Politics

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

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Hunt’s low-key Budget

If Jeremy Hunt’s Budget was the final flourish before a May election, it’s going to be a very low-key campaign indeed. The Chancellor did announce his National Insurance cut as trailed overnight, and abolished the non-dom status – also trailed – which will raise £2.7 billion for tax cuts for working people. He increased the child benefit threashold to £60,000, and prolonged the cut in fuel duty. But he had no big surprise, and no aggressive political attack. I suspect that the excited chatter around Westminster about Rishi Sunak calling a spring poll may die down a little now. Hunt’s own attacks on Labour were hardly aggressive There was still

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Angela Rayner’s fury at Hunt’s Budget jibe

Jeremy Hunt failed to raise many laughs with his Budget gags – but his quips went down particularly badly with Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner. After picking on Keir Starmer with a rather crude jibe at his weight, Hunt then turned the guns on Rayner, who has recently been reported to the taxman over allegations she may have failed to pay thousands when selling her old home, a former council house. ‘I have also been looking at the stamp duty relief for people who purchase more than one dwelling in a single transaction, known as Multiple Dwellings Relief,’ adding: ‘I see the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party paying close

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer accuses Sunak of failing to act after Sarah Everard murder

Prime Minister’s Questions today was a weighty affair, with Keir Starmer focusing on the murder of Sarah Everard following the Angiolini Report into the failings of the police that allowed Wayne Couzens to continue in his role and to abduct his victim. The Labour leader asked how it could be the case that there was ‘nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight’ three years on from Everard’s death. Sunak replied that the government had taken action ‘quickly’ to ‘strengthen police vetting, strengthen the rules for rooting out officers who are not there to serve and conducted the largest-ever screening of all serving officers and staff’. He added that

Coffee House

Jeremy Hunt cuts National Insurance in Budget

Jeremy Hunt’s Budget was short on surprises. The Chancellor cut National Insurance for workers by another 2p in a bid to address the Tories’ poll slide ahead of the upcoming general election. Hunt also announced a shake-up to child benefit charges, said that ‘non-dom’ tax status would be scrapped and said that alcohol and fuel duty would be frozen. Here are the Budget announcements in full: Follow all the analysis as it unfolded on our live blog:

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Trump ally tells Emily Maitlis to ‘f*** off’

The News Agents podcast has had a mixed reception in the UK but its presenters are having an even rougher ride in the US. Host Emily Maitlis ambushed Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on ‘Super Tuesday’ to get her reaction to Trump’s victory.  Asking first about the Republican party’s message for Trump’s competitor Nikki Haley, Maitlis swiftly moved on to a fiery line of questioning. She asked why ‘so many people who support Trump love conspiracy theories’, using as an example Greene’s own comments that the 2018 Camp Fire was started by ‘Jewish space lasers’. Suffice to say this didn’t exactly go down well.  A

Michael Cole

The picture that will scotch vile rumours about the Princess of Wales

The Princess of Wales has been photographed for the first time since she was hospitalised earlier this year. But while the picture, which shows Catherine in a car driven by her mother Carole Middleton, is splashed across the American celebrity website TMZ, it won’t be appearing in British newspapers. So why is the British press so scrupulous, so abstemious and so responsible – things they could never have been accused of in the Wild West days of the old Fleet Street – when their American cousins still shoot from the hip when it comes to publishing paparazzi pictures of the Royals? The Earl’s words hit home It all goes back to

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Jenrick warns of foreign state media ownership

Will a UAE-backed entity buy the Telegraph and The Spectator? Not if parliament gets its way. More than 100 MPs have signed a letter saying that this should not happen, demanding a veto on foreign states taking over British titles. Former Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick, who organised the letter, told this morning’s Today programme: We believe that freedom of the press is a fundamental bulwark of democracy, and it is therefore very important that we protect our major national newspapers and media outlets from inappropriate control by foreign powers. Jenrick says that he and his colleagues are proposing that, alongside the existing powers that the government has, there should be a vote in parliament on whether these

Matthew Lynn

Cutting National Insurance won’t save the Tories

It will put more money in people’s pockets. It will improve the incentives to work. And it will put down a marker that the party does still believe taxes can occasionally be cut. The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is not the world’s finest speech-maker, but he will probably attempt a few rhetorical flourishes when he cuts 2 per cent off the rate of National Insurance in his Budget later today. The trouble is, it is going to prove a damp squib, and not least because it has been widely trailed in advance. In reality, a modest reduction in National Insurance is not going to save the Conservative party from defeat at

Ryan Shorthouse

More people should have second jobs

Long gone are the days when you had a job for life. But, for young folks especially, it seems we don’t just do one job in a week. The strivers are scrambling for second jobs. Though it is hard to ascertain exact numbers through official statistics, some surveys suggest more than two-thirds of British Gen Zs are now supplementing their income with side hustles.  A side gig could well be the most sensible way to improve your prospects Some of this is out of necessity, thanks to stagnant wages and rising living costs. But it is also being driven by attitude changes, and a desire to choose more purpose and freedom in

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Hunt’s Budget is doomed

Anyone expecting Jeremy Hunt to unleash the animal spirits of wealth creators in his Budget today cannot have been paying much attention to the Treasury’s pre-briefing. Two per cent off National Insurance is likely to be as good as it gets, we are told. Perhaps a white rabbit will be pulled from a hat during the speech itself but more likely the animal in question will be a sloth. Such a creature – steady and dependable but resolutely undynamic – would be emblematic of the condition of what pundits used to term ‘UK plc’. For Britain under Hunt does not have an economy so much as a ‘meh-conomy’. While talk

Steerpike Steerpike

Ten of the worst Tory tax hikes since 2010

It’s Budget day today. With the tax burden predicted to amount to 37 per cent of national income by the next election, the 2019 to 2024 parliament is set to go down as the biggest tax-raising parliament in modern times. A rather impressive feat for a Tory party that likes to paint itself as one of low taxes and financial stability. In fact, under the last 14 years of Conservative government, Mr S has discovered there have been over 1,000 tax rises. While we eagerly await today’s Budget announcements, here is a list of some of the most significant tax hikes introduced under various Tory Chancellors since 2010… Income tax

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Jeremy Hunt play it safe today?

