Politics

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

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

The curious case of Boris and the bishops

Back in July the wedding of Boris and Carrie at Westminster Cathedral prompted Steerpike’s diligent colleague Robert Peston to ask a personal – but constitutionally important – question: is the PM a Catholic? As the head of government in a country with an established church, the Prime Minister and his office are intimately involved in deciding who runs the Church of England via his role in the appointment of bishops. Some premiers of course have relished their role in the ecclesiastical process. When appointing the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1961, Harold Macmillan was said to have been urged by the incumbent Geoffrey Fisher not to appoint Michael Ramsay as his successor on

Annabel Denham

Why Sunak’s wrong on teachers

Pupils lost around a third of their face-to-face teaching during the Covid lockdowns. Downing Street has promised an extra £3 billion of catch-up funding, on top of around £100 billion spent on education in a normal year. Fixing a lack of teaching should involve doing a bit more of it — but when asked if he would extend the school day, Rishi Sunak said longer hours wouldn’t provide ‘value for money’. It’s one of few areas where, in tomorrow’s Budget, the spending taps will be turned off. But why, as the Children’s Commissioner recently noted, are British state schools routinely closing their gates at 2.30 p.m.? The length of the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Could the Speaker cancel the Budget?

Lindsay Hoyle is, to put it mildly, on the warpath. The Speaker is now giving almost daily statements in which he complains about the government’s habit of making announcements to the media rather than in parliament. Last week he was furious that Health Secretary Sajid Javid had held a Downing Street press briefing on Covid instead of coming to the Commons. Yesterday he granted four urgent questions as punishment for the latest round of briefings. Today he was back fulminating again, telling the chamber that the government was breaking its own ministerial code by giving Budget announcements to the press first. He continued:  I want the House and especially the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Frances Haugen: a very convenient whistleblower

Facebook wants to move its business model towards the metaverse, that virtual future in which we will all hang out online through headsets and pretend it isn’t weird. The trouble is, we already appear to live in an alternate reality created by communications specialists with highly political agendas. Just look at the clearly PR-orchestrated Online Safety vs Facebook story which the media is playing out before our non-digital eyes. This week’s protagonist is Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who appeared yesterday in parliament to give evidence to MPs scrutinising the Online Harms Bill. That is the bill through which the government says it intends to regulate social media companies to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why is the Speaker so cross?

14 min listen

Budget week rolls on. But today in the house the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle voiced his displeasure at how much had been told to the press before tomorrow’s unveiling in the Commons. Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman about this tension, the budget, and the sewage situation.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why sewage is driving Tory MPs round the bend

Why are Tory MPs having to take so much crap over a vote about sewage? The past few days have seen a tsunami of fury against the Conservative party for voting in favour of water companies dumping sewage in rivers and the sea. Most Conservative MPs weren’t even aware of what the offending vote was, so were doubly surprised to be on the end of so much constituent and social media rage. They then had to ask colleagues what on earth was going on. What is going on is that last week the Commons was considering changes made by peers to the Environment Bill. One of those amendments, tabled by

Steerpike Steerpike

Corbynista channel purged by YouTube

Steerpike doesn’t browse Novara Media much these days. The Corbynista website has ceased to have much in the way of news value since the Magic Grandpa stood down as Labour leader early last year. Nowadays the unholy trinity of literal communist Ash Sarkar, under-employed YouTuber Michael Walker and David Brent tribute act Aaron Bastani spend most of their time moaning on Twitter about Keir Starmer’s beastliness to their comrades on the left.  But now Mr S has found an unlikely common cause with the Trotskyite trio. Novara has today announced that Google-owned YouTube has deleted their channel, supposedly without warning or explanation. This follows the news a fortnight ago that a speech by Tory stalwart to Big Brother Watch

Richard Ekins

It’s time to take back control from our judges

The Judicial Review and Courts Bill has its second reading today. Writing for the Guardian yesterday, David Davis MP denounced the government’s plans as ‘an obvious attempt to avoid accountability [and] to consolidate power’ which is ‘profoundly un-conservative’. He could not be more wrong. The Bill is a welcome first step in restoring the balance of our constitution, a balance put in doubt by a decades-long expansion of judicial power. If anything, parliament should go further and amend the Bill to make it a more effective means to restore the traditional constitution. Judicial review, Mr Davis argues, is ‘a cornerstone of British democracy’, a ‘check on the balance of powers

Steerpike Steerpike

Parliamentarians plot to ruin China’s G20

It’s a big week for fans of high politics and hobnobbing. Prior to the launch of Sunday’s COP26 shindig there is first the small matter of the G20 summit in Rome. And while the attention of many attendees – chief among them Britain’s Boris Johnson – will no doubt be on green gambits and climate diplomacy, there are fears that other crucial issues risk being overlooked in the dash towards Net Zero. Chief among these are the various abuses committed by President Xi’s China towards the Uyghur Muslims and the effective destruction of Hong Kong. Xi himself is not expected to physically attend the summit, not having left China since

Monday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will education be the big Budget loser?

Which departments will fare the worst from this week’s Budget? It won’t be the Department for Health and Social Care. Over the past few days, new funding announcements have appeared in the papers meaning the NHS will be handed another £5.9 billion. That’s in addition to the £12 billion a year investment it will receive as a result of the health and social care levy. Meanwhile, Whitehall sources suggest that Michael Gove has had some luck in his push for more funds for the levelling up agenda. Where the mood music is less positive is education. When Sir Kevan Collins stepped down from his role as Boris Johnson’s education catch-up tsar over the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How serious is the government about Net Zero?

