Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Katy Balls

Is Sunak’s cautious manifesto a mistake?

13 min listen

Conservatives hoping to turn their fortunes around with the publication of the party’s manifesto have been disappointed. The document contained little by way of surprises or rabbits, and despite Sunak’s pledge that the Conservatives are the party of tax cutting, the new costings show that the tax burden will continue to rise. Katy Balls talks to James Heale and Kate Andrews. Join the Coffee House Shots team for a live recording on Thursday 11 July. Get tickets at spectator.co.uk/live. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Ross Clark

Sunak’s National Insurance pledge could backfire

Two years ago, as Chancellor, Rishi Sunak chose to jack up National Insurance contributions. It is a mark of how all over the place this government has been that cutting NI has now emerged as Sunak’s big idea.  Fairness to the Conservatives seems to mean the self-employed being excused from a 6 per cent tax which is paid by employees Abolishing the main rate of NI for the self-employed by the end of next parliament is the one eye-catching initiative which was not trailed before the launch of the Conservative manifesto – the now customary ‘rabbit out of the hat’. Employees will get an NI cut, too – their rate

Alexander Larman

King Charles isn’t the enemy of animal rights activists

The attack by animal rights activists on the new portrait of King Charles, currently on display at the Philip Mould gallery in London, is both depressing and predictable. It is depressing because it suggests that any work of art, whether historic or contemporary, is now fair game for a bunch of privileged, often spoilt young men and women who wish to draw attention to their pet bugbear in as infantile and ostentatious a fashion as possible. And it is predictable because, in this country and overseas, there have been so many similar occurrences recently. Just a week and a half ago, Monet’s Coquelicots was defaced by a climate activist at

Patrick O’Flynn

Rishi Sunak’s manifesto is thin gruel

Rishi Sunak today launched a manifesto that might suffice for a governing party polling at level pegging with the opposition in a country where things have been going well. You will no doubt have spotted the problems with this: he’s more than 20 points behind in the polls largely thanks to losing most of his right flank to an insurgent rival, while the British public overwhelmingly believes their country is heading in the wrong direction. So a technocrat’s bloodless canter through what one of my social media followers aptly described as ‘magnolia gruel’ was never going to cut it. Sunak is more than 20 points behind in the polls Sunak’s

Steerpike

Watch: Animal rights activists vandalise King’s portrait

Good heavens. Protestors are back to their old tricks and now it’s the King’s first official royal portrait that has ended up in the firing line. The all-new painting has been defaced by animal rights group ‘Animal Rising’, which today decided to vandalise the portrait — unveiled just last month by its artist Jonathon Yeo. Claiming to have ‘redecorated’ the painting, protestors covered the monarch’s face with a cut-out image of Wallace, from cartoon show Wallace and Gromit, attaching a large speech bubble that reads: ‘No cheese Gromit! Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms!’ The vandals have said they want the stunt to bring attention to their long-running

Steerpike

Farage attacked again on campaign trail

Nigel Farage is continuing his cross-country campaign as he makes the case for voters to back Reform UK on 4 July. But while the arch-Brexiteer’s new party is polling well — coming just two points below the Tories in last week’s YouGov survey — Farage isn’t getting a friendly response everywhere. A week after the milkshake incident at Clacton-on-sea, poor Nige has had to face off a rather more serious attack. The ex-Ukip leader took his battle bus to South Yorkshire today, where he waved to cheering locals from the open-topped double-decker. But it wasn’t long before the pleasant atmosphere was ruined by a hooded man hurling objects from a

Kate Andrews

The nasty tax surprise hidden in the Tory manifesto

There are no big policy surprises in the Tory manifesto – not least because the major announcements on tax, immigration, welfare, housing and social care were all revealed before the document was published (James Heale has a helpful list here).  As already reported, a fifth consecutive Conservative government would cut employee National Insurance by another 2p, totalling a £1,300 tax cut for the average worker with the 4p that has already been cut; revive the Help to Buy Scheme that enables first-time buyers to have deposits of just 5 per cent (and unfortunately led to house prices increasing in Greater London); reduce immigration by capping work and family visas (with no details about

