Politics

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

Wednesday

Euan McColm

What’s going on with Nicola Sturgeon’s memory?

Nicola Sturgeon’s memory is a fascinating and frustrating thing. At times, the former First Minister of Scotland’s powers of recall are quite remarkable. No detail escapes Sturgeonian examination, no nuance goes unnoticed. On other occasions, it fails her completely. Take her appearance, in March 2021, before a committee of MSPs investigating the Scottish government’s handling of complaints of sexual assault levelled by a number of women against Alex Salmond. On that occasion, Sturgeon’s testimony was notable for its remarkable gaps. She simply didn’t remember details of a key meeting that had taken place just months previously. Even the extraordinary nature of the matters she was discussing could not help fill

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nicola Sturgeon’s torrid time at the Covid Inquiry

Nicola Sturgeon’s afternoon at the Covid Inquiry was pretty brutal. She was subjected to a difficult round of questioning on whether she used the pandemic to advance the case for Scottish independence. Funnily enough, the former first minister didn’t agree with that analysis.  In fact, her memory was that she had never thought ‘less’ about politics than during the pandemic. She became quite fixated upon the purity of her motives in dealing with Covid, to the extent that her evidence started to resemble Tony Blair’s lengthy ruminations during the Chilcot Inquiry. Her voice became unusually querulous at points, telling Jamie Dawson KC that she took it ‘very, very personally when people question

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Sathnam Sanghera: Empireworld

44 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast my guest is Sathnam Sanghera, author of the new book Empireworld about the effect of British imperialism around the globe. He tells me why he’s trying to get beyond the ‘balance-sheet’ view of imperial history, why we should all read W E B Dubois, and why he’s not good at going on holiday.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The unexpected star of PMQs is a man you’ve never heard of

Let’s hear it for Phil. The unexpected hero of PMQs was an Iceland employee in Warrington (referred to as ‘Phil’, no surname given) whom Sir Keir Starmer held up as a victim of Tory fiscal mismanagement. Doubtless poor Phil had no idea his personal circumstances were about to dominate today’s parliamentary punch-up.  The session began as a typical ding-dong between the party leaders who accused each other of lies, failure and incompetence. Sir Keir asked Rishi Sunak to detail the costs faced by a typical mortgage-holder with a fixed-term deal that expires this week. To the surprise of no one, except Sir Keir, Rishi rattled off the precise figures. So

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

David Cameron is in a muddle over Palestine

The definition of madness, commonly attributed to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In all likelihood, Einstein never said this, but the formulation is useful for understanding not only madness but western policy in the Middle East. (Admittedly, there is substantial overlap.) One idea that fixates foreign policy elites, so much so that we must persevere with it despite all evidence, is the creation of a Palestinian state. It is less a policy than a religious doctrine and its most devout adherents are to be found not in Israel or the territories but in the US State Department, the British Foreign

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Sturgeon paints herself as perfect at Covid Inquiry

10 min listen

Nicola Sturgeon became emotional during her evidence at the Covid inquiry today – a highly anticipated part of the inquiry given the issue of deleted Whatsapp messages. How did the former first minister come across today? And what else can the evidence tell us about how the Scottish government operated? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and Michael Simmons. 

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer and Sunak argue about a man called Phil

Keir Starmer opened PMQs by describing ‘the plight of the Member for Mid Norfolk’, whose mortgage had gone up by £1,200 a month and had to ‘quit his dream job to pay for it’. That Substack post from Tory MP George Freeman isn’t quite as potent as a note left on a Treasury desk, but it allowed the Labour leader to attack Sunak by saying ‘a Tory MP counting the cost of Tory chaos after 14 years, and we finally discovered what they meant when they said ‘we’re all in this together”.’ Rishi Sunak’s response was to accuse Labour of not having a plan, and to quibble the figures about

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Nicola Sturgeon breaks down in tears at Covid Inquiry

Even Nicola Sturgeon’s enemies agree that the former first minister is a formidable politician. But at the Covid Inquiry, Sturgeon appears to be struggling to keep it together. Asked whether she was the ‘right’ person to lead Scotland following her earlier criticism that Boris Johnson was not up to the job, Sturgeon broke down in tears: ‘I was the first minister when the pandemic struck. There’s a large part of me that wishes I hadn’t been. But I was, and I wanted to be the best first minister I could be during that period. It’s for others to judge the extent to which I succeeded.’ NEW: Nicola Sturgeon breaks down

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sturgeon paints herself as perfect at Covid Inquiry

How and where did Nicola Sturgeon make her big decisions during the pandemic? Not on WhatsApp, and never badly, according to the evidence she has given to the UK Covid Inquiry so far this morning. The questions to the former first minister have largely focused on how she recorded discussions between ministers, and why she deleted WhatsApp messages. She admitted that she did delete them, but insisted that it was not her practice to have detailed discussions with colleagues about decision-making on this channel anyway. ‘It’s not my style’, she said, criticising the use of WhatsApp in government as being too common and that it was too open to misinterpretation.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

No, Brexit checks won’t push up food prices

It is one of those occasions when you don’t need to wait for tomorrow’s newspapers to know what will be inside. There will be the usual photographs of empty supermarket shelves, along with the message ‘It’s Brexit wot done it’. Never mind that there are always some gaps on supermarket shelves and that the blockades on French motorways (as that country’s farmers demonstrate their deep commitment to the single market) are bound to impact on some supply chains. The reason for the gaps, it will be asserted, is that from today animal and vegetable products imported to Britain from the EU will require a veterinary certificate. From 30 April consignments will also be

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Sturgeon face another police probe?

