Politics Archives

Saturday

22 Feb 2020

In defence of the wood burner fuel ban

Open the papers this morning and you would think the government had just announced plans to slaughter the first-born. The cause of the outrage? The environment secretary has just said that the sale of coal and damp logs for burning in domestic properties is to be banned from next year. Apparently it is an attack on people who live in the countryside, and on the Tories’ new-found voters in the north of England – whom some Conservatives in the south still no doubt think keep coal in their baths. Maybe there are still a few coal-burners in the likes of Bolsover – although the business of that particular town was

James Forsyth

Trade talks between the UK and the EU are heading for a blow-up

‘The reality is the talks will blow up shortly’. As I say in the Sun this morning, this is the verdict of one Downing Street figure on the UK / EU negotiations. The EU might still be finalising its negotiating mandate. But if you read the draft of it and David Frost’s speech this week, it is clear just how far apart the two sides are. This is going to come to a head quickly as the EU line is that there must be agreement on ‘level playing field’ and governance before the talks proper can commence. If the EU side insists on these preconditions in the opening round of

The Spectator

Barometer: Who actually goes on a cruise?

Breeding controversy A Downing Street aide, believed to have been recruited as a result of Dominic Cummings’s advert for ‘weirdos and misfits’, resigned after it was revealed he had spoken favourably of eugenics in the past. Where did eugenics come from?— The term was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. As well as studying meteorology and introducing the first weather map to the Times, he proposed experiments to test the heredity of intelligence — including the somewhat unethical proposal of separating twins at birth. The weak, he proposed, should be prohibited from breeding. Galton himself failed to have any effect on the gene pool because,

Freddy Gray

Battle of the billionaires: Trump vs Bloomberg could be the nastiest election ever

‘There are two things that are important in politics,’ said Mark Hanna, the American senator, in 1895. ‘The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.’ In 2020, Hanna’s maxim could be updated: the second thing is being an old white guy from New York. The presidential election is 36 weeks away and it looks as if the winner will be one of three men. There’s the Manhattan billionaire incumbent, Donald Trump, 73, whose fortune is estimated at $3 billion (he claims eight). There’s the socialist outsider from Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders, who is 78 and worth $2.5 million. And last but not least is 78-year-old Mayor

Douglas Murray

I’ve seen wars more amusing than BBC comedy

Last weekend’s papers claimed that the government desires a ‘massively pruned back’ BBC. Former Conservative cabinet minister Damian Green and someone called Huw Merriman spoke out against this, which allowed the BBC to put the headline ‘BBC licence fee: Tory MPs warn No. 10 against fight’ atop its characteristically impartial coverage. I suppose there are various reactions one can have to this, ranging from outrage at supposed ‘cultural vandalism’, via a vague shrug, all the way through to the full Charles Moore. In recent years I have moved through all these stages. The discovery that mattered most was the realisation that the less BBC I had in my life, the

James Forsyth

The Brexit reshuffle: every great office of state is now held by a Leaver

One of the Tories’ tactical successes has been to push Brexit down the news agenda. But even if it no longer dominates front pages and news bulletins as it once did, the task of sorting out Britain’s future relationship with the European Union remains the government’s biggest challenge. Brexit also provides the best explanation for some of No. 10’s other actions. Last week’s cabinet reshuffle, for instance, can only be properly understood in the context of Brexit. The purpose was to create an all-powerful centre. The three greatest parts of government — No. 10, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office — have now been joined together. There is a combined

Martin Vander Weyer

Time for new leadership at Barclays and HSBC – and a new name at RBS

After a dull interlude, the big banks in their annual results season look a bit more interesting again. First to report was Barclays, where pre-tax profits were up 25 per cent to £4.4 billion but attention focused, yet again, on Chief Executive Jes Staley, whose name rarely appears in print without ‘accident-prone’ attached to it. The trouble this time is his link to the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was Staley’s client at JP Morgan in his earlier career: under investigation is whether Staley was sufficiently ‘transparent’ with his board and regulators in declaring that relationship. Staley survived previous embarrassments, including a £642,000 fine imposed by the Financial

