Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Steerpike

Ian Blackford’s tantrum over SNP auditor enquiries

The Mystery of the Lost Auditors becomes ever more exciting by the day. As scrutiny intensifies so does the shirking of responsibility, for it has now been revealed that the House of Commons authorities were not informed about Johnston Carmichael cutting ties with the SNP’s accounts until 13 February - a full five months after the fact. That was also incidentally three days after Stephen Flynn was informed, a mere two months after replacing Ian Blackford as Westminster leader. And last night, it was Blackford’s moment to return to the spotlight when asked if it was his responsibility to have let parliamentary finance staff know about his party’s lack of auditors.

Isabel Hardman

Sunak and Starmer turn nasty again at PMQs

Keir Starmer is very fond of giving 'deeply personal' interviews where he tries to bring some colour to his grey suited image. He is also increasingly keen on deeply personal attacks on Rishi Sunak at Prime Minister's Questions, as today's session showed.  The Labour leader ramped up his attacks on Sunak as a ludicrously rich, out-of-touch leader, telling the Commons the PM was 'clueless about life outside of his bubble', of regarding contactless cards as being something from Mars, and of 'smiling his way through the cost of living crisis'. He reminded MPs of the old video of a young Sunak boasting that he didn't know any working class people, and of the more recent clip of him telling voters in Tunbridge Wells that he'd diverted money from poorer areas to richer seats such as theirs.

Patrick O’Flynn

Are the Tories finally getting serious on tackling illegal migration?

Something significant happened in Westminster yesterday. The Immigration Minister made a speech which showed a thorough understanding of the damage done to British society by unchecked illegal migration. Given that combating illegal, or 'irregular', migration is Robert Jenrick’s core task, you may feel that such an occurrence should be treated as commonplace. But here’s the thing: it hasn’t happened before. To have a minister close to the PM make such a speech should be acknowledged as an important breakthrough It certainly hasn't since the small boats phenomenon got going in earnest four years ago. The likes of Caroline Nokes, who held the post under Theresa May, or Tom Pursglove, who sat in the chair for a few weeks under Liz Truss, never got round to it.

Ross Clark

The Bank of England is right: Brits can’t keep demanding pay rises

Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill isn’t going to win a popularity contest. Speaking on a podcast for Columbia Law School – a medium in which he perhaps felt a little less exposed than had he said it on a British TV programme – he said:  'Somehow in the UK, someone needs to accept that they are worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices….What we’re facing now is that reluctance to accept that yes, we’re all worse off and we all have to take our share.' Nurses, doctors, train drivers and everyone else contemplating striking for an inflation-beating, or even inflation-matching, pay rise: those remarks are aimed at you.

John Mac Ghlionn

The narcissism of Just Stop Oil

Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists have an insatiable appetite for mayhem. Protesters from the environmental group are slowing down traffic in London today, conducting a 'go slow' march through Parliament Square. This isn't the first time, of course, that they've caused disruption. Cast your minds back to July last year, when five members of JSO glued themselves to the Last Supper painting in London’s Royal Academy. A few days before this rather odd demonstration, campaigners entered the National Gallery in central London and proceeded to glue themselves to the frame of John Constable's the Hay Wain. Earlier this month, a JSO protester disrupted the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield by jumping onto the table and emptying a bag of orange powder paint over the playing surface.

Jawad Iqbal

Why are so many Indian migrants crossing the Channel?

Indians now make up the second-biggest cohort of Channel migrants: 675 Indians arrived in small boats in the first three months of this year, according to Home Office figures. This amounts to almost a fifth of the total 3,793 crossings made in the first quarter of this year. The number represents a stark rise: only 683 Indians made the journey in the whole of last year. Albanians, yes, Afghans and Iraqis possibly – but the revelation that so many from India are making the dangerous crossing to England has taken many by surprise. The Indian government insists that the growth in emigration is linked to a rise in Sikhs fleeing the country because of a crackdown on the separatist movement in the state of Punjab.

Philip Patrick

Do Scots support Humza Yousaf’s defence of devolution?

