James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
The Tory party is in stasis. Currently, Tory MPs aren’t prepared to move against their leader. But they don’t want to look as though they are trying to cover for him, either – which is why the government had to drop its amendment yesterday. As I say in the Times this morning, the loudest sound
Today has been a double blow to Boris Johnson. First, he now faces an investigation by the Privileges Committee into whether he deliberately misled the house when he said that the Covid rules were followed in Downing Street. At the very least, this means that this story – which is exhausting Tory MPs – won’t end with
Mid-term unpopularity is a given in British politics. Veterans from the Thatcher era like to joke that a government that isn’t behind at the halfway point of its term isn’t doing its job properly. But the worry for the Tories is that their current unpopularity is different. The usual explanation for the mid-term blues is
Nearly every Tory MP I have spoken to this morning has used the word ‘exhausted’ to describe their mood. They are tired of this scandal and worried about how long it may have to run. Their general view on yesterday was that Boris Johnson did ‘enough to get through’. But there are, as Katy notes,
It is worth thinking back to late January when Boris Johnson’s premiership seemed in the greatest danger. As I say in the Times today, back then those Tories trying to remove Johnson were split into two camps. One group thought that they should go hell for leather to get the letters to force a no-confidence
The government’s announcement today that it wants to send a number of those who cross the Channel in small boats to Rwanda will be subject to challenge in both the Lords and the courts. It is hard to see how the policy gets through the upper house, where the Tories do not have a majority.
We have just had the first ministerial resignation over partygate. David Wolfson, the justice minister in the Lords, has quit over the matter saying that he doesn’t believe that continuing to serve is inconsistent with his ‘ministerial and professional obligation to uphold the rule of law’. Wolfson, who was a highly successful QC before becoming
The U-turns on conversion therapy last night reveals a problem for Downing Street. After its partygate troubles, No. 10 is very keen to avoid issues that cause tensions with Tory MPs. I understand that desire, in part, lay behind the decision to drop legislation to ban LGBT conversion therapy. But the problem is that there
A month in, and the war in Ukraine looks very different to how anyone expected. On the first day of the invasion, western intelligence sources believed that Kyiv would fall to Russian forces within 72 hours, underestimating the Ukrainians’ ability to defend their territory and overestimating the Russian military’s capabilities. Among Vladimir Putin’s many errors
In his speech in Warsaw today, Joe Biden said of Vladimir Putin: ‘For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.’ This comes after Biden condemned Putin as a war criminal and ‘a butcher’. So, what did Biden mean by this? At first blush, it looks like a call for either a palace coup or
The return of inflation has changed politics, I say in the Times today . Until recently, it was possible to argue that the government should borrow to slashes taxes, or to cover almost any additional spending. It was so cheap to do so that it was almost rude not to, the argument went. Inflation was also dismissed as a
The Office for Budget Responsibility was designed to protect the Chancellor from accusations that he is cooking the books. If the forecasts are prepared by an independent body, there can’t be the suggestion – as there often was before the OBR’s creation in 2010 – that they have been politically influenced. But what the OBR
The biggest surprise of Rishi Sunak’s spring statement was the announcement that the basic rate of income tax will be cut by one penny come 2024. This is the first cut in the basic rate since the cut to 20p announced by Gordon Brown in his last Budget in 2007, which was of course partly paid
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the West has got many things right. Yet there is no doubt that Western mistakes over the past few years, and splits in the weeks and months beforehand, made Putin think he could get away with his invasion. The West cannot afford to repeat these with Taiwan, I say in the
It is tempting to believe that we have gone from one crisis to another: Russia invaded Ukraine hours after Covid restrictions were lifted in England. Tempting, but wrong. Covid is now manageable because of high levels of immunity from vaccines and prior infection (just look at how our high case rate isn’t leading to calls
It would be ridiculous to claim that Boris Johnson’s visit to Saudi Arabia is not morally problematic. He is going to a country which held a mass execution for 81 people this weekend – a record number – and to visit a man who US intelligence blames for the brutal murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Yet,
Since David Frost quit the government in December over its political direction, he has not said that much about the future of UK-EU affairs. But in the Churchill lecture at the University of Zurich tonight, he sets out a potential new basis for relations. His tone is warm and marks a deliberate attempt to move
The oil price is up by more than 40 per cent since the start of the year. It is being driven up by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the lack of investment in oil and turning the world economy on and off again: US production is still not back to pre-pandemic levels. In the immediate term,
Nato countries are being careful not to do anything that Russia could claim is an act of war. Just look at the reluctance from the US to provide Ukraine with Polish fighter jets. Yet Britain and other Nato members are involved in a huge effort to break Vladimir Putin’s war machine through supplying Ukraine with
Nato is trying to walk a tightrope in Ukraine. It wants the Russian invasion to be defeated, as the US joint chiefs of staff declaration that ‘We will make a second Afghanistan for Russia’ in Ukraine makes clear. But it also doesn’t want to do things that would enable Moscow to escalate the conflict on the basis that Nato
