Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Robert Peston

Rishi Sunak’s cost of living gamble

The Chancellor is lending £200 this year to anyone who pays an energy bill in their own name. That’s 28 million people at an upfront cost to the government of £5.5 billion. The £5.5 billion will go directly to the companies this year, and will be knocked off bills from October. It will count as public spending. However, we will all have to repay that £200, in five equal annual instalments of £40 from 2023. Or to put it another way, our energy bills will be £40 a year higher than would otherwise have been the case until 2028. In a way, Rishi Sunak has given most of us an interest-free loan of £200. And we’ll only be able to dodge repayments if we stop buying energy in the UK.

Steerpike

Fact check: are the SNP’s pensions claims right?

Ian Blackford has been making the most of current Tory difficulties, railing against the corrosion of public trust on Monday caused by partygate. But is the SNP Westminster leader really best placed to talk? Mr S has already pointed out his party's own lamentable record on inquiries and civil servants up at Holyrood. And now it seems the nationalists are happy to indulge in outright lies as to the future of Scottish pensioners in a post-Scexit nation. For speaking to the Scotland's Choice podcast in December, Blackford was asked what would happen to Scotland's state pension if the country voted for independence. He replied: Absolutely nothing.

Kate Andrews

The cost of living crisis has arrived

In recent weeks alleged lockdown parties and suitcases full of wine have been the biggest threat to Boris Johnson’s premiership. But throughout the winter months, another threat has been brewing — one that could, in the longer term, determine the government’s fate. Britain’s cost of living crisis has been steadily worsening as price hikes for essential goods and services (food, transport) continue to outpace predictions. But the worst is still to come, with Ofgem’s announcement this morning that energy bills for the average household will be rising by nearly £700, as the energy price cap is lifted by 54 per cent come April.

Ross Clark

The Bank of England’s interest rate hike isn’t enough

There would have been times when the news ‘Bank of England doubles interest rates’ would have been met with a shudder. But when the move takes rates merely from 0.25 per cent to 0.5 per cent it hardly ranks as a shock at all. The days when the base rate reached 15 per cent seem as far away as ever. Rates remain far lower than was considered normal before the banking crash of 2008/09. Prior to that, rates had not been below two per cent in 300 years. So, no, the Bank of England is not responding aggressively to rising inflation.

Andrew Tettenborn

Do university bigwigs really want the best for students?

We can all see that our universities are not in a good shape. They are churning out too many graduates – who probably shouldn't have gone to university in the first place – into a difficult job market. But do those in charge of them want to do anything about it? The row over a proposed government shake-up – which could limit places to those with decent GCSE grades – suggests not. Former fair access tsar Chris Millward led the backlash against the mooted plans. Appointed with great fanfare by Justine Greening in 2017 as the antidote to academic complacency, last weekend – freed from official obligations after he stepped down – he fired a broadside at the government.

James Kirkup

A speech which showed parliament at its best

It’s been an angry, tense few days around parliament. The Sue Gray report saw Boris Johnson accused of lying, and starting another fight about Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile that led to more allegations of dishonesty and bad faith. Anyone glancing at news from the Commons might get confirmation that MPs are a worthless sack of rats who spend all their time scratching and biting at each other. Which is why it’s important to draw attention to the other side of the Commons, which tends to get less attention: the human, collegiate side that was on display when MPs said goodbye to Jack Dromey who was the member for Birmingham Erdington until his death last month.

James Johnson

Boris is no Trump – and that’s why he’s doomed

In the last week, I’ve been crisscrossing the United States, meeting with politicians and their advisers ahead of this year’s congressional elections. Almost everyone has asked me about the ongoing Boris Johnson saga. Their most common refrain is surprise: how can the simple act of attending a party prompt a prime minister’s ever-more-likely political demise? In a country where every scandal bounced off Donald Trump, it is hard for Americans to imagine a few sausage rolls and glasses of warm wine in Downing Street causing so many to turn on the Prime Minister. In America, loyalty to Trump persists. More than 70 per cent of Republicans continue to back him, and four in ten doubt whether Joe Biden was legitimately elected.

