Politics

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

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson is running out of options

The No. 10 operation’s decision to double down on the Starmer/Savile row after the Labour leader was accosted in the street by anti-vaxxers shows us how limited the options are for Boris Johnson as he tries to recover from the turmoil of the past few weeks. The line from his allies and aides is that these protesters were shouting all manner of things, including about Savile but also about Julian Assange. In other words, they were wrong’uns before Johnson offered the slur in the Commons last week, and they would have threatened the Labour leader regardless. This may or may not be true but as a line of argument it

Steerpike Steerpike

Chatty MPs fuel podcast boom

Whether it’s online, print, radio or broadcast, it seems we can’t get enough of politics these days. And not content with traditional forms of media, an ever-expanding number of MPs are branching out into podcasts to share their thoughts with the wider world. Around half-a-dozen have launched their own shows in recent months, following in the footsteps of perhaps the most high-profile parliamentary podcaster: Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has hosted his fortnightly Moggcast show for ConservativeHome since 2018, often providing news lines which Mr S is only too keen to follow up. The latest ambitious MP to launch such a project is the chisel-jawed Luke Evans, whose career reads like a

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Mob hound Starmer outside parliament

An uneventful Monday was enlivened this evening by some rather unappealing scenes outside parliament. Walking back from a Ministry of Defence briefing, Sir Keir Starmer was surrounded by a group of foul-mouthed anti-lockdown protesters who yelled he was a ‘traitor,’ forcing the Labour leader to leave with a police escort.  Starmer had to be bundled away into a police car after numerous insults were aggressively hurled at him. Several demonstrators claimed the former top lawyer was guilty of ‘protecting paedophiles’ while other shouted  ‘Jimmy Savile’ — a presumed reference to Boris Johnson’s comments last week about the reviled TV personality.  Johnson claimed last Monday that Starmer, when he was director of public

Robert Tombs

Cambridge’s Jesus College is guilty of double standards

An event took place in Cambridge last week that was rare enough to reach the national press: a public hearing by the Diocese of Ely Consistorial Court in Jesus College chapel. It was brought about by a group of alumni who were opposing a move by the Master and Fellows of the College to remove a commemorative plaque to one of their greatest benefactors, the 17th century courtier and financier Tobias Rustat. His financial bequest was equivalent to over £4 million in present values, and his munificence is – or rather, was – celebrated in an annual College feast. I attended much of the hearing, spread over three days. It

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris’s new No. 10 team can’t save him from himself

Boris Johnson’s new No. 10 hires have given him a chance to catch his breath, very briefly, from the turmoil of the past week. But it’s worth noting that the plot has always thickened as a result of something the Prime Minister himself has done, rather than the mistakes or otherwise of his team.  Guto Harri, Andrew Griffith and Steve Barclay now have the unenviable and – many Conservative MPs think – impossible task of encouraging the party to feel more forgiving towards the Prime Minister whenever he next makes a mistake. They cannot, though, stop him from making mistakes, and this is why he is still in a great

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SNP councillor: ‘Prosecute Jimmy Carr’s audience’

Oh dear. It seems that the most illiberal party in Great Britain is at it again. In the nationwide haste to condemn the comedian Jimmy Carr for his remarks about the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community in his Netflix special, an elected councillor from (who else?) the SNP has called for prosecutions. Not just for Carr himself, mind you; Julie McKenzie, who sits on Argyll and Bute council, wants the many members of Carr’s audience prosecuted too for ‘applauding’ the remarks.  The show, called His Dark Material, was released on Christmas Day but received widespread attention last Friday after a clip was posted and shared online. Carr said:  When people talk about the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will Boris’s new appointments win over backbenchers?

14 min listen

On Saturday night, No. 10 announced two new appointments: Steve Barclay would become chief of staff, and Guto Harri would become director of communications. Will Downing Street’s reshuffle improve the mood of Tory MPs? And what else does Boris Johnson have to do?  Katy Balls talks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about the new faces inside No. 10.

Craig Oliver

Carrie Johnson and the problem with anonymous sources

The publication of extracts from a biography of Carrie Johnson this weekend is another stark reminder that we need a serious look at the over-use of anonymous sources in journalism. I first began to worry about the problem when extracts from another Lord Ashcroft biography – this time of David Cameron – were published. When I was told it included the claim that he once performed a sex act on a pig, I was sure it was a complete fabrication, not least because it was based on a single, anonymous source with nothing else to substantiate it. Seeing the prime minister’s sickened reaction confirmed this view. The claim was deeply

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Can MPs stomach their food and drink?

The end of Covid has brought with it the long-overdue restoration of liberties. And few know that better than thirsty MPs and their staff on the parliamentary estate, with the reopening last week of the famous parliament’s Sports and Social bar. On the night in question, Mr S was one of those piling into the legislative watering holes and was the first to report Labour backbencher Neil Coyle’s ‘expletive-laiden tirade’ at Tory MP Craig Williams. It now transpires that following a complaint, Coyle has now been temporarily banned from the estate’s bars – quite the feat to achieve on the first night of normalcy. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has now been dragged

Steerpike Steerpike

New No. 10 press chief: Boris is ‘not a complete clown’

If Boris Johnson thought his new No. 10 hires would be less high-profile than their predecessors, he might want to think again. Not content with taking a side-swipe at Dominic Cummings on Twitter, it appears that Guto Harri decided to do an interview with the Welsh media prior to taking up his post as Downing Street director of communications. Ignoring the convention that advisers stay out of the limelight, Harri regaled Golwg 360 with anecdotes about his appointment. He told the outlet that he was hired by Johnson on Friday, walking into Downing Street via the Cabinet Office to avoid being seen: I walked in and did a salute and said

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Politics isn’t a branch of the entertainment industry

Rudy Giuliani has had quite the trajectory in public life. Those of us who remember the days after 9/11 will still have a picture of a man who emerged from that disaster as a credit to his city and a credit to his office. If you only picked up the Rudy Show midway through season three, however, you’d have met the wild-eyed oddbod with hair dye running down his temples, spouting conspiracy theories outside a porn shop in a down-at-heel strip mall and — who even knew this was possible? – being suspended as a lawyer in Washington for dishonesty. His story arc was a mash-up of Breaking Bad and

Sunday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Has Rishi Sunak blocked Boris’s NHS recovery plan?

