Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Katy Balls

Can Sunak win over the DUP?

A deal on the Northern Ireland protocol could be imminent – if the various factions agree. Rishi Sunak is this evening flying to Northern Ireland in a bid to sell the new deal on the protocol to the Democratic Unionist party. The Prime Minister is expected to hold talks in Belfast before meeting with the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen over the weekend. Already there are warning shots from the DUP. The party’s chief whip has said: ‘Anything which does not deal with the democractic deficit and the imposition of EU law on Northern Ireland will not get our support.’ The role of the European Court of Justice is the most contentious aspect for both the DUP and Tory Brexiteers.

James Heale

How much power does Keir Starmer have?

15 min listen

With Labour nearly 30 points ahead in the polls, Keir Starmer is consolidating his position at the top. He said yesterday that Jeremy Corbyn will not stand as a Labour candidate in the next election, and he could be looking to reshuffle his shadow cabinet soon. How much power does Starmer have? Could he completely cut Labour's ties to the trade unions? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and the Times's Patrick Maguire. Produced by Cindy Yu and Max Jeffery.

Steerpike

South Park incinerates Harry and Meghan

If we hadn’t heard enough about ‘the Dumb Prince and His Stupid Wife’ – not Steerpike’s words – now South Park has dedicated an entire episode to mocking them and their faux pleas for privacy. Throughout the 20-minute episode, the long-running animated comedy’s writers really stuck the sword into Harry and Meghan, who have found themselves the butt of many jokes after their Netflix documentary and Harry’s moany memoir Spare. Just last week at the Grammys, host Trevor Noah said that James Corden was ‘living proof that a man can move from London to LA and not tell everyone about his frostbitten penis’. But in true South Park style – flapping heads, small black eyes and ludicrously over-the-top Canuck accents, eh?

William Moore

After Sturgeon

40 min listen

This week: What next after Sturgeon? In her cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator's political editor Katy Balls considers what Sturgeon's exit means for the future of Scotland – and the Union. She is joined by Iain Macwhirter, author of Disunited Kingdom, to discuss whether Scottish independence can survive after Sturgeon (01:09). Also this week: Elif Shafak writes a moving diary in The Spectator, reflecting on the terrible earthquakes that hit her homeland Turkey, and neighbouring Syria. She is joined by Turkey correspondent at the Financial Times Adam Samson, to assess President Erdogan's reaction to the disaster (15:03).

Steerpike

Shapps stands by his TikTok account

Once, TikTok was the weapon of choice for any aspirant Tory. Whether it was Dehenna Davison lip-syncing or Nadine Dorries dancing at the Euros, the addictive video-sharing app was all the rage. But a recent string of revelations about its Chinese parent company ByteDance mean that is no longer the case. Alicia Kearns, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, warned earlier this month that 'China is building a tech totalitarian state on the back of our data' and urged users to delete it. There have been calls for ByteDance to give further evidence in parliament. But at least TikTok can count on one reliable fan in the cabinet. Grant Shapps shot to social media stardom last year after a savvy TikTok to promote rail ticket sales with Michael Portillo went viral.

Stephen Daisley

Kate Forbes is the obvious successor to Nicola Sturgeon

The contest to replace Nicola Sturgeon really shouldn’t be a contest at all. The obvious successor is Kate Forbes, the Scottish finance secretary. She is young at 32 but she was even younger three years ago when she stepped in to deliver the Scottish budget just 12 hours after finance minister Derek Mackay was forced by scandal to resign. Her plaudit-winning performance showed her to be a woman of ability and nerve.   If you want to keep evangelical zeal out of politics, Kate Forbes is the least of your worries These are not her only qualities. Forbes is Cambridge-educated and a disciplined media performer. She is a true believer in the cause of independence but a moderate in tone and temperament.

Katy Balls

Who will succeed Nicola Sturgeon?

