Politics

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

Tuesday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Starmer backs a circuit break — putting pressure on Johnson

Keir Starmer has called for more drastic measures in a bid to control coronavirus infections. After Sage minutes were published on Monday that revealed the scientists advising the government recommended a two-week lockdown — the so-called ‘circuit breaker’ approach — Starmer used a press conference this evening to urge the Prime Minister to act.  The Labour leader called for ‘a two-to-three week circuit break in England, in line with Sage’s recommendation’. Starmer suggested that this could be run ‘across half-term to minimise disruption’ — and offered Johnson Labour votes to get it through the Commons. His intervention means there is now clear blue water between the government and the opposition’s coronavirus response. In recent weeks, Labour MPs

Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer: why we need a two week lockdown

In a press conference this evening, Keir Starmer has called for a two week ‘circuit break’ lockdown. Below is a transcript of his remarks. Good afternoon. We’re at a decisive moment in the fight against coronavirus. The figures are stark and I’m afraid they’re all heading in the wrong direction. The number of Covid cases has quadrupled in the last three weeks. Cases may be doubling as quickly as every seven to eight days. There are now more people in hospital with Covid than on 23 March when we went into national lockdown. And while the number of cases is rising more sharply in some areas it is increasing across all regions

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Boris’s Red Wall is crumbling before his eyes

What is the North? Where is the North? Does it start at Stoke-on-Trent and Derby or at Chesterfield and Runcorn? Even when you get into the unquestionable north, it is full of divisions between Liverpool and Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire, Newcastle and Sunderland. It’s no more packed with men in cloth caps than the south is packed with merchant bankers. If you put your mind to it, you can analyse northernness out of existence. And yet it exists, as surely as the short ‘a’ in bath. You hear northern defiance, and the perennial suspicion that the south barely thinks the north worth condescending to, everywhere now. You heard it when

Steerpike Steerpike

Scouts blast SNP over latest TV advert

Nicola Sturgeon’s problems are mounting rapidly. The first minister is embroiled in a row over when she knew about the allegations of sexual misconduct against her predecessor Alex Salmond. Sturgeon is also under pressure over her government’s handling of the pandemic, as cases continue to mount. And disgraced SNP MP Margaret Ferrier – who boarded a train after testing positive for Covid-19 – has defied Sturgeon’s calls for her to quit. Now Sturgeon is in a new battle: with the Scouts. The SNP’s latest TV advert which appeared last night features a woman named Helene from Kirkhill, dressed in a Scouts uniform. She told viewers:  ‘For my children, I feel that an independent Scotland is

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Britain’s unemployment crisis is closing in

Unemployment is creeping up. For months it remained stagnant, as the combination of the furlough scheme and people keeping out of the jobs market kept the rate deceptively low. But over the past few months, it has started to increase, with today’s labour market overview from the Office for National Statistics revealing a 4.5 per cent unemployment rate — the highest level in three years. There’s a sliver of hope in today’s data, which shows job vacancies are up Still, at first glance you’d expect the unemployment rate to be much worse. After the largest economic contraction in three hundred years, an increase from 3.9 per cent at the start

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is the government no longer ‘following the science’?

15 min listen

New documents from Sage show minutes from late September in which scientists advised a circuit breaker lockdown. It’s clear that the government didn’t take that advice. So is No 10 no longer ‘following the science’? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth.

John Keiger John Keiger

Macron and Boris are now bound together on Brexit

Last Saturday the French president and British Prime Minister had a phone conversation about the pandemic and Brexit that received little coverage. But the subject matter highlights the extent to which the two leaders have troubles in common and solutions to share. Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson have had a bad pandemic for similar reasons: lack of PPE, confused messaging on masks and quarantine, poor quality test and trace and unreliable Covid apps on phones (with the French prime minister and sundry ministers confessing not to have even downloaded the French version, which is unusable with a mere 2.6 million downloads).  Although British Covid death totals appear worse than the French

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Is Boris wise or foolish to ignore the scientists?

It is important to understand the gap between the Prime Minister and the scientists on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) because it is huge. On 21 September, when evidence was accumulating that infections were on the rise, Sage recommended a series of national measures. These included the closures of pubs and restaurants or an even more severe restriction on our freedoms in short sharp national ‘circuit breakers’. Instead, Boris Johnson has adopted a regional approach to stamping out coronavirus. And even the ‘baseline’ measures he is imposing on ‘very high risk’ areas such as Merseyside are seen as inadequate by his scientific advisers — as his chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, told me

James Johnson

Is Britain really a nation of lockdown-lovers?

A quick read of the polls, and you would be forgiven for thinking we are a nation of lockdown-lovers, clamouring for stricter measures, eager to obey and accept any and all restrictions given to us. An Ipsos-MORI poll over the weekend showed 45 per cent of the public think current measures are not strict enough, three times the amount who said they go too far. YouGov has shown majority support for a ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdown. And a survey by J.L. Partners found that, although only one in four thought the wider public would follow a potential ban on household mixing, three in four said they personally would. Focus groups — moderated

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Chris Whitty: tier three alone will not be enough

Chris Whitty made clear at tonight’s press conference with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that he doesn’t think that the tier three restrictions are enough to get on top of the virus in the worst hit places. He was explicit that local councils will need to go even further in terms of closures in some places. Later in the press conference he said that the government ‘knew full lockdown works’ but it was also aware of the societal and economic harm it does, and the government rightly wants to keep schools open. Taken together, the answers strongly implied that Whitty thinks that in Covid hotspots everything apart from schools

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Has Donald Trump already lost the election?

