Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Steerpike

Lee Anderson gets his own GB News show

The remorseless rise of Lee Anderson continues. Having been named Tory deputy chairman last month – and then swiftly started a national conversation on bringing back hanging – the Red Wall Tory has today been named as the latest presenter in the constellation of stars that is GB News. In a statement, the ex-miner declared that: GB News is the true voice of the Great British silent majority. I’m joining the people’s channel to ensure their voice is heard. One of those Anderson will be working alongside is Gloria De Piero, his Labour predecessor (and former boss) as MP for Ashfield. Other colleagues include a hat-trick of fellow Tories in Jacob Rees-Mogg, Philip Davies and Esther McVey. Sounds like the green room will need to start boasting leather green benches.

Ian Williams

A Cold War mindset is thriving in Beijing

China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang has come out growling, using his first media appearance to accuse the US of ‘all-out containment and suppression’. He said his country’s friendship with Russia was a beacon of strength and stability which ‘set an example for foreign relations’ and asked: ‘Why should the US demand that China refrain from supplying arms to Russia when it sells arms to Taiwan?’ He said that China and the US were heading for inevitable conflict if Washington does not mend its ways. It was a fiery performance, even by the standards of Beijing’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats. The tirade took place on the sidelines of the annual meeting of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC).

Lisa Haseldine

Did Belarusian rebels blow up one of Putin’s planes?

Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has some awkward explaining to do to Vladimir Putin after a Russian military plane, being stored in Belarus, was reportedly blown up last weekend by Belarusian rebels.  According to reports, one of the nine working Beriev A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft (Awacs) owned by the Russian military was attacked at the Machiulishchy airfield, just under eight miles from the capital Minsk, where it had been kept since early January this year. The aircraft, said to be worth £274 million, was capable of detecting and targeting air defence systems and formed a key part of Russia’s battlefield strategy.

Andrew Tettenborn

Will Rishi Sunak admit the truth about net zero?

When Boris Johnson nailed the Tories’ environmental colours to the mast a few years ago, he probably gained votes from a few waverers. Was it worth it? Almost certainly not. The point he missed was that promises of that sort regularly come back to bite the people that make them. The commitment to net zero by 2050 and no fossil fuel-powered cars after 2035 is a case in point. This pledge made little account of whether or not the technology will actually be up to scratch by then. Nor did it properly consider the question of if we can afford it, or indeed have assured access to the raw materials necessary to apply it. Yet still the political green lobby continues to exercise a disproportionate influence over the government.

Patrick O’Flynn

Rishi Sunak seems serious about stopping the Channel boats

So long as the extensive pre-briefing of the Illegal Migration Bill turns out to be a reasonably accurate reflection of its contents, things are looking up for those of us who rank ‘stopping the boats’ as one of our top political priorities. Sunak and Braverman are about to launch legislation that appears sufficiently broad ranging and radical to have a major impact Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman are finally about to launch a piece of legislation that appears sufficiently broad ranging and radical to have a major impact if it can be steered onto the statue book without being emasculated by parliamentary rebellions in the Commons and especially the House of Lords.

Steerpike

How many more scandals can Simon Case take?

After Matt Hancock himself, it seems that the person who comes out worst from the lockdown files is Cabinet Secretary Simon Case. Hancock's WhatsApps show Case accusing Boris of being 'nationally distrusted' and described some lockdown criticism as 'pure Conservative ideology'. Hardly the model of civil service impartiality... And off the back of those revelations it seems that Case is now considering his own position. According to today's Financial Times, 'friends' of the Cabinet Secretary say he is 'genuinely undecided' about staying up until the next election, which is due by December 2024. They say he is 'fed up' with all the briefings against him' with his 'original sin' supposedly 'being young and talented and promoted to that before he was grey'. Or Gray, even.

