Politics Archives

Tuesday

21 Mar 2023

Has Emmanuel Macron become France’s ‘Caligula’?

The government of Emmanuel Macron won a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly on Monday by a mere nine votes. The cross-party no-confidence motion, tabled by a Centrist coalition fell just short of the 287 votes it needed to bring down the government. To succeed the no-confidence motion required the support of the centre-right Republican party, augmenting the votes of the left-wing NUPE coalition and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, both of whom are opposed to the government’s reform bill that was passed last Thursday without a parliamentary vote. Instead, on Macron’s orders, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne used a controversial clause in the Constitution, Article 49.3, to pass

Owen Matthews

Were Ukrainians behind the Nord Stream bombings?

Vladimir Putin has his story, and he’s sticking to it: the destruction of three of the four Gazprom-owned Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September 2022 was the work of the American government. Speaking to reporters in Siberia last week, Putin insisted that the Nord Stream attacks had been carried out on a ‘state level’ and dismissed as ‘sheer nonsense’ a slew of recent stories pointing the finger at a group of freelance, Ukrainian-backed divers operating off a small hired yacht. But reported facts have been stacking up against Putin’s version of events. Earlier this month, the New York Times published a detailed investigation that suggested that the blasts were, in fact,

Monday

20 Mar 2023

Stephen Daisley

Don’t rush for tickets on Nicola Sturgeon’s farewell tour

Nicola Sturgeon’s valedictory address to the RSA was her ‘And now we turn to the liars…’ speech. The outgoing SNP leader’s remarks were nominally about inequality and climate change but she was really there to talk about the distorting impact of social media on democratic politics. Given her departure was possibly hastened by the pushback against her Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which saw women’s rights campaigners and others organise via social media, it’s understandable that the First Minister would feel a little irked by these disruptively democratic platforms. The ‘nature of the discourse’, Sturgeon opined, was ‘undermining our ability… to address the big issues’. The ‘damage’ social media was doing

Mike Gifford

How Russia’s neighbours are falling out of love with the Kremlin

Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine has united the West. Nato has been strengthened and there has been much support for the sanctions against the Kremlin and its supporters. Public opinion in the UK is firmly behind the Ukrainian people in their suffering, even if many remain wary of direct military entanglement. For the countries bordering Russia, however, the calculations are different, and nowhere can more ambivalence be seen than in Kazakhstan, the leading economy in Central Asia. Although it is the ninth largest country in the world, Kazakh foreign policy has long been dominated by the need to carefully manage relations with its two even bigger neighbours: Russia and China.

Freddy Gray

Why is bitcoin surging following SVB’s collapse?

For more than a decade, bitcoin bores have been banging on about cryptocurrency as the future of money. The emergence and spectacular growth of digital currencies, according to these evangelists, prove that the financial system upon which we all depend is broken. Bitcoin was after all created in 2009, after the great meltdown of 2008, as a revolutionary concept to fight the corrosive global power of central banking. Bitcoin was pitched as the new digital gold. It was limited in supply and could not be centrally controlled – its value couldn’t be distorted by quantitative easing and morally bankrupt governments hooked on debt. Bitcoin wasn’t just for buying illegal stuff

Andy Maciver

Jason Leitch’s lockdown regrets

You may have been forgiven for thinking that the only story in town up here in Scotland is the election of the leader of the SNP, and Scotland’s next First Minister. However, for a day at least, some of the headlines have been stolen by a man who became almost as well-known to Scots as the outgoing First Minister: Professor Jason Leitch. ‘Lockdown,’ Leitch concluded, ‘is an old fashioned approach to managing a disease that is going around the world in an aeroplane.’ Scotland’s National Clinical Director, Professor Leitch was at the side of Nicola Sturgeon during the entirety of the Covid pandemic, the country’s equivalent of Sir Patrick Vallance,

Natasha Feroze

Is the DUP’s protocol verdict a blow for Sunak?

