Politics

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

Stephen Daisley

The hubris of Scotland’s lofty Net Zero targets

Scotland’s climate goals are ‘no longer credible’ and there is ‘no comprehensive strategy’ to move away from carbon to Net Zero. That is the noxious assessment issued today by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the statutory body set up in Scotland to advise national and regional government on emissions policies. Underscoring the gap between rhetoric heard and action seen, the committee delivers an almighty verbal skelping to the SNP and its carefully cultivated image as a green government. Under the SNP’s Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019, ‘the Scottish ministers must ensure that the net Scottish emissions account for the year 2030 is at least 75 per cent

Ross Clark

Jeremy Hunt should listen to James Dyson

All Sir James Dyson wanted was to do what hundreds of business people and lobbyists have done before him: spend a little time with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and have a good old moan – initially about research and development tax relief but then extending to other subjects such as corporation tax, high levels of public spending and – according to reports – the number of diversity managers in the NHS.  But Jeremy Hunt’s reaction seems to have taken him aback. Apparently exasperated by Dyson’s list of complains at a Downing Street meeting last week, the Chancellor told Dyson that if he didn’t like the government he should seek

China’s threats to Kinmen should be taken seriously

When two Chinese fisherman died last month trying to flee Taiwan’s coastguard, Beijing laid the blame at Taipei’s feet and demanded an apology. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also spied an opportunity to advance its territorial claims. China has been targeting Kinmen, an island controlled by Taiwan, more aggressively over the past few weeks. The CCP stated that ‘there is no such thing as “prohibited or restricted waters”’ – saying that the waters around the island had been used as traditional fishing grounds by both sides. On the morning of 19 February, four Chinese coast guard vessels patrolled around Kinmen’s restricted waters. Personnel boarded and inspected a Taiwanese tourist boat that had ‘veered slightly of course’. The next day, a

Isabel Hardman

Will Sunak or Starmer ever say anything new at PMQs?

Rishi Sunak will have been grateful to have got through Prime Minister’s Questions today with little criticism – at least from his own side. The session opened with a loyal planted question on the inflation figures, which allowed Sunak to tell the Commons that ‘our plan is working’ and underline that this was the steepest fall since the 1980s.  Once that was over, the session then descended into a pretty run-of-the-mill grudge match between Sunak and Keir Starmer, with the latter listing things that weren’t working and asking why the Prime Minister wasn’t calling an election. Sunak’s responses contained some minor developments in his attacks on Starmer for defending Hizb

Steerpike

David Lammy’s Thatcher u-turn

As Labour prepares for power, the party’s leading lights are busy u-turning: not least on their views on Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady is Labour’s inspiration du jour, much to the anger of the party’s lefties. First, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones claimed that Thatcher oversaw a decade of ‘national renewal’. Then shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves chose to pitch herself as a modern day Iron Lady at Tuesday’s Mais lecture. And now shadow foreign secretary David Lammy has been busy singing Thatcher’s praises, with Lammy telling Politico that the Tory leader was a ‘visionary leader for the UK’. But Lammy has not always been keen to

Max Jeffery

Did Jeremy Hunt reduce inflation?

12 min listen

Inflation has fallen to 3.4 per cent, it was announced this morning. Jeremy Hunt said it was a sign that the government’s economic plan is working. Is he right? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.

Steerpike

SNP ministers caught up in racism row

Oh dear. As the Conservatives struggle to put the remarks of their biggest donor to bed, the governing party north of the border now has its own racism row to deal with. This week’s pro-indy ‘Scotonomics’ festival is being co-hosted in Dundee by founder Kairin van Sweeden, a former SNP councillor accused of racism last year. The unenviable speaker line-up also includes two SNP politicians, wellbeing economy secretary Mairi McAllan MSP and energy minister Gillian Martin MSP, who have found themselves in a spot of bother after it emerged who the event host was. The festival’s founder and former SNP councillor was forced to quit the party last year after

Is Viktor Orbán really anti-Semitic?

Much of the criticism directed at Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s long-serving populist prime minister, is richly deserved. Orbán poses as the bête noire of the EU, despite Hungary being a net recipient of EU largesse. Another source of the opprobrium directed against Orbán is his opposition to aiding Ukraine in its existential war against Russia. This is downright indecent for someone who, as a handsome young political firebrand in 1989, helped to end Soviet control of Hungary. Has Orbán forgotten, now that he is grey-haired and rather porky, what it means to yearn for your country’s freedom and independence? Continued access to cheap Russian gas and oil just isn’t a good

Kate Andrews

Inflation drops to its lowest level in two years

Inflation has slowed once again, to 3.4 per cent in the 12 months to February, down from 4 per cent in January. This takes the inflation rate to its lowest level in two and a half years, and keeps inflation on track for the Bank’s target of 2 per cent this spring. The fall in the headline rate was slightly bigger than expected – economists had forecast 3.5 per cent – driven by a fall in food prices, which slowed from 7 per cent on the year to January to 5 per cent in February. Restaurant and cafe prices also contributed to the falling rate: down to 6 per cent

Five takeaways from Rachel Reeves’s Mais speech

We live in an age of stunts and soundbites so it was refreshing to hear a politician stand up and, for the best part of an hour, explain their political philosophy to an audience savvy enough to shred it. That’s what Labour’s Rachel Reeves did at last night’s Mais lecture.  She summoned the ghosts of heterodox leftists Karl Polanyi, Joan Robinson and Marie Curie to explain that Britain stands on the brink of a global economic regime change just as big as the one begun in 1979, that the Tories have left us bystanders, and that Labour is the only party that can make it happen.  Though she didn’t mention

Rachel Reeves
Kate Andrews

How big will Rachel Reeves’s state be?