James Heale

The Zac Pack: the well-connected group quietly shaping Tory policy

Who let the dogs out? That’s the subject of a Whitehall probe into the recent Afghanistan debacle. When the Taliban took Kabul, an estimated 1,200 people who qualified for evacuation to the UK had to be left behind. But on 28 August, waiting Afghan families were left helpless on the ground as 173 cats and dogs were escorted past them into the airport and off to safety. The big question: on whose authority were animals put ahead of humans? And did any of this have the Prime Minister’s backing? As ever with Johnsonian drama, the truth is elusive, but one minister seems closer to it than others.

Rod Liddle

Boris will never recover from partygate

When a political party is hit by a crisis, the tendency these days is for both the politicians and their supporters to pretend that there isn’t a crisis at all, hunker down inside a comfortable state of denial and blame it all on a hostile media. To a degree, this has always happened — but social media has unquestionably exacerbated the process, to the extent that at any one moment a vast number of people are living under a bizarre delusion from which only much later do they emerge blinking into the sunlight. The polarising effect of social media and its echo--chamber properties have led to it becoming little more than a vast conduit for confirmation bias, and this informs the way in which politicians react to crises.

The Spectator

What’s the point of Boris?

The anger against the Prime Minister for failing to observe the rules which he imposed upon the rest of us is justified. Even so, there will come a point at which the public starts to ask: aren’t we spending too much time obsessing about the parties? Johnson’s electoral mandate gives him the chance to redeem himself; to show that he has the ideas to get Britain out of this mess and that although he may make mistakes over more trivial matters, he gets the big decisions right. In defying Sage’s advice in December, Johnson saved Britain from a needless lockdown. He could and should have done this at a far earlier stage last year, but he nonetheless deserves credit.

Charles Moore

Downing Street’s growing problem

In answers to questions following his statement in the Commons on Monday, Boris Johnson let drop an interesting statistic. He said that, ‘on busy days’, more than 400 officials work in 10 Downing Street. This figure explains a lot — why so many staff there got Covid, why, after long hours in overcrowded conditions, they might want to open bottles of wine, why factions struggle for mastery and leak against each other, and why the heart of government suffers from clogged arteries. With 400 rabbits in that warren, how can most of them know the Prime Minister personally, how can they feel much esprit de corps? The numbers are four times bigger than they were 30 years ago, to little visible benefit.

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson is drifting

Tory MPs only have one topic of conversation: the fate of Boris Johnson. They huddle together in offices in Portcullis House, comparing notes, assessing the Prime Minister’s survival prospects. At the time of writing, there is a sense in Westminster that attempts to oust Johnson have been delayed; that the danger for him will flare up again after the police end their investigation into Downing Street parties or after the local elections in May. But Johnson is not being helped by the fact that many of the hints of favour or policy change he has dropped to MPs as he has tried to shore up his position have not come to much. This is causing irritation and making MPs more inclined to send in no-confidence letters.

Ross Clark

Two years on, what’s the evidence for lockdown?

Did lockdowns save lives? We will never have a definitive answer to this vital question because it was impossible to conduct controlled experiments — we don’t have two identical countries, one where lockdown was imposed and one where it wasn’t. Nor is it easy to compare similar countries, for the simple reason that every country in the world — bar Comoros in the Indian Ocean — reacted to Covid by introducing at least one non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) by the end of March 2020. There was no clear link between lockdown stringency and fewer deaths in the spring of 2020, A team from Johns Hopkins University has, however, assessed the many (albeit flawed) studies into whether lockdown works — a ‘meta-analysis’.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Was the levelling up white paper worth the wait?

15 min listen

While Westminster politicians and journalists alike continue to predict exactly how many letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson have been officially filed. Michael Gove's levelling up white paper has finally arrived. A bizarre document that references many ancient cites and how they 'levelled up', but does it propose any tangible solutions on how to achieve its goal in present-day Britain?Isabel Hardman is joined by James Forsyth and Katy Balls to dissect the document.

