Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Steerpike

Tories fear Commons recruitment crisis

It seems that not even MPs' offices are exempt from the nation's employment crisis. Ahead of next year's general election, Mr S hears that many bright young things on the Tory side are leaving parliament – with their elected members now finding it difficult to hire suitable replacements. Some quitting the Commons fear a Labour landslide; others suggest it's merely long-serving staff reaching a natural end point after three or four years of service. 'Large amounts of my mates are actively looking' for new jobs, said one Portcullis House veteran, with Tory MPs now 'finding it hard to recruit.

The Spectator

We’ll miss Rupert Murdoch when he’s gone

The idea that Donald Trump was denied victory in the 2020 presidential election by conspirators determined to fiddle with the electoral system was never more than a fiction dreamed up by a frustrated losing candidate. At such times, the role of the media is crucial. If there were genuine evidence of vote-rigging then it should of course be investigated. But to amplify conspiracy theories for the sake of ratings could have grave consequences. The editorial decision to try to give legs to the stolen election claim is now costing Fox News dearly. This week the company reached a $788 million settlement with Dominion, a company which supplies vote-counting technology for US elections and had been accused of involvement in rigging the election.

The Spectator

We’ll miss Rupert Murdoch when he’s gone

The idea that Donald Trump was denied victory in the 2020 presidential election by conspirators determined to fiddle with the electoral system was never more than a fiction dreamed up by a frustrated losing candidate. At such times, the role of the media is crucial. If there were genuine evidence of vote-rigging then it should of course be investigated. But to amplify conspiracy theories for the sake of ratings could have grave consequences. The editorial decision to try to give legs to the stolen election claim is now costing Fox News dearly. This week the company reached a $788 million settlement with Dominion, a company which supplies vote-counting technology for US elections and had been accused of involvement in rigging the election.

Katy Balls

What is the point of Humza Yousaf?

A seized luxury campervan, a raid on a politician’s home and two arrests. The latest twists in Police Scotland’s investigation into how the SNP spent £600,000 of IndyRef2 donations wouldn’t seem out of place in an Ian Rankin novel. Just a year ago, Nicola Sturgeon looked invincible. Now the SNP is in freefall and Humza Yousaf, its new leader, is unable to give a clear answer when asked if his party is currently a criminal organisation. The latest arrest – of the party’s treasurer, Colin Beattie – was on the same day as Yousaf’s supposed policy relaunch day (‘not helpful,’ he said) and more developments are expected from Operation Branchform, the investigation into the missing funds for a referendum campaign that never took place.

Charles Moore

The common cause of Scottish Unionism

Although it cannot be stated publicly, Labour and the Conservatives have much common cause in Scotland now. They won’t stand down in each other’s favour at the next election; but expect ‘paper’ candidates in constituencies where one is much stronger than the other and the Nationalist is vulnerable. Wavering SNP supporters can be divided into welfare drones (who have benefited under the SNP to the detriment of spending on health and schools), and ‘tartan Tories’, social conservatives who hoped that Kate Forbes would be SNP leader. Labour courts the former, the Tories the latter. Both parties pray that Humza Yousaf, the new First Minister, remains in office. He is the gift that keeps on giving.

Isabel Hardman

Sunak’s ‘Sir Softy’ attack on Starmer flopped at PMQs

Keir Starmer had a much better Prime Minister's Questions than Rishi Sunak today. The main reason for this was that the Labour leader had come with a clear thesis about the Tories breaking public services and Sunak not noticing. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister had brought along a bizarre insult for his opponent. While Starmer ridiculed the claim by Conservative party chair Greg Hands that public services are in 'good shape', Sunak derided the opposition leader as 'Sir Softy'. At one point he claimed 'that's why they call him Sir Softy' – even though 'they' could only possibly refer to the aides he had been preparing for the session with, and even though Sir Softy sounds more like the name for an ice cream van than someone voters might reject at the ballot box.

