Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer

Macron has lost all credibility on Israel-Palestine

It has been a bruising few days for Emmanuel Macron. It began last Friday when he gave an interview to the BBC at the Élysée palace at the conclusion of a peace forum in Paris. In unusually forthright rhetoric, the president said there was ‘no justification’ for Israel’s bombing of Gaza, which was killing ‘these babies, these ladies, these old people’. He added: ‘There is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop.’ He also reiterated a call for a ceasefire in Gaza.   Macron’s words drew a swift and sharp response from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the president’s focus should be on

Oscar Edmondson

Should Starmer worry about the ceasefire rebellion?

13 min listen

Fifty-six Labour MPs rebelled last night and voted for an SNP amendment calling for a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. Keir Starmer had ordered his party to abstain on the vote, and said afterwards that Israel had suffered ‘its worst terrorist attack in a single day’ on 7 October, and that ‘no government would allow the capability and intent to repeat such an attack to go unchallenged’. Is Starmer’s authority now under threat? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.

Nick Cohen

What the ceasefire vote means for the future of the Labour party

It’s a little too easy to dismiss the huge Labour rebellion on the Israel-Hamas war last night as ‘virtue signalling’. No one can deny that politicians were striking poses. A party, not in government, tearing itself apart about a conflict that does not involve the UK, over policy recommendations which all the combatants will ignore, in the unlikely event that they care enough about the British Labour party to even notice the vote in the first place.  In an interview that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas member, praised the massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, and vowed that his

Ian Williams

Power shifts at the Biden-Xi summit

Perhaps the most important achievement of the summit between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden was that it was held at all. Expectations were set low and were duly met – assuming the modest agreements are carried through. There was little progress on issues that have pushed relations to the lowest point in four decades, and Xi still remains a ‘dictator’ in the eyes of the American president. Asked if he still held that view at the end of a carefully choreographed solo news conference, at which only four questions were allowed, Biden said, ‘Look, he is. He’s a dictator in the sense that he runs a country that’s a communist

Steerpike

Watch: James Cleverly denies slating Rishi’s Rwanda plan

The Tory party is still reeling from the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Rwanda migrant plan. Following Suella Braverman’s departure, it now falls to the new Home Secretary James Cleverly to help Rishi Sunak find a way through the mess and pacify the party’s grumblings. But it seems that Cleverly may be, er, starting on the back foot. Yesterday in the Commons, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper claimed that Cleverly never believed in the scheme and ‘may even on occasion have privately called it “batshit”’. As luck would have it, Cleverly was on the morning broadcast round this morning. On BBC Breakfast he was quizzed on the comment by the

Matthew Lynn

Biden and Xi’s meeting is a boost to the global economy

At least there will be some pandas. At his summit with President Biden this week, China’s President Xi pledged to send more cuddly bears to the US, the traditional Chinese way of cementing good relations with other countries. More importantly, there was a significant easing of tensions between the two largest economies in the world. Military communications will resume, reducing the chances of a catastrophic miscalculation between the two nations, controls on narcotics will be tightened up, and there will be a resumption of high-level diplomatic contacts. It remains to be seen if that sticks. But if it does, one point is surely clear. That could yield a huge ‘peace

Steerpike

Lee Anderson defends Sunak

There’s a lot of grumbling right now about Rishi Sunak on the right. So it must have been to the Prime Minister’s relief that there’s at least one no-nonsense Tory he can always depend on. Step forward Lee Anderson, the party’s deputy chairman and stalwart member of the Common Sense Group. Just a few hours after the PM’s spokesman defended Anderson’s comments about defying the Rwanda court judgement, the former miner repaid the favour, going on GB News to quash rumours that he is thinking of resigning. He told Patrick Christys that that talk of a leadership election is ‘absolute nonsense’, saying: Let me just tell you now, here on

Cristina Odone

How the Tories failed stay-at-home mums

We know that Westminster politicians do not always listen to ordinary voters. But there are few issues on which our representatives are more impervious to entreaties from their electorate than childcare. Too many politicians look on children as the impish impediment to both parents being in paid employment, the obstacles to Mum and Dad paying into Treasury coffers through taxes and national insurance contributions. Parents look on children as their life’s work. There is a particular cohort for whom this clash of priorities has been uniquely painful: parents who stay home to raise their own children. Conservative governments always talk of choice; but this government’s childcare policy robs these mothers

Sean Rayment

It’s time Israel stopped playing by Hamas’s rules in Gaza

For Israel, the war in Gaza is a zero sum game. Israel must win and Hamas must lose. Nothing but total victory over Hamas after the appalling terrorist attacks which left over 1,400 Israelis dead, hundreds injured and over 200 civilians taken hostage, will suffice. But how is victory going to be defined and what is Israel’s end game? When the dust of war finally settles what does Israel want Gaza to look like? An empty, lifeless, bomb-cratered ruin or a self-governing entity, secure within its own borders and no longer a threat to Israel? Unless Israel has a clear strategic aim, its troops risk becoming trapped inside Gaza, possibly

Freddy Gray

The 2024 veep show has already started

Vice presidents are meant to be dependable – and in a funny way Kamala Harris is exactly that. Joe Biden knows that, no matter how bad his poll numbers, hers will be worse: she’s the most unpopular vice president since polling began, according to one recent survey. Biden can afford to be pitifully vague in public partly because she is so painfully annoying. He loses his thread; she loses the plot.  That’s one of the reasons why, for all the alarm in Washington circles about the Commander-in-Chief’s ‘job performance’ and the distinct possibility that he might lose to Donald Trump next year, the Biden-Harris ticket seems locked in place for

