Politics

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

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Damning poll reveals SNP supporters don’t think Yousaf is up to the job

In a week that will prove testing for Humza Yousaf as public outrage over his hate crime bill continues, there is a tiny glimmer of hope for the beleaguered First Minister. A new poll has suggested that out of all the leaders of Scotland’s political parties, Yousaf is the public’s top choice for First Minister. That is, however, where his good news ends. The poll, conducted by Find Out Now for Alex Salmond’s Alba party, surveyed just under 2,000 Scots about their preferences for First Minister. But while Yousaf ranked first, only a quarter of all voters picked him — and fewer than half of SNP supporters felt he was

Joanna Williams

Rishi Sunak can’t lecture Humza Yousaf about free speech

Good on Rishi Sunak. At long last we have a Prime Minister who has come out swinging in defence of free speech. When JK Rowling shared her opposition to Scotland’s new hate crime legislation yesterday, Sunak was quick to defend her right to speak out. If the PM truly believes that the Conservatives are the protectors of free speech then he’s been asleep at the wheel Rowling declared that: ‘It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man.’ And

David Shipley

Drugs are costing the lives of too many prisoners

In prison, drugs kill. HMP Parc, a private prison in Wales managed by G4S, has seen six inmate deaths over a period of three weeks. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO), the official body tasked with investigating deaths in prisons, soon realised that ‘at least’ two of those deaths were drug-related. Imprisoned at HMP Wandsworth, I shared a cell with a regular spice smoker The PPO believe that these deaths involve ‘spice’ combined with ‘another family of drugs’. Spice is a synthetic cannabinoid, popular in prison because it comes in the form of a liquid which can be impregnated on innocuous looking paper, making it easy to smuggle in. When

Steerpike Steerpike

Rishi Sunak slams Scotland’s Hate Crime Act

Scotland’s Hate Crime Act has got off to a rather rocky start, to put it mildly. On Monday, when the bill came into force, renowned author JK Rowling took to Twitter to reiterate her concerns about how expressing gender critical views (namely, that biological sex is a reality) could be an offence under the new bill. Cue the pile on. And now even the Prime Minister has waded into the row. Taking Rowling’s side, Rishi Sunak proclaimed last night that ‘people should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology’ while a government source told the Mail that with the bill comes the ‘potential for seriously chilling effects on

Ross Clark Ross Clark

House prices aren’t falling any time soon

The thing about having three prominent house prices indices, all of which publish monthly figures, is that they are forever telling conflicting stories. Indeed, today’s Nationwide index, itself, nods in two different directions: prices were down 0.2 per cent in March, but the annual gain in prices was up from 1.2 per cent in February to 1.6 per cent in March. So is the housing market up or down? The first thing to note is that the Nationwide index is seasonally-adjusted – a process which is always at risk of giving a perverse outcome because it assumes that the same pattern of housing market activity will be repeated every year.

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Keegan in spat with BBC presenter over childcare policy

Easter recess may be in full swing, but government ministers aren’t getting a break. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was sent out on the morning round today, to talk about the Tories’ free childcare expansion package. Eligible working parents of two-year-olds can now receive 15 hours of government-funded childcare a week during term time. From September, this will extend to working parents of all children older than nine months, before all eligible families will be able to receive the full rollout of 30 hours a week a year later. But the government and its opposition are feuding over the plans. Labour has taken issue with the scheme, querying how the proposals

Charles Lipson

Joe Biden’s terrible Easter

Among the many political advantages of the presidency, surely one is the ability to extend warm wishes to Christians, Jews and Muslims on their holidays. It’s a golden opportunity to invite a few for pictures at the White House and explain how much the holiday has always meant to you. Easy-peasy. For a Catholic president such as Joe Biden, expressing solidarity with co-religionists on Easter ought to be a well-practiced routine.  Which voter group does the White House think its exclusionary message appeals to?  It took genuine incompetence and obtuseness for the Biden White House to muck up the chance to reach out to fellow Christians on the holiest day

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Anti-Israel virtue signallers should leave Eurovision alone

The 2024 Eurovision Song Contest – the final of which will be held in Malmö on 11 May – is the latest peculiar target of pompous virtue signallers. The hosts of the UK’s largest Eurovision screening have announced their decision to scrap the event. The reason? Israel, of course. ‘We have collectively decided not to screen the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest this year while Israel remains in the competition,’ the independent Rio cinema in Dalston, east London, said in a statement. Reminder: they are talking here, not about the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the Good Friday Agreement, but The Eurovision Song Contest – which generates

Zoe Strimpel

Britain should follow Germany’s lead in weeding out anti-Semites

On the surface of it, Germany’s new pathway to citizenship sounds like a rare dose of sense from the one country in the Western world whose modern history means it still understands why Israel has a right to exist. One surefire short-hand for establishing who means us ill is by singling out those who mean our Jews ill The shake-up makes it easier to get German citizenship, allowing people to apply five rather than eight years after they arrive in the country – and just three years for those with good language skills. But for die-hard anti-Semites, the process will get harder, with questions that may involve naming the date of Israel’s founding

Daniel Thorpe

Is this the beginning of the end for Erdogan?

President Erdogan’s political star rose when he won the local elections in Istanbul exactly 30 years ago. ‘The one who wins Istanbul wins the whole of Turkey,’ he once said. His famous sentence is now back to haunt him. People already talk about ‘the beginning of the end’ for Erdogan In Istanbul yesterday, tens of thousands of people gathered to celebrate not Erdogan but Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition’s incumbent mayor, in municipal elections. Despite the fatigue from last year’s general elections, over 78 per cent of Turkey’s 61 million-strong electorate turned up to cast their votes yesterday. Their backing for Imamoglu was resounding: his Republican People’s Party (CHP) performed spectacularly, securing 37.7

Limor Simhony Philpott

How will Iran respond to Israel’s assassination in Damascus?

