Politics

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

Tuesday

18 Jul 2023

The benefits row is a serious test of Starmer’s leadership

Keir Starmer is in the middle of his first proper row with his party. The Labour leader is not rowing back from his decision to tell Laura Kuenssberg that he wouldn’t reverse the two-child limit on child benefits. In fact, he’s leaning into it, even though he has achieved the incredible feat of uniting Rosie Duffield and Lloyd Russell-Moyle against it (the two backbenchers are normally found disagreeing vehemently on sex and gender). At today’s shadow cabinet meeting, the Labour leader told his top team that they would have to get used to these kinds of uncomfortable decisions because ‘tough choices is not a sound bite’. He insisted that ‘it’s

Kate Andrews

Why Starmer is choosing fiscal discipline, above all else

It’s been more than two days since Keir Starmer told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that Labour would keep the two-child benefit cap, yet the party seems no closer to finding resolution on the issue. The pushback within the party has been intense, with plenty of people (including, reportedly, members of the shadow cabinet) asking how the opposition leader can keep a benefits cap that he once railed against. But Starmer isn’t budging. Speaking on a conference stage with former prime minister Tony Blair this evening, Starmer insisted this wasn’t an issue of changing hearts, but rather a changing set of circumstances. Speaking about spending commitments more generally, Starmer noted that:

Katy Balls

Is Rishi weighing up a summer reshuffle?

Will Rishi Sunak reshuffle his top team in a matter of days if not hours? That’s the rumour going around Westminster this evening. As I first reported last month, there have been plans for some time for a summer reshuffle before MPs head home for the long recess. However, this was then complicated by the triple by-election. The original plan was to hold the by-elections last week – 13 July – which would have freed up this week for Sunak to try to move the narrative on with a wide-ranging pre-election reshuffle. The fact that the by-elections are this week instead means that it is now more complicated both politically

Joanna Williams

Why was Carla Foster ever sent to prison?

Carla Foster is to be released from prison. Her 28-month sentence for illegally obtaining abortion pills and terminating a pregnancy sparked angry protests from feminists and pro-choice activists when it was handed down last month. Now, following weeks of legal dispute, the Court of Appeal has reduced her sentence to 14 months suspended. Having spent 35 days behind bars, Foster is set to be freed immediately. Good. The Court of Appeal’s judgment is to be welcomed. It demonstrates compassion for a woman who found herself in a highly unusual and distressing situation and it allows her to be reunited with her three children. Announcing the Court’s decision, the appeal judge,

David Loyn

Tobias Ellwood is being the Taliban’s useful idiot

It has now been almost two years since the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan. In recent weeks, a number of international assessments have been published looking at the state of the country under their leadership. One UN report looked at the potential for terrorism in a country where ‘terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom… than at any time in recent history.’ Links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda are said to be ‘strong and symbiotic’, with al-Qaeda ‘rebuilding operational capability’ from its base in Afghanistan. I understand that Iran has reached out to Afghan warlords from the country’s earlier conflicts to investigate supporting a wider uprising against the Taliban Another UN report detailed

Katy Balls

Has Starmer become the villain?

15 min listen

Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and former Labour advisor John McTernan to discuss the ongoing Labour row over the child benefits limit. Reactions were muted during today’s shadow cabinet meeting, but is this a reflection of a looming reshuffle? Produced by Natasha Feroze.

