Politics explained

If there is one measure in the Queen’s Speech that appears to be a more or less naked attempt at suppression of the Labour vote, it is the proposal for compulsory voter ID at polling stations. The many critics of the idea, again mostly on the opposition benches, argue it is as unnecessary as it is undemocratic. They note that in recent years there has been only one conviction for this particular type of election fraud, “personation”, as impersonation is known in this context. The Electoral Commission noted with some satisfaction in a 2014 review that there is “no evidence to suggest that there have been widespread, systematic attempts to undermine or interfere with recent elections through electoral fraud”. In the course of their discussions with election officials in town halls, the police and others, the Electoral Commission concluded this: “Electoral fraud is not widespread, and reports of specific fraud are focused on specific places in England in a few local authority areas”. Even in those cases, the type of fraud tended to be “harvesting” of postal votes by campaigners, rather than the very rare examples of personation. Outside Northern Ireland, where the old slogan was “vote early, vote often”, personation has never been an issue in UK elections. The problem of dishonesty, one might add, is more likely to lie with those who get elected rather than the electorate, given what we know about the MPs’ expenses scandal and various instances of hypocrisy and worse perpetrated by serving ministers. More

After his bruising first encounter with the voters and a botched first reshuffle, there are growing doubts inside Labour that Keir Starmer can turn the party’s prospects around.With all eyes on him, Sir Keir needs to put in a strong performance in the Commons on Tuesday when he responds to the Queen’s Speech. In fact, Sir Keir has done well in his recent weekly jousts with Boris Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions. The big test for the former director of public prosecutions is not persuading the Commons judges, but the jury of public opinion.Sir Keir needs to explain urgently what he and his party stand for, so he will launch a policy review. But when the-then Labour leader Neil Kinnock did that in the 1980s, it took two years. Sir Keir doesn’t have that much time. More

It seems in bad taste to even contemplate such an idea, given the grievous loss of life, almost including his own, but it would seem that the Covid pandemic has – in purely political terms – served Boris Johnson well. While no doubt longer-term trends, long predating Covid-19, including the continuing aftershocks of Brexit, helped the Conservatives in the latest round of elections, it is still true that the Covid crisis was a special factor, and a lucky one for the PM.Imagine, for example, if many of the elections postponed from last year had somehow been held then, or, indeed, after Dominic Cummings affair. At that point, the government looked incompetent, hypocritical and worse, and Keir Starmer was starting to move steadily ahead of the prime minister in the polls. At least in some areas, there would have been an immediate protest vote, a gesture of no confidence in the government. Now, though, Johnson can take full advantage of the vaccine rollout, the relaxation of lockdown and a general feel-better factor.Second, the crisis allowed him to dismiss Labour attacks on “sleaze” and the SNP campaign for a second independence referendum as somehow trivial or irrelevant to the big task of dealing with Covid and returning life to normal. Again, this is not an argument that could have made by Tories with so much confidence last year, when they seemed to be anything but on top of things. More

To adapt a phrase, it would seem that some in the Labour Party believe that Keir Starmer’s difficulty is the left’s opportunity. While a Corbynite resurrection is unlikely, a poor election showing in Hartlepool and across the country – by what you might term Starmerite Labour – contains its own silvery-red lining. The reports are that the left – represented in parliament by the likes of Jon Trickett, Ian Lavery and Richard Burgon in the Campaign Group – is giving Starmer another year to make progress or make way for someone else. Already Burgon has urged the leader to include a “big” figure from the left in the shadow cabinet (whoever could he mean?), and there have been various coded threats about the way Starmer has been running things. Key concerns include the reversal of a Corbyn-era pledge to hike corporation tax (with Covid as the reason/cover); a suspicion that Starmer and Jonathan Ashworth’s “constructive criticism” over Covid leaves Labour looking weak and pointless; frustration at internal party disputes; and resentment about the way the drive to eradicate antisemitism has been handled, which is to say with sincerity and commitment. After all, the failure of Jeremy Corbyn to unconditionally welcome the Equality and Human Rights Commission report into Labour’s antisemitism problem has led to the former leader now sitting as an independent MP. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the once future leader, also left the front bench after an argument with the leader around antisemitism. More

