Politics

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

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Rishi Sunak and the coming Tory battle over climate change

The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, isn’t normally given to waffle, which makes his maiden appearance on GB News all the more remarkable. Asked by Andrew Neil who – government or homeowner – would have to pay the estimated £10,000 per household cost of replacing domestic gas boilers with heat pumps to help reach the target of net zero emissions by 2050 Sunak replied:  ‘So when you say the alternative is the household or the government, the government’s money is the people’s money. And that’s my point when I say ultimately we all pay. The government does have any separate money of its own’ As a general point of political philosophy, it

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How much trouble is the DUP in?

13 min listen

New DUP leader Edwin Poots faces his first challenge today as he tries to push through a controversial candidate for First Minister. There are now rumours that the party may launch a vote of no-confidence in him, only a month after he became leader. How much trouble is the party in? Katy Balls points out that the removal of Poots perhaps would not solve the DUP’s problems, given more moderate candidates like Jeffrey Donaldson lost out to him: ‘If we end up in a situation where there’s a vote of no confidence in Poots… it’s not clear that the party is unified in what should follow next.’ On the podcast, Isabel

Andy Cowper

No, Mr Hancock, Covid didn’t cause the NHS backlog

You might think that a cabinet minister and privy councillor whose reputation for truthfulness had been brought into (very public) question would be inclined to keep their public utterances strictly on the straight and narrow. You’d be failing to allow for the enthusiastic approach of the Health Secretary. Matt Hancock used his presentation to today’s NHS Confederation Conference to try to explain that the five million-strong NHS backlog, claiming it was down to Covid-19. Asked about providing guarantees of funding to address the NHS backlog, Mr Hancock told the event that ‘the virus is responsible, and the backlog is a consequence of the pandemic’.  This is, quite simply, untrue. The NHS backlog

Douglas Murray

Cambridge deserves better than Stephen Toope

Regular readers may be aware that in recent months I have been having a running-spat with a Canadian lawyer called Stephen Toope. I am rarely exercised by Canadian lawyers, but this particular one is the current Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, and he seems intent on running that crown jewel of an institution into the ground.  Since taking over as Vice-Chancellor, Mr Toope has been responsible for a wide array of anti-free speech initiatives through which, as I recently remarked in the Daily Telegraph, he appears to want to transform Cambridge University into something like the Canadian bar association, but without the thrills, or the pay. Anyhow – our spat came

Steven Barrett

Is the EU breaching its UK treaty by failing to protect LGBT rights?

Has the EU Commission lost any sense of moral value? This week, Hungary, an EU member state, voted to impose bigoted and oppressive laws on its LGBT citizens. This amounted to a clear breach of many of our domestic laws – and it is a breach of the shared Human Rights laws. Yet the EU’s response has been dismal. Is it time for Britain to show solidarity with LGBT Hungarians – and walk away from its treaty with the EU? The EU Commission said it is aware of what is unfolding in Hungary and that:  ‘When protecting children from harmful content it is important for member states to find the right balance

Steerpike Steerpike

Lords skewer the Animal Sentience Bill

Last month’s Queen Speech was noteworthy for how little it contained, with the only rabbit out of the legislative hat being (appropriately enough) the Animal Sentience Bill.  But now the proposed legislation, which would give vertebrates a legal right to feel happiness and suffering, has started to attract serious scrutiny as it enters the committee stage of the House of Lords. On Sunday Mr S noted that Lord Goldsmith’s response to a parliamentary question hinted that crabs, lobsters and other invertebrates could be included in the scope of the proposed protections. Now it appears parliamentarians have begun to take note, judging by yesterday’s debate in the Upper House. Peers queued up to pick

Andrew McQuillan

The DUP is tearing itself apart

Late last night, the UK government and Sinn Fein went over the heads of the DUP and agreed on a solution to the thorny issue of Irish language legislation. The Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis promised to step in and pass the legislation if Stormont fails to do so. An ultimatum has now been given to make good on the January 2020 New Decade, New Approach deal — the agreement that promised the language laws in the first place and which was central to the return of power-sharing. In theory, this rouse would have allowed the DUP to formally nominate Paul Givan as Arlene Foster’s replacement as First Minister with

