Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Saturday

Ed Balls

After 50 years: where next for VAT?

What is the appropriate act to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Value Added Tax in the UK? Are we celebrating? Surely not. Are we mourning? If only. But we should at least pause and reflect on the central role that VAT has played in our recent economic history.  The third largest source of tax revenue, forecast to deliver over £160 billion to the Exchequer this year, VAT has always been a cash-cow, but never without complaint. Most of the debates surrounding its introduction in 1973 focused simply on who and what should remain outside its claws. If you want an indication of what a different world this was, just look at Anthony Barber’s explanation to the Commons of the risks that the zero rate for children’s clothing could be misused.

Katy Balls

Katy Balls, Lisa Haseldine and Graeme Thomson

20 min listen

This week: Katy Balls discusses why Humza Yousaf is the Union's best hope (01:00), Lisa Haseldine reads her interview with former Georgian defence minister David Kezerashvili (07:00), and Graeme Thomson asks whether supergroups are really that super (13:54).  Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Gavin Mortimer

Did Brexit save Britain from France’s fate?

Stéphane Rozès, the author of a book entitled ‘Chaos’, was on French radio this week receiving congratulations for being a visionary. The chaos which he described in his book, published last November, is now being played out in France, as hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets. Asked to explain its cause, Rozès explained that it has been building since 1992, the year France signed the Maastricht Treaty, the beginning of the European Union.  Rozès is not alone in this view. One of France’s best known philosophers, the left-wing Michel Onfray, has been saying the same thing for years. ‘France died in 1992, the date of the Maastricht Treaty,’ he said in an interview in 2018.

Patrick O’Flynn

No wonder some Remainers are unhappy about the UK joining the CPTPP

The United Kingdom has become a member of a free trade bloc embracing 500 million consumers. And it isn’t the European Union. No wonder, then, that some Remainers are feeling triggered by Rishi Sunak’s success in steering Britain to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). David Henig, UK director of the European Centre For International Political Economy and a longtime Remainer, griped: 'It assists particularly those companies with trans-Pacific supply chains…The UK is mostly involved in European supply chains. And that’s why the economic impact is trivial. It could even be negative.

Danny Shaw

Charles Bronson and the problem with parole hearings

The letter delivered last week to Mr Charles Salvador, of HMP Woodhill, from the parole board did not bring him the news he wanted – it said his request to be released from prison had been turned down. But the outcome came as no surprise to me, nor I suspect many of the others who had watched his parole hearing by video-link at the Royal Courts of Justice in London in March. The conclusions that the parole panel reached were not rocket science, they were just common sense Salvador, whose birth name is Michael Peterson and who was previously known as Charles Bronson, has spent most of the past 50 years in custody.

Anna Richards

Poland’s burgeoning alliance with Britain is bad for Putin

Poland and the United Kingdom have been allies for years. But, since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, that union is becoming stronger. This week, the UK government announced up to £10 million in funding for a joint UK-Polish partnership to erect two purpose-built villages in Lviv and Poltava to shelter more than 700 of Ukraine’s most vulnerable displaced people. The UK-Polish partnership will also provide £2.6 million for power generators to serve some 450,000 people in schools, hospitals, and community centres in retaken and front-line areas, and up to £2.5 million distributed in partnership with the Red Cross to support those suffering under extreme weather conditions.

Friday

Patrick West

The BBC is axing its panel shows. It only has itself to blame

The veteran BBC show Have I Got News for You is ‘due to become BBC television’s only satirical comedy show’. This is the likely result of The Ranganation – also a panel show which dissects the week’s news – reportedly being cancelled. Satire at the BBC has been vanishing alarmingly quickly. Only last week the corporation announced the end of Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, amid dwindling viewership. Mock the Week was cancelled last year, while The Mash Report was put to bed in 2021 (to be revived as Late Night Mash on Dave, only to suffer the double indignity of being cancelled again earlier this month).

