Politics

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

Tuesday

29 Jun 2021

Steerpike

Boris Johnson’s football furnishings

The Prime Minister has never been much of a football fan. Unlike David Cameron, who could never remember if he supported Aston Villa or West Ham, Boris Johnson has remained resolutely ambivalent on the subject of personal preferences by opting to choose, err, no side in the English Football League. Tonight Johnson showed his patriotic support by posing delicately on the side of a creaking table to watch the football alongside his newly-married wife Carrie. Mr S could not help but admire the staging of the happy couple, poised melodramatically staring with open mouths at the England-Germany match. Could the willingness of the Prime Minister and his wife to perch

Fraser Nelson

What’s happening in Batley and Spen?

17 min listen

A bizarre flourish of tactics are on display in the run up to the Batley and Spen by-election. And are we already feeling the new Health Secretary’s influence? To discuss, Fraser Nelson is joined by James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Ross Clark

How much longer can the Treasury rig the housing market?

The past 15 months have produced a bizarre economic paradox. In 2020, the economy shrank at the fastest rate recorded in modern times: 9.9 per cent. Yet house prices have not merely weathered the storm, they have risen at the fastest rate since the height of the property boom in the 2000s. According to Nationwide, the average value of a UK home has risen by 13.9 percent in the past 12 months. Halifax puts it a little more modestly at a 9.5 percent annual rise. Yet there is a pretty clear picture of a rising market driven by a lack of stock and a desperation from many people to move home

Patrick O’Flynn

What does Starmer actually stand for?

The biggest reason Keir Starmer has proved a flop is not that he leads an unelectable rabble, or that Labour’s coalition of voters is splintering, or even that Covid has marginalised him — it is far simpler: He’s never known what to do. In fact, he lacks the first clue about how to do politics. High-powered lawyer he may once have been, but we might as well have pulled some random middle-class bloke out of a saloon car on a ring road and invited him to captain Britain’s next doomed attempt to win the America’s Cup yachting challenge. Because Starmer’s default pose is to be frozen at the wheel and

Steerpike

The curious case of Kate Osborne’s Wikipedia

Since her election to Parliament in December 2019, Labour backbencher Kate Osborne has become something of a transparency campaigner. The Jarrow MP has urged the extension of Freedom of Information laws to cover private companies and criticised Conservative opponent Nadine Dorries for sharing ‘fake news propaganda’ online. But Osborne seems less keen to divulge information about herself, being one of a handful of new MPs such as Felicity Buchan and Neil Hudson to decline to disclose her date of birth in the most recent Times guide to the House of Commons. Mr S was intrigued to find on browsing the left-wing firebrand’s Wikipedia page that a number of edits have

Annabel Denham

The economic illiteracy of anti-capitalists

Back in October, World Bank chief economist Carmen Reinhart recommended that countries borrow heavily during the pandemic. ‘First, you worry about fighting the war,’ she said, ‘then you figure out how to pay for it’. As thousands of mask-free demonstrators took to the streets of London this weekend to campaign on issues ranging from Palestine to climate change, you have to wonder: are we still at war? And does anyone care about the economy anymore? It has been apparent for some time — though it may continue to confound psephologists — that issues such as identity, patriotism and culture are more important to the electorate than economic concerns. That the

Steerpike

Lib Dem grandees go to war over China

It appears the Liberal Democrats have fallen foul of the Trade Descriptions Act. During the Brexit years, the party did its best to eschew the ‘democratic’ part of their name by promising to nullify the largest democratic mandate the UK has ever seen. And now Mr Steerpike is intrigued to see that party grandees don’t seem too keen on their ‘liberal’ roots either. Former party leader Vince Cable has this week written a piece for the Independent arguing that there is no point in the West criticising China for its policies towards the Uighur Muslims. Cable denies that ethnic cleansing is going on in Xinjiang, despite reports of forced sterilisations and abortion, justifying measures against

Robert Ede

Why Sajid Javid should delay Hancock’s NHS reforms

Sajid Javid arrives at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) at a point when the portfolio has never been more high profile. Whilst not technically a Great Office of State, the position of Health Secretary is second only to the Chancellor when the public is asked to rank a member of the Prime Minister’s team. When Jeremy Hunt was appointed to the post in 2012, he was urged by the then Prime Minister David Cameron to ‘calm down the NHS’. Sajid Javid, another bright, competent minister who does not seek the limelight has been chosen for a similar brief. His first task will be to prioritise. Under Hancock,

Theo Davies-Lewis

Drakeford draws up his battle lines on the Union

A little over two years ago, a relatively unknown First Minister of Wales unveiled his blueprint to repair intergovernmental relations across the UK. As he delivered the annual Keir Hardie lecture at Merthyr Tydfil College, Mark Drakeford said that he had been forced to ‘take up the baton where the UK government itself has dropped it.’ A reform of the constitution was deemed ‘both urgent and vital’ if the Union was to survive post-Brexit, while a ‘fairer, more equitable and more sustainable settlement’ should follow. Such language peppered the most provocative constitutional speech by a modern Welsh politician. The trouble was that hardly anybody listened. Downing Street certainly had little

Monday

28 Jun 2021

Freddy Gray

Is vaccine encouragement becoming vaccine coercion?

27 min listen

From jabs for joints, to peer pressure in schools, to free lap dances, it seems the powers that be are getting more and more aggressive in their mission of getting everyone jabbed as quickly as possible. To discuss this unprecedented vaccination campaign Freddy Gray talks to author of A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura Dodsworth.