Paul Collier

Northern lights: Seven steps for levelling up Britain

If you ever need a reminder of what northern Britain has achieved, I’d recommend a trip to York. The National Railway Museum brilliantly evokes the local creative energy that produced Stephenson’s Rocket which ran on the world’s first inter-city passenger railway and ushered in the railway age. Just over the River Ouse is the chocolate museum, which celebrates York’s chocolate-makers and their entrepreneurial legacy. It’s easy to be scornful about Boris Johnson’s talk of ‘levelling up’. Real levelling up would mean that for the foreseeable future, the North will grow faster than London, which seems almost unimaginable to Whitehall and in the City. But whatever the cocktail of culture and

Kate Andrews

The post-Brexit bounce seems to have stuck, for now

The post-election economic bounce appears to be more than a fluke. Positive news came in waves this week, as data for employment figures, weekly wages and economic activity painted a good picture for newly-Brexited Britain. People are in work and wages are finally back on track. Employment has hit a new record high (76.5 per cent) while unemployment has dropped to a new 44-year low, at 3.8 per cent. Most notably, weekly wages are (finally) back to their pre-financial crash levels ie, the highest since March 2008. And yes, it has taken a very long time get here – it has been the slowest wages recovery in economic history –

Nick Cohen

Boris’s main opposition is his party’s ageing demographics

If you want to see why Britain’s future will be so decrepit, look at the dramas on ITV. Unlike the BBC or Channel 4, ITV receives no state protection. It must compete in the market, and is targeting the most powerful audience in the country: the elderly. ITV has old soap operas: Coronation Street (first broadcast in 1960) and Emmerdale (1972). Agatha’s Christie’s Marple and Poirot always feature. Unlike the BBC with its colour-blind casting and willingness to tear-up and rewrite Christie’s stories until they suit modern sensibilities, ITV’s adaptations are traditional and its casts are typically white. The Christie stories, like The Darling Buds of May, The Durrells, Endeavour,

Friday

21 Feb 2020

Peter Hunt

The Queen has crushed Harry’s ‘Sussex Royal’ delusion

It’s taken just 44 days for a royal pipe dream to well and truly bite the dust. Last month, Harry and Meghan tried to bounce the ancient institution into giving them a ‘progressive new role’ as part-time royals, part-time money makers. Harry’s 93-year-old grandmother doesn’t take kindly to being bounced or indeed being blindsided. With government regulations and royal rules on her side, the Queen has imposed her final restriction on the couple embarking on a self-imposed exile. Sussex Royal can be no more. A freshly branded website will have to be re-branded. Their supporters will argue it’s no great loss. Like Boris and Oprah, Harry and Meghan have global

Steerpike

Dawn Butler: accountants were invented to count prostitutes’ money

Everyone knows what the oldest profession in the world is supposed to be. But what came afterwards? Labour deputy leadership hopeful Dawn Butler has put forward her suggestion: accountants. In an interview with Pink News, had this to say: ‘Sex work is the oldest profession in the world…It’s older than accountants. Apparently, sex work came first and then accountants came second, probably because they were counting the money from the sex workers’. ‘The most vulnerable in the equation of sex work is the sex worker.’ pic.twitter.com/mnPRi67Yux — PinkNews (@PinkNews) February 21, 2020 Butler also said in the interview: ‘For some reason, politicians don’t like talking about sex and drugs’. If

Ross Clark

Leo Varadkar has been hung out to dry by the EU

A year ago, did anyone look like they would come out of Brexit better than Leo Varadkar? Here was a leader of a small country on the fringe of the EU suddenly catapulted to its centre. He was the one pushed forward by Juncker, Barnier, Merkel and Macron, as they sought to leverage advantage from the tricky problem of the Irish border. Not only was Varadkar seen to be standing up for the Republic’s interest, but by driving a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, he seemed to be setting himself up as the instigator of possible Irish reunification – he was drawing the issue