Wednesday

James Heale

Mass Labour rebellion over Gaza vote

With no end to the war in sight, expect the theme over Labour splits on Israel to be a constant one Ten of Sir Keir Starmer’s frontbenchers have tonight left their posts after backing an SNP motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Jess Phillips, Afzal Khan, Paula Barker and Yasmin Qureshi were among 56 Labour MPs who defied their party’s whips to abstain tonight. Sarah Owen, Andy Slaughter, Naz Shah and Rachel Hopkins also left their briefs, as did two parliamentary private secretaries: Dan Carden and Mary Foy. They follow Imran Hussain’s departure last week in protest at Labour’s unwillingness to differ from the government in his support for

Katy Balls

Sunak and Suella clash over Rwanda plan B

For a brief moment this morning it looked as though Rishi Sunak had finally had some good luck. Inflation figures, which came out today, show that the government has met its pledge to halve inflation this year as the rate fell to a two-year low of 4.6 per cent. But that’s about where the good news stops for Sunak. Just a few hours later, the Prime Minister and his government were dealt a significant blow when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that his Rwanda scheme is unlawful. As Alexander Horne explains on Coffee House, the Supreme Court upheld a previous decision from the Court of Appeal that the policy was unlawful. It

Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Sunak struggles to defend David Cameron

The House of Lords is like a bag of doughnuts in the lap of a traffic policeman. There’s always room for one more. The newest peer, David Cameron, was the subject of much amused scorn at PMQs. Rishi Sunak wasn’t prepared for an obvious query about his new Foreign Secretary: what is Dave’s greatest feat on the international stage? Kevin Brennan, of Labour, put this question, and he asked Rishi to name a specific achievement. ‘Many, many,’ said Rishi, floundering in shallow waters. In search of a highlight from Dave’s CV, he said that he ‘hosted one of the most successful G8 summits of recent times.’ Rishi didn’t enlarge. Several

Andrew Tettenborn

The Rwanda judgment was not a foregone conclusion

This morning, the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s judgment on the Rwanda plan and declared that the scheme is unlawful. The Court of Appeal had said that the principle of sending asylum seekers to foreign countries was unexceptionable. But the courts had to decide if Rwanda was likely to be a safe country which would not mistreat asylum seekers, or send them on to third countries where they would face mistreatment. It determined that Rwanda was not safe. The Supreme Court’s decision was, broadly, that the Court of Appeal had been right to take that line, and that the justices agreed with it.  This decision is not particularly

Katy Balls

Back to the future: Sunak’s big gamble

On Remembrance Sunday, former prime ministers are given ceremonial roles. When everyone assembled last weekend, it was a reminder of the recent mayhem within the Tory party. Labour’s 13-year era seemed neat by comparison: Tony Blair, then Gordon Brown. The Tories’ 13 years in power were represented by a more chaotic line-up: David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak. If Tory rebels have their way, they might even try to squeeze someone else in before time runs out. ‘I was the future, once,’ the now Lord Cameron said on his last day in office in July 2016. He did himself a disservice: he is the future once

James Heale

The Rishification of the Tory party

When David Cameron arrived at the Foreign Office on Monday, he told staff he might be a bit rusty when it comes to modern politics. He joked that the only WhatsApp group he is in ‘is to do with my children’s school play’. Cameron may have been out of frontline politics for a while, but the rules stay the same. As Tory leader, he championed his favourites and promoted his supporters to the cabinet table, even at the expense of ignoring older colleagues’ claims. This week, his successor has done the same. A trio of thirtysomething former special advisers elected in 2019 now comprise the Prime Minister’s Praetorian Guard. Laura

Charles Moore

Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle weakens his government

Rishi Sunak thinks David Cameron will be a round peg in a round hole in the Foreign Office. I think (as I have written elsewhere) that he is right. If foreign secretaries could be bought at Harrods, Mr Cameron is the model discerning customers would prefer. But the underlying problem, which provoked this reshuffle, is at the Home Office. This was a personal one, because Suella Braverman, though she did not breach government policy, had defied the wishes of the Prime Minister about what her article in the Times should say. It is also, which matters much more, a national and political problem, because anti-Semitism, Islamism, immigration policy and confidence

Rod Liddle

The Establishment wins again

There is something a little spooky about writing off one’s car and wrecking one’s shoulder by driving into a tree and then, suffused with codeine and alcohol, watching incredulously as the government does kinda the same thing a week later, except faster and with a bigger and more intransigent tree. Metaphorically, I should add, for the more literal-minded of you. On Monday morning I had been asked by TalkTV to guffaw at Rishi Sunak’s decision to sack Suella Braverman and disinter David Cameron from whatever shiny morgue he has been resting in and make him Foreign Secretary. I duly guffawed and suggested that nobody north of Letchworth would vote Conservative

Alexander Horne

Why the Supreme Court demolished the Rwanda scheme

In its simple and comprehensible judgment, the Supreme Court has dealt a crushing blow to the Home Office’s Rwanda policy this morning.   The court upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal that the policy was unlawful. It reached that view because it believed there were substantial grounds to think that asylum claims would not be properly determined by the Rwandan authorities. That would mean that asylum seekers might be returned to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened, or where they would be subject to a risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment.   The plan now looks dead in the water This would be