Politics

It was Opposition Day in the Commons yesterday, with the SNP plumping for a debate on Covid contracts – a bold choice given the £500 million approved by Holyrood without scrutiny. For leader Ian Blackford however it was a golden opportunity to rail against Westminster’s ‘endemic cronyism during a global pandemic, the misuse of funds, and covid profiteers.’ At least he had the good sense to make his claims about ministers ‘funnelling covid cash from the frontline into the pockets of their rich friends’ under parliamentary privilege, unlike Labour’s Grand Poobah Angela Rayner, collector of titles and dispenser of insults. Blackford might have thought the Covid ‘chumocracy’ would provide him with rich

Big corporations have a lot not to be proud of, and we certainly could do with laws to rein in some of their excesses. But that doesn’t mean that we should necessarily nod those laws through without a careful look.  A case in point is the demand made in recent days for the government to follow an EU initiative and introduce a ‘corporate responsibility’ law. This would require British companies to vet their entire supply chains for, among other things, human rights violations. The EU scheme in question, based on a European parliament vote in March, is what you have to look at to see just what is being asked for. Its demands

Are the rights of protesters and the rights of all other citizens fairly balanced? Think back to the Extinction Rebellion protests of April 2019, when climate activists chose to ‘peacefully occupy the centres of power and shut them down’, as they put it, including the heart of London. The protests, organised globally, were perhaps the most disruptive in history. A small number of people managed to stop hundreds of thousands more going about their daily lives. People could not get to work, see family and friends or go shopping, because the streets were blocked by an extensive series of roadblocks and other tactics. At one point, printing presses were blockaded,

Prime Minister’s Questions proved a rather testy affair today as both Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer barked questions at each other across the Commons floor. After the Prime Minister unveiled his plans on Monday for a big bang reopening in which legal rules will be replaced by a focus on personal responsibility, Starmer urged caution.  The Labour leader quizzed Johnson on the health impact of this decision. He asked what the government estimate was for the number of hospitalisations if cases hit 50,000 a day. Johnson declined to say.  Labour’s own position on Covid rules isn’t particularly different to the Tories Starmer then moved on to the practicalities of Johnson’s planned

We will shortly find out who has been elected as the leader of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee after incumbent Sir Graham Brady faced a challenge from Heather Wheeler. I’m told that turnout in the election for the chair was over 90 per cent and that counting has just begun. Rather than emitting white smoke, the committee is notifying the two candidates of the result by text message. Brady has been at the helm since 2010 and has generally been considered a reliable figure in representing the views of backbenchers to the Prime Minister. But Wheeler’s pitch — which critics say is supportive of Boris Johnson to the point that

It often feels like we’re living through the revenge of the talentless. Cancel culture is essentially a war of no-marks against high achievers. Think of all those faceless furious people on Twitter who want the Harry Potter books thrown in the dumpster of history just because JK Rowling thinks biological sex is real. These people can barely string a tweet together, never mind write eight books that entrance millions. Or think of the armies of literalist bores who demand the scalp of some comic who once made an iffy joke. I bet those people have never made anyone laugh. At least not intentionally. And now we learn that a schoolteacher