Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

James Forsyth

Starmer’s beergate gamble

Keir Starmer has just confirmed in a press conference that he will resign if issued with a fine by Durham police over his curry and beer on the campaign trail last year. Starmer is adamant that he has broken no rules, that he merely had something to eat while working late. In his statement, Starmer said he would resign if fined as ‘the British public deserve politicians who think the rules apply to them’. In a clear attempt to draw a contrast with Boris Johnson, he said he wanted to show that not all politicians are the same.

Brendan O’Neill

Starmer’s beergate woes show why we need a lockdown amnesty

Do you really care that Keir Starmer had a curry and a beer while working late in April last year? Be honest. Does the image of Sir Keir tucking into a masala with colleagues keep you up at night? Do you find yourself distracted from the cost-of-living crisis by visions of Starmer having a San Miguel? Would you like to find out more about what’s happening in Ukraine but you can’t, because your mind keeps getting dragged back to that shocking grainy photo of the Leader of the Opposition holding a bottle of beer? Look, I get it about the hypocrisy. I get it that Starmer bored us all rigid – well, me anyway – with incessant questions about that ten-minute birthday party at Downing Street.

The Spectator

Read: Vladimir Putin’s victory day speech in full

The following is The Spectator’s translation of Putin’s speech for victory day 2022. Most respected citizens of Russia, dear veterans, comrade soldiers and sailors, sergeants and petty officers, midshipmen and ensigns, comrade officers, generals and admirals: I wish you all a happy great victory day! The defense of our homeland – when its fate hung in the balance – has always been sacred. With such feelings of genuine patriotism, Minin and Pozharsky’s People’s Militia rose up for the motherland, advanced to attack on the field of Borodin, fought the enemy on the outskirts of Moscow and Leningrad, Kyiv and Minsk, Stalingrad and Kursk, Sebastopol and Kharkov.

Steerpike

Tories seek more spinners

There's a new regime in Downing Street: the City Hall gang is taking over. The arrival of Guto Harri as No. 10 director of communications in February brought with it a fresh approach to media. Out went the broadcasting boycotts: in came a less hostile style willing to take more risks – the fruits of which could be seen in Boris Johnson's Good Morning Britain interview with Susanna Reid last week. But despite the arrival of several new special advisers, it seems that Harri's hiring spree is not done yet. For the backroom boys over at CCHQ are seeking a new 'video and film manager' for the party's new base in Leeds. 'High quality videos' are demanded for online and broadcast 'to communicate the Conservative party's corre narrative' and 'create compelling content'.

Steerpike

Starmer: I’ll quit if I’m fined

You can tell the trouble that Sir Keir Starmer is in by the desperation of Sun hacks in finding fresh curry puns. Whether it's 'backed into a korma' or 'bhaji smugglers,' the Labour leader's ongoing troubles over 'Beergate' has caused a run on puns over at London Bridge. The latest twist in the ongoing saga is the news that Sir Keir is discussing his possible resignation with shadow cabinet colleagues if Durham Police decide to fine him over the April 2021 gathering in which he and party workers enjoyed curries and beers.  The investigation is expected to take between six to eight weeks, with the force establishing a special six-man source to probe whether the Labour leader and his deputy Angela Rayner did indeed break lockdown rules.

Ross Clark

Crypto is dead

When Britain voted for Brexit, Macron boasted that Paris would eat the City of London’s lunch. It didn’t quite work out that way, with most league tables continuing to put London as the number one or two financial centre, with not a single EU city in the top ten. Emmanuel Macron's government has now announced that it has invited Binance, a crypto exchange site, to set up a European HQ in Paris. You have to ask: has Macron leapt on a bandwagon which has already started to lose its wheels?  The warning sign for cryptocurrencies is not so much that they have crashed – Bitcoin is down 50 per cent from its peak last November – but that they have become boring.

James Forsyth

How much trouble is Keir Starmer in?

11 min listen

As pressures mount over claims that Keir Starmer broke lockdown rules, the Labour leader has just pulled out of a keynote speech he is due to give today. How much trouble is he really in? Katy Balls looks at Starmer's future in a blog on Coffee House today.Also on the podcast, what will be the fallout from the Sinn Fein victory in Northern Ireland? Brandon Lewis heads to Belfast today to press for the return of a fully functioning government. Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth.

Katy Balls

How much trouble is Keir Starmer in?

Ahead of Thursday's local elections, there had been talk among MPs that it could serve as a referendum on partygate and lead to questions about Boris Johnson's future as leader. Instead, it's Keir Starmer who is facing questions about Covid breaches and how long he will stay in post. After Durham Police announced on Friday that they would investigate the so-called Beergate event – when he was pictured drinking a beer indoors in Durham with Labour staff last April while the rest of England was under stage 2 Covid rules – new details have come to light.

Sam Leith

Starmer’s beergate troubles won’t get Boris off the hook

It looks on the face of things as if Sir Keir Starmer is coming unstuck over that blurry photograph of him with beer in hand after a day campaigning in Durham during lockdown. His claim that no rules were breached on that occasion – like the earlier claims that Angela Rayner wasn’t there and that the curry was a spontaneous, ambushed-by-a-curry type of curry rather than a planned, party type of curry – is looking shakier than Shakin’ Stevens with the DTs. Beergate, thanks to new revelations in the Mail On Sunday, seems to have legs. But where do those legs, I wonder, take us? Let's suppose that everything that Sir Keir’s detractors say is true. Let’s not minimise the offence.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Jacob Rees-Mogg pulls his punches over beergate

