Politics

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

Monday

Winston Marshall

Seth Dillon – Will Elon Musk ‘Free The Bee’?

30 min listen

This week on Marshall Matters Winston speaks with Seth Dillon, CEO and owner of American political satire site The Babylon Bee. The Babylon Bee are currently locked out of their Twitter account for a joke that has been deemed ‘hate speech’ by the social media site. But the Bee are refusing to accept this. Seth and Winston discussed comedy through the American cultural divide, the legal issues behind free speech on social media, Elon Musk and more.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Do we really need a GCSE focused on saving the planet?

We have yet to see the first sample papers for the new GCSE in natural history to be announced by education secretary Nadhim Zahawi this week, but the fact that it has come about after lobbying by Caroline Lucas, Chris Packham and other green activists is a pretty good guide as to what might be in store: yet another fashionable, soft subject which is designed to indoctrinate rather than educate. It is a fair guess where it will lead: to children, especially from state comprehensives, being diverted from the more academically-rigorous subjects which would gain them access to the best universities. Conservatives have been far too sleepy about the use

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Nicola Sturgeon now resign?

The blessed Nicola has been out on the campaign trail in recent days, spreading the good news and decrying that wicked Boris Johnson’s non-believing band of heretic Tories. The bad king’s woes down in London have proved a godsend to Saint Nicola the nationalist, ever eager to lead her people to that land of milk and honey otherwise known as an independent Scotland. Naturally the sinless Sturgeon was among the first to call for Johnson to quit over partygate, preaching how ‘basic decency’ meant he should go for breaking lockdown rules. ‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’ For just four days after demanding the heathen Johnson go, it seems the good

Sunday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Justin Welby is wrong about Rwanda

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter sermon was quite something; forcefully delivered, arrestingly put. At the heart of it was his corruscating criticism of the Government plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda; it was framed to capture the news agenda and released in advance of its delivery. ‘The details [of the plan] are for politics and politicians’, he said. ‘The principle must stand the judgement of God and it cannot. It cannot carry the weight of resurrection justice, of life conquering death. It cannot carry the weight of the resurrection that was first to the least valued, for it privileges the rich and strong. And it cannot carry the weight

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Who would want to lead such an angry France?

It was a day of protest in Paris on Saturday and I made it to four of the five demonstrations. I missed Extinction Rebellion’s morning outing to the boulevard Strasbourg Saint-Denis in the centre of the city. Once there hundreds staged a sit-in and blocked traffic with bales of hay for most of the day. Like their Anglo-Saxon brethren in Britain, the protesters in Paris believe the end of the world is nigh and they are aggrieved that neither Marine Le Pen or Emmanuel Macron appear to share their pessimism. There was little optimism on show at the Place de la Nation in the east of the capital where two

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Terf war grips Scottish government

It is said in Westminster that Boris Johnson likes to surround his 5ft 6in Chancellor with tall ministers to make him feel small. And up at Holyrood, Nicola Sturgeon has clearly taken a leaf from the Prime Minister’s book, judging by the ministers with whom she surrounds herself. After suffering a reversal at last year’s elections, Sturgeon was forced to take the Scottish Greens into government: a marriage of political convenience but one that no doubt reaffirms Humza Yousaf’s faith in his own intellectual prowess. For the Greens are led by a duumvirate of Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie, a man diminutive both in size and in stature. The devolutionary double act serve as the

Steerpike Steerpike

Russia bans Nadine Dorries

Since her appointment as Culture Secretary in September, Nadine Dorries hasn’t been shy about making the odd enemy or two. Whether it’s the BBC, Channel 4, Facebook or Ofcom, the former nurse has shown no compunction in dishing out the harsh medicine during her seven months in office. And now it seems the Bedfordshire MP can add another name to her growing list of foes: Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic Russian regime. For Dorries is one of the more surprising additions on a list of 13 British politicians who have today been banned by Moscow over the UK’s ‘hostile’ stance on the war in Ukraine. While some of the names like Prime Minister Boris Johnson,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The problem with onshore wind farms

Remember how David Cameron’s government was going to end Nimbyism by having local communities vote for new housing developments on their doorsteps? That didn’t end so well. Last October, following a shock defeat in the Amersham by-election, the Prime Minister gave up on building more new homes in the shires in favour of reverting to the line of least political resistance: the old favourite of trying to solve the housing shortage by building more new homes on brownfield land in the North. Why, then, does the government think it will be any more successful trying to persuade us to accept wind farms on our doorsteps? Last week’s Energy Security Strategy

Friday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Could Elon Musk save Twitter?

22 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Kat Rosenfield, the author and UnHerd columnist, about Elon Musk’s proposal to buy a controlling stake in the social media giant. Rosenfield’s latest book, No One Will Miss Her, is published by HarperCollins and is available to buy now.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris isn’t safe yet

It is worth thinking back to late January when Boris Johnson’s premiership seemed in the greatest danger. As I say in the Times today, back then those Tories trying to remove Johnson were split into two camps. One group thought that they should go hell for leather to get the letters to force a no-confidence ballot. They worried that if they waited, Johnson might escape a police fine. He could then use that as a shield against the criticisms that the Gray report would contain. The other faction, which contained several former cabinet ministers, argued that the danger in going early was that Johnson could survive the no-confidence ballot. Better,

Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

What are the Tories for?