17 min listen

Joe Biden is well ahead of Donald Trump in the polls, but few are willing to say that the three-time presidential hopeful will win November’s election. Are commentators underplaying the Democrat’s chances? Freddy Gray speaks to Tim Stanley, historian and leader writer at The Telegraph.

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Labour MP’s pub slip-up

The Labour MP for Chesterfield caused a rush of sniggers in the Commons this afternoon when he told colleagues that:  People don’t generally go to the pub in order to meet their own wife, they will go to the pub to meet with other people… Little wonder fellow MPs started laughing given Toby Perkins’s own love life… 

The Spectator

Full list: How is your area affected by Boris’s local lockdown list?

Boris Johnson has just set out a new three-tier Covid alert system. Much of England will be on ‘medium’ alert, which means measures like the rule of six will be enforced. But those areas including Liverpool will be placed on a ‘very high’ alert, meaning that pubs, bars and betting shops will shut. Here is the full list of which alert levels will be in place from Wednesday across the country: Very High Liverpool City Region Liverpool Knowsley Wirral St Helens Sefton Halton High Cheshire Cheshire West and Chester Cheshire East Greater Manchester Manchester Bolton Bury Stockport Tameside Trafford Wigan Salford Rochdale Oldham Warrington Derbyshire Tintwistle Padfield Dinting St John’s Old Glossop Whitfield Simmondley

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tory MPs won’t like Boris’s response to Steve Baker’s Covid question

Today’s statement by Boris Johnson was a reminder of how difficult the politics of this second wave is going to be. In the first 50 minutes, there were only two Tory soft balls to the PM. The other questions from his own benches all had a degree of scepticism in them, and some were clearly hostile. Andrew Mitchell, the former Tory chief whip, echoed the Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street’s complaint that the region had been placed in tier 2. Caroline Ansell, the Eastbourne MP, argued that hyper local restrictions would be better than this new system. Perhaps the most interesting exchange, though, came when Steve Baker – one

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Johnson tightens Covid rules

After weeks of speculation over the government’s new Covid restrictions grading system, the Prime Minister today announced the details. Addressing MPs in the Commons chamber, Boris Johnson confirmed that his strategy was entering a new phase with a three-tier system. Rather than a traffic light system with a green for go, the regional categories are medium, high and very high.  Setting out the measures, Johnson attempted to say that he was striking a middle ground. He pointed to data suggesting the number of cases had quadrupled over the last three weeks as evidence that new steps were needed. However, he made a point of ruling out a national lockdown, at least

Robert Peston Robert Peston

The Covid rules haven’t been simplified

The new three tier ‘Covid alert levels’ unveiled by the PM are supposed to help all of us better understand how and why our freedoms are being restricted, and improve compliance, at a time when both infection levels and suppressive measures are significantly different across England and across the UK. But it is not clear that our understanding will be massively improved – partly because some of the rules remain complicated and confusing, partly because some of them are not exactly intuitive, and partly because some of them seem unfair. Let’s look at just one aspect of the rules, those relating to pubs and restaurants. And to be clear I

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Keir Starmer needs a Covid plan of his own

It’s clear now that Covid is going to be with us for the long haul. Most sane voices are talking about the remainder of the crisis in terms of years, not months. Yet the government has still not been able to take itself out of short-term mode. They seem to be holding out for a vaccine miracle. Stranger still, the opposition is still in short-term mode on Covid as well. I don’t think this can continue without becoming a large problem for Starmer, both internally within Labour and also in the polls. Starmer’s plan when it comes to the crisis so far is simple to explain. He wants to support

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Why shouldn’t a ballerina retrain?

A ‘story’ covered by several outlets today about a ballerina and a government skills campaign is the latest evidence of how Twitter is making us all more stupid and should generally be ignored. The ‘story’ in short summary: a government campaign to encourage people to consider training to develop skills in ‘cyber’ is using images of people doing jobs, including dancing, to suggest that people who are today doing one thing for a living might one day do something else. (For more on the full range of jobs depicted, see this bit of proper journalism from a BBC reporter.) The ad that’s picked up some attention online shows ‘Fatima’ a

Steerpike Steerpike

Keir Starmer’s bizarre definition of ‘tolerance’

During his regular LBC phone-in, Keir Starmer was asked by one listener for his thoughts on the latest free speech saga. According to reports in the Telegraph, the Brexit activist Darren Grimes has been called in for questioning by the Met police over comments David Starkey made on his podcast. Starmer responded with characteristic indecision when asked whether Starkey’s unpleasant comments warranted police investigation. He told listeners:  I think it does sometimes have to involve the police, unfortunately. When I was director of public prosecutions there was a lot of focus on whether what people say on social media should be policed or not. There’s got to be a level of tolerance, of course.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will the three-tier system backfire on Boris?

12 min listen

A three-tier system of coronavirus restrictions is set to be announced today, but the government is still locked in negotiations with local authorities over the financial support they will receive if they are placed at the highest level. With a growing number of Tory backbenchers coming out against harsher measures, could the new system backfire on the PM? Isabel Hardman speaks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth.