Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
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David Cameron is stateside meeting Republicans and Democrats as the Foreign Secretary tries to muster up support for the US to send aid to Ukraine. Before that he stopped by Mar-a-Lago to meet Donald Trump – the two haven’t seen eye-to-eye in the past. Will the Republicans warm to Cameron? Katy Balls speaks to Freddy Gray and Lucy Fisher, Whitehall correspondent at the Financial Times.
Labour, unsurprisingly, is crowing about a paper published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies claiming that Tony Blair’s Sure Start centres improved the GCSE results of children from low-income families a decade after attending the centres. Children who lived within 2.5 km of a Sure Start Centre before 5, it finds, went on to score an extra 0.8 in their grades at GCSEs compared with children who lived further away. At their peak in 2010-11 there were 3,500 Sure Start centres, intended as ‘one-stop shops’ where parents could access healthcare, parenting support, early learning, childcare, as well as research employment opportunities for themselves. After 2010 the incoming coalition concentrated its
Mark Sedwill is a serious man. He has a master’s in economics from Oxford. He worked in Cairo, Nicosia, Baghdad and Islamabad over several decades as a diplomat. He was a UN weapons inspector, Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Afghanistan and served as the Nato senior civilian representative there. He became cabinet secretary in 2018 after the death of Jeremy Heywood, and left just two years later after the first wave of Covid. Throughout the document, thoughtless language produces thoughtless thinking A shame then, considering his pedigree, that he has entered the world of corpspeak and insubstantial guff. He is the co-author of a UCL report called ‘The World in 2040:
Today, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on an unprecedented trio of cases which claimed that European states have taken insufficient action to combat climate change. The outcome of the claims were mixed. But the judgments of the Strasbourg Court are likely to prove exceedingly contentious. The three cases involved claims against Switzerland, France and Portugal. They were heard by the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court – essentially Europe’s top human rights court – with judges from 17 European states. In the Swiss claim, individuals and an association of older Swiss women claimed that they were at particular risk of illness because of climate induced heatwaves. The claim
David Cameron is stateside today as the Foreign Secretary tries to muster up support for the US to send aid to Ukraine. While Cameron plans to discuss other urgent issues on the trip, such as the situation in the Middle East, the priority is to make the argument for the US to step up funding to Ukraine; senior Republicans are accused of blocking a £49 billion package for Kyiv. The push comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Sunday that his side would lose to Putin if American aid was withheld and Ukrainian air cover is not improved. Will the charm offensive work? The last time Cameron tried to
The honeytrap scandal is the talk of the town as politicians, staffers, advisers and even journalists working in Westminster have been targeted by the sexting scammers. First to publicly admit he had engaged with the phishers was the Conservative MP — and until last night, vice chairman of the 1922 Committee — William Wragg MP. Wragg admitted last week that he had received rather salacious messages on Grindr, before confessing that he had in fact reciprocated with an explicit image of his own and even handed over the numbers of other parliamentarians. Dr Luke Evans MP was the second politician to admit that he had been sent explicit images by
By abolishing non-dom status, Jeremy Hunt was supposed to have clipped the wings of the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves. Given that she had already earmarked the extra revenue – or what she hoped would be extra revenue – for free school breakfasts and a few other things, Hunt had suddenly punched a hole in her spending plans. But Reeves now claims to have filled that hole. She claims that she will raise an extra £2.6 billion – on top of what the Chancellor is expecting to raise – by closing a few loopholes. Non-doms will no longer be allowed to escape inheritance tax by placing wealth held overseas into trusts.
The media and the middle class may love net zero. Unfortunately, it is increasingly clear that voters are less keen. Predictably then, activists have been trying to take as much power as possible away from elected representatives, transferring it instead to international courts and judges. This morning, this programme of lawfare scored a major success in the European Court of Human Rights. Every yard gained by a well-meaning extension of the ECHR is a yard lost to the democratic process Some months ago, three high-profile cases reached the Court where the claimants suggested that climate change was a European human rights matter. A concerned Frenchman, a number of Swiss activists and an
Last week Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the Olympic aquatic centre that will host the swimming and diving events at this summer’s Paris games. The President was delighted with what he saw, boasting to the press pack that the centre is ‘exemplary from an environmental point of view’. Macron’s party expect the Republicans to make their move in the coming weeks. Unfortunately, from a financial point of view, the centre is anything but exemplary. The initial estimate in 2017 was that the centre would cost €70 million to construct, a figure that was soon revised to €90 million. the final expenditure was €188 million. It is not just the Olympic aquatic centre
One might expect a global human rights organisation to wholeheartedly condemn a man involved in the brutal torture of a teenage soldier. Not the Amnesty International of 2024, it seems. On Monday night, the charity instead lamented the death of Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa, tweeting: The death in custody of Walid Daqqa, a 62-year-old Palestinian writer who was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails after 38 years of imprisonment, is a cruel reminder of Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life. Sorry? Amnesty International couldn’t possibly be talking about the same Walid Daqqa who, in 1984, led a group that abducted, tortured, castrated and mutilated Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam
When Australian businesswoman Sall Grover set up Giggle – an app exclusively for women – in 2020, it never occurred to her that men identifying as ‘transwomen’ would demand the right to use it. Today, a landmark case will hit the Federal Court in Sydney, brought by a transwoman called Roxanne Tickle. It will either confirm or challenge the Australian government’s ongoing attempt to banish woman, female, and girl as sex-based categories. In ‘Tickle vs Giggle’, what is at stake is whether individuals should be allowed to self-define as whatever ‘gender identity’ they choose, and whether that identity then trumps biological sex. On Giggle, women can find a flatmate, or organise
Another week, another development in the row over Angela Rayner’s tax affairs. The deputy Labour leader is facing questions over whether she broke electoral and tax law regarding a former council property she owned in Stockport. The allegations – which Rayner denies – stem from Lord Ashcroft’s biography (titled Red Queen) of the woman in line to be deputy prime minister if Labour triumphs as expected in this year’s general election. The row has been rumbling along for weeks now but is gaining momentum as the Tories ramp up their attacks. It goes back to the properties she and her then husband Mark Rayner owned in Stockport. When the couple
Oh dear. It seems things can only get worse for hapless Humza Yousaf. With his independence strategy dead in the water, he now has to contend with troubles at home too. Police Scotland has today confirmed that they have arrested Yousaf’s brother-in-law and charged him with abduction and extortion. It follows the death of a man who fell from a block of flats in Dundee in January. Ramsay El-Nakla, 36, is the brother of Yousaf’s wife, Nadia El-Nakla and is due to appear in court later today. In a statement, Police Scotland said that: A 36-year-old man has been arrested and charged with abduction and extortion following an incident where
Emmanuel Macron’s promise to strip off to his Speedos and swim in the Seine to prove it is safe for athletes has yet to be delivered. The Olympic Games commence in July and the river remains essentially a sewer. Although the water quality is supposedly getting better as the rains are relenting, Macron is wise not to hurry. Diarrhoea in the Olympic Village may be the least of the problems, even if the athletes complain In addition to fears that the Paris games will attract terrorist attacks, there is the now the unpleasant prospect of athletes being infected with norovirus and other unfortunate ailments of the intestinal tract. Not that
Will Wragg has now resigned as both vice-chairman of the 1922 committee and chairman of the public administration select committee. It follows last week’s revelation that he was the source responsible for passing on phone numbers to a source who subsequently tried to ‘honey trap’ them over text messages. The circle of those caught up in the Westminster honeytrap scandal has continued to expand in recent days, with at least 15 figures now believed to be involved. These people were sent messages from an unknown sender identifying themselves either as ‘Abi’ or ‘Charlie’. Three Tory MPs – Wragg, Andrea Jenkyns and Luke Evans – have already said that they were
David Cameron is overseas on a foreign office trip to the US, but it transpired yesterday evening that Washington DC wasn’t to be his only destination. Last night, the Foreign Secretary made a quick pit stop at Mar-a-Lago to speak to former president Donald Trump. Lord Cameron is making the case for continued support for Ukraine – and wants to ensure the US will, if Trump becomes President, continue to provide aid to the country. Republicans have spent months trying to block a proposed $60 billion military aid payment to Ukraine, and Trump has been pretty clear in previous statements that he opposes the support package. Not only that, the Washington
The Telegraph reported at the weekend that the Conservative party appears to be attempting, in its selection process for parliamentary candidates, to weed out anybody who might just possibly be a conservative. This strategy – with all its ineptitude and wilful blindness – is a perfect capsule of the parliamentary party and its upper echelons. A party can leap over disappointment and rage; contempt is a much higher hurdle to clear It’s hard to find the right word to describe what the Tories have done since their incredible election win in 2019. ‘Disappointment’ is polite, but too mild. ‘Rage’ is too hyperbolic. I think ‘contempt’ hits the mark best. And this
What happens when government policy meets an entirely unfit system? Today’s report on HMP Peterborough by HM Inspector of Prisons reveals a jail unable to handle the government’s early release scheme. Last October, in an effort to stop our prisons running out of room, Alex Chalk announced the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, under which prisoners would be released 18 days early. Last month, with the prisons almost full again, he amended the policy so that prisoners can now be released 60 days early. Every recalled prisoner costs money to return to prison Today HM Inspector has revealed what this means in practice. HMP Peterborough is a large, Category
Uh oh. Labour is once again facing dissent from its own supporters over the Israel-Gaza conflict. Things came to a head this afternoon when a group of renegades targeted Labour HQ in London by — you guessed it — dousing the building in spray paint. While other protestors held a march in central London, the vandals stormed the building that houses Labour HQ, covering both outside and inside walls with red paint. The lefty activist group Youth Demand has claimed responsibility for the vandalism, posting a video of the graffiti artists up close and in action on Twitter. In its tweet, the group fumed: ‘Labour has blood on their hands.
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Angela Rayner has faced fresh allegations related to her taxes. Keir Starmer and other MPs in the shadow cabinet have come to her defence. Could these accusations jeopardise her position as shadow deputy Prime Minister? Also on the podcast, what are Richard Tice’s plans for Reform? Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.