Politics

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

Wednesday

Andrew Tettenborn

Judges are empowering Just Stop Oil

It has been argued that the preparedness of the courts to declare governmental action unlawful is vital to the rule of law. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Yesterday’s High Court decision which annulled new police powers to control protests shows that there might be two sides to this, especially when you find yourself on the school run behind a deliberately dawdling crocodile of JSO protesters or in front of a a bunch of XR zealots lying in the road. The rule of law is all very well, but progressives cannot be allowed to have it all their own way The background to the episode is boringly legalistic. (Please accept apologies in advance.) The Public Order

Henry Hill

Will Ireland’s police question the ex-IRA boss who says he killed Mountbatten?

Do you remember when, last December, the Irish government took the United Kingdom to court over proposals for dealing with the legacy of the Troubles? They, and many domestic critics in the UK, said that plans to establish a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission – in which individuals could receive an amnesty in exchange for honest testimony – amounted to a get-out-of-jail-free card for people who may have committed terrible crimes.  ‘Yes, I blew him up,’ Michael Hayes said Well, nothing quite puts that story in perspective like this week’s report that Michael Hayes, a former IRA commander now living in the Republic of Ireland, has openly boasted about being

James Heale James Heale

Visa figures fall again – but is it enough?

It’s a big day for stats in British politics. Following the news that inflation has dropped to 2.3 per cent, the Home Office has this morning published its latest figures for visa applications. They reveal a 25 per cent fall across all visa routes in the first four months of 2024, following the package of changes that the Home Secretary announced in December 2023. The most significant drop was in student dependant numbers, which fell by 79 per cent.  This big fall is one of the reasons why Home Secretary James Cleverly is reluctant to clamp down even further on the graduate visa route. Last week’s report by the Migration

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: BBC’s Emma Barnett in bust up with Jeremy Hunt

Another day, another drama. This time it involves the BBC’s Today programme, where interviewer Emma Barnett was quizzing Jeremy Hunt on the UK’s economic prospects. The conversation didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned for the Chancellor… Barnett started on how today’s inflation figures have decreased to 2.3 per cent this morning — the lowest level in three years — which Hunt first hailed as ‘good news’, before admitting it may take a little longer until voters feel better off. His interviewer then went on to broach the subject of Liz Truss, lecturing Hunt on how ‘some of the shocks’ of the former PM’s premiership are ‘still being felt’ by

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Inflation falls close to target, but could interest rate cuts be delayed?

The UK inflation rate has slowed to 2.3 per cent on the year to April, down from 3.2 per cent in March. This marks the lowest headline inflation rate in almost three years, before the unwinding of lockdowns and release of pent-up demand sent prices spiralling. The Spectator‘s Data Hub outlines the inflation saga below: April’s slowdown is largely thanks to Ofgem’s reduction to the energy price cap, as higher energy costs fell out of the data. The lower cap saw bills reduce by around 12 per cent: a reduction of £238 from the average household’s yearly bill. According to the Office for National Statistics, the ‘prices of electricity, gas

Eliot Wilson

Zelensky’s time as president is up, but he’s right to stay put

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky’s five-year term is up, but he’s staying put. Unsurprisingly, some of Zelensky’s critics – and the Kremlin – have questioned his legitimacy. But Zelensky, who marked five years in office on 20 May, is right not to step down. The idea that, as a result, there has been some unprecedented outrage against democracy simply doesn’t stand up. It is impossible to conduct a free, fair and representative presidential election The practical problem in holding an election is obvious. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its occupation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014 gave it control of 16,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory. The full-scale military

John Ferry John Ferry

Did the SNP miss the boat on saving commercial shipbuilding on the Clyde?

