Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Boris feels more threatened by Sir Ed than Sir Keir

At PMQs Sir Keir Starmer led on the tricky subject of rape. He cornered the PM with a precisely worded four-part question about the fact that 98 per cent of reported rapes don’t lead to criminal charges. The PM countered that Labour had recently voted against a bill that toughened up sentences for violent sexual offenders. Sir Keir had war-gamed this in advance. And how he pounced. ‘What provision, what clause, what chapter or what words of that bill will do anything to change the fact that 98.4 per cent of reported rapes don’t end up in a charge?’ Without hesitation, Boris said, ‘Section 106 and 107 of that bill would have stopped the early release of rapists.’ Sir Keir was aghast. ‘What an appalling answer!

Jack Brown

The unfairness of London’s Remainer reputation

Today marks five years since the United Kingdom voted to Leave the European Union. London, as we all know by now, voted the opposite way to the rest of England — by a margin of 60 to 40 per cent. Ever since then, the capital has been portrayed as remote and out of touch, culturally disconnected from the rest of the nation. Brexit is often explained as the victory of the long-ignored Rest of England where the ‘real people’ live. In 2019, Dominic Cummings told reporters to ‘get out of London, go and talk to people who are not rich Remainers’. But is London really so different to the rest of the nation? Let’s start with idea that those reporters would have to get out of town to meet poor Leave voters. London was home to more 2016 Leave voters (1.

Steerpike

Joanna Cherry loses her seat

Oh dear. While all eyes in Westminster were on the dispatch boxes at Prime Minister's Questions today, it appears an unsightly scuffle was going on just out of sight. Joanna Cherry, the onetime SNP darling sacked from her party's front bench in February, has accused the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey of 'unacceptable behaviour.' In a series of tweets shortly after the session ended, Cherry claimed that Davey, buoyant after last Thursday's by-election triumph in Chesham and Amersham, had tried to dislodge her from her perch on the Commons green benches. She wrote on Twitter that: 'There are no reserved seats in @HouseofCommons at present yet Ed Davey just made me give up my seat for him at #PMQs in a v forceful manner.

Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Johnson’s inappropriate jab joke

Sir Keir Starmer had a powerful line of attack at today's Prime Minister's Questions. He led on the government's own review of the treatment of rape and sexual violence, which recommended sweeping reforms to the way cases are handled so that the current low rate of charges and convictions can be reversed. Prosecutions have fallen by nearly 60 per cent in four years — to just 2,102 — while convictions have also experienced a similar decline. Today, Starmer pointed out that 98.4 per cent of reported rapes don't lead to a charge. He repeatedly pressed Johnson on what the government was actually doing beyond apologising for the current situation.

Ross Clark

Is the green list enough to save tourism?

Will there be any new countries on the ‘green list’ when the latest revisions are announced tomorrow? Last time around there was expected to be some kind of relaxation – yet no countries were added to the green list. Instead, Portugal was removed and several countries were added to the red list. However, media minister John Whittingdale certainly seemed to hold hope when interviewed on the Today programme this morning, saying “hopefully it will be possible to increase that number [of countries]”. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the government will face serious difficulties if it does not allow some relaxation. The travel industry is getting restive and some bodies are holding a day of action in London today.

Robert Peston

What can Britain learn from Israel on ending lockdown?

Israel has been the world’s whole-country experiment to establish how, and how fast, Covid vaccination can return life to normal (as much as life is ever normal in a country where there is constant tension over the rights and future of Palestinians). I am in Jerusalem, trying to understand the implications for stability in Israel and peace in the Middle East of a new government where prime minister Naftali Bennett is opposed to any kind of Palestinian state, and the alternate PM Yair Lapid passionately believes a two-state solution is the only answer.

William Nattrass

Viktor Orbán goes to war on the European parliament

‘Times have changed, and whereas thirty years ago we believed Europe was our future, today we understand that we are Europe’s future’. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has never been one to shy away from controversy when it comes to the European Union. But on Hungarian Independence Day on Monday, he went a step further by presenting an alternative vision for the bloc.  Orbán's plan involves a major restructuring of the European parliament, which he described as a ‘dead-end’ for democracy. He wants to fix the EU’s democratic deficit by building a ‘democracy of democracies based on European nations’.

Steerpike

Five of the worst Remain predictions five years on

It is five years today since the EU referendum. Despite David Cameron’s psephological guru Andrew Cooper predicting a ten point win for In on polling day, we all know what happened next as the Vote Leave team of Boris and Cummings trumped the Britain Stronger in Europe’s brigade of Craig Oliver, Will Straw et al. The UK (eventually) went on to leave the European Union and now five years on, Mr S thought it would be instructive to take a look at five of the predictions that never came true. Households £4,300 worse off The focus of the Remain campaign on Brexit's economic costs was labelled as 'Project Fear' by opponents, with no politician doing more to push that line of argument than Chancellor George Osborne.

Steerpike

Who will save parliament’s choir?

Few institutions are as treasured in the Palace of Westminster as the parliamentary choir – though perhaps the terrace canteen's jerk chicken recipe runs it close. The choir is arguably the best embodiment of the cross-party spirit, in which Tory MPs, Labour peers and House staff members can all sing alongside one another. Or as the choir's music director Simon Over once quipped: 'There are just four parties in this choir – Sopranos, Altos, Tenors and Basses and that's it.' The choir is best known for its hugely popular Christmas services of festive choral works, seasonal readings and audience carols held every December. But now the future of the choir has been threatened by the scales of justice stacked against it.

Patrick O’Flynn

Labour’s killer queen is the perfect replacement for Starmer

As Keir Starmer’s re-run of the great Change UK centrist dad experiment sinks deeper into political quicksand, the importance of a party leader being able to project a compelling personality becomes ever more obvious. Even the pinko pundit class that was overjoyed by his election as Labour leader is now close to giving up on Starmer, whose lack of ringcraft reminds us that there is something to be said for career politicians after all. Ambitious shadow ministers with antennae more finely tuned in to the public mood than his are said already to be preparing prospective leadership campaign teams in anticipation of the voters of Batley and Spen delivering a devastating thumbs down to Starmer next week.

Andrew McQuillan

Can Jeffrey Donaldson halt the DUP’s civil war?

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the Lagan Valley MP, has triumphed in the one-horse race to replace Edwin Poots as leader of the DUP, getting the top job at the second time of asking. Nobody else came forward to instigate a leadership election, meaning that his appointment will be rubber stamped when the party's electoral college meets this Saturday. Respected at Westminster, Donaldson seems a more plausible fit for high office than the gauche Poots, though both men are remarkably similar; Donaldson, like Poots, is a committed Christian and is a prominent Orangeman. History is never far away from the politics of Northern Ireland. Donaldson’s win coincides with the centenary of the opening of the Northern Ireland parliament.

Kenneth Baker

The Tories risk losing their voter base

The switch from a 16,000 Tory majority to a Lib Dem majority of 8,000 in Chesham and Amersham is a gamechanger. HS2 was a special factor, though even the Lib Dems did not say they would cancel it. But there was real anxiety that the Tory planning changes would threaten local communities. The Tories had a good candidate, but Peter Fleet has since said that many of his electors were concerned that the government’s mammoth spending programmes would lead to higher taxes. The result should come as little surprise. The 2019 local elections gave a clear sense of where things were headed, when a huge number of Tory seats were unexpectedly lost in Chelmsford, Chichester, East Cambridgeshire, Guildford, South Oxfordshire, Winchester, Surrey Heath, Woking and Spelthorne.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Listen: Department for Education’s new patriotic anthem

After last year's A-level results day debacle and the ongoing saga about catch-up funding, Gavin Williamson is one of the bookies' favourites for the Cabinet chop. The incumbent education secretary has suffered some brutal headlines in the last 12 months and appears to have stumbled on the culture wars as his best bet for ministerial survival, jumping headfirst earlier this month into the Oxford Queen portrait row. https://twitter.com/educationgovuk/status/1406990765906145281?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Now though Williamson's department might have overstepped itself in its zeal to promote British values.

Katy Balls

Who’s being hurt by ‘white privilege’?

