Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Peter Apps

Cladding risks creating a political crisis for the Tories

Today, for the third time in as many months, MPs will vote on an amendment to prevent the costs of removing cladding and fixing other fire safety defects being passed on to residents. For some time now, thousands of British homeowners have been left fearing for their lives and facing ruinous bills after fire safety issues following the Grenfell Tower fire were identified in tens of thousands of tall and medium rise buildings across the country. In most cases, building owners have been able to charge individual flat owners to fix the defects, even though their apartments were signed off as safe under government regulations at the time.

Steerpike

Labour’s tax attack in Hartlepool backfires

Pity the poor people of Hartlepool. Next week's parliamentary by election has seen an army of activists pouring in to the Red Wall seat, with Labour desperate to cling on to a seat that last went blue in the days of Supermac. CCHQ have been playing down chances of a Tory gain but one Labour insider has told Steerpike their party's internal polling is 'dire' – a situation not helped by 'MILF-gate' or a farrago over St George's cross flags. Now though Labour are embroiled in another taxing row after deputy leader Angela Rayner launched an attack on the Conservative Hartlepool candidate, Jill Mortimer.

Stephen Daisley

Why the Cummings row won’t harm Boris

It's hard not to agree with those who believe that Boris Johnson, forced into the second Covid-19 lockdown, did say the words: ‘No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands.’  The allegation seems particularly convincing because it was reported in the Daily Mail, whose political team is one of the most plugged in to goings-on at the top of government, the civil service and the Conservative party. Westminster, the media, the infinite outrage-generator that is Twitter — all have been going into overdrive about the Prime Minister’s remarks I am convinced, too, because it sounds all too plausible.

Andrew Willshire

Joe Biden’s skewed climate change priorities

It's not hard to see why politicians like Joe Biden and Boris Johnson want to talk about climate change.  First of all, it looks good to the electorate. Caring about the planet (or at least being seen to care about the planet) is one of the things that marks you out as 'a good person'. It also allows leaders to compare themselves to other leaders and take pride in being more hardline than others. It tends to result in massive government-sponsored infrastructure programmes, requiring the Prime Minister and various cabinet ministers to keep their hi-vis jackets and hard hats within easy reach. Most importantly of all, the results won’t be seen until well after their term of office has finished.

Samantha Smith

The class of 2020 are being failed yet again

Last year, after the cancellation of exams and the ensuing A Level results fiasco, which saw thousands of students downgraded by an algorithm, the Government promised this would never happen again. They asked students to put their faith in a system that had failed them once before, and guaranteed that lessons would be learnt. Yet, one year later, young people are being put in yet another impossible position by the education system. Despite earlier assurances from the Education Secretary that exams would not be cancelled this year, teacher-assessed grades will end up deciding the fate of the class of 2020/21. That will create its own set of problems for many students.

Francis Elliott

Can Boris finally ‘fix’ social care?

It's been almost a year since Boris Johnson said he would not wait to 'fix the problem of social care that every government has flunked for the last 30 years'. With a green paper detailing the government's plan finally due, we'll soon learn whether the Prime Minister is as good as his word. We'll also see whether Johnson succeeds in avoiding the pitfalls encountered by his predecessors. Might he tumble into the same trap that blew up Theresa May's bungled snap election? The wrecks of those previous attempts – sent out with such high hopes – are plentiful. Talking to the politicians in charge of those efforts from three different parties and five administrations for Engage Britain common themes emerge.

Monday

Alex Massie

Does anyone doubt Boris’s leaked ‘bodies’ comment?

Of course Boris Johnson raged, King Lear-like, that he was prepared to 'let the bodies pile high in their thousands' if the alternative was subjecting the country to a third lockdown more dispiriting than either of its dreary, even grim, predecessors. I say ‘of course he said it’ not just because at least three different sources have confirmed to at least three different reporters that the Prime Minister did say it but also, and significantly, because it would be so wholly in character for the Prime Minister to have said it. If it sounds like the sort of thing he would say, that is largely because it is the sort of thing he would say. Nor have his denials been convincing.

Steerpike

Watch: brazen Tory claims government is ‘almost painfully transparent’

The SNP tabled an urgent question in Westminster today, asking for an update on the ministerial code in light of recent allegations of impropriety – something of course their comrades in Holyrood would know all about. A potentially tricky outing for the government beckoned but up stepped Michael Gove, master of the sticky wicket, to bat away the opposition spinmeisters and dig his hapless captain out of trouble again. Fortunately for Gove some Tory MPs were on hand to provide softball 'questions' that were more of gentle underhand throw than a fiendish googly. A case in point was 2019-er Andrew Griffith, who lent his £9.5 million townhouse to Boris Johnson's campaign during the latter's successful leadership bid.

Katy Balls

Does Simon Case have all the answers?

11 min listen

Simon Case dodged questions from MPs about his lockdown leak inquiry at a select committee appearance this afternoon, and refused to go into details about how Boris Johnson paid for the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, saying the PM would make the 'relevant declarations'. Why did Case stonewall the committee? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Robert Peston

Revealed: How Boris paid for the Downing Street refurbishment

I understand that CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) made a payment to the Cabinet Office to cover the initial costs of refurbishing the Prime Minister’s home in Downing Street, and the PM is now repaying CCHQ.  There is an audit trail and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case knows about it. This is presumably why he told MPs today that he would do a report on the propriety of how the decoration and furnishing was funded. Downing Street says to me that the PM has now paid for the costs of the refurbishment. But there was a loan to him from the Tory party. And I assume that loan will now have to be declared by him.  Readers can decide whether it was appropriate for his party to give him this kind of financial help.

