Politics

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

Thursday

21 Mar 2024

Why Labour secretly fears the Rwanda scheme

When Boris Johnson and Priti Patel first launched the Rwanda scheme, in the Spring of 2022, there seemed every chance that it could win the Tories the next election. Despite the ‘Partygate’ furore taking chunks out of the Conservative poll rating and ushering in a febrile atmosphere, Labour was struggling to create a large and durable poll lead. Exactly two years ago, the Politico website’s poll of polls had the Labour lead at just four points and Keir Starmer’s party was highly vulnerable to a Tory fightback based around the touchstone issue of tackling illegal immigration. These days the poll gap is so vast that not even the most Tiggerish

Sasha Lensky

How Putin used doublethink to manipulate the Russian election

In many ways, the recent presidential shenanigans in Russia, officially dignified with the word ‘elections’, have become a strange ritual. They’re both utterly predictable in terms of their result and, at the same time a source of anxiety for all concerned. Putin has been in power now for 25 years, and no elections under his rule have corresponded even minimally to internationally recognised standards. Their main violation has been the extensive use of public sector workers, both to run the elections and vote the way the Kremlin tells them to. Thus the electoral machine is technically always ready to provide any result required of it. Yet this was also the

Kate Andrews

Britain just can’t stop spending

Will Jeremy Hunt have scope to deliver more tax cuts before the next election? Tory MPs certainly hope so, as cuts to employee National Insurance in last year’s Autumn Statement and this month’s Budget have yet to move the polls. Something like an income tax cut, they think, would be preferable. But this morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics is an uncomfortable reminder that those kinds of tax cuts are hard to deliver: for as much as the government insists it wants to bring down the tax burden, it likes to spend money too. Public sector net borrowing in February was £8.4 billion – significantly higher than the

Jake Wallis Simons

Biden’s Rafah plan will only help Hamas

The fathers, brothers and sons who are risking their lives for their country do not want to go into Rafah, on the Egyptian border of the Gaza strip. The ordinary Palestinians who hate Hamas and wish for a swift Israeli victory – and there are more of them than you think – do not want a battle in Rafah. There are more than a million human shields there. The question is not one of wants. The question is one of needs. If Rafah remains untouched, Israel will have lost the war Attacking the terrorists’ last redoubt is not some kind of genocidal indulgence, as many in the west would shamefully

Katy Balls

Reform close in on Tories in new poll

On Wednesday night, Rishi Sunak urged his party to ‘dig deep and fight’ in the face of difficult polling. The Prime Minister will be hoping this morning that the message landed as another damaging poll has been released. The latest from YouGov/Times puts the Labour lead at 25 points. But the part that will worry Tory MPs most is the position of Reform. The poll – carried out between 19 and 20 March – puts the Tories on 19 points and Reform just four points behind on 15 points. The poll comes after Lee Anderson’s defection to Reform – which has seen the party boost its membership and visibility. So an

Ian O’Doherty

How it all went wrong for Leo Varadkar

Genuinely shocking political announcements are relatively rare in the Republic. It’s a small country, with an even smaller political and media base who all know and frequently socialise with each other. This means that the whisper-streams between politicos and hacks usually ensure that what may come as a surprise to the general population is usually well flagged, or at least strongly suspected, by the elites in advance of any public pronouncement. But yesterday’s announcement that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was stepping down from his role seemed to genuinely catch people by surprise. An emotional Varadkar cited ‘personal and political reasons’ for his departure. Nobody knows what the personal reasons may entail,

Gavin Mortimer

Could Jordan Bardella be France’s next PM?

Dixmont, Yonne In Britain, France’s National Front is synonymous with the Le Pen family. Jean-Marie founded the right-wing party in 1972 and his daughter Marine replaced him as its leader in 2011. In France, however, the National Rally – as it was rebranded in 2018 – is increasingly the party of Jordan Bardella. The 28-year-old was elected its president in November 2022. The party members had a straight choice: Bardella, a working-class youngster from northern Paris, or the veteran Louis Aliot, the 53-year-old mayor of Perpignan who had joined the party before Bardella was born and who was for many years in a relationship with Marine Le Pen. ‘You grow

Katy Balls

Who’s behind the Mordaunt plot?