Scotland’s SNP government would like nothing better than to be seen to have saved commercial shipbuilding on the Clyde. It likes the idea so much it has spent almost half a billion pounds of taxpayer money on the effort while trying to produce two new ferries for Scotland’s island communities. How ironic would it be if an opportunity emerged to finally create a commercially viable yard in Glasgow only for nationalist politics to get in the way of it coming to fruition? Yet that may well be what has happened in recent months. If anyone is going to save commercial shipbuilding on the Clyde, it probably won’t be the SNP

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Prince Harry loses bid to name Murdoch in phone-hacking trial

As much as Prince Harry claims to hate the media, he never manages to stay out of the spotlight for long. Now it transpires that the renegade royal has been reprimanded by a High Court judge for trying to bag ‘trophy targets’ — and has been told that he cannot take phone-hacking allegations against Rupert Murdoch to trial. The pampered Prince’s team claimed at a court hearing in March that Murdoch, owner of News Group Newspapers (NGN), was aware of unlawful activity taking place at his media outlets as far back as 2004. The allegations made against Murdoch suggest the media mogul ‘turned a blind eye’ to reports while he

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can the Tories ensure the infected blood scandal never happens again?

Are the compensation payments announced today for victims of the infected blood scandal a just response to what happened? Paymaster General John Glen announced that on top of the £100,000 interim payments already made to victims, an additional £210,000 will be paid within 90 days. Glen explained the urgency: ‘I recognise that each week members of the infected blood community are dying from their infections. There may be people – indeed, there will be people – listening today who are thinking to themselves that they may not live to receive compensation, so I want to address those concerns, too.’ Families and carers for those infected will be able to claim

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

How Israel should fight back against the ICC’s lawfare

The application for arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant is an act of lawfare. In seeking the detention of Israel’s political and military leadership during its war against Hamas, Karim Ahmad Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), is inviting that body to intervene in the conflict. Granting these warrants would require ICC signatory countries such as the UK to arrest the men if they set foot in their territory and hand them over. The likely effect of their arrest would be to cripple Israel’s war effort and throw the country into political chaos. Khan is proposing, in effect, that the ICC

James Heale James Heale

Is there finally good news for the government?

11 min listen

The IMF has upgraded the 2024 economic forecast for the UK. What does this mean for the Government and could more good news follow this week? And, with speeches on tax, benefit crackdowns and tackling anti-semitism, what should we make of all this political activity? Will we see the return of ‘the hot lectern guy’? Kate Andrews and James Heale join Katy Balls to discuss. Produced by Patrick Gibbons

Steerpike Steerpike

Taxpayer-funded porn project causes uproar in Scotland

Scottish government-backed quango Creative Scotland is back in the limelight over its porn project controversy. As Mr S wrote in March, the director of a hardcore pornographic performance, ‘Rein’, managed to secure £85,000 of taxpayers’ cash for her rather, um, explicit work. Now it can be revealed that, despite officials denying full knowledge of the show’s contents before this point, Creative Scotland was in fact aware of the show’s plans to include ‘non-simulated sex acts’ a year before signing off on the hefty sum. Just when you think events in Scotland can’t get any madder… Even the progressive SNP government is rather agog at the whole thing While quango bosses

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

UK growth is creeping up – but tough decisions still lie ahead

Today the International Monetary Fund has upgraded its growth forecasts for the UK: from 0.5 per cent this year to 0.7 per cent, followed by a 1.5 per cent rise in 2025 (unchanged from its previous update). These forecasts still sit slightly below the Office for Budget Responsibility’s most recent predictions – but only just. The IMF’s latest forecasts come less than two weeks after the UK economy defied predictions and grew by 0.6 per cent in the first quarter of the year, exceeding practically all expectations and confirming that recession ended back in 2023. As I noted earlier in the month, when the provisional GDP figures were announced, the

