Politics

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

Monday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why Johnson sounds pessimistic about Cop26

The Prime Minister has touched down in New York for the UN General Assembly where he hopes to press countries on committing funds for the Cop26 climate talks. Ahead of the summit, Boris Johnson has urged wealthier countries to contribute to a £100 billion a year funding target aimed at helping developing nations to cut carbon emissions. That commitment is viewed as key to getting the ball rolling when the negotiations get underway at the summit in Glasgow in November.  Behind the scenes there is increasing pessimism about what Cop26 will achieve But things aren’t going to plan. Speaking to hacks on the trip, Johnson said it would be a stretch to get the money

Sunday

Steerpike Steerpike

Four of the worst responses to the Aukus deal

It is four days since the US, UK and Australia announced their historic security pact in the Asia-Pacific but there are few signs of anger abating from the usual suspects.  The deal will let Australia build nuclear-powered submarines for the first time, using technology provided by America. Cyber ability and undersea technologies will also be shared in the pact, which focuses on military capability, separating it from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance which also includes New Zealand and Canada. But while the move has delighted Anglophiles overseas and supporters of CANZUK here in Britain, not all are so happy with news of the historic defence pact. France has grabbed most of the headlines for its

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Aukus ‘is not about provoking anyone’

Alok Sharma: Net zero targets can be met with incentives With the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow looming ever closer, Andrew Marr spoke this morning to Alok Sharma, the President for COP26. Marr asked about what the UK government was preparing to do in order to meet its ambitious targets of zero carbon emissions by 2050: AS: The UK actually has been making progress… This isn’t about forcing anyone to do anything, this is about providing incentives. People ‘shouldn’t be concerned’ about rising gas prices The Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has been in emergency talks with energy companies after the price of gas surged by as much as 70

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

The sad circus of the German election

The German election campaign has been entirely lacking in substance. Laschet, Baerbock, Scholz: none seem to grip the public’s attention. None are good enough to stand out, yet none are bad enough to drop out as the media and the opposition struggle to land definitive blows. Amid the monotony of political circus and sclerosis, the German press’s tactics are becoming increasingly outlandish, as two 11-year-old children asking questions about land requisition processes on television showed. A particular segment on the talk show Late Night Berlin is responsible: the idea is that children ask politicians questions. In the last episode, broadcast on Tuesday, Merkel’s would-be successor Armin Laschet was made to

Dominic Green Dominic Green

Biden is losing Nato

The forming of the Australia-UK-US (Aukus) military alliance in the Pacific shows how everything Trump can say, Biden can do. The problem is, Biden isn’t doing it very well. Biden’s administration, like Trump’s, is committed to building its Pacific alliances while sustaining Nato. Yet on Australia as in Afghanistan, the Biden team are doing exactly what they accused Trump of: unpicking the frayed bonds of Nato without a clear idea of what might replace it. The government has three tasks: to keep American workers at work, win contracts for American exports, and secure America’s interests overseas. Two cheers for Biden for getting the Trump memo on the first two points.

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Steady Eddie gets his Far East readies

The Tory party has had a difficult relationship with China in recent years. David Cameron and George Osborne’s ‘Golden era’ of Sino-UK diplomacy foundered on the rock of Beijing’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang while Boris Johnson’s backbenchers have consistently urged a tougher line on tech companies like Huawei.  The G7 summit in June illustrated the predicament facing ministers: maintaining pressure on President Xi over human rights violations while securing Chinese backing for global action on climate change. Tensions on Westminster’s green benches have played out behind the scenes in Whitehall too. Some urging a tougher line on China talk of being ‘brought back into line’ by No. 10 if they are perceived

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Fraser Nelson, Michela Wrong and Mark Mason

25 min listen

On this week’s episode, Fraser Nelson starts by reading the leader. Britain has a labour shortage and our immigration system is a mess – why not have an amnesty for migrants without legal status? (01:00) Michela Wrong is on next. She found herself in the sights of Rwandan President Paul Kagame after she wrote a book exposing the abuses of his regime. (07:05) Mark Mason reads his piece to finish the podcast. Ordering at the bar isn’t just about buying a drink, he says. (20:00)

John Keiger John Keiger

The real reason France was excluded from Aukus

The fallout from Australia’s cancellation of its submarine contract with France and the new trilateral Indo-Pacific security pact between Australia, the US and the UK continues. France has recalled its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington (though significantly not from London) for ‘immediate consultations’; the well-worn diplomatic gesture of discontent. This is the first occasion ever in over two centuries of Franco-American friendship.  Last night in another outburst of petulance, the French embassy in Washington cancelled the gala to celebrate Franco-American friendship. The festivities were to mark the 240th anniversary of the crucial Battle of the Capes when the French navy defeated its British counterpart in defence of American independence.  Compared

John Ferry John Ferry

Will Scottish independence really be ‘Brexit times ten’?

Scottish civil servants are to start work on a ‘detailed prospectus’ for independence so the Scottish government can hold another referendum ‘when the Covid crisis has passed’, Nicola Sturgeon announced earlier this month. The irony of this – coming just days before the Office for National Statistics reported that the percentage of Scots testing positive in a single week for Covid-19 equated to around one in 45 people – was lost on the First Minister. These things happen when you’re busy fighting to free your people from the tyranny of liberal democracy and free society in one of the richest places on earth. Deputy First Minister John Swinney subsequently went further when he promised a

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Does Liz Truss have what it takes to be Foreign Secretary?

