Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

Henry Hill

How Northern Ireland could torment the next PM

Whoever wins the Conservative leadership next week, one can’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for them. Even if it’s Boris Johnson. Liz Truss fulfilled her inadvertent promise to ‘hit the ground from day one’, and her successor might do the same. One of first points of impact could be the Medium-Term Fiscal Statement due on October 31, when Hunt or his successor try to sell a divided party and an unhappy nation on a course of bitter public spending medicine that none of them want. Another is Northern Ireland. Even as the would-be candidates struggle for nominations, Labour is taking the chance to go on the offensive.

Katy Balls

What Suella Braverman’s endorsement reveals

Boris Johnson is yet to formally declare that he plans to enter the Tory leadership contest. The former prime minister's meeting with Rishi Sunak last night led to no white smoke or agreement on a joint ticket. His supporters have since been touring the studios this morning insisting he will run and that he has the 100 MP nominations required to make the ballot (even if many are yet to go public). Only there is a growing sense in the party that Johnson's campaign is not going to plan and is losing momentum compared to Sunak's. MPs who have been Johnson loyalists are trying to tell him that this is not his moment Johnson has won the support of one senior cabinet minister today – in the form of Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.

Andrew Downie

Why do Brazilian footballers like Bolsonaro?

There are weeks when Jair Bolsonaro dominates the headlines in Brazil and there are weeks when that honour goes to Neymar. Both men have been in the news this week, which is understandable given the run-off election for president is on 30 October, and the World Cup kicks off in less than a month. One plays to the far-right galleries, spends a lot of his time on social media, and is frequently defending himself against accusations of corruption. The other is the president. Most outside of Brazil, though, would find it odd that the news cycle in the last few days has been about the two of them together. Neymar is in the news not just for his starring performances with Paris Saint Germain.

Jonathan Miller

Cancelling air shows won’t save the planet

To have ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings… and touched the face of God’ is amongst the most ancient dreams of humanity. Never better expressed than in the sonnet of pilot-poet John Gillespie Magee. Yet inevitably, the green blob has discovered a new target for cancelation: the air show. The magnificent men in their flying machines are being grounded on the altar of net zero. The most recent cancelation is in Sunderland, which has attracted more than one million visitors each year to see the Red Arrows, the Battle of Britain Memorial flight and aircraft from all over the world.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday Roundup: Mordaunt refuses to give policy details

Penny Mordaunt – ‘I’m not being drawn into the detail’ Penny Mordaunt found herself in an awkward position this morning as she faced off against Laura Kuenssberg. With a lot of ground to make up before nominations close for the Conservative party leadership on Monday, Mordaunt’s interview could well serve as a crucial moment in the success or failure of her campaign. Kuenssberg repeatedly asked her for some (indeed, any) details on spending pledges, but unfortunately her answers proved to be light on content: https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1584105949937164294?

James Forsyth

The momentum is with Sunak now

Rishi Sunak has now formally declared that he is running to be Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party. In a statement released online, he says he is running to ‘fix our economy, unite our party and deliver for our country’. With well over 100 backers, Sunak — who I should say I have known for years — is guaranteed to be on the ballot on Monday. This morning, sources close to Boris Johnson have been emphasising that he is going for it too, even though he isn’t yet formally declared. This suggests that there’ll be no joint ticket between the two men. The pair met last night, but nothing has come out about the meeting.

Steerpike

Zahawi’s Johnson U-turn

So much has happened over the last few months, that perhaps Nadhim Zahawi should be forgiven for a slight lapse in memory. The Tory MP, and former chancellor, has this morning come out to back Boris Johnson to become leader of the Conservative party and prime minister again. Zahawi wrote on Twitter: That’s strange. Has Zahawi forgotten what he, er, also wrote on Twitter back in July, when, after just over a day in the Treasury, he threatened to resign from Boris Johnson’s government? No bother.

