Politics

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

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Boris Johnson’s Krakatoa moment

He blew his stack. His mop almost came loose from his scalp. He wasn’t just jabbing his forefinger and tossing his arms around, he was throwing combinations and swinging at punch-bags. He almost did the Ali shuffle. At PMQs Boris delivered an amazingly combative performance. Last week he smouldered like Etna. This week the summit exploded. This was Krakatoa. Sir Keir arrived, with his starched quiff and his icy smirk, hoping to undo the Prime Minister by stealth. He raised the notorious October quote when Boris is alleged to have said that ‘bodies piled high’ would be preferable to a renewed lockdown. Did he say that? ‘No,’ Boris replied. ‘Lockdowns

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris was rattled at PMQs

Boris Johnson did not have a good Prime Minister’s Questions. It was never going to be a comfortable session, given the multiple rows about the funding of the Downing Street flat revamp and his reported comments about letting bodies ‘pile up’. But the way the Prime Minister approached it ensured both that the story will keep running and that he betrayed quite how annoyed he is by it. It is little use trying, as Johnson repeatedly did, to argue that the British people are not interested in the line of questioning that Sir Keir Starmer was pursuing. For one thing, there is nothing like a politician claiming that something is

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Boris Johnson has always been a penny-pincher

Sometimes, political scandals are important for what they reveal about character. The row over the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat seems to me one such case. Boris for many years earned a quarter of a million pounds a year for his Telegraph column, on top of his various other jobs. He can be expected to earn pretty well on leaving office, as Prime Ministers usually do.  Even with his complex private life and considerable outgoings, it seems unlikely to me that having set his heart on a £58,000 refurbishment of his living quarters he couldn’t one way or another lay hands on the dough to pay for it. What’s

Andrew McQuillan

It’s remarkable that Arlene Foster lasted this long

Arlene Foster’s spell as leader of the Democratic Unionist party is over. Today, Foster announced that she is stepping down as party leader on 28 May, and resigning her position as First Minister by the end of June. Her resignation came after a letter, signed by three quarters of the party’s MLAs alongside some MPs, was submitted to its chair Lord Morrow calling for her departure. In what is the most dramatic case of unionist infighting since Foster herself helped destabilise David Trimble’s leadership of the Ulster Unionists in the early 2000s, moves are also afoot to remove her erstwhile deputy Nigel Dodds. Several of her most senior advisers, including the party’s chief

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Electoral Commission launches probe into Boris’s flat refurbishment

The row over the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat has stepped up a gear this morning after the Electoral Commission launched a formal investigation. Following initial enquiries to determine who originally paid £58,000 towards the cost of the lavish refurbishment of the Prime Minister and his fiancée Carrie Symonds’s flat, the commission has concluded there are ‘reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence or offences may have occurred’. As a result, a formal investigation is now underway to establish whether this is the case. So what are they looking for? The government announced last week that Johnson has footed the bill for the works, with Liz Truss insisting on Sunday that the Prime

Steerpike Steerpike

Cameroons clash over Downing Street ‘skip’

As Flatgate rumbles on, it appears the government has adopted a new communications approach to a controversy involving the Prime Minister’s spouse: send for Michael Gove’s wife. The Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine popped up on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning to firefight the situation – an interesting choice given her love of incendiary quotes in her weekly columns. Presenter Nick Robinson asked Vine what she made of the row over whether £58,000 of Tory party money was spent on renovating part of No. 10 to which the latter responded with gusto: The thing about the whole No 10. refurbishment thing is that the Prime Minister can’t be expected to live in

Steerpike Steerpike

A politician’s guide to non-denial denials

Michael Gove was deployed to the Commons on Monday afternoon to answers questions on the ministerial code, an hour-long appearance in which he was (inevitably) asked about that day’s Daily Mail splash: ‘Boris: Let the bodies pile high in their thousands’. An awkward question for any minister to handle, you might think, but the oleaginous Gove just about got away with it. Asked directly about the reports, the Cabinet Office minister gave a lengthy reply which contained this key passage to wriggle out of trouble again: Tens of thousands of people were dying. The Prime Minister made a decision in that meeting to trigger a second lockdown. He made a

Paul Hunter

How concerned should we be by the Indian variant?

In recent weeks there has been a lot of new-found optimism in Britain with regards to Covid: case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths have dramatically fallen and the vaccine roll out continues at pace. The virus has now been overtaken as the main cause of death in England and Wales for the first time since autumn. But the pandemic continues to grow, and nowhere more so is this the case than India. Its hospitals are overrun. Crematoriums are overwhelmed and the first of nine planes from Britain set off on Sunday night to provide oxygen, ventilators and aid. Why should it be surging now? One of the theories behind this explosion

Tuesday

Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

Why is Ursula von der Leyen still talking about Sofagate?

