Politics Archives

Saturday

17 Jun 2023

When will the Department for Education get a grip on its transgender guidance?

Who’s running the show on trans and gender? Elected ministers? Or an activist civil service? A publication put out by the Department for Education (DfE) – Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) – suggests it may be the latter. Schools and colleges rely on this document to keep children safe. But, while the 2023 version contains a few updates, there are none regarding the safeguarding issue everyone has been talking about: children who want to change their gender. So why has the department chosen to turn a blind eye to the concerned parents, teachers and schools desperate for guidance? Education Secretary Gillian Keegan must answer some difficult questions. Why did she sign

Ross Clark

Why Boris’s critics might regret celebrating his downfall

Imagine a Tory prime minister who gave the liberal left almost everything that it wanted. Higher migration? Sure, let’s treble it. End austerity with more tax and spending? Sure, let’s pay the wages of 9 million people from the state’s purse, hand the NHS another £34 billion – and let’s jack up corporation tax to pay for it. Climate change? Let’s close down every gas-fired power station by 2035, ban fracking and lumber oil and gas companies with a windfall tax. Culture wars? Let’s make gay conversion therapy a crime. You might think that the liberal left would at least bring itself to show some gratitude, but apparently not. We

Friday

16 Jun 2023

Steerpike

Boris’s big column backfires

Boris! Boris! Boris! For a week now, the cry has been incessant among our national media. Liberated from his parliamentary cage, what will the albino gorilla do next? And last night we got our answer: a new column with the Daily Mail, that organ of Middle England sensibility. Eagerly, the whole of Fleet Street awaited Johnson’s first column, published at 5 p.m today. What would he write about, they speculated furiously? State secrets, perhaps? A denunciation of Sunak, Gove and all the sinister forces that they embody? Or some great revelation about his future plans? The answer, it turns out, is, er, no. Rather anti-climactically, Boris published his first Mail

Stephen Daisley

Is this Wickes’s Gerald Ratner moment?

Big businesses are increasingly torn between activist leadership and a customer base that just wants to stump up its cash and be on its way. Customers’ patience is wearing thin. The latest company seemingly eager to pick a fight with its clientele is DIY chain Wickes. A video dug up by campaigner James Esses shows the shop’s chief operating officer Fraser Longden taking part in a panel at PinkNews’s Trans+ Summit. The discussion, which took place last month, was entitled ‘The Role of Senior Leaders in Trans+ Inclusion’. So far, so corporate. At least it was until Longden was asked whether Wickes had received any backlash for its stance. He told the panel: ‘I

Kristina Murkett

Humza Yousaf should think again before scrapping end-of-year exams

One of the most wonderful things about walking around Oxford at this time of year is seeing hordes of young people celebrating the end of exams: finals, A-levels. GCSEs. Hundreds of miles north in Scotland, younger students may soon have another reason to celebrate altogether: the end of National 5 qualifications. An imminent review of secondary Scottish assessment is widely anticipated to recommend ditching exams for 15 and 16 year olds, and replacing National 5 qualifications (the Scottish equivalent to GCSEs) with a new system. Under the new proposals, students would be judged on coursework alongside a Scottish ‘diploma’ which recognises extra-curricular activities, sport and volunteering. The review was announced

John Keiger

Did France invent cricket?

As the First Ashes Test begins at Edgbaston it is fitting to recall England’s oldest cricket adversary: France. The Marylebone Cricket Club’s (MCC) first ever international tour was scheduled for France in the summer of 1789. Owing to local difficulties the tour did not go ahead. The match was eventually rescheduled for the bicentennial of the French Revolution with France beating the MCC by seven wickets. In the space of a fortnight, we have witnessed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meeting with president Biden in Washington to announce ambitiously that Britain would lead on setting up international norms on Artificial Intelligence (AI). This was followed a few days later by president

James Heale

How will MPs vote on the Partygate report?

11 min listen

The release of The Privileges Committee’s report into whether Boris Johnson knowingly misled parliament has caused a war of words in the press. Several MPs have announced that they will vote against the report when it comes to House of Commons on Monday. What’s the latest? Also on the podcast, Boris Johnson is expected to be announced as the Mail’s ‘erudite’ new columnist in tomorrow’s edition. Does Johnson need a political office in order to cause trouble? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson.