11 min listen

Ahead of the vote on Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the DUP has said he will not back the key parts of the Windsor Framework. How much could this become a problem for Rishi Sunak? Also on Wednesday, what are the possible outcomes of Boris Johnson’s probe into Partygate? Natasha Feroze, Katy Balls and James Heale take a look at the week ahead.

Steerpike

Budget Poll: half of voters see Tories as a high tax party

It wasn’t so long ago that the Conservatives won a landslide on Boris Johnson’s pledge not to put up income tax, national insurance or VAT. But four years on, and after 13 years in office, it seems the Tories have lost their hard-won reputation for low taxes. Mr S has done some polling and last week’s Budget only served to harden the increasingly common view of the Tories as a party of high taxers. A whopping 50 per cent of voters now associate the Tories with raising taxes, up from 42 per cent who thought so a week prior to the Budget. More than a third of voters – 38

James Heale

Sunak’s deal fails to get the DUP’s support

There was bad news for Rishi Sunak this lunchtime as Sir Jeffrey Donaldson confirmed that he and the seven other DUP MPs will vote on Wednesday against the Windsor Framework. Few in government were expecting the party to vote for the deal but some harboured hopes that the party might abstain or register a more muted protest. In a statement, Donaldson said there had been ‘significant progress’ but that ‘there remain key areas of concern’. Chief among them is Sunak’s much-vaunted ‘Stormont brake’ which would not apply to existing EU laws. The DUP Westminster leader said that ‘whilst representing real progress the “brake” does not deal with the fundamental issue

Lisa Haseldine

Is Putin struggling to maintain his strongman image?

China’s president Xi Jinping has arrived in Russia for the start of a three day state visit. The aim of the trip, according to the Chinese, is to strengthen relations between the two countries in a world threatened by ‘acts of hegemony, despotism and bullying’. Xi and Putin will meet in person this afternoon, before holding bilateral talks tomorrow. Their meeting comes just weeks after China published a twelve-point ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine calling for the ‘sovereignty of all countries’ to be respected. This morning, the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed Ukraine would be discussed by the two leaders: ‘President Putin will give exhaustive explanations so that President Xi can get Russia’s view

Steerpike

SNP MP attacks the press (again)

It seems to be all going to pot for the SNP. The party’s chief executive and its top spinner are heading for the exit as the ongoing shambles of a leadership race continues to claim more scalps than a Scorsese flick. And it seems the pressure is getting to some of the SNP’s grandees, judging by their touchy attitude towards the reinvigorated Scottish press. Today it was the turn of Alison Thewliss, the party’s Home Affairs spokesman at Westminster, who threw a very public fit on Twitter after having her regular column spiked in the Daily Record last week. ‘I had never been told what to write until this weekend,’

Lisa Haseldine

Can the Liberal Democrats become relevant again?

With neither the Conservatives nor the Labour party keen to talk publicly at least about softening Brexit, is there a gap in the market for an unashamedly pro-EU party? This is – once again – the hope of the Liberal Democrats. Speaking in York on Sunday at their first in-person party conference since the pandemic, Ed Davey played to the Europhile base – describing Brexit as ‘the elephant in the room of British politics’. A best case scenario at the next election for Davey would be if Labour had to be propped up by Lib Dem votes ‘Let me shout it, yet again,’ Davey said, ‘if you want to boost our

Katy Balls

Rishi Sunak faces judgment day on his Brexit deal

Rishi Sunak has received plaudits from MPs, foreign leaders and the media over the Windsor Framework. Yet the deal has not been voted on. This will change this week with MPs asked to vote on Wednesday on the Prime Minister’s renegotiation of the Northern Ireland protocol. So far the mood music has been broadly good for Sunak. The deal went further than many in the party expected on issues such as the Stormont brake – which could allow the Northern Ireland assembly to stop new EU single market rules from applying in the region if activated. There have been no ministerial resignations and little sign that a mass rebellion is

Sunday

19 Mar 2023

Ross Clark

Credit Suisse has been bought out – but at what cost?

