Politics

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

Tuesday

Portia Berry-Kilby

The Youth Parliament makes children of us all

When the British Youth Council (BYC) announced last week its imminent closure, people went near-hysterical, declaring it ‘devastating’ news and a ‘dark day’ for Britain’s youth. Of particular concern was the future of the Youth Parliament, one of the BYC’s flagship programmes. In all likelihood, the Youth Parliament will see new leadership rather than the graveyard. But the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport would be well advised to think twice before increasing its £750,000 grant for the project.  I say this not just as an old curmudgeon, but (for all my sins) as a former ‘Member of Youth Parliament’ (MYP). My criticism of it is not purely self

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Sunak jibes at Truss over ‘deep state’

To parliament, where the Commons is about to go into recess, again. Winding up this term’s proceedings was Rishi Sunak’s traditional grilling at the Liaison Committee. Back in the good old days of Boris Johnson there was mutual loathing between the Prime Minister and the various chairs of the select committees, some of whom were elected explicitly because they were Johnson’s critics. But these days under top swot Sunak, the panel’s session are much more staid affairs. The ninety-minute encounter proved to be something for a walk in the park for the PM as he eagerly displayed his mastery of the brief. Humour was provided, however, by William Wragg: the

Colin Brazier

The British farmers’ tractor protest may just be the start

As you tuck into a leg of roast lamb this Bank Holiday weekend, consider how religious festivals are a boon for British farmers. The agricultural sector may be struggling overall, but lamb prices have just hit a record high, up £2 per kilo since the start of the year. Simple supply and demand. The surge is not driven so much by Easter, as Ramadan. The three-day feast of Eid al-Fitr is now an established – and prized – feature of the shepherd’s calendar.  Farming never stands still. New markets emerge, even as old ones shrink. But the recent protests in Cardiff and Westminster have been prompted not by questions of

The Spectator

Covid and the politics of panic

During Easter weekend four years ago, the country felt on the verge of catastrophe. The prime minister was in hospital having just come out of intensive care, the Covid-19 death toll was at more than 1,000 deaths a day, and hospitals were trying to cope with a flood of patients. It had been estimated that 90,000 ventilator beds would be needed; we had only 10,000. That weekend, no one went to church and no one visited family: instead we sat inside, preparing ourselves for the horror to come. Science is always evolving, never settled. Our understanding changes as we gain new information No one knew, then, that the virus was

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Inside Sue Gray’s Labour party

At 8.30 a.m. each morning, Keir Starmer holds a meeting with his inner circle to go over the business of the day. Once, these meetings were mainly filled with unelected aides, but now they are attended by senior shadow ministers, such as Labour’s campaign co-ordinator and Blairite old-timer Pat McFadden or the shadow cabinet office minister and Brown-ite Jonathan Ashworth. Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner, may drop in too. If Rachel Reeves can’t make it, one of her shadow treasury aides goes in her place. The new setup is one of the many measures Sue Gray has brought in since she was appointed Starmer’s chief of staff a year ago. Her

Steerpike Steerpike

Braverman to headline NatCon with Orban

Ping! An email arrives in Steerpike’s inbox. Some happy news for headline-starved hacks at last: the National Conservatism conference is back! After last year’s Westminster offering brought with it quotes galore from Miriam Cates and Suella Braverman, this year’s event in Brussels promises more of the same. For Braverman is now being billed as the ‘keynote speaker’ alongside one other name: controversial Hungarian premier Viktor Orban. The two-day jamboree begins on Tuesday 16 April: just two weeks before much of the UK goes to the polls in local elections across England and Wales. And Labour will no doubt be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of Braverman’s jibes

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Stephen Colbert grovels for Kate joke