It’s an odd accusation to levy at Boris Johnson’s government, but the Conservative party feels grey. Flights of fancy suggesting a bridge to Northern Ireland or – a thought to make 19th century Royal Navy strategists shudder – to France have given way to a carousel of scandals and disappointments. The former is cheap or cruel; the latter marked mostly by their predictability. This week confirmed a suspicion I’ve held for a while; the Conservative party, being neither meaningfully socially conservative nor particularly interested in using an 80 seat majority, exists for the sole purpose of keeping Labour out of office. It doesn’t conserve; despite repeated pledges, immigration never came

Thursday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

What’s wrong with the Rwanda plan?

There are many unanswered questions about the government’s new policy of compelled expulsion to Rwanda of uninvited asylum claimants. Here are just a few. 1) What is the estimated cost per expelled refugee? None of the briefings give a clue. In its absence, how can the policy be assessed for its value for money, compared with the status quo? 2) What is the UK’s responsibility – moral, legal – if bad things (illness, accident, attack) happen to the expelled refugees after arrival in Rwanda? This would be a concern even if Rwanda did not have a recent history of trampling on civil liberties and basic human rights (see this report from

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is the government’s Rwandan immigration plan viable?

12 min listen

This week the government has announced a pilot scheme meant to address the increasing number of asylum seekers dangerously crossing the English Channel. While some have criticised this plan as expensive and immoral it could prove to be popular among large swathes of Conservative voters. Cindy Yu talks with Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls about this new policy as well as giving us a partygate update.

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The problem with Boris’s Rwanda solution

Is the Prime Minister’s plan to divert some asylum seekers to Rwanda racist? Is it inhumane? Is it a dead cat to distract from his fixed-penalty notice for breaching Covid rules? These are the questions fixating the political-media-activist class today and while they are not necessarily unimportant, they neglect a question that might be of more immediate concern to the average voter concerned about border integrity and abuse of the asylum system. Namely, will the Prime Minister’s plan work? To answer this, we must acknowledge its provenance in Australia’s policy of offshore processing, detention and turn backs, introduced in 2001 as John Howard’s Pacific Solution and reintroduced by Tony Abbott

Steerpike Steerpike

Partygate cuts through with voters

The Tory task at the next election is enormous. No party in the democratic age has ever won a fifth consecutive term in office and bruising battles over Brexit and Covid mean the Conservatives will have a tough ask next time out. Boris Johnson’s team still have two years left in office but inside No. 10 minds are already turning to the looming clash with the Starmer army. On what fertile ground can the forthcoming general election be fought and won by the Tories? Unfortunately for the bright young things of CCHQ, it looks like Labour’s traditional weak spot on ‘law and order’ has now been nullified. There were hopes that Sir Keir’s record

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories will welcome challenges to the Rwanda plan

The government’s announcement today that it wants to send a number of those who cross the Channel in small boats to Rwanda will be subject to challenge in both the Lords and the courts. It is hard to see how the policy gets through the upper house, where the Tories do not have a majority. But, I suspect, that a fight with peers over the policy is regarded by many in government circles as a feature not a bug of this policy. Even if the policy does get through the Lords in the end, there will almost certainly be legal challenges to it; Johnson referred to the likelihood of this

William Moore William Moore

Cross to bear

40 min listen

In this week’s episode: How are the people of both Russia and Ukraine processing the war? Our Russia correspondent Owen Matthews writes in this week’s Spectator that he has been stunned at how easily some of his Russian friends have accepted the Kremlin’s propaganda. He joins the podcast to explain why he thinks this is, followed by journalist and author of This Is Not Propaganda, Peter Pomerantsev, who has travelled to Kyiv to celebrate the festival of Passover. (00:48) Also this week: Is Rishi Sunak politically incompetent? Until recently Rishi Sunak was a favourite to succeed Boris Johnson, but this week his popularity plummeted to new lows. Our deputy political editor

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

The Rwanda plan could save Boris

If you want to see what explosive growth looks like then I invite you to eschew all the old Covid charts and instead make your own graph plotting the number of Channel-hopping migrants year on year. In 2018 there were 299, in 2019 there were 1,843, in 2020 there were 8,466 and in 2021 there were 28,527. So far in 2022 arrivals are running at easily more than twice last year’s month-by-month tally, meaning we are heading for 60,000+ by the end of the year. Extrapolating the trend to the general election year of 2024 takes us into the ballpark of 250,000 – roughly equivalent to the entire population of

The Spectator

To survive, Boris Johnson must do more than pose as a war leader

Attending an impromptu birthday party in the office is not the most heinous of crimes, and of course Britain’s fixation on Downing Street’s breaches of lockdown rules looks rather perverse against the crimes being committed by Vladimir Putin’s troops in Ukraine. But there is little point in the Prime Minister or any member of his government attempting to argue that point. It is very clear that there is considerable anger among the British public that a government which imposed highly prescriptive Covid rules failed to live by the letter of those rules itself. Whatever excuses Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak or anyone else attempts to make, they will not be compared