Politics

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

Thursday

Matthew Lynn

Rishi Sunak needs to start planning for the post-Covid economy

More help for bars and restaurants. Grants for businesses that are forced to close. Additional funding for the self-employed. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak has started shaking the magic money tree again, promising extra assistance to keep the economy alive during a second wave of Covid-19. There is a problem, however, and as the Chancellor runs through rescue package after rescue package it is becoming increasingly apparent. While Sunak is very good at coming up with wheezes to get through the next few weeks there isn’t yet much sign of a plan for a post-Covid economy – and that is increasingly what is needed. The problem is not the measures themselves.

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Boris Johnson is fighting on too many fronts

When Boris ran to become leader of the Conservative party – and again when he campaigned in December’s general election – he was pitched by his supporters as a unifier. Boris was going to get Brexit done and then lead the country into a new era – the spats of the previous half a decade consigned to history’s dustbin. Unfortunately for Boris and indeed everyone else in Britain, that’s not the way things have worked out. Right from the start, Johnson’s premiership has been marked by conflict. Only a few weeks in, he removed the whip from a host of Tory MPs, including the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A Manchester stand-off, a Presidential showdown and a Brexit culture clash

Home After ten days spent trying to persuade Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, to accede to the city entering Tier 3 (which entails the closing of pubs and betting shops), Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced that it would happen anyway, from 23 October. ‘I am deeply sorry,’ he said. Manchester had wanted £65 million in support first. Liverpool complained that it was not allowed to keep gyms open when Lancashire was. The nine million people of London languished in Tier 2, forbidden to meet anyone at home or in a pub, except if they pretended it was a business meeting. Scotland hatched plans for its own tiers.

The Spectator

End the Sage secrecy

At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis it was easy to see why the Prime Minister was so keen to be seen to ‘follow the science’. He had a pandemic plan, designed by past governments, to be guided by the medical facts and expert judgment. There was to be no role for politics. He held press briefings at which he was flanked by the chief medical officer and chief scientific officer, armed with charts and graphs, making it known that everything he did hinged on their advice. At first, we were not even allowed to know the identity of the 50 men and women who sit on the Scientific Advisory

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s high-risk Brexit strategy

There’s a reason why No. 10 is always so inclined to ratchet up the tension in any given scenario. Downing Street’s staff, and particularly the Vote Leave alumni, believe that one of their strengths is that in high-pressure situations, they stay calm while others panic. This confidence is not totally misplaced. Last autumn, Boris Johnson and his aides kept their nerve better than any other group in British politics — the result was a decisive parliamentary majority. Last October, they suggested Brexit talks were over and no deal was inevitable. They then briefed out unprecedented levels of detail from a Boris Johnson-Angela Merkel phone call before eventually doing a deal.

Carlo Rovelli

Winston Churchill’s remarkable love of science

Churchill was the first British prime minister to appoint a scientific adviser, as early as the 1940s. He had regular meetings with scientists such as Bernard Lovell, the father of radioastronomy, and loved talking with them. He promoted, with public funds research, telescopes and the laboratories where some of the most significant developments of the postwar period first came to light, from molecular genetics to crystallography using X-rays. During the war itself, the decisive British support for research, encouraged by him, led to the development of radar and cryptography, and played a crucial role in the success of military operations. Churchill himself had a scientific grounding that was hardly extensive

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why No. 10 keeps upping the ante on Brexit

The European Council conclusions issued last Thursday were a misstep by the European Union. It is positively Carthaginian to think that in a negotiation all the concessions have to come from one side. As I say in the magazine this week, No. 10 has seized on this overreach to push, not only for concessions on the process — Michel Barnier has offered to ‘intensify’ the talks and start working on a legal text, a long-time British ask — but also a recognition that both sides will have to compromise. The Prime Minister’s appetite for risk is greater than most of his cabinet ministers Barnier offered that in a speech to

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Sir Keir Starmer let himself down at PMQs

It was Sir Tier Starmer at PMQs today. Labour’s leader bounced into the Chamber with his bonce brimful of data about the three tier restrictions. But it was all irrelevant chaff. Both leaders have broadly agreed to treat the UK population as lab-rats. The only difference is how the scurrying rodents will be managed. Boris says his flexible method will curb the bug without clobbering the economy. Sir Keir wants a jackboot lockdown, amounting to a national curfew, starting this Friday. What Sir Keir can’t predict is what will happen if his circuit-breaker doesn’t break the circuit. Will he try to smash it again? If so, how many times before

Matthew Lynn

A circuit breaker would break the economy

More jobs will be lost in the long run. Businesses will go under. And government debt will soar even higher. Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds is pushing the argument that a circuit breaker — that is a short, sharp national lockdown — will be cheaper in the long run. It will keep the virus under control, and therefore enable the economy to bounce back quicker. Channelling her inner Gordon Brown, she has even come up with a very precise figure for that. Apparently, not having a circuit breaker will cost us £110 billion. But hold on. Even leaving aside the point that precise estimates should always make us suspicious —

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Angela Rayner accused of calling Tory MP ‘scum’

Angela Rayner was accused of some extraordinary behaviour in the Commons just now. The Labour deputy, unhappy with something Conservative MP Chris Clarkson said, allegedly decided to shout the word ‘scum’ across the chamber floor. Deputy Speaker Eleanor Laing appeared none too impressed… Rayner quickly shot back, denying that she used the phrase. 

