British Politics

Foreign secretary Dominic Raab is isolating after coming into contact with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus. Raab will work remotely during 14 days of isolation after being told of a recent close contact’s positive test on Thursday, a spokesman for the cabinet minister said. It follows Brandon Lewis last week having to self-isolate […]

Nicola Sturgeon is planning to ignore Westminster’s veto on holding a second independence referendum, a leaked party memo has suggested. The National is reporting that SNP MPs Angus MacNeil and Chris McEleny will have their motion debate alternative legal routes to independence during this year’s party conference approved. Dubbed “Plan B”, the motion suggests Holyrood should take the UK government […]

Robert Buckland has blamed the public for a second national lockdown after suggesting a lack of ‘compliance’ was the reason for harsher coronavirus measures. The justice secretary said a “tiny group of people” had been breaking Covid-19 regulations and that there was a “huge challenge” to get the public to follow the rules this time around. Speaking with the BBC, Buckland: “Sadly, it’s been […]

Andrew Neil has said he is enjoying his “new-found freedom” since leaving the BBC and used his final appearance on the news channel to criticise the SNP. Neil made the most of his presence on Politics Live to blast the SNP on the issue of poverty in Scotland. The now ex-BBC broadcaster claimed that people being “left behind” in parts […]

The prime minister will host a new coronavirus briefing as England entered a national lockdown for a second time. NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens will join the Downing Street event at 5pm on Thursday. It is unlikely that any new measures will be announced, but it follows chancellor Rishi Sunak revealing that furlough has […]

MITCH BENN on why he would almost be as bad as Boris Johnson. There’s a very useful expression which succinctly encapsulates the difference between the concepts of knowledge and wisdom. As is sometimes the case with such modern aphorisms, I’ve heard a few different versions of it, and I’m not sure with whom the phrase […]

The Test and Trace system has reached the lowest ever proportion of contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19 in England, a day after Boris Johnson said it had achieved a “remarkable feat”. Four in 10 close contacts of people who tested positive are still not being reached by the system, at the same […]

Labour has long been seen as a party of factions, while the Tories just had ‘tendencies’. But, asks TIM BALE, are the Conservatives now also splintering?  ‘You’re joking. Not another one!’ – not just Brenda from Bristol in the spring of 2017, reacting to Theresa May calling a snap election, but also Tim Bale (whose […]

In a deeply personal essay, writer PETER GUMBEL explains how the waning of national identities, combined with Brexit, has led him to reassess his own sense of who he is. November 9 is a day heavy with significance for my family: on that date in 1938, my maternal grandfather was arrested in his German hometown […]

Rory Stewart has called Boris Johnson the “most accomplished liar in public life” in a personal swipe against the prime minister in an article in the Times Literary Supplement. Stewart, who was of 21 rebel Tory MPs fired for voted against Johnson’s Brexit agenda last year, accused Johnson of being an opportunist who created the “historical forces” […]

STEVE ANGLESEY on how it doesn’t matter if Trump is in The White House in January as the intolerance, rage and loathing he has boiled up will remain. Everyone was surprised but them. As America’s election headed to VAR with the pollsters having got it wrong again, members of a British pro-Trump group on Facebook had […]

While all countries are grappling with coronavirus, France is also facing another profound crisis. JASON WALSH reports As France hunkers down for its latest coronavirus confinement, or lockdown – announced last week by Emmanuel Macron – the country knows it is heading into a period of unease, angst, economic devastation and death. And yet the […]

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL on how the UK government shows contempt of near Trumpian levels. Needless to say, the government’s fabled miscommunications team got itself into all sorts of muddles over its reaction to the Sunday Times’ revelation that the chair of the UK’s ‘vaccine task force’ briefed American venture capitalists on details of which projects the government was […]

Suella Braverman has defended Priti Patel’s attack on “activist lawyers” after reports they have faced physical and verbal attacks following criticism from the government. The attorney general was questioned by MPs about a Home Office video which accused them of epresenting migrants of trying to disrupt the asylum system. Labour’s Andy Slaughter also told the Commons: […]

