Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s growing backbench problem

When will Boris Johnson reshuffle his Cabinet? It's a question that’s asked every couple of weeks in Westminster with frequent briefings about who is up (Liz Truss, if recent ConservativeHome polls are anything to go by) and who is down (Gavin Williamson is the most recent minister to be tipped for the axe). Yet despite the talk, so far the Prime Minister has proven reluctant to refresh his top team. A hint of why can be found in the events of this week. A series of Tory rebellions are bubbling up. As Johnson considers whether to green-light the June 21 unlocking, members of the Covid Recovery Group are once again going public with their concerns. More troubling for the government, however, is the unease behind the scenes.

Leo McKinstry

Judge Ollie Robinson on his cricket skills, not his tweets

Ollie Robinson, who made his Test debut for England at Lord’s last week against New Zealand, is an outstanding cricketer with both bat and ball. But that ability apparently counts for little. His performance was overshadowed by the discovery of some incendiary, tasteless tweets he had sent almost a decade ago as a teenage professional. An abject apology was not enough to save him. The England Cricket Board promptly banned Robinson from the next Test match, and a full inquiry has been launched into his conduct. Quite rightly, sports minister Oliver Dowden has called the penalty 'over the top'. But that intervention has not helped Robinson. This row marks a depressing moment for English cricket. It also raises a key question: is any player safe?

Andrew McQuillan

How long will Edwin Poots’s DUP reign last?

New DUP leader Edwin Poots has wasted little time consigning the Arlene Foster era to history. Poots' shake-up of his Stormont ministerial team has resulted in Foster’s loyalists being shown the door, in favour of what the Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister drily termed 'Poots’ posts'. Poots' appointment of Paul Givan, his fellow Lagan Valley MLA, as first minister of Northern Ireland, is perhaps his most controversial, though not unexpected, move. Givan, who like Poots is a creationist, is one of the more verbose figures in the DUP hinterland.

Steerpike

Revealed: what Boris and Carrie hang on their walls

Much has been written about the reported £88,000 Downing Street flat makeover masterminded by A-list interior designer Lulu Lytle. We’re told that the new look boasts ‘Persian rugs, cream walls with gold hangings and gold chandeliers’. There's talk of 'gold' wallpaper (at £840 a roll) so heavy it is now peeling off the walls. But what works currently hang off it? These days, Downing Street aides are rather hush hush about the interiors of the flat. But there are some clues. Mr S has obtained files from the government Art Collection which lay bare for the first time the tastes and preferences of the Prime Minister and his wife Carrie Johnson when it comes to the paintings that hang in the flat.

Patrick O’Flynn

Priti Patel is running out of excuses for the Channel migrant crisis

When immigration minister Chris Philp announced last summer that he was in the process of agreeing a 'new operational plan' with his French counterparts to stop the cross-Channel traffic in irregular migrants, it seemed as though the government was finally getting a grip on the crisis. In a statement to camera he declared:  'We had a very constructive meeting with our French colleagues in Paris this morning. We have reaffirmed our unshakeable shared commitment to making sure this route of crossing the Channel is made unviable…we have worked on a joint operational plan, with the objective in mind of completely cutting this route. We’re going to work at pace in the coming days to make that plan a reality.

Tuesday

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

What the England team doesn’t get about ‘taking the knee’

England’s players being booed by their own fans is not a new phenomenon. But for the booing to be about politics rather than obnoxious personalities and tournament underperformance is. The furore over players taking the knee represents a new and exciting stage in the testy relationship between team and fans, in which each can take actions calculated to annoy and upset the other side, while believing themselves to be entirely in the right. The England team – in the words of manager Gareth Southgate – believe they’re just ‘trying to move towards equality and support our own teammates.

Stephen Daisley

Why our constituency names should celebrate Britain’s history

The real story of the proposed boundary changes is not which MPs might end up seatless or whether the new boundaries help Labour or the Tories, but what it means for ever-lengthening constituency names. Queen Mary university politics professor Philip Cowley says: https://twitter.com/philipjcowley/status/1402142280111120384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Professor Cowley points out that the mean number of characters in a constituency name would hit 15.7 under these proposals, compared to 12.6 in 1950. Whereas almost half of English constituencies had a single-word name in 1955, only one third do today and the new titles would take it down to 31.5 per cent.

