Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Ross Clark

The bookies must learn from the Westminster betting scandal

Nothing excuses the behaviour of the Conservative MPs, party officials and police protection officers who took a flutter on the date of the general election, but honestly, what did the bookmakers expect? If you are going to offer odds on events which come down to the decision of one individual or organisation you can hardly be surprised when you receive a flurry of bets which might be traced back to inside information. The past fortnight has been one big advert for political betting The political betting scandal has similarities to the spot betting scandal of 2010 involving the Pakistan test cricket team, three members of which were later convicted of

Terry Barnes

Many Australians are revolted by Julian Assange’s return

Convicted spy Julian Assange has come home to Australia. Assange’s chartered private jet touched down in Australia’s capital, Canberra, early in the evening local time to a hero’s reception. That the plea-bargaining deal ensuring his freedom was executed in a remote courthouse on the American territorial island of Saipan, in the isolated western Pacific but satisfying American demand that Assange be convicted on American territory, added a bizarre touch of the exotic to the whole tawdry business. It was a rubber stamp stopover en route from London to Canberra. Assange is a figure of whom we are ashamed to call our own It’s appropriate the deed was done on Saipan.

Isabel Hardman

Why is Mel Stride always doing the broadcast round?

It’s a day ending in ‘y’, so it must be time for Mel Stride to make one of his appearances on the broadcast round. Stride is one of the few ministers who have been prepared to go out and about for the Tories during this campaign, alongside Grant Shapps. They seem to perform slightly different functions. Shapps will walk into the studios with a striking warning about how badly the election is going for the Tories, while Stride is the genial character who tries to mollify everyone and exit the interview without creating any news.  This morning, Stride’s job was to try to move on from the gambling row. He

Gavin Mortimer

French football is suffering from election fever

If England’s excuse for their inept performances is Gareth Southgate, what explains France’s failure to come to life at this month’s European Championships? World Cup winners in 2018 and runners-up in 2022, the French were one of the pre-match favourites going into the tournament. They’ve been even worse than England, finishing second in group D having won once and drawn twice against mediocre opposition. They’ve scored just two goals, and one of them was an own goal from an Austrian. Something is clearly not functioning within the French team Yet this is a settled squad under the same coach, Didier Deschamps, who led them to World Cup glory six years

Steerpike

Green candidate advocates ‘Climate Nuremberg’

The Greens like to portray themselves as the party of hope and change. But what exactly does that entail? An enlightening answer perhaps comes from Joe Taylor, the Green candidate for Battersea. In his zeal to save the planet, he advocates using legal action against those whom he holds responsible for climate change. But not just any ordinary legal action – Taylor has previously argued that ‘Conservative politicians’ have ‘already cast their die and booked their places at the climate Nuremberg.’ Quite the incendiary claim, given that the Nuremberg trials obviously concerned the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime before and during the Second World War… Having previously tweeted about a

Alexander Larman

What happened to all the celebrity election endorsements?

JK Rowling’s denunciation of Labour leader Keir Starmer marked a rare moment in the election – a campaign in which the celebs have fallen quiet. At the 1997 election, Labour’s landslide was accompanied both by explicit endorsements from the great and the good. Noel Gallagher and Geri Halliwell, those two Britpop icons, both appeared alongside Blair in public. In New Labour’s later years, Gordon Brown had Rowling, and Ed Miliband spent time and dignity in courting the once-influential Russell Brand, leading to the much-ridiculed Guardian headline: ‘Russell Brand has endorsed Labour – and the Tories should be worried.’ The resulting Conservative majority disproved his point. Even Jeremy Corbyn could count

Tuesday

Steerpike

Labour dragged into betting probe

Uh oh. On the same day that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his party would be dropping the two Tory candidates caught up in the election betting scandal, now Labour is facing problems of its own. It transpires that Sir Keir Starmer’s party has suspended Central Suffolk and North Ipswich candidate Kevin Craig after the Gambling Commission launched an investigation into the Labour man. Craig was placed under investigation by the gambling regulators after he allegedly gambled against himself winning the race for his constituency. Talk about hedging your bets… The Gambling Commission is already looking into the gambling history of former Sunak aide and candidate for Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr

Steerpike

Badenoch blasts David Tennant over trans debate

With only nine days left until the general election, tensions are flying high and parties are under more scrutiny than ever. Labour’s muddled messaging on the gender debate has ignited heated discussions on the treatment of gender-critical feminists by Sir Keir Starmer’s party – namely one of his own colleagues Rosie Duffield – and has prompted the likes of renowned author and women’s rights activist JK Rowling to speak out. Now Conservative politician Kemi Badenoch, who is also the women and equalities minister, has hit out at Labour – and former Doctor Who actor David Tennant. On receiving a prize at the British LGBT Awards, Tennant took aim at Badenoch

Lara Brown

Will Starmer have the courage to stand up for women’s rights?

Gender ideology was perhaps the last topic which Labour wanted to be front and centre of the election campaign but public opinion and JK Rowling are forcing them to address it. While their proposals on tax and spend have attracted much scrutiny, until the bestselling author intervened this weekend sex and gender had been consigned to the periphery of the campaign. Close analysis of Labour’s manifesto reveals that it is on ‘the culture wars’ – from transgenderism to restitution to a proposed new ‘Race Equality Act’– where they will be the most distinctive, even radical.  There can be no doubt that the landscape surrounding the thorny issue of gender ideology has shifted

Jake Wallis Simons

Joe Biden has failed Israel

Another week, another confirmation that when it comes to jihadism, the Biden administration’s foreign policy occupies the nexus between incompetence and moral vacancy. We’ve observed the President’s strategic genius when it comes to the Taliban (withdraw), Iran’s nuclear ambitions (appease) and Hamas (thus far but no further). Now we are seeing it when it comes to Hezbollah. With the conflict in Gaza winding down, Israel is being forced to turn its mind to its restive northern border. Over the last eight months, with the eyes of the world fixed firmly on Palestine, the parallel war – for that is what it has been – with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah has

Gray Sergeant

How Edinburgh kowtowed to Beijing

Zhang Biao, Beijing’s man in Scotland, warned earlier this month that a proposed friendship agreement between Edinburgh City Council and Taiwan’s southern city of Kaohsiung would ‘hurt the feeling[s] of the Chinese people’. The people of China, from Shenzhen to Harbin – all 1.4 billion of them – can sleep easy tonight: the proposal has been pulled from the council’s agenda. Whether it will reappear is unclear. The city’s leader, Cammy Day, has announced that ‘more discussion is required before taking this agreement forward’. Discussions which could presumably, if necessary, go on indefinitely.  Edinburgh Airport feared the agreement could harm work to increase the number of direct flights to China Anyone with

Isabel Hardman

Steve Baker speaks as though the Tories have already lost

It’s pretty unusual to hear a minister speaking during this election campaign: other than Mel Stride, the rest seem to have gone to ground entirely, either because they want to save their own seats or because they don’t want to be associated with the campaign at all. So when Steve Baker popped up on Andrew Neil’s show on Times Radio this lunchtime, that in itself was pretty remarkable. The Northern Ireland minister then accepted that the Tory betting scandal looked ‘terrible’, and did not bother to defend the delay in suspending the two Tory candidates who are alleged to have placed bets on the election date. He merely said:  The

Steerpike

Which cars are stolen most often in London?

As the election campaigns continue to pick up pace ahead of the national poll in nine days’ time, Mr S has been digging into some of the problems facing voters across the country. One issue stood out: crime. Sir Keir’s party has insisted it will cut down on antisocial behaviour and has this morning pledged to ‘take back our streets’. Steerpike would also point Starmer’s lefty lot focus in the direction of car theft – as it’s a growing epidemic in Britain’s capital city… The number of stolen cars logged in London has increased at a rather alarming rate since 2021, according to figures obtained via a Freedom of Information request

Kate Andrews

Labour already know what public finance horrors await them

Over the weekend, a leaked document revealed by the Guardian outlined different tax hikes the Labour party could impose, including changes to capital gains tax and inheritance tax. It’s evidence of what has long been suspected: that what’s been left out of the party’s manifesto (almost every tax) remains on the table. How might Labour justify not being more upfront about this ahead of the election? As I have noted on Coffee House before, Labour has gone to great lengths to insist all its plans are costed by tax increases that have already been announced. The lack of specificity in the manifesto, we’ve been told, is evidence that the party isn’t planning to

Brendan O’Neill

Why do some anti-fascists have a problem with Jews?

