Politics Archives

Tuesday

18 July 2023

Is Sunak any closer to implementing his Rwanda plan?

When the Lib Dem peer Brian Paddick complained on social media last month that the House of Lords was keeping punishing hours, it is fair to say the plight of peers was not greeted with universal sympathy. Lord Paddick, the Lib Dem spokesman on home affairs in the upper house, had the battle around the Illegal Migration Bill in mind when he complained: ‘Last night I got home from @UKHouseofLords four hours earlier than the night before…10.30 p.m. instead of 2.30 a.m…I’m 65, many colleagues are older. This is unsustainable. So tired.’ Ministers face a perilous summer during which many thousands more Channel-hoppers will arrive ‘Oh, poor lamb,’ was one

Katy Balls

Will the child benefit row rain on Starmer’s by-election parade?

As the Tories chalk up a rare win with the passing of the Illegal Migration Bill in the Lords, Keir Starmer is facing a revolt in his own party over his insistence that a Labour government would keep the two-child benefit limit. As James Heale reports, MPs from across the party gathered at Monday’s parliamentary Labour party meeting to express concerns over Starmer’s position on a policy that both he and the majority of his shadow cabinet have heavily criticised in the past. MPs called for the Labour leader to think again but received little in the way of assurances from his deputy Angela Rayner. The question is whether the

Isabel Hardman

How the challenges to the Illegal Migration Bill were seen off

The Illegal Migration Bill is making its final crossing today to become an Act, after peers and MPs voted into the small hours on the final changes to the legislation. The House of Lords eventually dropped the amendments that they’d been holding out on, including the plan by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, for the government to draw up a proper international strategy for refugees and an amendment from Lord Randall of Uxbridge on victims of modern slavery. It became clear that these peers were not going to have any luck when Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick opened the ‘ping-pong’ debate in the Commons by telling MPs there would be

Kristina Murkett

The trouble with Rishi Sunak’s ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree crackdown

Rishi Sunak is a big fan of a ‘crack down’. He has previously vowed to crack down on migration, anti-social behaviour and climate protests. ‘Rip off’ university courses that ‘don’t offer the prospect of a decent job at the end of it’ are the PM’s latest target. But Sunak’s tough talk and aggressive rhetoric smacks of over-compensating for any lack of real detail. Politicians love to poke fun at ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees, but rarely define what they actually mean. In an interview on Good Morning Britain, higher education minister Robert Halfon couldn’t name a single degree, salary threshold or ‘good job’ against which the criteria for a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree could be set. It’s easier to sardonically mock fake

Monday

17 July 2023

James Heale

Inside Labour’s fiery Commons meeting

Sparks flew at tonight’s Parliamentary Labour party (PLP) meeting. Deputy leader Angela Rayner had been due to speak to MPs as part of an end of term pep talk. Instead, the ongoing row over Keir Starmer’s decision to maintain the two child benefit cap if Labour enters government dominated the entire session. Rayner herself has previously labelled the cap ‘obscene and inhumane’ and she was forced to defend herself when those past comments were raised by backbench Labour MPs. The deputy leader told her colleagues that she stood by the tweet but that there was a need for fiscal responsibility. More surprising than Rayner’s remarks were the range of criticisms

James Kirkup

I dislike David Cameron, but he was right on gay marriage

The other day, I found myself at a large event in a posh garden where David Cameron was present. Being a polite sort of person, he smiled and mouthed some sort of greeting as we passed. And being an impolite sort of person, I ignored him and walked on. When someone asked me why I’d been so rude, I explained that I was just being consistent. I’ve been very rude about Cameron in print over several years, so wouldn’t it be a bit hypocritical – craven, even – to be all smiley and polite in person? My rudeness has taken many forms and has several causes. I thought that Cameron’s

