Politics Archives

Tuesday

9 Jan 2024

Why everyone is worried about Hezbollah

Hezbollah has escalated attacks against Israel in the last few days. The Iran-backed Lebanese militant organisation started firing missiles into Israel when the war against Hamas started last October. In the three months since, it has kept attacks limited in order to avoid an escalation into a full-scale war, but the situation is highly volatile. Since the Israeli assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut a week ago, tensions have been rising. Hezbollah’s attacks have intensified further this week, following the killing of top commander Wissam Tawil. Tawil commanded Hezbollah’s elite Radwan fighting forces based close to the border with Israel. Today Israel killed two more Hezbollah commanders:

Max Jeffery

Paula Vennells hands back her CBE

10 min listen

Paula Vennells, the former head of the Post Office, has handed back her CBE. Will her decision put more pressure on politicians like Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader who has so far refused to resign? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.

Katy Balls

Labour plan to find lockdown’s ‘ghost children’ will rile the Tories

Bridget Phillipson spent the morning setting out what she will prioritise in the Department for Education if Labour wins the election. The shadow education secretary parked her party’s tanks on the Tories’ lawn by giving a speech at the Centre for Social Justice, the thinktank co-founded by Iain Duncan Smith. She follows the shadow work and pensions secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, who also delivered a keynote speech on out-of-work benefits at the CSJ. Phillipson kicked off her address by praising Michael Gove for championing high expectations and standards during his time in the education brief – something that, she said, was no longer the case. Labour MPs giving speeches at the

Isabel Hardman

Paula Vennells has lost her CBE. That’s not enough

Paula Vennells has announced she will hand back her CBE with immediate effect, meaning the former Post Office boss now suffers the pain of a slightly shorter name as a consequence of the wrongful conviction of hundreds of subpostmasters. The former Post Office boss now suffers the pain of a slightly shorter name A petition demanding that she be stripped of the honour had reached 1.2 million signatures, and Rishi Sunak had let it be known that he was very supportive of the Honours Committee looking into whether she should lose the gong. So it was only a matter of time – and Vennells has clearly decided to cut the

Ian Williams

Why has Xi Jinping purged his senior commanders?

The Chinese Communist party will no doubt throw a militarised tantrum should Saturday’s election in Taiwan be won by Lai Ching-te, the more independence-minded of the candidates. Yet behind these histrionics lies an army in turmoil, with a purge of top generals raising serious doubts as to whether it is up to the task of fighting a war. The CCP has spent billions of dollars expanding and modernising its armed forces at a pace rarely seen in peacetime, with the aim of creating a cutting edge force. But the money thrown at the generals and their hunger to acquire shiny new kit has fuelled increasingly deep-seated corruption in its rapacious

Gavin Mortimer

Can Macron’s ‘Brutus’ PM stop Le Pen?

Emmanuel Macron has begun the new year by replacing one Socialist prime minister with another. Out goes Elisabeth Borne and in comes Gabriel Attal, who at 34 is almost half as young as his 62-year-old predecessor. Macron hopes that Attal will provide his ailing presidency with some youthful vigour after the disastrous 20 months of Borne’s premiership. The arch technocrat wasn’t Macron’s first pick for the choice of PM in May 2022, but the left-wing members of his party made it known that his first choice, Catherine Vautrin, was unacceptable on account of her conservatism. So Borne got the job, but proved inadequate and uninspiring. As Le Figaro put it, her government

David Shipley

Police are in a muddle over transgender strip searches

Have you ever been strip searched? I have. The date it happened – 7 September 2020 – is etched on my mind. That morning, as part of a security sweep on HMP Wandsworth’s H Wing, a group of male and female officers ‘span’ my cell. With the door closed, the women left, and one of the officers asked me to remove my vest, then shorts, then boxers. Next, they asked me to squat, while one of the men bent down and shone a torch at my anus. I felt vulnerable. My knees shook. When he said: ‘Sorry mate, I promise you this is worse for me than it is for