Almost a month has passed since the now infamous ‘sofa-gate’ incident where, during a meeting with Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, Ursula von der Leyen was not provided with a chair. Instead she was forced to sit on a nearby sofa. And yet it is this event – rather than Europe’s ongoing vaccine woes – that seems to be at the forefront of the president of the European Commission’s thoughts. Von der Leyen used a speech given to the European Parliament to reiterate accusations of sexism over sofa-gate. The president did everything she could to drive home her feminist message, concluding that:  ‘I am the president of the European commission. And this

Kristina Murkett

How Britain can really help India tackle its Covid crisis

India’s Covid situation is dire: hospitals have run out of beds (some hospitals are treating patients in cars), people are turning to the black market for drugs and oxygen cylinders, and mass cremations are taking place in car parks. The official daily death toll is around 2000, but the likely reality is much, much higher. Britain has offered to help by sending 600 pieces of medical equipment to support the country in its Covid crisis. But the reality is that our country could do much more to help its ally than just offer a token shipment of supplies. The UK continues to block a patent waiver designed to boost the

Steerpike Steerpike

Exclusive: Murdoch pulls News UK television channel

Plans for a News UK channel to rival the BBC appear to be dead in the water.  Last year it was reported that Rupert Murdoch was planning to expand his news empire by launching a new channel in the UK that would take inspiration from Fox News in the US.  Alas it’s not to be. The company’s Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks has today emailed all staff to announce that broadcast executive David Rhodes is leaving the company at the end of June. It follows reports in February that News UK planned to focus on streaming, with Brooks telling staff that News UK had concluded it was not ‘commercially viable’ to launch a linear news channel. Instead the company is looking at on demand

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can Labour make the Tory sleaze allegations stick?

One of the reasons the row isn’t fading about Tory sleaze allegations and the Prime Minister’s conduct is that there are so many different facets to it. Each row has its own faction within the Conservative party and indeed within No. 10, and so far there is scant evidence that any of these factions are backing down. Labour isn’t likely to benefit from this story politically just yet While the stories are now front-page news, it is also the case that allegations about special treatment for friends and donors have been bubbling away for a year now. This is causing some satisfaction to some of those around Labour leader Sir

JP O'Malley

Vince Cable: on Brexit and the case for working with Beijing

Sir Vince Cable is talking about Brexit and damaged bicycle wheels. ‘The metaphor I like to use when talking about the economic consequences of Brexit is a slow puncture,’ the 77-year-old explains from his home in Twickenham, South West London. ‘Because effectively we’re losing access to Britain’s largest market of goods and services.’ ‘I was initially encouraged that Brexit campaigners wanted to pursue an open and global Britain,’ he says. ‘And I think that’s absolutely right because that is very much part of the old free trade tradition… But we are now in a world which is probably going in the opposite direction. And I fear that Britain now stands

Peter Apps

Cladding risks creating a political crisis for the Tories

Today, for the third time in as many months, MPs will vote on an amendment to prevent the costs of removing cladding and fixing other fire safety defects being passed on to residents. For some time now, thousands of British homeowners have been left fearing for their lives and facing ruinous bills after fire safety issues following the Grenfell Tower fire were identified in tens of thousands of tall and medium rise buildings across the country. In most cases, building owners have been able to charge individual flat owners to fix the defects, even though their apartments were signed off as safe under government regulations at the time. The failure

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour’s tax attack in Hartlepool backfires

Pity the poor people of Hartlepool. Next week’s parliamentary by election has seen an army of activists pouring in to the Red Wall seat, with Labour desperate to cling on to a seat that last went blue in the days of Supermac. CCHQ have been playing down chances of a Tory gain but one Labour insider has told Steerpike their party’s internal polling is ‘dire’ – a situation not helped by ‘MILF-gate‘ or a farrago over St George’s cross flags. Now though Labour are embroiled in another taxing row after deputy leader Angela Rayner launched an attack on the Conservative Hartlepool candidate, Jill Mortimer. Following reports that Mortimer spent a decade

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why the Cummings row won’t harm Boris

It’s hard not to agree with those who believe that Boris Johnson, forced into the second Covid-19 lockdown, did say the words: ‘No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands.’  The allegation seems particularly convincing because it was reported in the Daily Mail, whose political team is one of the most plugged in to goings-on at the top of government, the civil service and the Conservative party. Westminster, the media, the infinite outrage-generator that is Twitter — all have been going into overdrive about the Prime Minister’s remarks I am convinced, too, because it sounds all too plausible. Before entering Downing Street, the Prime Minister made a

Andrew Willshire

Joe Biden’s skewed climate change priorities

It’s not hard to see why politicians like Joe Biden and Boris Johnson want to talk about climate change.  First of all, it looks good to the electorate. Caring about the planet (or at least being seen to care about the planet) is one of the things that marks you out as ‘a good person’. It also allows leaders to compare themselves to other leaders and take pride in being more hardline than others. It tends to result in massive government-sponsored infrastructure programmes, requiring the Prime Minister and various cabinet ministers to keep their hi-vis jackets and hard hats within easy reach. Most importantly of all, the results won’t be

Samantha Smith

The class of 2020 are being failed yet again

Last year, after the cancellation of exams and the ensuing A Level results fiasco, which saw thousands of students downgraded by an algorithm, the Government promised this would never happen again. They asked students to put their faith in a system that had failed them once before, and guaranteed that lessons would be learnt. Yet, one year later, young people are being put in yet another impossible position by the education system. Despite earlier assurances from the Education Secretary that exams would not be cancelled this year, teacher-assessed grades will end up deciding the fate of the class of 2020/21. That will create its own set of problems for many

Francis Elliott

Can Boris finally ‘fix’ social care?

It’s been almost a year since Boris Johnson said he would not wait to ‘fix the problem of social care that every government has flunked for the last 30 years’. With a green paper detailing the government’s plan finally due, we’ll soon learn whether the Prime Minister is as good as his word. We’ll also see whether Johnson succeeds in avoiding the pitfalls encountered by his predecessors. Might he tumble into the same trap that blew up Theresa May’s bungled snap election? The wrecks of those previous attempts – sent out with such high hopes – are plentiful. Talking to the politicians in charge of those efforts from three different