Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Katy Balls

What’s behind the secret Brexit summit?

Is there a plot to unravel Brexit? Tory Eurosceptics are asking this question after the Observer published details over the weekend of a ‘secret summit’ to address the ‘failings’ of Brexit. The paper reports that the two-day event in Ditchley Park was a cross-party affair. Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy – who previously backed a second referendum – was in attendance, as was Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, who under Theresa May backed the Chequers deal. Lammy and Gove were in a group which included Peter Mandelson and David Lidington, May’s former deputy. There were several Brexiteers in attendance, such as former Tory party leader Michael Howard and former Labour MP Gisela Stuart.

Sarang Shidore

Will Lula’s Brazil turn away from the West?

Joe Biden has promised to bring Brazil and America closer together. ‘Both of our democracies have been tested of late’, Biden told reporters last week as he met with president Lula da Silva for the first time. The two leaders were on the ‘same page’, Biden said. But that feeling isn’t entirely mutual. When Lula was sworn in as president on New Year’s Day, he promised ‘dialogue, multilateralism and multipolarity’, and there’s good reason to believe he’ll deliver it. In Lula’s first two terms, he was key to founding the Brics, an economic grouping with Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Julie Bindel

How did the Tavistock gender scandal unfold?

Another week, another blast of evidence as to why putting kids on hormone blockers is an abomination. Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by BBC journalist Hannah Barnes, which is released on 16 February, is dynamite. The revelations it contains are horrifying: former clinicians at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, detail how some children were placed on medication after one face-to-face assessment, despite many having mental health or family issues. More than a third of young people referred to the service had moderate to severe autistic traits, compared with under 2 per cent of children in the general population.

Ross Clark

Is Brexit really costing households £1,000 each?

They never give up, those Remainers. Like the Japanese soldier found on a Pacific island still fighting the second world war – in 1974, every other day there is another loose shot from the undergrowth. After last week’s Ditchley Park gathering involving Lord Mandelson, David Lammy and others, comes an interview in the Overshoot with Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member Jonathan Haskel. In it, Haskel makes the claim that Brexit is costing each British household £1,000 a year through lost trade and investment. The beauty of modelling is that you can get it to tell you pretty much anything you want it to Let’s start with the assertion that this is a loss per household.

Steerpike

Who really owns Britain’s waterways?

Stop press: Fleet Street is officially full of sewage. Flicking through the papers this morning, Steerpike was intrigued to see water pollution feature prominently on the front page of both the Times and the i newspapers. 'Water firms to be spared threat of £250m fines' roared the former; 'Sunak facing Tory rebellion over sewage in UK rivers' retorted the latter. Both are worthy stories but neither were splashed across any of the other national newspapers. What's going on? It turns on that the i are keen on the story because on Friday they proudly launched their new campaign to 'Save Britain's Rivers.' It is a new UK-wide drive to rescue the country’s polluted waterways, champion a manifesto for our rivers and features Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey as a prominent spokesman.

Natasha Feroze

Is there a plot to unravel Brexit?

11 min listen

Whilst the government is in recess, a group of cross-party politicians joined a private meeting to discuss 'How we can make Brexit work better with our European neighbours?' Are the critics right that this is an attempt to unravel Brexit?  Also on the podcast, Labour dropped their GPC files [government procurement cards] early this morning – what can be learnt from their big scoop? Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.

Steerpike

Red-faced Angela Rayner embarrassed over expenses

Labour have been out this morning, trumpeting their much-hyped 'GPC files' about the use of government procurement cards. Mr S has had a look and there's some interesting things in there. But was Angela Rayner really the best choice to lead on this issue? Especially when it was Emily Thornberry who did all the work. It was Rayner whose quotes about 'lavish spending' and 'a scandalous catalogue of waste' led the Labour attack in the write-ups today, as part of her party's attempts to paint her as the Prescott-like bruiser to Starmer's sensible southern style.

Steerpike

Six of the worst revelations from Labour’s procurement files

Labour got much of the lobby exercised last week with its latest wheeze: mysteriously rebranding its Twitter account as 'the GPC files' and sending out a link to 'theGPCfiles' to launch 7 a.m Monday morning. Sadly, for fans of the Global Powerlifting Committee eagerly expecting a string of revelations, the website in question focuses on government procurement cards. These allow purchases to be made directly against departmental budgets without going through regular invoicing procedures. Dozens of parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests have been tabled by Labour in recent months to try to find out what this money has been spent on.

Gavin Mortimer

Has Macron turned France into America’s poodle?

A notable feature of how the French public view the war in Ukraine is that the strongest support for its continuation is among voters who identify as Centrists and Socialists. Those most in favour of a peace settlement are backers of the left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the right-wing Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour. A poll in December revealed that 69 per cent of the former and 77 per cent of the latter would prefer that negotiations take precedence over the delivery of weapons to Ukraine, a number that rose to 88 per cent among Zemmour loyalists. These dropped to 57 per cent for Socialists and 60 per cent for supporters of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party.

Sam Leith

It’s time for ‘reality-based’ politicians to start addressing Brexit

Praise be. A day or two ago, something potentially quite exciting took place in Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire. It was a two-day conference and its guiding question – according to documents obtained by the Observer – was: ‘How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?’ Gathered there, and not a moment before time (though some might say five or six years ago might have been better still), were a number of politicians and public figures. It’s described as having been a ‘private discussion’. There are two things that seem worth noticing about this.

