Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Katy Balls

Is Starmer falling short?

As the local election results trickle in, Labour has plenty to shout about when it comes to London. The party has taken Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet from the Tories, in a blow to the Conservatives. Given these are high-profile victories – Wandsworth was Thatcher's favourite council and Westminster has never been Labour – it's understandable that the results are leading the news. But outside of London, with 73 out of 146 councils counted, Labour is actually looking at a net loss of seats (down six) with not much signs of winning back the 'red wall'. So what's the wider picture for Starmer?

Steerpike

Labour’s Westminster election night takeaway

Local elections aren't exactly the most glamorous of affairs but there's usually a sprinkling of celebrity stardust to enliven the occasion. This year it has been in short supply, with Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman and Carrie Johnson's lockdown-defying friend Ben Mallett supplying infamy, in lieu of charisma. But now Mr S has discovered an unlikely connection between the seismic events in Westminster – where the Tories lost the council for the first time ever – and a popular millennial YouTube star. Labour's efforts in Westminster were spearheaded by PR guru and longtime councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, who wrote the account of the borough's ‘homes for votes’ scandal of the 1980s and 1990s under Shirley Porter.

Steerpike

Scottish Tories get the knives out

All is not well within the Conservative party north of the border this morning. Counting the votes hasn't even started yet but already the Scottish Tories have pre-emptively begun deciding who's to blame for the looming electoral losses. Senior figures within the party expect 'heavy losses' and are preparing to slip into third place: unnamed sources are going around suggesting Boris is to blame, with unionist voters refusing to turn out in protest against the No. 10 lockdown parties. Not all within the Scottish party are content to play this game. Former MSP Adam Tomkins, a widely-respected academic who stood down from Holyrood last May, has pointed out that the Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross must share in the blame too.

Steerpike

Tory council leaders round on Boris

It's not been a great night for the Tories. Labour have taken three symbolic London councils from the Conservatives – Westminster, Barnet and Wandsworth – while also making some gains outside the capital in key marginals like Southampton. And with Tory council defeats come defeated Tory council leaders. John Mallinson, who led his party on Carlisle City Council, was early out of the blocks, telling the BBC that he had 'lost some very good colleagues' in the election. He said he had found it 'difficult to drag the debate back to local issues' while campaigning because of partygate and the cost-of-living crisis. Asked if he thought Conservative MPs should oust the PM, Mallinson said: 'That would be my preference, yes.

Tom Goodenough

Westminster falls to Labour for first time ever as voters vent fury at Boris

Westminster council has fallen to the Labour party for the first time ever, as the Tories suffered a string of defeats in local elections across Britain overnight. The party also picked up Wandsworth council for the first time since 1978, with the defeated Tory council leader Ravi Govindia admitting many voters raised 'the issue of Boris Johnson' during the campaign.  Elsewhere in the capital, the Conservatives conceded defeat in Barnet, which has never had a Labour majority. Barnet's Tory leader Daniel Thomas said losing the council 'doesn't bode well for us' at the next election and described it as a 'warning shot' for Boris Johnson. Meanwhile London mayor Sadiq Khan said the Prime Minister had been a 'vote-winner for Labour'.

Michael Simmons

The 2022 local election results in five charts

Local elections results are still coming in but one thing is already clear: it’s been a bad night for the Tories. The Conservatives have lost 184 seats and ten councils, not as bad as the 800 councillors they had been forecast to lose. But still hardly a result for Boris Johnson to celebrate. Labour haven’t quite lived up to their highest hopes either. Just over two thirds of councils have declared and Labour have gained 48 councillors and five councils so far. But despite these gains, their vote share appears to be up by around only one per cent on 2018, when these seats were last contested. The biggest gains were made by the Liberal Democrats who have 84 new councillors so far and taken control of Hull from Labour.

