Politics

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

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why is Britain so worried about Denmark’s mink farm Covid outbreak?

How worried should we be about a mutant strain of Coronavirus found in Denmark’s mink farms? The virus was found on its farms in June, and it emerged a few days ago that a dozen people had been infected with a strain of Covid called ‘Cluster 5’. This has raised the prospect of a new, more virulent vaccine-proof strain: a prospect dismissed in some places but being taken very seriously in 10 Downing St. So seriously that Britain has just become the only country in the world to close its borders to anyone from Denmark. Francois Balloux, a professor of genetics at University College London  has downplayed it as a story “making the

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What does Biden’s win mean for Britain?

So, how will Joe Biden’s victory affect US-UK relations? As I write in the Times, the downsides for this government are obvious. Biden fiercely opposed Brexit and those around him, like many on the American left, look to London and see a mini-Trump. They will regard other leaders from Merkel to Macron as more natural partners for them. The first phone calls are likely to go to them, not to Johnson. If the transition period ends without a trade deal and the Northern Ireland clauses of the Internal Market Bill come into force, that will further strain relations. The bulk of Biden’s key appointments will need to be confirmed by

Matt Kilcoyne

Nicola Sturgeon is not so different to Donald Trump

Nicola Sturgeon sank to a new low this morning. The SNP leader bizarrely seemed to compare opposing a second independence referendum in Scotland to Trump refusing to concede the US election. This is, of course, the same SNP leader who still refuses to accept the SNP’s 2014 referendum loss – a referendum her party claimed would be a ‘once in a generation’ vote. Perhaps Sturgeon should take a long hard look in the mirror before claiming that ‘politicians who rage against democracy don’t prevail’. Let’s remember too, that as well as rejecting the decisive No vote in the independence referendum in 2014, Sturgeon has also raged against the British vote

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Was the three tier system working all along?

14 min listen

As Liverpool begins it’s mass testing trial, ONS figures published today show that the coronavirus infection rate was fell in the week ending October 31. So was the tiered system working all along, meaning the new lockdown is unnecessary? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about the new data, Scottish independence, and the US election.

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Trump doubles down on unfounded election claims

Tensions over the election outcome are escalating in the United States, as President Donald Trump repeated unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. Nearly a day and a half after Trump prematurely declared victory, he took to the stage at a press conference held in the White House and did so again, arguing ‘if you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.’ He also used the opportunity to double down on his assertions of foul play: ‘they’re trying to rig an election. They’re trying to steal an election,’ he said. Team Trump has not provided evidence for these serious allegations. The claims remain unfounded,

Thursday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Is this the end for Trumpism?

28 min listen

What are the latest developments in the US presidential election? (01:15) – Lara is joined by the Spectator’s economics correspondent Kate Andrews and the Spectator US’s editor Freddy Gray, who is currently in Pennsylvania. What is it like to care for a disabled child during a time of lockdown? (09:19) – The journalist Sam Carlisle discusses the lack of support for her daughter Elvi with the Education Select Committee Chairman Robert Halfon. And finally, should churches keep their doors open throughout the pandemic? (20:42) – Journalist Laura Freeman thinks so, and considers the issue with Reverend Steve Morris from St Cuthbert’s Church in North Wembley. Presented by Lara Prendergast. Produced

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Has Rishi Sunak lost the argument?

14 min listen

The Chancellor announced new furlough measures today, something that he has long been opposed to. Katy Balls speaks to Kate Andrews and James Forsyth about whether or not Rishi Sunak has lost the argument.

Steerpike Steerpike

NHS boss’s dig at Whitty and Vallance

Sir Simon Stevens, the chief exec of NHS England, joined Boris Johnson during this evening’s Downing Street press conference where the pair sought to justify England’s second national lockdown. Stevens, however, went one step further: he had a dig at Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance. He told the press conference:   I’ve watched a number of these press briefings and sometimes the charts can be a bit hard to keep up with. So I’ve just got one chart today that indisputably sets out what we in the health service are seeing.  Stevens’s chart — which shows the number of patients in hospital in England with Covid-19 — was then described by the NHS boss as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris can’t afford a third lockdown

Boris Johnson is holding a press conference at 5 p.m. on the new England-wide lockdown. This follows last night’s vote where thirty-odd Tory MPs voted against the new measures. But listening to that debate, it was clear that even among many of the Tories who voted for the lockdown there is deep scepticism about the measure. The biggest danger for the government, as I say in the magazine this week, is that this lockdown turns out to be tactical, not strategic. The driving force behind it was the fear that the NHS would be overwhelmed. Johnson has indicated that if infection levels are falling on 2 December, he will deem

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Has Rishi Sunak lost the argument?

