Politics Archives

Sunday

25 Feb 2024

Viktor Orban is not abandoning Europe

The news that Hungary and China have signed a security pact, following a visit by to Budapest by Wang Xiaohong, Minister of Public Security, has been a long time in the making. In 2012, two years after beginning his second term as Prime Minister, Viktor Orban formally re-orientated Hungary’s economic and foreign policy under the slogan of the ‘Eastern Opening’. Orban understood the frustration that had returned him to power with a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Two decades of integration with western Europe had made plenty of Hungarians prosperous, but not the majority. The introduction of the free market in Hungary was accompanied by the mass closure of businesses, and

Philip Patrick

Why are Japan’s trains so much better than ours?

With six more months of train strikes recently announced it is getting hard to imagine a punctual, anxiety-free railway journey in the UK. Over in Japan it’s hard to imagine the opposite. Japan is one of those blessed countries where people understand the value of a modern, reliable, affordable and extensive railway network. In a 2019 global efficiency survey Japan, unsurprisingly, came out on top. And there hasn’t been a strike since the 1970s. If I had to think of one moment that crystallised all that I admire about Japanese trains it would be when I lost my paper ticket and had to negotiate the exit barrier. An immaculately uniformed

Debbie Hayton

The dilemma of being a transsexual Christian

As the Church of England once again tears itself apart over gay marriage, us transsexual Christians have slipped in under the radar. It’s been 24 years since the first transgender CofE priest, Carol Stone, returned to work in Swindon after gender reassignment surgery. Even in 2000, Stone’s parishioners weren’t that bothered about their ‘new’ vicar. I’ve also found my fellow Christians to be mostly welcoming – but that doesn’t mean being a trans Christian is without its dilemmas. In my youth I struggled to reconcile science and faith, but that challenge was easy compared to the rather more profound clash of transsexualism with faith. Nowhere does the Bible say ‘thou

Dominic Dyer

The sinister reality of trail hunting

Will Sir Keir Starmer go further on the Hunting Act than Tony Blair did? While the passing of the legislation in 2004 marked a significant moment in the history of wildlife protection, it was flawed. This wasn’t immediately realised: at the time, many believed that the move by the Labour government would finally bring an end to fox hunting in the British countryside. But Prime Minister Blair was far from enthusiastic about banning fox hunting, thanks to his fears the issue would generate a growing rift between the Labour party and rural voters. In recent months Lord Mandelson has indicated that Blair felt under pressure to act on this issue, partly due to a

Saturday

24 Feb 2024

Max Jeffery

Lee Anderson suspended: what now?

Lee Anderson has been suspended from the Conservative party this afternoon after saying on GB News that Islamists controlled Sadiq Khan. Will Rishi Sunak miss having the Ashfield MP in his party? Will Anderson join reform? Max Jeffery speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.

Fraser Nelson

Sunak was right to suspend Lee Anderson

When Lee Anderson was made deputy chairman of the Conservative party, it was on the understanding that he’d explode now and again. Say something outrageous, cause a stir. The unelected Rishi Sunak had a wide conservative coalition to keep together and was mindful that, as a besuited Goldman Sachs alumnus, he may struggle to keep the right of the party (and the electorate) on board. Occasional outbursts from Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson were helpful: they were chaff and flares which would save him from incoming missiles from the right. But Sunak is up against the strong centrifugal forces pulling conservatives further to the right. A great many politicians look

Katy Balls

Will Lee Anderson defect to Reform?

Lee Anderson has been suspended from the Conservative party following comments he made about Sadiq Khan. The former deputy party chairman used an appearance on GB News on Friday to claim the London mayor had ‘given our capital away’ to Islamists, who he referred to as Khan’s ‘mates’. This afternoon a spokesperson for Chief Whip Simon Hart said he had suspended the Conservative whip from Anderson ‘following his refusal to apologise’ for his remarks. Since the programme aired, a number of Tory MPs have expressed their upset at Anderson’s comments. This includes former chancellor Sajid Javid who called them ‘ridiculous’. Meanwhile, Labour has gone on the attack — Khan himself

Jacob Rees-Mogg

Shamima Begum shouldn’t have lost her British citizenship

Parliamentary sovereignty is the bedrock of the constitution, and the courts ought to accept it, even when bad laws are passed. It is not the job of the courts to make the law, but to adjudicate on it. Thus the Appeal Court ruling against Shamima Begum is right, even if the decision of Sajid Javid, as Home Secretary, to strip Begum of her citizenship is wrong and ought never to have been made. This is not because Begum was groomed, trafficked and raped. These are serious considerations, and in all normal circumstances, a 15-year-old treated in such a barbarous way would not be held culpable for her actions. However, extenuating

Steerpike

Lee Anderson loses the Tory whip

Oh dear. Lee Anderson has now lost the Conservative whip after refusing to apologise for comments directed at London’s mayor. Appearing on GB News yesterday, the red wall Rottweiler declared that ‘Islamists’ have ‘got control of London’ and its mayor, Sadiq Khan. He told the network that Khan has ‘Given our capital city away to his mates. I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London.’ It triggered a storm of criticism from the opposition parties, with Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, labelling Anderson’s comments as ‘unambiguously racist and Islamophobic’.

Freddy Gray

How badly will Nikki Haley lose in South Carolina?

Will Nikki Haley defy expectations and only lose by 20 points today? That seems to be closest thing to a point of contention as South Carolina heads to the polls for today’s dodo of a Republican primary. The polls have shown Trump’s enormous lead shrinking in recent days from well over 30 points to around 25. Some well-informed reporters think that Trump’s lead has diminished because of his rude outburst about Haley’s spouse. ‘Where’s her husband?’ Trump mused in February, in his off-the-top-of-his-head way. ‘Oh, he’s away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone.’ Making jokes about people’s marriages is one thing; insulting

Katy Balls

Tom Baldwin: ‘There is no such thing as Starmerism’

17 min listen

In this special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots, Katy Balls is joined by Tom Baldwin, author of a new authorised biography of Labour leader Keir Starmer. Tom tells Katy why Starmer is such a complex character, his struggle to get the leader of the opposition to open up – particularly about his relationship with his father – and why he is not a politician, in the usual sense. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson.