Iain Macwhirter

The SNP is living in a fantasy land

Scotland has the worst drug death rate in Europe. More than half a million Scots are on hospital waiting lists. The NHS is being privatised by stealth as more and more Scots go private. We don’t hear much about this in the endless SNP leadership hustings. Instead there is an air of self-congratulation that things aren’t worse. Candidates have distanced themselves from the Scottish government’s chaotic deposit return scheme for bottles and cans. But that isn’t the only environmental disaster waiting to happen. Sales of petrol and diesel cars in Scotland are to be banned in seven years, yet the electric charging infrastructure is so bad people are turning away from electric vehicles.

Richard Ekins

Will Rishi Sunak’s Channel migrant crackdown work?

The government’s inability to control our maritime border is a public scandal. Bold action is needed to make crossing the Channel pointless and put the people smugglers out of business. This will be impossible without major legal reform. So it is good news that the government is about to introduce new legislation to Parliament.  The government’s Rwanda plan was well-intentioned. However, it not supported by a legislative mandate and was, predictably, challenged in the courts. In June last year, an attempt to implement the plan was blocked by a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights. The legal challenge in our courts continues and even if the government in the end prevails, the Strasbourg Court may still say no.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Labour is finding it difficult to justify hiring Sue Gray

Labour was the party under pressure in an urgent question in the Commons. This is not normally the order of things: it is usually the opposition or a disgruntled backbencher who tables the question, and an irritated-looking junior minister who is sent out to bat defensively on behalf of their beleaguered seniors. But today, the urgent question was from Robert Buckland, a supporter of Rishi Sunak, and it was about whether Sue Gray and the Labour party followed the rules around civil service appointments. Tory MPs were so interested to hear the answer that a multitude of them had tabled suspiciously similar questions to the extent that the Speaker complained he wasn’t going to be swayed by ‘mass lobbying’.

Stephen Daisley

Qurangate has exposed the weakness of ‘liberals’

There’s a sudden vacancy in the constituency of Wakefield. The incumbent Labour MP hasn’t resigned or died. He just happens to be Simon Lightwood, a good example of nominative determinism. Lightwood’s weaselly intervention in Qurangate carries all the moral force of a sliver of driftwood carried along by the tide. In place of an MP, Wakefield has the faintest of shadows. Statement on the recent incident at Kettlethorpe High School: pic.twitter.com/k5a8eoslVA— Simon Lightwood MP (@simonlightwood) March 5, 2023 Note that he characterises teenage boys dropping and scuffing a book – a book which was the property of one of those boys – as ‘the incident’.  Note that he condemns threats and ‘hate speech’, as he calls it, ‘from anyone’.

Philip Patrick

The shame of Scotland’s SNP leadership contest

Ed Miliband must be relieved. With Ash Regan’s idea for an ‘independence thermometer’, a giant screen or billboard visually representing progress towards various aspects of independence, his ‘Edstone’ now has competition for the most ridiculous idea ever presented by a UK politician during an election campaign. It is a measure of how absurd the contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon has become that Regan’s Heath Robinson-esque brainwave has caused only mild amusement. Regan followed up her inspiration by going full Braveheart and endorsing Alex Salmond’s idea of withholding the Stone of Destiny from the upcoming coronation. Quite how this benefits the people of Scotland or advances the cause of independence was left unclear.

Steerpike

Is Rishi’s tech revolution all it’s cracked up to be?

Social media users were treated to a mysterious post this morning. Just before lunchtime, the Prime Minister tweeted out a stylish QR code featuring the number ‘10’ at its centre. The post – captioned ‘Innovation means growth’, along with a phone emoji – was entirely without context. Keen to figure out what ‘innovation’ and ‘growth’ the PM was referring to, Steerpike thought he’d have a go at cracking this particular code. However, Mr S soon encountered the first stumbling block in Sunak’s bright idea. As many Twitter users were quick to point out, it turns out that to access whatever lies behind the code, you need two devices: one to display the QR code, and another to scan it with. Doh! Undeterred, Mr S fired up his laptop and scanned the code.

