Politics

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

Tuesday

30 Jan 2024

The return of power-sharing in Northern Ireland is not a done deal

Is power-sharing about to finally return to Northern Ireland? That’s the expectation in Westminster and Stormont after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) endorsed a new deal with the UK government. On Monday evening, the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson held a tense five-hour meeting with his party’s executive. In a sign of the high stakes nature of the discussion, one DUP executive member has been accused of wearing a wire – so Donaldson’s speech could be leaked to a loyalist activist who shared the details in real time on social media. But despite the commotion, the DUP leader emerged in the early hours of Tuesday morning to declare that after

Ross Clark

Rishi Sunak lacks the courage to take on the rail unions

So, what was the point of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act? What is happening today and for the rest of this week was exactly what it was supposed to prevent: whole rail networks closing down on strike days. The law is in place and rail companies have the power to issue ‘work orders’ to staff demanding that enough employees turn up to work to run 40 percent of the normal service. They also have the powers to dismiss workers if they defy them. Yet not one of the 18 companies which are affected by this week’s rail strikes have used those powers. The one company which did indicate that it would invoke

Isabel Hardman

The Lords’ debate exposed the holes in the Tories’ Rwanda Bill

What sort of trouble is the Rwanda deportation legislation going to get into in the Lords? It passed its second reading last night, as expected, and peers also defeated an attempt by the Liberal Democrats to block the legislation entirely. But the debate gave us some idea of the problems the Safety of Rwanda Bill will encounter when the noble Lords really get down to business. There were truly stinging speeches from some peers who are not given to melodrama. Lord Hennessy, the foremost historian of the British constitution, has been increasingly frustrated by the ways in which he feels the past few iterations of Conservative government have been undermining

Gareth Roberts

Why is Michael Gove gaslighting himself about the Tories’ achievements?

Michael Gove has written a staunch defence of the government’s 14 years of ‘achievements’ for Conservative Home. ‘Do we really want to go back to square one?’ the Tory MP and ‘levelling-up secretary’ asks, reminding us of the dim, dark and distant days of the country after 13 years under Labour. If that was genuinely on offer, I’d snap Gove’s hand off. It may seem hard to remember but in 2009 it was still generally understood that jokes are jokes and not statements of genocidal intent, that there are two sexes, that economic growth is a pretty spiffing idea and that the police are there to enforce civic order. Yes,

Freddy Gray

Is Taylor Swift ‘profoundly powerful’ when it comes to politics?

It’s not yet February, and already we have a clear idea of what Joe Biden’s re-election will be all about: Donald Trump, abortion and, er, Taylor Swift. The New York Times reported yesterday that Team Biden-Harris 2024 has made recruiting Taylor Swift as one of its endorsers a top priority. This, inevitably, has triggered a media storm because Taylor Swift is now a culture-war avatar. She’s the new Meghan Markle when it comes to dividing opinion, although Swift is arguably more controversial because she was once a conservative darling and a hate figure among left-liberals. Today she’s the opposite. The Guardian called Swift ‘an envoy for Trump’s values’ Right-wing

Mark Galeotti

Zelensky’s rivalry with Zaluzhny spells bad news for Ukraine

Is he out or not? After a night of claim, counter-claim, rumour and speculation, it appears that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has decided not to dismiss his commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny. Tension, however, clearly remains between the two – and this is bad news for Ukraine. Ukrainian news outlets were the first to begin claiming that General Zaluzhny had either been dismissed or was about to be. Insider sources contacted by well-connected Western journalists were, on balance, also apparently confirming rather than denying the claims. Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleksy Goncharenko asserted that Zaluzhny had resigned and had refused the offer of an ambassadorial position in Europe. Quickly, though, the pendulum of reporting

