Politics

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

Thursday

2 May 2024

Holyrood needs Kate Forbes

There are a number of very good reasons that Kate Forbes is not standing for SNP leader. Chief amongst them is that she’d lose again. John Swinney is not Humza Yousaf. He has been an MP or MSP continuously since 1997, led the party through four difficult years in the early 2000s, and spent seven years as Alex Salmond’s right-hand man then eight at the side of Nicola Sturgeon. He is liked across the factions and respected for his decades of service to the party. There is probably no one who could beat him. Another calculation that Forbes will have considered is that her party is careening towards a general

Gavin Mortimer

Von der Leyen can’t buy her way out of the migrant crisis

Elections have a wonderful way of focusing a politician’s mind. So it is with Rishi Sunak and the Tories, who are hoping their Rwanda Bill will be their salvation come the general election. In Brussels, the EU also knows that the migrant crisis will be a significant factor in deciding the outcome of Europe’s elections next month. The omens, or rather, the polls aren’t good. The EU is bracing itself for what it describes as a ‘sharp right turn’ next month The EU is bracing itself for what it describes as a ‘sharp right turn’ next month. Certainly, the polls in France and Holland, to name but two of the

Philip Patrick

Japan won’t forgive Joe Biden for his xenophobia gaffe

Joe Biden just threw a particularly nasty insult the way of Japan, a close ally of the United States, at a campaign event. The president accused the Japanese, along with China, Russia, and India, of being ‘xenophobic’ in their reluctance to admit large numbers of immigrants, and of damaging their economies as a consequence: ‘Why is China stalling so badly economically, why is Japan having trouble, why is Russia, why is India, because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants. Immigrants are what make us strong,’ he told a Washington fundraiser on Wednesday. The insult is being especially keenly felt over here in Tokyo The insult is being especially keenly felt

Ross Clark

Wes Streeting should be ashamed of his white supremacist Tory jibe

Over the past few years Wes Streeting has established himself as one of the more open-minded and reasonable members of the shadow cabinet. Rather than nodding along with his party’s traditional worship of the NHS, and utilising the usual, false campaigning tool of trying to claim that the Tories have some secret plan to privatise the health service, he has been frank about its weaknesses. A tweet put out by Streeting yesterday afternoon, however, points in a rather different direction: blatant opportunism. He wrote: ‘A win for Susan Hall and the Conservatives is a win for racists, white supremacists and Islamophobes the world over. Susan Hall’s campaign has been fought

Euan McColm

The SNP’s ‘operation stop Kate Forbes’ has succeeded – for now

If you want to know how deep is the crisis in which the Scottish National Party currently finds itself, let this sink in: the next leader of the party will be a man who’s already had the job and made an absolute mess of it. In a remarkable turn of events following the resignation of Humza Yousaf on Monday, senior SNP figures quickly began urging John Swinney – who served as Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy when she was First Minister – to enter the contest to replace him. This morning, Swinney accepted their challenge and announced his candidacy to become SNP leader and, thus, Scotland’s seventh First Minister since the establishment

Steerpike

Top Republican: Lammy ‘far preferable’ to Cameron

There’s a certain type of Tory who goes a bit gooey-eyed whenever David Cameron speaks. Since his Lordship’s return to the frontline of British politics last November, many a moderate can be heard gushing about the former leader’s mastery of communications. ‘At last’, they cry ‘The grown-ups are back in the room!’ The sentiment among a certain type of centrist was best summarised by the two-word text which Iain Dale received on reshuffle day from a Tory MP. It read simply: ‘Daddy’s home.’ But seven months on, with Labour’s poll lead only continuing to grow, is the return of Lord Cameron really all it was cracked up to be? The