This evening the SNP’s executive committee will meet to decide the rules of the leadership contest following Nicola Sturgeon's decision to resign both as party leader and First Minister of Scotland. In a sign of how the news has come as a surprise to many even in her own party, there is no heir apparent. Speaking this morning on the Today programme, the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn declined to say who he might like to take over – instead pointing to the fact he had ‘not seen anyone throw their name in the ring yet’.

Patrick O’Flynn

Rishi Sunak deserves credit for the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon

Political leaders are like tribal chiefs and one way of assessing their fortunes is by counting up the number of heads they have accumulated from the toppled leaders of rival tribes. Tony Blair had the shrunken skulls of John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard threaded around his waist when he left the stage. Sunak never gave the SNP leader grounds to caricature him as an arrogant Sassenach It undoubtedly enhanced Keir Starmer’s authority when Boris Johnson was brought down, though his part in the immolation of Liz Truss soon afterwards was less obvious. On this basis, Rishi Sunak is entitled to point to a modest enhancement of his political capital via the business of the downfall of Nicola Sturgeon.

Steerpike

Trump denounces ‘failed woke extremist’ Sturgeon

Reading some of the tributes from English luvvies yesterday, you would have had no idea that Nicola Sturgeon was anything less than perfect. The great and the good in the media world were tripping over themselves to call her a stateswoman, praising her tone, grace and composure rather than her lack of substantive achievements. Still, there was one familiar face who had no compunction in calling Sturgeon out on her multiple blunders.  These days Donald Trump’s statements receive somewhat less traction now he’s no longer on Twitter. Still, Mr S did enjoy reading the former president’s brutal assessment of the outgoing First Minister, replete with the usual mix of adjectives, exclamation marks and pettiness that comprise his style of prose.

Charles Lipson

Putin’s inhumane war strategy is backfiring

The war in Ukraine changed fundamentally after Vladimir Putin failed to capture Kyiv and decapitate the regime there a year ago. His army settled into Russia’s traditional way of war: a slow, brutal, relentless slugfest. That strategy necessarily expends countless Russian lives. Human-wave attacks rely on untrained troops, dragooned from prisons or off the streets. The idea is to use these expendable men to weaken Ukraine’s front-line defences and then follow them with more sophisticated attacks by Russia’s battle-hardened troops. Risky as it is for Russia to double down, it is really the Kremlin’s only path to victory This strategy has cost countless lives on both sides while producing only minor Russian gains.

Andrew Tettenborn

The EU is mired in sleaze

The last year has not been good for the European Union’s image. The Qatargate scandal rumbles on. So far, apart from various functionaries and hangers-on, three MEPs, including a vice president of the European parliament, and one ex-MEP have been implicated in the scandal. Last week, however, yet another festering sleaze scandal broke, this time over the EU’s purchase of Covid vaccines from Pfizer. The scandal is less serious in that no one suggests it involves actual bribery. But it is nevertheless rather more embarrassing because it embraces Commission president Ursula von der Leyen herself.  At issue is the billions paid by the bloc to Pfizer for the vaccines. In 2020 Pfizer had delivered a first batch at the stiffish price of €15.50 a pop.

Steerpike

Corbyn hits back at Starmer

Another day with more Starmer drama. Sir Keir yesterday told a press conference that Jeremy Corbyn will be barred from standing as a Labour candidate at the next election, a decision that hasn't gone down very well with the magic Grandpa. Corbyn has now released an angry statement, accusing the man who replaced him as Labour leader of a 'flagrant attack' on democracy. In a lengthy statement on Twitter, he declared that: Any attempt to block my candidacy is a denial of due process, and should be opposed by anybody who believes in the value of democracy. At a time when the government is overseeing the worst cost of living crisis in a generation, this is a divisive distraction from our overriding goal: to defeat the Conservative party at the next general election.

Alex Massie

Nicola Sturgeon was made – and destroyed – by independence

The greatest trick an ideologue can ever pull off is convincing people they are not, in fact, an ideologue. But Nicola Sturgeon was just as much an ideologue as her predecessor. In some ways, indeed, her convictions eclipsed Alex Salmond’s.  The country is cleft in two and for all that Sturgeon may now deplore this polarisation she played an outsize part in producing it Whereas he did not join the SNP until he was an undergraduate at St Andrews university, Sturgeon signed up for the national cause while still a teenager. In all the years which followed, her faith never faltered. Regardless of circumstance, political moment, or fashion, she remained guided by her unfalsifiable conviction that Scotland’s future lay as an independent state.

