Today

17 Jun 2021
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 to have drawn a very different conclusion: bloated government bureaucracies have failed.

The new leviathan: the big state is back

Yesterday

16 Jun 2021

Tuesday

15 Jun 2021
Coffee House Shots
Will the Australia trade deal really make a difference?
17 min listen

The government has agreed its first post-Brexit bespoke trade deal. But the agreement with Australia has already caused consternation among Conservative MPs about the potential competition from Australian farmers. Are these fears overstated? James Forsyth argues yes: 'Both its proponents and its critics exaggerate its importance. Meat prices in Asia are roughly twice what they are in the UK. I think that is where Australian farmers are going to continue to focus their export energy.' And the team discuss the fallout from the extension to July 19 of the lockdown easing day. Fraser Nelson points out that not only has freedom been delayed, but that even the thresholds for freedom are not clearly set out: 'It seems to be a complete mess of communications though.

Will the Australia trade deal really make a difference?

Monday

14 Jun 2021
The lockdown delay has triggered a constitutional crisis

It is not the Battle of Marston Moor, but it strikes me that we are now in something of a constitutional crisis following the Speaker’s dramatic outburst this afternoon. In response to points of order about the fact Boris Johnson is announcing lockdown changes in a press conference rather than to parliament, Hoyle said that he had been told no decisions had been taken only to find out that there was an embargoed document setting out what changes were coming. A visibly furious Hoyle declared from the chair that: ‘This House is being misled’. Considering that misleading the House is a resigning matter, this is a remarkably serious accusation for the Speaker to level against Downing Street. It is not hard to follow it through to its logical conclusion; and I cannot think of a previous example of a Speaker accusing No.

The lockdown delay has triggered a constitutional crisis

Sunday

13 Jun 2021
Boris Johnson’s Northern Ireland problem

In an at times grouchy press conference, Boris Johnson tried to calm the row over the Northern Ireland protocol. The Prime Minister declined to comment on what Emmanuel Macron is supposed to have said about Northern Ireland’s position in the UK. He said that the whole issue of the protocol had taken up a ‘vestigial’ amount of time at the summit. (Interestingly, Mujtaba Rahman of Eurasia Group, who is particularly well connected in EU capitals, says that he has been told it took up two-thirds of the conversations in the margins of the summit).  Instead, Johnson wanted to emphasise the vaccine commitments that the summit had made and how these would help ‘demonstrate the benefits of democracy and freedom and human rights’ to the rest of the world.

Boris Johnson’s Northern Ireland problem

Friday

11 Jun 2021
How to fix the protocol

The blame game between London and Brussels over the Northern Ireland protocol obscures the fact that there are solutions waiting to be found. There are, as I say in the Times today, ways to reform the protocol and better protect the Good Friday Agreement while not threatening the integrity of the single market. Three changes would render the protocol far more acceptable and would better position it to withstand the undoubted pressures it will come under when the EU and UK start to diverge their regulations.  The first of these is a trusted trader scheme for food. This would allow registered suppliers to move goods — including, yes, sausages — from Great Britain to Northern Ireland without checks. The likes of Sainsbury's can be trusted to make sure that British bangers are bought in the province rather than finding their way to the shelves of shops in Drogheda.

How to fix the protocol

Thursday

10 Jun 2021
Is Biden coming around to Boris?

Today’s US-UK diplomacy didn’t get off to the best start, with the Times breaking the remarkable news about a US demarche — or diplomatic rebuke — to the UK government to complain about its approach to the Northern Ireland protocol. But the day has ended in a better place for the UK government. The US-UK joint statement contains a section on Northern Ireland that is far more nuanced than the demarche. It talks about the ‘delicate balance’ of the Good Friday Agreement, which is something that the UK has been trying to stress in its discussions with the EU — arguing that unionists' objections to the protocol in its current form risk upsetting that. Downing Street, though, would not have wanted so much focus on the protocol today.

Is Biden coming around to Boris?

Wednesday

9 Jun 2021
Coffee House Shots
Are Brexit talks back to the bad old days?
10 min listen

Today, talks between David Frost and the EU's negotiator Maroš Šefčovič ended with little agreement about how to move forward on the Northern Ireland Protocol. As James Forsyth says on the podcast: 'it didn't end with either man walking out of the meeting, but you probably can't say much more for it than that.' This is partly down to Lord Frost's negotiating style. Katy Balls points out that he's learning from the lessons of the Brexit talks of recent years: 'David Frost, who gets a lot of criticism for being very confrontational in his methods, looks back at the Brexit negotiations which he led on the UK side, and thinks that "Well it worked then, it might work now". And therefore, all these people saying his approach is wrong.

Are Brexit talks back to the bad old days?

Tuesday

8 Jun 2021
Coffee House Shots
Is the foreign aid row a sign of things to come?
13 min listen

Though the amendment on foreign aid was not selected by the Speaker yesterday, the row over the budget cut is not over yet. Today MPs will have an emergency debate about the policy, and Lindsey Hoyle has advised that the government should bring the matter in front of the House in the future. This is just one of a number of things bothering Tory MPs at the moment - so what's going on?  James Forsyth sums it up as: 'There's a pattern about money, essentially.' With the worst of the pandemic over the Treasury is looking to tighten its pursestrings. But Isabel Hardman points out that, while MPs are largely supportive of the aid cut, the same problem might be more difficult when it comes to healthcare or education:'The international development cuts might be quite easy for Red Wall MPs to defend.

Is the foreign aid row a sign of things to come?

