Politics Archives

Monday

24 Jul 2023

Cindy Yu

Did some good come from the Qing’s dying century?

37 min listen

In the 1800s, Qing China’s final century, European powers were expanding eastwards. The industrialised West, with its gunboats and muskets, and the soft power of Christianity, pushed around the dynasty’s last rulers. But was this period more than just a time of national suffering and humiliation for China? The British Museum’s ongoing exhibit, China’s hidden century, tells the story of Qing China’s final decades. The more than 300 exhibits tell a story not only of decline, but of a complicated exchange between China and the West about culture, fashion, politics and ideas. I reviewed China’s hidden century in The Spectator last month, and hosted a live Chinese Whispers recording about the exhibition in the British Museum a

James Esses

Labour still can’t be trusted on trans rights

Today, Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, has pledged in a Guardian article that ‘Labour will lead on reform of transgender rights.’ At first glance, you could be fooled into thinking this is a positive intervention. For starters, Dodds has rowed back on the policy of self-ID, perhaps after seeing the chaotic collapse of the policy under the SNP in Scotland. Labour will also maintain the need for a diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’ before someone can obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate. Dodds says that the party will not seek to remove same-sex exemptions permitted under the Equality Act 2010 either. But when you dig beneath the surface, it

Steerpike

BBC finally apologises to Nigel Farage

Dogs bark, cows moo and the BBC makes a hash of it. After holding out for a week, the Corporation has today thrown in the towel and issued a belated and grovelling apology to Nigel Farage for misreporting the reason his bank account at Coutts was closed. The Beeb’s original report by its Business Editor Simon Jack claimed that the reason for the closure was that Farage’s account had fallen beneath the bank’s wealth limit. But following last week’s revelation that Farage’s account was shut because he was not ‘compatible with Coutts… as an inclusive organisation’, the BBC has been left with a substantial amount of egg on its face once again.

Steerpike

Charlotte Owen joins the House of Lords

While golden oldies battle for the presidency, the age of those in Westminster seems to be getting younger and younger. Last week, we had a new ‘Baby of the House’ when 25-year-old Keir Mather was elected as MP for Selby and Ainsty. And today, 29-year-old Charlotte Owen is being sworn in as the youngest life peer in British history. Who says the Tories have nothing to offer millenials? The onetime No. 10 aide is to become Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge, having been awarded the gong in Boris Johnson’s honours list for her work as a parliamentary assistant and 18 months as a spad. Her appointment has been lauded by

John Oxley

Michael Gove can’t solve the housing crisis by ignoring the suburbs

Michael Gove, one of the few ministers with a track record of getting stuff done, set out the government’s new housebuilding plans this morning. But will his policies actually help solve the housing crisis? The British Dream is largely a suburban one, and Gove’s plan fails to address it Gove’s plans have focused on streamlining the planning system in certain areas. The levelling up secretary is planning to create a dozen more Development Corporations, which take planning decisions away from local politicians and have speeded up building in areas such as Canary Wharf and the London Olympic games site. Gove is also opening the Office for Place, a department for

Matthew Lynn

Elon Musk has launched X to kill Twitter

It will trash the brand. It will alienate its core users. And relaunching and rebranding a failing business almost never works. As Elon Musk drops the Twitter blue bird and swaps it for an X, we will hear plenty of arguments about why the world’s second richest man has made another critical commercial mistake. In fairness, some of them have a point. Yet Musk’s critics are making a mistake by missing the real purpose of the new name. X only exists to kill off Twitter. The rebrand was announced in a typically haphazard way. As of today, Twitter will be known simply as X. It was Musk’s boldest move yet

Mark Nayler

The unlikely new kingmakers in Spanish politics

Depending on how you look at the result of yesterday’s general election in Spain, either everyone won or no one won. It had been called five months early by outgoing Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez, who hoped to block a resurgent Spanish right after its emphatic victories in regional elections on 28 May. The vote drew 70.4 per cent of the population to the polls, 4.2 per cent more than in 2019. This was a surprisingly high turnout for the middle of summer, when a lot of Spaniards are either on holiday or sheltering from the intense heat. Prolonged political freezes, sleep-walking governments and prop-up arrangements have become the norm

James Heale

Is Labour infighting a problem for Starmer?