On the inaugural Andrew Neil show on Channel 4, Jacob Rees-Mogg was strikingly adamant that there were no easy solutions to the current cost of living crisis as increasing public spending would be inherently inflationary. This argument has intellectual force but is difficult to make politically. It was interesting, though, how keen Rees-Mogg was to lean into it. Equally noticeable was Rees-Mogg’s desire not to pile into Starmer on the whole question of his campaign trail curry and beer when tier 2 restrictions were in place.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Starmer guilty of ‘rank double standards’, Raab lambasts

Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab was tasked with the government’s media round this morning, and he used the opportunity to take aim at the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, accusing him of hypocrisy after Durham Police said they will re-investigate the so-called ‘Beergate’ affair. A leaked Labour party document appears to suggest that Starmer and his colleagues did not return to working after a scheduled dinner, which lasted for over an hour. Raab stopped short of calling for Starmer to resign, but piled on the pressure for him to account for exactly what happened on that night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Fraser Nelson

Starmer is caught in a web of his own words

I’ve so far found it hard to get outraged about Keir Starmer’s curry with staffers after a campaigning event in April last year. For the boss to buy in a curry for his local activists during the visit is a decent and human thing to do. I’d not condemn anyone for it. But this is politically tricky for Starmer for three reasons: Starmer was not a voice of moderation on lockdown. He was always calling for an even tougher regime than that which the Tories needlessly imposed. As Opposition leader, I'd say, he had not only the option but the duty to oppose a cruel and draconian policy that gratuitously criminalised harmless, everyday acts.Starmer did not change his mind on lockdown.

Steven Fielding

Beergate is a big danger for Starmer – and a great opportunity

Beergate represents a great danger to Starmer’s leadership. But handled in the right way it could be his opportunity to show that his is a party that can be trusted by voters who have abandoned it since the days of New Labour. It might even be his ‘clause four moment’, one which allows Starmer to transform how the public regard Labour and be the springboard to victory at the next general election. Last week's local elections were good for Labour: they suggest it is on course to become the largest party in the Commons. But they were not good enough: much work remains to be done before Labour can form the next government without the help of other parties. Something is currently missing – and for that many blame Starmer’s worthy but uninspiring leadership.

Saturday

Steerpike

Keir Starmer’s beergate story unravels

Uh oh, it looks like things are getting uncomfortable for Keir Starmer. This week the Labour leader was hoping to turn the national conversation towards the cost of living crisis and the poor Tory showing in the local elections. Instead the hapless opposition leader has become embroiled in a ‘beergate’ scandal of his own – after the Labour leader was pictured drinking beer at a campaign event in April 2021, when lockdown restrictions were in place. This week Durham police announced that it was opening an investigation into an alleged lockdown breach at the event – which Starmer has continued to insist was a work event and not a party. It looks like that story could be beginning to unravel though.

Damian Reilly

Is Gary Neville actually a Tory?

If you judge a man on what he does and not just what he says, then it seems obvious multimillionaire Labour activist Gary Neville is in reality a Tory. ‘I’m not a socialist, I’m a capitalist,’ the former Manchester United defender turned Sky Sports commentator and plutocrat businessman told the world on Instagram this week. ‘I believe in entrepreneurialism. I believe in companies making profit. I believe in lower taxes. And I also believe that distribution of profit should be spread amongst us.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Steerpike

David Warburton plots his comeback

It's been a bad week for the Tories. They've lost nearly 500 councillors, are facing two key parliamentary by-elections and are now near-extinct in much of the capital. There are some who fear that following the various scandals involving Owen Paterson (lobbying), Imran Ahmad Khan (sex offences) and Neil Parish (porn in Parliament), the Conservative party risks becoming irrevocably associated with sleaze. And such fears are unlikely to be calmed then by the return of a familiar figure to Westminster. For David Warburton has signalled he could come back to the Commons next week at the end of the parliamentary recess, following a stint in hospital.

Ian Acheson

Sinn Fein’s victory doesn’t mean the end of the Union

No amount of extra counting later today can undo the seismic shift that has taken place in Northern Ireland’s politics. The first preference votes in Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly elections are in and Sinn Fein are the clear winners on 29 per cent. Sinn Fein – once the political appendage of a terrorist organisation that wrought 30 years of havoc and misery – is set to win the most seats in Stormont. It will then be able to nominate the first ever Republican First Minister. Before Unionists panic though, it’s worth examining the facts. On total votes cast, there will likely be a Unionist majority hidden by the byzantine calculus of the Single Transferrable Vote system which benefits smaller parties.

Steven Fielding

Why Keir Starmer isn’t living up to the dream of 1997

‘A new dawn has broken has it not?’, asked Tony Blair as the sun first blinked over London’s South Bank on the early morning of 2 May 1997. Blair was addressing a crowd of supporters following Labour’s first general election victory since 1974, an election that saw the party win 43.2 per cent of votes cast and achieve its biggest ever Commons majority, even bigger than Clement Attlee’s in 1945. It was a victory that laid the foundations for an unprecedented 13 years of Labour government. After this year’s local elections nobody in the Labour party is talking about a new dawn. In reality, the results are nowhere near good enough for Keir Starmer to credibly make this claim.

Bruce Anderson

Do the Tories really want Boris to fight the next election?

In large part, these local elections were a referendum on a basic proposition. Do the government and the Prime Minister deserve a kick in the pants? As it was virtually impossible to argue against that verdict, Boris Johnson could claim to have done surprisingly well. Indeed, some of his Tory critics are disappointed with the outcome. It does not justify an immediate coup. That said, it seems certain that many of the Tory losses can be blamed on Boris. A lot of traditional Tories, who are used to seriousness in their own lives, will not accept lower standards in their prime minister. This appears to have been especially true in London. In local elections, London always attracts disproportionate attention. Keir Starmer will be grateful for that.