A handful of Tory MPs have defied public opinion and their own party to vote against Boris Johnson’s lockdown plans. The prime minister’s bill sailed through the Commons by 516 to 39 in a vote on Wednesday evening. Under the legislation, non-essential shops will be forced to close and social gatherings and non-essential travel banned from Thursday […]

There was no shortage of critics for Rishi Sunak’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme when it became clear it may have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus. Still, the chancellor’s wife Akshata had good reason to applaud what he was trying to do. Mandrake can disclose that she was among the founder shareholders […]

MICHAEL WHITE on the growing twin nightmares of authoritarianism and incompetence in the week arch-opportunist Nigel Farage returns to frontline politics. Whatever the final outcome it was clear within hours of the polls closing that the result of the US election has not been the decisive repudiation of the Trump Era for which progressive opinion […]

CATHRIN SCHAER on the latest European country coming to terms with an atrocity. This week’s terror attack in Vienna was the first in the Austrian capital since 1981, when Palestinian gunmen stormed its main synagogue and killed two people. Monday evening’s atrocity was also the most murderous, resulting in four deaths and more than a […]

A Brexiteer has fumed about the possibility of Joe Biden entering the White House, claiming the loss of Donald Trump will hit the UK, and that any economic damage will be the fault of Remainers. Express commentator Paul Baldwin sparked anger from pro-EU campaigners after he said it was the “rabble of Remainer cohorts” who would […]

One of Boris Johnson’s ministers was left red-faced after he failed to say how many people had received a coronavirus test on Wednesday during an appearance on BBC Breakfast. Buckland, the minister for justice, suggested over quarter of a million people had been tested on Wednesday but had to quickly retract that statement when he […]

LIZ GERARD is second to no one in her criticisms of Boris Johnson. Yet for all his manifest failings, she cannot help feel some sympathy for his current predicament. But when anger starts turning to pity, how long can a prime minister last? At what point does anger turn to pity? Do we rediscover our essential […]

Boris Johnson’s “toxic” nature is likely to put a strain on a Joe Biden presidency, a prominent Democrat adviser has warned. Max Bergmann, a senior fellow with the Centre for American Progress, told the Times that Johnson’s credibility has fallen across the pond as a result of his Brexit support, and the administration could turn […]

Joe Biden was just one battleground state away from securing enough electoral college votes to achieve what he called a ‘victory for the American people’ early on Thursday, as Donald Trump pursued legal avenues to the White House. After securing victories in Wisconsin and Michigan, the Democrat had 264 electoral college votes and needed to […]

MPs have for a second time overturned measures from peers aimed at protecting UK food standards in future trade deals. The House of Commons voted 331 to 272, majority 59, to disagree with a House of Lords amendment to the Agriculture Bill which sought to ensure imported foodstuffs met equivalent benchmarks to those followed by […]

MPs have for a second time overturned measures from peers aimed at protecting UK food standards in future trade deals. The House of Commons voted 331 to 272, majority 59, to disagree with a House of Lords amendment to the Agriculture Bill which sought to ensure imported foodstuffs met equivalent benchmarks to those followed by […]

Theresa May accused Boris Johnson of choosing data to fit his coronavirus policies, as she insisted the government must reveal the economic cost of lockdown. The Conservative former prime minister tore into predictions said to have informed her successor’s decision to impose a second national lockdown in England, which will start on Thursday and last […]

A Brexiteer has been met with criticism for saying he will be voting against a second lockdown in the House of Commons. Peter Bone said that the government’s scientific and medical advisers had provided “dubious modelling”. There are lies, damned lies & then there are the likes of @PeterBoneUK, whose formal education clearly did not […]

The US embassy in Côte d’Ivoire has called on leaders to respect the “democratic process” after president Alassane Ouattara won a controversial third term. The Ivorian leader took 94% of the vote and up to 99% in some strongholds after the opposition boycotted the election which saw a 54% turn-out. In an ironic turn of events, the […]