Today

6 May 2021

What’s next for the Union?

The Union faces two simultaneous challenges in Northern Ireland and Scotland that both look set to worsen in the coming years. In Northern Ireland, the immediate problem is that Brexit has disturbed the fragile balance there. (A more persistent problem is the fact that after the Good Friday agreement, the Democratic Unionist party and Sinn Fein replaced the more moderate Ulster Unionists and the Social Democratic and Labour party as the main Unionist and Nationalist parties.) The debate over where various borders should go has turned into a question of identity. Unionists argue that the UK government’s agreement to create half a border in the Irish Sea threatens Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom. When Northern Irish Unionists feel they cannot trust the British government, this quickly leads to anger.

What’s next for the Union?

Yesterday

5 May 2021

Tuesday

4 May 2021

Hartlepool turning blue would mean a Labour crisis

We have two years of elections on Thursday. But in England, the Hartlepool by-election is fast becoming the defining contest. If the Tories take the seat, which has always been Labour's, it will show that Keir Starmer hasn’t stopped the bleeding for Labour in the red wall. It will indicate that the realignment of English politics is continuing even without Brexit and Corbyn. A Tory win would suggest that the 2019 general election was not a freak result or a unique product of voters’ desire to get Brexit done combined with their concerns about Corbyn, but rather part of a substantial shift in the electoral geography of England. Hartlepool turning blue would precipitate a Labour crisis. It would raise the existential question of whether it is possible for Labour to keep together its ‘Hull and Hampstead’ coalition or whether the values gap between Labour’s metropolitan base and its former industrial heartlands is now simply too big to bridge.

Hartlepool turning blue would mean a Labour crisis

Saturday

1 May 2021

Friday

30 Apr 2021

Unionist opinion will harden unless the EU gives ground

Arlene Foster has been forced out as DUP leader because of Unionist anger about the Northern Ireland protocol. She is blamed for being far too trusting of Boris Johnson. Her party’s anger with her has been compounded by how it has fallen in the polls since the protocol started being implemented. But as I say in theTimes this morning, the protocol isn’t even yet in full effect. If the protocol were to be implemented in full, Unionist opposition towards it would escalate to the next level. Next year’s Stormont election would turn into a proxy referendum on the protocol, with unionist parties arguing that if they can get a majority, they can vote to scrap it. This is because the concession that Johnson extracted from the EU was an agreement that the Northern Ireland assembly could scrap the protocol by a simple majority vote.

Unionist opinion will harden unless the EU gives ground

Thursday

29 Apr 2021

The nightmare: Boris’s battles are just beginning

When Boris Johnson parted company with Dominic Cummings at the end of last year, it was inevitable there would be trouble further down the line. To pick a fight with one of Britain’s most formidable campaigners and his allies was always going to have consequences. It’s now becoming clear what they are. Some of the revelations from Johnson’s enemies are quotable: for example, the allegation that he said in private he’d rather let ‘bodies pile high’ than allow a third lockdown. But what he said in anger, or what he considered doing, matters a lot less than what he actually did. That’s why the most serious question he’s facing is about the financing of the renovation of the Downing Street flat. The Electoral Commission has launched a formal investigation, on the basis that ‘there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence or offences may have occurred’.

The nightmare: Boris’s battles are just beginning

Wednesday

28 Apr 2021

Tuesday

27 Apr 2021

Monday

26 Apr 2021

Simon Case’s answers left us with more questions

Simon Case was determined not to make news at his select committee appearance today. But his sheer desire not to make news told a story in itself as the Commons Public Administration committee got increasingly frustrated with him. Case dodged a string of questions on the lockdown leak inquiry and then declared, ‘What I can say I have already said to the committee.’ Case did, though, reveal a couple of things. First, it will be weeks not months before the inquiry concludes and the reason he couldn’t say much on it was that while the leak was not criminal, the investigation is using techniques he can’t talk about it in public. Second, he said that after this length of time he thought it was ‘probable’ that the culprit, or culprits, would not be identified.