Another Sunday, another banking takeover swiftly arranged before markets open on Monday morning. This time Credit Suisse has agreed to be bought by fellow Swiss bank UBS for 0.5 Swiss Francs a share – less than a third of its closing price on Friday and less than a tenth of what the bank was worth a year ago. A banking collapse which was beginning to look inevitable in spite of a 50 billion Swiss Franc bailout by the Swiss central bank on Friday has been averted, market turmoil has been avoided, or postponed, jobs have been saved (although many are expected to be lost in London as Credit Suisse’s investment banking

Kate Andrews

Is the banking system on the brink?

Has a full-scale banking crisis been avoided? UBS has announced a takeover of rival Credit Suisse for just over $3 billion – half of its valuation on Friday and a tenth of its valuation just two years ago. The deal, timed to conclude before the Asian markets opened, is intended to stop any domino effect that might have been created had Credit Suisse folded this week and started to call into question the viability of other banks. Reflecting the announcement, UBS shares fell 14 per cent in early trading. Credit Suisse calls it a ‘merger’, UBS calls it a ‘takeover’ but it can also be called a ‘bailout’. The deal

Steerpike

Sturgeon’s final snub to Sunak

In her eight and a half years at Bute House, Nicola Sturgeon has never been one to show much in the way of grace towards ministers down in London. There were the Brexit debates, where she endlessly sought to undermine those involved in negotiations with Brussels. There were the Covid crises, where she sought to claim the moral high ground by pipping Westminster with unannounced rule-changes. And then there was the Gender Recognition Reform Bill where she paid no heed to constitutional law – and ended up paying the price. So it was no surprise then that Sturgeon’s final act in office – her resignation – was carried out in

Duncan Gardham

Could MI5 have stopped the Manchester Arena bombing?

‘I know that what I have revealed, while increasing public knowledge, will raise other questions that I have not been able to answer,’ Sir John Saunders said, in issuing his final report into the Manchester Arena bombing. ‘I did ask the questions, I did get answers, but for the reasons I have given I have not been able to report publicly what those answers were,’ he added. The report gave us a glimpse into the decision-making of MI5, but only a glimpse. Despite the thoroughness with which the chairman approached his task, it does leave unanswered questions. Key among them are the two ‘pieces of intelligence’ that MI5 learned in

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Kate Forbes attacks SNP power hoarding

Oliver Dowden – the unions have a decent deal now, ‘let’s move forward’ The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Dowden faced up to the media this morning to speak on a number of issues, beginning with the NHS strikes. Dowden claimed the government had always been willing to engage with the unions, but Laura Kuenssberg questioned why they had taken so long to come to an agreement, to the detriment of the public: Dowden – ‘I am confident Rwanda is safe for people’ Oliver Dowden also spoke to Sky’s Sophy Ridge about the government’s policy of sending asylum seekers to be processed in Rwanda. Ridge pointed out that

Freddy Gray

Is Donald Trump really going to be arrested?

How will it look, for the health of American democracy, if the former President Donald Trump is put in handcuffs next week over charges that he paid ‘hush-hush money’ to the porn star Stormy Daniels? The man himself seems to be bracing for legal persecution over what he calls ‘The Stormy Horseface Daniels Extortion Plot.’ He says he expects to be arrested on Tuesday and blames his ’sleazebag’ former lawyer Michael Cohen, who claims Trump paid him £230,000 to pay off Daniels and another woman called Karen McDougal, who was voted America’s second ‘sexiest playmate of the 1990s.’ Trump has always denied the allegations and says the whole Daniels case is

Andy Pearce

Are we failing to learn lessons from the Holocaust?

Ninety years ago this week, the acting chief of the Munich Police Department held a press conference. The new man had been busy. On assuming office a few days earlier, the chief had tried to get to grips with what he saw as acute political unrest in the city by authorising a wave of mass arrests. The primary targets were leading figures in the Communist Party and paramilitary groups made up of trade unionists, liberals, and social democrats. According to the chief, it was no longer possible to guarantee the security of such people, and so scores of them were unceremoniously taken into so-called ‘protective custody’. However, a new problem