Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak’s torturous Titanic exchange

It’s day two of the election campaign and things aren’t looking up for Rishi Sunak. After the downpour on the Wednesday and the Euros blunder on the Thursday, today the Prime Minister produced his third viral moment of the campaign on a visit to Belfast. As the latest polls revealed that his party is still 20 points behind Labour, Sunak and his team decided to tour a thriving Northern Irish business situated, somewhat unfortunately, in Titanic Quarter. With local hacks already annoyed by the ‘shambolic’ nature of the visit, it was left to James McCarthy of BelfastLive to ask Sunak the obvious question: Prime Minister, we are just yards away

Freddy Gray

Would a conviction hurt Trump?

24 min listen

Next week the world may know whether Donald Trump becomes the first US President to receive a criminal conviction. But could this verdict help or hinder him? Tom Lubbock, co-founder of pollsters J L Partners, joins Freddy Gray to discuss. They also analyse the dynamics at play in current polling: why is Trump doing better in the sun-belt states? And is this election a referendum on Biden? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze. 

Steerpike

Watch: May swipes at Truss in her final speech as MP

So. Farewell then to the Covid parliament. It’s been a remarkable five years in British politics, what with the pandemic, Brexit, the change of monarch and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But with the Commons due to dissolve next Thursday, one of the great features which Mr S will miss the most is the number of ex-Prime Ministers we had in this parliament. Liz Truss may be clinging on but Boris Johnson bowed out last summer and now Theresa May is quitting too. But not without one final blast at one of her short-lived successors… Speaking in the Commons for the final time today, the Maybot of Maidenhead provided

Mark Galeotti

Why is Putin purging his generals?

Five down – how many more to go? As more and more senior Russian officers and defence officials are arrested on corruption charges, the rumour mill is in full spin as it cranks out claims that this is everything from a purge of potential coup plotters to a Federal Security Service (FSB) takeover of the military. The truth is likely to be at once more prosaic and also more significant.  Tackling corruption within the top brass is a Herculean task Before defence minister Sergei Shoigu was given his sideways move to become secretary of the security council, deputy minister Timur Ivanov had already been arrested. He was followed in quick

Iain Macwhirter

Can Scottish Labour really vanquish the SNP?

There is a distinct air of unreality about the position of the Scottish Labour party as it enters this election campaign. Frankly, many in the party don’t believe opinion polls suggesting, as YouGov did last week, that they are 10 per cent ahead of the SNP and could return up to 35 MPs on 4 July. ‘In yer dreams, pal’ say canvassers tramping the rainy pavements of urban Scotland. The collapse in the fortunes of the Scottish National party, and their own corresponding rise, has just been too sudden. Perhaps Anas Sarwar’s biggest task is to get his battered troops to believe After all, the Scottish Labour party currently has

Kate Andrews

How net zero will divide Labour and the Tories

This morning, Ofgem announced another reduction in the energy price cap from July. The new cap on the unit price of energy should see costs fall by another 7 per cent, taking £122 off the average household bill. And it didn’t take long for both the Tories and Labour to try to swing the news in their electoral favour. Only two days into an election campaign, the government will want to claim credit for today’s news: an opportunity to remind voters what successive Conservative prime ministers did to protect people from higher energy costs (of course, the Energy Price Guarantee was a large part of the reason markets rebelled against

James Heale

Sunak’s smoking ‘legacy’ goes up in flames 

When Rishi Sunak announced his decision to call a July election, he used his rain-soaked speech to list his apparent achievements in office. This included his plans for a ‘smoke-free generation’: We set out a comprehensive plan to reform our welfare system to make it fair to those who pay for it as well as those who need it. Immigration is finally coming down and we will stop the boats with our Rwanda partnership. We will ensure that the next generation grows up smoke free. I hope that my work since I became Prime Minister shows that we have a plan and are prepared to take the bold action necessary for our country to flourish. Only did Sunak speak a little too soon? Ahead of the dissolution of parliament next Thursday, MPs are in a

Matthew Scott

The criminal justice system is crumbling

Today’s report by the National Audit Office on the backlog of cases in the Crown Court is unlikely to feature much in the election campaign, but it examines an aspect of criminal justice policy which will need to be addressed very urgently by the next government.   In April last year the Ministry of Justice had a plan: to reduce the backlog from around 60,000 cases to about 53,000 by April 2025. The increasing number of cases waiting to be heard was not only demoralising witnesses, victims and defendants, it was also driving up the prison population as remand prisoners found themselves waiting ever longer to have their cases heard.    Astonishingly,

Brendan O’Neill

The revolt of the Jews of London

Every now and then you see an event and you think to yourself: ‘This will go down in history.’ Last night’s revolt of the Jews of London against a ‘pro-Palestine’ mob is one such event. Jews and their allies gathered at the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley to defend its showing of a film about Hamas’s fascistic massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October. Unbelievably – or not, perhaps – the ‘Palestine solidarity’ set wanted the screening to be cancelled. No way, said the Jewish rebels, loudly and proudly, many of them draped in the Israeli flag. It was truly stirring stuff, a bold act of people’s defiance

