Politics

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

Tuesday

Carson Becker

How can Poland’s Law and Justice party revive its fortunes?

After narrowly losing power in October’s parliamentary elections, Poland’s conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) has spent the last four months battling the reforms of Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who co-founded PiS in 2001 and has served as its chairman since 2003, must now adapt to his role in opposition. On Saturday, Kaczynski said that he would seek another term as the leader of PiS, but this won’t be an easy task. After the excitement of the last few weeks, which has included showdowns with the government over its takeover of public media and the arrests (and subsequent presidential pardon) of two opposition figures, some members of PiS’s

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Is there anything wrong with ‘Christian nationalism’?

When does radical religious conservatism become a dangerous bid for theocracy? It’s a question that some American commentators are pondering, in relation to ‘Christian nationalism’. David French has argued in the New York Times that we should be wary of the term ‘Christian nationalism’, which is often attached to Trump-supporting evangelicals. There is nothing very dangerous about Christians wanting their faith to be politically expressed, he says. If you define the term broadly, ‘then you’re telling millions of ordinary churchgoing citizens that the importation of their religious values into the public square somehow places them in the same camp or on the same side as actual Christian supremacists, the illiberal authoritarians

Monday

Roger Kimball

The people should decide on Donald Trump, not the courts

In a big victory for democracy, but a big blow to the partisans of ‘Our Democracy™’, the Supreme Court of the United States just reversed the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, which had determined that Donald Trump could not appear on the ballot for president in that state.  A coven of anti-Trump activists, desperate to stop the juggernaut that is the Trump train, argued that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment authorised them to remove Trump from the ballot because he had engaged in ‘insurrection’ on 6 January 2021.  Let’s leave aside the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment, designed to apply to rebels who had joined the Confederacy during the Civil

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: George Galloway returns to the Commons

He’s back. George Galloway, victor of Friday’s Rochdale by-election, has this afternoon been sworn in as MP in the House of Commons for his fourth different constituency. After a morning swanning around the estate, ‘Gorgeous George’, who last sat in 2015, arrived to a rather empty chamber, flanked by Alba MP Neale Hanvey and Father of the House Sir Peter Bottomley. The unwilling escorts were chosen after David Davies and Jeremy Corbyn both turned down the chance to accompany Galloway into the House for his triumphant return. Talk about awkward… After taking the oath – on a Holy Bible – parliament’s newest MP set about doing what he does best:

Steerpike Steerpike

BBC Verify sources under scrutiny 

There’s rarely a day now that the blundering BBC isn’t the news itself. This time the spotlight is back on BBC Verify, the Corporation’s much-lauded fact-checking service launched to combat the scourge of fake news. Yet journalist David Collier has done some digging and has suggested that BBC Verify looks to be falling short of the high standards to which it holds others… Collier focuses on a recent report from the broadcaster which seemed to insinuate that Israel was directly to blame for Palestinians killed on Thursday as food aid arrived in Gaza. The reporting relies on incomplete IDF video footage, Al Jazeera video and the word of hospital manager

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Does France hold the key to cracking down on Islamist extremism?

Are we being ‘poisoned’ by extremism? The Prime Minister seems to think so. His speech on the steps of Downing Street following the Rochdale by-election described a country where values of tolerance and civility were being deliberately undermined by Islamists and the far right. ‘Islamist extremists and the far right feed off and embolden each other,’ he warned. But in conflating those two threats, the Prime Minister made the same mistake as his predecessors. Jews, with no connection to what is happening in Gaza, are terrified by the uptick in hatred against them Sunak followed the script, endorsed by too many institutions in Britain, that the big threat to our way