Brendan O’Neill

How dare William Hague lecture the Women’s Institute on trans rights

I see it is acceptable again for men to tell women what to do. And to snap ‘Get over it!’ if any of the little dears dares to quibble or speak back. How else do we explain William Hague taking to the airwaves to wag a patriarchal finger at the Women’s Institute and instruct it to welcome transgender women into its ranks? Lord Hague was asked about infighting at the WI, between a leadership that wants trans women on board and ‘rebel members’ who think it’s odd and wrong to let biological males join a famously female-only organisation. Hague was unequivocal. The pesky WI insurgents who outrageously believe that people with penises are men, not women, need to get with the programme, he said on Times Radio.

Andrew McQuillan

Is Chris Heaton-Harris the worst Northern Ireland secretary yet?

Amidst the veneration of the Belfast Agreement taking place at Queen’s University this week, there has been a less than subtle message: that the DUP should get back to work and re-join the devolved executive at Stormont. One of the many banging that particular drum – and unlikely to feature in any Orange parade this July – is Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland Secretary. Heaton-Harris's speech to those gathered in Belfast yesterday was a browbeating performance par excellence which has raised unionist hackles rather than assuaged them. But while his speech grabbed the headlines for this reason, it also contained an extraordinary appraisal of the history of Northern Ireland and bizarre phraseology for a supposed unionist to use.

Matthew Lesh

Why WhatsApp could quit the UK over the Online Safety Bill

WhatsApp, Signal and five other messaging services have joined forces to attack the government's Online Safety Bill. They fear the bill will kill end-to-end encryption and say, in an open letter, that this could open the door to 'routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages'. The stakes are high: WhatsApp and Signal are threatening to leave the UK market if encryption is undermined. This intervention comes as the Lords begins their line-by-line committee stage scrutiny of the Bill today. Encryption provides a defence against fraud and scams; it allows us to communicate with friends and family safely; it enables human rights activists to send incriminating information to journalists.

John R. MacArthur

Meet the aristocrat plotting Macron’s downfall

Vitry-le-François Can a modern revolution emanate from the political centre or, more unconventionally, from the heart and mind of an aristocrat who places republican values above factional allegiance? This was the question that propelled me more than a hundred miles east of Paris – while another day of mass demonstrations unfolded in the capital and across France – to the post-industrial town of Vitry-le-François to meet Charles de Courson, the French parliamentarian descended from Norman nobility who nearly succeeded in bringing down the government of President Emmanuel Macron with a no-confidence vote on 20 March.

Rod Liddle

I shed a tear for the SNP

For people who take politics seriously and very earnestly, such as myself, the present debacle within the Scottish National party is surely a time of great sadness and disappointment, rather than of jumping up in the air, screaming ‘Ha ha ha, suck it up, you malevolent ginger dwarf!’ and breaking open the champers. Gloating in such a manner is odious and juvenile and so I simply shook my head sadly and even shed a tear when I heard that the party’s treasurer, Colin Beattie, had been arrested.

Kate Andrews

Stubborn inflation rates spell trouble for Rishi Sunak

The rate of inflation has come down, barely. This morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics shows inflation fell to 10.1 per cent on the year in March, down from 10.4 per cent in February. The rate remains in the double digits, where it has hovered since September 2022. Today's update takes the rate back down only to where it was in January.  A trend has emerged with inflation data in the UK. As predicted across the board, energy prices are falling at significant pace, with the largest ‘downward contributions’ in March coming from a drop in motor fuel prices – which fell by 5.9 per cent in the year to March 2023, compared with a rise of 4.6 per cent in February. But these price drops are being offset by a rise in domestic costs.

Anna Arutunyan

Russian patriotism isn’t what Putin thinks it is

With Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine showing no signs of reaching a conclusion, a recent study by the country's main state-run pollster, VTsIOM, revealed that 91 per cent of Russians consider themselves patriots. On the face of it, these numbers seem to vindicate two camps with a strikingly similar worldview. On the one hand, there is Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, desperate to prove that he is fighting this war in the name of all Russians; and on the other, a growing handful of those in the West who claim to be supporters of Ukraine and Putin’s foes, but who insist with equal vehemence on the populist fallacy that it is not just Putin’s war, but that of all Russians.

