Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Steerpike

Sturgeon plans to sue herself

Here we go again then. Nicola Sturgeon has finally anounced her great Scexit wheeze: after years of making claims about another independence referendum, she's finally announced a timetable at last. Thursday 19 October 2023 is now Scotland's divinely-ordained date with destiny (according to the First Minister at least) with Sturgeon prepared to use the courts to achieve this, given the UK government's continued intransigence. To do this, Sturgeon says she asked the Lord Advocate to consider referring to the Supreme Court the position of her referendum bill with regards to reserved matters; in effect, suing herself. She confirmed that the Lord Advocate has agreed to make a reference to the court, with papers being filed in London this afternoon.

Matthew Lynn

Macron’s Russian oil plan is bound to fail

It will drain Vladimir Putin of funds for his war machine. It will bring down inflation. And it might even be enough to stop the global economy from tipping into recession. As President Macron put forward his wheeze for solving the energy crisis this week, he no doubt had plenty of persuasive arguments. He appears to have brought the rest of the G7 on board for his plan for a global cap on the price of oil. There is just one problem. Like most price controls, it is not going to work. Indeed. It will only make the crisis worse. Of course, everyone can see where Macron is coming from. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, and embargos started to be placed on its energy, the price of oil has soared. From $74 a year ago it has risen to $117 a barrel and could go a lot higher still.

Isabel Hardman

Boost defence spending to prepare for Putin, Wallace demands

Ben Wallace is giving a speech this afternoon in which he will urge Boris Johnson to increase defence spending. The Defence Secretary – who has long been close to Johnson – is making his campaign public, having apparently already secured a nod from the Prime Minister that he will get something. He wants a 20 per cent increase in defence spending in the next five years, and to push Britain’s budget for its armed forces up to 2.5 per cent of GDP, having secured the 2 per cent target. He is speaking at the Royal United Services Institute event alongside the chief of the general staff General Sir Patrick Sanders, who is, naturally, arguing that spending should rise because ‘this is our 1937 moment’ and the army needs to prepare to fight Vladimir Putin directly.

Isabel Hardman

Why did Tory rebels abstain from the NI Protocol Bill?

10 min listen

The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill passed its second reading last night with a majority of 74 votes. A number of Tory rebels voiced their opposition to the bill including former Prime Minister, Theresa May, Simon Hoare and Andrew Mitchell. However, despite vocal opposition, not one Tory MP voted against the bill – opting to abstain instead. Did the Whips office play a part in this?Also on the podcast, Nicola Sturgeon unveils her plans to have a second independence referendum, with or without Boris Johnson’s consent. What chance has she got?Katy Balls is joined by Isabel Hardman and James Forysth.

Freddy Gray

AOC’s Roe v. Wade grandstanding has gone too far

If you’ve bothered to actually read the Supreme Court’s opinion on Roe v. Wade – rather than the endless social media memes – you’ll know that America’s chief justices have not decided they can rule over women’s bodies. The court has rather declared that the issue is not a matter for the court – that abortion should be returned to the nation’s elected representatives. Funny thing, though: the nation’s elected representatives, at least the Democratic ones who most vocally support abortion, don’t seem to want that power – and they are furious with the Justices who have handed it back to them.

Steerpike

Will any Tory MPs defect to Labour?

Parliament is ablaze with gossip and rumour this morning. There's only one question on anyone's lips: will any more MPs defect to Labour? Such speculation has been fuelled by something of a collective Fleet Street guessing game: the Sunday Times has predicted that up to six Tories might make the jump while today's Telegraph merely suggests three. The Guardian conservatively suggests that one Tory MP is in 'advanced discussions' about defecting while a second is in talks with a Labour MP about the possibility of doing so. Such talk has been fuelled by the case of Bury South backbencher Christian Wakeford, who crossed the floor in January.

