Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Government ‘absolutely’ protected care homes

Nadhim Zahawi – Government ‘absolutely’ threw protective ring around care homes Dominic Cummings’ much anticipated testimony before the lessons learnt joint inquiry on Wednesday has proved as volcanic. Earning his particular ire was the health secretary Matt Hancock. Cummings claimed that Hancock should have been fired for ’15 to 20’ different reasons, and alleged that Hancock had lied about supplying tests for Covid patients before they were discharged to care homes during a cabinet meeting in March 2020. Matt Hancock stated two months later that the government had thrown a ‘protective ring’ around the care home sector.

Steerpike

Boris and Carrie mystery guest revealed as top Remainer

The wedding of Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds was a highly secretive affair. The couple tied the knot yesterday at Westminster cathedral, with key aides being kept out of the loop for fear of leaks. So Mr S was surprised to spot one high-profile Remainer pictured emerging from Downing Street in wedding attire last night, having been apparently sworn to secrecy. The 'mystery man' in a gold waistcoat who the Mail captured here with the label 'it is not clear what their relation to the newlyweds is' is none other than one Hugo Dixon.

Patrick O’Flynn

‘There is no alternative’: Why Boris will keep winning

Those of us who generally wish this Government well and consider Boris Johnson a preferable holder of the office of prime minister to any likely alternative are facing a new accusation this weekend. The vast brigade of pinko pundits who have predicted Johnson’s downfall on numerous occasions only to be proved wrong each time, have changed tack. They now mostly acknowledge that rows over prorogations or pelmets – or even this week’s Dominic Cummings spectacular – are likely to have only a very limited impact upon public opinion. But they shake their heads sadly at us and tell us this is not the point. Rather, what actually matters is that we are in the grip of a morally deficient PM who is not up to the job and that ought to worry us greatly.

John Ferry

The SNP’s latest separation blueprint is pure project fantasy

'A SNP MSP has claimed an independent Scotland could guarantee a couple with children a minimum income of more than £37,000 a year,' the Daily Record reported breathlessly this week, as it covered the SNP's latest plans for an independent Scotland. Then came the clincher: 'Neil Gray admits the plans have not been costed.' Neil Gray is an SNP MSP and deputy convenor of the party's Social Justice and Fairness Commission, which has published its final report: A Route Map to a Fair Independent Scotland. One of the report's key recommendations is for a pilot of a minimum income guarantee.

Saturday

Steerpike

Boris marries Carrie

After Dominic Cummings's seven-hour evidence session slating Boris Johnson and his ministers, it's been a difficult few days of press coverage for 10 Downing Street. There were even rumours last week that the Prime Minister could embark on a Cabinet reshuffle to change the news agenda. However, it seems that may not be necessary. Today Boris Johnson married his fiancee Carrie Symonds in a secret ceremony at Westminster cathedral. After sending out invites this week to friends for a big celebration of their marriage next summer, the couple tied the knot in a Catholic ceremony with 30 of their closest friends and families. The plans are reported to have been so top secret that many of Johnson's aides were kept out of the loop for fears of a leak.

Joanna Williams

The problem with Prince Harry’s mental health drive

Has Prince Harry ever had a thought and not made it public? Are there feelings or emotions he has experienced but kept to himself? The latest episode of The Me You Can’t See, the Duke’s documentary series exploring mental health and emotional well-being, aired this week. Loyal viewers were rewarded with a bonus ‘town hall conversation’ show in which Harry and his co-host and producer, Oprah Winfrey, were reunited with advisors and participants from the series.  The premise of the programmes, drummed home once again in the town hall special, is that having ‘a me we can’t see’ is bad for our mental health. Full emotional disclosure is open, honest, liberating, brave and true.

Steerpike

All is rosy in the Downing Street garden

After Dominic Cummings’s explosive testimony on Wednesday, you might have thought special advisers in Downing Street would be spending the evening busily preparing their lines of rebuttal. Far from it. Mandarins, spads and operatives piled into the Downing Street garden for a belated farewell drinks for James Slack, the longtime No. 10 director of communications, whose departure Steerpike first revealed in March. The booze up came exactly a year and a day after Cummings appeared in the same rose garden to explain his Barnard Castle debacle – an irony that was not lost on some of those in attendance. Mr S understands the occasion was an amicable one, with the highlight being Boris Johnson’s gift of a signed copy of the Brexit deal.