James Heale James Heale

Gove sounds the alarm on anti-Semitism

Multiple ministers are out giving speeches today but none will be as hard-hitting as that made by Michael Gove this morning. Britain, he warned, risks ‘descending into the darkness’ if it fails to tackle growing anti-Semitism in the wake of the 7 October attacks. Much of the Community Secretary’s ire was directed at the recent pro-Palestine campus protests, amid fears of the impact on Jewish students. University encampments are merely, in Gove’s words, ‘anti-Semitism repurposed for the Instagram age’; the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign is ‘explicitly anti-Semitic’. It comes after anti-Jewish hate crime incidents rose by 147 per cent last year, two-thirds of which followed the attack on Israel, according to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The far right isn’t the only threat ahead of the European elections

In France, Holland, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Hungary and Austria parties described by their foes as ‘far-right’ are on course for significant gains at next month’s European elections. To the chagrin of progressive politicians, Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders are popular with many voters. But centrist groups in the European Parliament are determined to do everything to stop them. Europe does indeed feel like it might be returning to ‘the darkest pages of our history’ ‘We are facing a crucial moment in the history of our European project, where once more the far right is attempting to bring back the darkest pages of our history,’ said a communique

Steerpike Steerpike

Europe’s leaders hail Rwanda scheme

Well, well, well. Rishi Sunak’s immigration plans have been met with a fairly underwhelming response in Britain – only a quarter of people believe the Rwanda scheme will work, while the PM has faced some rather public dissent from within his own ranks over his record on small boats. But the Rwanda policy does in fact have some political admirers – in the form of leaders from across the Continent. Finally a piece of good news for the PM… Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer is the latest European politician to heap praise on Rishi’s Rwanda plan. At a press conference in Vienna this morning, Nehammer hailed Britain as a ‘pioneer’ on

Connor Allen

How did the EU get Raisi’s death so wrong?

Most of the world will not mourn the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash near Varzaqan in Iran, this week. Dubbed the ‘Butcher of Tehran’, Raisi was responsible for the deaths of thousands in a purge of political dissent in the 1980s. Since becoming president he has overseen the brutal crackdown on Iranians protesting against the regime’s punitive morality police. And he has led a country which is a key supplier of drones and weapons to Vladimir Putin, causing countless civilian deaths. Why was it obvious to democratic countries that commemorating Raisi would be morally contemptuous, but not to the bureaucrats in Brussels? Accordingly, most

Ross Clark Ross Clark

A crackdown on foreign students isn’t the only reason universities will struggle

Reducing the number of overseas students able to come to Britain would be a needless attack on one of our most successful export industries. But should we really believe David Cameron’s warnings to Rishi Sunak that universities are in danger of going bust if the graduate visa scheme is removed, or reformed (graduate visas give graduates the chance to stay on and work in Britain for up to two years)? The government would be foolish to choke off foreign students Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) does not appear to show any desperate crisis in university finances. On the contrary, their income has shown a steady and healthy,

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Ken Clarke lose his peerage?

In the aftermath of the tainted blood scandal, there is no shortage of blame to go around – but some are more culpable than others. As a junior health minister from 1982 to 1985, Ken Clarke was at the heart of Whitehall as reports of the risks from blood transfusion began to be published. According to Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry, by 1982 there was evidence that infections were occurring through imported blood products. The Department of Health even admitted it was ‘likely’ that HIV/Aids was transmitted through blood products. Yet still in 1983 Lord Clarke continued to say that there was ‘no conclusive proof’ of infection via this route. Sir Brian

Kristian Niemietz

The trouble with Labour’s new towns plan

Since last October, when Keir Starmer declared that he was a ‘Yimby’ – a ‘yes in my back yard’ – Labour has tried to position itself as the pro-housing party. We are now finally getting a glimpse of what this might look like in practice.   Deputy leader Angela Rayner has promised a revitalisation of the postwar ‘New Towns’ programme, which, in the quarter-century from 1946 to 1970, delivered hundreds of thousands of new homes.   New Towns are not a panacea This certainly signals the right ambitions, and if done in the right way, New Towns could indeed make a major contribution to solving Britain’s housing crisis. But they are not