13 min listen

Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson speak to James Heale about Labour’s infighting over issues such as ULEZ and the child benefits cap. Whilst not in government yet, is this something Keir Starmer will need to get a grip on in order to become the next Prime Minister? Produced by Natasha Feroze.

Jim Lawley

When will Spain’s political paralysis end?

Sunday’s general election in Spain was supposed to answer the question: will Spain be governed for the next four years by a right-wing coalition or by a left-wing coalition? If the question was easy to understand, the answer certainly isn’t. Like the four previous general elections, this one was inconclusive – only even more so. The right-wing Partido Popular won 136 seats and Vox, even further to the right, won 33, giving a Partido Popular/Vox coalition a total of 169 seats – fewer than most polls had predicted. Unfortunately for the just over 11 million Spaniards who voted for these two parties, this leaves them seven seats short: in a

Steerpike

Minister calls in the banks after Farage account closed

It’s a month since the Farage Coutts row blew up and there’s no sign of it calming down any time soon. The asinine decision of the bank to close the Brexiteer’s account because they didn’t like his politics and then to tell the BBC that it was down to commercial reasons now looks to be the financial equivalent of Pearl Harbour. NatWest boss Alison Rose – the Djimi Traore of the banking world – was last week forced to issue a grovelling apology after the bank’s own goal. But that’s not enough for City Minister Andrew Griffith, who will summon Rose and eighteen other bank chiefs to give assurances that customers

Sam Leith

Immigration and a government in a state of post-hypnotic suggestion

Hurrah! The government, it was reported yesterday, is working on getting some more migrants. To plug a million-strong post-Brexit labour shortage in the hospitality sector, Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick have been instructed by Downing Street to start talks to open the doors to young French, German, Spanish and Swiss nationals. If it goes well, the plan is to perhaps invite a few more to help out with farming, fish processing and all sorts of other sectors of the economy that are looking a bit peaky. ‘European baristas and au pairs could return to Britain under government scheme’, read the headline. Just like the good old days, eh? What’s wrong with, say, Lithuanian au

Lisa Haseldine

Drones strike Moscow in fifth attack since May

For the fifth time in three months, Moscow has once again been targeted by drones. In what is fast becoming a regular occurrence, the Russian ministry of defence reported that two drones attacked the city in the early hours of this morning. Despite the ministry’s claims to have intercepted and jammed the drones, they were still able to inflict damage on two buildings in the south west of the city. According to the government news agency TASS, one of the drones hit a non-residential building on Komsomolsky Prospekt, a mere two miles from the Kremlin and just over the river from Moscow’s famous Gorky Park. This isn’t the largest drone

Sunday

23 Jul 2023

Svitlana Morenets

Targeting Odesa marks a new turn in the war

The world is waking up to pictures of fresh destruction in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, which has been under constant Russian fire since the grain export deal collapsed last week. At least one person has been killed and 19 more injured following missile strikes overnight. The roof of the recently-rebuilt Transfiguration Cathedral has partially collapsed, and there have been films of local residents trying to rescue icons and other sacred artefacts. The footage is striking – but a tiny part of what’s now at stake. Back in July 2022, Russia agreed not to destroy Ukraine’s grain-exporting infrastructure given how important the foodstuff is to Africa and world food

Julie Burchill

Sadiq Khan needs to #HaveAWord with himself

When a public figure is in danger of annoying me so much that it risks impinging on my quality of life, there’s an easy trick I play on myself in order to put the irritant back into their box and into perspective. Rather than take them seriously, I simply reframe them as a comic creation in the style of David Brent of The Office fame. This strategy worked a treat with Meghan Markle when I had to watch the Netflix mockumentary for work. With the latest mis-step in Mayor Sadiq Khan’s anti-sexist #HaveAWord campaign, the time has come to view him too through the prism of Ricky Gervais’ supreme buffoon.