Katy Balls

Will the DUP lose ground under Edwin Poots?

11 min listen

This week Edwin Poots was formally endorsed as the DUP's new leader, in a meeting which Arlene Foster, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson (Poots's rival in the leadership campaign) and other senior DUP politicians walked out of before Poots gave a speech. What does the future hold for the divided political party that held so much sway in Westminster during the Brexit process? Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and the Irish Times's Denis Staunton. On the podcast, Denis suggests three ways forward for disgruntled DUP politicians like Foster and Donaldson. One, they could try to topple Poots. Two, they could go back to the Ulster Unionist Party (from which they defected in 2004). Or three, they could form their own party.

Ian Acheson

The catalogue of failures that allowed Usman Khan to kill

The inquest into the murder of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt by Islamist terrorist Usman Khan has revealed a collision of arrogance, hubris, naïveté and incompetence from which the two graduates arguably paid with their lives. Saskia and Jack were attached to a prison education programme supported by Cambridge University called ‘Learning Together’. The scheme, which appears not to have been formally evaluated, inspected or risk assessed by its creators – and had no clear rehabilitation purpose – placed criminology students from the university alongside prisoners on a study programme. In late 2017, at High Security HMP Whitemoor, Khan – an active threat to prison staff – was allowed to join this group.

Stephen Daisley

The BBC cannot survive many more scandals

The BBC is still investigating one of its journalists almost one week after it emerged she had tweeted ‘Hitler was right’. Tala Halawa, who is based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, is the ‘Palestine specialist’ for BBC Monitoring and was part of the reporting team which covered the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas and the reactions to the conflict. As The Spectator reported last Sunday, watchdog group Honest Reporting and a number of British Jews who campaign against antisemitism uncovered a series of tweets and Facebook posts from Halawa. These included assertions such as ‘Israel is more Nazi than Hitler’ and ‘Hitler was right’, as well as the pronouncement that ‘ur media is controlled by ur zionist government’.

Leo McKinstry

Is awarding medals to Bomber Command heroes a wise idea?

Will the heroic members of Bomber Command, who played such a vital role for Britain during the Second World War, finally get the recognition they deserve? In recent years, there has been growing pressure on Whitehall to strike a campaign medal for the RAF crews who fought during the conflict, thereby giving them the special recognition they were denied in 1946. But even if it is done with the best of intentions, is a unique award for these men – who were undoubtedly heroes – really such a wise idea, or could it set a difficult precedent?

Friday

Steerpike

The best and worst of ministerial interests

At long last the ministerial register of interests is here – a mere five months after it was due. The register was released today to accompany the findings of the independent adviser on ministers’ interests, Christopher Geidt, into whether Boris Johnson's No. 10 flat shenanigans broke the ministerial code (spoiler: he didn't.) Mr S has spent the afternoon looking at the register and picking out the most interesting gigs, perks and possible conflicts of interests detailed. Johnson himself lists 12 charities and non-profit organisations with which he has links including the Anglo Turkish society of which he is president and Hillingdon golf club in Uxbridge who presented him with honorary membership in his capacity as the local MP.

Katy Balls

Boris acted ‘unwisely’ but cleared over Downing Street flat

Boris Johnson’s week has ended better than it began. After Dominic Cummings spent Wednesday launching a broadside against the Prime Minister over his handling of the Covid response, at least one of Johnson’s problems appears to be receding. This afternoon the government has published Lord Geidt’s report into the funding of the redecoration of the No. 11 flat Johnson shares with his fiancée Carrie Symonds. That refurbishment has been the subject of many column inches – with questions asked about whether donors initially funded the pricey project by the eco-designer Lulu Lytle.

