Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Kate Andrews

Another rate rise from the Fed. Is it enough?

Will the Bank of England raise interest rates again? We'll know for sure next Thursday, when we get the Monetary Policy Committee's next announcement on the base rate, but today’s decision from the Federal Reserve to hike rates again makes it more likely that the Bank will follow suit. The Fed has announced another interest rate hike: a quarter of a percentage point, taking the rate to 5 – 5.25 per cent. This tenth consecutive hike in the United States has taken its key interest rate to the highest level since 2007 – approximately where rates sat before the financial crisis hit.  This has caused plenty of controversy across the pond, as fears grow that further hikes risk tipping the US economy into recession.

Katy Balls

Did the Tories ‘kill the dream of homeownership’?

11 min listen

In today's Prime Minister's Questions, Keir Starmer accused the Prime Minister and his party of having 'killed the dream of homeownership'. With news this week that Rishi Sunak is considering reintroducing 'Help to Buy' while Michael Gove is sued for blocking a new housing development in Kent, does Starmer actually have a point? Katy Balls talks to Kate Andrews and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Steerpike

SNP find some accountants, at last

Just in the nick of time, the SNP have at long last – after cold calling almost every auditing firm in the country – found some new accountants. The small Manchester-based firm, AMS Accountants Group, must be hungry for a challenge: the Westminster group’s accounts need auditing in just over three weeks, while the Holyrood party’s accounts have a deadline of 7 July. Tick tock! Commenting on this minor triumph, First Minister Humza Yousaf said:  We take our statutory obligations extremely seriously, so it is welcome news that AMS Accountants Group will complete the accounts for both the party and the SNP Westminster group. I am very grateful for the work of our new party treasurer Stuart McDonald in securing the auditors' services.

Madeleine Teahan

The alarming spread of child euthanasia

A few weeks ago the Dutch parliament announced that euthanasia will be licensed for children between the ages of one and 12, for cases involving ‘such a serious illness or disorder that death is inevitable, and the death of these children is expected in the foreseeable future’. The coverage of this latest development was eerily muted, considering the enormity of what had just been communicated; namely, that a European liberal democracy had deemed it appropriate for seriously sick infants and primary school-aged children to receive lethal injections. How have liberal democracies become so enticed by the sinister notion that children should be eligible for euthanasia?

Lloyd Evans

Keir Starmer’s gutter politics is working

Powerful stuff from Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs. He tackled Rishi Sunak on his favourite battleground – statistics. He began by pinning the PM down on a very specific question. How many mortgage-holders have to pay more each month because the Tories ‘crashed the economy last autumn’? Rishi didn’t know. Sir Keir gave him the answer and promptly gloated over the PM’s failure to reply. Next he asked how many future mortgage-holders will enter the trap of rising payments. No reply from Rishi. He simply didn’t know. Bad look.  Sir Keir has wisely shifted the focus of his attacks. Rather than complaining about Mrs Sunak’s bank balance – which feels ungallant – he brought up the family swimming pool which, he claimed, costs £9,000 a year to heat.

Brendan O’Neill

The emasculation of Sinn Fein

The right needs to calm down about Sinn Fein. It needs to chill out about the fact that the party’s vice-president, Michelle O’Neill, will be attending the coronation of King Charles. It needs to relax about that selfie featuring Sinn Fein’s former president, Gerry Adams, gurning next to Joe Biden during his jaunt in Ireland. It needs to stop fretting over the spike in support for Sinn Fein in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in recent years. For all of this stuff is not proof that Sinn Fein’s old radical goal of creating a 32-county republic is gaining ground. On the contrary, it points to the neutering of Sinn Fein, to its hollowing out and humiliation; to the transformation of this once guerilla-style party into Ireland’s version of the Lib Dems.

Euan McColm

Why won’t the SNP stand up for Joanna Cherry?

The campaign by furious activists to destroy Edinburgh’s reputation as a great crucible of critical thinking continues apace. The home of the Enlightenment is under sustained attack. Students and – shame on them – staff at Edinburgh University have, for a second time, blocked the screening of the film Adult Human Female on campus. To allow the viewing and discussion of this documentary would, claim members of the mob, make the university an unsafe space. Not to be outshone in this parade of idiocy, The Stand comedy club subsequently cowered before the screeching fury of gender ideology campaigners and cancelled a show due to take place during this year’s Edinburgh Festival featuring the SNP MP Joanna Cherry.

