Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Stephen Daisley

The problem with Boris’s Rwanda solution

Is the Prime Minister’s plan to divert some asylum seekers to Rwanda racist? Is it inhumane? Is it a dead cat to distract from his fixed-penalty notice for breaching Covid rules? These are the questions fixating the political-media-activist class today and while they are not necessarily unimportant, they neglect a question that might be of more immediate concern to the average voter concerned about border integrity and abuse of the asylum system. Namely, will the Prime Minister’s plan work? To answer this, we must acknowledge its provenance in Australia’s policy of offshore processing, detention and turn backs, introduced in 2001 as John Howard’s Pacific Solution and reintroduced by Tony Abbott in 2013 as Operation Sovereign Borders.

Steerpike

Partygate cuts through with voters

The Tory task at the next election is enormous. No party in the democratic age has ever won a fifth consecutive term in office and bruising battles over Brexit and Covid mean the Conservatives will have a tough ask next time out. Boris Johnson's team still have two years left in office but inside No. 10 minds are already turning to the looming clash with the Starmer army. On what fertile ground can the forthcoming general election be fought and won by the Tories? Unfortunately for the bright young things of CCHQ, it looks like Labour's traditional weak spot on 'law and order' has now been nullified. There were hopes that Sir Keir's record as a QC – defending all kinds of unseemly sorts – might make him susceptible to jibes of being soft on crime or terror.

James Forsyth

The Tories will welcome challenges to the Rwanda plan

The government’s announcement today that it wants to send a number of those who cross the Channel in small boats to Rwanda will be subject to challenge in both the Lords and the courts. It is hard to see how the policy gets through the upper house, where the Tories do not have a majority. But, I suspect, that a fight with peers over the policy is regarded by many in government circles as a feature not a bug of this policy. Even if the policy does get through the Lords in the end, there will almost certainly be legal challenges to it; Johnson referred to the likelihood of this in his speech this morning. Again, I suspect that there will be Tories who privately welcome this—remember how well the government’s defeat over prorogation played for Johnson in 2019.

William Moore

Cross to bear

40 min listen

In this week’s episode: How are the people of both Russia and Ukraine processing the war? Our Russia correspondent Owen Matthews writes in this week’s Spectator that he has been stunned at how easily some of his Russian friends have accepted the Kremlin’s propaganda. He joins the podcast to explain why he thinks this is, followed by journalist and author of This Is Not Propaganda, Peter Pomerantsev, who has travelled to Kyiv to celebrate the festival of Passover. (00:48) Also this week: Is Rishi Sunak politically incompetent? Until recently Rishi Sunak was a favourite to succeed Boris Johnson, but this week his popularity plummeted to new lows.

Patrick O’Flynn

The Rwanda plan could save Boris

If you want to see what explosive growth looks like then I invite you to eschew all the old Covid charts and instead make your own graph plotting the number of Channel-hopping migrants year on year. In 2018 there were 299, in 2019 there were 1,843, in 2020 there were 8,466 and in 2021 there were 28,527. So far in 2022 arrivals are running at easily more than twice last year’s month-by-month tally, meaning we are heading for 60,000+ by the end of the year. Extrapolating the trend to the general election year of 2024 takes us into the ballpark of 250,000 – roughly equivalent to the entire population of Wolverhampton or Portsmouth.

The Spectator

To survive, Boris Johnson must do more than pose as a war leader

Attending an impromptu birthday party in the office is not the most heinous of crimes, and of course Britain’s fixation on Downing Street’s breaches of lockdown rules looks rather perverse against the crimes being committed by Vladimir Putin’s troops in Ukraine. But there is little point in the Prime Minister or any member of his government attempting to argue that point. It is very clear that there is considerable anger among the British public that a government which imposed highly prescriptive Covid rules failed to live by the letter of those rules itself.

