LONDON — Buckle up! Voters head to the polls for a bumper day of local elections Thursday. It’s a chance for 43 million people in England and Wales to pick their local reps in a host of institutions with proper decision-making powers. But, with a U.K. general election looming, the local results are also going […]
Category Archives: UK Politics
LONDON — Andy Street was once a success story for the Conservatives — now he wants less and less to do with them. The 60-year-old former department store manager was elected the first mayor of the West Midlands in 2016 and went on to win re-election by a wider margin in 2021. He’s been hailed […]
Prime minister’s questions: a shouty, jeery, very occasionally useful advert for British politics. Here’s what you need to know from the latest session in POLITICO’s weekly run-through. What they sparred about: Oldies and imaginary tax cuts. Rishi Sunak’s ambition to eventually scrap national insurance — and the potential toll it’ll take on people’s pensions — […]
Tom Harper is a former Sunday Times journalist and is now head of media relations, Europe at APCO, a global advisory and advocacy firm. When Buckingham Palace released an intimate Mother’s Day photograph of Catherine, Princess of Wales and her three children last month, it had hoped to debunk the online conspiracy theories that had […]
LONDON — Humza Yousaf’s resignation as Scottish first minister after just a year in power sees him join a growing pantheon of British political leaders leaving office when they’ve only just got started. The number of defenestrations has shot up this side of the millennium, bringing the retirement age for U.K. politicians crashing down. Let […]
Humza Yousaf’s resignation as Scotland’s first minister plunges the Scottish National Party into its second leadership election in two years. Yousaf — who only took over from Nicola Sturgeon in 2023 — has been under mounting pressure after junking a power sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens. That means the SNP now governs as a minority […]
Humza Yousaf resigned as Scotland’s first minister Monday, plunging the devolved nation into fresh political uncertainty. Yousaf — under major pressure after breaking off a power-sharing agreement between his Scottish National Party and the left-wing Scottish Greens last week — told a press conference in Edinburgh that repairing frayed ties with the country’s opposition parties […]
LONDON — Deep disagreements in the U.K. Conservative Party over Brexit? Surely not! Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch continued the Conservatives’ EU forever war Thursday night as she accused David Cameron of failing to prepare sufficiently for Brexit as prime minister. “One of the most disappointing things was becoming an MP a year later […]
It was meant to make Scotland a green world leader. But the country’s ambitious climate targets — and the Edinburgh government’s failure to keep up with them — triggered the break-up of the country’s governing coalition and left the ruling Scottish National Party limping on as a minority administration. Only a week after his government conceded that […]
LONDON — Here we go again. Top political scientist John Curtice predicted another referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU could take place in the next 16 years. “I think the 2016 referendum is going to be as unsuccessful as the 1975 one,” Curtice told the U.K. in a Changing Europe research organization Wednesday night, […]