Annabel Denham

It’s time to take a chainsaw to the British civil service

Slashing Whitehall waste is a pledge that brings to mind Augustine’s prayer for the Lord to make him virtuous – but not yet. It is something repeatedly promised by governments, but rarely delivered. Here we are again, days out from the final Budget before voters go to the polls in a general election, and Jeremy Hunt is announcing a crackdown on bureaucracy in the public sector. He intends to reduce the civil service headcount by 66,000, returning it to pre-pandemic levels. Do we need a Department for Culture, Media and Sport? Voters are likely to feel cynical. Britain’s public sector is riddled with entitlement and waste at levels described by the Chancellor as

Katy Balls Katy Balls

New poll points to Tory wipeout

Another day, another damning poll for the Tory party. This time it’s a survey by Ipsos for the Evening Standard that finds the Conservatives have hit their lowest level for 40 years. The poll puts the Tories on 20-points, falling from 27-points back in January. It means Rishi Sunak’s party is 27-points behind Labour and his personal ratings are not looking great either, with a net approval score of -54. Keir Starmer isn’t exactly popular but he is faring better than Sunak. The Labour leader’s net approval rating is -26. To put this poll into perspective, the Ipsos Political Monitor started in the late 1970s and has never before recorded

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why are UK shares doing so badly?

What is wrong with UK shares? While the US, European and Japanese stock markets reach new highs, UK markets are stuck in a deep rut. The FTSE 1000 is just 10 per cent higher than it was on the last day of last century. As for the FTSE 250, small cap and AIM markets – which seemed to be doing okay until 2021 – they are still deep in bear market territory. The AIM 100 – the largest hundred shares on the Alternative Investment Market, which peaked at over 6000 in August 2021 is currently down below 3600. That is the sort of crash that happened to the wider stock

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Sunak and Hunt face a Budget dilemma

14 min listen

Budget day is approaching and the government has hinted that their plans for tax cutting ‘giveaways’ are now less likely. James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews about what to and what not to expect for Wednesday’s Spring Budget.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour will find it hard to get tough on benefits seekers

Liz Kendall gave a speech this morning in which she promised to ‘build a better future’ for young people, with better mental health support and careers advice in schools. Sounds pretty motherhood-and-apple-pie from the shadow work and pensions secretary, but what’s getting more attention is that she also said there would be ‘no option of a life on benefits’ for people who can work.  This is interesting for two reasons. One is that the Labour party has really struggled over the past decade with conditionality in the benefits system, and more widely with the idea that it should tell people they should be in work. But that is exactly what

John Keiger John Keiger

Why France is a target for Russian spies

Last week was a good time to bury bad news in France. While French and international media were focused on president Macron’s Trump-like maverick statement of not ruling out western troops being deployed in Ukraine, a new book slipped out detailing the extent of KGB spying in France during the Cold War. Ironically this was also a week in which Macron and French authorities publicly warned of France being a privileged target of Russian intelligence agencies, through large-scale hacking, manipulation of social media in everything from the French ‘bed-bug scandal’ to the June European elections. Combine this with prime minister Gabriel Attal’s charge in parliament that the Rassemblement National –

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Sunak and Hunt face a Budget dilemma

Budget day is approaching and what was once seen as a window of opportunity is now being talked up as a moment of dread. Jeremy Hunt has gone from comparing himself in January to the former tax-slashing chancellor Nigel Lawson to telling the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that, in reality, fiscal constraints mean on Wednesday he will be closer to a ‘prudent’ Gordon Brown. Rishi Sunak is still hoping to make good on his promise of a ‘gear shift’ on taxation. But given the government has less space for manoeuvre than they envisaged at the beginning of the year, any tax cuts will be accompanied by difficult decisions elsewhere.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is Rishi Sunak too late to stop the spread of Islamism?

Rishi Sunak has joined the long line of prime ministers who have declared that enough is enough, and the country must act to root out Islamist extremism. His speech from the steps of 10 Downing Street on Friday was hailed in some Conservative quarters as ‘striking intervention’. Nevertheless, the sceptic might wonder why it’s taken the Prime Minister until now to face up to the fact that many Jews do not feel safe in the British capital. Those same sceptics are entitled to think that despite Sunak’s vow to ‘implement a new robust framework’ to tackle extremism, nothing will change. Britain has been here many times before. Sunak has at

Alexander Horne

Could this Lords paper save the Rwanda Bill?