James Heale

Sunak plays it safe with his manifesto

With three weeks to go until polling day, Rishi Sunak this morning unveiled his prospectus for a Conservative government. There had been much talk that the Tory manifesto would have a big, bold policy to win back voters: perhaps the abolition of inheritance tax or maybe a referendum on the European Court of Human Rights. Such measures though were rejected in favour of a more modest tax reduction. With most of the manifesto briefed in advance, the headline-grabbing measure from today’s launch is the news that the Conservatives will abolish National Insurance contributions for the self-employed by the end of the next parliament. Sunak claims that this will be worth

Alexander Horne

Why Rishi Sunak can’t weaponise the ECHR

One of the major themes of the current election campaign is the attempt by Rishi Sunak to draw a dividing line between the Tories and  Labour on the issue of immigration, particularly when it comes to the Rwanda scheme. Today, the Conservative party sought to highlight the issue in its manifesto.  The manifesto claims a Conservative government would: ‘stop the boats by removing illegal migrants to Rwanda’, ‘stop illegal migrants bringing spurious legal challenges’ and ‘work with other countries to rewrite asylum treaties’. It also repeated a slogan that Sunak had previously trailed at the first televised debate with Keir Starmer that ‘if we are forced to choose between our security

Steerpike

Former Green leader jumps ship to Labour

Another day, another drama. As general election campaign shenanigans continue, it now transpires that Robin Harper — the UK’s first ever Green parliamentarian and former leader of the Scottish Greens — has jumped ship to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party. With just over three and a half weeks to go until polling day, the veteran politician has announced he is endorsing the Shadow Scotland Secretary, Ian Murray, in Edinburgh South. The writing was on the wall when the ex-Edinburgh MP revealed last week that Harper was helping as a ‘volunteer’ during his campaigning. Murray — who until last year’s Rutherglen by-election was the only Scottish Labour MP since 2019 —

Andrew Lilico

It isn’t true that elections are always won from the centre

Last week, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt argued that the Tories shouldn’t pitch to the right in response to Nigel Farage and Reform, because ‘elections are always won from the centre ground.’ It is one of the most widely-repeated ideas in political analysis that elections are won from the centre. It isn’t really true, but it isn’t a silly idea and it’s interesting to understand why so many people believe it and the reasons it’s wrong. Its origins lie in economics, and in particular a model produced by an American economist called Harold Hotelling. That model is usually illustrated using the thought experiment of two ice cream sellers on a beach. The

Gavin Mortimer

How France’s shy Le Pen voters caused a political earthquake

Emmanuel Macron visited Oradour-sur-Glane on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary since the village in central France was liquidated by SS troops. Laying a wreath at the site where 643 Frenchmen, women and children were massacred, the president of the Republic declared that: ‘We will remember Oradour, always, so that history never starts again’. That was a veiled reference to the success of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which crushed the opposition in Sunday’s European elections. In 96 of France’s 101 Departments, the National Rally – led by Jordan Bardella – came out top, and their triumph in France’s towns and villages was overwhelming. Villages such as the rebuilt Oradour sur

Kate Andrews

The Tories are addressing welfare reform too late

The launch of the Conservative manifesto later this morning will dominate today’s headlines. But it’s worth reflecting, before the full details are released, on how we ended up with an earlier-than-expected election. In addition to ministers’ fear that the small boats figures would rise this summer – and flights to Rwanda would be grounded – there was also growing concern that the economic data wouldn’t tell the good news story they wanted to take into an autumn election. Today’s labour market update complicates that theory.  The Labour market is still cooling, but slowly. Unemployment rose again, to 4.4 per cent between February and April this year: this takes the rate