Katy Balls

Boris’s most important election

When Boris Johnson suggested over the weekend that he was actively thinking about a third term as Prime Minister, it met a robust response from his MPs. Given many don't want him to lead them into the next election – let alone the one after – Conservative MPs were quick to brand the comments as delusional. As one put it to me: 'To say that comment is tin-eared and the wrong thing to say to Conservative MPs right now is the bloody understatement of the year to date'. But putting aside the Prime Minister's general election plans, it's a vote that comes before even 2023 that could decide the his fate.

Isabel Hardman

The Northern Ireland Protocol: the real fight is yet to come

Last night’s vote on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill didn’t turn into an open revolt from Tory MPs – but that’s not to say that there isn’t big trouble for the legislation. A chunk of Conservatives abstained, some of them having made very clear in the debate on the second reading of this legislation that they could not support it. Theresa May, Julian Smith, Simon Hoare and Bob Neill all raised serious concerns in their speeches and did not vote. Other Conservatives who did support the legislation still said they were uncomfortable with certain aspects of it.

Oliver Wiseman

Will abortion rights galvanise the American left?

Sometimes, defeat is just what a party, or a movement, needs. Hard lessons are learnt, uncomfortable realities are acknowledged and the group in question emerges more serious, more competitive, more potent a political force. In recent years, liberals and conservatives have often failed to learn the right lessons from their losses because they won’t accept defeat in the first place. From crackpot theories about Cambridge Analytica swinging 2016 for Trump to the idea that 2020 was stolen by Joe Biden four years later, both sides of America’s political divide have opted for comforting fictions over hard truths. But the case of Dobbs v.

Steerpike

Steve Baker reveals his next move

Back in February, Mr S pointed out that Steve Baker was on manoeuvres. The ‘Brexit hardman’ is returning to the playbook which won the war over vaccine passports by teaming up with Covid Research Group consultant Ed Barker. It’s part of a planned relaunch next month of the moribund Conservative Way Forward, at a suitably tactical Westminster location. Given his track record in masterminding both the CRG and ERG, Baker is sure to have a more successful launch than the last time the Thatcherite pressure group was re-started. That was in July 2018 at a dinner that was somewhat overshadowed by the leak of Boris Johnson’s disparaging comments about Theresa May.

Andrew O’Brien

Why the Tories struggle to shake off the ‘nasty party’ label

The Conservatives’ brand is being taken to the cleaners. According to Lord Ashcroft’s focus groups, the words and phrases most often associated with the Conservative party right now are 'untrustworthy', 'for themselves', 'out of touch', and 'for the few'. The Conservatives are at risk of becoming the Nasty Party again. Given all the years spent detoxifying the party’s brand, how has it come to this?  The reputation of every governing party suffers with time, but the Conservatives seem to have a particular knack for being seen as heartless the longer they are in office. At a time when households are struggling, the Conservatives find themselves in a position where despite spending £37 billon to help, they are still seen as out of touch.

Gabriel Gavin

Turkey is heading for a Nato showdown

‘Nato is surrounding Turkey,’ reads a banner flying in Istanbul’s Kadiköy district, on the Eastern side of the water that divides Europe from Asia. ‘Let’s get out of it.’ The sign, featuring American flags scattered across Europe and the Middle East, from Greece to Syria, has appeared across the country’s second city in the run-up to next year’s presidential and parliamentary votes. Paid for and promoted by the Patriotic party, a fringe left-wing nationalist group founded by several former Turkish army generals, it looks more like Russian propaganda than election literature, even recognising the independence of Abkhazia, a Moscow-backed breakaway region of Georgia.

Monday

Steerpike

May gives Boris a taste of his own medicine

Oh dear. Is Boris Johnson's bid to rip up the Northern Ireland Protocol over before it really began? First, Simon Hoare, the chair of the Northern Ireland Select Committee, lobbed a grenade at Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, asking whether her support for the government's bill was merely 'a muscle flex for a future leadership bid?' When the camera panned to Truss on the frontbench, she had, er, left her seat. And then, in the words of King Louis XV, 'Après moi, le déluge.' For shortly after Hoare sat down, it was Theresa May's time to rise to her feet.