The Treasury on Saturday prevented an announcement pencilled in for tomorrow of the so-called ‘elective recovery plan’, the multi-billion pound initiative to reduce the NHS’s record backlog of treatments. Treasury sources insist the plan wasn’t ready and this was a joint decision with the NHS. ‘The NHS wanted to pause too,’ said one. But this is disputed by those working for the Department of Health and the NHS. They believe the delay to its launch stems from mounting tensions between the Chancellor and Prime Minister, and a reluctance on the part of the Treasury to help a PM it views as a lame duck and living on borrowed time. According

Matthew Lynn

Kirstie Allsopp is wrong about house prices

They could cancel their Netflix subscriptions, stop drinking chai tea or go a little easier on the avocados and the smoothies. And perhaps most of all they could get on their bikes and start searching for some cheaper places to live. Kirstie Allsopp, the presenter of popular TV shows such as Location, Location, Location, probably always knew she was going to stir things up with her comments this weekend. Allsopp said that if young people simply cut back on some self-indulgent luxuries, and explored some alternative areas to live, then they would be able to get on the property ladder in their twenties just the way she did:  ‘I don’t want

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Kwasi Kwarteng defends Boris over Jimmy Savile slur

Boris Johnson’s decision to accuse Keir Starmer of ‘prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile’ while he was director of public prosecutions continues to divide the Tory party. The comment has gone down badly with his own MPs, and the Chancellor Rishi Sunak notably refused to defend the remark. It also led to the resignation of Munira Mirza, the director of the No. 10 policy unit. However, the Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng told Trevor Phillips that although Starmer did not bear any personal blame, Johnson was well within his rights to make the remark: KK: ‘In that context I think it was perfectly reasonable to mention the fact that Sir Keir

Steerpike Steerpike

Johnson’s new hire goes for Cummings

Well, that didn’t take long. Scarcely had Boris Johnson announced two new hires to join his depleted Downing Street team, then Dominic Cummings began attacking one of them on Twitter. The Svengali of special advisers reacted badly to the news that Guto Hari, a former Johnson aide during his mayoralty, was to be brought back into the fold as director of communications. Cummings claimed that the ‘message from No. 10’ is that ‘Our new boss is a pro-Remain lobbyist who’s said the PM is ‘sexually incontinent’, ‘hugely divisive’, ‘destructive’, ‘dragging the country down’, & picked ‘wrong side’ in referendum’ GREAT’. Is firing off angry tweets at your nemesis really a sign that

Hilal Kaplan

Boris’s Turkish fan club isn’t fazed by partygate

If Brits are falling out of love with Boris Johnson over partygate, there is still hope for him in Turkey. If you were to quiz my fellow Turks on a list of ‘foreign leaders whom Turks find favourable’, there is no doubt Boris would be somewhere at the top of the list. Despite his hand in the Brexit campaign – when the prospect of a possible Turkish invasion was weaponised to convince people not to back remain – Boris remains popular over here.  Boris’s Turkish roots going back to his great-grandfather’s hometown, Orta in Cankiri (a central Anatolian town) are one of the reasons he remains loved. Us Cankiris, at least, are proud of Boris.

Debbie Hayton

The Cabinet Office’s transgender toilet muddle

Transgender people need to be treated with dignity and respect at work. But our rights should not be allowed to ride roughshod over the rights of others. Yet it’s an unfortunate reality that, in the quest for inclusion, some workplace policies do just that – even in the heart of Whitehall. The Cabinet Office’s ‘Toolkit‘ to support transitioning at work is astonishingly forthright when it addresses the issue of staff toilets: ‘It is assumed that the transitioning employee knows which facilities are the best match for their gender identity. Therefore, the employee should use the facilities closest aligned to their affirmed gender from their first day presenting in it.’ Everyone else, it seems,

John Ferry John Ferry

The book that shatters the SNP’s economic myths

There aren’t many whose name becomes part of the mythology of a nation while they are still alive. Gavin McCrone, author of After Brexit: The Economics of Scottish Independence, has inadvertently achieved this status. McCrone is an academic and a former chief economist to the Scottish Office. In 1974, he wrote an internal briefing paper for Scottish ministers outlining the economic potential of North Sea oil. McCrone thought ministers were underestimating the value of the resource and the positive impact it could have on the economy if extraction were managed successfully. His paper was designed to remedy that ignorance and was framed from a Scottish perspective and in the context

Saturday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris announces a new look No. 10 team

Boris Johnson has this evening unveiled the second stage of his Downing Street shake-up. After the Prime Minister rushed forward the departure of his chief of staff Dan Rosenfield and director of communications Jack Doyle when his policy chief Munira Mirza quit on Thursday, replacements have been announced. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Steve Barclay is Johnson’s new chief of staff – and will be in charge of integrating the new Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office. Meanwhile, Guto Harri has been appointed director of communications – he served as Johnson’s spokesman during his first term as London mayor. Further appointments are expected in the