Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Steerpike

Cressida Dick: I consider quitting ‘every few weeks’

It's been a pretty awful year for the Metropolitan Police. Having been forced to apologise for Wayne Couzens' murder of Sarah Everard in July, forced to apologise for their officers taking pictures of two murdered sisters in October and forced to apologise for failing Stephen Port's victims in November, this week the Met was forced to apologise for officers sending 'disgraceful' abusive messages at Charing Cross police station. And let's not forget the Met's cack-handed last-minute intervention into Sue Gray's inquiry which will now drag the partygate affair for weeks to come. In such circumstances it's perhaps unsurprising that the scandal-ridden Met commissioner Cressida Dick sometimes thinks it's time to pack it in.

Steerpike

Minister’s unfortunate Carrie slip

It's a quiet day in the Commons today as MPs mostly return to their constituencies for their weekly surgeries. But not all backbenchers have chosen to do so: Matt Vickers, the MP for Stockton South, is among those today debating plans to introduce fixed penalty notices for animal cruelty.  New boy Vickers used the occasion to raise some eyebrows in the House, telling members to titters that 'one of my best friends is a sassy little bitch called Karen.' He quickly added that: 'she's a pomeranian chihuahua or pommy-huahua, a very small dog with a very big personality.' Cue laughs all round. Unfortunately in responding to the debate, Defra minister Victoria Prentis slipped up when referencing Vickers' comments.

John Ferry

Ian Blackford has exposed the SNP’s pensions muddle

Amidst the Downing Street psychodrama, have we missed the moment the reality of Scottish fiscal autonomy finally dawned on the SNP?  This week saw an extraordinary turn of events in London and at Holyrood. First there was an interview the SNP's Commons leader Ian Blackford gave in which he stated the government of the remaining UK will be responsible for paying the Scottish state pension after a Scottish exit. The next day, Nicola Sturgeon was asked at First Minister's Questions if the SNP's position now really was that pensions in an independent Scotland would be paid by English taxpayers. Amazingly, she took the same brazen stance as Blackford.

Katy Balls

Who will fill the vacuum in No. 10?

14 min listen

Five members of Boris Johnson's team have now resigned from No. 10. This led Downing Street to bring forward changes to Johnson's top team – announcing the resignations of chief of staff Dan Rosenfield, director of communications Jack Doyle and Martin Reynolds, his principal private secretary (who sent the now notorious BYOB email). How will the PM fill the vacuum they leave in No. 10? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Steerpike

Commons chiefs buy half-a-million masks

Labour has been making much hay out of the government's £8.7 billion spend on personal protective equipment (PPE), much of it bought at the height of the Covid pandemic. The shadow Treasury minister Pat McFadden claimed the figure would be 'galling to hard-working households' while his colleagues have made much of the government's VIP lane to secure kit that was in desperately short supply throughout much of 2020 and 2021.  Mr S abhors waste as much as the next man. But it's worth asking as to what Labour's own alternatives would have been if they were running the country when millions of items were suddenly required for frontline NHS staff.

Andrew McQuillan

The DUP’s dangerous game in Northern Ireland

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s leadership of the DUP has been characterised as something of a phoney war against the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) – until now. After months of threatening to pull down the Northern Ireland executive should he and his party not be satisfied with progress on removing the protocol (which creates checks on goods between Britain and Northern Ireland) Donaldson has made his move. Paul Givan, something of a lame duck in his role as First Minister, has resigned and left his post at midnight. Because of the intricacies of Stormont, the deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein will also depart but junior ministers will remain in post until an election.

James Forsyth

Who would join Boris’s No. 10?

Munira Mirza’s resignation over Boris Johnson’s refusal to withdraw his Savile barb at Keir Starmer led to Downing Street bringing forward the departure of various senior staff. Johnson’s shadow whipping operation were keen to emphasise that these were the very changes to his operation that he had promised Tory MPs on Monday night. Leaving aside the fact that these departures looked rather chaotic, the real challenge will come with whether Johnson can persuade anyone to come into Downing Street. As I say in the Times today, the failure to get Lynton Crosby to take on a formal role shows how difficult it will be to get the kind of big hitters into the building that Tory MPs are expecting.