Freddy Gray

Will nuclear power heal the climate?

52 min listen

This week, Freddy is joined by a great American filmmaker, Oliver Stone, and a great Argentinian filmmaker, Fernando Sulichin. Their new documentary Nuclear Now proposes nuclear energy as the solution to the climate crisis. On the podcast, they address global concerns about adding nuclear to the energy mix, compare the nuclear policy of Presidents Biden and Trump and discuss the opinion that Oliver formed of Vladimir Putin while filming The Putin Interviews.

Mark Solomons

Readers of Ulysses have a right to be smug

Happy Bloomsday everybody. Today, 16 June, is the day on which the events of James Joyce’s epic novel, Ulysses, is set and the anniversary is celebrated every year by fans, scholars and people who simply want to look clever. Millions of people either cite the tome as the greatest piece of literature ever written, or as the biggest load of pretentious drivel: so complicated that you can’t get past page 46 before giving up. Hardcore devotees to the 1922 work based on Homer’s Odyssey, will even follow the route taken by its central character, Leopold Bloom, through Dublin from a Martello Tower on the coast via a funeral and a selection

Iain Macwhirter

The SNP is sleepwalking into extinction

The Scottish National party has been through difficult times in the past, but can anything compare with this week? Nicola Sturgeon arrested ‘as a suspect’ by Police Scotland in the investigation into party finances. The ignominious collapse of the deposit return scheme; the deepening scandal of the Ferguson Marine ferries. This must be the nadir, surely, of SNP fortunes. Or is it? As the week progressed, SNP figures became visibly more relaxed and even started sounding rather bullish. Nothing to see here…Nicola hasn’t been charged with anything…voters are focussed on Boris’s crimes. The SNP MSP, James Dornan, even accused the police and the media of ‘collusion’ and complained that officers had raided

Matthew Lynn

Is France finally changing its tune on Brexit?

The waiters can sometimes be a little surly. That holiday villa you booked in the Loire may not always be as desirable as it looked in the pictures. And you can never be entirely sure which side they will be on in a major war. Still, despite occasional inconsistencies, there is one thing you could always rely on the French for. They will insist forever that leaving the EU has been a catastrophe for the British economy, and by far the stupidest decision any major country has ever made. But hold on. What’s this? In a note this morning BNP Paribas, a bank right at the heart of the French

Steerpike

Boris Johnson gets a Mail column

It’s bad news for Rishi Sunak on the front page of the Daily Mail. No, not the splash about a revolt on Monday’s Privileges Committee vote but rather the teasing trailer for the paper’s latest recruit. A mystery ‘erudite new columnist’ is trailed on the front of today’s edition, with the Mail promising that their writing will be ‘required reading in Westminster – and across the world!’ The paper offers only a blacked out silhouette of their new hire but it’s clear who it is: Boris Johnson. The new Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds is on what Politico call a ‘very high six-figure sum’ to pen a weekly column. There was much

Katy Balls

The Isabel Oakeshott Edition

46 min listen

Isabel Oakeshott is a journalist and author of numerous political biographies, formerly the political editor for the Sunday Times. She’s known for a number of scoops over the years, including Chris Huhne’s speeding ticket and revealing Matt Hancock’s lockdown WhatsApps. On the episode, she talks to Katy about why toughness was a quality her parents particularly emphasised in her upbringing; what it was like to break into the lobby as a female journalist; and why she decided to break her confidentiality agreement to expose the cache of messages that Matt Hancock had given her. Produced by Natasha Feroze, Saby Reyes-Kulkarni and Oscar Edmondson.

