Politics Archives

Tuesday

18 Feb 2020

Ashoka Mody

The EU is in trouble and Ursula Von der Leyen is the wrong person to rescue it

Ursula von der Leyen was an unloved choice to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as the next president of the European Commission. She emerged from a ferociously contentious process as a last-minute compromise and she promptly fell into a storm of criticism. Even members of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) shellacked her. In the thankless role of German defence minister, she was unable to overcome the handicaps imposed by Germany’s postwar pacifism and mindless fiscal stinginess, while a former defence minister blamed her for the “catastrophic” state of the German army. A member of the Bundestag mockingly said: “It’s good for the army that she’s going.” Von der Leyen’s ministry was tainted

Monday

17 Feb 2020

The Spectator

Full text: Top UK Brexit negotiator David Frost on his plans for an EU trade deal

Boris Johnson’s top Brexit negotiator David Frost gave a major speech at ULB Brussels University on Monday evening where he set out the British government’s plans for a UK-EU trade deal. This is an edited transcript of his speech: Thank you much everyone for that very kind introduction. It is a really huge pleasure to be here at your university. I would like to say thank you also to the Institute for hosting me, and your distinguished President, Ramona Coman, for being kind enough to host me here tonight. Your institute here has really made a huge contribution to the study of European politics and European integration – and long

Isabel Hardman

Is Andrew Sabisky an example of ‘cancel culture’?

Dominic Cummings said he wanted to hire ‘weirdos’ and ‘misfits’ to improve Whitehall, but new adviser Andrew Sabisky (more on whether he’s actually an adviser shortly) isn’t so much a misfit in Westminster as he is a sore thumb, standing out for his views on eugenics, race and unplanned pregnancies. Today a No. 10 spokesperson refused 32 times to say whether Boris Johnson shares Sabisky’s views, and wouldn’t even comment on the conditions under which he had been employed. Just to recap, Sabisky has suggested that the best way to avoid an ‘underclass’ is to legally enforce uptake of contraceptives, that black people naturally have a lower IQ than white

Patrick O’Flynn

What Boris Johnson’s opponents need to know about the PM

Margaret Thatcher famously said of Mikhail Gorbachev “We can do business together”. Clearly she wasn’t endorsing the policies and outlook of the USSR, just reaching a practical conclusion that was to lead to beneficial outcomes for both sides in the years ahead. It’s time for Boris Johnson’s opponents to arrive at the same conclusion – and accept that Boris is a man they can do business with. Boris’s critics might not admit it but the Prime Minister is a pragmatist with liberal inclinations in many policy areas. Yet the luminaries of progressive liberalism still pledge to fight him on every front. They seek to depict him, quite absurdly, as the

Ross Clark

The police are in thrall to Extinction Rebellion in Cambridge

When I read that police were invoking emergency powers at an Extinction Rebellion protest in Cambridge I thought: about time, too. It meant, I presumed, that they were not going to make the same mistake as the Met Police last April, when they were too slow to stop this bunch of anarchists closing down public thoroughfares. But one should underestimate the plods at one’s peril. The ‘emergency powers’ being used by Cambridgeshire Police instead allow them to close the roads without giving any notice. Yes, they are actively facilitating the protest. They turned up in their yellow vests and closed a local road on the activists’ behalf. It will remain

Terence Kealey

Moving universities northwards will do nothing for the levelling up agenda

If major research universities improved their neighbourhoods, the city of New Haven—the home of Yale University—would be one of the richest and happiest in the state of Connecticut. Instead, New Haven is a pit of poverty and crime in a state that is otherwise known for its wealth and lawfulness. Equally, Baltimore in Maryland, which is the home of Johns Hopkins University, is so crime and poverty-ridden that HBO set The Wire there. A person might suppose New Haven and Baltimore would have been even more degraded but for their elite universities; yet, sadly, it may have been the universities that helped degrade the towns, because elite universities in America