Steven Barrett

The parallel world of EU law

The EU courts are not like our courts. They are given a specific purpose of advancing the union. That purpose can be hard to spot and does get denied. I would say that is a court being required to do politics. Our courts do not try to advance the interests of our country – they just do law. In 2014 on the EU Courts the more diplomatic Foreign Office said ‘Both principles [subsidiarity and proportionality] are “legal” principles in that the EU institutions are bound by them and cannot legally act in breach of them. However, given their nature, they require significant political judgment’. Those quote marks in paragraph 2.7 are doing a titanic amount of heavy lifting.

Katy Balls

Truss outlines plan to override the Northern Ireland Protocol

There's a general consensus that the government's Northern Ireland Protocol bill will result in a fight – the question: who with? When news of the Foreign Secretary's plan to unilaterally override parts of the protocol agreement first broke, it led to a number of Tory MPs on the One Nation wing speaking out and members of the European Research Group pushing more. There was also concern in Washington and outright rejection in Brussels. Today the bill has its second reading in the House of Commons giving MPs a chance to air their grievances. Labour were quick to go on the attack: shadow foreign secretary David Lammy accused Liz Truss of reneging on an international agreement and called for the government to focus on negotiation rather than unilateral legislation.

Steerpike

Ministers make a royal mess of Jubilee books

Speak to any disaffected Tory these days and the conversation quickly turns to one of leadership. Who should be next to wear the Conservative crown? Rishi? Damaged goods. Liz? Always self-promoting. Jeremy Hunt? Come off it. With question marks hanging over each of the main contenders, one name increasingly doing the rounds is that of dark horse Nadhim Zahawi, the millionaire businessman whose supporters bill him as the man who gets things done. The case for Zahawi goes as follows: he came to this nation an immigrant child yet built the hugely successful YouGov polling firm. After years of being overlooked for high office, he oversaw the successful vaccine roll-out at health before cleaning up the hapless Gavin Williamson's mess at education.

Gus Carter

Are the Abraham Accords working?

Two years ago, UAE citizens were barred from entering Israel. No longer. The inaugural Emirates flight touched down in Tel Aviv last week, a Boeing 777 carrying 335 passengers. For much of the 20th century, the only thing that the Middle East could agree on was the destruction of the Jewish state. But attitudes are changing. The purported reason is the so-called Abraham Accords, signed in 2020 after Donald Trump decided to solve the seemingly intractable problem of the Middle East. If Don the Dealmaker couldn’t do it, who could? Seven decades of antagonism had failed, the White House argued, and the Palestinian cause seemed as troubled as ever, so why not try a different approach?

Steerpike

Lords gear up for new by-elections

They're the by-elections all of Westminster is talking about. No, not the race for Tiverton and Wakefield in the Commons but the battle to replace two vacant seats in Lords. For, following the retirement of Lord Brabazon of Tara and the death of Lord Swinfen, hereditary peers who take the Tory whip are gearing up to decide who among their number shall take their place. These contests are held every time one of the 92 hereditary peers still in the Upper House die or choose to leave the chamber. Some 42 places are reserved for Conservative members. Each candidate submits a brief manifesto statement with previous highlights include the Earl of Limerick using a, er, limerick to support his case.

Patrick O’Flynn

How the Tories can bin Boris

There are not very many good things to say about the Conservative party in Parliament these days. Barely a month seems to pass without one of their number being exposed as some kind of pervert. Others among them seem far more interested in plotting their own ascents than in delivering sound public administration or working out what they actually believe in. But one of the good things to say is that Sir Graham Brady seems like a sensible chap, running the all-powerful backbench 1922 Committee in a calm and mature fashion. One supposes that Sir Graham must sometimes look at the most likely course of events around Boris Johnson’s party leadership and despair.

Isabel Hardman

Is Boris being too bullish?

12 min listen

After a bruising few days, Boris Johnson remains bullish suggesting his intentions to stay in Downing Street for a third term. Is this rattling Tory MPs?Also on the podcast, a Cabinet reshuffle may be approaching. Who is under threat and why? Isabel Hardman is joined by Katy Balls and James Forsyth.Produced by Natasha Feroze.