Gus Carter

Back in 2005, Boris Johnson wrote that among geopolitical gloomsters, China was becoming the ‘fashionable new dread’. They were obsessed with the idea that this ‘incubator of strange diseases’ was angling to become ‘the next world superpower’ — ‘China will not dominate the globe’ he concluded. The China question is now the most fashionable new

The House of Commons was due to vote on the so-called ‘genocide amendment’ to the Trade Bill later today. The proposal gives British courts the right to decide if a country is committing genocide and was on course to trigger a major Tory rebellion — with China hawks ready to take a stand. However, that plan has been

Boris Johnson has announced sweeping new Covid restrictions, imposing a curfew on pubs and restaurants and telling office workers to return to home working if they can. In a statement to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister said the UK is at a ‘perilous turning point’ and promised that more measures would be introduced

Last night’s second reading of the Internal Market Bill passed with a comfortable 77 votes for the government. In truth, this was always going to happen. A second reading vote confirms merely the principle of a bill so the real question was over the size of any potential rebellion rather than the future of the

Following widespread speculation that the UK government intends to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis was summoned to the chamber to answer an urgent question on the issue. Despite government attempts to suggest that intended changes to the Withdrawal Agreement through the new Internal Market Bill were simply to tie up loose

For many Lib Dems, this leadership election felt like an existential choice. The party is now on its fourth leader in almost as many years, while Brexit has left the party a polarising – and increasingly irrelevant – force in British politics. Sir Ed Davey made clear that he knows his party is facing serious problems during

The report into Russian interference in British politics was finally published on Tuesday morning following a nine-month delay. Here are the five most interesting takeaways from the report:  1. The government ‘actively avoided’ investigating Russian interference  During this morning’s press conference, intelligence and security committee member Stuart Hosie made the extraordinary claim that ‘no one in government knew if Russia

Dominic Cummings may have committed a minor breach of lockdown restrictions during a trip to Barnard Castle, an investigation by Durham police has concluded. The force has said that the journey ‘might have been a minor breach of the regulations that would have warranted police intervention’.  The statement released earlier today says that while his trip up from London

Every evening, at around 5 o’clock, a minister walks through the large panelled doors to Downing Street’s state dining room and delivers the daily coronavirus briefing. The conference always begins in the same way – ‘I’d like to update you on the latest daily figures’. The minister in question then proceeds to tell us just how many tests

One of the great Cameron legacies has been an era of very low unemployment. In his biography, the former PM cited two defining moments of his teenage years; the first was getting caught smoking weed at Eton and the second was reading the 1982 IEA pamphlet ‘What cost unemployment?’. While Cameron avoided many of the radical