Steerpike

Watch: Rayner flounders over Gaza

Angela Rayner has had better starts to the week. The Labour deputy leader appeared on Good Morning Britain today, ostensibly to talk about her party’s plans for housing and town centres. But if the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne MP thought she would get a soft-soap interview, host Richard Madeley quickly proved her wrong. Following her heckling by Palestinian activists last week, he asked Rayner: Last time there was a vote on a ceasefire in Gaza, you abstained. A lot has happened since then, there have been a lot more deaths in Gaza. If there was a vote again today, would you abstain or would you agree to a ceasefire? Stuttering, the politician

Eliot Wilson

It is still early days for the DUP’s new power-sharing deal

It has been nearly two years since the last elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Sinn Féin, for the first time, emerged as the largest party, with 27 of the 90 seats, two ahead of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). But the assembly has only met four times since then. Business cannot proceed until a speaker is elected, and the DUP has consistently refused to take part in the cross-community process of choosing one. Now, 21 months later, the DUP has finally agreed to a deal with the UK government to restore power-sharing to Stormont. The party had boycotted the assembly because of its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol,

Ross Clark

Do French farmers really have it so bad?

What a shame we are not still in the single market, seamlessly exporting our lamb and whisky so it can be enjoyed in the finest restaurants in Paris. Or rather so that it can be burned and poured over the A1 autoroute. French farmers have blockaded roads with tractors and haystacks, set lorries on fire and are now threatening to re-enact the Siege of Paris by cutting off food supplies to the capital. They are protesting against red tape, environmental policies and what they say are cheap imports. And no, it isn’t just UK farmers whom they don’t like exporting food to Britain. Over the past week, they have attacked lorries

Steerpike

DUP crunch meeting descends into chaos

All is not well in the DUP. The once-mighty masters of Northern Irish politics last night convened a top-secret executive meeting to discuss a return to power-sharing at Stormont. But the event was spectacularly upstaged by a succession of leaks to loyalist activist Jamie Bryson, who proceeded to live-tweet the meeting. Somewhat embarrassingly, these updates also included details of apparent attempts to find out who was leaking the information to Bryson, a vocal opponent of Stormont’s return. Needless to say, such attempts were unsuccessful… In an epic 44-long tweet threat, Bryson set out leader Jeffrey Donaldson’s remarks to his party. Among them include complaints of leaks, with every meeting getting

Jawad Iqbal

Why Jordan is in Iran’s sights

The drone attack on a US base in Jordan that killed three American troops and injured dozens risks bringing one more country into the orbit of the war between Israel and Hamas. US president Joe Biden has blamed ‘Tehran-backed militants’ operating in Syria and Iraq for the strike on Tower 22, a US base on Jordan’s border with Syria, and has promised reprisals. Iran has denied any involvement: Tehran prefers to let its proxies do its dirty work. Watching on nervously is Jordan. Iran, whatever its denials, has much to gain by sowing instability in Jordan Iranian-backed militias in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have now launched more than 150 attacks on US positions in

Steerpike

David Lammy changes his tune on Corbyn

Politics can produce some fickle friends – and none, it seems, are more fickle than the Honourable Member for Tottenham. Watching last night’s debate on Gaza in parliament, Mr S was surprised to watch David Lammy’s reaction to the intervention of his onetime leader. After Jeremy Corbyn rose to his feet, the Shadow Foreign Secretary was seen lying back and shutting his eyes in apparent contempt. What could possibly have been going through his mind? Was it perhaps the time in June 2015 when Lammy nominated Corbyn to be leader, to ‘broaden’ the debate that year? Or after the magic grandpa’s ‘bloody brilliant’ conference speech in September 2017, following that

Monday

29 Jan 2024

Steerpike

George Freeman: My £120,000 ministerial salary wasn’t enough

At £120,000 a year, George Freeman was in the top 3 per cent of earners as science minister – but he says that is why he stood down two months ago. His mortgage went up and his pay – £75,000 after the tax increases of his government – suddenly wasn’t enough. He had many reasons to quit, he says on his Substack, but one was ‘because my mortgage rises this month from £800pcm to £2,000, which I simply couldn’t afford to pay on a ministerial salary.’ So he stood down and was free to top up his MP’s salaries with consultancy. Chris Skidmore has shown how Tories can slip into

Isabel Hardman

Do the Tories really ‘have a plan’?