Steerpike

Matt Hancock’s privacy probe

It's not been a great few months for Matt Hancock. Every time the Casanova of the Commons tries to make a comeback, nothing seems to go his way. First, HarperCollins dismissed speculation that they would be publishing his self-justificatory book; then he faced mockery for his turtleneck outfit at the Capital Jingle Bell Ball. Even efforts to flaunt his sexual appeal came to nought after indignant Serpentine members slapped him down for swimming in their pool while a photographer snapped him topless. And now Steerpike can reveal that there's still been no luck as to finding the perpetrators who leaked highly-sensitive images of Hancock in a passionate embrace back in June 2021.

Katy Balls

What’s the purpose of the levelling up white paper?

After months of delays, the government's levelling up white paper is finally out. Boris Johnson has viewed this document as one of the things that will help him kickstart his premiership after months of negative headlines over partygate. However, MPs remain jumpy as letters of no confidence continue to trickle in.  As for the document itself, it comes in at a cool 332-pages and can be described as academic in places. While it sets out key missions, it is also heavy on history — complete with a timeline of the largest cities in the world since 7,000 BC including Jericho, Dobrovody, Yinxu and Ayutthaya.

Lloyd Evans

Starmer knows that Boris is safe – for now

Calm returned to the bridge. Big Dog looked comfortable in the chamber as Sir Keir Starmer quizzed him at PMQs. It started with an exchange of fireworks. Sir Keir made a statement about Boris’s suggestion that he failed to bring Jimmy Savile to justice when he was director of public prosecutions. He called this slur ‘a conspiracy theory of violent fascists’. Strong stuff.  In reply, Boris quoted Sir Keir’s statement in 2013 which appeared to apologise for oversights in relation to Savile. However – and this is the point – Sir Keir didn’t follow it up. The mortal blow has failed to land as yet. More delays will play into Boris’s hands. The longer Plod takes to issue any fines, the more trivial the law-breaking will seem.

Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Boris doubles down on Jimmy Savile claims

Today's PMQs suggests that some of the immediate heat has gone the partygate crisis, if only temporarily. Sir Keir Starmer did not make all his questions about parties, instead widening out his attacks to Conservative tax policy. The faces of most of his backbenchers froze as he doubled down, saying that Starmer had apologised for what the CPS had done Starmer did though open by complaining about the behaviour of the Prime Minister in Monday's statement on the Gray report, saying that the leader of the party of Winston Churchill was now repeating the conspiracies of 'violent fascists to try and score cheap political points'.

Steerpike

BBC political editor frontrunner’s thousand-dollar bash

Of all the jobs in Westminster journalism, BBC political editor is thought to be the hardest. Laura Kuenssberg will shortly be quitting the role after nearly seven years in post but it seems the corporation is having a hard time finding a successor. First, favourite Vicki Young, Kuenssberg's deputy, ruled herself out of the running. And then, last week, Mr S revealed that the Beeb had had to extend the deadline by another fortnight to allow more applicants. The current frontrunner is Jon Sopel, who recently returned to Britain after almost eight years as the BBC's main man in North America. Despite protestations that he is taking a 'long break' to write a book, bookmakers reckon the battle to succeed Laura K will be between him and fellow Beeb colleague Alex Forsyth.

Matthew Lynn

The flaw in Boris’s levelling up agenda

Regional agencies pumping money into research and development. Targets for education and healthcare. Another layer of meddling local government, and possibly a new bus route or two. The government plans for 'levelling up' unveiled today are a mixture of 1960s statism, which could have been taken straight from Harold Wilson’s government, mixed up with some wishful thinking. But don't despair: there is a far better strategy. The Tories should simply offer some meaningful tax breaks and incentives and let the private sector do the hard work for us. That approach can't be worse than what has been offered up by the government. Even by the recent dismal standards of the Johnson administration the ‘levelling up’ plans outlined today are thin stuff.