Oh dear. In his never-ending quest to prove that he’s almost as funny as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert has tripped up again. The late-night American TV host was last night forced to issue a humiliating apology to the Princess of Wales after he produced a segment mocking her ‘disappearance’ and marriage – shortly before it emerged that she had cancer. Classy. Colbert began his Late Show on 12 March with a two-minute-long monologue ‘spilling the tea’ on the Royal Family in which he made a series of not-especially-funny jokes about scurrilous rumours involving William and Kate. Unfortunately for Colbert, they aged so poorly that he was forced to make the

Andrew Tettenborn

Why the WHO’s pandemic planning poses a threat to Britain

The fall-out from Covid continues. Its latest manifestations on the international stage are a draft pandemic preparedness treaty, soon to be formally published and opened for signature by the WHO, and an upcoming vote on proposals to amend the organisation’s International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR). The latter is a set of internationally binding rules for dealing with, among other things, pandemics. Neither text makes for gripping reading; both might look innocuous and almost uncontroversial. In fact, however, as a group of Tory MPs and peers from the all-party parliamentary group on pandemic response and recovery pointed out this week, they could carry considerable dangers for Britain’s sovereignty, freedom and democracy.  It is

Iain Macwhirter

Scotland’s pound shop Stasi

The Scottish government’s illiberal Hate Crime and Public Order Act isn’t even being enforced yet and already Police Scotland are being accused of behaving like a pound shop Stasi. The Conservative MSP, Murdo Fraser discovered last week that police had recorded him as a perpetrator of a ‘hate incident’ without informing him or giving him a chance to defend himself. An anonymous trans activist complained last year about a tweet in which the MSP had suggested that identifying as a non-binary was no more valid than ‘identifying as a cat’. He was not addressing any individual but responding to the Scottish government’s Non-Binary Action Plan. You might think a ‘non-crime

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Waspi women won’t be compensated any time soon

If the ‘Waspi women’ (women against state pension inequality) were hoping that last week’s ombudsman report into the maladministration of the change to their pension age would lead to swift compensation, they will have been sorely disappointed by the government response yesterday. There wasn’t really a proper response to speak of, with Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride giving MPs what he described as an ‘interim update’ on the investigation. Neither, though, was there a call from the opposition for the government to get on and pay the compensation recommended by the parliamentary and health service ombudsman. Stride spent some time correcting what he called ‘inaccurate and misleading commentary since

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Europe must tighten its borders to combat the Islamist threat

Europe is on a state of high alert after Friday’s Islamist attack in Moscow that left 137 concertgoers dead. France has raised its security alert to the highest level, and more soldiers will be deployed to patrol the streets and stand guard outside ‘sensitive sites’ including churches, synagogues and schools. President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement on Sunday that the group that carried out the Moscow attack, Islamic State – Khorasan Province (IS-K), an Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State, had attempted to commit ‘several’ atrocities on French soil in recent months, including an attack in the city of Strasbourg. Will border controls be tightened? It would be futile. The Islamist threat

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump’s legal troubles are paving his way to the White House

The Trump 2024 campaign’s fundraising email operations went into overdrive last weekend. ‘Dems threaten to seize Trump Tower,’ screamed one call to donate on Saturday. ‘Maniacs want to seize Trump Tower,’ read another. ‘If they seize Trump Tower…’ said a third. ‘Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower,’ added yet another.  The tone flitted from alarm to defiance. By Sunday, the message was: ‘Trump Tower will never be captured’ and ‘You’ll never get Trump Tower.’ And on Monday, after Trump was ordered to pay a mere $175 million (£138 million) bond in his civil fraud suit instead of the initial half billion, the campaign turned triumphant. ‘Trump Tower remains mine’ read an email

Nigel Jones

Was Russia right to torture the Moscow attackers?

