Politics Archives

Monday

5 Dec 2022

Steerpike

Watch: Harry and Meghan’s latest cringe-fest

Quick, nurse, pass the sick bag! The wokest couple in all the West is at it again. Harry and Meghan have today released another trailer ahead of their Netflix series, before its release on Thursday. The streaming giant is keen to recuperate the many millions it spent on hiring the dilettante duo back in the heady days of the pandemic, with the Sussexes now required to sing for their proverbial supper in the upcoming tell-all documentary. The trailer for this ‘global event’ bears all the hallmarks of Harry and Meghan’s ‘brand’: slick shots, moody music, tear-stained cheeks and Hollywood jargon more hackneyed than a Hallmark movie. In one glorious snippet,

Katy Balls

Why is Labour so keen to reform the House of Lords?

12 min listen

Today former prime minister Gordon Brown has released a review which includes recommendations to overhaul the constitution and replace the House of Lords. Could Labour push through reform? Also on the podcast, after Kier Starmer said that he doesn’t see Jeremy Corbyn standing at the next election, has Starmer finally silenced the far left faction in his party? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

James Forsyth

Three reasons Labour wants to talk about Lords reform

There are reasons why Labour wants to talk about constitutional reform despite all the other challenges facing the country. First, there is no financial cost to it. At the moment, Labour is severely hemmed in by the fact that it doesn’t want to make new spending commitments as it knows the Tories will immediately ask how they will be paid for. Political reform is one area where Labour can be radical without it costing anything. Second, it punches a Tory bruise. As Gordon Brown said this morning, Labour knows that Boris Johnson’s resignation honours will push the issue back up the agenda and make the current arrangements hard to defend.

Patrick O’Flynn

Will Braverman turn on Sunak over the Channel crisis?

Finally the Tory government appears to have realised that its serial mishandling of the Channel boats issue is the top cause of the voter disaffection that is killing its re-election prospects. Rishi Sunak’s administration now understands that the position he has set out so far – saying there is no ‘silver bullet’ to solve the dinghy problem, and that progress will require careful and patient work across many fronts – will not suffice, if well-briefed pieces in the weekend newspapers are anything to go on . As Nick Timothy – co-author of a radical new pamphlet on the issue that recommends withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, blanket

Steerpike

Starmer surge leaves Burnham eclipsed

Poor Andy Burnham. This time last year the Mayor of Manchester was riding high in the Labour leadership stakes, having cruised to re-election with a whopping 67 per cent of the vote, as Sir Keir Starmer struggled to cut through in Westminster. Now the fortunes are reversed: Starmer is 20 points ahead in the polls, while Burnham – the onetime ‘king of the north’ – would be forgiven for looking enviously on at his rival’s kingdom down south. Having clashed with Sir Keir in recent months on picketing and voting reform, there are perhaps some indicators that Burnham is feeling slightly bruised from being out of the action in SW1.

Katy Balls

Does Starmer have the stomach to scrap the House of Lords?

It’s Labour’s turn to take centre stage today as Keir Starmer attempts to seize the agenda with the launch of his party’s constitutional review. The report – A New Britain – is written by Gordon Brown and has been over two years in the making, with the former prime minister set to present it alongside the Labour leader in Leeds later this morning. Given the party currently enjoys a 20-point lead over the Tories, it’s safe to say the plans will receive plenty of attention and scrutiny. The general thrust of the 155-page report is devolving power, with Labour aides keen to pitch it as what would amount to the

Jack Smith

Will the EU’s oil price cap hurt Russia?

The EU’s import embargo of Russian oil – which comes into force today – plus a price cap on non-EU seaborne exports is intended to hit Russia without damaging the West. It sounds too good to be true, and it probably is. First, there’s the price cap level itself. Originally, the EU had wanted to push for a more comprehensive ban on maritime shipping insurers providing any coverage to vessels carrying Russian oil. But this frightened the US, so what we’re left with is the cap. The final figure, which the EU agreed on at the end of last week, is $60 (£49) per barrel. Russian crude oil sales have

Steerpike

Keir Starmer rules out a return for Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn has been an MP for 40 years, but Keir Starmer has confirmed Corbyn’s time in the Labour party has come to an end. Starmer was asked three times on the Today programme whether Corbyn – who was kicked out in 2020 over his response to the equalities watchdog’s report into antisemitism in the party – would stand as a Labour candidate in Islington North at the next election. Three times, Starmer said his predecessor as Labour leader would not be coming back: ‘I don’t see the circumstance in which that can happen. I don’t see the circumstance in which Jeremy Corbyn will stand as a Labour candidate.’ Starmer’s

David Loyn

Afghanistan’s guerrilla generation: an interview with Ahmad Massoud

Fighting has continued against the Taliban in Afghanistan while the world has not been watching. The commander of the main opposition force, Ahmad Massoud, began with 643 fighters after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, and now claims to have a force of 5,000 across six provinces in a belt in the northeast of the country. In a rare meeting in Tajikistan, where he commands remotely from across the northern border of Afghanistan, the 34-year-old resistance leader told me that western countries are making a mistake by trying to engage with the Taliban. Massoud inherited the mantle of resistance leader from his father, the legendary guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah

Sam Leith

The shabby dishonesty of Matt Hancock’s ‘diaries’

‘Standing in my kitchen in Suffolk after a quiet New Year’s Eve, I scanned my newspaper for clues as to what might be lurking around the corner.’ So run the opening words of yesterday’s first extract of Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against Covid. 1 January. New Year’s Day. And our hero – modest, unassuming, but eternally vigilant, eyes always scanning the horizon – is on duty, even when most of us are nursing a foggy head. Of course, we know now what this man of destiny didn’t know then: that the ‘news-in-brief story about a mystery pneumonia outbreak in China’ that catches his