Steerpike

Labour mayor quits and torches Keir

So. Farewell then. Jamie Driscoll. The left-wing North of Tyne mayor – widely described as the ‘last Corbynista in power’ – has today quit the Labour party with a double-barrelled blast at Keir Starmer. Driscoll was last month barred from the longlist to run in the new expanded north east authority after appearing at an event alongside film maker Ken Loach. And today Driscoll has exacted his revenge by dramatically quitting and firing a departing blast at the Starmer army. In a series of tweets, Driscoll says that if he can raise £25,000 for a campaign by the end of August, he will stand as an independent against Labour’s candidate

James Heale

Labour row brews over two-child benefit cap

17 min listen

Keir Starmer has said that Labour will not be reversing the two-child benefits cap, after Angela Rayner said it was ‘obscene and inhumane’. But will he continue to back the policy, which allegedly saves the Treasury £1.3 billion, or change his mind in the face of pressure from his shadow front bench? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Ross Clark

It’s not for Sunak to save students from themselves

Rishi Sunak is not wrong to write, as he does in the Telegraph today, that too many young people are being ‘ripped off’ by poor-quality university courses, and that many would be better signing up for apprenticeships. But should a Conservative government really be threatening to tell the universities what to do? David Cameron’s tuition fee hike was meant to make discerning consumers out of university applicants. Rishi Sunak clearly thinks that’s failed. Cameron allowed universities to charge students tuition fees of up to £9,000 per year (since increased to £9,250). Universities would be able to charge full fees on good quality course, but find themselves having to reduce fees

Steerpike

Six times Starmer’s team demanded benefits cap be scrapped

In fairness to Keir Starmer, he only U-turns when his lips move. In an impressive double yesterday, the Labour leader managed to U-turn twice in one interview with Laura Kuenssberg. Starmer managed to both float and then, er, reject the notion that Labour would change the Bank of England’s inflation target (nice one!) while also confirming that the party is no longer committed to scrapping the two-child benefits cap. This longtime Labour policy appears to have been unceremoniously dropped sometime within the last few months despite both Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner winning their mandates on it. Below is a quick list by Mr S on half-a-dozen Labour frontbenchers who

Lisa Haseldine

Crimea’s Kerch bridge targeted in second attack

The Kerch bridge, Russia’s only road link to Crimea, has been targeted once again in what seems to have been a drone attack. The damage appears to be extensive may take weeks, if not months, to repair. The Russian-installed head of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstatinov, has blamed the ‘terrorist regime in Kyiv’ for a ‘new crime’ – but in Kyiv, it will be seen as an audacious attack on a legitimate military target. This attack underlines the vulnerability of Russia’s most important assets to a new wave of Ukrainian drones. The Ukrainian military has made no secret of the fact they consider the bridge to be a legitimate military target

Katy Balls

Labour row brews over two-child benefit cap

Another day, another Keir Starmer U-turn. The Labour leader is facing a backlash from his own side after Starmer used an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg’s to say that a Labour government would keep the two-child benefits cap. When asked whether he would scrap the cap – which has been blamed by Labour politicians for pushing families into poverty – Starmer said he was ‘not changing that policy’. That is a decision that will upset many in the shadow cabinet, let alone the wider parliamentary party. The current work and pensions secretary John Ashworth has previously described the cap as heinous: ‘the idea that this policy helps move people

Gavin Mortimer

Will the French riots spawn a new generation of jihadists?

Apart from the 96 arrests and 255 burned cars, Bastille Day passed off without a hitch in France. A bullish Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, expressed his satisfaction in a tweet, thanking the 45,000 policemen and women who had been deployed across the country. It says much for the state of France that avoiding a riot on their national day is a cause for celebration. Still, one can understand why the government is grateful for small mercies after the trauma of the recent uprising. The financial cost of the damage caused by the rioters is predicted to top €1 billion (£858 million), a staggering sum for a country that is already dangerously

Nicholas Farrell

Giorgia Meloni and the true migration hypocrites

Cerberus, the record-breaking heatwave that struck the Mediterranean, was followed this week by another one called Charon – after the mythical boatman who ferried the dead across the Styx to Hades. Meanwhile illegal migrants continue to be ferried across the Mediterranean in record numbers to Italy – thus to Europe – by people traffickers. Relatives placed a single obol, it is said, in the mouths of the dead to pay Charon for the voyage. The living pay the traffickers €3,000 to €10,000, it is said, for theirs. In April, Italy’s conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared Italy’s migrant crisis a national emergency. So far this year 75,000 illegal migrants have arrived here by boat –

