Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

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.

Iain Macwhirter

SNP treasurer’s arrest overshadows Humza Yousaf’s big speech

Just what Humza needed on the day of his Big Speech to Holyrood: another arrest in what has inevitably been called the 'campervangate' affair. This time it was the party treasurer, Colin Beattie, who was taken into police custody this morning. The 71-year-old has now been released without charge, pending further investigation. It is the latest stage in the two year long police investigation (Operation Branchform) into what happened to that now infamous £600,000 sum for a referendum campaign that never happened. Earlier this month, the former SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, was arrested and released without charge - pending further investigation - in what Police Scotland say is an 'ongoing investigation'.

Tom Slater

Why is Just Stop Oil targeting the snooker?

Just Stop Oil has finally hit the fossil-fuel barons where it hurts: the World Snooker Championship. Last night, play was disrupted when one JSO activist climbed on to a snooker table and covered it in orange powder paint, leading the match between Robert Milkins and Joe Perry to be suspended. Another activist tried – and failed – to glue herself to the other table. Both have been arrested. Meanwhile, enraged snooker fans everywhere are trying to work out what on Earth their sport has got to do with climate change. We could speculate. The tournament is sponsored by online used-car dealer Cazoo, which is perhaps particularly complicit in the defilement of Gaia, according to those lunatics. But in truth the setting was almost incidental.

Jawad Iqbal

Angela Merkel doesn’t deserve to be honoured by Germany

It must rank as some form of political satire that Angela Merkel has been awarded Germany’s highest political honour. Not least because the former Chancellor will most likely be remembered foremost for turning a blind eye to the security threat posed by Russia. The Grand Cross of the Order of Merit has previously been given to only two of Germany’s greatest postwar leaders. The first went to the Federal Republic’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, who achieved the remarkable feat of reconciling West Germany with its former enemies, especially France, and, by supporting Nato, helped ensure his country became an integral part of the Western bloc. The other recipient is Helmut Kohl, who was responsible for German unification and created the European Union.

Debbie Hayton

Has the single sex trans school conundrum finally been resolved?

For too long, some teachers and schools have been making it up as they go along when presented with the challenge of accommodating transgender-identified children. Either that or they have contracted out their thinking to Stonewall or other third-party providers. The promised guidance from the Department for Education (DfE) cannot come soon enough. The latest snippet that has emerged will reassure single-sex schools that they can indeed remain single-sex. The rules around such schools have always allowed for some discretion. A boys' school, for example, might admit a girl into the sixth form if the local girls' school doesn't offer her desired combination of A-Level subjects. But nobody would be under any illusion that the child has changed sex to do so.

Steerpike

SNP treasurer quits following arrest in finance probe

Another day brings another bombshell revelation about Scotland's ruling party. Yesterday morning the SNP treasurer Colin Beattie was arrested by police investigating the party's finances. It now transpires that Beattie has quit as the SNP's national treasurer following his arrest. He also states that he will 'be stepping back from my role on the Public Audit Committee until the police investigation has concluded'. The arrest follows the arrest of Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon’s husband who was previously the party's chief executive, earlier this month. Murrell was released without charge pending further enquiries.

Steerpike

Six things we know about the Fox Dominion defamation trial

Who needs Succession when we have Dominion? A billion-dollar lawsuit involving a media tycoon, the 2020 presidential race and a potential Supreme Court showdown. But for Rupert Murdoch and Fox News this is no fictional drama. They are about to begin one of the most anticipated defamation trials in American history, over the claims that Fox broadcast about voting systems used in the 2020 presidential election. Dominion Voting Systems – whose equipment was used in 28 states during the election – is seeking damages of £1.3 billion in damages over the anti-Dominion conspiracy theories and demonstrably false claims made by Fox News on-air personalities during the weeks that followed the election.

Michael Simmons

Is Britain getting back to work?