This Budget is probably Jeremy Hunt’s last fiscal event before the election, and the Chancellor will want to at least set a fair wind for the Conservatives to head into polling day. That means giving voters a sense that sticking with the Tories is the safer option, offering them giveaways on tax and the sense that more tax cuts might be to come – as well as avoiding the sort of post-Budget rows that can define a government in all the wrong ways. Hunt is expected to cut National Insurance by a further two percentage points, on top of the 2 point cut he made in the autumn. This is

Charles Lipson

The race for the White House is about to get much dirtier

Super Tuesday is over and so is the primary season. Although some states have not voted yet and a few others have not finished counting, the parties’ nominees are now locked in. They were really locked in several weeks ago. Biden had no serious competition and Trump vanquished his two main rivals in the early voting.  Trump’s chief competitors were Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and Trump’s UN ambassador. The former president effectively clinched the nomination when he beat both decisively on their most favourable terrain: DeSantis in Iowa and Haley in New Hampshire and her home state. Haley stayed in the race

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Geri Halliwell can never be wrong

Watching the current scandal around Christian Horner play out, I didn’t feel any of the glee I usually do when tabloids dissect the private lives of well-known people. (To be fair, I had zero sympathy for myself when the Daily Mail did it to me, twice – if you dish it out, you’d better be able to take it.) Rather, I felt an emotion that I rarely feel: protectiveness for my adored Ginger Spice – a.k.a Geri Hallwell Horner, wife of the Red Bull boss. It’s a weird one. We’re used to feeling various emotions towards pop stars – lust, love, loathing – but it’s not often that we feel protective of

Tuesday

James Heale James Heale

MPs demand veto on foreign state press ownership

More than 100 MPs have tonight backed an amendment in the House of Lords which would give parliament a veto on foreign states owning UK media outlets. Robert Jenrick, the former Housing Secretary, has organised an open letter among colleagues, following the attempt by the UAE-owned RedBird IMI to take over the Telegraph and Spectator titles. Signatories include  a string of former Cabinet ministers including Sir John Redwood, Therese Coffey, Sir Simon Clarke, Robert Buckland, Stephen Crabb, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers and Sir Geoffrey Cox. Jenrick’s letter to Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, says that: ‘If major newspaper and media organisations can be purchased by foreign governments, the freedom of the press has

Steerpike Steerpike

Science minister forced to pay damages

Another day, another government figure in a spot of bother. Michelle Donelan, Science and Technology Secretary, has today had to retract false accusations she made about an academic and agreed to pay the damages and costs. It’s a rather embarrassing case of the science minister unable to get her facts right: sub-optimal to say the least. Last October, Donelan accused Professor Kate Sang, an academic working at Heriot Watt University, of expressing sympathy for Hamas in the aftermath of the 7 October attack. She also accused another academic, Dr Kamna Patel, of sharing extremist material. Both woman, Donelan claimed, had breached the Seven Principles of Public Life and should be

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Would another cut to National Insurance be enough to move the polls?

We’ll know tomorrow afternoon what exactly Jeremy Hunt has included in his Budget, but reports this evening suggest we’re looking at another 2p cut to employee National Insurance: a move that is estimated to put £450 back in the pocket of the average worker, which Hunt will try to sell as a £900 tax cut, if you combine it with the additional 2p taken off NI in his Autumn Statement last year.  The decision to opt for NI will be driven by fiscal restraints rather than political desire. Tory MPs, and workers, have been expecting something bigger than what was already delivered last autumn, and an income tax would have

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What tax cut will Hunt deliver tomorrow?

13 min listen

Kate Andrews speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman as the speculation grows over what taxes Jeremy Hunt will cut in tomorrow’s budget. National Insurance is looking most likely – it’s a giveaway but does it go far enough?

Eliot Wilson

The flaw in the SNP’s plan to ‘build a new Scotland’

The SNP seems determined not to stick to the day job of actually running the country. Scotland’s government this week launched a publication called ‘Building a New Scotland: an independent Scotland’s Place in the World’. It set out policies for something that doesn’t exist – an independent Scotland – in areas in which the devolved administration has no responsibility. Angus Robertson, the party’s constitution and external affairs secretary who launched the report, hardly seemed fazed by those facts: he spoke fluently and familiarly about ‘defence, peace and security’ and Scotland’s role as ‘a good global citizen’, even if his party’s plan is unlikely to ever see the light of day.

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Vulnerable children don’t belong in jail

Britain’s prisons brim with vulnerable people but perhaps the most vulnerable are children. At 30 September 2023, there were 301 children in prison in England and Wales alone. Wetherby Young Offender Institution in Yorkshire is home to 165 of them and a new report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons makes for troubling reading about the conditions inside. There are the usual observations, familiar to regular readers of these write-ups, about broken heating systems and smashed windows, faulty electrics and insufficient time out of cells. But then there is this: ‘We had considerable concerns about the use of all-male teams to cut the clothes of vulnerable girls under restraint and