Simon Case’s answers left us with more questions

Saturday

24 Apr 2021

Friday

23 Apr 2021

How the Tories can tackle generational inequality

Covid is far more fatal for the old than the young. But it is the young who have borne the economic and social brunt of the pandemic. It is, as I say in The Times today, a basic matter of fairness that the government now tries to help them. The government does have schemes such as Kickstart and the bonus for taking on apprentices designed to prevent mass youth unemployment. But if there are limits on how many people firms can have in offices or factories even after 21 June, they will be reluctant to take on apprentices, even if the government is offering them thousands of pounds to do so. The biggest challenge for our leaders, though, is ending the generational bias in politics. Older people turn out to vote more than the young: almost three quarters of pensioners voted at the last general election, compared with just under half of the under-25s.

How the Tories can tackle generational inequality

Thursday

22 Apr 2021

Putin’s on manoeuvres – are we ready?

‘What follows plague?’ I asked a medieval historian at the start of the pandemic. ‘War,’ he replied. In recent days, this remark has seemed worryingly prescient: 120,000 Russian troops are massing on the border with Ukraine, China is aggressively increasing military activity across the Taiwan Strait and Iran has responded to Israel’s successful sabotage of its nuclear facility by declaring it will enrich uranium to close to the level required for a nuclear bomb. The West — and specifically the new US President — is being tested. Those who want an end to the western-led rules-based system are pushing to see what they can get away with. British foreign policy sources dismiss the idea that Russia and China are coordinating their actions, but there is little doubt that the two countries benefit from the fact that there are two simultaneous challenges in Europe and Asia.

Putin’s on manoeuvres – are we ready?

Wednesday

21 Apr 2021

The Super League collapse shows interventionism is back

What killed the European Super League? Undoubtedly part of it was the backlash from the fans. But the government’s threats to intervene were clearly a factor too. A super league where the six English clubs couldn’t get work permits for any overseas players would have quickly lost its appeal – and the government and the FA were clearly prepared to go down this route. Brexit had strengthened the government’s hand on this; freedom of movement would have meant that any footballer with an EU passport could have come and played for one of the Super League clubs. Football is clearly a special case. But the government’s willingness to intervene does seem typical of a new era of globalisation in which governments are more prepared to act to curb the powers of corporations.

The Super League collapse shows interventionism is back

Tuesday

20 Apr 2021

Johnny Mercer’s departure became inevitable

No Prime Minister likes a minister allowing public speculation about whether they are going to resign or not. So when reports emerged this morning about Johnny Mercer planning to resign over Northern Ireland veterans not being covered by the Overseas Operations Bill, it was inevitable that Downing Street would sack him if he did not commit to staying. Mercer was duly dismissed tonight following a tempestuous meeting with the chief whip  Mercer’s letter to the Prime Minister doesn’t pull its punches. He accuses the government of lacking ‘moral strength or courage’ in failing to resolve this issue. His letter says that this is leading to veterans ‘being sectioned, drinking themselves to death and dying well before their time’.

Johnny Mercer’s departure became inevitable

Monday

19 Apr 2021

Saturday

10 Apr 2021

Thursday

8 Apr 2021

Boris will need Labour support for vaccine passports

No prime minister wants to be dependent on the opposition to get the government’s business through the House of Commons. But this is the position Boris Johnson will likely find himself in when it comes to ‘Covid status certificates’, I argue in the magazine this week. More than 40 Tory MPs have already signed a pledge to oppose vaccine passports, and the government’s majority is 80. ‘It is just down to Starmer. If he whips against, Boris will lose,’ says one of the leaders of the Tory rebellion. The policy has hit a nerve in the Conservative party. Tory opponents of Covid status certificates see them as a step towards identity cards and a shift in the balance of power between the individual and the state. Those against the scheme think the alternative is a return to normal life and the status quo ante.

Boris will need Labour support for vaccine passports

Wednesday

7 Apr 2021

Tuesday

6 Apr 2021
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