James Forsyth

No sea change in favour of Labour despite Tory defeats

The results in the local elections so far provide further evidence of the fractured nature of British politics. The Tories have done badly in London. They lost Barnet, which was widely expected. And they have also suffered defeats in Wandsworth and Westminster.  Labour have had some good results, taking Southampton from the Tories. But it is impossible to see these results as a sea change in favour of Labour. On the BBC’s numbers their vote share is only up one point on 2018, when these seats were last contested. John Curtice, the elections expert, says that these results would not guarantee that Labour would be the largest party in the next parliament.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Local elections: Boris Johnson faces his first post-partygate test

The polls have now closed in this year’s local and devolved elections. The parties – and their leaders – face a nervous wait for the results. For Boris Johnson, this is the first electoral test since he was fined by the police for breaking his own Covid rules. Tory MPs will be watching nervously to see how much damage has been done. Tory MPs will be watching nervously to see how much damage has been done CCHQ have done a canny job of expectation management, suggesting that the loss of 800 seats – which would be a truly diabolical night for the party – should be seen as par. But there is real Tory nervousness about how bad results might be in the south. I suspect that Tory MPs in Lib Dem facing seats will be more nervous once these results are in.

Steerpike

‘Have a word’: Sadiq gets the vote out

Sadiq Khan may have won his contest last year but he's not having such a good election this time around. The wokest mayor in all the West has not enjoyed the best week in the run-up to polling day. First, he was accused by Grant Shapps of breaking pre-election purdah rules after Transport for London yesterday announced the opening date for the Elizabeth Line. And today, Khan has reminded floating voters, uncertain of who to vote for in this year's London council elections, of his key priorities. The mayor used polling day to tell male voters to '#HaveAWord' and not laugh at 'sexist "banter",' demanding that Londoners interrogate their friends when offensive language is used by saying 'What makes you think that?

Katy Balls

Is the UK headed towards recession?

10 min listen

The Monetary Policy Committee has just raised interest rates again. This is the fourth consecutive rise, the first time this has happened within a quarter of a century. Economically the future is looking pretty bleak and not just in the UK, this looks like it may be a global problem caused by several factors. China's no Covid policies, US inflation, the Eurozone trying to wean itself off Russia's oil and gas, etc.Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Kate Andrews about the state of the global economy.

Steerpike

The mystery of Dan Rosenfield’s wardrobe

It's polling day today and voters will be giving their verdicts on Boris Johnson's leadership. It's the PM's first test post-Partygate so what better time to reflect on the man in charge when that whole saga blew up? Dan Rosenfield was one of four men to serve as Johnson's effective chief of staff in No. 10, having taken up the post in January 2021 before leaving a mere 13 months later. The former Treasury mandarin had a fairly torrid time in Downing Street, being the victim of the near-incessant briefing wars that have characterised so much of Johnson's time in office.  Shortly before his abrupt departure in February, Rosenfield was accused of presiding over an 'overbearing' culture that allegedly contributed to the departures of six women from the No.

William Moore

Boris’s plans for a new Brexit clash

40 min listen

In this week’s episode: Is Boris Johnson planning to tear up Britain’s deal with the EU?James Forsyth says in his Spectator cover story this week that Boris Johnson plans to reignite the Brexit voter base by taking on the EU again over Northern Ireland. He joins the podcast along with Denis Staunton, the London editor of the Irish Times, who writes in this week’s magazine about how Sein Finn has benefited from the DUP’s collapsing support. (00:50)Also this week: Does overturning Roe V. Wade stand up to constitutional scrutiny? Douglas Murray has written in his column this week about America’s abortion debate, in the wake of the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion set to overturn the 1973 decision in Roe V Wade.

Kate Andrews

Are we heading towards a recession?

The US Federal Reserve yesterday announced its biggest interest rate rise in 22 years. Today, the Bank of England follows suit, raising rates at the fastest pace for a quarter of a century. But the biggest question remains: how successful will these hikes be at tackling inflation? The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee has voted six to three to raise interest rates from 0.75 to one per cent. This incremental 0.25 per cent rise was broadly expected by economists – though there had been speculation in recent weeks that the Committee might move faster, after March’s headline inflation rate hit seven per cent. Notably, Committee members in the minority were calling for a bolder hike of 0.5 per cent.