Steerpike

Tobias Ellwood’s Taliban blunder

It’s long been the case that trips abroad can allow for a new perspective – to broaden the mind. But Mr S can’t help but think, Tobias Ellwood’s summer jaunt to Afghanistan is taking this to an extreme. The Tory MP and chair of the Defence Select Committee has shared a video on Twitter urging people to ‘hold your breath’… Afghanistan is, he says, now a ‘country transformed’ with ‘security vastly improved, ‘corruption reduced’ and the ‘opium trade ended’. It’s a pity, of course, that the Taliban don’t allow women to wear lipstick, but they do have solar panels. This is a far cry from Ellwood’s previous comments on the issue. Back

Steerpike

What Elena Whitham’s leaked messages reveal about the SNP civil war

A fierce new critic of the SNP has burst onto the Scottish political scene. This acid-tongued detractor describes Humza Yousaf’s deputy Shona Robison as ‘a bit of a cold fish’, ‘like an automaton’ and ‘painful to listen to’, and says Angus Robertson’s promotion to the Scottish cabinet meant ‘the ego has landed’. Who is this merciless mocker of the Nationalists? Step forward, Elena Whitham, SNP MSP and Scottish government drugs minister. Whitham, who recently called for the decriminalisation of all drugs, is splashed across the front page of today’s Daily Record. The paper has acquired her contributions to a WhatsApp group of SNP politicians. In addition to making known her feelings about Robison

Freddy Gray

What went wrong for Ron DeSantis?

30 min listen

Freddy is joined this week by Roger Kimball, editor of the New Criterion to talk about the diminishing power of Ron DeSantis. It wasn’t so long ago he looked like a serious challenger that could beat Donald Trump to the Republican nomination. Where did it all go wrong?

Andrew Tettenborn

Does Labour know the point of going to university?

It’s not difficult to pick holes in Education Secretary Gillian Keegan’s plan, publicised over the weekend, to deal with so-called ‘rip off’ university courses. True, there is a serious problem. Too many students are being inveigled into signing up for degrees with low entry requirements, little intellectual stimulation, a high drop-out rate and not a great deal deal of vocational usefulness at the end of it all. Something clearly must be done about this grievous waste of both young people’s time and also a great deal of just-about-managing taxpayers’ money. The trouble with the government’s answer is that it shows a miserable myopia about the point of higher education. The government’s

Terry Barnes

Australia’s Commonwealth games disgrace

In world sport, the Commonwealth games are a bit of a sideshow. In swimming and athletics, at least, they are seen as something of a mid-cycle training event for the Olympics. Australians, however, love the Commonwealth games. Not just because they are about friendly sporting rivalries and promote goodwill between the nearly 60 nations of the Commonwealth and Britain’s remaining dependencies. Nor because they are one of the few remaining institutions that justify the Commonwealth’s active existence. But because Australia wins big, every time. With only England as a serious rival for intra-Commonwealth supremacy, Australian teams and athletes are guaranteed a shower of gold medals, in a way the Olympics

Patrick O’Flynn

Is Sunak any closer to implementing his Rwanda plan?

When the Lib Dem peer Brian Paddick complained on social media last month that the House of Lords was keeping punishing hours, it is fair to say the plight of peers was not greeted with universal sympathy. Lord Paddick, the Lib Dem spokesman on home affairs in the upper house, had the battle around the Illegal Migration Bill in mind when he complained: ‘Last night I got home from @UKHouseofLords four hours earlier than the night before…10.30 p.m. instead of 2.30 a.m…I’m 65, many colleagues are older. This is unsustainable. So tired.’ Ministers face a perilous summer during which many thousands more Channel-hoppers will arrive ‘Oh, poor lamb,’ was one

Katy Balls

Will the child benefit row rain on Starmer’s by-election parade?

As the Tories chalk up a rare win with the passing of the Illegal Migration Bill in the Lords, Keir Starmer is facing a revolt in his own party over his insistence that a Labour government would keep the two-child benefit limit. As James Heale reports, MPs from across the party gathered at Monday’s parliamentary Labour party meeting to express concerns over Starmer’s position on a policy that both he and the majority of his shadow cabinet have heavily criticised in the past. MPs called for the Labour leader to think again but received little in the way of assurances from his deputy Angela Rayner. The question is whether the