Sam Dumitriu

Why Britain is building the world’s most expensive nuclear plant

For over 20 years, Britain effectively gave up on building new nuclear power stations. But that’s changed now Hinkley Point C in Somerset is under construction. When completed it will provide around 7 per cent of the UK’s electricity. Hinkley Point C is set to be the most expensive nuclear power station ever built. In fact, it is more than four times more expensive on a pound-for-megawatt basis than the average nuclear power plant built in South Korea. Even Flamanville 3, a French plant that uses the same reactor (EPR-1750) and built by the same company (EDF), is set to cost at least 25 per cent less. Why has Hinkley Point C

Iain Macwhirter

John Swinney will lead the SNP into oblivion

The coronation of John Swinney, a 60-year-old yesterday’s man, as SNP leader is bleak news for the independence movement. When Swinney – a three-time loser if ever there was one – was last leader, he took the SNP to 20 per cent in the 2003 European elections. In the 2004 general election the next year, the SNP was left with only six MPs against Scottish Labour’s 41. That was his legacy. Swinney may say he is ‘no caretaker’ but he looks rather like the undertaker of the independence dream Today he announced his decision to stand again as SNP leader. What happens next seems to be a foregone conclusion. The

Kate Andrews

Will Britain ever escape the low growth trap?

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) latest report, published this morning, downgrades Britain’s growth prospects this year: from 0.7 per cent (forecast in November last year) to 0.4 per cent. Based on the OECD’s Economic Outlook, Britain and Germany risk experiencing the least growth amongst advanced economies, with Germany coming last this year (with 0.2 per cent growth) and the UK coming last next year (with 1 per cent growth). In response to this morning’s downgrade, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said that the ‘forecast is not particularly surprising given our priority for the last year has been to tackle inflation with higher interest rates’. This is a point

Steerpike

John Swinney launches SNP leadership bid

Back to Scotland, where the SNP remains in a state of disarray. After hapless Humza Yousaf rather badly mishandled the ditching of the Greens from government, he was forced to announce his resignation when he realised he would lose a confidence vote in his leadership. And now, after a period of 72 hours in which almost all of Yousaf’s cabinet ruled themselves out of the running, one candidate has finally put themselves up for the top job: John Swinney. Deputy first minister under Nicola Sturgeon and onetime SNP leader himself while the party was in opposition, Swinney is quite the veteran Nat. A close confidant of Sturgeon, the current backbencher

Theo Hobson

What does the faith school shake-up mean for Anglicans?

Why do faith schools excite such passions? Obviously people care a lot about religion, and education, but there’s something else at work too. Schools are microcultures, bubbles, little versions of society, in which the secularism of our culture can be shut out, defied. It sounds like a strange exaggeration, but if a religion has its own schools, it has a small but vital link to the old era of its cultural dominance. The shake-up overturns the current rule, that a new faith school can only select half of its pupils on religious grounds Is this why Roman Catholics like Melanie McDonagh are so happy with the government’s decision to allow

Steerpike

Tory members prefer Farage to Sunak

Happy local elections day, one and all. As voters head to the polls across the country, the talk in Westminster is how bad the result is going to be for Rishi Sunak. His party is tipped to lose around 500 councillors, with mayors Andy Street and Ben Houchen among the potential casualties. Faced with the loss of so many seats, it is no surprise that Tory plotters are talking about a leadership challenge. So it is with exquisite timing then that new polling by FindOutNow for Labour Together offers little comfort to the Prime Minister, with his own party activists saying they would prefer a different leader. More than half

Leo McKinstry

It’s time to abolish Police and Crime Commissioners

When the idea of having Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) first arose it seemed so promising. These would be locally elected candidates, tough and charismatic and they’d be given the power needed to transform the country. Bureaucrats have taken control of British policing, said David Cameron at the time, and cops should be dealing with anti-social crime not fining motorists. PCCs were the local heroes who would revive proper policing, and hold bad police to account. At the Conservative conference in 2011, the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, declared that the commissioners would be ‘powerful public figures’ of ‘the highest calibre’ who would ‘make the police truly accountable to the