Steerpike

Will beefy Botham hit the hacks for six?

The end of lockdown and the dawn of summer has seen Westminster's finest emerge once more in their best cricket whites. On Sunday two lobby teams turned out at Bromley common ground to see Harry Cole's Chatty Bats face off against Brendan Carlin's Cincinnati cricket club. The latter eventually triumphed by 48 runs and now have the honour of facing off against the best talent banded together from the Lords and the Commons as part of an all-star parliamentary XI. Ahead of the crunch tie, peers and MPs themselves took to the field in a warm up game against Marylebone cricket club as part of the dozen or so fixtures the side play a year.

Andrew Tettenborn

China should be worried about the Uyghur Tribunal

There have been harrowing stories of cruelty, torture and mistreatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang province in the news this week, coming from an official-sounding body called the Uyghur People’s Tribunal. But what is it, and what is its status? The answer may surprise you. Although its composition is highly eminent and its chairman the impeccably fair lawyer Geoffrey Nice QC, it has no official status whatsoever. True, it has formal sittings and apes much of legal procedure; true also that it will make formal findings on the question of what is going on in western China and whether it amounts to crimes against humanity or genocide. But these findings will have no more legal effect than your opinion or mine.

Robert Peston

Why the 21 June unlocking will probably not go ahead

The Prime Minister’s roadmap rules would logically dictate not moving to stage four of lockdown easing on 21 June, but delaying by two or four weeks – because the increase in the R transmission rate to more than one is driven in part by the stage two and stage three easings and not just by the greater transmissibility of the Delta variant. As Nadhim Zahawi said on the Peston show last Wednesday, the more significant characteristic of the Delta variant is that one vaccine dose is not terribly effective against it, though two doses provides decent protection. And that good protection kicks in two or three weeks after the second dose.

Katy Balls

Is the foreign aid row a sign of things to come?

13 min listen

Though the amendment on foreign aid was not selected by the Speaker yesterday, the row over the budget cut is not over yet. Today MPs will have an emergency debate about the policy, and Lindsey Hoyle has advised that the government should bring the matter in front of the House in the future. This is just one of a number of things bothering Tory MPs at the moment - so what's going on?  James Forsyth sums it up as: 'There's a pattern about money, essentially.' With the worst of the pandemic over the Treasury is looking to tighten its pursestrings.

Ross Clark

Does the data justify a delay to lifting lockdown?

There are still six days to go before the Prime Minister has to decide whether or not to go ahead with the full reopening of the economy and society on 21 June. But there seems little doubt in which way the government is travelling.  It is reported this morning that, following a pessimistic presentation by Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance the likelihood is that the reopening will be delayed by a fortnight, the lifting of some measures perhaps a little longer than that. Is this yet another shifting of the goalposts? It is true that there has been an increase in cases over the past couple of weeks – not so far accompanied by a rise in hospitalisations and deaths.

Mary Dejevsky

In defence of the foreign aid cut

It says something for the persuasive powers of former international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, that he mustered enough potential votes to inflict defeat on Boris Johnson’s government, if only his amendment had been permitted and a vote had been held. Mitchell’s consolation prize, awarded by the Speaker in recognition of the strength of feeling in the Commons, is an emergency debate on what would have been the substance of his amendment: to reinstate foreign aid at 0.7 per cent of GDP from next year, rather than the reduction to 0.5 per cent that was set in the Budget.  The rift this row has exposed among Conservative MPs could embarrass the Prime Minister as he prepares to host G7 leaders in Cornwall.

Steven Barrett

The Colin Pitchfork saga exposes the problem with the Parole Board

Colin Pitchfork, 61, was jailed for life for raping and murdering 15-year-olds Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth in Leicestershire in the 1980s. Now the Parole Board has said Pitchfork should be released. The backlash from politicians has been swift. Local MP Alberto Costa said he was 'appalled' by the decision. 'It would be immoral, wrong and frankly dangerous to release this disgraceful murderer of two children,' he added. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, who is said to be exploring the use of the 'reconsideration mechanism' to reverse the decision, appears to agree with his Tory colleague. But the reality is that Buckland – and Costa – have little power to stop Pitchfork's release.

