Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Patrick O’Flynn

When will the Tories come clean on their migration plan?

Net annual immigration – which successive Tory manifestos promised the electorate would be brought down below 100,000 – has just topped 600,000, an all-time record. During 2022 some 606,000 more people immigrated into the UK than emigrated out of it, according to official figures from the Office for National Statistics.  As a result, we must all look around for a new major city to use as a yardstick. The places traditionally deployed to give people an idea of the enormous scale of the influx such as Hull (population approx. 320,000) or Sunderland (340,000) or Rishi Sunak’s home city of Southampton (250,000) will no longer suffice. We are moving into the big league now.

Steerpike

Ministers to curb Boris’s animal agenda

Boris Johnson is back in the news this week, with Partygate rearing its ugly head once again. And it’s in that spirit of 2021 that Mr S returns to the ill-fated animal crusade which Johnson embraced during his premiership, as part of his bid to rebrand Brexit as an eco-cause. There was the Animal Sentience Act, the Net Zero agenda and, of course, the ill-fated evacuation of Pen Farthing’s animal sanctuary: a project that has now resumed under the Taliban regime. But now word reaches Steerpike that ministers are planning to curb one of the outstanding pieces of this green agenda. The Kept Animals Bill – aimed at improving animal welfare in a range of areas – is expected to be pulled shortly for a host of reasons.

Melanie McDonagh

Just Stop Oil’s Chelsea Flower Show protest is a new low

You have to sink low, very low, to target the Chelsea Flower show for an environmental protest. But the boys and girls of Just Stop Oil are, it seems, up for tormenting even the most blameless and benign element of society: gardeners. One of the show gardens, designed by Paul Hervey-Brookes, was sprayed with orange powder. I'm not sure what was its offence. Hervey Brooks can't have been sponsored by Shell. Maybe there's a clue in what one of the protesters shouted before being marched off by security: 'What's the use of a garden if you can't eat?'. Well, I agree that this particular garden wasn't big on fruit and veg. It seemed purely ornamental to me.

Kate Andrews

Net migration hits record high – but is significantly lower than expected

It’s three years since the UK formally left the European Union and cut off free movement, and net migration has reached a record high: 606,000 in 2022. This total (measured by the number of new arrivals, minus people emigrating from the UK) is 118,000 higher than last year. This is certainly an increase from 2021, but nothing like the estimates that had been floated in recent weeks that suggested the net figure would be at least 700,000 – possibly even as high as one million. The estimates originally came from a Centre for Policy Studies report, which calculated (based on visa approval statistics) a series of net migration scenarios.

Freddy Gray

DeSantis’s presidential ambitions are crashing to earth

People imagine that the real world is similar to the dark side of the TV show Succession. For some reason we enjoy thinking that media barons and tech tycoons pull the strings of global power, creating the election-deciding narratives which the bovine public then swallows whole.  But the truth, as Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis showed so spectacularly with their disastrous campaign announcement on Twitter last night, is much more like the funnier bits in Succession. It’s cock-up not conspiracy.  His candidacy makes so much sense in theory.

James Kirkup

The trouble with Britain’s net migration figure

Where to start with the net migration figures? As someone who has generally defended liberal immigration policies, I could just shout, yet again, about the economic benefits. That would no doubt annoy a few readers, get some angry clicks, and add precisely nothing to the conversation.   Or I could point out that this is what Britain voted for in 2016. The migration described in today’s figures is the result of the UK government implementing migration policies entirely of its own choosing. We took back control and this is what we did with it. This outcome is wholly legitimate: it was chosen by our democratically elected government.

Nicholas Sheppard

New Zealand’s opposition embroiled in AI-attack ad storm

New Zealand’s opposition National party has admitted using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate fake images for its political attack ads. The ads featured AI-generated images of a group of robbers storming a simulated jewellery store, two nurses of Pacific Island descent in a Wes Anderson cinematic aesthetic, and a crime victim gazing solemnly out of a window. Another ad was an AI approximation of a poster for The Fast and the Furious franchise, the cast’s likenesses devolved into generic faces, like something you might see on sweatshirts or lunchboxes in a short-lease tat shop. Questioned on whether the images had been created by AI, National Party leader Christopher Luxon was caught flat-footed.