Terry Barnes

Australia sees sense on its plan to ditch the monarchy

Australia’s government has been determined to ‘do a Barbados’ and ditch the British monarchy for an Australian republic with an Australian president. But now, it seems, prime minister Anthony Albanese has lost his nerve. In the week that the first Australian coins of Charles III’s reign entered general circulation, and it was confirmed the King and Queen will visit Australia later this year, Albanese and his government scuttled away from his party’s proclaimed republican intentions with a speed that makes even Rishi Sunak look decisive and in control. After campaigning for office with a commitment to put the future of the monarchy to a constitutional referendum in Labor’s second term

Steerpike

Watch: Trump mocks Macron’s accent

Emmanuel Macron is facing something of a crisis at home: his prime minister has resigned and his party is trailing that of his fierce rival Marine Le Pen by up to ten points in the run-up to crunch European elections. But Macron’s troubles don’t stop there: his ‘friend’ Donald Trump has been busy on the campaign trail in the United States, mocking his old ally and imitating the French leader’s accent. During a rally in Iowa, Trump told the crowd what happened when he threatened to slap tariffs on French wine and champagne if France imposed duties on US tech giants: Trump told the crowd: ‘I said, ‘Emmanuel, how are

Monday

8 Jan 2024

Sebastian Milbank

Could Idris Elba’s solution help tackle knife crime?

Actor Idris Elba took to the airwaves on the Today programme this morning to call for more to be done to tackle the scourge of knife crime in Britain. Elba asked the government to speed up the ban on the sale of machete and ‘zombie’ knives to prevent more young people dying in knife attacks. Few will disagree with Elba’s practical solution for tackling this issue. It is, at least, more likely to succeed than some of the more fashionable solutions – particularly so-called ‘public health’ approaches – which are occasionally suggested as a solution to knife crime. The rhetoric of a ‘public health’ solution to violence is very popular

James Heale

The problem with Chris Skidmore’s resignation

12 min listen

Chris Skidmore has formally announced his resignation today, triggering another by-election in the process. His departure from the Commons is in protest against the government’s bill on new oil and gas licenses, which is set to be debated later this evening. What’s the reaction been in Westminster? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Oscar Edmondson. The Spectator is hiring! We are looking for a new producer to join our broadcast team working across our suite of podcasts – including this one – as well as our YouTube channel Spectator TV. Follow the link to read the full job listing: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/wanted-a-broadcast-producer-for-the-spectator-2/

Andrew Liddle

Why Anas Sarwar is succeeding

Few politicians had a better 2023 than Anas Sarwar. The Scottish Labour leader began last year with his party still in the doldrums, languishing behind a seemingly impregnable SNP led by a seemingly indefatigable Nicola Sturgeon. A resignation, a camper van, and an incompetent successor later, and that has all changed. Scottish Labour is now in the ascendency and looking towards the coming general election in not with its normal trepidation, but with newfound relish. That much, at least, was clear from Sarwar’s speech – notionally kickstarting the party’s general election campaign – earlier this week (MON). This desire for change is Sarwar’s strongest suit As in the rest of

Ben Lazarus

Is a new front about to open up in Israel’s war?

Two days after the Israel Defence Forces announced that it had dismantled Hamas’s ‘military framework’ in the northern Gaza Strip, a new front in the war could now begin after the IDF took out a senior Hezbollah commander. Wissam al-Tawil, the deputy head of a unit within the group’s elite Radwan force, was killed this morning in an Israeli air strike on his car in southern Lebanon. ‘This is a very painful strike,’ one unnamed security source told Reuters. ‘Things will flare up now,’ another security source added. Since 7 October, more than 130 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in skirmishes between the group and Israel (another 19 died in Syria). Some