Sunday

Steerpike

Watch: Andrew Mitchell flounders over Rwanda

We haven't seen much of Andrew Mitchell since his recent promotion and today was perhaps a reminder why. For more than ten years, the onetime Chief Whip languished on the backbenches post-plebgate, until last October Sunak appointed him Minister of State for Development and Africa. It was Mitchell's turn to do the government media round today but it proved to be a pretty tricky outing for the Old Rugbeian. His trenchant criticisms of Boris Johnson's policies came back to haunt him today when Mitchell was asked by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg  about his punchy past statements on the decision to cut Britain's aid budget from 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income.

Rakib Ehsan

The Knowsley disruption shows the UK’s incompetence on asylum

This week’s public disorder outside a hotel accommodating asylum seekers in the town of Knowsley in Merseyside was in some ways inevitable. A total of 45,756 people entered the UK on small boats via the English Channel last year – which, according to the 2021 Census, is a number larger than the entire population of English towns such as Dover in Kent, Boston in Lincolnshire and Kirkby in the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley. Britain’s asylum regime should be prioritising the world’s most persecuted peoples, especially women and girls at major risk of sex-based violence in their conflict-ridden homelands.

James Heale

Can the BBC’s chairman carry on?

It's more bad news for the Beeb with a stinging set of Sunday papers today. The Culture select committee has released a report in the appointment of Richard Sharp as the Corporation's chairman – and it makes for damning reading. The MPs accuse him of failing to publicly divulge his role in facilitating an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson by omitting key details in introducing Johnson to businessman Sam Blyth. He is accused of making 'significant errors of judgement' and undermining the selection process for his role. The omissions 'constitute a breach of the standards expected of individuals' applying for top public jobs. And while the MPs stop short of calling for Sharp to go, their conclusions suggest his future at the BBC ought to now be in doubt.

Douglas Carswell

How to defend free markets in the 21st century

It wasn’t Liz Truss’s failure to make big changes we should worry about. It was her inability to deliver even the most modest pro-market reforms after a decade in high office that ought to alarm us. As Prime Minister for six weeks, Truss tried and failed reduce Britain’s tax burden to about the level it was under Gordon Brown. As a cabinet minister for ten years, Truss – a mother as well as a free marketeer – tried to reduce the costs of childcare by reducing red tape. Her efforts to change legally mandated child/carer ratios, despite mountains of evidence it could be done safely, were persistently thwarted.

Saturday

James Heale

James Heale, Hannah Moore and Matthew Wilson

18 min listen

This week: James Heale reads his interview with Lee Anderson MP (00:54), Hannah Moore writes in defence of amateur sleuths (05:33), and Matthew Wilson discusses the rehabilitation of the rose (09:54).  Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Cindy Yu

Was Liz Truss right?

36 min listen

This week has seen the return of Liz Truss, firstly with her op-ed in the Telegraph and then her Spectator TV exclusive interview. Has enough time passed to revise our opinion of her pro-growth agenda? Or will her legacy forever be one of failure? Cindy Yu speaks to Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews.

Stephen Daisley

A modest proposal for the death penalty

Lee Anderson has changed my mind. I’ve always been an opponent of capital punishment but the Tory deputy chairman makes an irrefutable point: ‘Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed.’ I could make a number of objections. I could say the death penalty violates the sanctity of human life. I could say it is vulnerable to wrongful conviction and execution. I could say handing power over life and death to a state that locked us in our homes for two years and forced old and sick people to die alone is remarkably trusting, to say nothing of forgiving.  Instead of saying any of that, I’ll say this: fine, let’s bring back the death penalty.

Friday

Freddy Gray

Who will win the Super Bowl?

12 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to former Ambassador to the UK and owner of the Jets football club Woody Johnson about the rising success of the NFL in Britain; who will win the Superbowl and his own team the Jets.

David Abulafia

Cambridge’s King’s College Chapel is no place for solar panels

If Cambridge colleges were entitled to register protected characteristics, there is no doubt what they would be in the case of King’s College. Announcing the election of Dr Gillian Tett (currently at the FT) as the next Provost, the current Provost of King’s, Mike Proctor, has described the college as ‘this vibrant and forward-looking institution’. For at least a century its members have taken pride in its left-wing credentials. Whether Ho Chi Minh ever read the telegrams of support sent to him by the King’s College Students’ Union at the height of the Vietnam War is very doubtful, but at least they made the college’s Marxist student leaders feel important.

Charles Lister

Who cares about Syria’s earthquake victims?

At 4 a.m. on Monday, when the earthquake hit, most of the 4.5 million people living in northwestern Syria were asleep. Thousands of buildings collapsed, burying their residents alive. The majority of those living in this small corner of Syria had already been displaced from their homes in other parts of the country by the civil war. The northwest is the final stronghold of Syria’s opposition and is the main target of president Bashar al-Assad’s grim campaign to retake full control of the country. Before the earthquake, some two thirds of the area’s basic infrastructure ­– public housing, water and sanitation, hospitals and medical clinics, roadways and power generation – was already destroyed or damaged. The people living there could not have been more vulnerable.