Katy Balls

Michael Gove leads the Tory exodus

When Rishi Sunak told cabinet colleagues about his decision to call a general election, Michael Gove sought to raise spirits by declaring ‘who dares, wins!’. But a great many Tory MPs have been making a different calculation: that with Labour 20 points ahead in the polls, it may be better not to dare – and just not fight the next election. This is what Gove has now ended up doing. In a letter released this evening, he’s leaving the once-safe seat of Surrey Heath to someone else and is joining a very long line of other refuseniks who are deciding not to join Sunak in the trenches. So far, 78

John Ferry

The flaw in the SNP’s plan to strengthen Scottish shipbuilding

The Scottish government under John Swinney and his deputy Kate Forbes could be on the verge of missing an opportunity to strengthen UK/Scottish shipbuilding while possibly failing islanders and the working communities of Glasgow’s Clyde area. This is according to the former head of Scotland’s nationalised shipyard, David Tydeman, who has decided to speak out. Tydeman was unceremoniously sacked from his job as chief executive of Ferguson Marine in March. As covered here earlier this week, Tydeman had finally managed to overcome the production and design issues that had held up the two highly controversial ferries the yard has spent years and hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money trying

Cindy Yu

Is the Labour lead as big as it seems?

13 min listen

Both major party leaders are hitting the road today and campaigning in Scotland, which will be a major battleground in the coming election. Labour looks comfortably in the lead, but is that number accurate to what’s happening on the ground? Cindy Yu and Katy Balls talk to Focaldata’s James Kanagasooriam about their latest analysis. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Ross Clark

Why is UK retail doing badly?

This morning’s retail sales figures are not what Rishi Sunak will have hoped for as he pitches his case for re-election on economic recovery. They are yet more indication that Britain has fallen out of love with shopping. Sales volumes were 2.3 per cent down in April compared with the previous month, while the March figure was revised downwards from zero to minus 0.2 percent. Some of this might be connected with the timing of Easter: the holiday weekend straddled March and April, so people will have done their food shopping, Easter egg purchases, filled their car with petrol, and everything else, in March rather than April, but the bigger

Steerpike

Corbyn to stand as an independent MP

Amidst the election drama it would be easy to forget about one rather eccentric politician. Today Jeremy Corbyn has announced today that he will stand as an independent candidate for the seat of Islington North — after significant speculation about whether he would be welcomed back into the Labour fold. After holding the seat for 40 years, Corbyn says he will not defend views held by either the Tories or his former party Labour — including the two-child benefit cap and rent controls. Blocked from standing again for Labour, and suspended for remarks he made after the equalities watchdog report into antisemitism in the part, Jezza will be expelled for

Nick Boles

Why it’s time to vote Labour

Most people don’t belong to a political tribe. They vote pragmatically. When an election comes round, they ask themselves how well the party in power has performed in government and try to decide whether it looks likely to improve their living standards in the future. In next month’s general election, millions of pragmatic middle-of-the-road voters, who have supported the Conservatives in every election since 2010, will be wondering whether the party deserves their support yet again in 2024. The current team at the top of the Labour party are serious people of integrity and ability. For nearly 20 years I was a member of the Conservative tribe. A councillor for

Eliot Wilson

Can Rishi Sunak get Britain to like him again?

When Rishi Sunak stood in the rain in Downing Street to announce a general election on 4 July, he made a speech which was unusually personal. Looking back on his steep rise to power – five years ago he was not even a cabinet minister – he spoke of the challenges the country has faced and how they have affected him. Seeing how people responded to the pandemic, he said: ‘I have never been prouder to be British’. The Prime Minister knows this is a weak point for him The Prime Minister knows moments like this are a weak point for him. He comes across as a colourless technocrat, a man

Ed West

How bad will a Labour government be?

I’m old enough to remember the sense of optimism, hope and promise felt when Tony Blair was elected back in 1997; not by me, obviously, but I could at least appreciate that other people felt that ‘things can only get better’. Whether you think they did or not, Blair transformed the country in his own image, just as his predecessor Margaret Thatcher had done during her similarly long reign. No one could say the same of the recent 14 years of Tory-led governments, a period that has been marked by a continual drift away from conservatism both within civil society and in many ways driven by the administration itself. Labour is

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Why is Biden so unpopular?

23 min listen

New York Post writer Miranda Devine joins Freddy Gray to discuss Joe Biden’s unpopularity. Why are Americans increasingly not supporting him? And how have Biden family scandals and rumours affected trust in the President? In a week that Biden gave a commencement speech, they also discuss the recent controversy over NFL kicker Harrison Butker’s speech. What insight does the reaction to the speech tell us about America today? Produced by Natasha Feroze and Patrick Gibbons.

Steerpike

Ex-SNP chief’s charge sheet submitted to Crown Office

It’s a day that ends in ‘y’, which means more chaos for the beleaguered SNP. Now it transpires that Scotland’s Crown Office has finally received Peter Murrell’s charge sheet – after he was charged with embezzlement from the SNP over a month ago. The husband of former SNP leader and first minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon was taken into police custody for the second time on 18 April as part of the police probe into SNP finances. Shortly after the police force announced that it had charged the former SNP chief, it emerged that Murrell had also resigned his party membership. His wife, Nicola Sturgeon, and the SNP’s former treasurer Colin Beattie were

James Heale

Why has the election been called now?

15 min listen

Less than 24 hours after Rishi Sunak’s surprise election announcement, we look ahead to the parties’ campaigns. What has been the fall out? How have Labour responded to the shock news? And why didn’t Rishi have an umbrella? James Heale is joined by Isabel Hardman and former Labour adviser John McTernan to discuss.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.