What’s next for the DUP?
13 min listen
Arlene Foster has stepped down as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party. What’s next for the party? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.
Politics
Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Wednesday
Who would want to replace Arlene Foster?
Arlene Foster has announced that she will be standing down as DUP leader on the 28 May and First Minister of Northern Ireland at the end of June, bowing to the inevitable after the arithmetic suggested that 80 per cent of her Stormont and Westminster colleagues were set against her leadership continuing. This will be welcomed by those who in recent days orchestrated manoeuvres against her; Foster staging a defiant last stand had the potential to turn the leadership election poisonous very quickly, which was the last thing the embattled party needs. Who would honestly want to replace Foster now, such is the troubling in-tray she is handing over to her successor?
Have we reached herd immunity?
When the Office for National Statistics released the last antibody survey a fortnight ago, the results were underwhelming. After watching prevalence in the population shoot upwards for months, the figure had plateaued at 55 per cent. There were several reasons suggested for the stall, including the move to giving second doses and difficulties detecting fading antibodies (which the ONS is quick to point out does not necessarily mean a person no longer has immunity). But, regardless, it raised concerns that it might take longer to reach high antibody prevalence rates than previously hoped. Thankfully, today’s update has provided plenty of cheer. In the two weeks following the last update (taking
Watch: French MP factchecked on UK jabs record
France’s vaccine rollout has had its difficulties in recent months. In early January, the Mail on Sunday reported the ‘French are at better at torching cars than giving Covid vaccinations’ after vandals burned 861 vehicles on New Year’s Eve – more than twice the number of people inoculated over the last five days of December. Subsequent efforts to address rampant vaccine hesitancy were not hindered by President Emmanuel Macron, who claimed the AstraZeneca vaccine was merely ‘quasi ineffective’ with one poll showing just 20 per cent of French voters had confidence in the jab in March. Now though efforts have at last stepped up, with the country reaching a target of
Boris Johnson’s Krakatoa moment
He blew his stack. His mop almost came loose from his scalp. He wasn’t just jabbing his forefinger and tossing his arms around, he was throwing combinations and swinging at punch-bags. He almost did the Ali shuffle. At PMQs Boris delivered an amazingly combative performance. Last week he smouldered like Etna. This week the summit exploded. This was Krakatoa. Sir Keir arrived, with his starched quiff and his icy smirk, hoping to undo the Prime Minister by stealth. He raised the notorious October quote when Boris is alleged to have said that ‘bodies piled high’ would be preferable to a renewed lockdown. Did he say that? ‘No,’ Boris replied. ‘Lockdowns
Boris was rattled at PMQs
Boris Johnson did not have a good Prime Minister’s Questions. It was never going to be a comfortable session, given the multiple rows about the funding of the Downing Street flat revamp and his reported comments about letting bodies ‘pile up’. But the way the Prime Minister approached it ensured both that the story will keep running and that he betrayed quite how annoyed he is by it. It is little use trying, as Johnson repeatedly did, to argue that the British people are not interested in the line of questioning that Sir Keir Starmer was pursuing. For one thing, there is nothing like a politician claiming that something is
Boris Johnson has always been a penny-pincher
Sometimes, political scandals are important for what they reveal about character. The row over the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat seems to me one such case. Boris for many years earned a quarter of a million pounds a year for his Telegraph column, on top of his various other jobs. He can be expected to earn pretty well on leaving office, as Prime Ministers usually do. Even with his complex private life and considerable outgoings, it seems unlikely to me that having set his heart on a £58,000 refurbishment of his living quarters he couldn’t one way or another lay hands on the dough to pay for it. What’s
It’s remarkable that Arlene Foster lasted this long
Arlene Foster’s spell as leader of the Democratic Unionist party is over. Today, Foster announced that she is stepping down as party leader on 28 May, and resigning her position as First Minister by the end of June. Her resignation came after a letter, signed by three quarters of the party’s MLAs alongside some MPs, was submitted to its chair Lord Morrow calling for her departure. In what is the most dramatic case of unionist infighting since Foster herself helped destabilise David Trimble’s leadership of the Ulster Unionists in the early 2000s, moves are also afoot to remove her erstwhile deputy Nigel Dodds. Several of her most senior advisers, including the party’s chief
Electoral Commission launches probe into Boris’s flat refurbishment
The row over the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat has stepped up a gear this morning after the Electoral Commission launched a formal investigation. Following initial enquiries to determine who originally paid £58,000 towards the cost of the lavish refurbishment of the Prime Minister and his fiancée Carrie Symonds’s flat, the commission has concluded there are ‘reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence or offences may have occurred’. As a result, a formal investigation is now underway to establish whether this is the case. So what are they looking for? The government announced last week that Johnson has footed the bill for the works, with Liz Truss insisting on Sunday that the Prime
Cameroons clash over Downing Street ‘skip’
As Flatgate rumbles on, it appears the government has adopted a new communications approach to a controversy involving the Prime Minister’s spouse: send for Michael Gove’s wife. The Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine popped up on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning to firefight the situation – an interesting choice given her love of incendiary quotes in her weekly columns. Presenter Nick Robinson asked Vine what she made of the row over whether £58,000 of Tory party money was spent on renovating part of No. 10 to which the latter responded with gusto: The thing about the whole No 10. refurbishment thing is that the Prime Minister can’t be expected to live in
A politician’s guide to non-denial denials
Michael Gove was deployed to the Commons on Monday afternoon to answers questions on the ministerial code, an hour-long appearance in which he was (inevitably) asked about that day’s Daily Mail splash: ‘Boris: Let the bodies pile high in their thousands’. An awkward question for any minister to handle, you might think, but the oleaginous Gove just about got away with it. Asked directly about the reports, the Cabinet Office minister gave a lengthy reply which contained this key passage to wriggle out of trouble again: Tens of thousands of people were dying. The Prime Minister made a decision in that meeting to trigger a second lockdown. He made a
How concerned should we be by the Indian variant?