There’s an old Russian joke about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist in Moscow. The pessimist believes that things cannot get any worse. The optimist replies: ‘Of course they could!’ These days the same joke could be made about the Tory party. As it slumps to its worst polling result since the dying days of Liz Truss’s leadership, MPs are debating which of two bad choices to make. Should they roll the leadership dice one more time or stick with Rishi Sunak and hope that for once his plan works? Sunak’s team believe Tories will come to see a fourth prime minister in four years as a kind

The Spectator

What does Rachel Reeves stand for?

As the world discovered when she was caught lifting other people’s work for her book on women in economics, Rachel Reeves is not the most original of thinkers. But she has political talents. She has cultivated her image as an uninspiring technocrat in order to present herself as someone who will not spring surprises or take risks as chancellor. She thinks the state is inefficient and taxes are too high. She believes in ‘securonomics’, which sounds like a pleasing contrast to years of Tory policies. It is easy to preach fiscal discipline, but in office Labour would find it very difficult to contain spending Polls show that voters now think

Wednesday

20 Mar 2024

Katy Balls

Inside Sunak’s showdown with Tory MPs

After a bruising few weeks for Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister this evening appeared before the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers to make his case. As MPs prepare to go into the Easter recess, Sunak tried to encourage his party to unite rather than descend further into plotting. He told MPs: This battle will define us, when the going got tough, when the polls were against us did we dig deep and fight or did we turn in on ourselves? I know that the overwhelming majority of people in this room are determined to fight: to stand up for our values, our vision and our record. He added that the

Michael Murphy

Leo Varadkar’s days were numbered

Leo Varadkar’s abrupt resignation today left even his closest allies perplexed. ‘I was very surprised, I didn’t expect it at all’, said his deputy, Micheal Martin, after the announcement. Varadkar said he’s stepping down for reasons that were ‘both personal and political’, to give Fine Gael the best chance of victory. So what made him walk? Varadkar’s government rebuffed people’s concerns with platitudes Varadkar may have thought he was continuing a decades-long progressive trend where liberal Irish governments had the wind at their backs. Divorce and same-sex marriage were legalised after successful referendums, and most recently, a ban on abortions was repealed. Ireland was shedding the small-c conservative, Roman Catholic

Lloyd Evans

PMQs is getting sadder and sadder

At PMQs we saw the next year of politics condensed into a few seconds. Sir Keir Starmer asked the PM why he declined to call an election. ‘My working assumption is that the election will be in the second half of the year,’ said Rishi. So there it is. A date in October rather than January 2025. And he confidently expects to lose which is why he urged Labour’s Dan Carden to ‘chat with his shadow chancellor about her plan to impose £28 billion of tax rises on everyone.’ Sir Keir harried the PM on Rwanda which he called ‘a gimmick’ constantly. The g-word, clearly favoured by focus groups, was

Elliot Wilson

There’s an important lesson for politicians in the fall of Leo Varadkar

So farewell, then, Leo Varadkar. The Taoiseach says he is stepping down because he is no longer ‘the best person for that job’. But the reality is that Varadkar found out the hard way that delegating decisions to voters can come back to bite. This wasn’t the first time Ireland’s leaders have chosen to hand difficult decisions to voters Varadkar’s fate was sealed earlier this month when his government suffered a crushing defeat in two referendums. Irish voters were encouraged to back changes to the constitution which would clarify the definition of ‘the Family’ to mean ‘whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships’ and omit a definition of

Steerpike

Simon Case quits the Garrick Club

Should we expect a flash sale on Garrick Club memberships? The cabinet secretary Simon Case is the second high-profile figure to have quit the exclusive all-male club just hours after earnestly defending his position. The top mandarin follows MI6 chief Richard Moore out the door. The spy chief told his colleagues that he too planned to reform the organisation from within. But something apparently changed overnight that caused those noble ambitions to come apart. Talk about a fast turnaround… Case’s resignation from the club comes after the UK’s top civil servant attempted to make a compelling case for his membership only, er, yesterday. ‘You’ll forgive the impertinence of the question,’