Steerpike

Dawn Butler becomes the first MP to join Cameo

What do John Bercow, Nigel Farage, Iain Dale and Count Binface all have in common? The quartet are among the few British political commentators listed on popular celebrity video app Cameo, where celebrities charge fans to record messages. Now though the quartet has been joined by the first sitting MP to use the app: onetime Corbyn loyalist Dawn Butler. Butler, a former Shadow Cabinet member who has sat for Brent South since 2015, is now flogging messages for any kind of occasion. Customers are promised a 24 hour delivery time from a 'serious MP with a serious sense of humour' with an accompanying winky face, with prices of £30 having previously been listed.

Andy Cowper

Should Dido Harding end up running the NHS?

In England, the NHS is run by an organisation with an identity crisis. It calls itself NHS England, but that’s just self-promotional branding. In law, it is the NHS Commissioning Board, created by Andrew Lansley’s controversial 2012 reforms which gave the NHS a high level of autonomy from direct government control. The NHS Commissioning Board was first run by ex-Communist Sir David Nicholson; then by a former Labour councillor and ex-New Labour special advisor Sir Simon Stevens, who steps down at the end of July. Based on that trajectory, a cynical observer might suggest that in the distant future even a former Liberal Democrat could one day get the job. But could the ‘NHS England’ top job go next to a prominent Conservative?

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Priti Patel schools Zarah Sultana

Tories up and down the country should be celebrating tonight after it was revealed that walking CCHQ advert Zarah Sultana has kept her seat intact in the report by the Boundary Commission. The hard left MP has served as a Conservative recruiting agent since 2019 when the 27-year-old squeaked home in Coventry South by just 401 votes – down from some 7,947 her Labour predecessor Jim Cunningham managed just two years earlier. And this afternoon Sultana gave us some indication as to why she hemorrhaged votes to such an extent at the last election. Popping up today at Home Office oral questions, Sultana asked Priti Patel about detention conditions for asylum seekers at Napier barracks.

Isabel Hardman

Two lessons from the Commons aid revolt

The Speaker's decision to rule out an amendment which would have forced a vote on international aid cuts tells us a number of important things about the current situation in Westminster. The first is of course that Lindsay Hoyle is not John Bercow, who was prepared to ride roughshod over the advice of the clerks and convention in order to manufacture certain political confrontations and drama. Indeed, the Speaker today very pointedly opened his statement on the amendment by saying 'I respect and trust the advice from clerks in this House'. Hoyle made clear when he campaigned to be Speaker that he wanted to stop some of the games that Bercow had been playing, and that parliament deserved more respect.

Steerpike

Tech blunder adds to MPs’ results day nerves

It is results day in the House of Commons as nervy MPs wait to find out their future. At long last the Boundary Commission for England has today revealed its conclusions on the future of Westminster constituencies. It is the latest development in a decade-long saga which has previously failed to change the parliamentary map. This time though the expectation is it will go ahead, with new constituencies finalised in 2023. Those who see their constituency go will have to compete with a party colleague to stand in a neighbouring seat or move across the country to a safer seat as part of the infamous 'chicken run' tradition as Mims Davies did in 2019.

Steerpike

The foreign aid rebels: meet the new awkward squad

And so the foreign aid rebellion died before it even began. This afternoon Speaker Lindsay Hoyle decided that an audacious move to amend the ARIA bill to keep spending 0.7 per cent of GDP year on international development was not within the scope of the legislation.Despite this Mr S thought it worthwhile to go through the names of those Tories listed on the order paper to give you a cut out and keep guide to the new gang of government rebels. Most of those named will be familiar to long-suffering members of the Tory whips office: Sir Roger Gale was of course one of the first MPs to call for Dominic Cummings's resignation after Barnard Castle and it can hardly be a surprise to see him backing a measure that would gut the latter's cherished project.