Cindy Yu

The EU puts Ukraine at the centre of its China policy

If Beijing was in any doubt that its 12-point peace plan for Ukraine has gone down badly in Europe, those doubts can now be put to rest after a punchy speech by Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels yesterday. In perhaps the clearest formulation of the EU’s latest thinking on China so far, von der Leyen put Ukraine front and centre of Europe’s dealings with Beijing, saying that the way China interacts with Russia will be ‘a determining factor for EU-China relations going forward’. As for the peace plan, she accused Beijing’s proposal of being something that would ‘in effect consolidate Russian annexations’. Von der Leyen will be visiting China next week, together with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Katy Balls

Does CPTPP make it harder to reverse Brexit?

16 min listen

Britain has agreed to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a £9 trillion trade bloc with 11 members. James Heale, speaks to Katy Balls and a special guest, Alexander Downer about whether this is a win for the government. And what it could mean for those looking to reverse Brexit.

Freddy Gray

Biden, Trump and iniquity in America

Shall we talk about double standards? People scoff at ‘whataboutery’, yet sometimes an iniquity towards one side becomes so absurd it's sillier not to talk about it. And when it comes to American politics, the Democrats, and the indictment of President Donald J Trump, right-wing Americans have a point. This is a ‘weaponisation’ of the justice system and the unfairness of it reeks.    Two weeks ago, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee revealed that the Biden family had, through an associate, received more than $1 million dollars from a Chinese energy company. The documents show that, from 2015 to 2017, Joe Biden’s brother Jim, his son Hunter, and his deceased son’s widow Hallie received significant funds – as did another, mysteriously unnamed ‘Biden’.

Stephen Daisley

Humza Yousaf wants a fight. Good

Westminster is not plotting to steal powers from Holyrood or roll back devolution, contrary to the campfire stories the Scottish establishment likes to scare itself with. In reality, neither Labour nor the Tories are interested in considering what impact Holyrood has had on the Union.  It’s peculiar, given both parties have self-interested reasons for rethinking the arrangements of devolution. Less than a decade into the experiment, the SNP had seized control of Holyrood and unilaterally renamed the Scottish executive ‘the Scottish government’. The party has used the Scottish government, and the UK civil servants who staff it, to plot both independence and a separate Scottish foreign policy, despite both matters being reserved to Westminster.

Debbie Hayton

The trouble with Joe Biden’s trans declaration

Today is International Transgender Day of Visibility – just like the preceding 89 days of 2023. But, jesting aside, it has prompted an astonishing proclamation from the White House. 'Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul,' president Joe Biden has announced. Really? Who did Biden have in mind? Maybe he was still entranced by Dylan Mulvaney, a self-absorbed social media influencer who shot to fame last March after documenting a gender transition. Since then, Mulvaney has relentlessly taken to TikTok chronicling each 'day of girlhood' in nauseating detail. Biden is scaremongering On day 222 of this egregious series, Mulvaney was invited to the White House to interview Biden. Trans privilege really does know no bounds, it seems.

Charles Lipson

Even Donald Trump’s critics should be troubled by these charges

A New York grand jury has indicted former president Donald Trump over alleged 'hush money' payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress. The jury was empaneled by Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, a man on a mission. His mission is simple. Get Trump. On anything.  He had to do it with the thinnest of evidence, the weakest of legal theories. He focused on a misdemeanour for which the statute of limitations has expired. Using a novel legal theory, he wants to tie that misdemeanour to other alleged crimes and package them all as a felony. The case, he knows, will be tried before a Manhattan jury that hates Trump as much as he does.  That’s not how our justice system is supposed to work.

