Politics

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

Tuesday

4 Jul 2023

Sajid Javid’s medicine won’t save the NHS

Does the NHS need a royal commission? Sajid Javid, the former health secretary, thinks so. ‘It is abundantly clear the status quo cannot continue,’ he writes in the Times. He argues that ‘a dispassionate and honest assessment is required’ from an ‘institution that is above the political fray’. Javid suggests that a royal commission that is ‘set up correctly’ could perform this function. Royal commissions sound august but don’t have a great track record of really helping governments make difficult decisions. They have become a byword in Westminster for kicking something not so much into the long grass as into a thick forest of delay. The Labour government set up

Steerpike

Five of the worst Mhairi Black moments

Another one bites the dust. Mhairi Black today becomes the sixth SNP MP to announce she is standing down at the next election. It’s a rather big deal given Black is the Westminster group’s deputy leader. She famously pushed Labour’s Douglas Alexander out of his seat at only 20 years of age, with her entry to parliament symbolising the party’s landslide victory in 2015. Black follows in the footsteps of former Westminster group leader Ian Blackford, onetime party treasurer Douglas Chapman, Peter Grant, Angela Crawley and Stewart Hosie in quitting the Commons. Currently Mr S calculates that 13 per cent of the SNP group will not be standing as MPs

Isabel Hardman

Sunak faces a grilling over his key targets

Does Rishi Sunak think he’s going to hit his key targets? The Prime Minister had to answer this question repeatedly today after being asked by members of the powerful Liaison Committee. His basic answer was that he was still very committed to the targets – but couldn’t say that he definitely would meet them. A particularly difficult set of questions came from Home Affairs Select Committee chair Diana Johnson, who grilled him on the details of how his Rwanda deportation policy would stop the boats, as Sunak has promised. The Prime Minister was very keen instead to talk about the agreement the government had struck with Albania, but said he

Lisa Haseldine

Drone strikes Russian military base near Moscow

Just as Moscow was beginning to recover from the shock of Evgeniy Prigozhin’s march on the capital, the city has, once again, been targeted by drones. In the early hours of this morning, according to the Russian ministry of defence, five drones were intercepted before they reached the capital. Eyewitnesses reported seeing two of the drones flying in the direction of Moscow at a low altitude of approximately 200 metres. They came within touching distance of the city, getting as far as the New Moscow suburb to the south west. According to Russia, four of the drones were shot down. Footage circulating on Russian social media allegedly filmed at the time the

Jake Wallis Simons

Don’t condemn Israel for defending itself

Car-rammings, shootings, stabbings and bombings targeting innocent men, women and children are a constant fear for Israelis. This morning, seven people were wounded in a ramming attack in Tel Aviv. Only a fortnight ago, four Israelis were gunned down by Hamas murderers. Last year, there were 5,000 such attacks. In 2023, more than 28 Israelis have so far been killed. How would we in Britain react to such events? The IRA years show all too clearly that, in the wake of a terror threat, the security forces fight back. Israel is adopting a similar approach – but is being roundly, and unfairly, condemned for doing so. On Monday night, Israeli

Katy Balls

Rishi’s Tory rating turns negative

As the average mortgage rate for a five-year fixed deal rises to 6 per cent, Rishi Sunak can find little relief in his personal approval ratings. ConservativeHome has published its monthly cabinet league table in which the Prime Minister’s support among Tory members has hit its lowest level since he entered 10 Downing Street. Sunak at least has plenty of company in the red – he is one of a record nine cabinet ministers to find themselves with sub-zero approval ratings. These ministers include his deputy Oliver Dowden, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove and Therese Coffey. Sunak is now on -2.7, compared to a positive rating of

James Heale

Rishi Sunak’s Tory approval ratings turn negative

12 min listen

Rishi Sunak’s personal approval rating among Tory members has turned negative for the first time in his premiership. Why is the Prime Minister becoming more unpopular in his party? Should he be worried about internal dissent? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Christopher Snowdon

The CMA is wrong to go after high supermarket fuel prices

Picture two village shops. If both shopkeepers are doing nicely out of selling the same product at a high price, they may decide to keep their prices the same even when the wholesale price falls. This is known as tacit collusion. Both retailers have an incentive to co-operate with each other at the consumers’ expense. But each shopkeeper also has an incentive to lower the price to make more sales and more profit. If another shop opens, this temptation will grow stronger. If a dozen shops open, it is almost certain that one of them will start a price war. Unless, that is, they form a cartel – which would

Steerpike

Secessionists seethe over the ‘Scottish coronation’

King Charles III is all set for his ‘Scottish coronation’ in Edinburgh tomorrow. Yet despite the royal fervour north of the border, Mr S hears that the nationalists are still not satisfied. Alex Salmond of the pro-independence Alba party and Green co-leaders, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, have all snubbed the royal invitation. Quelle surprise. ‘This ceremony is entirely wrong-headed and neither fish nor fowl,’ raged Salmond, after revealing he has declined the monarch’s invitation to what he called the ‘artificial and second rate ceremony’. According to Salmond, ‘Charles is being poorly advised by a group of courtiers who have a great love of pomp and no understanding of circumstance.’

Hardeep Singh

When will the world wake up to the persecution of Nigerian Christians?

More Christians are killed in Nigeria for their faith than anywhere else in the world. Of the 5,621 people murdered worldwide in 2022 for their belief in Christ, almost nine in ten died in Nigeria, according to the charity Open Doors. On average, this equates to 14 Christians killed every single day last year in Nigeria. Many more Christians are being kidnapped, and there is little sign of this terrible violence ending any time soon. Such horrifying figures are hard for us in the West to comprehend; we take freedom of religion – a protected right enshrined in law – for granted. But despite the unending and seemingly escalating cycle

Monday

3 Jul 2023

Kristina Murkett

Is this really the best Labour can offer teachers?