Devolution has largely failed in Scotland and Wales and some powers need to be returned to Westminster. This is a precis of a controversial article by Lord Frost in the Daily Telegraph last week that continues to provoke outrage. Leading members of the SNP have denounced it. Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf has vowed to ‘defend our democracy’ in the face of the attack, and Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, has called it evidence of ‘a deliberate, co-ordinated attempt to reverse devolution, …and force Scotland under Westminster control.

Tuesday

Cindy Yu

Could the UK’s new China policy prevent a second cold war?

What a difference a year makes. Three prime ministers ago, in April 2022, Liz Truss gave a characteristically punchy speech at Mansion House as Foreign Secretary. Grouping Beijing with Moscow into a club of ‘aggressors’ with ‘malign tactics’, she reiterated her pledge to create a ‘network of liberty’, bringing together like-minded, liberal and democratic countries to face down ‘the bullies’. Tonight’s speech from her successor at the Foreign Office signalled a significant softening. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tilted towards strategy and pragmatism, reiterating the message of last month’s updated Integrated Review. He called for engagement, but only on the basis of British national interest, while arguing that security should still trump all.

Lucy Dunn

SNP Westminster leader says the party must ‘do better’

Is the truth about the ignorance of key SNP figures being exposed? Or is the party's 'inner circle' even smaller than first thought? It certainly appears to have been the norm for senior figures to only become aware of party dealings after the fact. First Minister Humza Yousaf has said he didn’t know about the purchase of a £110,000 motorhome until after he became SNP leader. Former treasurer Colin Beattie initially said he didn’t know about the buy, despite his name appearing on the SNP’s 2021 balance sheet (though he has, this evening, clarified that he ‘became aware of the transaction via the 2021 annual accounts’ – still indicating that over a year went by before he found out).

Steerpike

Labour’s sewage scheme backfires

It seems that the Starmer army have once again been caught trying to be too clever by half. Earlier today, Labour sought to exploit Tory woes over sewage by tabling a motion in an opposition day debate. The motion called for the government to set a target for the reduction of sewage discharges, implement financial penalties and carry out an impact assessment of such discharges. Stung perhaps by the debacle of October – when an opposition day debate ultimately precipitated Liz Truss’s resignation – the government opted to not object to those arguments. However the Labour motion included a fourth part that would have given the opposition the ability to take control of the Commons order paper in future and introduce legislation of their own.

James Heale

How did Beattie miss a £100,000 motorhome?

10 min listen

Colin Beattie, the SNP’s former treasurer, said today that he ‘didn't know’ about the party’s purchase of a motorhome worth £100,000, the vehicle at the centre of an ongoing police probe into SNP finances. What’s going on? And as the military begins to evacuate British citizens from Sudan, did the Foreign Office react fast enough?  James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.

Iain Macwhirter

Humza ‘useless’ Yousaf is living up to his nickname

It's often said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first turn mad, which may or may not apply to the Scottish National Party. But the deities always find it easier to punish hubris when those guilty of it turn themselves into figures of fun. And, when it comes to that, Humza Yousaf is your man.  The First Minister is a virtuoso of bathos. He can hardly open his mouth without saying something that turns a serious matter into an unintentional gag. When the SNP national treasurer, Colin Beattie, was arrested last week, on the day of the new First Minister's big 'vision' speech to Holyrood, Humza told reporters that he 'did not believe' the SNP is a criminal organisation.

Brendan O’Neill

Diane Abbott and the trouble with the ‘hierarchy of racism’

The radical left have a new favourite phrase: ‘hierarchy of racism’. This is when one form of racism is treated more seriously than another. Such racial favouritism infuriates online leftists. It is anathema to the noble cause of anti-racism to elevate one ethnic group’s suffering over another’s, they cry. All racism is bad, they’re forever reminding us. But here’s the thing: they only ever use that phrase ‘hierarchy of racism’ when it’s anti-Semitism that is being talked about. I guarantee that every time you hear a Corbynista or some other virtual radical bemoan the treatment of certain kinds of racism as more concerning than others, it’s because anti-Jewish hatred is in the news. It’s like a tic they have.

Isabel Hardman

Would Labour really tackle the strikes better than the Tories?