In recent weeks there has been a lot of new-found optimism in Britain with regards to Covid: case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths have dramatically fallen and the vaccine roll out continues at pace. The virus has now been overtaken as the main cause of death in England and Wales for the first time since autumn. But the pandemic continues to grow, and nowhere more so is this the case than India. Its hospitals are overrun. Crematoriums are overwhelmed and the first of nine planes from Britain set off on Sunday night to provide oxygen, ventilators and aid. Why should it be surging now? One of the theories behind this explosion
Tuesday
Will the Downing Street refurbishment cut through?
14 min listen
Reports today suggest that the Conservative Party initially covered the costs of the Downing Street refurbishment. Will Conservative members, and the public at large, care? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.
Why is Ursula von der Leyen still talking about Sofagate?
Almost a month has passed since the now infamous ‘sofa-gate’ incident where, during a meeting with Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, Ursula von der Leyen was not provided with a chair. Instead she was forced to sit on a nearby sofa. And yet it is this event – rather than Europe’s ongoing vaccine woes – that seems to be at the forefront of the president of the European Commission’s thoughts. Von der Leyen used a speech given to the European Parliament to reiterate accusations of sexism over sofa-gate. The president did everything she could to drive home her feminist message, concluding that: ‘I am the president of the European commission. And this
How Britain can really help India tackle its Covid crisis
India’s Covid situation is dire: hospitals have run out of beds (some hospitals are treating patients in cars), people are turning to the black market for drugs and oxygen cylinders, and mass cremations are taking place in car parks. The official daily death toll is around 2000, but the likely reality is much, much higher. Britain has offered to help by sending 600 pieces of medical equipment to support the country in its Covid crisis. But the reality is that our country could do much more to help its ally than just offer a token shipment of supplies. The UK continues to block a patent waiver designed to boost the
Exclusive: Murdoch pulls News UK television channel
Plans for a News UK channel to rival the BBC appear to be dead in the water. Last year it was reported that Rupert Murdoch was planning to expand his news empire by launching a new channel in the UK that would take inspiration from Fox News in the US. Alas it’s not to be. The company’s Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks has today emailed all staff to announce that broadcast executive David Rhodes is leaving the company at the end of June. It follows reports in February that News UK planned to focus on streaming, with Brooks telling staff that News UK had concluded it was not ‘commercially viable’ to launch a linear news channel. Instead the company is looking at on demand
Can Labour make the Tory sleaze allegations stick?
One of the reasons the row isn’t fading about Tory sleaze allegations and the Prime Minister’s conduct is that there are so many different facets to it. Each row has its own faction within the Conservative party and indeed within No. 10, and so far there is scant evidence that any of these factions are backing down. Labour isn’t likely to benefit from this story politically just yet While the stories are now front-page news, it is also the case that allegations about special treatment for friends and donors have been bubbling away for a year now. This is causing some satisfaction to some of those around Labour leader Sir
Vince Cable: on Brexit and the case for working with Beijing
Sir Vince Cable is talking about Brexit and damaged bicycle wheels. ‘The metaphor I like to use when talking about the economic consequences of Brexit is a slow puncture,’ the 77-year-old explains from his home in Twickenham, South West London. ‘Because effectively we’re losing access to Britain’s largest market of goods and services.’ ‘I was initially encouraged that Brexit campaigners wanted to pursue an open and global Britain,’ he says. ‘And I think that’s absolutely right because that is very much part of the old free trade tradition… But we are now in a world which is probably going in the opposite direction. And I fear that Britain now stands
Cladding risks creating a political crisis for the Tories
Today, for the third time in as many months, MPs will vote on an amendment to prevent the costs of removing cladding and fixing other fire safety defects being passed on to residents. For some time now, thousands of British homeowners have been left fearing for their lives and facing ruinous bills after fire safety issues following the Grenfell Tower fire were identified in tens of thousands of tall and medium rise buildings across the country. In most cases, building owners have been able to charge individual flat owners to fix the defects, even though their apartments were signed off as safe under government regulations at the time. The failure
Labour’s tax attack in Hartlepool backfires
Pity the poor people of Hartlepool. Next week’s parliamentary by election has seen an army of activists pouring in to the Red Wall seat, with Labour desperate to cling on to a seat that last went blue in the days of Supermac. CCHQ have been playing down chances of a Tory gain but one Labour insider has told Steerpike their party’s internal polling is ‘dire’ – a situation not helped by ‘MILF-gate‘ or a farrago over St George’s cross flags. Now though Labour are embroiled in another taxing row after deputy leader Angela Rayner launched an attack on the Conservative Hartlepool candidate, Jill Mortimer. Following reports that Mortimer spent a decade