Politics

The UK’s Northern Ireland secretary has said he “will be calling an election” in the nation after a deadline to restore devolved government at Stormont passed at midnight. Yesterday, last-ditch efforts to restore the multi-party executive failed and Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris had been expected to subsequently call an election today and announce the
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It’s Albert Einstein’s classic definition of insanity – “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” A second Northern Ireland Assembly election might produce a slightly different picture but the end result will be the same. Unless there’s a solution to the Brexit trading arrangement, there still won’t be a power-sharing government
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Security services could be reluctant to share sensitive information with Suella Braverman after her controversial reappointment as home secretary, Lord Blunkett has warned. The Labour peer, himself a former home secretary, suggested “there could be two really unfortunate outcomes to the reappointment of the current home secretary” just six days after she was forced to
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Rishi Sunak is reinstating the ban on fracking that Liz Truss controversially lifted. During Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, the new prime minister said he stands “by the manifesto” on fracking. The Conservative 2019 manifesto placed a moratorium on fracking in England following opposition from environmentalists and local communities. Mr Sunak‘s spokesman explicitly confirmed he
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After allowing her chancellor to rewrite the government’s energy price plan, Liz Truss has just removed one of her biggest remaining arguments for staying in power. Yes, reversing the Kwarteng income tax cut, abolishing the dividend tax changes and the VAT-free shopping scheme are very politically painful. But abandoning the existing energy price cap scheme
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A senior Tory has accused the government of looking “like libertarian jihadists” and treating the country as “laboratory mice” over the past few weeks. Robert Halfon, former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and an education minister under Theresa May, said he believes Liz Truss needs to apologise to the public for the economic turmoil
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Discussions are under way in Downing Street over whether to scrap some of the contentious proposals in the chancellor’s tax-cutting mini-budget, Sky News understands. The proposed changes to corporation tax and dividend tax are understood to be under discussion. Downing Street insisted earlier on Thursday that there will be no more U-turns on policies in
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Liz Truss has pledged not to cut public spending to balance the books in her first PMQs since the chancellor’s contentious mini-budget – despite a leading economics-focused think tank warning the government is billions short of the sums needed. The prime minister insisted she was “absolutely” not planning public spending reductions, but vowed that taxpayers’
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