Max Jeffery

Max Jeffery, Lisa Haseldine, Christopher Howse, Philip Hensher and Calvin Po

43 min listen

This week: Max Jeffery writes from Blackpool where he says you can see the welfare crisis at its worst (01:29); Lisa Haseldine reads her interview with the wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, whose husband is languishing in a Siberian jail (06:26); Christopher Howse tells us about the ancient synagogue under threat from developers (13:02); Philip Hensher reads his review of Write, Cut, Rewrite (24:34); and Calvin Po asks whether a Labour government will let architects reshape housing (34:42). Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Margaret Mitchell.

Mark Galeotti

Two years on, the Ukraine war matters more than ever

There are inevitably voices in the West questioning the value of committing more than £5.5 billion a month in support of the war in Ukraine. It looks for now deadlocked at best, and at worst – in light of the recent Russian capture of Avdiivka – a slow defeat. Yet it is important to realise just how the Ukraine war matters to the world outside that country’s borders, even if perhaps not quite in the ways some would suggest. There is much overheated talk about a Ukrainian defeat leading to a direct threat to Nato. Some presume that this means the whole country falling to Vladimir Putin and Russian troops

Andrew Tettenborn

Dartmoor’s mass trespass isn’t what it seems

The largest mass trespass in a generation will take place in Devon today. Hundreds of protesters belonging to the pressure-group Right to Roam will descend on Vixen Tor, a slightly sinister-looking granite outcrop on Dartmoor a few miles from Tavistock. Since 2003, access has been banned. But given that much of Dartmoor is already open to the public, why the stress on this fairly small part, which is not? Those marching on Vixen Tor say the reason is simple: a small part of the high moor where hikers have the right to walk at will is inaccessible because it can only be reached across the Tor, which is privately owned

Anna Arutunyan

Navalny showed there is a better Russia

Everything was angular about him: his brilliant smile, the choppy movements of his hands as he spoke, the western mannerisms he had picked up abroad at Yale. But it was the smile that really stood out. Alexei Navalny didn’t know me, probably didn’t trust me, but his smile was a signal of trust – an open sincerity I’d never seen among Russian politicians. It was the kind of trust that comes from an inner self-confidence, the belief that his country’s laws are for him and for the people, and most of all, the belief in solutions. As a reporter in Russia, it was not the only time I had seen or spoken to him, but when

Friday

23 Feb 2024

Steerpike

Watch: Truss turns on the Financial Times

Where would be without Liz Truss? The blonde bombshell hit Washington DC this week to attend the great right-wing jamboree that is the Conservative Political Action Conference. Appearing alongside Trump election mastermind Steve Bannon, Truss told the crowd that she had wanted to cut taxes and the size of the state while in No.10, but ‘the economic establishment in Britain wanted to keep things the way they were – they got me.’ ‘But I have learnt from that, Steve,’ she said. Bannon then interjected: ‘Hold on – was it the Economist that got you, was it the Financial Times of London, the City of London – are they the ones that

Steerpike

Civil servants roll over £323 million worth of holiday

It was Douglas Jay who wrote that ‘In the case of nutrition and health… the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves’. But that instinct, it seems, deserts Sir Humphrey when it comes to planning his own holiday. For civil servants have today been told to ‘use it or lose it’ after it emerged staff at six government departments have been allowed to rollover hundreds of millions of pounds worth of annual leave. The TaxPayers’ Alliance found that a total of more than £323 million of paid holiday was carried over between 2019 and 2023, a figure is likely to be far higher, given that most government departments, er, refused to provide

Arash Azizi

Iran and the Yakuza are natural criminal bedfellows

On Thursday, a 60-year-old Japanese crime boss appeared in a New York court to respond to charges that he helped traffic illicit material from Myanmar to Thailand. You might expect this to be a story about the Southeast Asian drug trade – it’s a vibrant business after all. In fact the supposed Yakuza boss, Takeshi Ebisawa, was allegedly caught trying to supply uranium and weapons-grade plutonium to an undercover DEA agent purporting to know a general in Iran. According to the court documents, Ebisawa and his Thai partner, who are being held in a Brooklyn jail, had been able acquire the nuclear material from an ethnic insurgent group in Myanmar. The Islamic

Steerpike

Home Office director: we should ‘leverage’ George Floyd’s death

These days, it’s not hard to find an example of departmental failure. From procurement problems at the MoD to accounting errors at the Treasury, Whitehall offers a rich mine of failure from which to draw. But of all the great ministries of state, few provide more gems than the Home Office. The mandarins at 2 Marsham Street are always working on some hare-brained scheme that can destroy a Home Secretary’s career. The trouble is, in the words of Richard Wilson, not only does the minister ‘not know who they are, but neither will they.’ So it is with a sense of weariness then that Steerpike brings news of some of

Dean Godson

The Met have allowed pro-Palestine protestors to run riot in Westminster

The Metropolitan Police is more frightened of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign than the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is of the Metropolitan Police. This is the central fact of life in the public order debate today – and does much to explain the context of Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s decision to break with long established Parliamentary convention in order to avert large scale threats to MPs. The Speaker’s reasoning should puncture the Panglossian narrative of the Met and of other forces that the Palestine protests are largely peaceful. The truth is that these outwardly orderly marches are based on a discourse of threat – to which the Met responds by effectively ‘taking the knee’.