Kate Andrews

Dyson tells Hunt: your tax grab sucks

As tax rates rise in the UK, so do business jitters. The windfall tax on oil and gas companies – raising tax on profits to 75 per cent this year – has energy companies openly discussing plans to divert money elsewhere. The looming hike in corporation tax – from 19 per cent to 25 per cent for the largest companies – also has the businesses talking about future investment strategies.  So far, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt seems unconvinced that investment threats will amount to much. His Budget next week is expected to confirm the corporation tax rise in April.

Cindy Yu

Can Rishi stop small boats?

13 min listen

Tomorrow the government is set to deliver its plan the tackle small boats, legislation Rishi Sunak has been promising since before Christmas. Is Rishi about to get tough on immigration? Also on the podcast, what is the latest in the Sue Gray scandal? Will this – alongside continuing questions over Simon Case – start a serious conversation about impartiality in the civil service?  Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman.

Steerpike

Poll: public support King’s meeting with von der Leyen

It's six months on Wednesday since Charles became King. So, to mark the occasion, Mr S thought he'd ask his fellow royal subjects what they made of the King's reign thus far. Our septuagenarian monarch had a difficult act to follow in succeeding Elizabeth II but it seems on the whole that he has done a pretty good job. Polling by Redfield and Wilton of 1,500 Britons last week found that some 43 per cent of the public think that Charles III has thus far been a 'good king' – slightly ahead of the 42 per cent who replied 'don't know' but nearly three times as many as those who responded 'no.

Joanna Williams

In defence of Isabel Oakeshott

What shocks me most about Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages is the flippancy surrounding decisions to scare, manipulate and control the British public. We were told, repeatedly, that government ministers were ‘following the science’. But thanks to Isabel Oakeshott we now know that schools were closed, children masked, families and friends separated, visitors kept out of care homes and quarantine periods prolonged, less because of ‘science’ and more, it seems, for political convenience.   So where is the outrage? People lost lives and livelihoods. Children missed out on education and exercise. Physical and mental health suffered. Lengthy NHS waiting lists and economic problems will be with us for many years to come.

Alexander Larman

Harry and Meghan’s coronation guessing game isn’t fair on the King

Will they or won't they? I'm talking, of course, about whether or not Harry and Meghan will attend the King's coronation in May. A statement from the couple suggests that, despite reports to the contrary, the couple have been invited: 'I can confirm the Duke has recently received email correspondence from His Majesty's office regarding the coronation,' a spokesperson for the couple said. But it seems the Sussexes will be keeping Charles III on tenterhooks for now: 'An immediate decision on whether the Duke and Duchess will attend will not be disclosed by us at this time,' the spokesman added. Britain has not been in such a state of apprehension for some time.

Steerpike

Watch: Starmer squirms over Gray job offer

Oh dear. Just this morning Mr S was wondering how Labour can justify its job offer to Sue Gray. And it seems Sir Keir is having similar difficulty in doing so too. Appearing on LBC this morning for his weekly 'Call Keir' segment, the Labour leader was asked six times about when the party first approached the senior civil servant but Starmer refused to answer. Quelle surprise... Presenter Nick Ferrari did his damnedest, asking whether Gray was first approached this year or last year. Sir Keir declined to answer, only saying it was a 'recent' approach, following the departure of his previous chief of staff in October. It was, he said, after he had a period 'working through in my own mind what I wanted from a chief of staff.

Gavin Mortimer

Failing to stop the Channel crisis will cost Rishi Sunak his job

Finding an effective solution to Europe’s migrant crisis has eluded the continent’s leaders for a decade. Presidents, prime ministers and chancellors have tried, and failed, to tackle the issue. Above all, governments have been scared to stand up to the powerful pro-migrant lobby which has controlled the narrative since the crisis began in 2011. Is this about to finally change?  Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is determined to make good on his vow to stop the small boats crossing the Channel. This week, Home Secretary Suella Braverman will explain how this will be done. Under a new bill, anyone arriving in the UK on a small boat will be prevented from claiming asylum, with the Home Secretary having a duty to ‘detain and swiftly remove’ those who break the law.