Omicron, a few days after Steve Baker and the Covid Recovery Group had led about 100 backbenchers in a revolt against new measures. This meant Boris felt he had to take proposals for a Christmas 2021

William Atkinson

Boris Johnson should quit now to save his career

The greased piglet will soon be sausages. That, at least, seems the obvious outcome of this week’s Tory party confidence vote. With over 40 per cent of his MPs in open revolt against him, even Boris Johnson, the great political escapologist, is running out of road. He may have survived now. But with two by-election losses looming in the Red and Blue Walls, a cost-of-living crisis spiralling out of control, and MPs manoeuvring against him, this reprieve looks temporary. The Conservative party has still not entirely recovered from Margaret Thatcher’s defenestration 30-odd years ago, and nobody would want to repeat the six months of agony and the electoral shellacking that

Tuesday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Boris’s moment of maximum danger is yet to come

Much as Boris Johnson wants to ‘bash on’, deliver popular populist policies, and characterise Monday’s confidence vote as the catharsis that purges him and his party of the partygate poison, his struggle to re-establish his credibility and authority will be the challenge of his life. First of all, most of the 148 Tory MPs who rejected him cannot be bought off, because they typically want him out not for the policies he espouses but rather for what they see as his character flaws – and they are doubtful he can change his spots. I asked one rebel what was the new plan, after the rebels failed to muster the 180

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The EU’s phone charger rule will stifle innovation

Who could argue with the words of the EU’s internal market commissioner Thierry Breton when he says: ‘a common charger is common sense for the many electronic devices in our daily lives’? No longer, it seems, will we have to fiddle around with several different cables, and curse when we have brought the along the wrong one on holiday. M. Breton has just succeeded in introducing a directive which, from 2024, will oblige the manufacturers of all electronic devices on sale in the EU to use the same model of charger. The directive – yet to be rubber-stamped by the European parliament – will ‘increase convenience and cut waste’, as well

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Shame on Cineworld for cancelling The Lady of Heaven

Bradford was chosen last week as the UK’s City of Culture for 2025. This week, Bradford Cineworld – as well as a number of other cinemas around the country – announced that a new movie called The Lady of Heaven was being pulled from schedules following protests by angry Muslims. So is this what we can expect from a City of Culture in 21st-century Britain – the creation of all kinds of culture, except for anything that might offend some adherents to the Islamic faith? The fuss and fury over The Lady of Heaven has been incredibly revealing. This is a British-produced epic historical drama about Fatimah, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad. It

Steerpike Steerpike

Drakeford adds to Labour’s trans troubles

It’s not just in Westminster that Labour is having difficulties with transgender issues. Over in Wales, Mark Drakeford’s barmy army has been wrestling with the same debate, amid claims from Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi that LGBT charity Stonewall has ‘dictated policy’ to her colleagues at Cardiff Bay. And the Welsh Tories have clearly spotted an opportunity here for some clear blue water between the two parties. For last Tuesday, Tory Laura Anne Jones popped up in the Senedd to lob a grenade at Drakeford at First Ministers’ Questions. The blonde bombshell probed her opponent about just how the Welsh government intends to protect women’s rights in sports as ‘we have a