Politics Archives

Wednesday

23 Sep 2020

Who cares what Harry and Meghan think about Trump?

Well, who can the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have in mind in their video message to Time 100 – for the magazine’s issue on influential people – when they talked about the need to reject ‘hate speech, misinformation and online negativity’ in the context of the US election? There are precisely two possibilities. Do you reckon these things might, just possibly, be code for the president, Donald Trump? In which case – I may of course be wrong here – it looks as if they’re urging people to vote Democrat. As for lovely Meghan’s observation that this is ‘the most important election of our lifetime’ it does seem to

Steerpike

Maitlis goes to Hull and back

As the BBC’s new director general Tim Davie works to change the perception of the BBC – with social media crackdown and an alleged plan to tackle left wing comedy bias – there seems to be an acceptance across the corporation that they need to work harder to reflect modern day Britain. So, it was perhaps bad timing for Emily Maitlis last night that she made a comedic slip of the tongue as she spoke to a guest dialling in all the way from Hull. Introducing Alan Johnson, the Newsnight presenter said that the former health secretary was joining the programme down the line from ‘hell’. Whether a Freudian slip indicating her internal feelings towards the

Steven Fielding

Keir Starmer’s hardest task lies ahead

Keir Starmer’s first conference speech as Labour leader took place in exceptional circumstances. Thanks to Covid, there was no party conference in the conventional sense. His speech lacked the usual enthusiastic audience primed to punctuate a leader’s rhetoric with cheers; nor was there a ten-minute-long standing ovation at its conclusion. It was a desperately low-key event. If the lack of conventional theatrics made the speech unique, Starmer’s address was in terms of substance exactly what we might expect from the leader of a party which has suffered four successive defeats, especially as the last one was Labour’s worst since 1935. For Starmer’s main theme was – other than criticism of

Tuesday

22 Sep 2020

Katy Balls

Boris defends new Covid rules

Boris Johnson addressed the nation this evening to update the public on his government’s coronavirus strategy. After announcing the broad details of the new measures at the despatch box this lunchtime, tonight’s statement was focussed on justifying the new restrictions. The Prime Minister said that while there were no easy choices ahead, he was confident the country would succeed as they had done so in March — insisting the government had followed the scientific advice to the letter and as a result protected the NHS and saved thousands of lives. As for why there are now issues, rather than mention difficulties on testing, he suggested that the ‘freedom loving’ nature of Britons had meant

Cindy Yu

Can the lockdown hawks stave off further restrictions?

20 min listen

Boris Johnson today warned that Britain has ‘reached a perilous turning point’ in its battle with coronavirus, as he ordered pubs to close at 10pm and pledged to crack down on rule-breakers. The package of new restrictions were not as sweeping as many Tory MPs had feared, but with the Prime Minister saying that his government could yet ‘deploy greater firepower’, is this just the beginning? Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Dr Chris Papadopoulos

The case for full lockdown

The government now knows that the country is losing the battle against Covid-19. Boris Johnson has announced a series of new restrictions on our daily lives which, he suggests, could last up to six months. After the first national lockdown, the government made clear that it was putting its faith in people to act responsibly, as well as its emerging track and trace system and enhanced testing capacity. Stopping the daily briefings was a particularly loud message, louder than any of the others that the government has since tried to communicate: that we were past it. Indeed, the government should have been fully cognisant to the fact that people do not always act responsibly and

Robert Peston

Do the new restrictions go far enough?

The Prime Minister announced a raft of measures that will significantly delay the UK’s economic recovery, but whose impact on the spread of coronavirus is profoundly uncertain. The important point is that there is only one significant new measure, namely closing pubs and restaurants between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. Pretty much everything else is either: A toughening up of existing measures — such as more compulsory mask-wearing in shops and restaurant, and banning indoor five-a-side football; Or freezing the planned re-opening of the economy, such as a return to work in offices that the PM urged only days ago or permission for us to go to football and other

Stephen Daisley

Is Liz Truss seeking to emulate Scotland’s hate crime bill?

Beware a government appearing to do the right thing. Liz Truss, minister for women and equalities, released a statement this morning that appears to do the right thing on reform of the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). Trans activists wanted the 2004 law changed in three key ways: 1) Remove the requirement for a medical diagnosis and allow individuals to legally change their gender by self-declaration, 2) extend this to those who wish to be recognised as ‘non-binary’ rather than male or female, and 3) lower the age at which a person can do these things to 16. Gender campaigners got a good way down the path to victory before the

Ross Clark

There is no Covid consensus

Today, 32 scientists, economists and other academics have written to the Prime Minister demanding a change in policy on Covid-19, saying that attempting to suppress the virus is ‘increasingly infeasible’. They have instead demanded that vulnerable groups should be protected from the disease while younger people should be allowed to get on with their lives. Many of the signatories will be familiar to Spectator readers. They include the bad boys and girls of Covid — scientists who have argued consistently against lockdown and the more doom-laden narratives. Those such as professor Carl Heneghan of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Professor Sunetra Gupta, a theoretical epidemiologist also of Oxford University, and

James Kirkup

How women won the war against gender ‘self-ID’

Liz Truss, in her role as equalities minister, has confirmed to Parliament that the Government will not amend the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to allow people to change their legal gender without the approval of doctors and officials. ‘Self-ID’ is not happening. There is a lot to say about this statement, and the way it has been made. Here are four thoughts, for now. 1: It was the women what won it This decision is a significant reversal in government thinking. In 2017, when the May government announced a consultation on GRA reform, a system of self-ID was effectively the default option. Most politicians paid no attention to the detail,

