Politics

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

Thursday

20 Jul 2023

John Oxley

Britain has a Martin Lewis problem

Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert, has become the sage of the cost-of-living crisis. He is closing in on national treasure status, dispensing helpful advice on TV and online to help people avoid rip-off charges and ensure they are getting the benefits they are entitled to. This is all good work, but as the housing campaigner Anya Martin notes, Lewis, and resources like him, rarely focus on increasing earnings. Watching the similarly themed American show How to Get Rich on Netflix, the contrast is noticeable. The expert here, an American named Ramit Sethi, does all the Lewis-style tricks to save pennies here and there – but also encourages his subjects to leverage their

Mark Galeotti

Will MI6’s Russian recruitment drive work?

Sir Richard Moore, head of the Secret Intelligence Service – MI6 – follows the tradition of only giving one public address a year, so it is inevitably scrutinised carefully for signs and portents. His speech at the UK embassy in Prague, inviting Russians to spy for Britain, required no particular reading between the lines. After a suitable preamble noting Britain’s strong relationship with the Czech Republic, he pivoted from Moscow’s brutal suppression of the liberal Prague Spring in 1968 to Soviets, the bravest of whom, seeing ‘the moral travesty of what was being done…acted on their convictions by throwing in their lot with us, as partners for freedom.’ This was

Nicholas Sheppard

New Zealand mourns after Auckland gun rampage

Two people are dead after a gunman armed with a pump-action shotgun stormed a building in Auckland’s central business district this morning. The gunman has also died. At least six people are injured, including one police officer who was transported to hospital in a critical condition. The police officer is now stable. The incident occurred hours before the opening of the Fifa Women’s World Cup, which is being co-hosted by New Zealand. The shooter has been identified as 24-year-old Matu Tangi Matua Reid. He was serving a sentence of five months home detention for domestic violence and had approval to travel to the building site as an employee of a subcontractor that

Steerpike

Watch: Nigel Farage launches fresh attack on Coutts

Coutts gave Nigel Farage the boot as a customer because their reputation risk committee didn’t approve of his political views. But the decision has backfired spectacularly and has sparked one of the biggest crises in the bank’s 330-year history. The row shows no sign of dying down: last night, Nigel Farage appeared on BBC Newsnight to accuse the bank of behaving like a ‘political campaigning organisation’. He said: ‘Read the report, read the conclusions. They say Russia is a risk for them. They say my views do not align with the bank’s. How on earth a bank that is 40 per cent owned by the British taxpayer after their greedy

Wednesday

19 Jul 2023

Katy Balls

Inside Sunak’s meeting with Tory backbenchers

What does a prime minister say to his party ahead of three potential by-election defeats? This was the task for Rishi Sunak tonight as he addressed a final meeting of the 1922 committee ahead of the summer recess. The Prime Minister was welcomed into the room with banging on desks (though such stunts often don’t relieve much about the mood). He began his address by listing the achievements of the government over the past eight months in a bid to show progress, insisting there was a strong conservative record to be ‘proud of’. He then claimed that despite the difficulties his five priorities have faced so far, he would stick

Katy Balls

Who is Susan Hall?

15 min listen

Katy Balls speaks to Kate Andrews and James Heale about today’s inflation figures and the latest news about the Conservative Mayoral candidate for London – Susan Hall.

Ross Clark

Why have the Tories given up on London?

Have you ever heard of Susan Hall? Until a month ago, I hadn’t. Now that she has been selected as the Conservative candidate for next year’s London mayoral election, her name might well stick – although I am going to write it down somewhere just in case. This isn’t to disparage her abilities. Hall has, apparently, been leader of the Conservative party group in the London Assembly for the past four years – I don’t live in London, which may explain my ignorance. Before being elected a councillor in Harrow she was a mechanic in the family garage business and has also worked as a hairdresser – so she ought to have a

Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Rishi prepares for opposition

The tectonic plates were shifting at PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer asked Rishi Sunak if the total NHS waiting list of 7.2 million had risen or fallen during his nine months in office. Rishi said the number was up because striking medics are denying treatment to the people whose taxes pay for it. He suggested that Sir Keir should get work-shy doctors to accept the pay increase recommended by an independent review. The SNP can’t show delight in public – party policy forbids any display of cheerfulness or amusement They tussled over the funding of a new NHS staffing policy. Sir Keir claimed that scrapping tax exemptions for non-doms will cover

Justin Doherty

Coutts’ reputation committee has destroyed its own reputation

Nigel Farage has been cancelled by his bank because their reputation risk committee doesn’t approve of his political views and has branded him a ‘chancer’ and ‘grifter’. This matters to him because, having been cancelled by one bank, it is almost impossible to get an account with another – you are obliged upon opening a new account to reveal if you have ever been turned down or thrown out of a bank before. Reputation risk has become all the rage in recent years as companies, governments and individuals scramble to protect themselves from the fate suffered by trial by media and powerful regulators. PR firms and management consultancies charge high fees to

Coffee House

Revealed: The Coutts files on Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage’s bank account with Coutts was closed earlier this year. Here is the bank’s dossier, obtained by Farage using a subject access request, that reveals why: Item 1: Personal data extracted from minutes from Wealth Reputational Risk Committee on 17th November 2022 Content • Seeking approval to continue the relationship with Nigel Farage (NF) subject to annual reviews. • Referred to NF’s controversial profile in public life and politics, reflected in the adverse press outlined in the paper presented. • Despite the adverse press, from a legal perspective NF has not been formally charged of any wrongdoing, and is not subject to any regulatory censure. • NF is already