These days Rishi Sunak’s appearances before the House of Commons tend to mark changes to pre-existing economic support schemes. His proposed winter economy plan didn’t survive a month before alterations had to be made. But even by recent standards, today’s statement marks a big shift for the Chancellor. Not only is the furlough scheme back — despite previous insistences that it must end — it is available until the end of March (with the specifics of the policy to be reviewed in January). Meanwhile, the jobs retention scheme, which had been imagined as a follow-up scheme for the end of furlough, has been scrapped. While Sunak and his supporters take issue with the idea that

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: SNP politician grilled by Andrew Neil

SNP politicians often get an easy ride when they appear on politics programmes south of the border, where most of the discussion tends to revolve around the performance of the Westminster government. Unfortunately, that was not the case for the SNP MP Alyn Smith, who appeared on the BBC’s Politics Live this afternoon. Near the end of the show, the politician received quite the grilling from Andrew Neil, who was appearing on the show as a guest for the final time. Neil began by tearing apart the SNP’s woeful record on poverty and deprivation, after which Smith suggested the SNP needed more powers to solve Scotland’s problems. In response, Neil pointed out

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Sunak’s furlough extension paves the way for more lockdowns

England has only been back in national lockdown for a matter of hours and already economic support packages are rolling in — not for the duration of this lockdown (furlough was already confirmed until 2 December) but for the months to follow after the country exits lockdown. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has abandoned a return to the jobs support scheme when lockdown ends — which sees the majority of financial costs fall on the employer — and instead decided to extend the furlough scheme across the UK in its most generous form. Furlough will run until March 2021 at least, with the government paying 80 per cent of workers’ wages for

Steven Fielding

What Keir Starmer can learn from Joe Biden

Even before the final result of the US Presidential election was known, the British left was ready with its hot takes. Momentum, which continues to proudly hold aloft the flickering flame of Corbynism, was amongst the first out of the traps, claiming that Joe Biden’s failure to achieve a landslide victory confirmed, ‘what we already know: that corporate centrism cannot deliver a decisive defeat to insurgent right-wing populism or deliver real change’. Expect more of this kind of thing from across the Labour party: somehow or other events in the US will be magically used to authenticate already-entrenched positions. Since the parallel rise of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, the

Robert Peston Robert Peston

The Bank of England’s terrifying economic projections

The Bank of England includes as one of its ‘conditioning assumptions’ in its forecasts today that the Bank Rate – the interest rate that is the benchmark for all rates – becomes negative for the first time in history next year, at minus 0.1 per cent. It describes a world in which banks are charged for not lending to us and we are charged for saving. And it is one manifestation of the desperate economic scarring caused by the virus. Another striking characteristic of today’s Bank of England projections is that UK GDP, or national income, is set to shrink by 11 per cent for the whole of 2020 –

The Spectator

Whatever the science of this lockdown, the execution has been a disgrace

The benefit of having a lockdown announced some days in advance is the ability to savour what is about to be lost. People have been able to visit friends and family, not knowing when it will be legal to meet again. Parishioners have attended church to say their farewells, as have small groups of friends and family. Small shops stayed open until midnight on Wednesday to serve customers, restaurants were booked up. Yes, we face the return of Covid-19. But was also face a government that seems in a flap, unable to decide what to do. Boris Johnson has said that this latest lockdown will last only four weeks, and there

James Forsyth James Forsyth

This lockdown comes at a high political cost

Keir Starmer has his first attack line of the next general election campaign. He will say that England’s second lockdown was longer than it needed to be because the Prime Minister didn’t act when he had the chance. If Boris Johnson had listened to the scientists, Labour will say, we’d have had a two week ‘circuit-breaker’ and controlled the virus. As things stand, a man who set his face against lockdown was then forced to adopt one — making it longer, more painful and costing far more jobs. A couple of weeks ago, there was a clear dividing line: Labour wanted national measures; the Tories wanted regional ones. So Starmer

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

France vs Islamism: how does Macron hope to prosecute his war?

Montpellier France is under attack. Two weeks ago, Samuel Paty, a middle school teacher, was decapitated in a leafy suburb of Paris after showing his students cartoons of the prophet Mohammed published by Charlie Hebdo in 2015. Last week, there were three killings at the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice, and after that, an Orthodox priest in Lyon was shot and gravely wounded. ‘Tell my children I love them,’ were the dying words of Simone Barreto Silva, a 44-year-old mother of three and herself an immigrant, killed in Nice. France has gone to ‘war’ with Islamic ‘separatists’, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has claimed. The police have been rounding up the

Wednesday

Matt McDonald

Biden wins Wisconsin and Michigan — is his victory imminent?

The 2020 election results have been rolling in. Joe Biden has won California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Washington DC. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming have been called for the President. CNN called Wisconsin for Biden on Wednesday. The Trump campaign is set to demand a recount of the state, citing ‘reports of irregularities in several Wisconsin counties which raise serious doubts about the validity of the results.’ CNN

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Theresa May attacks lockdown

Theresa May has continued her campaign of criticism from the backbenches, questioning the government’s thinking over England’s month-long lockdown. The former PM pointed out the problems with the now-infamous 4,000 deaths a day graph used by Vallance and Whitty at Saturday’s press conference.  In fact, she went a step further, pointedly telling the Commons: ‘For many people, it looks as if the figures are chosen to support the policy rather than the policy being based on the figures.’ Ouch!

James Forsyth James Forsyth

PMQs: Starmer failed to land his punch

Today’s PMQs was not an enlightening affair. Keir Starmer tried to drag out of Boris Johnson an admission that the England-wide lockdown would continue past 2 December if the virus was not in retreat. But Johnson dodged that question. Johnson’s own side, while grumpy, is not in outright rebellion Of more concern for Labour will be the fact that Starmer failed to land his most effective point: that Johnson has now adopted the policy Labour was calling for on 13 October. The move from a regional system of tiered restrictions to a nationwide lockdown is a big shift from Johnson — but Starmer couldn’t pithily sum that up today. Indeed, Johnson claimed that