Steerpike

CCHQ scramble for membership ballots

Action stations! It's go go go this weekend as the old campaign vehicles crank into life once more. Are you (still) ready for Rishi? A Boris backer? Or a Mordaunt man? As the three candidates scramble around to tot up their tallies of parliamentary supporters, a rather different madcap muddle is happening in associations across the country. For those whizz kids at CCHQ – Tory high command to you and me – are in something of a pickle. Up to 20,000 members lack an email address which mean they will be unable to vote in a membership vote, if the indicative vote tomorrow night fails to persuade one candidate to stand down. A 36-hour race is now on then to track down every offline member and try to establish an alternative way for them to vote.

Gavin Mortimer

Why is Macron’s foreign policy such a mess?

Last Sunday I marched through Paris with tens of thousands of disgruntled Frenchmen and women. I was there to observe, not holler and sing like those around me, a mix of Socialists, Communists and Greens. They had much that they wanted to get off their chest: the cost of living, ‘climate inaction’, the war in Ukraine, the state of the health system and their opposition to social security reform. On Thursday it was the right who marched in Paris, led by Éric Zemmour, on the streets to voice their anger about the horrific murder of a 12-year-old in Paris. They see it as symptomatic of an immigration system they claim is broken.

Fraser Nelson

Does Boris really deserve a second chance?

The original fans of Boris Johnson feel a special kind of disappointment about his disastrous premiership. He’s the best campaigner of his generation, he governed London well, his superpower is to find and devolve to brilliant people who can implement a vision of liberal conservatism that he articulated over a 20-year career. Judge him, we’d argue, by his achievements. That’s what we argued in 2019, anyway. If we judge him by his record in No. 10, it was one not just of disaster – but of doing the precise opposite of what he promised. As we argued in The Spectator, he was becoming the very prime minister that, as a journalist, he warned us about. That’s why, as I argue in today’s Sunday Telegraph, I cannot cheer him on this time.

Steerpike

Steve Baker backs Sunak

What a year it's been for Steve Baker. Fresh from leading rebellions over Brexit and Covid, the Wycombe MP joined the revolt against Boris Johnson, briefly mulled a bid to replace him before getting on board the Truss train, becoming a Northern Ireland minister and issuing an apology for the UK's behaviour in Brexit. Now, he's back at the centre of it all again, using an appearance on Sky today to come out and back Rishi Sunak. He told Sophy Ridge that Boris Johnson would be 'guaranteed disaster' because of the investigation into whether he misled Commons: 'It's a guaranteed nailed on failure. We cannot allow it to happen. I'm not willing to lay down my integrity.' Baker added that 'If Boris is in charge his premiership will implode and we'll be back here...

Patrick O’Flynn

Would a Boris-Rishi pact work?

There is generally a basic problem to be overcome whenever somebody suggests two competing political egos come together to campaign on a ‘joint ticket’ – one of them has to be the boss. There is only one vacancy being fought over by Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak and it cannot be subject to a job share. It is not, after all, the political editorship of the Guardian at stake here, but prime minister of the United Kingdom. It can be surmised that Sunak and Johnson will have had very different ideas about what a pact between them might look like when they met last night for extensive talks. Sunak will likely have favoured himself occupying No.

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The Tories have no good options

As the Conservative party holds its third leadership contest in four years, Britain is not experiencing déjà vu; we’re just stuck on square one. The three frontrunners consist of the previous contest’s runners-up, Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Boris Johnson, the man they previously deposed. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, the Conservative party lost its marbles a long way back. These candidates have already been tested and found wanting. Penny Mordaunt is still a Labour politician in blue clothing, a living representative of your HR department’s moral values and political purpose while still willing to flip between trendy views and crude jokes on trans issues in order to cadge a few extra votes.