Isabel Hardman

Gove’s ‘bodies pile high’ non-denial

This afternoon's urgent question on allegations of Tory sleaze could have been a rather explosive affair. Instead, it was used by members of all parties to produce a series of rather rubbish slogans for the local and devolved assembly elections next month. The Conservatives wanted to deflect attention from their problems by complaining about a series of things: that the other parties were bad too, that voters didn't care about this stuff anyway, and that the government was being criticised for trying too hard in the pandemic. Labour and the SNP wanted to nail the Tories and produce similar clips for their campaigns, and the Lib Dems had a number of targets, including the SNP.

Kate Andrews

When will vaccines begin boosting the economy?

Britain may be about to go from one economic extreme to another. This winter the OECD calculated Britain suffered one of the highest levels of economic damage in the developed world, compared with the year before, due to its stringent lockdown. Fast forward to spring and the UK’s trajectory for economic recovery is now being revised, with forecasts only moving in one direction: up. Today alone, two heavy hitters boosted their predictions. This morning EY Item Club revised its 2021 growth forecast from 5 per cent to 6.8 per cent – which, if accurate, would see the UK grow at its fastest rate on record, recovering to pre-pandemic levels months earlier than originally anticipated.

James Forsyth

Simon Case’s answers left us with more questions

Simon Case was determined not to make news at his select committee appearance today. But his sheer desire not to make news told a story in itself as the Commons Public Administration committee got increasingly frustrated with him. The row over who is responsible will rumble on Case dodged a string of questions on the lockdown leak inquiry and then declared, ‘What I can say I have already said to the committee.’ Case did, though, reveal a couple of things. First, it will be weeks not months before the inquiry concludes and the reason he couldn’t say much on it was that while the leak was not criminal, the investigation is using techniques he can’t talk about it in public.

Matthew Lynn

The EU will regret suing AstraZeneca

Well, that will teach them to go around manufacturing a vaccine against a global virus at cost price, and at record speed. The European Union has today said it is planning to take legal action against the pharmaceuticals conglomerate AstraZeneca for failing to deliver enough doses of the Oxford shot on time.  No doubt European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and her team are planning to be exonerated. They will finally be able to demonstrate that the whole vaccine debacle, for which the Commission has taken so much flak, and which has already caused thousands of unnecessary deaths across continent, was all the fault of the Anglo-Swedish company. No doubt the untrustworthy British will also be implicated.

Kate Andrews

Should we give vaccines to India?

Last spring, scenes in Lombardy, Italy, caused panic in Whitehall: buckling healthcare systems and tents pitched outside emergency centres played a large role in the government’s decision to implement a nationwide lockdown. It was thought that the British public could tolerate many of the consequences of Covid-19, but not the idea that the NHS would be unable to cater to those who needed it.  As it happened, the UK’s worst nightmares were never realised. The Nightingale hospitals built to increase capacity were barely used. But what the British government feared most is now taking place elsewhere. India is suffering an exponential growth in infections, with more than 349,000 cases reported yesterday, as well as nearly 3,000 deaths.

Nick Tyrone

The Remainer dilemma of Boris vs Dom

There is something deeply dissatisfying about the latest No. 10 psychodrama. Given this is a crisis that could end Boris Johnson’s political career, it should feel like more of a pivotal moment than it does. Part of the problem is that if you’re a Remainer or a Labour supporter, whose side of the story do you trust here? Do you believe Boris Johnson, the man who fronted the Leave campaign and whose support probably swung the referendum? Or do you believe Dominic Cummings, the evil genius who supposedly manipulated the masses via technical trickery to vote to leave the EU? Of course, ‘neither’ is an option, but not one that seems to be getting a lot of pick up in Remain-land or Labour circles.

Steerpike

Wanted: head of Labour party fundraising

Whether it's in government or outside it, financial management has often been Labour's weak spot. In recent years though the party has struggled to balance its own budgets, let alone those of the country, with fundraising from wealthy donors being (understandably) more difficult during Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.  Electoral Commission figures published last week show that in 2019 the Lib Dems managed to outspend Labour by more than £2.3 million during that year's general and European elections even with the might of the trade unions backing Jezza. Despite a change of leader, problems still remain with reports last summer that the party risked facing bankruptcy over the legal bill for antisemitism cases and the leaked internal dossier on the handling of this issue.

Katy Balls

Where will the Downing Street psychodrama end?

21 min listen

The Downing Street psychodrama continues today, with the Daily Mail reporting that Boris Johnson said he would rather see the 'bodies pile high in their thousands' than order a third lockdown. Where will the war between the PM and his former adviser Dominic Cummings end? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Patrick O’Flynn

When will there be another right-wing insurgency?

Almost the whole of the British political class failed to understand that the rise of Ukip after the 2010 general election was not some fringe irrelevance but was in fact likely to have major consequences. Academics Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin were two of a select band of political futurologists who were onto the Ukip advance early. By the time their insightful book Revolt on the Right was published, Ukip had already forced an EU referendum pledge out of David Cameron and the book was therefore read by many dumbfounded Westminster insiders as if it were a crammer for a module that had unaccountably not been covered in the standard curriculum.

Andrew Tettenborn

Priti Patel must tread carefully when lecturing police on hate crime

Any gunslinging sheriff can tell you that if you shoot from the hip you may hit the target but not quite with the precision you wanted. Priti Patel, very much a minister to draw first and ask questions later, is in much this position with her challenge to the police establishment over the weekend on its policy of recording all non-crime hate incidents. Most of what she said is spot-on; but in two respects she may have to think a little more carefully. The problem with the present police policy, as Matthew Parris trenchantly pointed out in this week’s Spectator, is that even if you never break the law it makes being rude to anyone on social media a risky business.