The Spectator

The French election should be a warning for Boris

In just over a week’s time, Emmanuel Macron will most likely win a second term. He has the opponent he wants in Marine Le Pen, whom he believes will be too unpalatable for the French people. He hopes voters will fear that, unlike in 2017, she has a reasonable chance of victory – polls show just a few percentage points between the two candidates – and be persuaded to vote for him instead. If Macron’s strategy succeeds and he returns to power, it may seem as if nothing has changed in French, and indeed European, politics. But even if Macron sees off a populist challenger for the second time, a strong showing by Le Pen threatens to destabilise his administration. He may not keep his majority in the parliamentary elections.

Katy Balls

The new plan to stop Channel migrants

How best to move attention away from the Prime Minister receiving a fine over partygate? An eye-catching government announcement to fly asylum seekers 4,500 miles to Rwanda. This is what Boris Johnson is due to announce in a speech this morning as part of a government crackdown on unauthorised migrants. Fines aside, this has been in the government grid all week – though the news will still have come as a surprise to the government's new refugees minister who said there was no possibility of it happening just eight days ago.

Steerpike

Home Office minister blindsided by Rwanda

The issue of Channel migrant crossings has been rumbling on for several years. But now, hundreds of small boats and thousands of asylum-seekers later, the Home Office claims to have the solution at last: send them to Rwanda. Home Secretary Priti Patel is in the African nation to sign a deal for a £120 million trial involving mostly single men arriving in Britain via crossings.  Under the proposal, Rwanda would take responsibility for them, put them through an asylum process, and at the end of that process, if they are successful, they will have long-term accommodation in Rwanda.

Katy Balls

Rishi Sunak’s political naivety

Before the war in Ukraine, ministers and Tory MPs believed a fixed penalty notice for the Prime Minister would mean the end of Boris Johnson. It would result in enough no-confidence letters from Tory MPs to trigger a leadership contest which would run into the summer. There would be a new Prime Minister in time for the party conference in the autumn. But now the Prime Minister has been told he will be fined by Scotland Yard for attending parties during lockdown, no one is quite so sure. The reason? The circumstances around Johnson are changing. Until now, stories about lockdown parties in No. 10 had been overshadowed by the Ukrainian crisis. Johnson has also impressed MPs and the party membership with his response.

Douglas Murray

I feel sorry for Rishi Sunak

Perhaps I should stress from the get-go that I do not know Rishi Sunak. So far as I know, we’ve only met once, some years ago when he was working at the think-tank Policy Exchange. He showed me to my seat when I arrived late for an event. It is one of those things you must get used to in this life – that the person you last saw helping you into a folding chair will just a few years later be Chancellor of the Exchequer. When I first noticed this tendency, a wise older friend cautioned me against feeling concern about it. Best to accept it as part of life’s great dance. In fact, my friend stressed, you shouldn’t even worry about it when some of the dimmest people you’ve met (not that Sunak fits that bill) arrive into the great offices of state.

Aidan Hartley

Why so many African leaders support Putin

The Russian atrocities against civilians in Ukraine have been met with silence from Dar es Salaam, Harare and Juba. Not a word from Addis Ababa, Maputo or Khartoum. On Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the Ugandan President’s son, lieutenant general Muhoozi Kainerugaba, is clear: ‘Putin is absolutely right!’ Nearly half of Africa’s 54 nations refused to vote against Russia at the United Nations last month. Not only African governments but multitudes of Africans, even in countries that opposed Russia, such as Kenya, enthusiastically support Vladimir Putin. And the curious thing is that it’s the very countries that have historically received the most western aid that seem most in favour of him. In fact, they support him because he is the West’s enemy.