It’s not been a great morning for Nicola Sturgeon at the Covid Inquiry. In August 2021, she promised bereaved families via Channel 4 News that she would disclose all her WhatsApps, even though by that stage she knew that her messages had been destroyed. Today she insisted that she thought ‘anything of any relevance or substance’ ‘would be properly recorded in the Scottish Government system’ – even though the Channel 4 question was specifically about handing over personal emails and WhatsApps. Sturgeon now claims she was trying to answer ‘the substance of the question’ adding that ‘I apologise if that answer was not as clear’. You can say that again…

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Labour MP uses child-killing analogy to explain green spending

Will Labour stick to its pledge to spend £28 billion a year on a green industrial revolution if it wins the election? The party’s leader Keir Starmer appeared to row back on doing so last month by describing the green spending spree as an ‘ambition’. Now, Labour MP Tulip Siddiq has further muddied the waters by saying the plans are merely a ‘commitment’. LBC host Nick Ferrari, who was interviewing Siddiq this morning, was understandably baffled. But having asked the shadow city minister to clarify matters, he was likely to have been left even more confused. Pressed on what the difference is between a ‘commitment and an ambition’, Siddiq used a somewhat bizarre

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour U-turns, yet again

Another day, another Labour U-turn. This morning it’s the turn of Rachel Reeves, who has done another copy and paste job by following Jeremy Hunt’s lead on lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses – less than 100 days after her own Treasury team lambasted the move. The Shadow Chancellor told the BBC that she had no plans to reinstate it, despite repeated criticism from key Labour figures including, er, herself. She told the Corporation today that: The cap on bankers’ bonuses was bought in in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and that was the right thing to do to rebuild the public finances. But that has gone now

Matthew Lynn

Jeremy Hunt should ignore the IMF’s tax cut warning

Government borrowing is lower than had been forecast. The economy needs some form of a boost. And perhaps most of all there is an election within a few months. There are plenty of reasons why Chancellor Jeremy Hunt might want to cut taxes slightly in his spring Budget, and perhaps even once more by the autumn. But hold on. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has just said it would be ‘fiscally irresponsible’. Well, perhaps. And yet, the IMF’s record on forecasting is very poor, and it is also very committed to a high-tax, big-state economic model. On that basis, Hunt should just ignore it, and cut taxes anyway. There is

William Atkinson

Will expat voters really help the Tories at the next election?

With opinion polls predicting an oncoming electoral shellacking for the Conservatives, it is unsurprising that Rishi Sunak is hoping to find extra voters wherever he can. CCHQ’s latest bet is in the two million or so Britons living overseas who have just had their lifetime voting rights restored. On 16 January, rules came into operation allowing all British citizens living abroad to register to vote in general elections. Labour introduced a 15-year limit on voting rights for expats in 2001. Repealing that limit has been a long-standing Tory manifesto commitment. Doing so with last year’s Elections Act has more than doubled the number of eligible overseas voters from 1.4 million to

Tuesday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The surprising truth about ‘Nanny State’ Britain

This week, a Conservative Prime Minister announced he was banning something – disposable vapes. The reaction to that ban – or rather, the lack of reaction – is a signpost to future UK health policy, which will lean towards interventionism in the years ahead. Companies making and selling food and drink should pay close attention. Over the last quarter-century around Westminster, I’ve watched many political debates about intervening to make it harder or more expensive for people to buy and consume things that are, in general, bad for them. There was Labour’s ban on smoking indoors, then Gordon Brown’s attempt to deter buy-one get-one free food deals. There was the

Francis Pike

The West’s shameful silence on Imran Khan’s imprisonment

Donald Trump should spare a thought for Imran Khan. If the former US president feels overrun by lawsuits, he could comfort himself with the thought that they are a mere bagatelle in comparison with those against Pakistan’s former prime minister. Since being deposed in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in 2022, Khan and his PTI (Pakistan Movement for Justice) party has clocked up hundreds of civil and criminal charges. Some have been charges of corruption, treason, espionage and fraud. Others have been pettifogging in the extreme. Two weeks ago, the election commission of Pakistan won its case in the Supreme Court to deny Khan, a former world cup winning

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

France’s farmers’ revolt isn’t all it seems

The toll station on the A9 motorway near the French-Spanish border is closed with cones and guarded by the local gendarmes. A few dozen trucks are parked on the grass verges, waiting for the farmers’ barricades to open. The farmers themselves have gone, heading north to barricade Montpellier. The autoroute is utterly, weirdly silent. A thundering corridor of commerce completely closed. The truckers I talk to like that I’m British, congratulating me on Brexit as if I was personally responsible. They uniformly support the farmers although it is their livelihood that is being disrupted. Why? It is long past the time that credulous French people should support petulant farmer ‘unions’ demanding ever more