Thursday

15 Jun 2023

Lara Prendergast

Get Rishi: the plot against the PM

35 min listen

This week: For her cover piece, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls writes that Boris Johnson could be attempting to spearhead an insurgency against the prime minister. She joins the podcast alongside historian and author Sir Anthony Seldon, to discuss whether – in light of the Privileges Committee’s findings – Boris is going to seriously up the ante when it comes to seeking revenge against his former chancellor. (01:02) Also this week: In The Spectator journalist Paul Wood writes about how Saudi Arabia is buying the world, after the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund negotiated a controlling interest in the main US golf tournament, the PGA. This took many people by surprise. He is

Brendan O’Neill

The troubling truth about Boris’s partygate inquisition

There is something faintly ridiculous about the Privileges Committee’s report on partygate. Sixteen pages in, you encounter the following sentence: ‘We have evidence that trestle tables were set up for drinks to be laid out.’ You have barely caught your breath from this nightmarish vision of a trestle table being erected in the Downing Street garden before you are informed that there is evidence that, at another get-together, ‘a cake and alcohol were provided’. It gets worse. In the annex to the report we learn of ‘platters of sandwiches’. Was there no end to the Bacchanalian debauchery of the Boris Johnson regime? Surely I am not alone in thinking this

Steerpike

Red Wall voters prefer a pint with Starmer over Sunak

Nicola arrested, Boris now seatless, Nadine’s on the warpath and the Tories are in the mire. These days life seems pretty sweet if you’re Keir Starmer. You can even U-turn on your flagship policy on the Today programme and have it completely forgotten about by the time of the Six O’Clock news. And now a new survey commissioned by Mr S brings more cheer for the Labour leader. Starmer’s first priority upon replacing Corbyn – other than tackling antisemitism – was winning back the Red Wall and it seems his efforts have not been in vain. A new poll for The Spectator by Redfield and Wilton of 1,200 voters shows

Kate Andrews

Boris Johnson took us for fools. Now we have proof

No one wants to talk about the pandemic anymore. Not even partygate. Understandably so: we’ve all put hard work into suppressing and burying miserable memories over that two-year period. Why dredge it all back up? But as one of the people in this country who still deeply cares about partygate – the hypocrisy of it, the abuse of power – I simply want to say that today’s report from the Privileges Committee into whether Boris Johnson misled parliament is remarkable. It’s a delivery of justice that the Sue Gray report wasn’t: one which some of us have quietly been holding out for. If you don’t have hours today to go through the full 30,000

Steerpike

Tory MP: ‘Put Boris in the stocks’

The Privileges Committee report is out today and the reaction is just what you’d expect. Nadine Dorries has taken to Twitter, declaring that any Conservative who votes for the report ‘is fundamentally not a Conservative’ and threatening deselections for those who do. Brendan Clarke-Smith has attacked its ‘spiteful, vindictive and overreaching conclusions’; Paul Bristow claims that ‘few are brave enough’ to admit that they ‘clearly go way too far.’ But Steerpike’s favourite response to all of this is that offered by close Boris ally Sir James Duddridge. He sarcastically offered an elegant solution to Johnson’s woes – one that might even enjoy Rishi Sunak’s report. Duddridge tweeted earlier today: Why

Katy Balls

How damning is the Privileges Committee’s report?

11 min listen

We have finally got the results of the Privileges Committee’s report into whether Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament, and it doesn’t make for comfortable reading for the former prime minister. The 30,000-word document finds that he committed multiple contempts of parliament, including deliberately misleading the house, deliberately misleading the committee, breaching confidence, impugning the committee and the democratic process of the house and ‘being complicit in the campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation of the committee’. What will these findings mean for Boris? And what has the reaction been in parliament? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Heale. Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson.

Patrick O’Flynn

Let’s not follow Boris down his path as ‘Britain’s Trump’

The Commons privileges committee report into the conduct of Boris Johnson is completely damning. All the kerfuffle about whether the committee was justified in devising a new intermediate category of mendacity defined as ‘recklessly misleading parliament’ turns out to be irrelevant. The entire seven-strong committee, including the four Tory members on it, have found that Johnson deliberately misled parliament on multiple fronts. Johnson’s dissembling and purveying of falsehoods while prime minister is judged so serious that, had the blond bombshell hung around to take his punishment, the committee’s recommendation would have been a suspension from the Commons ‘long enough to engage the provisions of the Recall of MPs Act’. We have