Rishi sunak

With the likelihood of a deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol fading this week, a new issue has emerged to enrage the Tory right: fresh plans to cut tackle the asylum backlog. Asylum seekers will no longer be subjected to face-to-face interviews, with more than 12,000 migrants from five countries having their claims assessed on paper instead. These five countries – Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Eritrea and Yemen – have the highest asylum success rate. Asylum seekers will have 20 days to fill in and return the fast-track official forms. Officials expect 95 per cent of applicants to be given leave to remain for at least five years, although those who fail

Rishi Sunak is once again facing an unhelpful intervention from one of his predecessors. As the Prime Minister attempts to finalise a deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol – spending the past few days meeting both with the DUP and the president of the European Commission – Boris Johnson has issued a warning. A source close to Johnson told the Sunday Telegraph that ditching the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in favour of a new Brexit deal would be a ‘great mistake’. Speaking this morning on the BBC, government minister Penny Mordaunt sought to downplay the comment – describing it as ‘not an entirely unhelpful intervention’. Some MPs supportive of Sunak

Britons were keen to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. A month into the war, more than half thought we hadn’t gone far enough. That was after the government had frozen the assets of Russia’s banks, banned the Russian airline Aeroflot from landing in Britain, and sanctioned Putin and his cabinet. Voters wanted more sanctions, even if it hurt the economy. Now, though, it seems the public isn’t so sure. Only a quarter of Britons think we should give Ukraine more support, according to a YouGov poll this month. We’ve given it tanks. Should we now send jets? Democratic governments often find it hard to keep up support for war, especially when it entails sacrifices. But history shows

Rishi Sunak and Michelle Donelan will this afternoon bow to the inevitable and accept rebel changes to the Online Safety Bill. They are doing so after it became obvious that the government was going to lose a vote on the legislation, due to have its remaining stages in the Commons later today. The Online Safety Bill has already been significantly changed in order to get past Tory MPs Tory backbenchers Bill Cash and Miriam Cates have said they won’t be pressing their amendment to a vote after reaching an agreement with ministers. Their proposals, which had the support of at least 50 Conservative MPs, as well as the backing of

There has been excited chatter in recent days that a breakthrough on the Northern Ireland Protocol could be imminent. Last week, the UK government and Brussels agreed a new technical arrangement on sharing trade data, which was heralded as a ‘new basis’ for talks, following a meeting between EU chief negotiator Maros Sefcovic, and James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary. Since then, there has been speculation that the two sides could enter the ‘tunnel’ – the intensive end stage of negotiations – as soon as this week. There is a desire on both sides to find an agreement on changes to the Protocol could ahead of the 25th anniversary of the

Rishi Sunak has a rebel problem: we already know that. He’s got factions of Tory MPs prepared to vote against the government on a range of issues, and the Prime Minister knows that on each issue, there are different rebels, rather than just one easy-to-identify awkward squad. Even when he is, as Katy explains in the magazine this week, focusing on issues that unite the party rather than reforms that will provoke some rebels such as planning reform, he still has trouble on his hands.  The current trouble comes in the form of the Online Safety Bill, which has a phalanx of Conservatives prepared to vote against their party whip

Rishi Sunak – The NHS ‘is under pressure’ Laura Kuenssberg kicked off her first show of the new year with an interview with the Prime Minister, who now has a maximum of just two years to turn his party’s ailing poll numbers around. The National Health Service has always posed its fair share of political problems, but with the system now suffering from industrial action, alongside what some are calling a ‘twindemic’ of Covid and flu cases, Kuenssberg asked Rishi Sunak if the NHS was in crisis: My healthcare arrangements are ‘a distraction’ Kuenssberg inquired as to whether Sunak used the NHS himself. Sunak was not comfortable being as frank

It’s a new year but Lord Cruddas is not giving up an old causes. The onetime milkman turned billionaire led the campaign last summer to put Boris Johnson back on the ballot after the latter was forced out of No. 10. After that failed, Cruddas suggested he would stop funding the Conservatives unless it rewrote its constitution to prevent another PM being toppled. In October, he unsuccessfully urged Johnson’s return in the brief contest that followed Liz Truss’s downfall. And now the former Tory treasurer is ploughing his considerable energies into a new initiative: the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO). The grassroots group is supporting a raft of measures to give

Our naturally centrist and establishment-minded Conservative prime minister trails Labour badly in the polls even though the electorate is at best lukewarm about the leader of the opposition. Former Tory voters are drifting away, outraged about a perceived abandonment of sound Conservative principles and European interference in the immigration system. Economic austerity may have convinced financial markets that the PM is serious about rebuilding the battered public finances, but the tax rises and spending restraint involved are making popularity a stranger to him. With the Commons in Christmas recess, a threat is growing on the Conservative right flank which will make the next election impossible to win unless it is

As Home Secretary Suella Braverman struggles to keep her job in the face of vicious attacks from the official opposition, her fate will be the first big political test for new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.  If Sunak bows to the almost hysterical shrieks for Braverman’s scalp she will be the fourth big beast brought down by a combined Labour and media assault – aided by a handful of usefully idiotic backbench Tory MPs only too willing to publicly undermine the government – since the Tory election victory in 2019. Already Labour MPs such as Chris Bryant have called on the Home Secretary to resign, while Keir Starmer has said Sunak should sack Braverman

During the summer leadership race between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, Sunak’s team were braced for a bloodbath if he won. It would have required a major polling error and gone down as one of the biggest political upsets in recent years. ‘If we win, we win by 1 per cent,’ was how one close ally of Sunak put it at the time. If this had played out, it would have come as a nasty surprise to many in the Tory party. With wounds still raw from Boris Johnson’s departure, the deposed former PM’s loyalists would have quickly gone on the offensive – accusing Sunak of being a traitor for