Generally, it stands to reason that the larger you are, the more chance you will have of securing an advantageous trade deal. This certainly seems to be holding true in the case of the UK and the (rather larger) EU’s attempts to secure closer economic relationships with the United States and with the emerging global industrial superpowers of India and China. Britain finds it fairly easy to adapt existing EU deals with the likes of Kenya or Jordan, and the talks with New Zealand seem to be going well. But, with respect, they are not going to fuel the British economy as it loses its old advantages in continental Europe. Britain needs to hitch itself to bigger, more dynamic powerhouses. It is stumbling.So far the EU is well ahead of the UK in the race for China, partly for political reasons. With Joe Biden pursuing much the same protectionist agenda as his predecessor – his vast $1.9 trillion stimulus is firmly focused on American jobs – neither the British nor the Europeans are likely to make much headway. The most “available” prize is thus India. Here, the British are a few months behind. EU negotiators will be at work by the end of the week; the UK side will have to wait their turn in the autumn. No surprise, that, given that the EU market is around 10 times as large as the British, but a sobering corrective to the buccaneering dreams of “Global Britain” some still seem to cling to.Of course the British trade secretary, Liz Truss, is proud of securing some £1bn of Indian investment and the prospect of some 6,000 jobs being created (according to government claims) in the next year or so. Yet two hypothetical, but important questions, arise: how much of that investment would have materialised if Ms Truss and her department didn’t exist; and how much would have been precluded or delayed if the UK were still part of the EU, with all of its negotiating heft? It is at least possible that Indian companies, like the Japanese before them, would have preferred to have Britain as a base inside the EU single market, and would have invested more if that was still the case. More

Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, was trapped yesterday by his demand that Nicola Sturgeon should resign as first minister if she is found to have broken the Scottish government’s ministerial code. Did this mean he thought Boris Johnson should resign if he broke the UK ministerial code? “Of course,” Ross told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday.So how likely is it that the prime minister will be found to have broken the code? That depends on two things: what the code says and who decides whether Johnson has contravened it.Two parts of the code might be relevant. Paragraph 1.3c says: “It is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the prime minister.” More

Nicola Sturgeon can at least be given credit for admitting that, for an independent Scotland, there will be a border with the rest of the UK and that it might not be as it exists today: invisible apart from the “Welcome to Scotland” signs on the motorway.As first minister and leader of the Scottish National Party she could hardly do other than recognise the obvious, and she has: “This is the frankness that certain sections of the media will seek to stir up trouble on – I am not denying that we would need to confront and resolve the issues of being in the European Union for the border between Scotland and England.”The specifics of the border was not much of an issue in the 2014 referendum, because the assumption then (and one reason why independence was rejected) was that either the whole of the UK or Scotland independently would all be part of the EU single market and customs union, and thus trade in goods and service could continue unimpeded (though possible changes to the currency and other changes would complicate matters). More

The new post-Covid geopolitical normal will feature a much weaker European Union than could ever have been foreseen before the crisis. Brexit, damaging to all concerned as it has undoubtedly proved, looks a mere distraction set against the impact of the coronavirus. The public health test-and-trace response, and death rates, in some EU member states, notably Germany, have been enviable, and many others have scored successes of their own, not least Belgium and the Netherlands, such important centres for vaccine production. Yet throughout the year of turmoil, the European Union’s efforts to coordinate national responses have been either ineffective or downright disastrous. From the get go, when individual countries rushed to close borders and ban exports of protective equipment, ventilators and treatments, the authorities in Brussels have been bystanders. When hard-pressed nations such as Italy sought financial assistance, they were scorned by Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. She was chosen to run the EU, it is rumoured, because Paris and Berlin favoured a weaker style of leadership in Brussels. They should be more careful what they wish for. Friends of the EU should take no pleasure in its travails, because Britain is no unconquerable island so far as the virus is concerned, but equally should send any illusions about the recent performance of the EU and its agencies. The answer may be “more Europe”, as President Macron used to say, or an end to integration, but the problem of EU competence (in both senses) over public health is plain.Right now, the European Union finds itself in the embarrassing position of watching the British speed way ahead in the vaccination race (by fair means or foul), and in the more humiliating position of having to turn to Russia, of all places, for help. A third Covid wave is hitting parts of Europe hard. France is the latest to fall back into lockdown, even if Macron has tried to rebadge it as a “third way”. Hence the urgent need for vaccines in what the president calls “a race against time” for his country. More