Katy Balls

Sajid Javid’s optimistic Covid forecast

Sajid Javid used his first appearance at the despatch box since his appointment as Health Secretary to paint an optimistic picture of the UK’s route out of lockdown. Confirming that there would be no relaxation on 5 July, Javid talked up the likelihood of restrictions ending on 19 July. He appeared to go further than Matt Hancock on the end of lockdown. Javid said he was ‘very confident’ the end of the roadmap would go ahead: ‘For me, 19 July is not only the end of the line but the start of an exciting new journey for our country.’ Of course, Javid wouldn’t be the first minister to sound positive about

Ian Williams

Matt Hancock and the problem with China’s surveillance tech

There can have been no more avid viewers of the CCTV footage of Matt Hancock’s snog and grope than China’s cyber spies, chuckling in some dark room in Beijing and asking each other, how can it have been so easy for somebody to obtain? MI5 seems to be asking itself the same question. Three days after the photographs and video were first published, it appears that nobody knows for sure how it was done. Did it come from somebody with access to the feed who downloaded it or filmed it on the screen with a mobile phone? Or was the camera hacked, because the dirty little secret of these devices

Isabel Hardman

Will Javid scrap Hancock’s NHS reforms?

Sajid Javid has his first Commons outing as Health Secretary today, not even 48 hours after he took over from Matt Hancock. As Katy outlines here, the focus will be on how he differs from his predecessor on the pace of easing Covid restrictions. But Javid will also quickly face questions on whether he plans to scrap some of Hancock’s ambitious plans to reform the NHS too. As I reported last week, there is growing anxiety in the health service and in the Conservative party about the forthcoming Health and Social Care Bill, with one senior figure warning that it could end up being ‘Lansley mark II’. That’s a reference to

Katy Balls

Boris changes his tune on Hancock

Matt Hancock may be out of government but that doesn’t mean the matter is closed when it comes to the Prime Minister’s handling of the whole affair. Hancock officially resigned on Saturday as Health Secretary after concluding that his position was untenable, following the publication of photos of him breaching lockdown rules with his married female adviser. However, the initial suggestion from both Downing Street and Hancock was that he would cling on. When the news first broke on Friday, Johnson took the view that the best way to deal with this type of story was to ignore it. Hancock put out an apology statement and No. 10 aides said

Steerpike

Watch: Wimbledon hails Oxford jab creator

A heart-warming moment at the first day of Wimbledon today. In the crowd to watch matches on centre court was Professor Sarah Gilbert who developed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for coronavirus. Having spent much of 2020 working on finding a jab, the scientist was today enjoying a rare day out, having been appointed a Dame in the Birthday Honours earlier this month for her services to science. The crowd may have been there to see players like Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray but there was only one star this afternoon when the Wimbledon announcer declared Gilbert was in attendance. The crowd rose to give the obviously affected scientist a standing ovation to thank her and the Oxford team for

Michelle Clement

How crises shape government

Crises often exhaust the capacity of governments to renew themselves. All consuming problems do not allow prime ministers to have what Walter Bagehot called ‘mind in reserve’ — and yet future success at the polls depends on it. The vast achievements of the postwar Labour government were largely built on the work of a Liberal in the form of the 1942 Beveridge Report, which most notably recommended a National Health Service. But Attlee was unable to create a new vision of his own during an era of crippling rationing and economic strife. Labour went from winning their first overall majority in 1945 to a very slim majority in 1950. Churchill’s Conservatives

Isabel Hardman

Will Javid handle Covid differently?

11 min listen

It’s Sajid Javid’s first day in the office as health secretary. The former chancellor’s comments last year that he would ‘run the economy hot’ have led some to think he will try to end restrictions as soon and as extensively as possible, but might he have changed his mind? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls. Katy says his position might be more complicated than many first assume: ‘We know what his instinct is, but it’s also the case that when he made the comments last spring, that was obviously thinking with his former chancellor hat on, and now he’s going to have to look at things in terms of

Nick Tyrone

Why Labour should stick with Starmer – even if he loses Batley

Things could be bleak for Labour in the Batley and Spen by-election this Thursday. Throughout an ugly and dispiriting campaign all round, George Galloway’s entrance into the race has threatened to prevent a Labour victory. If the party loses, Starmer’s position will be on even shakier ground. He might even be deposed. But if that were to happen, it would be a mistake for Labour, one felt for years to come. Keir Starmer has made a lot of errors since becoming leader of the Labour party. He seemed to assume that just being presentable and not Jeremy Corbyn would be enough to see his party rise in the polls again.

Steerpike

Can Javid beat the blob at the Department of Health?

One man’s loss is another man’s gain. Matt Hancock’s downfall has meant the return of Sajid Javid, restored to Cabinet sixteen months after his resignation in a Downing Street power struggle. Javid wasted no time in taking to the airwaves yesterday, paying the obligatory tribute to his disgraced predecessor and telling broadcasters: ‘We are still in a pandemic and I want to see that come to an end as soon as possible. That will be my immediate priority – to see that we return to normal, as soon and as quickly as possible.’ Fighting talk after the past year and a half. Hancock was known to be one of the most pro-lockdown ‘doves’

Katy Balls

Will Sajid Javid champion the end of Covid restrictions?

As the row over Matt Hancock’s relationship with his married adviser Gina Coladangelo continues to dominate the news, attention in Westminster is turning to what his Cabinet successor will do. Will Sajid Javid’s appointment as Health Secretary lead to a change in the government’s approach to Covid? That’s the question Tory MPs are asking as Javid prepares to make his Commons debut today after accepting the role. On Sunday, Javid said his most immediate priority would be to return life to normal ‘as quickly as possible’. Of course, wanting a pandemic to end sooner rather than later isn’t a particularly controversial position, but given that Hancock earned a reputation as