14 min listen

While Labour are shuffling people round yet again.. 'There needs to be a change in messaging from the leader's office, because otherwise it just looks like he's rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.' - Isabel HardmanAnd the DUP are getting ready to welcome in their third leader in less than a month... 'Donaldson is actually in a much stronger position this time round, than if he had won by one vote last time round.' - James Forsyth A new report seems to show that in education, the group seemingly most negatively affected by the idea of 'white privilege' are white, working class children.  'I've been involved in the social mobility foundation for quite some time and there's no doubt that the demographic most missing in these programs is white, working class.

Andy Cowper

Should Dido Harding really run NHS England?

Dido Harding’s campaign to become the next boss of the NHS in England took a high-profile turn this weekend. ‘Sources close to Dido Harding’ (perhaps ones occupying the same pair of shoes) briefed the Sunday Times about the Conservative peer and ex-boss of the £37 billion Test and Trace scheme pitch as a candidate. (If appointed, the noble Baroness will reportedly resign from the Conservative party and take an indefinite leave of absence from the House of Lords.) Apparently, the health world’s favourite noble Baroness will end England’s reliance on foreign doctors and nurses if she replaces Sir Simon Stevens as the next head of NHS England.

Steerpike

Shadow ministers’ grousing gaffes

Few trends are as little remarked upon in British politics as the strange death of rural Labour. Back in 2001 the party held more than 100 seats in rural England and Wales; today the figure has slumped to just 17. Whereas once both comfortable shires and working class countryside constituencies were red on the map, now such places are seas of blue. In such circumstances, you would have hoped Labour's frontbenchers would be well briefed on the issues facing the countryside. So Steerpike was surprised therefore to tune into yesterday's Westminster Hall debate on grouse shooting – prompted by a petition backed by broadcaster Chris Packham's outfit Wild Justice – and hear the party's spokesmen talk about the practice.

Stephen Daisley

Labour’s worrying descent into communalism

Labour’s candidate in Batley and Spen, Kim Leadbeater, reportedly pulled out of a hustings featuring George Galloway over the weekend. This makes sense. Not only is Galloway a master of bluster whose pompous bombast has a steamroller quality in a debate, but Leadbeater would have been debating the person of whom she is currently doing a dubious impression. If the organisers were concerned about getting Labour’s perspective, they could have stuck a mirror in front of Galloway and given it equal time.

Ross Clark

It’s time to take back control of the public finances

It is called managing expectations: priming the public for really bad news so that when modestly bad news arrives it comes across as good news. Today’s public finance figures is a case in point. We have become so used to ever-grimmer predictions of the size of the government’s deficit that the latest figures released this morning ended up being reported in the form 'borrowing is much lower than expected'.  In May the government borrowed £24.3 billion which, we are told in a government press release, is a whacking £19.4 billion less than last May. Furthermore, total borrowing for the financial year 2020/21, came in at £299.2 billion — which, we are told by the Office for National Statistics, is £28.

Steerpike

Labour’s house building hypocrisy

The imminent departure of Labour's communications team appears to have done little to galvanise its flagging social media game. Party staffers yesterday released a new campaign graphic on Twitter, labelling the government's proposed liberalisation of planning laws a 'Developers' charter' accompanied by the old jibe at 'Tory party donors.'  Some online were quick to point out the cynicism of such a move, coming just three days after the party's poor performance in Chesham and Amersham, in which the Liberal Democrats quoted Tory grandees denouncing the plans. Others noted that the image in question is of Little Barrington where average house prices start at £1.6 million, which could be something to do with the current planning laws. https://twitter.

Julie Bindel

Laurel Hubbard is the beginning of the end of women’s sports

When women’s professional soccer was deemed good enough for our TV screens a couple of years ago, I was watching with a friend and her four-year-old son. He was enthralled by the game, and asked his mother, ‘Are boys allowed to play football as well as girls, mummy?’ This little boy’s comment clearly highlighted the insidious sexism prevalent in all aspects of competitive sport. When it comes to soccer, rugby, weightlifting, darts, you name it, commentating, sports writing, sports photography and so many other operational aspects of competitive sports are dominated by men. Female sports champions can be such important feminist role models for girls. Look at Martina Navratilova, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Nicola Adams and Sian Massey-Ellis.