Sunday

16 July 2023

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Starmer dodges questions on public sector pay

‘This is the government’s mess, and it’s for them to sort it out’ In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg this morning, Keir Starmer was keen to emphasise Labour’s commitment to change and reform. When Kuenssberg pressed him on a few specific issues however, he deflected the questions, saying they were the current government’s problem. He was also reluctant to go into any detail on Labour’s spending plans. Instead, Starmer insisted on fiscal responsibility, the necessity of growing the economy, and changes to the planning system. ‘The target date for clean electricity has not changed’ Kuenssberg also asked Starmer why Labour had decided to delay its pledge to borrow £28 billion

Lukas Degutis

Lithuania’s support for Ukraine remains undimmed

Vilnius, Lithuania This week, the world’s eyes were on the Lithuanian capital Vilnius as it welcomed global leaders for Nato’s 74th summit. The event was a logistical challenge not helped by the fact that Vilnius is only 30km away from the border with Belarus, which is now home to Russian nuclear weapons. Commercial flights were suspended for the duration of the summit. Air defence systems were stationed. Four-thousand troops, undercover police officers and bomb detection dogs roamed the streets. A Boeing E-3 Sentry – Nato’s eyes in the sky – circled the capital while a 30km radius no-fly zone was imposed. Shuttles to and from the exhibition centre had paint

Patrick O’Flynn

Wallace’s exit shows the Tories are running out of hope

The announcement by Ben Wallace that he will stand down as Defence Secretary at the next Cabinet reshuffle and then give up being an MP at the general election hardly counts as a sensational turn of events. There are at least a dozen happenings at the top end of the Tory party from the past few months that put it in the shade where personnel matters are concerned. One thinks, for example, of the ongoing technicolour splurge of the quitting of Nadine Dorries, the ushering of Dominic Raab towards the exit door and of course the abandoning ship of the great blond bombshell himself before he could be made to

Gerry Hassan

The lessons Labour can learn from the SNP

The Labour party should be experiencing its best time in recent politics with victory very much expected at the next election. Yet it’s not all plain sailing at Labour HQ. Not only does the party still lack a convincing agenda, there is disquiet about the nature of the Starmer leadership, in terms of what it believes in, how it does politics inside the party and how it manages dissent. Discontent has been bubbling away for a while, with the left accusing the leadership of a plan to oust Corbynistas to create a new loyal Labour party. But now the internal fallout has burst into the open with the potential expulsion

Jim Lawley

Can Spain forgive Pedro Sánchez?

Voters in Spain’s general election on 23 July have a clear-cut choice. They can choose to continue with the left-wing coalition currently in power or they can replace it with a staunchly right-wing government. Since 2019 Spain has been governed by a minority coalition consisting of PSOE, Spain’s main left-wing party, with 120 seats, and Podemos, further to the left, with 35. With a total of only 155 of the 350 seats in the national parliament, in order to pass legislation the left-wing bloc has had to seek ad hoc support from various regional parties, including Basque and Catalan separatists. Many want to punish Sánchez for pardoning the Catalan separatist politicians Many voters will prefer the right-wing combination consisting of

Mark Hollingsworth

Putin and the power of the Orthodox church

In April this year, a sombre looking Vladimir Putin attended a midnight Orthodox Easter Service in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. Holding a lit red candle, the Russian President crossed himself several times during the ceremony, known as the Divine Liturgy. When Father Kirill declared ‘Christ has risen’, Putin duly responded with the congregation: ‘Truly he is risen’. It was a year after the brutal invasion of Ukraine, but the Russian leader and Father Kirill showed no remorse or compassion for the suffering caused by the war. In fact, Putin and the Kremlin has exploited the support of the Orthodox Church in an attempt to give his actions a spurious