Stephen Daisley

Who governs Britain? Not ministers, it seems

Who governs Britain? It’s a dangerous question, as Ted Heath learned half a century ago. But while he was concerned with untrammelled unions, ministers today must contend with another unelected cadre calling the shots. The difference is that now, like in so many horror movies, the calls are coming from inside the house.  The Telegraph reports that the Ministry of Justice has appointed a ‘transgender employee support officer’. That in itself is hardly surprising. What does stand out is the reason for the appointment.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Poll: Rishi should quit as Chancellor

It's been a pretty awful week for Rishi Sunak. In the space of seven days, his wife was revealed to be a non-domiciled resident, average wages fell by the highest sum since 2013, he admitted having a US Green Card until last year and UK GDP grew by just 0.1 per cent. Oh, and there was the small matter of the Metropolitan police fining him for a breach of lockdown laws. In Westminster, the impact of all that on his political capital is still sinking in. But in the country, it seems that the mind of the public is pretty clear: Rishi's star is on the wane.  For every voter who wants Sunak to stay as a Chancellor, two more want him to go.

Lord Wolfson

Why I resigned over partygate

This is an edited version of Lord Wolfson's resignation letter, following the Met's decision to fine Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak over Downing Street parties which broke Covid restrictions in 2020. Dear Prime Minister, Everyone in a state, and indeed the state itself, is subject to the law It was a great honour to be invited to join your government as a justice minister. In my maiden speech, I twice used the phrase 'justice and the rule of law'. Justice may often be a matter of courts and procedure, but the rule of law is something else – a constitutional principle which, at its root, means that everyone in a state, and indeed the state itself, is subject to the law.

James Forsyth

The first ministerial resignation over partygate – could more follow?

We have just had the first ministerial resignation over partygate. David Wolfson, the justice minister in the Lords, has quit over the matter saying that he doesn’t believe that continuing to serve is inconsistent with his ‘ministerial and professional obligation to uphold the rule of law’. Wolfson, who was a highly successful QC before becoming a peer and a minister in 2020, writes: I regret that recent disclosures lead to the inevitable conclusion that there was repeated rule-breaking, and breaches of the criminal law in Downing Street.

Steerpike

Chris Mason named BBC political editor

At last, the longest running West End drama since The Mousetrap has come to a close. Dark horse candidate Chris Mason was this afternoon named as the BBC's new political editor to take over from Laura Kuenssberg after a rollercoaster recruitment ride lasting nearly four months. Mason had originally ruled himself out of the running, saying he was content in his current role as host of the Beeb's flagship radio show Any Questions? But it seems that Yorkshireman couldn't resist the lure of the top job in British political journalism. For BBC executives, the news that someone – anyone – is willing to fill Laura K's shoes will come as a relief after first Vicki Young and then Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel all ruled themselves out of the running.

Katy Balls

Has Boris got away with it?

14 min listen

After the news of the fixed penalty notices, Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie Johnson and Rishi Sunak paid their fines and issued a public apology. For Boris, the reaction has been surprisingly positive compared to the beginning of the year. The majority of cabinet ministers have come out in support of the Prime Minister, but there are still some voices of discontent. Nigel Mills was the first Tory MP to announce he no longer has faith in the Prime Minister and thinks he should resign, who will be next?

Stephen Daisley

Douglas Ross has become Boris Johnson’s human shield

If Boris Johnson has a superpower, it is the ability to make others pay the price for his wrongdoing. Today the whipping boy is Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, though it must be said Ross walked clear-eyed into the path of the scourge. That’s another of the Prime Minister’s skills: he can convince people that it would be in everyone’s interest if they maximised their exposure to political risk so that he may minimise his. In the run-up to the Iraq War, a bunch of peace-mongering oddballs flew to Baghdad to offer themselves as human shields and Tories who volunteer to take flak for Boris give off much the same energy.

Matthew Lynn

Inflation is the real lockdown scandal

No. 10 was an endless series of parties. The Chancellor was more interested in socializing than sorting out the economy. And the Prime Minister was imposing rules on everyone else that he cavalierly ignored himself. It remains to be seen whether Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak can survive the fines handed out for breaking the lockdown rules and the public anger over their behaviour. And yet, in reality, there is a far larger lockdown scandal and one that will cause far more lasting political damage: inflation. The ‘partygate’ scandal, and its fallout, has distracted attention from yet another sobering set of inflation statistics. Today we learned that prices are now rising at an annual rate of 7 per cent, up from 6.2 per cent last month.