Daniel Rey

Trump is forcing Biden to the right

Joe Biden is a pragmatist. With just five months to go until his rematch against Donald Trump, the veteran Democrat is making political decisions based on an electoral calculation. These decisions, intended to undermine Trump’s appeal among wavering voters, cross into economic, domestic and foreign policy. They are taking him closer to the views of his Republican opponent. A case in point is immigration – one of Trump’s electoral strengths, and one of Biden’s biggest weaknesses. Biden, who is lagging behind Trump in the polls, has just signed an executive order denying asylum to migrants who enter the United States illegally. Michigan has become a major problem for Biden Immigration

Terry Barnes

Australia’s Covid honours farce

Whatever one thinks of all that happened in the Covid years, and how the experience scarified so many and even compelled us to question the solidity of democratic institutions and values throughout the West, most of us simply want to forget. The Covid time is like a relationship gone bad: it’s easier to cope by burying it it and moving on. In Australia this week, however, unpleasant reminders of the dark Covid time resurfaced in an unexpected place: the national King’s Birthday honours list. What a face-slapping insult Andrews’s gong is to Victorians Since dispensing with imperial honours several decades ago, the highest civilian honour here is to be appointed

James Heale

What can we expect in the Tory manifesto?

Day two of manifesto week will see the Conservatives launch their prospectus for government. At a chunky 77 pages, the document aims to set out what the Tories intend to do if given another five years. Rishi Sunak’s party has already announced a slew of policies in the campaign (from mandatory national service to more help for pensioners). However, there will still be new ideas, with a focus on the economy through tax and welfare. Below is a run-down of what we can expect from this morning’s announcement in the East Midlands. Taxation The centrepiece of the manifesto is likely to be a 2p cut to national insurance, taking the

Dalibor Rohac

The EU election spells trouble for Ukraine

If one story dominates the cacophony of results of the European election from across the 27 countries of the Union, it is the defeat of incumbents in the EU’s largest member states: France and Germany. While their underperformance was expected, its aftershocks risk leaving Europe weak and ineffectual in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine.  It is hard to see how Macron or Scholz will become bolder in their Ukrainian positions in the coming months In France, president Emmanuel Macron responded to the poor performance of his party, Renaissance, by calling a snap election for 30 June – less than two weeks before Nato’s summit in Washington.  The logic

Gareth Roberts

The trouble with ‘centrist’ Tories

‘Elections are won from the centre ground,’ the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said. Perhaps he should have a word with his own party. The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years and, while they are nominally centre-right, many of the party’s policies and positions will hardly strike the average voter as sensible and centrist. Maybe if the Tories really had stuck to the centre ground they wouldn’t be 21 points behind in the polls and heading for electoral wipeout on 4 July. Nowhere is the Tories’ refusal to adopt a sensible centrist position clearer than in the gender debate. The middle ground on this issue is surely that the

Lloyd Evans

Sorry Sunak can’t muster much of a fight in BBC interview

A clash of the razor-blades. That’s how it started. Nick Robinson’s grey jowls were dotted with stubble as he sat down to quiz the PM on BBC One. Rishi Sunak had shaved. Robinson hadn’t bothered. And that mismatch set the tone for their bad-tempered interview. Robinson played the irritable major-general going over the blunders of an incompetent subaltern. The worst error Rishi had committed, said Robinson, was ‘bunking off D-Day.’ Rishi grovelled abjectly, yet again. His upper lip quivered nervously. ‘I hope that people can find it in their hearts to forgive me,’ he said. Crikey. Anyone would think that he’d crashed a chopper into a column of veterans on

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Sunak splutters in BBC interview, but Starmer won’t do much better

Rishi Sunak has started to move on from his D-Day blunder. He probably won’t recover from the electoral damage he caused himself, but he is now able to talk about other things. The question is what is it that he can talk about that will actually get the voters listening? This evening he gave an interview to the BBC’s Nick Robinson where – after making his apology for the way he ‘bunked off’, as Robinson put it – he had to answer questions on why people should believe the promises the Conservatives are making on tax, immigration, the NHS, and so on, when none of the things they’d promised so