Stephen Daisley

The UN should be ashamed of its anti-Israel boycott list

I knew if we waited long enough, the United Nations would make itself useful. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has produced a handy catalogue of companies that supporters of Israel can give their business to. Of course, this was not Michelle Bachelet’s intention. Bachelet is the commissioner and before that she was an exquisitely unpopular Chilean politician and head of UN Women, the all-girl Ghostbusters of UN agencies that fights global mistreatment of women by putting out hashtags and putting Saudi Arabia on its executive board. Now Bachelet has released ‘a database of all business enterprises involved in certain specified activities related to the Israeli

John Keiger

Macron’s British charm offensive is only just getting started

In the excitement/misery of leaving the EU at the end of January many overlooked a touching note written by President Emmanuel Macron to the British people. It was a ‘love letter’ of sorts, a mixture of déclaration d’amour and regretful confession, which bore all the hallmarks of a note from the jilted to the jilter, warm in parts but suffused with a peevish undertone. After three and a half years of condescension, lecturing and veiled threats, Britons are unused to being the object of courtly love. But Macron’s billet doux is about much more than Brexit. Brexit is the catalyst for a deeper concern that Britain is embarking on a

James Forsyth

Why the new Attorney General matters so much

Suella Braverman, Geoffrey Cox’s replacement as Attorney-General, is not a household name. But she is one of the most significant appointments of the reshuffle, as I write in The Sun this morning. Why, because she is serious about taking on judges who she thinks are inserting themselves into issues that should be left to parliament. ‘The key issue for the new AG and many others is that ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ policies that have been rejected by the electorate are being imposed by courts, both domestic and foreign’ one Boris ally tells me. The government’s spine has been stiffened by the fact that in just the last week, it has been

Robert Peston

No wonder Rishi Sunak is thriving under Boris Johnson

As you know, I misspent much of the past 20 years trying to understand and report on the excesses of the City of London that led to the banking crisis and everything that followed. There were two hedge fund managers who made a bundle out of the rise and fall: Chris Hohn and Patrick Degorce. I mention them because the new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, worked with and for both of them. The reason this matters is that Hohn and Degorce were so focused, relentless and masters of detail that they make Dominic Cummings seem like a soft dilettante. It is little wonder therefore that Sunak is thriving in what feels

Katy Balls

Boris’s chief Brexit negotiator urges EU to rethink its red lines

What are the UK’s red lines in the upcoming trade talks with the EU? Although Boris Johnson has said publicly that he will pursue a Canada-style trade deal and move to an Australia-style deal should that fail, there’s concern on the British side that Brussels is yet to take Johnson at his word when he says divergence is a crucial aspect of any deal. On Monday evening, the Prime Minister’s Europe Advisor and Chief Negotiator David Frost attempted to fix this with a lecture to students and academics at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Frost used the address to try to explain what type of new relationship the UK is

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s lead Brexit negotiator sets out his red lines

What are the UK’s red lines in the upcoming trade talks with the EU? Although Boris Johnson has said publicly that he will pursue a Canada-style trade deal and move to an Australia-style deal should that fail, there’s concern on the British side that Brussels is yet to take Johnson at his word when he says divergence is a crucial aspect of any deal. On Monday evening, the Prime Minister’s Europe Advisor and Chief Negotiator David Frost attempted to fix this with a lecture to students and academics at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Frost used the address to try to explain what type of new relationship the UK is seeking to

Stephen L. Miller

Write off Bloomberg’s meme army at your own peril

Michael Bloomberg is everywhere. If you watch a YouTube video, there’s a Bloomberg 2020 ad. If you live in any Super Tuesday state, he’s on your television. And now he’s all over your Instagram. Michael Bloomberg is hiring New York media savvy image firms and viral influencers to Poochie his way into the White House. Right now, it’s largely being written off by media and pundits as a weird internet gimmick and not a serious political strategy. But the thing is, it just might work. Political pundits are thinking like outdated campaign flacks from yesteryear, when Reddit groups and 4Chan memes couldn’t carry a serious candidate to the White House.

Sunday

16 Feb 2020

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Could the Budget be delayed?

