Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Steerpike

Is Rishi Sunak launching a bailout or a menswear range?

The government had plenty of good news to share with the arts world today, after it unveiled a £1.57 billion support package for cash-strapped theatres and venues who are unable to open because of the coronavirus crisis. The £880m in grants and £270m in loans are the latest of several whopping support schemes signed off by the Treasury to keep the struggling British economy afloat. It was perhaps inevitable then that the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, would want to celebrate the move with his own announcement this weekend. It also gave the Chancellor the opportunity to once again show-off his own unique branding.

Steven Fielding

Keir Starmer needs to find his own Guilty Men

This is a week of bittersweet anniversaries for the Labour party. It is now 72 years since Clement Attlee’s government created the National Health Service, its most popular achievement. It is also 75 years since Attlee led the party to its first ever landslide victory, a triumph that made the NHS possible. But if these memories warm the hearts of Labour members they should be cooled by the realisation that their party is some way from even scraping back into office, let alone marching into power armed with a manifesto as radical as ‘Let Us Face the Future’, which rejected pre-war poverty and laissez-faire economics and embraced a new world of greater equality and state intervention.

Sunday

Stephen Daisley

Scotland’s Covid nationalists

One of the rare upsides of living in a country run by nationalists is that nationalists are not great at hiding their true feelings. When you’ve got a superiority complex, it’s hard to prevent it from bursting out, often at the most inopportune times. Efforts to explain to outsiders that the SNP isn’t actually a more left-wing version of Labour, but a strategically savvier version of Ukip may fall on deaf ears but, sooner or later, the subjects of your hand-wringing will just come out with it by themselves. On Saturday, a modest band of Scottish nationalists just came out with it in dramatic fashion on the border with England.

Kate Andrews

This NHS clap is not for its carers

At 5pm, we are being encouraged to head to our windows and doors to clap for the National Health Service on its 72nd birthday – the idea is that we’d be doing, once again, what we did in lockdown. Except we wouldn’t. The original gesture was to show thanks to the many healthcare staff (and a broader scope of key workers) who were putting their lives on the line to help others, treating our sick at the peak of the virus in the UK. These are brave people at the best of times, but especially so in the early months of the pandemic, when we were still in the dark as to how contagious it was, who was most likely to suffer from it, and just how deadly it would become. But this evening’s round of applause for the NHS isn’t like the others.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: ‘I’m pleased with’ Super-Saturday, says Health Secretary

Matt Hancock - 'I'm pleased with what happened yesterday' The Health Secretary was Sophy Ridge's first guest this morning. Pubs and restaurants were allowed to reopen yesterday, prompting concerns from some quarters that the public would overindulge themselves. Ridge asked Hancock how he felt so-called 'Super Saturday' had gone: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1279681822159507456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw MH: From what I've seen... very, very largely, people have acted responsibly... Overall I’m pleased with what happened yesterday.

Saturday

Katy Balls

Will No 10’s press briefing shake-up really deliver more transparency?

13 min listen

Downing St has announced that it will be televising its afternoon lobby press briefing, come October. Inspired by the daily coronavirus briefings, it's a shake-up that supporters say could improve transparency. On the podcast, Katy Balls speaks to former No 10 comms chief Craig Oliver, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson. They also take a punt at which experienced broadcaster may be brought in to deliver the briefing.

Paul Mason

Can Labour win the Blue Fen?

The Labour Together election review makes grim reading. Unless Labour can take back a large part of Scotland, it needs a swing in England so large that it takes Jacob Rees-Mogg’s seat in Somerset. We’ll have to take back not only the Red Wall but the Blue Fen.  Realistically, the report says, there are three routes back to power: drop social liberalism and bring out the anti-immigration mugs; tack to the centre on economic policy while talking loudly about patriotism; or try to unite a culturally divided working-class base around a radical economic offer that is ‘credible and morally essential’.  That third option is effectively the strategy Starmer stood on, but the report also reveals levels of incompetence in the party that will take months to fix.

Tom Goodenough

Now isn’t the time for an NHS pay rise

Across Britain, the rainbow pictures are coming down. But in some houses, they are being replaced with new, more political placards. ‘This home supports a pay rise for NHS heroes,’ the poster says. It’s unlikely that any politician will be brave enough to say so but it’s worth asking a question in response: is now really the time? No one doubts that the NHS has risen remarkably to the threat of coronavirus. Doctors, nurses, cleaners and others working in hospitals deserve our gratitude for their efforts in treating those affected by this virus. In some cases, these people have put themselves at personal risk to do their jobs and ensure that the health service was able to cope with the daily flood of cases.

Patrick O’Flynn

Get ready for Starmer’s Brexit conversion

A new problem is looming for Sir Keir Starmer: a leader of the opposition needs some shop windows if he is to get more punters through the doors and his will shortly be getting boarded up. Prime Minister’s Questions is usually more important to opposition leaders than it is to the actual PM because he must demonstrate that he has the potential to upend the status quo, increasing market share at the expense of the dominant player. By a quirk of parliament’s amended coronavirus calendar, Sir Keir Starmer still has four PMQs outings in which to strut his stuff before the later than usual summer recess.

Steerpike

Was Ed Davey ‘a bit right-wing’ for a Tory coalition partner?

