Inside Politics: Noisy court

Wimbledon is well underway, with Serena Williams and Harmony Tan serving up a cracking match in SW19 last night. Boris Johnson is contending with a noisy court at home, as defence secretary Ben Wallace ramps up calls for extra spending as the PM attends the Nato summit in Madrid. Elsewhere, Nicola Sturgeon has set out a proposed date for a second referendum on Scottish independence.

Our political commentator Andrew Grice on what to look out for today:

There’s no cabinet meeting this week, and so no opportunity for the ministerial mice to play while Boris Johnson continues his eight-day, three-summit tour at Nato’s meeting in Madrid. But prime minister’s questions carries on in his absence, as a battle of the deputies: Dominic Raab versus Angela Rayner. The deputy PM will come armed with Rayner’s supportive remarks about strikes.

Questions to Scottish Office ministers will cover Nicola Sturgeon’s plans for an independence referendum in October next year.

Ministers appearing at select committees include George Eustice (on environmental protection); Richard Harrington (Ukrainian refugees) and Anne-Marie Trevelyan (the trade deal with Australia).

Sajid Javid will announce a digital health and care plan to tackle Covid backlogs. Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, will address the Local Government Association’s conference in Harrogate on the financial problems facing councils.

Nicola Sturgeon is proposing 19 October 2023 as the date for another referendum on Scottish independence. The SNP leader, who said the question would be the same as the one on the last ballot – “Should Scotland be an independent country?”, has written to Boris Johnson asking for permission to hold the vote. This is because UK constitutional matters are reserved for the government in London.

So far, the prime minister has refused to grant something called a section 30 order, which would give Sturgeon the power to hold the vote, saying that now is not the time for another divisive election campaign – some 8 years after Scots voted to stay in the union. That position is unlikely to change following the SNP leader’s address to SNPs in Holyrood yesterday.

In a move that has somewhat blindsided Johnson, Sturgeon conceded that the legality of holding a second referendum without consent from London – a “wildcat poll”, like the one seen in Spain’s Catalonia region in 2017 – was contested and demanded an urgent ruling from the supreme court in London. “What I am not willing to do, what I will never do, is allow Scottish democracy to be a prisoner of Boris Johnson or any prime minister,” Sturgeon said.

Whatever your views on Scottish independence, the move by Sturgeon is clever politics for several reasons. Firstly, it eases pressure on the FM from the grassroots of her party, who are demanding another poll despite most recent polls showing that there is no majority for independence. Secondly, Sturgeon has got ahead by referring the matter herself to the court, where the issue probably would have ended up anyway.

If judges rule that the vote is legal, she gets what she wants and the poll goes ahead. If they don’t, then Sturgeon will use the decision as a recruiting sergeant for the independence cause and she has vowed to fight the next general election campaign on that single issue. If she wins that election with a majority she will then say that she has a democratic mandate for independence. One way or the other, it looks like there will be a vote on Scotland’s future. The court has confirmed that it has received the referral from the Scottish government’s lord advocate, although it did not put a date on when it would respond.

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Johnson, with his in-tray already overflowing, responded to Sturgeon’s call by saying that she should focus on getting the economy back on track as he argued that the UK is “stronger together”.

The PM is well into his sojourn abroad as questions about his future continue at home. He landed in Madrid last night for the Nato summit and will meet with other leaders there today to discuss Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

But his trip on the world stage threatens to be overshadowed by yet another cabinet row –this time on defence spending. As the PM issued a grand call to his counterparts at the summit to step up Nato spending, Ben Wallace, his own defence secretary, criticised the UK’s “smoke and mirrors” military budget.

Wallace said UK forces had for too long survived on “a diet of smoke and mirrors, hollowed-out formations and fantasy savings” – after calling for the PM to commit to a 20 per cent spending increase.

“If governments historically responded every time the NHS has a winter crisis so must they when the threat to the very security which underpins our way of life increases,” Wallace told the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

Labour also accused the PM of “breaking” his own 2019 manifesto promise on defence spending, after a senior government source said the pledge to hike annual military spending by 0.5 per cent above inflation may no longer be met.

“My determination is to secure a process that allows the people of Scotland, whether yes, no or yet to be decided, to express their views in a legal, constitutional referendum so the majority view can be established fairly and democratically.”

Sturgeon sets out date for second referendum campaign.

“The fact the Met is now formally in special measures makes it seem all the more remarkable that Boris Johnson and Priti Patel were so keen to keep Cressida Dick in post.”

George Parker, FT politics editor, on the news that the Metropolitan Police service has been placed in special measures.

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