Isabel Hardman

How the challenges to the Illegal Migration Bill were seen off

The Illegal Migration Bill is making its final crossing today to become an Act, after peers and MPs voted into the small hours on the final changes to the legislation. The House of Lords eventually dropped the amendments that they’d been holding out on, including the plan by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, for the government to draw up a proper international strategy for refugees and an amendment from Lord Randall of Uxbridge on victims of modern slavery. It became clear that these peers were not going to have any luck when Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick opened the ‘ping-pong’ debate in the Commons by telling MPs there would be

Kristina Murkett

The trouble with Rishi Sunak’s ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree crackdown

Rishi Sunak is a big fan of a ‘crack down’. He has previously vowed to crack down on migration, anti-social behaviour and climate protests. ‘Rip off’ university courses that ‘don’t offer the prospect of a decent job at the end of it’ are the PM’s latest target. But Sunak’s tough talk and aggressive rhetoric smacks of over-compensating for any lack of real detail. Politicians love to poke fun at ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees, but rarely define what they actually mean. In an interview on Good Morning Britain, higher education minister Robert Halfon couldn’t name a single degree, salary threshold or ‘good job’ against which the criteria for a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree could be set. It’s easier to sardonically mock fake

Monday

17 Jul 2023

James Heale

Inside Labour’s fiery Commons meeting

Sparks flew at tonight’s Parliamentary Labour party (PLP) meeting. Deputy leader Angela Rayner had been due to speak to MPs as part of an end of term pep talk. Instead, the ongoing row over Keir Starmer’s decision to maintain the two child benefit cap if Labour enters government dominated the entire session. Rayner herself has previously labelled the cap ‘obscene and inhumane’ and she was forced to defend herself when those past comments were raised by backbench Labour MPs. The deputy leader told her colleagues that she stood by the tweet but that there was a need for fiscal responsibility. More surprising than Rayner’s remarks were the range of criticisms

James Kirkup

I dislike David Cameron, but he was right on gay marriage

The other day, I found myself at a large event in a posh garden where David Cameron was present. Being a polite sort of person, he smiled and mouthed some sort of greeting as we passed. And being an impolite sort of person, I ignored him and walked on. When someone asked me why I’d been so rude, I explained that I was just being consistent. I’ve been very rude about Cameron in print over several years, so wouldn’t it be a bit hypocritical – craven, even – to be all smiley and polite in person? My rudeness has taken many forms and has several causes. I thought that Cameron’s

Steerpike

Labour mayor quits and torches Keir

So. Farewell then. Jamie Driscoll. The left-wing North of Tyne mayor – widely described as the ‘last Corbynista in power’ – has today quit the Labour party with a double-barrelled blast at Keir Starmer. Driscoll was last month barred from the longlist to run in the new expanded north east authority after appearing at an event alongside film maker Ken Loach. And today Driscoll has exacted his revenge by dramatically quitting and firing a departing blast at the Starmer army. In a series of tweets, Driscoll says that if he can raise £25,000 for a campaign by the end of August, he will stand as an independent against Labour’s candidate

James Heale

Labour row brews over two-child benefit cap

17 min listen

Keir Starmer has said that Labour will not be reversing the two-child benefits cap, after Angela Rayner said it was ‘obscene and inhumane’. But will he continue to back the policy, which allegedly saves the Treasury £1.3 billion, or change his mind in the face of pressure from his shadow front bench? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Ross Clark

It’s not for Sunak to save students from themselves

Rishi Sunak is not wrong to write, as he does in the Telegraph today, that too many young people are being ‘ripped off’ by poor-quality university courses, and that many would be better signing up for apprenticeships. But should a Conservative government really be threatening to tell the universities what to do? David Cameron’s tuition fee hike was meant to make discerning consumers out of university applicants. Rishi Sunak clearly thinks that’s failed. Cameron allowed universities to charge students tuition fees of up to £9,000 per year (since increased to £9,250). Universities would be able to charge full fees on good quality course, but find themselves having to reduce fees

Unlock full access to The Spectator

Tuesday

Monday