The Lib Dem leadership showdown between Layla Moran and Ed Davey has become something of an ideological battle over the soul of the party. Moran is explicitly courting disgruntled left-wingers, telling Business Insider that under her leadership the party would be 'even more radical than Labour' and is pledging to match the Corbynite promise of free broadband. Meanwhile, Davey is pitching himself as the pragmatist's choice. He has, in the past, defended the coalition (even if he strenuously avoided mentioning the dreaded 'c' word since the general election). Though lately he has been keen to burnish his progressive credentials by talking the language of radical BLM campaigners.

Friday

Steerpike

Runners and riders: 10 Downing Street’s new press conference host

Update: It has been reported that the former BBC and ITV journalist Allegra Stratton will be Downing Street's new press conference host. This morning, Boris Johnson confirmed on LBC that the government is planning to introduce daily televised press briefings not too dissimilar to White House press conferences. Replacing the off-camera afternoon lobby briefing, the conferences aim to build on the success of the daily coronavirus briefings, which Johnson said showed that ‘people want direct engagement and want stuff from us’.  With an area in No. 9 Downing Street to be converted for the new set-up, No.

Alan Dershowitz

The Ghislaine Maxwell I know

My wife and I were introduced to Ghislaine Maxwell by Sir Evelyn and Lady Lynne de Rothschild, and we subsequently met her on several occasions — generally in the presence of prominent people such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nobel Prize-winning scientists, presidents of universities, and prominent academic and business people. We never saw her do anything inappropriate. We knew her only as Jeffrey Epstein’s thirty-something girlfriend. Now she stands accused of serious crimes allegedly committed a quarter of a century ago. Like every other arrested person, she must be presumed innocent. Many in the public however, will presume her guilty because of the portrayal of her in the Netflix series about Jeffrey Epstein.

James Forsyth

The looming Tory trade debate

Post-Brexit, the UK needs to find allies on trade liberalisation. One obvious place to look is the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership. The UK is keen to join this group of 11 countries, as Liz Truss reiterated at a Policy Exchange event this afternoon. The Singaporean trade minister emphasised how keen he would be to see the UK join, and how this would send a message about the role that the UK wishes to play in the world post-Brexit.  Interestingly, he also warned that the government needs to prepare domestic businesses for the change this would bring to prevent any anti-trade backlash.

Katy Balls

Will Super Saturday prove a washout?

12 min listen

One day to go until 'Super Saturday', when pubs and restaurants in England (except Leicester) will reopen. But polls show that only a small minority of Brits will go back to the pubs. Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson about what this would mean for post-pandemic recovery.

Alastair Stewart

Boris’s TV briefings could end the lobby pantomime

The daily coronavirus briefings from Downing Street were wildly popular by one measure, drawing in millions of viewers, but were they any use? Like them or loathe them, it seems that we will be seeing plenty more of them. Boris Johnson has decided that, from October, the 'briefings sessions’ should be televised. Journalists and former spin doctors from all sides have been hailing this as a move which will mean more transparency. But we can also expect to see many of the ridiculous stunts that plagued the coronavirus briefings. Political correspondents often asked the same questions, most seeking a ‘gotcha’ moment in relation to something that should have been done sooner, or better.

Steerpike

George Osborne lands another job

When George Osborne stepped down as editor of the Evening Standard, it was unlikely the former chancellor was going to fall on hard times. Not only did Osborne have another eight jobs to fall back on, he was handed a plum position by the Standard as its new editor-in-chief. But now, less than a month on from handing over the editorship to David Cameron’s sister-in-law, Osborne has bounced back with a new appointment. Mr S hears the happy news that George Gideon Oliver Osborne has just been appointed as a director of the family business Osborne and Little Limited. Congratulations, George.

Nick Tyrone

What Peter Mandelson still doesn’t understand about Brexit

On Tuesday evening at 11 pm, the chance for the UK to extend the Brexit transition with the EU expired. Britain and the EU must come to some sort of deal before the end of 2020 or what amounts to a no-deal Brexit will happen. What is interesting about this is how much a no-deal situation is still being underplayed by many in the government and other parts of the Westminster bubble. What is even more fascinating is the position of several key remainers on this point. Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool has been doing media interviews this week, all as part of putting out his stall to become the UK candidate to be the next WTO director-general. The Labour peer says he’s been informally approached by the government to be our choice for the role.

Katy Balls

The Chloe Smith Edition

27 min listen

Chloe Smith is the Conservative MP for Norwich North and minister at the Cabinet Office. She entered parliament at the age of 27 and rose through the ranks quickly. In 2012, she was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman in what has been described as a 'car crash interview' when she was sent out to defend then-Chancellor George Osborne's U-turn on fuel duty. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about what it was like to do that interview and the aftermath, why she proposed to her husband, and what it was like to receive a fake anthrax package.

Thursday

Cindy Yu

Mission Impossible: can Boris Johnson rewire the British government?

39 min listen

The Prime Minister is trying to reform the civil service. He's not the first to try - so will he succeed? (00:50) The stakes for success are high, as his opponent is no longer Jeremy Corbyn, but the more impressive Keir Starmer. How have Starmer's first almost 100 days gone? (15:45) And last, how widespread is loneliness? (29:45)With the Spectator's political editor James Forsyth; Jill Rutter from UK In a Changing Europe; our deputy political editor Katy Balls; former C4 Economics Editor Paul Mason; author Leaf Arbuthnot; and Andy Nazer from the Campaign to End Loneliness.Presented by Cindy Yu.