Roger Kimball

Twitter troubles weren’t the only problem with DeSantis’s launch

Free tickets to Disney World: maybe that’s what Ron the aspiring Don should give to the clever staffer who thought of having him announce his candidacy for POTUS on Twitter Spaces.  It was only the official announcement, of course. But having him unfold the bulletin on Twitter Spaces, in an unscripted chat with Elon Musk, was supposed to transform a rote, ho-hum, so-what-I-already-knew-that non-event into a media happening. When I last checked, Tucker Carlson’s 'We’re Back' Twitter clip had garnered more than 132 million views (take that, Fox). How did Ron do? From where I and some friends sat, it was more or less like the Thresher’s final voyage. Or maybe like one of SpaceX’s rapid unscheduled disassemblies.

Steerpike

DeSantis’s presidential launch flops on Twitter

Talk about a power failure. Ron DeSantis finally unveiled his long-awaited 2024 bid to become president last night in a glitch-riddled Twitter announcement plagued by technical difficulties. The Florida Governor filed a declaration of candidacy with the US federal electoral commission on Wednesday and then announced his move in an online chat with Twitter head honcho Elon Musk. But the audio stream crashed repeatedly, making it almost impossible for most of the followers to hear DeSantis speak most of the time. The event got off to a rocky start after technical issues meant there were minutes of silence, with those who endured being subsequently kicked off the feed, subject to microphone feedback, hold music and other issues.

Wednesday

Kate Andrews

Sunak should stop pretending that he controls inflation

The government is delighted with today’s inflation update. Rishi Sunak released a clip this afternoon, talking about his government’s efforts to ‘halve inflation’ by the end of the year. ‘I know it’s still tough’ he says, but ‘the plan is working, and we are delivering.’ The problem is that it is not in his gift to deliver on his particular pledge. The economics in this video rival his chancellor’s coffee cup video from a few months back – in that they simply don’t add up. Politicians do not control inflation. They have no reliable mechanism for doing so. Windfall taxes do not bring down inflation, as he suggests in the video; and borrowing and spending at record levels definitely does not bring down inflation.  Sunak knows all this.

Sam Leith

In memory of Martin Amis

37 min listen

In this week’s Book Club podcast, we celebrate the life and weigh the literary reputation of Martin Amis, who died at the end of last week. I’m joined by the critic Alex Clark, the novelist John Niven, and our chief reviewer Philip Hensher – all of whom bring decades of close engagement with Amis’s work to the discussion.

Isabel Hardman

The rise of private healthcare could finish off the NHS

The number of Britons turning to private healthcare has risen by a third since the pandemic. The figures from the Private Healthcare Information Network aren’t a surprise: they show that there were more ‘self-pay’ admissions for treatment in 2022 than in any other year the organisation has data for. If long waiting lists remain, then a two-tier healthcare system will become normalised In all, 272,000 people paid for their own treatment (rather than having it financed by insurance).

Lloyd Evans

What’s this? A good joke from Sir Keir?

Strange tactics by Sir Keir at PMQs. He raised the issue of broken promises on immigration, which gave Rishi Sunak a chance to sound tougher than Labour. ‘How many work visas were issued to foreign nationals last year?’ asked Sir Keir. Rishi dodged the question and blamed the unexpectedly large influx on the Ukraine war. And he mentioned his personal and very generous decision to welcome refugees into other people’s houses. Sir Keir supplied the figure Rishi had just ducked: ‘It’s 250,000. He knows the answer. He just doesn’t want to give it.’ Rishi seized his chance to accuse Labour of plotting to scrap our borders altogether. ‘He believes in an open-door immigration policy,’ he said.

Katy Balls

Boris vs Rishi, round VII

The decision by the Cabinet Office to refer Boris Johnson to the police after his ministerial diary revealed visits by friends to Chequers in Buckinghamshire during the pandemic is being felt in Westminster today. Allies of the former prime minister say Johnson is considering taking legal action against the government (taxpayer-funded lawyers for Johnson – hired by the Cabinet Office – flagged the material to officials). Some of Johnson's more vocal supporters have pointed the finger of blame at Rishi Sunak, accusing the Prime Minister of allowing a 'witch-hunt' against Johnson.