Matthew Lynn

France is paying a heavy price for Macron’s vaccine catastrophe

The United States is growing at such a blistering pace the Federal Reserve may have to raise interest rates. In Britain, retail sales grew by nine per cent this month, the fastest pace on record, as the economy opened up again. Around the world, economies are starting to bounce back strongly from the Covid-19 crisis. Except for one: France. We learned today that the country is now officially in a double-dip recession. The explanation? That is easy. It made a complete hash of its vaccination programme. In the first-quarter of this year, revised figures showed that France’s output shrank by 0.1 per cent. That followed a 1.5 per cent contraction in the final quarter of 2020, making two consecutive quarters of falling output, the standard definition of a recession.

Fraser Nelson

Did NHS discharges ‘seed’ Covid into care homes? A look at the data

Did Matt Hancock’s negligence lead to Covid seeding into care homes because patients were not tested before being discharged? This was one of Dominic Cummings’s more potent charges  and it brings back memories for me because I spent a chunk of last summer looking into this. In my line of work, the success rate for stories is quite low: investigate five avenues and you’re likely to find four dead ends. So you end up with a lot of data and research that’s never used, because the original premise doesn’t hold up. I was (and remain) critical of much of government policy on Covid response: it seemed horribly plausible to me that panicked NHS discharges were behind the staggering care home death count.

Robert Peston

Was Matt Hancock guilty of ‘negligence’?

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock has insisted that he promised the Prime Minister and his former chief aide Dominic Cummings only that all elderly and vulnerable patients would be tested for Covid on discharge to a care home when there was adequate testing capacity, and not with immediate effect. This is Hancock’s defence against Cummings’s charge that the Health Secretary lied to him and the PM when promising to test patients prior to them going to a care home. But I understand Cummings has documentary evidence that as late as May last year he and the PM feared they had been misled by Hancock about how he would protect the elderly in care homes, and that he was guilty of ‘negligence’.

Katy Balls

Will Hancock cling on?

14 min listen

Matt Hancock defended his position at a Downing Street press conference yesterday. He told journalists that, by his 'recollection of events', he told the Prime Minister that hospital patients would be tested before being sent to care homes 'when we could do it'. Dominic Cummings says the Health Secretary promised all patients would receive a test.On the podcast, Isabel Hardman says the press conference setup was 'a bit shifty', as journalists were denied follow up questions. 'What had started off being a reasonably good day for Hancock - he didn't get a drubbing in the Commons - ended really badly for him. The front pages were hastily rewritten, so he was on the front of many of the newspapers dodging questions,' Isabel adds.

Steerpike

Read: Carrie Symonds’s barking mad letter

It has been a ruff time in No. 10 for poor old Dilyn the dog. Adopted in September 2019, the Jack Russell-cross has been the subject of interminable briefing wars about his constant yapping, destructive tendencies and attempts to fornicate with his next door neighbour. But while not everyone in Downing Street is smitten with the sex-crazed mutt, Dilyn is fortunate in having an ardent champion in owner Carrie Symonds who clearly takes his welfare very seriously. Just yesterday Mr S noted how a March 2020 story in the Times that suggested Dilyn might be rehomed had been unceremoniously purged from the newspaper's website.

James Forsyth

Could 21 June be delayed?

There are two key questions ahead of the 21 June reopening. First, as I say in the magazine this week, there is the issue of how much more transmissible the Indian variant is than the Kent one. According to papers published by Sage, it is a ‘realistic possibility’ that it is up to 50 per cent more transmissible. If the true figure is at the top of this range, then a full reopening would likely lead to another big wave of cases and put pressure on hospitals. But the view in Whitehall is that if it is only 30 per cent more transmissible, then it should be safe to proceed with reopening. More data on this is expected next week. The second question is how many people have had their second jab by then.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

The questions Matt Hancock still has to answer

Matt Hancock’s approach to Dominic Cummings’s allegations has been to come out fighting. He believes he has spent most of today answering questions about these allegations. But Thursday night's press conference highlighted what he has really been doing today: merely talking at length about the allegations, while dodging any real answers. No longer cushioned by eager Conservative colleagues, Hancock found himself being repeatedly asked about whether he had told No. 10 that people coming out of hospital would be tested before they were discharged into care homes. The journalists asking those questions listened as the Health Secretary refused to deny saying this, using a precise formula of words to dodge giving a full answer.