Steerpike

Loyalists parrot the party line

Mass resignations. Backbenchers demanding blood. Frontbenchers distancing themselves. It's all gone a bit JG Ballard over at No. 10 as Boris Johnson seeks to prevent his premiership being scuppered by partygate. Fortunately though, the much-maligned Whips' Office has come up with a cunning plan: a co-ordinated MP Twitter storm, eulogising the surprise resignation of five No. 10 aides as part of a long-term Johnsonian plan. Brilliant! For while the resignations of Jack Doyle, Martin Reynolds and Dan Rosenfield were long-expected, those of Munira Mirza and Elena Narozanski were not and can hardly be construed as such.

Katy Balls

Boris’s staffing dilemma

How much trouble is Boris Johnson now in? The Prime Minister suffered one of his most tumultuous days in office on Thursday after his longstanding policy chief Munira Mirza resigned over his Jimmy Savile attack on Keir Starmer. This led Downing Street to bring forward changes to Johnson's top team – announcing the resignations of chief of staff Dan Rosenfield, director of communications Jack Doyle and Martin Reynolds, his principal private secretary (who sent the now notorious BYOB email).

Patrick O’Flynn

The great Tory Red Wall betrayal

Boris Johnson may well have to go. His own proximity to a party in his private flat in Downing Street on 13 November 2020 – the very day he fired Dominic Cummings – could be the thing that does for him. Were the police to decide that this event was a criminal breach and hand out a fixed penalty notice to the Prime Minister, it is inconceivable that Tory MPs would fail to remove him from office. But we do not have to await a police report to spot that the Tory party as a whole, Johnson included, has committed a far bigger crime: the political sin of neglecting and disrespecting the Red Wall voters who gave it a landslide majority in 2019.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Why Munira Mirza’s resignation matters

Boris Johnson's great strength has always been his ability to spot, recruit and hire a great variety of brilliant people. He did so when he edited this magazine and as London Mayor with a superb crop of deputy mayors. As Foreign Secretary he couldn’t hire anyone, so he struggled. As Prime Minister, his gift seemed to have come back when he hired Munira Mirza as policy chief. She was one of his deputy mayors and having her in No. 10 was, to me, a promise of great things to come. Her resignation, today, suggests a prime ministerial team that’s falling apart rather than being rebuilt. She is an academic, a thinker, a fighter, writer (she once wrote a superb cover story for us) and I always saw her as a potential London mayoral candidate.

Isabel Hardman

Boris is finished — it’s when, not if

This week, Michael Gove's lengthy Levelling Up white paper talked about the ancient city of Jericho. This was largely because of its size and natural irrigation, but perhaps the Biblical story of the city's walls falling might be more fitting given the state of Downing Street. The response in the Conservative party to not one but four senior resignations — for unconnected reasons — is pretty fatalistic. Martin Reynolds and Dan Rosenfield were doomed because of the former’s ‘BYOB’ email and the latter’s unpopularity with Tory MPs. But the Munira Mirza case is stranger: senior staff don't tend to quit. Ministers like to resign in a blaze of glory, but even in the dying days of an administration people tend to want to go down with the ship.

Steerpike

Downing Street exodus continues at pace

It never rains but it pours. On Thursday night it wasn’t just Munira Mirza and Jack Doyle exiting the building. Both Dan Rosenfield, Boris Johnson’s chief of staff, and Martin Reynolds, his principal private secretary are leaving their jobs. Officials in No. 10 have just been told, with Steerpike's sources telling him that the mood inside the building tonight is 'dire.' Both men offered the PM their resignations. A No. 10 spokesman said that Johnson: ‘Has thanked them both for their significant contribution to government and No. 10, including work on the pandemic response and economic recovery. They will continue in their roles while successors are appointed, and recruitment for both posts is underway.