Parliamentary procedures and conventions are often dismissed as ‘arcane’ or ‘byzantine’ by commentators. Still, on occasion, they can have a significant impact on politics – as demonstrated by the recent furore over a Labour amendment to the Gaza ceasefire motion in February. Last week, a new paper in the House of Lords was published which has the potential to have a similar political impact – and could even save the government’s controversial Rwanda Bill, which is in its Report Stage today. The paper, by the convenor of the crossbench peers Lord Kinnoull, is on the Salisbury-Addison convention, which says that the Lords will not vote against Bills which were in the government’s manifesto. The convention began

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP split over abstentionism row

Oh dear. It never takes long for the perpetually-warring SNP to take a pop at someone — but now the party’s leaders are, er, squabbling among themselves. The cause this time? Whether or not the nationalists should boycott Westminster, following Gazagate last month. At least we’d be spared Ian Blackford’s bloviating… Keith Brown, the party’s deputy leader, yesterday took to the pages of that august journal, the Sunday National, to attack Labour for being ‘unrepentant about the illegitimate thwarting of the SNP’s Opposition Day debate’. He then suggested that the issue of withdrawing SNP MPs from Westminster ought to ‘be re-examined’, arguing: An incompetent Speaker and a contemptuous Knight of the Realm

Nigel Jones

Germany is the West’s weakest link against Putin

Two massive security scandals this weekend have given a shot in the arm to Putin’s war on Ukraine. Yet again they have exposed Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Germany as the West’s weakest link in its ongoing confrontation with Russia. Scandal Number One came when the loose-lipped Chancellor revealed that British and French troops were in Ukraine helping the embattled country’s soldiers operate long range Storm Shadow cruise missiles targeting the Russian invaders. Explaining why Germany would not supply Taurus missiles, its own version of the Storm Shadow system, to Ukraine, Scholz said that doing this would make Germany an active participant in the war. These are embarrassing and alarming revelations of

Sunday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Is this really the Tory party’s election budget?

February was a tough month for Jeremy Hunt, as he tried to roll back the tax cut promises that were made by himself and Rishi Sunak in January. The money simply did not materalise, despite the government borrowing less than expected in recent months. The rough £15 billion that independent forecasts now think the Chancellor has for additional announcements is not enough to deliver the major income tax cuts Hunt wanted to announce.  The disappointment is palpable. Appearing on BBC One this morning, Hunt squashed all remaining hopes that this Wednesday might be the tax-slashing Budget Tory MPs were desperate to deliver ahead of an election. ‘The most unconservative thing I could

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Hunt insists Budget will be ‘responsible’

Jeremy Hunt: Budget will be ‘prudent and responsible’ Ahead of Wednesday’s Budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt gave an interview on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg in which he tried to manage expectations regarding potential tax cuts. Without mentioning any specific details, he said the ‘most unconservative’ thing he could do would be to lower taxes by borrowing more. However, Hunt did hint there might be some form of cut, arguing that the economies growing fastest globally are those with lower taxes, and suggesting he wanted to ‘show a path in that direction’. Will Hunt ‘steal’ Labour’s non-dom tax policy? Kuenssberg asked Jeremy Hunt about the expectation that he might both cut national

Jawad Iqbal

The Iranian people have had enough

The record low turnout for parliamentary elections in Iran, which took place on Friday, is another blow to the regime’s attempts to pretend that all is well in the country. Early reports suggest a turnout of just under 41 per cent nationwide. Iranians in their millions have rejected the regime by choosing to stay at home rather than vote. The elections were never really about the final results (victory is pretty much guaranteed for the motley crew of religious hardliners and social conservatives endorsed by the ruling clerics), but about how many people would actually bother to vote. Turnout matters to the mullahs because the election process exists to give