Bridget Phillipson was appointed Labour’s shadow education secretary in November 2021. After 18 months in the role, she has now finally unveiled Labour’s ambitious new idea to help tackle the teacher retention and recruitment crisis: use the tax raid on private school fees to fund a £2,400 welcome bonus to every teacher who has completed their two years of training. This is a classic case of copying someone’s homework, except – no surprises – it wasn’t very good the first time round. The Conservatives have already increased the starting salaries of newly-qualified teachers to £30,000. Teaching unions have already overwhelmingly voted to reject a one-off payment. The government has already tried giving bonuses to maths teachers,

Kate Andrews

The NHS isn’t underfunded

We’re going to hear a lot about the NHS this week: mostly tributes and praise – and even a few prayers – all in recognition of its 75th anniversary on Wednesday. The loudest criticism you’re likely to hear will be about underfunding – which is not the fault of NHS officials, really, but rather the fault of politicians who set the health service’s budget. The NHS is only falling short on patient outcomes, the logic goes, because it’s being denied resources in the first place. Is it really? New data published by the OECD this afternoon pops some of those birthday balloons. It reveals that the NHS actually remains one of the best-funded

Isabel Hardman

The ‘New Conservatives’ are useful for Braverman

How unhelpful are the New Conservatives to their party in government? They insist that they’re fully supportive of Rishi Sunak, but today’s 12-point plan to cut net migration isn’t exactly a love letter to the Prime Minister. Someone who does seem rather less annoyed by the new caucus is Suella Braverman, who as luck would have it was taking Home Office Questions in the House of Commons this afternoon. One of the members of the new caucus, James Daly, had a question about ‘what steps she is taking to reduce net migration’, and the Home Secretary replied: Net migration is too high, and this government are determined to bring it

Steerpike

Parliamentary police officer purged every six months

These days, the reputation of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection (PaDP) Unit is at a low ebb, following the scandals over its former members David Carrick and Wayne Couzens. A review of the wider force found it was institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic, with the PaDP singled out for particular condemnation. In March of this year, Politico reported that the unit’s officers had received 439 complaints in 2020, 2021 and 2022, including a total of 264 by members of the public. Now, Mr S has done his own digging and it transpires that every six months an officer on the parliamentary unit is being removed from duty due to allegations of criminal

Tom Slater

Virginia Woolf doesn’t need a trigger warning

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? Americans, apparently. Or at least that’s the conclusion Vintage US seems to have drawn. The publishing house has slapped a new edition of Woolf’s 1927 novel, To the Lighthouse, with a trigger warning, alerting US readers to its potentially upsetting content. (Vintage UK hasn’t followed suit.) The warning, reported in the Daily Telegraph, doesn’t mention anything specific, probably because you’d have to strain yourself to find anything particularly offensive about this philosophical, semi-autobiographical novel about a well-to-do family’s holidays on the Isle of Skye. Instead, it just warns hypothetical, easily offended readers about how old – and thus potentially terrifying – the novel is: ‘This

Freddy Gray

Joe Biden is not OK

25 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Spectator columnist, Douglas Murray who wrote in the magazine this week about Joe Biden’s endless gaffes and the incompetence which Douglas argues has spilled into the rest of the party. Produced by Natasha Feroze.

Steerpike

Bank of England: ‘any gender’ can be pregnant

Talk about getting your priorities right. As ministers battle to get inflation down from the double digit highs of earlier this year, it seems not all at the Bank of England are preoccupied with this struggle. For it has today been revealed that staff at Britain’s central bank – whose main job is to keep inflation at just two per cent – have been spending their time drawing up new, right-on pregnancy guidelines. The main takeaway? People of any gender identity can become pregnant, apparently. In its submission last year to Stonewall (who else?), the Bank of England boasted about how its new ‘family leave’ policy, introduced in June 2021,

James Heale

Who are the New Conservatives?

10 min listen

A group of 25 Tory MPs, calling themselves the New Conservatives, have launched a plan that they say will cut net migration from 606,000, last year’s figure, to 226,000, the figure in 2019. Temporary visa schemes for care workers should be shut, the ‘skilled work’ salary threshold raised, and the number of refugees accepted into the UK capped. Who is in the group, and what do they want? James Heale speaks to Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Steerpike

Ministers say Sue Gray breached Civil Service code

Sue Gray did break the Civil Service code, according to a Cabinet Office investigation released by the government. The Partygate prober-in-chief has today been found to have breached the guidelines which she did so much to uphold during her six years as head of the government’s, er, Proprietary and Ethics team. Gray began negotiations with Labour in October of last year and thus violated the rules whereby individuals must declare all relevant outside interests to their line manager as soon as they arise. Government advice states that individuals ‘should err on the side of caution when considering what to declare but the onus is on the individual to consider what might

Katy Balls

Red Wall MPs go up against Sunak on legal migration

Rishi Sunak is facing calls from the latest Tory caucus – ‘the New Conservatives’ – to take a series of steps to clamp down on legal migration. The group, made up of MPs from the 2017 and 2019 intake, formed last month and largely features MPs with so-called Red Wall seats. Members include Tory rising star Miriam Cates as well as Lee Anderson (this has raised eyebrows as Anderson is deputy party chairman, which would usually prevent an MP joining a backbench pressure group). For their first policy push, the New Conservatives have released a 12-point plan which they claim would allow the government to cut net migration to Britain

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