Patrick O’Flynn

Going soft on Net Zero could save Rishi Sunak

The Tory green brigade now tends to be heavily concentrated in the House of Lords, where Zac Goldsmith recently joined John Gummer, now known as Lord Deben. This pair were jointly responsible for the Conservative party ‘Quality of Life’ report of summer 2007, which argued: ‘Beyond a certain point – a point which the UK reached some time ago – ever-increasing material gain can become not a gift but a burden.’ Had the hard-bitten Andy Coulson not arrived to reframe the Tory message, the party could well have gone into a general election in the autumn of that year with its central charge against Gordon Brown being that he had

Gavin Mortimer

Could Ulez lead to Sadiq Khan’s downfall?

Emmanuel Macron has spoken of his fear of France’s ‘fragmentation’ and of the nation’s ‘division’ following the riots that reduced parts of the Republic to rubble earlier this month. The truth, as the president well knows, is that France is already deeply divided, and the fractures are numerous. As well as the topical one, that of the chasm separating many of the Banlieues from the rest of the Republic, there is also the growing gulf between those who prostrate themselves at the altar of Net Zero and those who are sceptical or downright resistant. And the French, being French, have never been shy in demonstrating forcefully their opposition to the Green zealots.

Ian Acheson

The truth about the Bibby Stockholm migrant barge

The ingloriously-named Bibby Stockholm has weighed anchor in Dorset’s Portland harbour to a storm of protest. The vessel is intended to house up to 500 single male adults who have arrived in this country by illegal means. Rishi Sunak’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’ has morphed into a need for bigger boats to contain a small fraction of those asylum seekers still arriving every day on our coastline. A rare but conspicuously uncomfortable alliance of activists and local Nimbys have united in protest against this move. The former assert that conditions will be inhumane; the latter fret about overwhelmed local services. Both are proxies for a national debate polarised between

Saturday

22 Jul 2023

Stephen Daisley

Ann Clwyd was a humanitarian unlike any today

Ann Clwyd, who has died aged 86, never held ministerial office or high office of any kind. Unless, of course, you count a stint as chair of the parliamentary Labour party, though that is more of a penance than a power trip. She did a few tours on the opposition front bench under Neil Kinnock, John Smith and, briefly, Tony Blair, but she was too independent-minded and probably not metro enough for a New Labour red box. That she was rebelling against the government a few months into its first term only confirmed that. Voting against an early Harriet Harman benefit cut, designed to force single parents into the labour

Steerpike

Watch: Stonewall chair grilled on transgender issues

It’s been a difficult time for the gay rights charity Stonewall. Chief Executive Nancy Kelley is due to leave her job next week, after a torturous year that saw the Allison Bailey case and numerous employers withdraw from the charity’s ‘Diversity Champions’ scheme. Iain Anderson, Stonewall’s Chair, was probably hoping to put all this behind him when he sat down with Sky’s Beth Rigby for an in-depth interview on the charity’s work. Unfortunately for Anderson, Rigby raised some of the thorniest issues with regards to trans rights, including elite sports and single-sex spaces. Asked about trans swimmer Lia Thomas beating two biological women on a podium, he replied ‘We’re working

Robin Ashenden

Igor Girkin’s arrest was a long time coming

With the reported arrest on Friday of Igor Girkin (aka ‘Strelkov’ or ‘Igor the Terrible’) the career of one of the Russia-Ukraine war’s most infamous, larger-than-life characters may finally have hit a dead end. Girkin, the career-killer with the sensitive face and soulful eyes, has played numerous parts in his time: activist, blogger, FSB colonel, executioner, convicted war criminal and eternal thorn in the side of the Russian Ministry of Defence. A self-professed nationalist, and founder member of the ‘Club of Angry Patriots’, he has consistently lambasted Putin’s ‘special military operation’ for its failures and perceived half-measures, calling repeatedly for martial law and mass-mobilisation to avert a likely defeat.

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