The UK's labour market is cooling down, slowly. Although unemployment rose from 3.7 per cent to 3.8 per cent, figures published by the Office for National Statistics this morning show that job vacancies have fallen for the ninth consecutive period. They’re now down 47,000 but still stand at over a million. The number of people out of work and not seeking it (economically inactive) fell too, as students started hunting for work. The most startling figures, however, were those for wage growth. They showed that average pay rose 6.6 per cent in the three months to February. Hefty pay raises in normal times – but adjusted for inflation, that’s a real terms fall of 3 per cent: one of the largest falls in wages since comparable records began in 2001.

Gavin Mortimer

Does Macron regret celebrating Lula’s Brazilian victory?

The headline in the Guardian could not have spelt it out more clearly: ‘World leaders rush to congratulate Lula on Brazil election victory’.  From North America to Europe to Australia, the sigh of relief that Lula had beaten Jair Bolsonaro in last October’s general election was audible. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau was cock-a-hoop, so too French president Emmanuel Macron, who heralded the turning of a 'a new page' in Brazil’s history and declared. 'Together, we will join forces to take up the many common challenges and renew the ties of friendship between our two countries.' It turns out the friendship Lula values most isn’t with Macron or anyone else in the West but with Xi Jinping.

James Snell

Sudan’s dreams of democracy appear to be over

Fighting is raging once again in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where a power struggle between rival factions has claimed the lives of hundreds of people. Around 185 people have been killed and more than 1,800 injured in the wake of an attempted coup. A US diplomatic convoy came under fire yesterday and the EU's ambassador in Sudan, Aidan O'Hara, was reportedly assaulted at his home. Journalists have been detained and beaten up by soldiers for breaking newly-imposed curfews. Across Sudan, international agencies, non-governmental organisations and charities are scrambling for a solution to prevent further bloodshed. Military aircraft have flown low over urban centres and engaged targets on the ground.

Euan McColm

Can Scottish Labour pull off an election victory?

After decades in the shadows, members of the Scottish Labour party are back out in the open, their confidence growing. Emboldened first by polls signalling the very real prospect of Sir Keir Starmer becoming the next prime minister, Scottish Labour politicians now watch with tastefully concealed glee as the SNP – under the stewardship of new leader Humza Yousaf – sinks into deepening crisis. The mood in the party – which is led in Scotland by 40-year-old Anas Sarwar – has, says a senior source, changed completely. 'It's like night and day. When Anas Sarwar became leader in 2021, people might sidle up to him at events and whisper good wishes, now they’re happy to be open about their support.

Gareth Roberts

Angela Rayner is the odd one out in Starmer’s top team

Who are Labour? Focus groups regularly report a lack of familiarity on the part of voters with His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, even with their leader. ‘Don’t know’ looms quite loudly on Keir Starmer’s focus word cloud, though dwarfed by ‘Boring’. Despite this – maybe because of it – Labour are still a good stretch ahead in the polls. A recent slight crumbliness in that lead has sparked Labour to produce attack ads which use a formulation I hadn’t seen since reading the walls at my primary school, i.e. – ‘Do you think people should wash under their arms? Janet Figgis doesn't’ – but even these flavourful communications are all about Rishi Sunak and the Tories.  Labour might be running the country pretty soon.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

The NHS crisis won’t end soon

How long are the NHS strikes going to go on for? The collapse in agreement on nurses’ pay over the Easter recess has made it much harder for ministers to push the British Medical Association towards a deal on junior doctors’ pay, as well as undermining Rishi Sunak's positioning as someone who gets things done. The Royal College of Nursing is now balloting its members on further strike action after they narrowly rejected the pay offer made by the government. Today, Health Secretary Steve Barclay was summoned to the Commons to answer an urgent question from Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting on how the government planned to stop further strikes.