Tom Goodenough

London deserves better than Sadiq Khan

By any measure, Sadiq Khan deserves to lose the London mayoral election. Khan has been terrible for the capital, yet Londoners are stuck with him. Barring a near miraculous upset by the Tory candidate Susan Hall, Khan will almost certainly win re-election today. Surely one of the world’s great cities deserves better? Instead of going to war on the gangs that plague London’s streets, Khan has picked a softer target: the police Under Khan, London’s streets have become more dangerous and unpleasant. Knife crime is terrifyingly high. Shoplifting is rife. Traffic is dreadful. Pavements have become dumping grounds for unwanted bikes. Housing costs have soared. The ‘nighttime economy’ has collapsed. Jews

Freddy Gray

Why Trumpists think the real conspiracy is RFK Jr

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Winston Churchill’s description of Soviet Russia in 1939 could also apply to the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr in the presidential election of 2024. What we can say with certainty about RFK Jr is that, in a year when the American electorate is deeply unhappy about having to choose once again between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, he has the opportunity to win over an enormous number of disgruntled voters. At first glance RFK appears to outflank Trump along the wackier fringes of US politics He’s currently polling at up to 15 per cent. That makes him the biggest

Katy Balls

Survival plan: is Rishi ready for the rebels?

Ever since Rishi Sunak became leader of the Conservative party, he has been preparing for this week. Entering 10 Downing Street without winning a general election or even the Tory membership vote, he owes his position entirely to Conservative MPs. At any moment, they could decide to replace him as they did Boris Johnson. This bank holiday weekend, as the results of the May elections roll in, has always had the potential to be his moment of greatest vulnerability. The results will show how the Tories are performing now compared with the local elections of 2021 when a triumphal 30ft giant-sized Boris balloon in Hartlepool came to symbolise his political

The Spectator

Why Sunak should stay

In the end, the Tories did just as badly as predicted in the local elections. They lost about half of the council seats they were defending as well as ten out of the 11 mayoralties up for election and did not even come close in London. It’s a disaster, but one consistent with the opinion poll picture painted with such devastating regularity over the last year or so. Any Conservative now tempted to depose Rishi Sunak should study the pantomime playing out in Holyrood. The Tory motto, now, is to remember that there is always someone worse off than you are – and that person is usually in the Scottish Parliament.

Wednesday

1 May 2024

Lucy Dunn

Can Ben Houchen save Rishi Sunak?

12 min listen

Tomorrow, voters go to the polls for the last set of local elections in this parliament, alongside 11 mayoral elections in England, 37 police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales plus the London Assembly elections. Could Ben Houchen, Tees Valley Mayor, help turn Rishi Sunak’s fortunes around? You can read James Heale’s assessment of the key battlegrounds here. Also on the podcast, a look at rumours that Labour are in talks to water down their employment policies. Lucy Dunn speaks to James Heale and John McTernan, former adviser to Tony Blair.

Steerpike

Scotland’s Crown Office still hasn’t received Murrell’s charge sheet

News just in: Scotland’s Crown Office has still not received a report from Police Scotland about the SNP’s former chief executive Peter Murrell — almost a fortnight after he was rearrested and charged with embezzlement. Talk about taking things slowly… The husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon was taken into police custody for the second time on 18 April as part of the police probe into SNP finances — and charged with embezzling funds from his own party. Yet two weeks on, there has been little sign of the case progressing. Shortly after the police force announced that it had charged the former SNP chief, it transpired that Murrell

Lloyd Evans

Lindsay Hoyle is a hooligan

How does it feel to wake up and discover that you’re a socialist? We got the answer at PMQs where the TV cameras were trained on Dan Poulter – or ‘Doctor Dan’ as he likes to be called – who recently quit the Tories and joined Labour. But his awakening seems to have poisoned his mood. His cheeks were pale, his eyes lifeless and dull as he glared at his former colleagues across the aisle. There was more absurd behaviour from the SNP’s Stephen Flynn. Why not celebrate with a cheeky smirk? He looked like a man whose knee operation has just been transferred to Wales. And he seems to