Every year the Mais lecture, hosted by Bayes Business School, gives its speaker a chance to lay out their vision for the economy. It’s how we knew Rishi Sunak would prioritise fiscal prudence over tax cuts long before he entered Number 10. Last night it was Rachel Reeves’s turn.  The message seemed to be: build up the state to get it out of the way As expected, there were no big policy announcements about what Labour might do in power. But that wasn’t the point of the speech. Reeves formally committed to keeping Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal rule, to get debt falling as a percentage of GDP in a rolling five-year forecast. This

Philip Patrick

Football is in enough trouble without a ‘regulator’

Unlike David Cameron – who famously got in a muddle about which team he supported – Rishi Sunak is a genuine football fan. But this makes the government’s latest wheeze of introducing a football regulator hard to take. Sunak says the outfit will help to prevent the ‘financial mismanagement’ of ‘unscrupulous owners’. It is, he says, a ‘historic moment for football fans’. Not everyone is convinced. The Premier League is one of Britain’s most famous exports. Millions of people around the world follow teams like Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool. Its success is because these clubs have been left relatively free to conduct business: snapping up the best players and

Isabel Hardman

Does Rachel Reeves have the answers?

Rachel Reeves has given her much-anticipated speech about what she’d do as the first female chancellor in history. As briefed, her Mais lecture was a look at Labour’s ‘securonomics’ economic policy, with promises to beef up the Treasury, as well as analysis of Nigel Lawson’s 1984 Mais lecture, and an insistence that ‘I don’t want to make this a party political speech any more than you want me to’. Both Reeves and the Conservatives are dodging questions Some of the most striking lines were the ones where she reflected on Labour’s own record in government, telling the audience that ‘the analysis on which [New Labour’s policies were] built was too

Freddy Gray

Are we suffering from ‘Trump outrage fatigue’?

Freddy Gray talks to political science lecturer Damon Linker about the latest developments in the Biden and Trump campaigns.  Why did Biden’s fiery State of the Union Address provide him no uptick in the polls? In what ways does Trump fatigue affect each candidate’s chances? And does Trump’s greater popularity with non-white low propensity voters skew the polls in his favour?

Isabel Hardman

Rachel Reeves is making mischief for the Tories

Rachel Reeves has a busy day: the shadow chancellor is giving her big speech tonight, where she is expected to outline the broad brush of her economic policy and claim there is a ‘new chapter in Britain’s economic history’ just waiting to start under a Labour government. Reeves was in the Commons this morning for Treasury Questions, and her focus there was on whether the Tories had a sequel planned for their own National Insurance policy. Labour has decided that it’s worth exploiting the suggestion As I reported from the Commons yesterday, Labour has decided that it’s worth exploiting the suggestion from senior Conservative figures that they would like to

Cindy Yu

What should Labour do about the Rwanda bill?

14 min listen

All ten of the amendments to the Rwanda bill, put in by the House of Lords, were rejected by the House of Commons last night. The bill will head back to the Lords tomorrow, where they will decide whether to continue the process of ‘ping pong’ (putting more amendments in and sending the bill back to the Commons). Should Labour peers worry about being portrayed as foiling the Rwanda asylum plan? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Spectator contributor Patrick O’Flynn. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Steerpike

Simon Case’s five worst WhatsApp moments

At long last, Simon Case has received his hearing date for the UK Covid Inquiry. The most senior civil servant in the country was initially excluded from the Inquiry for health reasons, but now that he’s back and fighting fit, the top mandarin has been told to appear in front of Baroness Hallett on 23 May 2024. Incidentally, it’s the same day that Paula Vennells is due to give evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. The phrase ‘dead cat’ comes to mind… Case became the youngest ever Cabinet Secretary when he was appointed by Boris Johnson in 2020, but perhaps his relative youth made him a little too

In defence of private members’ clubs

The members list of the men-only Garrick Club in London’s West End has remained a closely-guarded secret – until now. King Charles, Richard Moore, the head of MI6, and Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, have been named as members of the club after the Guardian revealed what it called ‘the roll call of (the) British establishment’. But is anyone surprised that the great and the good are signed-up members of the Garrick? The club’s critics condemn the Garrick for being exclusive, not least because it doesn’t allow women to join. But the endurance of the traditions of the private members’ club is something to celebrate, not condemn. London’s gentleman’s clubs