Steerpike

Now Boris’s press chief quits too

Oh dear. It's been another awful afternoon for Boris Johnson. First, Munira Mirza, the head of his No. 10 policy unit, resigned over Johnson's claims about Sir Keir Starmer's involvement in the Jimmy Savile case. And now, Jack Doyle, his long-suffering director of communications, has just handed in his notice after two torrid months dealing with the fall out of partygate. Doyle joined No. 10 as the PM's press secretary in 2020 from the Daily Mail and has served as comms chief since taking over from James Slack in April 2021. He leaves the role after a mere 10 months in post, having told friends he always planned to leave after two years.

Isabel Hardman

Is Rishi on manoeuvres?

Boris Johnson's day has just got considerably worse after Rishi Sunak distanced himself from the Prime Minister in a Downing Street press conference. The Chancellor pitched himself as the person focusing on the things voters actually worry about — unlike his boss. Sunak's press briefing was on the cost of living crisis and specifically what the government was doing to help families with their energy bills, but naturally he was asked about the resignation of Munira Mirza (broken exclusively by James here) and the Savile smear that sparked it. Sunak was blunt. 'With regard to the comments, being honest, I wouldn't have said it and I'm glad that the Prime Minister clarified what he meant.

Katy Balls

What does the latest No. 10 resignation mean?

17 min listen

Recorded just moments after Spectator Political Editor, James Forsyth broke the story that Munira Mirza, the Downing Street head of policy, had resigned over Boris Johnson’s Jimmy Savile attack on Keir Starmer. Katy Balls talks to James about how this defection of one of Johnson's oldest allies will affect the already turbulent No. 10. They are also joined by Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson who now thinks that the current government is 'terminal'.

Katy Balls

The fallout from Munira Mirza’s resignation

Tory MPs are in a jumpy mood this afternoon after The Spectator revealed that No. 10 policy chief Munira Mirza has quit Downing Street, citing Boris Johnson's refusal to apologise over his Jimmy Savile attack on Keir Starmer. Given that Mirza is a key ally of the Prime Minister's — dating back to his City Hall days — it is has led to doubts about the longevity of Johnson's premiership if even his longest-standing supporters are walking. It also raises questions about the direction of the government.  Part of the problem Johnson faces with Mirza's departure is that she was well-liked among MPs In a bid to suggest there is no drift, Downing Street has wasted no time in announcing Mirza’s replacement.

Lara Prendergast

Frozen: can China escape its zero-Covid trap?

40 min listen

In this week’s episode: Is China stuck in a zero-Covid trap?For this week’s cover story, Cindy Yu looks at Xi Jinping’s attempt to grapple with Covid. She joins the podcast, along with Ben Cowling, Chair Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong. (01:42)Also this week: Whose in The Zac Pack? And what is their influence in No.10?James Heale, The Spectator’s diary editor has written in this week’s magazine about The Zac Pack. A group made up of Carrie Johnson, Lord Goldsmith and some highly influential figures in the Westminster corridors. James is joined by Christian Calgie, a senior reporter at Guido Fawkes to discuss the power this group have in No.10.

James Forsyth

Exclusive: No. 10 policy chief quits over Boris’s Jimmy Savile slur

Munira Mirza, the Downing Street head of policy, has resigned over Boris Johnson’s Jimmy Savile attack on Keir Starmer. Mirza, who has worked with Johnson for 14 years and who he named as one of the five women who have most inspired him, quit this afternoon. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Mirza writes:  ‘I believe it was wrong for you to imply this week that Keir Starmer was personally responsible for allowing Jimmy Savile to escape justice. There was no fair or reasonable basis for that assertion. This was not the usual cut and thrust of politics; it was an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse. You tried to clarify your position today but, despite my urging, you did not apologise for the misleading impression you gave.

Steerpike

Sadiq’s £1.5 million damp squib

London politicians are no strangers to seeing fireworks. But this year's annual New Year's Eve shindig was a somewhat more muted affair than usual, after mayor Sadiq Khan ordered the last-minute cancellation of events in central London in response to a surge in the Omicron variant, despite the NYE celebrations being, er, almost entirely outdoors.  Those who wished to see the fireworks instead had to make do with watching the BBC's coverage at home, featuring a dreadful, trite opening monologue over an army of drones spelling out the letters 'NHS'.