Steerpike

Watch: Lee Anderson’s ‘institutional racism’ takedown

It’s hardly been a week since Lee Anderson defected to the flanks of Reform UK and already the red wall rottweiler is making headlines again. Anderson put Rebecca Knox, chair of Dorset’s fire and rescue authority, on the spot at a Home Affairs Committee meeting today, after she described her own force as ‘institutionally racist’. When Anderson probed what that actually meant, Knox was a little lost for words: LA: So could you please tell me, councillor, what unfair advantages white people have in your force? RK: I would hope none… not advantages. Did I hear you…? LA: Yeah, do they have any advantages? RK: No. LA: So then how

Stephen Daisley

The hubris of Scotland’s lofty Net Zero targets

Scotland’s climate goals are ‘no longer credible’ and there is ‘no comprehensive strategy’ to move away from carbon to Net Zero. That is the noxious assessment issued today by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the statutory body set up in Scotland to advise national and regional government on emissions policies. Underscoring the gap between rhetoric heard and action seen, the committee delivers an almighty verbal skelping to the SNP and its carefully cultivated image as a green government. Under the SNP’s Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019, ‘the Scottish ministers must ensure that the net Scottish emissions account for the year 2030 is at least 75 per cent

Ross Clark

Jeremy Hunt should listen to James Dyson

All Sir James Dyson wanted was to do what hundreds of business people and lobbyists have done before him: spend a little time with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and have a good old moan – initially about research and development tax relief but then extending to other subjects such as corporation tax, high levels of public spending and – according to reports – the number of diversity managers in the NHS. But Jeremy Hunt’s reaction seems to have taken him aback. Apparently exasperated by Dyson’s list of complains at a Downing Street meeting last week, the Chancellor told Dyson that if he didn’t like the government he should seek

Gray Sergeant

China’s threats to Kinmen should be taken seriously

When two Chinese fisherman died last month trying to flee Taiwan’s coastguard, Beijing laid the blame at Taipei’s feet and demanded an apology. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also spied an opportunity to advance its territorial claims. China has been targeting Kinmen, an island controlled by Taiwan, more aggressively over the past few weeks. The CCP stated that ‘there is no such thing as “prohibited or restricted waters”’ – saying that the waters around the island had been used as traditional fishing grounds by both sides. On the morning of 19 February, four Chinese coast guard vessels patrolled around Kinmen’s restricted waters. Personnel boarded and inspected a Taiwanese tourist boat that had ‘veered slightly of course’. The next day, a

Isabel Hardman

Will Sunak or Starmer ever say anything new at PMQs?

Rishi Sunak will have been grateful to have got through Prime Minister’s Questions today with little criticism – at least from his own side. The session opened with a loyal planted question on the inflation figures, which allowed Sunak to tell the Commons that ‘our plan is working’ and underline that this was the steepest fall since the 1980s. Once that was over, the session then descended into a pretty run-of-the-mill grudge match between Sunak and Keir Starmer, with the latter listing things that weren’t working and asking why the Prime Minister wasn’t calling an election. Sunak’s responses contained some minor developments in his attacks on Starmer for defending Hizb

Katy Balls

Leo Varadkar resigns following crushing referendum defeat

The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is to step down as Ireland’s prime minister and as the leader of his party, Fine Gael. In an announcement this lunchtime in Dublin, Varadkar said he would quit as party leader with immediate effect, but stay in the role of Taoiseach until his successor is appointed. Explaining his decision, Varadkar cited ‘personal and political reasons’: ‘After careful consideration and soul searching, I don’t feel I’m the best person for the job anymore’. Varadkar encouraged people to vote to expand the definition of the family Varadkar – who first became Ireland’s Taoiseach in 2017 – went on to say that there is ‘never a right time