John Connolly John Connolly

Can Starmer capitalise on Boris’s lockdown woes?

11 min listen

Keir Starmer seemed unable to land a definitive blow on Boris Johnson in PMQs this afternoon, after the government imposed a tier three lockdown in Manchester. Will the Labour leader be able to capitalise on their lockdown woes? John Connolly speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why is the UK copying the EU’s failed agricultural policy?

With the UK looking likely to exit transition in December without a trade deal, there has been plenty of coverage of what life outside the bloc will mean for Britain. There has been rather less coverage of what we have avoided by virtue of having left the EU. Yesterday came one of the first big EU agreements to which the UK has not been party: the latest reform of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In typical fashion, it resulted in a fudge engineered by powerful lobbyists and which will guarantee vast sums of public money going to waste. The whole point of the latest round of CAP reform was that it was

Calvin Robinson

Kemi Badenoch is right to take on Critical Race Theory

Schools have a responsibility to maintain political neutrality. The Education Act (1996) states that governors and head teachers have a duty to secure balanced treatment of political ideas. The Teachers’ Standards says ‘teachers uphold public trust in the profession and maintain high standards of ethics and behaviour, within and outside school, by ensuring that personal beliefs are not expressed in ways which exploit pupils’ vulnerability or might lead them to break the law.’ Why, then, have schools been getting away with teaching highly contested political ideas as if they are accepted facts? The idea of ‘white privilege’, for example, is the principal element of Critical Race Theory, which teaches that

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Devolutionary theory: How Westminster is killing the Union

Robert Conquest’s third law (which may not have been his third law) says that the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is most easily explained if one assumes it has been captured by enemy secret agents. This maxim often comes to mind when I read about the UK government’s latest wheeze to ‘save the Union’. Ministers’ new ideas are invariably the same idea they’ve been having for a decade now: devolution has failed, let’s have more of it. The Tories have already transferred more powers to Holyrood twice, in 2012 and 2016, and both times we were assured that doing so would subdue the separatists. And that was the last we heard

Tuesday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

How reliable are the polls?

18 min listen

The latest polls continue to show Democratic nominee Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump in crucial swing states. But why could Georgia, which Trump won by more than 5 per cent in 2016, be the most important? Freddy Gray speaks to Marcus Roberts.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Jonathan Van Tam comes to Boris’s rescue

In this evening’s press conference, Boris Johnson confirmed that Greater Manchester is to be placed under Tier 3 despite continuing opposition from local leaders. With the government previously offering £60m for the area in negotiations with metro mayor Andy Burnham – which was rejected as local leaders pushed for £65m – Johnson refused to be drawn on whether that offer of support remained. However, shortly after the press conference ended Downing Street confirmed that the offer was still there.  Had Johnson announced this during the press conference, he would have had an easier time in the Q&A session where the issue was brought up repeatedly. It’s still unclear how exactly the

Theo Davies-Lewis

Mocking the Welsh is still the last permitted bigotry

Even after Wales voted marginally for a form self-government in 1997, there was incredulity that these remnants of Celtic antiquity thought they could look after their own affairs. Wales’ former first minister, Carwyn Jones, recalled what he saw as ‘casual racism’ towards the Welsh that still existed in the early years of devolution: ‘How incredible you Welsh feel that you can govern yourselves! This great experiment of devolution!’, was apparently the reaction of many in Whitehall.  After 20 years of devolution, not much has changed. Compared to Northern Ireland and Scotland, Wales has been crudely viewed by many as an extension of England, but with its own curious culture, an

John Connolly John Connolly

Andy Burnham goes down fighting

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, pledged to continue his fight against the government today, after Number 10 broke off the negotiations with local leaders and suggested the area could be moved into Tier 3 without their consent. The talks collapsed this afternoon, after housing and local government Secretary Robert Jenrick expressed his ‘disappointment that despite recognising the gravity of the situation, the mayor has been unwilling to take the action that is required to get the spread of the virus under control in Greater Manchester and reach an agreement with the government.’ Jenrick has therefore ‘advised the Prime Minister that these discussions have concluded without an agreement’. In

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will coronavirus overwhelm Manchester’s hospitals?

12 min listen

While the government has failed to strike a deal with Greater Manchester authorities to put the region into tier three, the Prime Minister is expected to announce an imposition of the restrictions in a press conference later today. But will coronavirus overwhelm Manchester’s hospitals? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Hunter Biden story isn’t going away

It’s the election equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting ‘LA-LA-LA-LA’. Joe Biden keeps ignoring questions about his possible role in the business dealings of his shady son. He keeps losing his temper with reporters who dare to insist that he has an obligation to answer legitimate public concerns. Most of the media, which supports Biden, can keep insisting that the New York Post’s big Hunter story is a dud, and publishing endless malicious snark about how shabby the paper’s standards are. Twitter and Facebook can keep insisting that they were obliged, according to their own codes of practice, to stop the story circulating online, even though