In the dying days of Theresa May’s benighted premiership I spotted a long-serving Tory MP on the same weekend train as me, a few rows down. This old whips office hand had naturally bagged a table of four for himself and spread out documents and newspapers across it to deter all-comers. But he seemed most focused on a smaller piece of writing paper on which he periodically scrawled a note. After a few minutes he got up and headed to the buffet car so I did what most of those trained in my trade would have done in the circumstances and sauntered past his vacated table to take a sneaky

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Sir Humphrey’s spirit survives in Whitehall

Fear has been the watchword of Westminster this week, as nervy ministers check to see whether they have survived the cull. Their civil servants meanwhile have had no such troubles, able to wait in their Whitehall offices to comfort, console or congratulate their political masters and listen to yet more interminable farewell speeches from those unceremoniously axed. One departure that has cheered some mandarins was Michael Gove’s switch from the Cabinet Office to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The iconoclastic Aberdonian has blown the winds of change through the corridors of power since his appointment two years ago – hardly surprising in light of his comments that ‘the senior civil service

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Can Gove remake conservatism?

16 min listen

Michael Gove has been tasked with transforming levelling up from a soundbite to an agenda. What will this look like? And what Michael Gove will we get, the liberal reformer or big state lockdown supporter? Katy Balls is joined by Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth to discuss.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Michael Gove’s big challenge

Michael Gove is now in charge of one of the government’s biggest short-term problems: what to do about its proposed planning reform, which are facing huge opposition from Tory backbenchers, as well as levelling up, the government’s long-term aim. Remember that there were more second homes bought in the decade after the financial crisis than there were new homes built I write in the Times today that those MPs who have discussed planning with Gove in recent weeks have been struck by his emphasis on the fact that only 15 per cent of the house-price inflation of the last two decades comes from a lack of supply. This suggests Gove thinks

Julie Bindel

Is Kemi Badenoch’s leaked audio a set-up?

The headline reads, ‘UK Equalities Minister Goes on Anti-LGBTQ Rant in Leaked Audio’. Oh dear, I thought. As a lesbian and a harsh critic of the Tory government, I wondered what had been said. I scoured the piece in Vice, expecting something along the lines of ‘pervert’ and ‘unnatural’ and something about how we will be marrying our vacuum cleaners next. But it was all rather tame and boring. Badenoch said: It’s now, you know like, it’s not even about sexuality now, it’s now like the whole transgender movement, where, OK well we’ve got gay marriage and civil partnerships, so what are transsexuals looking for? … So now it’s not just

Daniel McCarthy

The vanishing presidency

Joe Biden is beginning to feel like an ex-president after only nine months in office. The last two Democrats to occupy the White House, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, arrived with a spirit of renewal, not to mention tremendous legislative ambitions. Biden came in with a spirit of reversal: he was not Trump. His selling point was ‘competence’. Like Warren Harding a century before, he was meant to usher in a ‘return to normalcy’. After Covid and its economic consequences, after the riots that raged in the summer of 2020, normal sounded good enough. Yet that was more than Biden could deliver. What everyone had hoped would be the end

Steerpike Steerpike

Nadhim’s first day no-show

Politics is all about priorities and the new Cabinet has certainly shown that. Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries is hunting among hacks for a new media special adviser, keen to conscript a lieutenant to fight the Tory culture wars. Liz Truss and Dominic Raab are divided over who gets to use the Foreign Office home Chevening – a spectacle that must bring back memories for Geoffrey Howe’s widow Elspeth. Conor Burns meanwhile celebrated his new Northern Ireland brief with a packet of Tayto crisps.  Nadhim Zahawi however did not have the best first day in post as Education Secretary. The MP for Stratford-on-Avon was last night due to be guest of honour at the speech day

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Has Pope Francis just thrown Joe Biden under the bus on abortion?

18 min listen

Say what you like about Pope Francis, but he’s incapable of giving a boring in-flight interview. On Wednesday, coming back from Hungary and Slovakia, he was asked about the problem of pro-abortion Catholic politicians receiving Holy Communion. He immediately launched into a ferocious denunciation of abortion, describing it as homicide, saying there was no middle way and stating that support for abortion was grounds for ‘excommunication’. Francis then slightly qualified this by explaining that these ‘excommunicated’ Catholics needed to be lovingly shown the error of their ways, but it was hard to escape the obvious conclusion. The Pope regards the President as barred from Communion – which drives a horse

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris chairs the new Cabinet – what’s next?

10 min listen

As Boris Johnson today chairs the first meeting of his new cabinet, he’s focused on delivering on his levelling up agenda. What’s the plan? To discuss this, the ongoing junior ministerial appointments and the Liberal Democrat conference this weekend, Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin’s Covid cocoon is a sign of his terror

Although he has been vaccinated, Vladimir Putin is self-isolating for at least a week after ‘dozens’ in his entourage came down with Covid. He is apparently showing no signs of being infected. And perhaps no wonder, as even by the standards of his usual presidential protection, since the start of the pandemic Putin has been shielded within a formidable bio-security regime. Those due to meet him face-to-face are tested, required to isolate beforehand, and – if visiting him either in the Kremlin or his mansion outside Moscow – has to pass through a tunnel fogged with aerosolised disinfectant and bathed in germ-killing ultraviolet light. Back in March last year, he wore

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Australia and the new special relationship

The awkwardly-named AUKUS agreement reflects Washington’s escalating concern about China’s dominance in the Indo-Pacific. It signals London’s determination to be more, not less, involved in the global community after Brexit and the retreat from Afghanistan. Ultimately, however, this deal is about Australia. Few countries are as pivotal to regional security yet so poorly understood as such, at home and abroad, among commentators, politicians and policymakers. Australia’s standing in security terms is intimately linked to its alliance with the United States, but this relationship is not as one directional as some Australian critics believe. In defence and global security terms, Australia is a country with something to offer — quite a