Steerpike

SNP show goes from bad to worse

A new week has come around, and it brings yet more turmoil for the SNP. Calls for Nicola Sturgeon to resign as MSP for Glasgow Southside have grown louder after a leaked video showed the former SNP leader angrily warning colleagues about speaking negatively of the party’s finances. Despite her colleagues returning to the Scottish parliament post-recess, Sturgeon’s spokesman confirmed that the former First Minister will not in fact be back in Holyrood this week – ‘to ensure the focus is on the new First Minister’. Nevertheless, Humza Yousaf’s time is still being consumed by desperate attempts to convince the public that nothing is amiss.

Lisa Haseldine

The jailing of Kremlin critic Kara-Murza is a message from Putin

In a warning to Kremlin critics everywhere, the prominent Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza has today been sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony by a Moscow court. His conviction is based on several charges, all of which he denies, including treason and ‘discreditation of the Russian Army’ – a move that has been internationally criticised as politically motivated. Kara-Murza’s sentence is significant for being the longest to be handed down to critics of Vladimir Putin’s regime so far. Not even Alexei Navalny, so hated by Putin he famously refuses to ever call him by name, received a sentence that long – last year he began a nine-year term on the basis of trumped up fraud charges.

Ross Clark

Net zero will make flying more expensive

Are we going to have to give up flying to save the planet? Many climate campaigners have been saying so for years, but now Sustainable Aviation – a trade body which represents the UK aviation industry – seems to agree, at least in the case of less well-off passengers. It is rather significant that the UK aviation industry seems to have nodded along with the idea that some passengers are going to be priced out of the air  Today, it has published a ‘road map’ showing how the industry intends to decarbonise, in order to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 – in line with the government’s self-imposed, legally-binding target. It proposes that 14 per cent of emissions cuts will come from ‘demand reduction’ – i.e.

Gerry Hassan

Humza Yousaf can’t save the SNP

Under Nicola Sturgeon's leadership, the SNP was renowned for its discipline, unity and its impressive electoral success. Since the former first minister resigned, a series of revelations have chipped away at the party's reputation leaving Scotland's dominant party standing on shaky ground. If people had cared to look they would be forgiven for thinking that decay has always been present in the SNP – and the leaked video of the former first minister lecturing her politicians about SNP finances back in March 2021 doesn't help matters – but it is the extent of the rot that is hard to stomach.

Steerpike

Sleaze watchdog probes Sunak’s interests

Bang goes Rishi Sunak's big maths speech. Fresh from delivering a paean to the joys of numeracy, the Prime Minister is now facing an investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner into his outside interests. The probe is understood to concern Sunak's wife's shareholding in a business that runs Koru Kids – one of the childcare providers which stands to get taxpayer funding from Jeremy Hunt's Budget scheme. The issue was raised by Labour's Cat McKinnell last month at the Prime Minister's Liaison Committee grilling and serves as a reminder  that Sunak’s extensive family wealth has the potential to be a political liability for him. A No.

Cindy Yu

Does Sunak’s maths plan add up?

11 min listen

Parliament is back from the Easter break and Rishi Sunak has taken the opportunity to reiterate his commitment to improving maths literacy in the country. Listeners will remember that the plan to make maths compulsory until 18 was first announced in Rishi's new year's speech along with his five priorities. Why is maths provision so important to him? Also on the podcast, with local elections on the horizon, how does Tory campaigning shape up against Labour's new tactics?  Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman.  Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson.

Steerpike

Brecon Beacons sheds its name and logo in eco-crusade

'The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation' claimed Robert Conquest 'is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.' If that is the case then the Brecon Beacons National Park must be run by a veritable junta of saboteurs. Park bosses have today announced that it will no longer be using its historic English name, dropping it in favour of the less well-known 'Bannau Brycheiniog'. The reason for the name change is to signal a 'commitment' to the Welsh language, which is spoken by less than a third of the population. Catherine Mealing-Jones, chief executive of the authority, is quoted in the Times as saying that the name 'doesn’t really make any sense' given that it does not mean anything in Welsh.