Matt Hancock

It takes courage to be vulnerable

It has been wonderful to welcome seven refugees – and their four dogs – to my home in Suffolk. I’ve enjoyed getting to know Ukrainian food and picking up the basics of the language. It’s humbling living with three generations from one family who have escaped war with little more than the clothes on their backs. It brings perspective. They video-call family and friends left behind who live under the threat of bombardment, and it’s striking just how close to home this conflict is. The teenagers staying with me study by remote learning at their college in Kyiv while the shells fall. The Suffolk community has been so helpful.

Rod Liddle

Will Putin go nuclear?

A ghastly tragedy Ukraine may well be, but it is coming to the rescue of a number of British Conservative politicians. Most notably Boris Johnson, of course, who would surely be out of a job by now if Vladimir Putin had not rolled those tanks across the border on 24 February, just as Sue Gray was getting her act together. A little later, Ukraine gave David Cameron a facelift as he was photographed driving a van full of supplies to the transgressed country. Supplies of what? Large sacks full of smuggery and emollience, one supposes. Or tiny wind turbines like that one he shoved on the side of his house to buttress his green credentials and which would take seven years and three months to boil water for a cup of tea. The latest is Brooks Newmark.

Denis Staunton

Why Sinn Fein holds sway on both sides of the border

If Sinn Fein emerges with the most seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections this week, it will not be because the party has grown in popularity since the last vote in 2017. It will be because support for the DUP is at its lowest in more than two decades. The DUP has suffered because of its failure to prevent Boris Johnson from agreeing the protocol that left Northern Ireland subject to EU single-market and customs rules. Sinn Fein, meanwhile, has benefited from Brexit and the Conservatives’ assertion of a muscular form of Unionism, both of which have added legitimacy to calls for a border poll on Irish unity.

The Spectator

Can anything save Boris Johnson?

As Boris Johnson faced the possibility of a no-confidence motion earlier this year, a large number of Tory MPs decided they would neither back him nor sack him. ‘Wait until the local elections,’ they said. The Prime Minister was chosen as party leader not because of popularity among his political peers (he has never commanded much loyalty in the Commons) but because he was seen to be the best at winning elections. If he lost his touch with voters, surely that would be proof it was time for a change? There is an obvious problem with this reasoning. Local election results in the United Kingdom have always been a poor gauge of confidence in the prime minister.

Katy Balls

‘Whitehall was horrified by Brexit’: an interview with Australia’s departing high commissioner

When Britain voted for Brexit, Tony Abbott, the former prime minister of Australia, had an idea. How about striking a new free trade deal between Australia and the UK to celebrate escaping the statism and bureaucracy of Brussels? The deal needed to be only one page long, he argued, because the two countries were already so similar. ‘If a car is fit to be sold in Britain, it’s fit to be sold in Australia,’ he said. ‘If a doctor is fit to practise in Australia, he or she is fit to practise in the UK.’ In the end, things proved more complicated. An agreement was eventually signed last December, but it ran to 430 pages. Free trade was to be phased in very slowly – over 15 years in all – on the grounds that British farmers needed time to adjust.

James Forsyth

Boris’s plans for a new Brexit clash

In next week’s Queen’s Speech, a remarkably controversial bill will be announced in the most anodyne language. The government will legislate to protect the Belfast Good Friday agreement in its entirety. These words will be a coded threat to the European Union that the UK is prepared to unilaterally tear up parts of the Brexit deal relating to Northern Ireland. The EU has previously said that if this happens, the whole deal could fall. To which the Prime Minister may well respond: so be it. Northern Ireland was the great compromise of Brexit. Boris Johnson got his deal against all expectations because he agreed to what is, in effect, a regulatory border in the Irish Sea.