Lisa Haseldine

Seven key battlegrounds to watch at the 2023 local elections

And just like that, the local elections have rolled around once again. On Thursday 4 May, 230 councils will be going to the polls: over 8,000 seats are up for grabs in England, including 3,365 currently held by Tories and 2,131 by Labour councillors. It will be Rishi Sunak’s first big test, with both parties viewing it as a ‘dry run’ ahead of the general election next year. The impact of the new voter ID laws will be scrutinised closely too. The last time these seats were up for election was in 2019, when both parties suffered a bad night. Labour now have a commanding 15-point lead and are predicted to make gains of between 400 to 700 seats while Tory expectations are low, with estimates of losses ranging from 500 to 1,000 councillors.

Mark Galeotti

What’s the truth about the Kremlin drone attack?

The Russian government has claimed that ‘two unmanned aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin. As a result of timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems, the vehicles were put out of action.’ There were, it continues, ‘no victims and material damage’, although it is considering it a ‘terrorist’ attempt to kill Putin. That said, unverified videos circulating on social media (which, of course, is not necessarily proof in the age of deep fakery), shows at least one drone hitting the Senate Building, one of the larger structures inside the Kremlin complex, starting a small fire. Ukraine has been developing longer-range drones and getting closer to Moscow.

Katy Balls

Sue Gray, Simon Case and a tale of two appointments

When Boris Johnson appointed Simon Case to the Cabinet Office, he believed that the youngest cabinet secretary in a century (just 41 when he accepted the role) would be more malleable than his more experienced rivals. Case was appointed in September 2020, when Dominic Cummings was, in effect, running No. 10 and had big ideas about rewiring Whitehall. ‘Simon was picked to be Dom’s stooge,’ says one former Johnson aide. ‘His role was to let Dom be Dom.

Isabel Hardman

PMQs was all about the local elections

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer were both present for Prime Minister’s Questions, but the session was largely Why You Should Vote For This Party In The Local Elections Tomorrow. Backbenchers on both sides used the half hour to air their grievances with local councils led by their rivals, or praise the important work of authorities where their own party had power. Both party leaders framed their exchanges around their own local messaging, too, but what was interesting was that Starmer chose to lead on home ownership and housebuilding.  The Labour leader used housing as the latest example of things Sunak likes to pretend are going absolutely fine even when they manifestly aren’t.

Steerpike

Which Tory MP will be the next ‘presentician’?

These days it's hard to turn your telly and not find a politician gurning back at you. But while once MPs both past and present were wheeled out only as guests – hapless prey before a fearless interviewer – now they're more likely to be running the show. A veritable smorgasbord of Tory MPs currently host or have previously hosted such shows on GB News including Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dehenna Davison, Esther McVey, Philip Davies and Lee Anderson. TalkTV meanwhile have 'Friday night with Nadine Dorries' while her fellow parliamentarians Bim Afolami and Labour's Tan Dhesi as talking heads on Talk’s flagship late night show. And even Jake Berry has been trying his hand in the presenter's hot seat, filling in for Jeremy Kyle last week alongside Emily Sheffield.

Matthew Lesh

George Osborne’s smoking ban is deluded

Former Chancellor George Osborne has become the latest British politician to call for a smoking ban. The architect of the sugar tax wants the UK to follow the lead of New Zealand, which will prohibit anyone born after 2008 from purchasing cigarettes.  'You basically phase it out. Of course you’re going to have lots of problems with illegal smoking, but you have lots of problems with other illegal activities,' Osborne said. 'It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and ban them and police them and make it less readily available. I thought that was a compelling public health intervention.' You have to admire his flawless logic. Prohibition has proven so successful for recreational drugs; so successful that even senior politicians have admitted to using Class A substances.