Is it still okay to ‘Punch a Nazi’? I’m asking for a friend. In fact, I’m asking for many friends who watched those violent protests outside a synagogue in Los Angeles over the weekend and wondered to themselves if that old left-wing slogan about walloping bigots still holds. If it was acceptable to punch alt-right Jew-haters back in the 2010s, then why not the keffiyeh-wearing variety of today who taunt Jews at their very place of worship? What a thin excuse for mobbing a synagogue ‘Punch a Nazi’ was the cry of every self-styled anti-fascist a few years ago. It was mostly bluster – none of these coddled, vegan kids

Katy Balls

Who will survive?

14 min listen

It’s another bad day for the Conservatives. Rishi Sunak has withdrawn support for the Tory candidates involved in the general election betting scandal. What has led to the timing of this decision? Also on the podcast, James Kanagasooriam, Chief Research Officer of Focaldata, explains their latest poll that suggests a 250-seat Labour majority. He joins Katy Balls and James Heale. 

Patrick O’Flynn

Rishi Sunak has proved he is terrible at politics

Today’s hot topic for the Rishi Sunak-is-terrible-at-politics club is the foolishness of suspending candidates mired in the election betting scandal a full week after Keir Starmer called for that to happen. It certainly makes Sunak look slow and weak and the Labour leader the safer bet, as it were, to be running the affairs of state. But this is just bog-standard tactical incompetence in the face of an unexpected event. Those of us who have been active in this club for longest know that it is at a strategic level where Sunak’s political cluelessness produces the most dire consequences for his party. Consider the point of attack that Sunak and

Steerpike

JK Rowling slams Rayner and Reeves over trans debate

Following JK Rowling’s rather scathing attack on Sir Keir’s Labour party on Sunday, some in Starmer’s army have been grovelling for the author’s support since. But Rowling isn’t prepared to let them off the hook that easily… After Rowling slammed Starmer’s lot for the party’s ‘dismissive and often offensive’ approach to concerns of gender-critical feminists, Rachel Reeves got in touch. The Shadow Chancellor offered up an olive branch to Rowling, telling the renowned writer that she would meet with her to provide ‘assurances’ over the protection of women-only spaces. In response, the Harry Potter author retorted: I’ll be happy to meet after Keep Prisons Single Sex, Lesbian Labour, Women’s Rights

Philip Patrick

King Charles has much in common with Japan’s Anglophile Emperor

The Japanese Emperor is in London today for a state visit, the first by the occupant of the chrysanthemum throne to the UK for 26 years. Along with a trip to Buckingham Palace, Emperor Naruhito, accompanied by his wife Empress Masako, will inspect the Thames barrier, which the Emperor studied as a student. He’ll then proceed to Oxford where he spent happy years as an undergraduate. The Emperor will also pay a private visit to St. George’s chapel and lay a wreath at the tomb of Queen Elizabeth II. Naruhito is a genuine Anglophile. You may not hear too much about this visit, due to other salient events obviously (there

Katy Balls

Sunak withdraws support for gamble-gate Tory candidates

It never rains but pours for Rishi Sunak. After a weekend of negative headlines over the Tory gambling scandal and a grilling on the Sun’s leaders’ election special, the Prime Minister has decided to take action. In a statement released this morning, a Conservative spokesman said the party is withdrawing support from the two Tory candidates being investigated by the Gambling Commission: ‘As a result of ongoing internal inquiries, we have concluded that we can no longer support Craig Williams or Laura Saunders as Parliamentary Candidates at the forthcoming General Election. We have checked with the Gambling Commission that this decision does not compromise the investigation that they are conducting,