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Is Sunak making a mistake on the NI protocol?

18 min listen

James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Conservative Home editor Paul Goodman about the union. Both in terms of Nicola Sturgeon's sudden decision to resign this morning and the possibility of an imminent agreement on the Northern Ireland protocol.

Katy Balls

After Sturgeon: what’s the future for Scotland – and the Union?

When news broke of Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, the first reaction among Tory ministers was delight. For years, she had been one of their most formidable opponents and potent threats: perhaps the only politician capable of leading a Scottish independence campaign to victory. Without her, what would happen to the SNP? But then the elation faded. If nationalists’ votes are up for grabs, would they be more likely to go to Labour or the Tories? Sturgeon’s departure has consequences far beyond that of the SNP leadership. The UK’s whole political landscape could be about to change. In her resignation statement at Bute House, Sturgeon said she believed more than ever in the cause of independence but had come to see herself as an obstacle, not an enabler.

Anshel Pfeffer

Bibi’s big mistake

Jerusalem As 100,000 Israelis gathered outside Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Monday, to protest against Binyamin Netanyahu’s government’s plans to pass a series of laws dramatically weakening the power of the Supreme Court, the first speaker was Netanyahu himself.  Actually, it was a recording from an interview he had given in 2012, where he said that ‘without a strong and independent Supreme Court there can be no protection of rights. It’s what makes the difference between dictatorships and democracies’. The crowd jeered. There had been fear of violence at the demonstration. Police set up barricades, but there was no real need for them. The mood was surprisingly upbeat for a demonstration which claimed the end of Israeli democracy was nigh.

Katy Balls

Nicola Sturgeon resigns – why now?

12 min listen

Nicola Sturgeon has announced her resignation as First Minister of Scotland. James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman about her decision to leave and Sturgeon's nine years as leader.

Iain Macwhirter

Nicola Sturgeon is a hard act to follow

Nicola Sturgeon insisted last month she had 'plenty in the tank', but apparently the First Minister was already running on empty. Announcing her resignation this morning, Sturgeon said she finally decided to step down only yesterday at the funeral of a long-serving SNP activist. However she also made clear she had begun to realise over the past year she no longer had the energy to give '100 per cent' to the job. In an emotional press conference at Bute House in Edinburgh, Sturgeon insisted she could have 'led the party to independence'. But she conceded that her personality was becoming a liability: 'Fixed opinions about me are becoming a barrier to reasoned debate,' she said. It was time to hand over the reins to someone, she implied, with a lesser personality.

The Spectator

Sturgeon, Sunak and the state of the Union

Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation as First Minister of Scotland comes at a critical moment for the Union, since the question of Scottish independence has inevitably been tied to the ongoing dilemmas over Brexit. It seems that, over the next week or two, the UK and the EU will announce a potential agreement over the revision of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Goods travelling from mainland Britain for consumption in Northern Ireland will no longer be subject to automatic checks; a trusted trader scheme will allow most shipments to be waved through. In return, it appears that the UK government has dropped its opposition to the role of the European Court of Justice as the ultimate arbiter in disputes involving trade between Britain and the island of Ireland.

Coffee House

Full text: Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation speech

Below is an edited transcript of Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation speech, made this morning at Bute House. Coffee House readers may be interested to note that the words 'I', 'me' and 'my' are used 153 times in the speech. ‘Scotland’ is only mentioned 11 times. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming along. I'm sorry to break into your half-term break. The First Minister of Scotland is, in my admittedly biased opinion, the very best job in the world. It is a privilege beyond measure, one that has sustained and inspired me in good times and through the toughest hours of my toughest days. I am proud to stand here as the first female and longest serving incumbent of this office, and I'm very proud of what has been achieved in the years I've been in Bute House.