The debate about NHS strikes is turning into one of those 'am I being unreasonable?' threads on Reddit and Mumsnet, where posters jump all over each other to point out the way someone has messed up in a relationship. Health Secretary Steve Barclay is still hoping to win the war of attrition between the government and healthcare workers by appealing to the unions to be reasonable and constructive. Barclay made that argument again today when taking departmental questions in the Commons, but his announcement last night that he would be taking the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to court in a bid to stop that union's strikes showed that it is becoming harder, not easier, to stick to this line of attack.

Steerpike

The SNP’s civil war erupts in Westminster

It seems that the acrimonious civil war embroiling the SNP isn't merely restricted to Scotland. For amid growing questions about the party's finance structures, a new front has opened up down in London, with Stephen Flynn, the party's leader at Westminster, turning on his predecessor Ian Blackford. Flynn admitted to Good Morning Scotland on Monday that his group of 45 MPs is currently struggling to appoint auditors, following the decision of the party's long-time accountants Johnston Carmichael to cut ties. That is significant because the SNP must submit an auditor's certificated by 31 May or risk losing its annual sum of more than £1 million of 'Short money' – taxpayer funding from the House of Commons reserved for opposition parties. Tick tock!

Stephen Daisley

China is right to chuckle at Britain’s foreign policy

The Foreign Office has seven ministers, 16,000 employees, an £11bn credit card and one of these days it might get itself a foreign policy. If the trailed excerpts of James Cleverly’s speech to the Lord Mayor’s Easter Banquet are to be believed, the Foreign Secretary will articulate the government’s pivot back towards Beijing. Cleverly will reportedly declare that ‘no significant problem… can be solved without China’. He will say that while ‘it would be clear and easy – perhaps satisfying – for me to declare a new cold war and say that our goal is to isolate China’, it would be ‘wrong’, ‘a betrayal of our national interest’ and even a ‘wilful misunderstanding of the modern world’.  This pro-China tilt does not come out of the blue.

Steerpike

SNP treasurer in the dark about motorhome purchase

It's a day ending in y, which means another bad 24 hours for the SNP. And as the party's leading lights all turn on each other like rats in a sack, this morning it was the turn of the party's former treasurer Colin Beattie to come out swinging. Beattie said earlier that he was not aware of the purchase of the £110,000 motorhome supposedly bought for a second referendum campaign, back when he was in charge of the party’s finances. Cornered by journalists in Holyrood today, Beattie floundered when faced with a simple question ‘Did you know about the motorhome purchase and did you sign it off?’ The beleaguered beancounter hesitated before insisting ‘No, I did not know about it.

Joanna Williams

Labour’s ‘lessons for boys’ plan is a sinister sideshow

What are schools for? The answer used to be obvious: school was where children went to learn how to read, write and count, while the lucky ones picked up some history, algebra, chemistry and literature along the way. But not any more. Nowadays, academic subjects have become a sideshow to the main event: changing children’s attitudes and values. Whether it is relationships and sex education classes that teach children there are 73 genders, citizenship lessons that preach the importance of fair trade, or personal, social and health education workshops on white privilege, today’s schools seem more concerned with coercing children into accepting a particular set of beliefs than they are with teaching subject knowledge.

Steerpike

Doubts raised over Diane Abbott’s Observer excuse

Oh dear. It seems that Diane Abbott's antisemitism apology – dashed off on Sunday morning in a failed last-ditch attempt to stave off her suspension – has backfired somewhat spectacularly. The Jewish Chronicle has today published an article which calls into question Abbott's account of how her letter downplaying racism against Jewish people came to be published by the Observer. The former Shadow Home Secretary claimed that an initial draft of her letter was sent erroneously to the newspaper. But the JC says that Abbott's letter was sent to the Observer twice from the MP’s own email account a week before it was published.

Euan McColm

Lord Frost has offered the SNP a lifeline

First Minister Humza Yousaf met with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last night for the first time since he took over from Nicola Sturgeon almost a month ago. Amongst other things, Yousaf 'raised concerns' about 'UK government attacks on devolution', including recent comments from a certain Lord David Frost in the Telegraph, who wrote: 'Not only must no more powers be devolved to Scotland, it’s time to reverse the process.' But it's pro-Union politicians who are really up in arms after the Tory peer's calls that some of the Scottish government's devolved powers be rolled back. The former Brexit negotiator's clumsy intervention has been a lifeline to Yousaf in the middle of his crisis.