Luke Tryl

Labour’s attack ads may already be backfiring

'Poor taste,' said Julie, 'Really desperate,' added Shawn. Mark thought it was 'A low blow' and Becky was simply 'gobsmacked'. That was the verdict of our focus group participants in Erewash in Derbyshire last week when they were shown Labour’s controversial advert suggesting Rishi Sunak did not believe that those convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison.  Labour's shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has defended the advert and suggested 'There’s more to come'. But based on the feedback of voters, if these adverts are to mark the start of a more aggressive approach, the spinners at Labour HQ might want to think again.

Steerpike

Fox settles in Dominion defamation case

Talk about denying us a grand finale. Moments before the defamation ‘trial of the century’ was due to begin, media giant Fox News announced last night it had settled the lawsuit from the voting machine company, Dominion, over its reporting of the 2020 presidential election. In a last-minute settlement before trial, the network agreed to pay £634 million, just under half the £1.3 billion initially sought by the firm. It spares Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch from having to testify but comes at significant cost and the embarrassment of the network acknowledging ‘the court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley

Scotland should prepare for life after Humza Yousaf

All political careers end in failure but Humza Yousaf has managed to begin his there. Three weeks ago, he clinched the leadership of the SNP in a 52-48 per cent photo finish. Since then, he has deepened divisions within his party by shunning MSPs who failed to support his leadership bid, launched a legal challenge to Westminster to restart his government’s unpopular gender reforms, and watched as police raided Nicola Sturgeon’s home and arrested Peter Murrell, her husband and the SNP’s former chief executive, amid a probe of party finances.   Tuesday was supposed to mark a ‘reset’, because Yousaf’s leadership is in such dire straits that, less than a month in, it already needs resetting.

Isabel Hardman

Humza Yousaf has a difficult road ahead of him

It was, by his own admission, a 'not ideal' set of circumstances for Humza Yousaf's speech setting out his priorities as First Minister, with the arrest of the party treasurer just hours before he was due in the Scottish parliament chamber amid the ongoing investigation into the party's finances. Then again, there were a lot of 'not ideal' policies that Yousaf had to deal with. Despite previously boasting that he would have Sturgeon on 'speed dial', Yousaf spent today's speech distancing himself from her policies.

Freddy Gray

The Murdoch empire’s darkest secret

One way or another, we’re almost all ‘content creators’ these days, humble social-media serfs toiling away in the Silicon Valley vineyards of the ‘likes’. That’s why dinosaur billionaire media owners – the old kings of content – have taken on mythic qualities even as their empires collapse. It’s why everybody loves the TV show Succession.  The Murdochs, the Maxwells, the Bloombergs, who not so long ago were potent figures of vulgar fun, suddenly possess the sort of nostalgic glamour once attached to the landed gentry or the Great Industrialists.

James Heale

How much does the investigation into Sunak matter?

14 min listen

The investigation into Rishi Sunak leads several papers today, but how much does it really matter? On the episode, James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Conservative Home editor Paul Goodman about why the episode is unlikely to hurt Sunak in the long run. They also discuss the coming report on Dominic Raab's alleged workplace bullying and the centenary of the 1922 committee. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Michael Simmons

Coffee House Scots: can Humza save the SNP after treasurer’s arrest?

10 min listen

The arrest of the SNP's treasurer Colin Beattie in relation to the probe into the party's finances has overshadowed Humza Yousaf's relaunch speech scheduled for today. Beattie has been taken into custody two weeks after Peter Murrell, the SNP's chief executive, was questioned by police regarding loans made in June 2021. Can Yousaf distance himself from the chaos in his own party? What does this mean for Scottish Labour's chances at the next election? Michael Simmons speaks to Katy Balls and Stephen Daisley. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.