Iain Macwhirter

The SNP is facing a disastrous general election result

Any uncertainty about the extent of the damage inflicted on the SNP by the criminal investigation into party finances can be safely disregarded. An extensive poll by YouGov suggests that those scenes of a police forensics tent outside Nicola  Sturgeon’s Glasgow home, and the arrest of her husband, the SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, have done lasting damage in the SNP heartland.  According to this survey of 3,500 Scots, conducted in April and May, the Nationalists stand to lose 21 of their 48 MPs in the next general election – including nearly all their Glasgow seats. Labour would return 24 seats across Scotland, up from only one. This could be enough to put Keir Starmer in No. 10 with a majority and pitch Humza Yousaf out of Bute House in a palace coup.

Ross Clark

What will it take to crash the housing market?

Is there anything that might cause the much-predicted crash in UK house prices? Not – evidently – a pandemic (which perversely caused prices to surge). A sharp, upwards jerk in the Bank of England’s base rate to 4.5 per cent didn't do it either.    The latest edition of the Office for National Statistics's UK House Price Index – the most comprehensive of house prices indices, but which tends to trail Halifax and Nationwide – shows that prices rose by an average of 4.1 per cent in the 12 months to March. That is down from 5.8 per cent in February and is lower than inflation, indicating a real-terms fall in house prices. But it hardly represents a crash.

Mark Galeotti

Ukraine’s next move: can Putin be outsmarted?

Has Ukraine’s much-heralded counter-offensive already begun? At the end of last month, defence minister Oleksy Reznikov promised that ‘as soon as there is God’s will, the weather and a decision by the commanders, we will do it’. The past few weeks have seen an upsurge in what the military describe as shaping operations, preparing the ground for battle, with attacks on Russian fuel and weapons depots and command centres. This week’s incursion by Ukraine’s anti-Kremlin Russian units over the border into the Belgorod region could also be an attempt to distract Moscow and make it disperse its forces away from likely lines of attack.

Katy Balls

Is Sunak heading for a showdown over Rwanda?

When the Prime Minister first assembled his cabinet, the most controversial appointment was Suella Braverman as Home Secretary. She had only just left the role under Liz Truss after she admitted sending an official document from a personal email account. But when Truss fell, Braverman called for Rishi Sunak rather than a Boris Johnson restoration. She was back in the Home Office after less than a week. ‘It’s either stop the boats or leave the ECHR,’ says one senior Tory Some suspected a grubby deal between the two, but Sunak had plenty of reasons to want Braverman back. While critics accuse her of harbouring unsubtle leadership ambitions, her place in the cabinet keeps an important part of the Tory coalition on side – even if it comes with downsides.

Freddy Gray

Can Trump’s opponents prove him wrong on Ukraine?

Boris Johnson, Britain’s most sought-after Churchill impersonator, visited Texas on Monday to urge a group of rich right-wing Americans to never, never, never give in to Vladimir Putin. ‘I just urge you all to stick with it,’ Agent Bojo told a private lunch of conservative politicians and donors in Dallas. ‘You are backing the right horse. Ukraine is going to win.’ Johnson wasn’t paid to speak at the lunch, though it’s worth noting that he only stopped over in Texas on the way to the SCALE Fintech conference in Las Vegas, where he is expected to receive a six-figure sum for talking about the future of innovation alongside Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US. Nobody said freedom was free.

Steerpike

Watch: Lindsay Hoyle boots Tory MP out the Commons

Another week, another angry ticking off in the House of Commons by speaker Lindsay Hoyle. Today it was Conservative MP Paul Bristow who felt the full might of Hoyle’s wrath after being singled out for heckling Labour leader Keir Starmer during Prime Minister’s Questions. Standing at the despatch box, Starmer had challenged Rishi Sunak’s grip on illegal immigration. To the sound of taunting from the government benches, he said: ‘Mr Speaker, if anyone wants to see what uncontrolled immigration looks like, all they’ve got to do is wake up tomorrow morning and see what this government…’ It appears that Hoyle managed to make out Bristow’s voice amongst the hecklers, because at this point he cut Starmer off and rounded on the unfortunate member for Peterborough.