Iain Macwhirter

Trans activists will regret picking on Joanna Cherry

Another feminist getting no-platformed in Scotland is hardly news. Poets, writers, students, academics, comedians and, of course, film-makers have become inured to being cancelled north of the border if they stray from the dogma that trans women are women. Normally this kind of thing happens in the shadows, without publicity. People just find, like the poet Jenny Lindsay, that their livelihood disappears. Cancellation is the standard operating procedure for the handful of trans activists who seem to have a stranglehold on Scottish cultural life and education institutions. But this time they took on someone willing to fight back.

Hardeep Singh

Does Britain have a problem with ‘Sikh extremism’?

Terror threats from Islamist and far-right terrorists are depressingly familiar to Brits, but other faiths are not immune from the plague of extremists who might seek to harm others. A recent report by Colin Bloom, the government's faith engagement advisor, touched on lesser-known ideologies like ‘Buddhist nationalism’ and ‘Hindu nationalism’. It also raised concerns about ‘Sikh extremism’. But how much of a problem is this particular form of radicalism in Britain? ‘Small pockets of Sikh communities’ in Britain are involved with ‘subversive, sectarian and discriminatory activities,’ according to the report. The numbers here are small. According to the 2021 census, there are 524,000 Sikhs in England and Wales, which equates to just under 1 per cent of the population.

Steerpike

Three questions Labour still need to answer on Sue Gray

Two months after leaving government, Sue Gray is still causing headaches for ministers. The partygate inquisitor is back in the news following her refusal to cooperate with a Cabinet Office probe into her shock defection to the Starmtroopers as Sir Keir’s chief of staff. Unwilling to answer questions to an official government inquiry? What would the Sue Gray of 2021 make of that… Attention therefore switches to the second investigation being conducted by ACOBA into Gray’s defection. This, Labour says, ought to be the real inquiry because ACOBA is an independent body, exempt from the machinations of those beastly Tories. They are expected to make a recommendation on Gray’s appointment by the summer, with ministers pressing for a ‘cooling off’ period of up to two years.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

The NHS is still in trouble despite the pay agreement

The decision by the NHS Staff Council to accept the government’s pay offer is not the end of the stand-off between ministers and some healthcare workers, obviously. But it does mark a step away from the general hostility over pay that has marked the autumn and winter months. Unite and the Royal College of Nursing are still threatening more strikes, even though they are on the council of 12 unions representing all NHS workers (save for doctors and dentists) in England. The vote at today's Council meeting means the pay rise of 5 per cent for 2022/23 and 2023/24 and a one-off payment of at least £1,655 will go to all workers, but Unite and the RCN plan to hold out for more money.

Cindy Yu

Could Sue Gray-gate backfire on Keir Starmer?

17 min listen

The Cabinet Office has published its written statement into the resignation of Sue Gray, stating that it has given a 'confidential assessment' to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) about whether she broke civil service rules in taking up a job from Keir Starmer while still a senior civil servant. On the episode, Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and the UK In A Changing Europe's Jill Rutter, who is also a former civil servant, about the implications for the civil service if Gray is found to have broken the rules. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Steerpike

Sue Gray disappoints… again

Is that it? After keeping half of SW1 on tenterhooks all day, it seems that Keir Starmer's favourite gamekeeper-turned-poacher has done it again. Fifteen months ago, it was the partygate inquiry; today it's the probe into Sue Gray's spectacular defection to Labour. After much speculation, the government has today published a written statement about the Cabinet Office review into her appointment as Keir Starmer's Chief of Staff. In a terse and pithy notice, the Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden wrote that 'Ms Gray was given the opportunity to make representations as part of this process but chose not to do so.

Joanna Williams

Where was Stella Creasy when other mums were being harassed?

Parliament’s ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok cannot come soon enough. But it’s not just cyber security we need to worry about. Our social media happy MPs clearly need saving from themselves. Matt Hancock might be the parliamentary champion of toe-curling film clips but other MPs are bidding to out-cringe him.  Labour’s Stella Creasy filmed her response this weekend to a critic who had moved from bombarding her office with emails, to reporting her to social services for exposing her children to 'extreme views'. Creasy was quickly cleared but the whole situation left her, understandably, angry – not least when police told the MP she should 'expect to be challenged' because of the public nature of her role. I sympathise.