Monday

7 Jun 2021
Coffee House Shots
How much trouble is the government in over foreign aid?
13 min listen

After the government cut the UK's foreign aid budget a group of rebellious tory MPs bound together to try and reverse the decision, will it come to a head this week?'This cut has caused some resentment amongst other nations' - Isabel HardmanAnd has the culture war spread to cricket after the suspension of Ollie Robinson for decade old racist remarks?'I think there is a broader question in society about how do we allow people to make up for youthful errors?' - James ForsythAnd with Portugal moving to the amber list, just how limited will the options be for our summer holidays? 'The government now, it's aim is to protect the domestic reopening on June 21st' - James Forsyth Cindy Yu talks with James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

How much trouble is the government in over foreign aid?

Sunday

6 Jun 2021
Why the one-metre rule could stay beyond June 21

Matt Hancock said this morning that the Indian variant was 40 per cent more transmissible than the Kentish one. Now, it should be noted that these numbers do tend to move around. But if come 14 June and the decision about the unlocking on 21 June this is still the figure, it would point to a less than full reopening. The view in Whitehall has long been that if it is only 30 per cent more transmissible then it would be safe to go ahead with a big bang unlocking. But if the figure was higher than that, then things would get complicated. This suggests that some forms of social distancing will remain post 21 June. Continued mask wearing seems a near certainty given how little economic impact that measure has. The working from home instruction is also likely to remain as its economic impact is relatively small and given that the government has long assumed that the big return to the office will take place in September rather than this summer.

Why the one-metre rule could stay beyond June 21

Saturday

5 Jun 2021

Friday

4 Jun 2021
Have we hit peak graduate?

The Tory party has turned sharply against the idea of ever larger numbers going to university. The reasons for this are both economic and political, I say in the Times today. On the economic front, the taxpayer is bearing more of the cost of the expansion of higher education than expected — the government estimates that it will have to write off 53 per cent of the value of student loans issued last year — and there is a belief that the lack of funding for technical education is contributing to the UK’s skills and productivity problems. Politically, the issue is that graduates tend not to vote Tory. At the last election, the Tories beat Labour by 44 per cent to 32 per cent. But among graduates (not students), the Tories trailed Labour by 14 points, polling a mere 29 per cent.

Have we hit peak graduate?

Thursday

3 Jun 2021
No. 10 should expect an aid rebellion

If a vote is called on the government’s aid cut on Monday, it will be very tight for the government. Andrew Mitchell is a former chief whip as well as a former development secretary and it is hard to believe that he would have put this amendment down if he didn’t have the numbers to defeat the government. This is, in some ways, an odd rebellion. The rebels claim they are not really rebels at all and just trying to uphold the Tory manifesto from the last election. But the size of this rebellion should concern Boris Johnson and the Tory whips. It highlights how many former ministers there now are on the backbenchers who are prepared to defy the government. Theresa May and the former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt are both backing the amendment along with a slew of select committee chairs.

No. 10 should expect an aid rebellion

Wednesday

2 Jun 2021
Keir Starmer’s interview gamble pays off

One of the biggest challenges for any leader of the opposition is getting noticed. Doing that requires taking some risks and Keir Starmer’s sit down with Piers Morgan was a bit of a risk – politicians can get caught out in these more personal formats. Starmer did well, though. He didn’t fall into any Nick Clegg style traps; navigating the sex and drugs questions with relative ease. He talked movingly about his mother, and how she coped with her long illness. His relationship with his own father clearly wasn’t easy, Starmer said the only time his father ever said he was proud of him was when he passed the 11-plus, and it was touching to hear him talk about how he tries to parent his own kids differently. There wasn’t, unsurprisingly, much policy in the interview.

Keir Starmer’s interview gamble pays off

Tuesday

1 Jun 2021
Coffee House Shots
What difference does a wedding make?
12 min listen

Now officially in June, the significance of the 21st seems even greater for the country, but with the Indian variant still on the rise how safe is the date? Katy Balls says that for the government: 'The plan is to offer all over fifties two doses before June 21st.'And a glorious weekend of weather for the Prime Minister's secret nuptials, but what does this wedding mean for the warring factions that circle No. 10? Some questions were raised about the ceremony; just how Boris Johnson gets a Catholic service raised a few eyebrows and Katy has also heard: 'There were reports of dancing at the wedding, in the garden… you're not actually allowed to dance at weddings…' And finally Keir Starmer sits down with Piers Morgan tonight, will this interview be the thing to renew the Labour leader's image? James Forsyth points out Sir Starmer needs to try something new because: ‘In his first year as Labour leader, Keir Starmer was essentially riding on government mistakes… the problem for him is that the vaccine rollout has kind of shifted the narrative about the government.

What difference does a wedding make?

Saturday

29 May 2021
Coffee House Shots
Will the DUP lose ground under Edwin Poots?
11 min listen

This week Edwin Poots was formally endorsed as the DUP's new leader, in a meeting which Arlene Foster, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson (Poots's rival in the leadership campaign) and other senior DUP politicians walked out of before Poots gave a speech. What does the future hold for the divided political party that held so much sway in Westminster during the Brexit process? Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and the Irish Times's Denis Staunton. On the podcast, Denis suggests three ways forward for disgruntled DUP politicians like Foster and Donaldson. One, they could try to topple Poots. Two, they could go back to the Ulster Unionist Party (from which they defected in 2004). Or three, they could form their own party. On the possibilities, Denis points out that the system of single transferable vote in Northern Ireland could benefit moderate parties in the middle as they hoover up second preferences: 'Essentially a modern party.

Will the DUP lose ground under Edwin Poots?
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