The green agenda is leading the news, with Boris Johnson on a PR mission to sell his environmental plans to the country (and sceptical Tory MPs) ahead of Cop26. Several documents were published last week, including the much-delayed Heat and Building strategy, the Net Zero strategy and the Net Zero review which is meant to offer some idea of how much exactly the whole agenda will cost. Downing Street is pushing their environmental policies as a gradual transition rather than something that could drastically impact household finances. But how might this work in practice? Tomorrow, The Spectator is hosting its own virtual Cop26 summit (you can get tickets — free and open to

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: SNP councillor insists ‘all cities have rats’

Mr S had not intended to provide a rolling blog of COP26. But with the UN’s green games less than a week ago, things in host city Glasgow go from bad to worse as the world’s leaders prepare to jet in to tell the rest of us how to save the planet. Unite and GMB today confirmed their bin men, school cleaners and janitorial staff will be the latest workers out on strike during the eco-summit, joining the RMT’s train drivers and the GBA’s lawyers on the picket lines. At what does point does industrial action become a general strike…? And it’s that decision by the refuse collectors to walk out which will compound

Christopher Snowdon

Do we want the nanny state tracking our every step?

The best thing that can be said about the government’s latest anti-obesity scheme is that it’s cheap. For now. The new HeadsUp app, which will track people’s diet and exercise regimes and reward them with cinema tickets, clothes vouchers and the like, has a price tag of £3 million. This is peanuts in public health terms. The NHS burns through £3 million every eight minutes. It amounts to 4p for every man, woman and child in the UK. The bad news is that it is only a pilot scheme. If bribing people with their own money is seen to ‘improve rates of physical activity and inspire healthier eating’, as the Office

Steerpike Steerpike

Saint Jacinda backs a two-tier society

For many so-called liberals, Jacinda Ardern seemed to be the perfect premier. Warm, empathetic, progressive, above all – moderate – the New Zealand Prime Minister was lionised by the London intelligentsia as the ideal model of a liberal, centrist leader who saved her country by locking down during the pandemic.  But now the shine is coming off the blessed Jacinda as some in the West start to see her all-too human failings. Having managed to irritate both right and left with her clamp down on immigration and complacency on China, Ardern has now admitted what many others have been scared to admit: that her Covid restrictions will mean the emergence of a de-facto

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What can we expect from Budget Week?

13 min listen

It’s Budget Week and Rishi Sunak has already telegraphed a lot of what we can expect from it, branding it as a good news affair including NHS spending and minimum wage reform…but who stands to feel the pinch? Katy Balls sits down with James Forsyth and Kate Andrews to discuss the Budget as well as the rising Covid numbers and the chances of the implementation of the government’s Plan B.

Steerpike Steerpike

Baroness Hale’s post-judicial jaunts

Baroness Hale has evidently been enjoying life since retiring as President of the Supreme Court in January last year. Hale, once dubbed the ‘Beyoncé of the legal profession,’ became the toast of Remainers everywhere after her withering slap-down to Boris Johnson’s prorogation bid in 2019.  Now ensconced on the lecture circuit, the former academic has spent the past eighteen months being showered with those baubles beloved of the establishment: academic honours galore, an Oxford fellowship, a gushing interview in the New Statesman, the obligatory slot on Desert Island Discs and, of course, a book deal with a leading London publisher. Hale’s memoirs – Spider Woman – is a nod to the brooch she wore when delivering

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Why did we decide that Covid was over?

Look, I don’t know much epidemiology. Can’t pretend to. So what follows is, necessarily, a personal finger to the wind. But perhaps it chimes with your experience.  First time round — back in the days when we were all huddled indoors, leaving the house only to stand on the doorstep of a Thursday night to bang pans with a wooden spoon, or making solo expeditions to a denuded supermarket where we do-si-dohed around each-other in the aisles… yes, back in those days, I didn’t know very many people who got Covid. Acquaintances, the odd friend. Some scary stories. Some scarier statistics. But not so many ‘rona stricken friends. Could we inch

Sunday

Steven Barrett

Is the European Court of Justice about to unravel?

For the European Union to work, its law must be supreme. All member states have courts, but those courts submit to the EU’s own court, the European Court of Justice (the ECJ). The UK knew and accepted this. By the time the Lisbon Treaty was signed, everybody knew this. That is why Poland and Germany are both legally wrong to have denied that EU law is supreme and declared that their national courts have the final say. Legally speaking, both have done a unilateral declaration of independence: taken back control. An important article examining the crisis has laid this bare. While it’s quite technical (the EU’s power lies in these boring-but-powerful

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Covid Plan B will not involve furlough

Rishi Sunak – Plan B will not involve furlough This Wednesday will see the Chancellor’s second budget of the year. As always, the contents are hotly anticipated, but Rishi Sunak was reluctant to give too much away this morning. It has been reported that the new Health Security Agency is sounding out local authorities about the implementation of the government’s ‘Plan B’ for trying to control the coronavirus over the winter months. Andrew Marr asked Sunak if Plan B meant a return to a scenario very much like the one experienced this time last year: RS: The Plan B that we’ve set out does not involve the same type of

Thomas Lorman

How to beat Orbán? Copy him

Opposing Viktor Orbán is a formidable task. Support for his coalition hovers at around the 40 per cent mark while the parliamentary system makes it harder for opposition parties to break through. By 2018, all of the opposition parties, most of which are firmly on the left, realised they were individually incapable of breaking through. They began fielding joint candidates and had some early success when Gergely Karácsony won the mayoralty of Budapest. So they agreed late last year to select a common candidate for the prime ministership at next spring’s elections. Last weekend, a political outsider, Péter Márki-Zay, became the candidate. Márki-Zay’s appeal comes from the idea that he