Katy Balls

The Budget will show how the Tories plan to win the next election

It’s only a few weeks until Budget day and the papers are filled with reports of the various revenue-raising measures being considered. After plans for a mansion tax were dampened down by government sources, ideas being mooted include cuts to pension tax relief and a fuel duty hike. Who the burden falls on will reveal a lot about which voters the Conservatives believe will win them an unprecedented fifth term in government. Key to this is the level of appetite in No. 10 to please the North at the expense of the South. Some reports of proposed Budget measures – including a recurring property tax – have been a cause

Steerpike

Varadkar resigns

Leo Varadkar, the Irish Taoiseach, has tendered his resignation. After gambling his political career on an election in which he hoped Brexit would be the defining factor, the Irish voters decided they cared about pretty much anything but. In fact, just one per cent of Irish voters cited Brexit as a decisive factor for them in this month’s general election. Instead, voters focused on issues that might actually affect their lives such as housing and healthcare. The result was that Varadkar’s Fine Gael party was knocked into third place, behind Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein. The gamble clearly failed. Ireland’s new parliament, the 33rd Dail, met for the first time

Katy Balls

The Thérèse Coffey Edition

28 min listen

Thérèse Coffey is the MP for Suffolk Coastal and the work and pensions secretary. On the podcast, she talks about her famous karaoke parties, the importance of her Catholic faith to her, and that picture from one Spectator party.

Thursday

20 Feb 2020

Stephen Daisley

Nicola Sturgeon’s immigration hypocrisy

Living in Scotland, it’s depressing to hear the way UK Government ministers talk about immigration. I have one proposal in front of me right now that advocates ‘a points-based approach’ as part of ‘a controlled immigration system to meet our own economic, social and demographic priorities and needs’. Anyone who wishes to ‘work, study or live’ here ‘will have to meet a set of reasonable and fair requirements to gain entry or approval to remain’. Predictably, for all the usual talk about attracting ‘skilled individuals from overseas’, there is the familiar obsession with numbers, especially of non-Europeans: ‘If there are higher than required numbers of non-European Economic Area/Swiss migrants… then

James Forsyth

The big Brexit challenge still facing the Tories

Since the election, Brexit has fallen down the news agenda. But getting this country ready for the end of the transition period is still—by far—the biggest challenge facing the Government and what drives many of its actions. As I say in the magazine this week, you can only understand the reshuffle through this prism. First, it was about creating an all-powerful centre. The three greatest parts of government — No. 10, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office — have now been joined together. Just as significant as the combined No. 10/11 economic unit is the fact that there is a Minister of State—Theodore Agnew—shared between the Cabinet Office and the

Kate Andrews

A fuel duty hike shows the Tories are struggling for Budget ideas

Could motorists be hit with the first fuel duty rise in ten years in this month’s Budget? According to the Sun, the PM’s chief advisor Dominic Cummings wants to use petrol and diesel as a revenue-raiser to fund big infrastructure projects outside the capital. But ending the fuel duty freeze after a decade might not be a good idea, particularly when many new Tory voters in the North are likely to be the worst affected. Fuel duty is an easy way to raise revenue in theory, as the demand for fuel is always high. It is also a tax that is difficult for motorists to avoid (though this doesn’t stop some from trying). Yet

Amber Athey

Hinden-Bloomberg: NYC mayor goes up in flames at Vegas debate

Former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg got a taste of front-runner status on Wednesday night, getting absolutely walloped by his primary opponents during the ninth Democratic debate in Nevada. Bloomberg, who was not on the ballot in the Iowa caucus or the New Hampshire primary, has been surging in the polls thanks to massive ad buys and a social media-oriented campaign. However, his absence from debates has allowed him to avoid scrutiny for the issues raised by massive opposition research dumps. Bloomberg took a gamble by appearing at Wednesday’s debate — presumably he assumed he had the political experience to put up a good performance. Instead, he was hammered repeatedly