Tory ministers are now well rehearsed in the latest slogan that Rishi Sunak wants to take into the election. Today’s Education Questions in the Commons underlined what it is: ‘Our plan is working, Labour would take us back to square one.’ Education Secretary Gillian Keegan took care to ram that into every answer she gave, as did her junior ministers. The Conservatives have a plan on childcare provision, Labour doesn’t; the Conservatives have a plan to give better mental health support in primary and secondary schools, Labour doesn’t; the Conservatives are funding breakfast clubs in primary… you get the picture. It shouldn’t normally be remarkable that ministers in the governing

Steerpike

Laurence Fox loses his libel case

Things go from bad to worse for Laurence Fox. In October, he was sacked from his GB News gig; in December, the Reclaim leader shed his party’s sole MP. And today, the actor-turned-politician lost a High Court libel case with two people he called ‘paedophiles’ on social media. Former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and drag artist Crystal duly launched the action follow a row on Twitter/X October 2020 about Sainsbury’s decision to mark Black History Month. Fox counter-sued the pair and TalkTV broadcaster Nicola Thorp over tweets accusing him of racism. But in a ruling today, High Court judge Mrs Justice Collins Rice ruled in favour of Blake and Seymour

Tom Slater

How will attacking the Mona Lisa save the planet?

Now the environmentalists are going after the Mona Lisa. Because of course they are. Just when you thought you couldn’t dislike these apocalyptic irritants anymore, now they’ve gone and pelted soup at another priceless artwork, the most famous artwork in the world no less, because they think their fever dreams about climate change are more important than ordinary people getting to marvel at da Vinci’s masterpiece. Two activists from Riposte Alimentaire – France’s answer to Just Stop Oil, only with a particular interest in food policy – took their chance at the Louvre yesterday. After emptying a bottle of orange gloop on to the Mona Lisa, one of the women was captured

Steerpike

Harriet Harman: Tory women are ‘not subversive’

What is it with the Labour party and female leaders? Much has been written about the left-wing party’s failure to give a woman the top job, given the fact that Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss have all done so for the Tories. But now, a new theory has been advanced as to why Labour has never had a female leader, according to the woman who once (temporarily) filled that role, Harriet Harman. According to the long-time London MP, the answer could lie in the fact that, er, Tory women aren’t agents of change like their Labour equivalents. Harman made the comments on Times Radio when she mused aloud

Kristina Murkett

Can we blame universities for cashing in on foreign students?

As an English teacher and sixth form tutor, I spend a lot of my time at the moment celebrating and comforting students as they hear about their UCAS offers. I try to reassure them when they are disappointed – which many of them were last week in particular, when Cambridge offers came out – that the system is flawed and far from always fair. Many of them this weekend will have realised just how unfair it can be, as a Sunday Times investigation revealed that British universities are paying tens of millions of pounds a year to recruit lucrative overseas students with far lower grades than those required of UK applicants. Up

James Heale

Why Sunak wants to ban vapes

11 min listen

Rishi Sunak has outlined plans to ban disposable vapes, and is hoping to change vape packaging to make it less appealing to children. Why? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.

Andrew McQuillan

Ireland is falling out of love with Sinn Fein

Is the Sinn Fein star starting to wane? Support for the party has hit its lowest level for four years according to a poll for the influential Business Post newspaper. While Sinn Fein still remains the most popular party in the Republic, it has dropped seven points since October 2023. Sinn Fein can only be all things to all people for so long A reason for the loss of support has been its prevarication around the question of immigration; riots gripped Dublin in late November after an attack by an Algerian man on three children in the heart of the city. Since then, the so-called ‘land of a thousand welcomes’ has grappled with arson

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