The court appearance of the four men accused by Russia of carrying out the Moscow massacre of 137 innocent concert goers at the Crocus City Hall venue told its own grim story. All the suspects bore marks of torture: one was wearing a bandage on his ear, following reports that it may have been at least partially severed and forcibly fed to him during his interrogation; another was semi-conscious and appeared to be missing an eye. Meanwhile, a video did the rounds seemingly showing one of the men’s genitals hooked up to an electricity generator.  The footage of the battered men was shocking to tender western eyes, but hardly surprising:

Owen Matthews

The Moscow terror attack is Putin’s 9/11

The Crocus City Hall attack blindsided Putin’s vast security state. Employing nearly a million policemen, 340,000 national guards and over 100,000 spies, that apparatus has proved ruthlessly efficient at terrorising babushkas bringing flowers to Aleksei Navalny’s grave, tracking down lone bloggers and persecuting homosexuals. But as the Crocus attack demonstrated, the Kremlin’s securocrats are utterly incompetent at doing their actual job, which is to protect the lives of Russian citizens. Rather than keep a relentless watch for emerging threats from all over the region, Putin’s security chiefs have instead focused on only two tasks – repressing internal dissent, and stealing money.  Putin is locked into his own lies about Ukraine

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Let’s kick ‘racial justice’ out of the Church of England

Holy Week is the most important part of the year for many Christians, but it will come as little surprise that some members of the Church of England appear to be focusing on racial justice rather than Jesus. ‘I went to a conference on whiteness last autumn,’ the Venerable Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, archdeacon of Liverpool, wrote on Twitter. ‘It was very good, very interesting and made me realise: whiteness is to race as patriarchy is to gender. So yes, let’s have anti-whiteness, & let’s smash the patriarchy. That’s not anti-white, or anti-men, it’s anti-oppression.’ Miranda Thelfall-Holmes is a name for a trendy vicar that a comedy show would strike out for

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is the UK’s China policy about to change?

What difference is the revelation that China was behind two cyber attacks – on the Electoral Commission and UK parliamentarians – really going to make when it comes to the government’s approach to Beijing? Oliver Dowden told MPs today that the two attacks ‘demonstrate a clear and persistent pattern of behaviour that signal hostile intent from China.’ But he came in for criticism for the scale of the government response – just two individuals and one entity associated with the attack have been sanctioned, and there is a promise to continue to ‘call out’ this activity in the strongest terms. The Chinese ambassador is also being summoned to respond to the

Limor Simhony Philpott

The UN’s ceasefire call will only strengthen Hamas

The UN has passed a draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to last until the end of Ramadan in two weeks’ time, possibly leading to a permanent ceasefire. The resolution was backed by Russia, China and by the 22-nation Arab Group. This is the first time that the security council managed to pass a ceasefire resolution, after all the others were vetoed. The UN resolution is highly unlikely to result in the release of hostages by Hamas The non-binding resolution calls for the ceasefire ‘to be respected by all parties’ and demands ‘the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.’ It does not call for Hamas to

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why do Trump’s enemies always overreach?

37 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to editor-at-large of the Wall Street Journal Gerry Baker about why the media’s wrong reporting of Trump’s ‘bloodshed’ comments have played to his advantage; why America has lost trust in its institutions; and whether voters think the economy was better off under Trump. 

Steerpike Steerpike

Steve Bray is silenced, finally

It must be a hard job being the Metropolitan Police. Too hardline and you risk howls of protest from the left; too soft and you’re lambasted by the right. So Steerpike is pleased to bring his readers news of a policing decision that will please all inhabitants of the Westminster village, regardless of their political affiliation. For six long, miserable years, Steve Bray – the Hiroo Onoda of the Remain campaign – has tormented those who work in and around Whitehall, blaring out music from his loudspeakers on Wednesday mornings before PMQs. But last week the artist known as ‘Stop Brexit man’ met his comeuppance after the Met sent some

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Scott Benton triggers another by-election

10 min listen

Former Conservative MP Scott Benton has resigned, triggering a by-election in Blackpool South. The outgoing MP had the Tory whip removed after suggesting to undercover reporters that he would be willing to break lobbying rules for money. Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale and Katy Balls about the likelihood of another Tory election defeat in Blackpool South, plus whether the Conservatives are pivoting on their China stance following an alleged cybersecurity threat.