Kristina Murkett

Parents should share blame for plummeting school attendance

Is school optional nowadays? In summer 2022, 140,000 children were classed as ‘severely absent’ from the classroom, a rise of 134 per cent on before the pandemic. Some 1.5 million pupils – one in five children – are ‘persistently absent’, which means they miss more than 10 per cent of lessons. The problem is getting worse: for secondary students, absence rates in the first half of the 2023 autumn term were higher than in the same period a year before. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has vowed to make ‘tackling attendance’ her ‘number one priority’. Today, the government has announced £15 million of investment to expand its ‘attendance hubs’ programme to over 2,000 schools. Yet this money

Ross Clark

Boris Johnson can’t lecture Sadiq Khan on rail strikes

London mayor Sadiq Khan has just given us a foretaste of a Labour government by capitulating to the RMT and averting a tube strike at the last moment by, to borrow Nye Bevan’s phrase, stuffing the rail workers’ mouths with gold. That, at least, is Boris Johnson’s assessment of the 11th-hour agreement to avert the walkouts. Johnson is right, except is it really much different from what has been going on for years under his and other Conservative governments? It wasn’t Labour which gave us train drivers on £65,000 a year – far more, in some cases, when you add on overtime. That puts some train drivers in the top

Cindy Yu

What lies at the root of the India-China rivalry?

45 min listen

India is the fifth largest economy in the world, and now has a population larger than China’s. It’s no surprise, then, that officials in Washington often see India as a powerful non-western bulwark to growing Chinese power. On this podcast, I look at where China and India’s rivalry comes from. How much have long-lasting skirmishes on the China-Indian border damaged relations? How have demographics, economic competition and recent international conflicts affected the relationship between the two countries? And are the domestic politics of China and India in fact more similar than most westerners like to admit? I speak to Avinash Paliwal, an international relations expert at the School of Oriental

Jawad Iqbal

What’s the truth about the US defence secretary’s mystery illness?

Questions are growing over who knew what, and when, about the hospitalisation of the American Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, the most senior official in the chain of command between the president and the military. Austin was taken to hospital on New Year’s Day but the news was kept secret. Astonishingly, even president Joe Biden does not appear to have been told that Austin was unwell until last Thursday, four days after his admission to the Walter Reed National Medical Center in Maryland. Key figures in the Pentagon and members of Congress were also kept in the dark, and only informed on Friday. There have even been claims that senior members of his

Steerpike

Watch: shadow education secretary mauled over private schools

Labour might be ahead in the polls but it’s not all plain sailing. With an election looming later this year, members of the shadow cabinet have been reticent about setting forth their policy platforms for fear that the Tories either trash or nick their ideas. And a perfect demonstration of the perils of a flagship policy was demonstrated yesterday by Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, when she appeared on GB News. The Sunderland MP was keen to talk up Labour’s plans to levy VAT on independent schools. Such a move, she claims, will raise between £1.3 to £1.5 billion – money that can be invested in funding further mental

Steerpike

Will Ed Davey have to quit over the Post Office scandal?

The role of the Liberal Democrat leader is normally a simple one: sit on the sidelines, demand resignations and attack the Tories for being so beastly. But the incumbent Sir Ed Davey is now in a bit of jam over the ongoing Post Office scandal. For prior to reinventing himself as the scourge of Conservatives everywhere, Davey served from 2010 until 2012 as the postal affairs minister in the Coalition government. In this role, he was told of concerns about the Post Office’s faulty Horizon software, which eventually led to hundreds of postmasters being prosecuted over fraud, theft and false accounting. Davey is accused of ‘fobbing off’ those affected. Campaigner

Sunday

7 Jan 2024

Steerpike

Theresa May gets her Brexit dividend

There’s nothing so ex as an ex-Prime Minister. But while the likes of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and David Cameron are busy off respectively writing columns, making speeches and, er, running the Foreign Office, Theresa May has been content to quietly reside on the backbenches. As MP for Maidenhead, she has spent much of the past year promoting her new book – Abuse of Power – which proved to be the best-seller at October’s party conference. But such a low-key approach continues to reap dividends. For recently-published accounts show that in the year up until March 2023, the former PM’s eponymous company declared more than £1,540,000 in net assets –