Last night, six missiles fired from an Israeli F-35 combat aircraft hit and destroyed a building belonging to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. At the time, a meeting between high-ranking members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were taking place. The attack resulted in the death of two IRGC generals: Mohammad Reza Zahedi who was leader of the Quds force – the IRGC force in Syria and Lebanon – and his deputy, Sardar Haji Rahimi. It is reported that at least five other IRGC officers were killed in what is one of Israel’s most successful assassinations of senior Iranian commanders.

Monday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

JK Rowling has exposed the absurdity of Scotland’s Hate Crime Act

Humza Yousaf’s illiberal Hate Crime Act is now in force and its first day has been a doozy. The SNP’s minister for victims and community safety Siobhian Brown admitted on the Today programme that Scots could be investigated by the police for ‘misgendering’ trans people. It was revealed that one-third of police officers has still not received training on the legislation. JK Rowling posted a thread on Twitter discussing a number of transgender women and stated that all of them were men. The author, who is currently out of the country, added that, if saying this represents a criminal offence under the Hate Crime Act, ‘I look forward to being

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why the council tax rise on second homes helps no one

What a surprise. Given the choice of whether or not to double council tax for second home owners from next April, 153 English councils have already reportedly decided that yes, indeed they will. Even officials in that well-known holiday hotspot, Gravesham, have decided to introduce the levy, in spite of there being a mere 21 second homes in the district. Councils seem to be smacking their lips at the prospect. Cornwall council is reckoning on pulling in an extra £24 million, Westmorland and Furness an extra £10 million. I wouldn’t spend the money quite yet, if I were they. There is always the chance, of course, that they might end

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Farage at 60: there’s more to come

Were I to tell you that the most significant political figure of his age celebrates a landmark birthday this week, you’d probably work out that I could not be referring to Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer. There would be an argument for suspecting I might be talking about Boris Johnson, given that he was born in 1964 and presided over the departure of the UK from the EU. But no, his 60th birthday does not fall until June – beaten to it by more than two months by Nigel Farage, who chalks up the big six-o on Wednesday. Though we could say that Brexit is a child with two fathers, there

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Martin Lewis is wrong about the ‘energy poll tax’

Given that a fair proportion of the UK public seem to want Martin Lewis to be prime minister, the government might well hesitate to dismiss the Money Saving Expert’s latest grumble: that Ofgem’s cap on standing charges is to be jacked up from today – from 53 pence to 60 pence per day in the case of electricity and from 29 pence to 31 pence in the case of gas. This rise comes in spite of the sharp fall in Ofgem’s energy price cap, which should see average annual dual fuel bills fall from £1928 to £1690. Lewis is not the least bit pleased, tweeting that standing charges are ‘an

Mark Nayler

Why Spaniards celebrate April Fool’s Day in December

On 28 December 1993, after getting off a flight from Barcelona at Madrid’s Barajas airport, 23 year-old actress Maribel Verdu was suddenly surrounded by journalists and photographers. The reason for their frantic curiosity became apparent to Verdu when she was handed that day’s copy of a Spanish newspaper, in which a full-page feature claimed she was ‘implicated’ in the separation of Princess Diana-Prince Charles. As a stunned and incredulous Verdu sat in the press room, cameras flashing in her face, the assembled hacks demanded details about her rumoured affair with the English royal, who had announced his split from Diana the year before.  Verdu actually started to look a little

Sunday

Eliot Wilson

Donaldson’s fall is a challenge for the future of the DUP

The news that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, had been arrested and charged with rape and other historical sexual offences, was a rare moment of genuine shock in politics. Politicians on all sides have been scrabbling to respond, to understand what has happened and what it means for the DUP and Northern Ireland as a whole. Of Donaldson, little can be said until the conclusion of his criminal trial. He is scheduled to appear at Newry Magistrates’ Court on 24 April and says he will be strenuously contesting the charges against him. But it is clear that his involvement in politics is over: he resigned as leader of

Steerpike Steerpike

Richard Tice and Jonathan Gullis in new war of words

Reform are breathing down the neck of the Tories, according to the latest polls. So it’s perhaps no surprise then that hostilities have stepped up between spokesmen for the two parties. The Mail on Sunday has today run a two-page story on various eccentric candidates standing for Reform at the forthcoming election. Among them include a man ordered to pay £2,000 for attacking a dog in a Dorset country lane, a fortune-teller who sold spells on OnlyFans and a Covid conspiracy theorist who likened Boris Johnson to Hitler. The story also includes a prominent quote by Jonathan Gullis, the newly-appointed Tory deputy chair, criticising Reform’s vetting process. According to Gullis,

Andrew McQuillan

Will the ‘Tik Tok Taoiseach’ undo the damage done by Leo Varadkar?

Simon Harris, the anointed successor to the outgoing Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, has quite the in-tray. Harris, who was the only candidate in Fine Gael’s party leadership race, will become Ireland’s youngest prime minister on 9 April when the Irish parliament, the Dáil, resumes after its Easter break. One of the most pressing tasks he faces is trying to rebuild a semi-decent relationship with the unionists of Northern Ireland, such is the noxious legacy of his predecessor.  Harris is identikit to Varadkar in many ways Speaking in Athlone last weekend, where the 37-year-old described his new role as the ‘absolute honour’ of his life, Harris claimed that UK-Irish relations were