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Delay, data and the need for transparency

Boris Johnson delayed 21 June, he said, because the data did not merit a full reopening. The specific data government is tracking to make these decisions remains unknown, so we are left to guess. But it’s hard to imagine the decision was disconnected from the rising Covid infection rate across the UK, due to the Indian variant’s increased transmissibility. The UK has gone from having some of the lowest Covid rates in Europe to now having the highest in just a matter of weeks. But is the story that simple? Data from areas hit hardest and fastest by the Indian variant suggest some reasons to be optimistic. In Bolton, the

Henry Hill

Scrapping English votes for English laws could spell trouble

It has been almost 45 years since Tam Dalyell first asked the West Lothian Question. It is a damning indictment of devolutionary unionists that they are still flailing for an answer. Dalyell, a Scottish Labour MP with the uncommon foresight and courage to oppose his party’s embrace of devolution, first posed it during the parliamentary debates that teed up the first referendums in 1979: ‘For how long will English constituencies and English Honourable members tolerate … at least 119 Honourable Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important, and probably often decisive, effect on English politics while they themselves have no say in the same matters in Scotland,

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Rishi Sunak’s waffle exposed the flaw in Boris’s green agenda

Who pays? It is one of the most important questions in politics, especially when it comes to the sort of expensive zeitgeisty ideas that governments love to take a reputational ride on. When Margaret Thatcher was Tory leader, she tried to exempt her party from this charge of vulnerability to fashionable notions that come with eye-watering price tags attached, once observing:  ‘The Labour party scheme their schemes, the Liberal party dream their dreams, but we have work to do.’ Nobody who has followed the career of Boris Johnson at all closely would seek to exempt him. Indeed, ‘schemes and dreams’ appear to be what make him tick. So it is

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The new leviathan: the big state is back

‘In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,’ proclaimed Ronald Reagan in his inaugural speech as American president. Forty years on, the leaders of the G7 have reversed this mantra. In Cornwall last week they declared that the government, and more specifically its $12 trillion of economic support, had not only been the answer during the pandemic but would continue to be the answer during the recovery. They committed ‘to support our economies for as long as is necessary, shifting the focus of our support from crisis response to promoting growth into the future’. It would have been quite possible for leaders

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

The art of politics: what ministers hang on their walls

On the walls of the Chancellor’s office hangs a print of Eric Ravilious’s lithograph ‘Working Controls while Submerged’ (1941). Two engineers in blue overalls heave the levers of a submarine. A third slumps asleep on a bench. An image, perhaps, of the ship of state, several hundred feet underwater, but by no means sunk yet. We might picture Rishi Sunak in the Treasury control room, changing the gears, working the pumps, keeping the country bumping along even at the bottom of the economic ocean. Or perhaps Sunak looks at his four framed screen-prints by the artist Justine Smith — ‘Pound’, ‘Euro’, ‘Dollar’, ‘Yen’ — and thinks: if only it were

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The biggest danger to Boris comes from the enemies within

Boris Johnson’s predecessor was destroyed by her inability to meet deadlines. Theresa May extended the Brexit transition period so many times that her party eventually turned against her. Johnson, who was notorious for pushing deadlines when he was a journalist, is now discovering the political problem with missing dates. The Prime Minister may still be flying high in the polls but if he cannot meet the new date for ending restrictions — 19 July — then his own MPs will lose faith in his ability to restore normality. The whole point of the government’s staggeringly long lockdown timetable, announced back in February, was to set an achievable deadline. The theory

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Charles Walker MP calls for elections to Sage

Few MPs in the House of Commons have been as eloquent on either side of the lockdown argument as Charles Walker. The MP for Broxbourne returned to the chamber yesterday afternoon to take aim at the scientists sitting on Sage — the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. Walker — who has accused Boris Johnson of treating MPs like dogs and carried around a pint of milk in protest — began his speech by contrasting the status of elected members with that of the unelected ‘experts’: As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sage has huge power over our lives. It has power over whom we hug and hold. It has power over

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why Rishi Sunak should keep the Universal Credit uplift

Chancellor Rishi Sunak agreed to sit down with Andrew Neil on GB News last night for what turned out to be a fairly brutal grilling. The Chancellor floundered under interrogation on the pensions triple-lock, the cost of climate-friendly policies and the Tories’ big-government instincts. However, one of the more uncomfortable moments came when Neil pressed him on the future of the £20 weekly Universal Credit uplift. The benefit supplement, which also applies to the basic element in Working Tax Credit, was introduced at the start of the pandemic because the government acknowledged that the coming recession would inflict particular hardship on those already on the lowest incomes. Announcing the 12-month

Alexander Downer

The UK-Australia free trade agreement is a triumph

How significant is the UK-Australia trade deal announced this week during Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s visit to Britain? Well, Australia already has 17 genuine free trade agreements, including with the United States, Japan and China. But the free trade agreement with the UK is undoubtedly one of the highest quality agreements Australia has ever reached. In terms of the liberalisation of markets, it is only exceeded by the free trade agreement Australia has with New Zealand. This demonstrates something very important: that the UK, having left the European Union, is going to be a genuine champion of global trade liberalisation. That will not only be good for the British economy

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Rishi Sunak: I’m a fiscal Conservative (unlike Boris)

When Rishi Sunak told Andrew Neil this evening that he had his eyes on the future, he was ostensibly talking about the nation’s finances. But it was difficult not to conclude from his interview on GB News that he wasn’t also keeping at least one eye on his own future, too. A particularly striking exchange came when Neil asked him what kind of Conservative he is: Andrew Neil: ‘Beyond the pandemic are you a One Nation conservative, are you a big Government Conservative like the Prime Minister or are you a small government, fiscal Conservative?’ Rishi Sunak: ‘Of course I’m a fiscal Conservative, Andrew, because as we talked about it’s

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is Matt Hancock hopeless?

13 min listen

Another day, another Dom bomb. In Cummings’s latest release, a number of WhatsApp messages reveal communications between himself and the Prime Minister, with the latter describing the health secretary Matt Hancock’s performance as effing ‘hopeless’.  Is this damaging to Hancock? Or is this the sentiment that you can expect from senior people who work at close quarters with each other during a crisis? To discuss the new revelations and its potential fallout Katy Balls is joined by James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman with a surprise appearance by Fraser Nelson.

Daniel DePetris

Why the Biden-Putin summit wasn’t a waste of time

The meeting between U.S. president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin in Geneva started cordially enough. A quick handshake, toothy smiles for the cameras, and some standard words of diplomacy. ‘I would like to thank you for the initiative to meet today,’ a slouching Putin told an attentive Biden. ‘Still, U.S.-Russian relations have accumulated a lot of issues that require a meeting at the highest level, and I hope that our meeting will be productive.’ Putin’s words were something of an understatement. U.S.-Russia relations are scraping the bottom of the barrel and may very well be at their lowest point since the early 1980s, when Washington and Moscow were turning Europe into

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What does the latest ‘Dom bomb’ mean for Matt Hancock?

When Dominic Cummings gave seven hours of evidence to a Commons inquiry into the government’s Covid response, it was Matt Hancock who received the most criticism. The former No. 10 senior aide’s accusation that the Health Secretary was negligent – the most serious charge being that Hancock had misled the government over testing and care homes – led to questions over Hancock’s position. But it quickly became clear No. 10 had no plans to fire Hancock. The Prime Minister opted to rally round his minister rather than cast him out. So, does the publication of WhatsApp messages allegedly showing the Prime Minister heavily criticising Hancock change things? In a new blog on