Grant Shapps – No 10 and 11 should be working ‘hand in glove’ Sophy Ridge’s first guest was the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps. On Thursday, Boris Johnson carried out his long planned cabinet reshuffle, which saw the shock resignation of the Chancellor Sajid Javid. It emerged that Javid had been told that he could stay in his job on the condition that he sack all of his special advisers, something which he was not prepared to countenance. Ridge questioned Shapps about this development: When asked about Sajid Javid’s resignation, @grantshapps says he thinks viewers would likely want advisers to “be working hand in glove” with Number 10.Asked if he would

Claire Fox

Don’t expect the EU to learn any lessons from Brexit

I have enjoyed my first fortnight back as a civilian after my temporary stint as an MEP. Along with other Brexit party representatives, we had one job, and we did it. I am rather proud of my modest contribution to bringing democracy home. Looking back at my experience as an MEP, there are lessons worth noting. I had assumed that a gathering of 700 or so MEPs from all around Europe, would, at the very least, provide a fascinating exchange of views from an international perspective. But the parliament operates through artificially federalised political groupings; behind closed doors the leaders of each grouping carve up who gets to speak, for

Julie Bindel

Feminism for men is bad news for women

In my 40 years as a feminist activist campaigning to end male violence, I have never felt so engulfed in a culture of woman hating. I first met feminists in Leeds, West Yorkshire, in 1979, shortly before Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, was finally arrested, weeks after he murdered and mutilated his 13th victim, Jacqueline Hill. During the five years that Sutcliffe was killing, the climate of fear and hostility towards women kept many of us indoors. We were terrified to walk the streets at night, but also galvanising others into protesting at the bungled police operation and the disgraceful misogynistic newspaper coverage of the murders. According to police

David Butterfield

The Spectator becomes the world’s longest-lived current affairs magazine

This weekend The Spectator reaches a truly historic milestone. For forty years, it has been the oldest current-affairs or literary magazine in the UK, since Blackwood’s Magazine (1817-1980) at last came to an end. But now, in its 2,300th month, it becomes the longest-running news magazine in the world, taking that title from the journal that started the genre. The Gentleman’s Magazine that appeared in 1731 was not just any magazine: it was the venture that first launched this word in print, repurposing the French/Arabic magasin/makhazin (‘storehouse’) to describe its novel medley of current affairs, news gazette, literary criticism and antiquarian speculation. (While the original Spectator, founded by Joseph Addison

Saturday

15 Feb 2020

Liam Halligan

The coronavirus is China’s biggest test since Tiananmen Square

Over 1,500 Chinese have died from the coronavirus, with tens of millions quarantined in their own homes. President Xi is keeping a low profile, mindful of the political dangers should China’s authorities fail to contain this killer bug. In the UK, nine people have been diagnosed with the virus, including two GPs. Several public buildings have been closed – including schools, medical centre and an old-age care home – with Health Secretary Matt Hancock warning of a ‘serious and imminent threat’. Amid fears of the human fall out from what the World Health Organisation has classified as Covid-19, concerns are growing, also, about the economic and financial impact of this

James Forsyth

What the reshuffle means

As the dust settles, it is clear that the big story of the reshuffle is that Boris Johnson has created the most powerful central government operation in living memory. He has yoked together Number 10, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office. As I say in the Sun this morning, no department or agency will be able to resist the power of this new centre. The rationale behind this move is simple. Boris Johnson’s view is what is the point of being in power if you are not actually in charge. He wants to bring an emphatic end to a decade of weak government. He believes that this new set up

Katy Balls

What will Rishi Sunak do as Chancellor?

Boris Johnson ends the week with a new Chancellor in tow after Rishi Sunak replaced Sajid Javid in the role. Prior to the reshuffle, Sunak had expected to remain Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Although the Tory rising star had been tipped at one point to be given his own department to run, he had privately made it known that he wanted to stay put and help the Chancellor with next month’s Budget. Sunak got his wish in part. He is staying in the Treasury. It’s just that he is now the one in charge. So, what does Sunak’s appointment mean for the direction of this government? As I say