Politics explained

If Keir Starmer wanted to prove he wasn’t dull, that he was an emotional man with the power to move others, then telling his life story to Piers Morgan was a great success. The story of the life and, most poignantly, the death of his parents almost brought a tear to his eye, and that of the viewer, and possibly even to Morgan. On the other hand, the fairly friendly exchanges between the two men also confirmed what must be obvious to anyone who has had the slightest acquaintance with Starmer, which is that he is a clever, cautious lawyer. When Morgan, a bit clumsily, tried to put words into the mouth of his “witness” by suggesting that he’d taken drugs at university but not enjoyed them, Sir Keir Starmer QC, former director of public prosecutions, was well able to dodge it. “We had a good time at university” was the formula of choice. It must have been, for Morgan if not the audience, a bit of a let down.Do back stories matter? Sometimes. Having a solid working class, trade-union background is a pretty substantial asset if you want to be elected deputy leader of the Labour Party, as Angela Rayner and John Prescott showed to their advantage. It doesn’t work so well for the leadership itself, which tends to go solidly to the lower middle, middle and upper middle class types, covering every leader from Attlee and Gaitskell through to Tony Blair and Jeremy Corbyn. Only Neil Kinnock serves as the exception, son of a coal miner and a nurse. Starmer is very much in that line of middle-class Labour leaders. His father was a highly skilled toolmaker, though as Starmer pointed out, he was rather looked down upon because he worked on the factory floor. Starmer didn’t drag himself up from crushing poverty, and doesn’t pretend to, and has obviously done well for himself and made his parents extremely proud. However, rising up through the ranks of the law just doesn’t quite have the same romantic appeal as a start in life as a care worker (Rayner) or a merchant seaman (Prescott). More

It would be amusing to suppose that there was a chorus of liberal voices in Budapest objecting to their prime minister, admittedly a bit of a populist himself, collaborating so openly with Boris Johnson, someone who has voiced extremist views on Muslims, is militantly anti-European, and has been responsible for much democratic backsliding in his time in power, attempting to suspend parliament, limit the freedom of the broadcast media and the courts. And yet, so far as can be judged, Viktor Orban’s populist summit with Johnson seems to have attracted little of the outrage that it has ignited in London. Less amusingly, Orban’s apparent acquiescence, and worse, in an upsurge of antisemitism in Hungary seems to be no barrier to a warm welcome in Downing Street. It is no coincidence that one of the main hate figures for conspiracy theorists is the Hungarian Jewish emigre George Soros. Johnson, who is certainly no antisemite, nonetheless seems happy to pursue his cynical, dangerous liaison with Europe’s most successful authoritarian, verging on totalitarian, leader, aside from Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus.They are an odd couple, and their meeting makes one wonder who’s using who. Orban is on something of a charm offensive, touring European capitals to make himself look important and statesmanlike rather than a chancer, ahead of elections next year. Orban will also enjoy annoying the EU’s leadership, which has clashed with him many times over human rights abuses and Hungary’s adamant refusal to take its share of migrants seeking refuge in the EU. Hungary habitually vetoes and weakens EU common foreign policy positions, most recently on Israel and Palestine. His Fidesz party has just been thrown out of the European Conservative/Christian Democrat group in the European Parliament, and he is looking for allies against President Macron and Chancellor Merkel, who find Orban so difficult to deal with. Recently Hungary has taken to diluting EU criticism on China, over human rights abuses in Hong Kong for example, something Johnson will probably have to raise at their meeting. Given the vast industrial and economic advantages Hungary derives from the EU there is no chance that Orban would try and pull Hungary of the EU; but with allies in the Visegrad group of Central European states, especially Poland, he seems very happy to take as much, and give as little, to the EU as possible. With the British gone, Hungary is the leader of the EU’s awkward squad. Despite setbacks for the likes of Marine le Pen and the far right in Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany, the wave of nationalistic protest has not subsided completely. More

What a difference a day makes. By the end of Dominic Cummings’s evidence session with MPs it was a wonder that Matt Hancock didn’t just resign and turn himself into the nearest police station. It was devastating stuff. And yet, 24 little hours later, Hancock was back at the Downing Street podium, untroubled by the fuss, behaving, apparently, as though nothing had happened. Appropriately for a man in charge of the health service, it was the biggest comeback since Lazarus.How so?First, he is fortunate in having Dominic Cummings for an enemy. True, Cummings can muster evidence, deploy an argument and pursue it with determination; but on the other hand, “Dom” is pretty much still hated by the public and, more to the point, much of the Conservative party, who cannot easily forgive or forget the damage he has inflicted on their government and party. Cummings is far from being rehabilitated, and can easily be portrayed as an unreliable witness, a bitter and twisted figure who is mad, bad and dangerous to know. More