James Heale

Britain joining CPTPP is a triumph for the Tories

This morning ministers have confirmed that Britain has joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) – the first new nation to do so since it was set up in 2018. It comes after nearly two years of intense negotiation and secures access for British exporters to 500 million people. Spanning Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, Vietnam and Malaysia, the deal is expected to be ratified by parliament and those of the other 11 member states later this year. Rishi Sunak claims that 'this deal demonstrates the real economic benefits of our post-Brexit freedoms'; Kemi Badenoch, the Trade Secretary, says it 'sends a powerful signal that the UK is open for business.' Ministers expect CPTPP membership to generate £1.

Ross Clark

The CPTPP trade deal shatters the ‘little Englander’ Brexit myth

Britain’s acceptance into the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will be presented by the government as a triumph, a statement that Britain really does, finally, have something substantive to show for Brexit.   It is a deal which could not have been done so long as Britain remained a member of the EU, as the only trade deals we were allowed to enter into were those negotiated by the EU on our behalf. Cynics might counter that there is limited point in joining a trade bloc when you already have bilateral trade deals with seven of its 11 members and have negotiated deals with two others which have yet to begin.

Katy Balls

The Penny Mordaunt Edition

27 min listen

Penny Mordaunt is the Conservative MP for Portsmouth North and one of the most recognisable women in British politics. She has served in several ministerial roles from International Development to Defence and she is currently Leader of the House. On the podcast, Penny talks about the last two tumultuous years; some of her proudest moments in politics – increasing armed forces pay and leading a Lords reform rebellion, and adding some humour to business questions in parliament.

Ben Domenech

Why Democrats shouldn’t celebrate the charges against Donald Trump

The indictment of former president Donald Trump as part of an investigation into hush money paid in 2016 to an ex porn star is striking for a number of reasons. There is its historic nature, unprecedented and indicative of the weaponisation of government entities by partisans who head them. Trump is accused of having an affair with Stormy Daniels and paying her to keep quiet. The allegations – which Trump has denied and says amount to a 'political persecution' – are questionable. No serious legal scholar believes they could pass muster. And then there is the total bifurcation of reaction: for Democrats, they are approaching this conclusion with less joy than solemnity, a gritted teeth approach to revelations that might once have had them dancing in the streets.

Thursday

William Moore

Macron’s last adventure: the President vs the public

36 min listen

On the podcast: In his cover piece for the magazine, journalist Jonathan Miller argues that President Macron is pitting himself against the people by refusing to back down from his plans to raise the age of retirement. He is joined by regular Coffee House contributor Gavin Mortimer, to ask whether this could be Macron's last adventure (01:06). Also this week: In the magazine, travel journalist Sean Thomas says that – in comparison to other cities he has visited – American cities are uniquely struggling to bounce back from the impacts of the covid pandemic. He is joined by Karol Markowicz, columnist at the New York Post and contributing editor at Spectator World, to discuss the decline and fall of urban America (16:29).

James Heale

Are MPs doing the ‘chicken run?’

It’s a sign of the tensions within the parliamentary Conservative party that talk of colleagues swapping constituencies is currently a major talking point in the Commons tea rooms. This week two more members of the 2019 Tory intake announced that they would not be seeking re-election in their constituencies. Both Nicola Richards and Stuart Anderson released lengthy statements explaining their decision – but neither MP explicitly ruled out standing again in another seat. Keiran Mullan has meanwhile declined to comment on claims that he will switch from Crewe and Nantwich to the new Chester South and Eddisbury seat.

Lucy Dunn

Humza Yousaf’s debut FMQs descends into chaos

Humza Yousaf's debut at First Minister's Questions was never going to be straightforward. The First Minister's questionable track record in government offered, to use his own words, an ‘open goal’ to his opposition. Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar was quick to point to Yousaf’s ‘incompetence’, while Scottish Conservative’s Douglas Ross belittled the new cabinet. But what made Yousaf’s FMQs debut even more chaotic were seven serial interruptions by climate activists. When the protests eventually stopped – after the public gallery was, in an unprecedented move, cleared bar two groups of schoolchildren – the attacks against Yousaf continued while today's guest, the ambassador to Iceland, looked on.