Gus Carter

Boris brings in new restrictions

Boris Johnson has announced sweeping new Covid restrictions, imposing a curfew on pubs and restaurants and telling office workers to return to home working if they can. In a statement to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister said the UK is at a ‘perilous turning point’ and promised that more measures would be introduced if the rate of infection was not reversed. From Thursday, a 10 p.m. curfew on pubs, bars and restaurants will be introduced under the new restrictions which he said could last up to six months. Meanwhile, planned relaxations for sporting events have been halted while retail staff will now be required to wear face masks. Johnson told the Commons

Alex Massie

The price we’ll all pay for a Labour-SNP pact

Sometimes you just need to accept that some political problems do not have a solution. One such is the Labour party’s increasingly fraught relationship with Scotland. One opinion poll published earlier this summer suggested the erstwhile people’s party now commands the support of just 14 per cent of Scottish voters. The optimistic view of this finding is that the party has finally hit rock bottom and, hence, the only way forward is also the way up. The gloomier view is that 14 per cent is pretty much as good as it will get for Labour. They are where they are because that is where they deserve to be. Uniquely, the

Dr Waqar Rashid

Vallance’s dire Covid warning was a mistake

The idea on the whole was sound. The execution less so. Boris Johnson was nowhere to be seen at yesterday’s press conference. Instead, the honest brokers in this crisis, the medical scientists, were front and centre, in what may be a Downing Street briefing remembered for all the wrong reasons. When chief medical officer, professor Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, had finished their statements, there were plenty more questions than answers – not least as a result of their use of a graph showing how quickly the coronavirus crisis could get out of hand if we fail to act. As a medic, I’m inclined to be supportive of

Katy Balls

The most revealing thing about Keir Starmer’s conference speech

Keir Starmer’s first conference speech as Labour leader did not go as he had first planned. Social distancing measures meant that he had to deliver it from Doncaster to an empty hall. Meanwhile, the time was changed at the last minute so as to avoid a clash with government announcements on new coronavirus restrictions. But Starmer still managed to use the outing to start to flesh out what type of leader he intends to be. Even if crowds were in short supply, the choice of location for the set piece event was in itself telling. Starmer said it was the first Labour Leaders’ Speech in Yorkshire since Harold Wilson in 1967. With Labour’s red wall reduced

Steerpike

Labour frontbencher: Covid is an opportunity

With the country facing a possible second wave and the prospect of further restrictions to our daily lives, Labour’s Kate Green has an entirely different train of thought. The shadow education secretary wondered how best to exploit the coronavirus for political gain. Speaking at a Labour Connected event, Green said: ‘I think we should use the opportunity, don’t let a good crisis go to waste’. These comments somewhat overshadowed Keir Starmer’s keynote conference speech, with shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy forced to make an embarrassing apology during this morning’s accompanying media rounds.

The Spectator

Full text: Keir Starmer’s conference speech

I’m delighted that we’re here in Doncaster. My wife’s mum was born and grew up here – just next to the racecourse. We’re regulars here. Visiting family friends but also to go to the Ledger. Though of course sadly not this year. I’m also told that this is the first Labour leaders’ speech in Yorkshire since Harold Wilson in 1967. The circumstances were a bit different then. For one thing, Wilson was able to update conference about Labour’s achievements after three years in government. So I look forward to coming back one day in the same circumstances that brought Wilson here! I want to say a heartfelt thanks to the

John Lee

The dangers of a Covid ‘elimination’ policy

It’s understandable that, in a crisis, politicians reach for wartime metaphors – but they don’t always fit. There was the ‘war on terror’. Now we have politicians talking about the need to vanquish Covid-19. This is about more than language. There’s a big difference between a Covid-19 eradication strategy and one that seeks to find a way to live with this virus, in the way we learned to live with Swine Flu (or, as it’s now called, flu.) The Prime Minister is leading by example. Addressing a committee of conservative MPs on Thursday, he said: ‘We have to make sure that we defeat the disease by the means we have

Monday

21 Sep 2020

Carl Heneghan, Jason Oke & Tom Jefferson

Is Covid really rising in Spain? A look at the data

In a press briefing today Professors Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance showed epidemic curves for Spain and France — demonstrating how cases numbers have been growing rapidly, possibly exponentially, since August. As is often done when using case numbers by publishing date, the raw numbers are smoothed with a seven-day moving average. Drawn this way, the data shows a continued upward trend. But drawing the epidemic curve for Spain using cases by symptom onset produces a different result. We have put these two methods together on a single graph so that they can be compared: The epidemic curve based on the symptom onset date does not show the same continued

Katy Balls

What to expect from Boris’s Covid clampdown

As the UK’s coronavirus alert level is upgraded from three to four, all focus is now on what new restrictions Boris Johnson will announce on Tuesday when he makes a statement to the Commons. Before he gets there, the Prime Minister must first meet with his cabinet and chair Cobra. Monday’s briefing from Chief Scientific Officer Patrick Vallance and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty saw a hint of the difficult decisions that lie ahead. The pair painted a grim picture of the direction that infections are going in — claiming that it could lead to 50,000 new coronavirus cases a day by mid-October without further action. However, despite talk of a so-called ‘circuit break’

Robert Peston

How do we avoid another coronavirus lockdown?

Probably the most interesting new bit of information we received today on Covid-19 was from Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, who implied that he and the government are now assuming that fewer than one in 200 people who are infected with the virus will die. That still means this form of coronavirus is a terrible scourge. It is not exactly conventional good news. But this Infection Fatality Rate of 0.4 per cent is less than half the circa one per cent he and the chief medical officer Chris Whitty employed as their rule of thumb or heuristic only a few months ago. To be clear, what Vallance actually