Government ministers and their top officials have been nervously wondering for several weeks where exactly the most damaging “Dom bombs” were going to fall.It’s now clear that Dominic Cummings had Matt Hancock in his sights – singling out the health secretary for heavy and repeated bombardment during Wednesday’s testimony to the joint inquiry of MPs examining the government’s response to the pandemic.Boris Johnson’s former senior adviser accused Hancock of “criminal, disgraceful behaviour” by interfering with the fledgling test and trace system and claimed that the minister fell “disastrously below” the standards expected during a public health crisis. More

Like an FA Cup Final or a WBA title fight, Westminster is greatly looking forward to Dominic Cummings’s appearance at the Health and Social Care Committee. Even though the rest of the country might have heard more than enough from the PM’s former chief adviser, what he says about what various senior figures did – and did not – as the Covid crisis mounted last year will make a difference to careers and reputations. He also happens to be great theatre, as his appearance in the sunny garden of Downing Street one year ago demonstrated, and as his high profile departure from No 10 in the shadows last year confirmed.So who might the losers and winners be?Losers More

Priti Patel is the sort of determined no-nonsense figure who tends to ruffle feathers, to say the least. As with recent accusations of bullying and perceptions of her behaviour, for which she apologised (sort of), her statements on immigration are usually controversial if not divisive, and if not deliberately provocative. Sometimes, she says, her own outlook and the attacks she attracts are influenced by her own background as the daughter of an Asian family expelled like so many by President Amin of Uganda in 1972. She gives no quarter. She takes great comfort from the 2016 Brexit referendum and the 2019 general election as her mandate to implement what she takes to be the people’s attitude towards migration. That doesn’t mean that everything that emanates from her Home Office is automatically wrong-headed or impractical. Brexit, the loss of security for Hong Kong citizens, and the flow of migrants making their way across the English Channel in flimsy dinghies mean that immigration policy has to change. The New Plan for Immigration she has unveiled seems enough to keep even her substantial tram of civil servants occupied for some years. She has radical proposals, but almost concealed beneath the hardline rhetoric about life sentences for people smugglers, Patel has summarily scrapped the cornerstone of Conservative immigration policy for the past decade – the target, perhaps casually arrived at, to limit migration to the UK to the “tens of thousands”. She has buried it. More

The government this week unveiled major reforms to the way Britain’s railways will be run. There’s no doubt that these are significant changes and represent the biggest change to the industry’s structure since privatisation in the 1990s.Some commentators have suggested that the railways are effectively being renationalised, but this isn’t really correct. To understand why, let’s unpack the reforms.Before the pandemic, railways were operated by private franchise holders. Private companies bid for and won contracts to operate a certain franchise for a number of years, in a competition run by the Department for Transport (DfT). More

Although somewhat more optimistic at Prime Minister’s Questions about the government’s Covid roadmap, in recent days Boris Johnson has been a striking a cautious tone about the next significant date, 21 June. This is the moment when, according to the official roadmap guidance, “the government hopes to be in a position to remove all legal limits on social contact”. Specifically: “We hope to reopen remaining premises, including nightclubs, and ease the restrictions on large events and performances that apply in Step 3. This will be subject to the results of a scientific Events Research Programme to test the outcome of certain pilot events through the spring and summer, where we will trial the use of testing and other techniques to cut the risk of infection. The same Events Research Programme will guide decisions on whether all limits can be removed on weddings and other life events.”Much obviously depends on how effective the vaccine programme will be against the spreading Indian variant of the coronavirus, which is becoming more prevalent. Last Friday the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, gave this assessment of the danger: “There is now confidence … that this variant is more transmissible than B.1.1.7 (Kent variant), now the question in practical terms over the next two to three weeks is is this somewhat more transmissible than B.1.1.7 or is this a lot more transmissible and that will have implications for the long-term prospects of this epidemic in the UK and indeed the pandemic internationally?”Now, the prime minister says that there is “increasing confidence” about the vaccines’ ability to fight the virus, and to prevent severe illness in individuals. The evidence will need to be sifted carefully in the coming days. It will come from the piloted mass outside events; from an analysis of the general relaxation measures already taken; about the effects of more international travel; about trends in infection, hospitalisation and deaths; the geographical spread from the hot spots; the efficacy of the vaccines for Indians and the wider community; and a more precise idea about the specific characteristics of the Indian virus. More