Ross Clark

Road rage: the great motorist rebellion has begun

Since Boris Johnson quit as an MP last month, Labour has been confident about winning the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. Yet not so confident that Danny Beales, the party’s candidate, felt he could get through the campaign without lambasting Sadiq Khan’s plans to expand London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) to cover the capital. ‘It’s not the right time to extend Ulez to outer London,’ he told a hustings a fortnight ago. ‘It’s just not.’ It is hard for motorists not to wonder whether there is a campaign to ease them out of their vehicles From the end of next month, anyone driving a non-compliant vehicle – which in

Isabel Hardman

Sunak returns to PMQs with a subpar performance

Everyone was very keen to attack Labour at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, particularly over Keir Starmer’s decision not to scrap the two-child benefit limit. Before the session, SNP staffers handed out ‘controls on family sizes’ mugs to journalists in the Commons press gallery, a reminder of Labour’s disastrous 2015 ‘controls on immigration’ mug. Then SNP leader Stephen Flynn, and later Pete Wishart, both called the policy ‘heinous’. Flynn even said Scottish children were used to living in poverty, which prompted some ironic shouts from MPs on the other side of the house: the SNP has the power to change benefits policies anyway, but hasn’t scrapped the two-child limit on the

Katy Balls

Labour’s reality check

Rishi Sunak goes into the summer holidays in the same position he began the year: 20 points behind in the polls. In other ways it feels as if his premiership has gone backwards. Mortgage rates have risen above the levels they were under Liz Truss. The Tory psychodrama of the Boris Johnson era has led to two of the three by-elections taking place this week. Little progress has been made on Sunak’s ‘five priorities’ – the junior doctor strikes show no sign of abating and the Rwanda scheme is held up in the courts. ‘At this point Keir Starmer could probably announce backing for freedom of movement and still scrape

Rachel Johnson

In defence of ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees

When someone asks ‘How are you?’ you have to assume your interlocutor is only being polite.Anyone who returns a ball-by-ball commentary about their aches and pains, work-life balance and reduced chances of summer fun thanks to the heat storm should immediately be sent to Coventry for the rest of time. That said, I am just back from wintry New Zealand where I have been in a Channel 4 series called Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins. Despite my pledge that I’d never do any more shows with the word ‘celebrity’ in the title, this one brought out the Bond Girl manquée in me and I couldn’t resist. I can’t say any

Steerpike

Watch: Mark Francois savages Tobias Ellwood at PMQs

There was a good old ding dong at PMQs today. No, not between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, but rather between Mark Francois and an absent Tobias Ellwood. The two Tories both sit on the Defence Select Committee, with Ellwood serving as chair. But the Bournemouth MP has horrified his fellow MPs this week by releasing a bizarre video gushing support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Such simpery has no truck with Francois, who stood up to aim a double-barrelled blast at his fellow Conservative. ‘Can I make plain that this was not in our name?’ he told the House. ‘And can I have the Prime Minister’s assurance that

Ian Williams

The strange disappearance of China’s foreign minister

It is strange and surreal, even by the standards of the looking-glass world of the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Foreign Minister Qin Gang has disappeared, not seen in public since 25 June and the information vacuum about his whereabouts has inevitably been filled with all manner of rumour about marital infidelity, a love child, and even the dark world of foreign espionage. First the facts, as far as there are any. Qin, a former ambassador to the United States is a protégé of CCP leader Xi Jinping. He was regarded as a rising star, one of the new generation of aggressive ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats and was appointed foreign minister in

James Heale

Susan Hall wins Tory mayoral race

The Tories now have their candidate to take on Sadiq Khan next May. Susan Hall, the right wing member of the Greater London Authority, has today defeated Moz Hossain by 57 per cent to 43 per cent in a ballot of Conservative members across the capital. Hall, who led the GLA Tories for six years, was initially seen as an outside shot for the candidacy back in May. But she impressed the party board in London to make the final three. After Dan Korski dropped out following an accusation (which he denies) of groping, members were faced with a choice of either her or an electoral novice in Hossain. Her

Ian Williams

Tory floundering over China is a gift to Labour

Earlier this month, a Chinese spy reportedly tried to enter a private House of Commons meeting with Hong Kong dissidents. The alleged spy claimed to be a lost tourist, and there was a brief stand-off before he quickly left. The area was far from those usually visited by tourists, and some Hongkongers, fearing for their safety, covered their faces during the event. ‘I believe this man was a [Chinese Communist party] informer,’ said Finn Lau, one of two pro-democracy activists at the meeting who have CCP bounties on their heads. ‘This is one of the remotest committee rooms in parliament. And it is on the top floor. It is not

Steerpike

Will the BBC now apologise to Nigel Farage?

Oh dear. It seems that Auntie has done it again. This time it’s the row over Nigel Farage’s bank account, with the Brexiteer revealing at the end of last month that his Coutts account had been closed with ‘no explanation.’ Farage suggested that this was for political reasons but a week later, the BBC offered up a different explanation. Business Editor Simon Jack fired off an eight-tweet thread on 4 July, citing anonymous sources who suggested that Farage had merely fallen ‘below the financial threshold required to hold an account at Coutts.’ Jack grandly claimed that ‘people familiar with the matter’ had rejected the notion that the decision to close

Darius Guppy

Farage’s fate shows that cash should remain king

Nigel Farage’s cancellation by Coutts and Co – a blackballing which seems to have extended nationwide – brought to mind two similar events with which I had to contend a few years ago. First, in the East, where I was fortunate to have a flexible bank manager who allowed me to step behind her PC and spy next to my name the words ‘politically exposed’ – affixed by an American credit agency which knew the square root of nothing about me, save what some bot had picked up from Google. ‘This will be on most banks’ systems in the world,’ I was informed, ‘and the majority of them will close your account or won’t allow you to open one in the first place.’ Thankfully, common sense prevailed and we were able

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