Sunday

4 Dec 2022

Steerpike

Eddie Izzard loses (again)

Oh dear. It seems that the curse of Izzard has struck again. The stand-up comedian and staunch Labour member has something of an unenviable track record when it comes to personal endorsements, having backed the euro, Ken Livingstone in 2008, Gordon Brown in 2010, ‘Yes2AV’ in 2011, Ed Miliband and then Andy Burnham in 2015, before subsequently advocating Remain in 2016 and then suffering personal defeat in that year’s Labour NEC elections. Undaunted by this litany of failure, Izzard opted in October to stand as the party’s candidate for the safe seat of Sheffield Central. Much hand-wringing followed, with Sir Keir Starmer refusing to say if Izzard, who identifies as

Steerpike

New Labour’s children make hay in exile

Life is good in the Labour party right now – which is perhaps why it’s no surprise that a few old faces could be making a comeback. In the late nineties and early noughties, a crop of talented young New Labour advisors were dubbed ‘the golden generation’. Much like their footballing equivalents in the England team of that period, they flattered to deceive, with many leaving politics in the arid years after the 2010 election. Some lost their seats; others declined to waste their prime years in opposition under the plodding leadership of Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn. Now though, with the Starmer army 20 points ahead in the polls,

Lucy Dunn

Letting pharmacists prescribe would ease the strain on the NHS

The NHS is facing its own winter of discontent: A&E waiting times are surging, GP availability is plunging and a strike is brewing. The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), says Britain is facing a ‘de facto general strike’: from nurses to ambulance drivers to doctors – even in emergency departments and cancer centres – as they ask for pay rises. Today the Sunday Telegraph reports that (privately-run) pharmacies may be called in to help and given power to prescribe for simple conditions to help ease pressures in A&E departments. I argue in the current edition of The Spectator how they could easily help plug plug the gap that exists between GPs

David Abulafia

Why the Rosetta Stone shouldn’t be returned to Egypt

The Rosetta Stone is said to be the most visited object in the British Museum. By and large the most popular, most beautiful or most impressive objects are found at the top of the shopping list of those who want to send objects back to their place of origin. Yet here is a piece of debris that, if installed in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, would look as out of place as a dirty pair of trainers in the Athenaeum. This, after all is (or rather will be, after endless delays in its opening) the final resting place of Tutankhamun, a museum rich in gold and lapis lazuli lying

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Zahawi’s plea to striking unions

Nadhim Zahawi: We may deploy the military to ‘minimise disruption’ over Christmas Conservative party chairman Nadhim Zahawi was in the hot seat this morning. He spoke to Sophy Ridge about strike action over the coming weeks, urging unions not to disrupt people’s Christmases. With industrial action not just limited to the railway network, but spreading to the NHS, teachers, the fire service, immigration officials, postal workers and many more, Zahawi stressed that the government was looking at all the options to try and keep the country’s public services operating over a December of discontent: Zahawi: ‘I’m very proud’ of the Online Safety bill The Online Safety bill returns to Parliament

Charles Parton

Is Xi losing control of China’s zero Covid protests?

Tony Blair recently described the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s zero-Covid policy as ‘completely irrational’. He is completely wrong. Within the context of the CCP’s interests, it makes sense. ‘Completely political’ would have been nearer the mark, but not a bull’s eye. When Covid first appeared, the CCP got it right. Lockdowns and restrictions meant the China largely escaped deaths and serious illness. Later the mistakes – or rather the inevitabilities of the system – kicked in. China’s home-produced vaccines were insufficiently effective, but the CCP refused to use foreign vaccines, even though they had been licensed for use within China. Partly, this was misplaced nationalistic pride. But ever wary of

Samuel Ramani

The paradox at the heart of Russia’s missile strategy

Russia has launched five waves of missile strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructures since 10 October. These strikes have damaged or destroyed almost half of Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure and made blackouts a way of life across Ukraine and neighboring Moldova. Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has aptly accused Russia of ‘weaponising winter’ against Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia will not ‘calm down’ as long as it has missiles. Russia’s deployment of a warship capable of carrying Kalibr missiles to the Black Sea suggests that the worst may be yet to come for Ukraine’s war-ravaged cities. Russian propagandists have framed these strikes as retribution for the ‘Donbas

Saturday

3 Dec 2022

Freddy Gray

How Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story

For weeks now, Twitter’s new chief Elon Musk has been promising to reveal what really happened behind the scenes at the social media platform in the run up to the 2020 presidential election. Well, yesterday, Musk did — through the journalist Matt Taibbi. It’s a big story, one that free speech supporters everywhere should take seriously, especially in the United Kingdom where we are on the verge of passing the Online Safety Bill. What happened at Twitter in 2020 shows how easily concern about ‘safety’ can, under political pressure, morph into corruption and censorship. Taibbi, apparently directed by Musk, has released a long Twitter ‘thread’ citing company emails which show

Dalibor Rohac

The EU and America are sliding into protectionism

Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Washington this week and the upcoming meeting of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council on Monday are important tests of whether the western world can avoid a return of destructive beggar-thy-neighbour policies which already once destroyed the global trading system in the 1930s. The most recent point of contention centres on the American Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions aimed at supporting US manufacturers of electric vehicles, to the exclusion of European ones. While at a joint press conference with his French counterpart, the US President Biden vowed to fix the ‘glitch’ in his signature piece of legislation. But doing so remains a tall order, particularly with

Cindy Yu

Is Rishi Sunak going soft on China?

14 min listen

Katy Balls speaks to Cindy Yu, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson about the Prime Minister’s attitudes towards China and how to deal with the challenges it presents for the UK and the world.