Saturday

Ian Williams

The mystery of the Hu Jintao incident

A steward tries to lift Hu Jintao from his seat, but Hu doesn’t want to move. The former Communist party leader is sitting to the left of current boss Xi Jinping, and he reaches out to take Xi’s notes, but Xi moves Hu’s hand away and takes back the papers. The world’s cameras follow every move, as Hu is eventually raised to his feet. There are two stewards now, one holding him firmly under the arm, the other gesturing for him to leave. But Hu is clearly reluctant to go, leaning over and saying something to an impassive-looking Xi, who nods and gives a brief reply to Hu without looking directly at him. Hu then taps the shoulder of Premier Li Keqiang, who is sitting on Xi’s right. Li looks uneasy, turning briefly to watch Hu being ushered from the hall.

Katy Balls

Is the Boris campaign losing momentum?

Is the Boris campaign losing momentum? The former prime minister’s supporters had briefed journalists that Johnson has 100 MPs backing him so can enter the race should he wish to. But the number of MPs who have publicly backed Johnson is much lower at 59, vs Rishi Sunak's 131 (and a lonely 24 for Penny Mordaunt). That means either there are a lot of Boris backers who are very shy - or that the claim is inaccurate and he's facing an uphill struggle to hit the threshold. (Lee Anderson/Facebook) If Johnson hits 100 and reaches the membership, his supporters believe the Tory grassroots will back him over Sunak Johnson supporters have been keen to suggest that the bulk of Sunak's support comes from the left of the party – ergo meaning Sunak can’t be a unifier.

Steerpike

Ellwood’s endorsement backfires

It was all going so well for Rishi. With a hundred MPs in the bag, Sunak looks to be the only candidate who will cruise through to the final round on Monday unlike his struggling rivals. But has Tobias Ellwood managed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory once again? The chairman of the defence select committee announced his endorsement for Sunak last night, declaring on Twitter that: The free mkt experiment is over – it's been a low point in our party's great history. The reset begins. Time for centrist, stable, fiscally responsible government offering credible domestic and international leadership. Honoured to be the 100th Tory MP to support.

Steerpike

Does Boris really have 100 MPs?

Does Boris have the numbers? That's the question all Westminster is asking today. There's been much excitement about an anonymous briefing that seems to have gone out to half the parliamentary press gallery. BBC Pol Ed Chris Mason quotes a source close to Boris Johnson as claiming that he has 'now has more than 100 backers and so could be on the ballot if he chooses to be'. The interesting word there is 'could'. According to Coffee House's own list here Johnson has 54 public backers as of 3:30 p.m today, meaning there are 46 undeclared backers still out there. Is that really plausible? There may be MPs keeping their powder dry for all sorts of reasons – party whips for instance have to remain neutral.

Steerpike

Watch: Xi’s predecessor marched out of CCP meeting

Is this the start of a new Xi Jinping purge? Earlier today, the former Chinese president Hu Jintao was manhandled and led out of the closing ceremony of the Communist party congress – watched on by delegates and the media. The 79-year-old is Xi Jinping's immediate predecessor and was seated to his immediate left. A pair of stewards can be seen removing the seemingly distressed elder statesman as he tried to speak to Xi. Such shows of apparent disunity are rare within the CCP’s China, especially at heavily stage-managed events such as this. Earlier in the congress, two of Hu’s proteges, Li Keqiang and Wang Yang, failed to be re-elected to the party's central committee.

Patrick O’Flynn

The Boris strategy needs to change

Had Boris Johnson simply wished to use the current vacancy for prime minister to remind us all of his superstar status then it would be mission accomplished already. The mere confirmation that the great blond bombshell was mulling an instant comeback transformed a prospect I likened a fortnight ago to the preposterous Bobby Ewing shower scene in the 1980s TV soap Dallas into a 2-1 shot with bookmakers. Scores of Conservative MPs came out in his support. Across provincial England, vox-popping BBC reporters encountered a groundswell of opinion wishing for his return – most notably a Birmingham fishmonger who pointed at the camera before saying, Lord Kitchener style, ‘your country needs you’.