Politics Archives

Tuesday

15 Nov 2022

Steerpike

Is Rishi backsliding on China already?

It used to be said that political parties were Eurosceptic in opposition, but Europhile in government. The same perhaps could now be said of China. Back in July, Rishi Sunak was keen to talk tough on the Beijing behemoth, which he called Britain’s ‘biggest long-term threat’. He tweeted that ‘China and the Chinese Communist party represent the largest threat to Britain and the world’s security and prosperity this century’. And Sunak also accused China of ‘stealing our technology and infiltrating our universities’ in one punchy attack: Abroad, they are propping up Putin’s fascist invasion of Ukraine by buying his oil and attempting to bully their neighbours, including Taiwan. They are saddling

James Snell

Iran’s protests are coming to a head

Iran’s protest movement appears to be coming to a head. It’s been going on for two months, since the country’s ‘morality police’ beat Mahsa Amini, a young woman visiting Tehran, into a coma from which she never recovered earlier this year. The reason these thugs gave for dragging her into their van was that she was wearing her mandatory hijab incorrectly. Ever since, Iranians of all ages, across the country, have been on the streets, protesting for ‘women, life, freedom’. Now the violence of that initial act is radiating outwards. From the ominous steps being taken by the Iranian state, and the extra-legal killers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,

Kate Andrews

UK workforce falls, vacancies at 1.23 million

The workforce has not sprung back. According to the latest labour market figures, released by the Office for National Statistics today, the UK workforce is falling, not rising. Employers may be crying out for workers but the number in employment fell by 52,000 in the three months to September, twice what was expected. This was due to a remarkable drop of 249,000 in September alone. Meanwhile, job vacancies still stand near the record high, at 1.23 million – about twice the average seen in the past decade. Unemployment, by formal definition, has fallen: a dip of 0.2 percentage points on the quarter, down to 3.6 per cent. Very few people seeking

Monday

14 Nov 2022

Winston Marshall

Michael Shellenberger: What Just Stop Oil gets wrong and COP27 corruption

64 min listen

With climate activists around the world vandalising great works by Monet, van Gogh and Goya, Winston speaks with environmentalist, conservationist and pro-nuclear activist Michael Shellenberger. They discuss the validity of Just Stop Oil’s methods and environmental imperialism at this years United Nations Climate Change Conference. They take a deep dive into Shellenberger’s book ‘Apocalypse Never’, evaluate the environmentalist case for fracking and consider why nuclear will save us all.

Kate Andrews

Is Jeremy Hunt bailing out Bailey?

There is a conundrum at the heart of Jeremy Hunt’s comments leading up to the Autumn Statement. Hunt describes inflation as an ‘evil’ that ‘erodes the pound in your pocket’: uncontroversial. So Autumn Statement, he says, has been designed by his Treasury to ‘help the Bank of England bring down inflation.’ But controlling inflation is the Bank of England’s remit, so any action will be indirect. By tightening fiscal policy, Hunt is lifting pressure off the Bank to keep pushing raising interest rates. This will be by design on the part of the Treasury. After Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-Budget, markets were predicting rates headed for over 6

Isabel Hardman

Is Braverman’s French Channel migrant deal a sign of progress?

Is the deal struck between the UK and French governments on policing Channel crossings really going to make a difference? MPs don’t seem to think so, with Suella Braverman getting a rather chilly reception from her own side in the Commons this afternoon. The Home Secretary signed the deal this morning, and returned to tell Home Office Questions that this was a ‘step change and a step forward’. But she also admitted, after criticism from Tory MPs, that it was important not to ‘overplay’ what it meant. The Home Secretary cannot win politically on hotel bookings for asylum seekers, or on Channel crossings Braverman was criticised by Dover MP Natalie

James Forsyth

Has the next cold war been put on hold?

The Biden-Xi meeting at the G20 seems to have been relatively productive, and has at least improved the lines of communication between the two superpowers. The Chinese readout has them declaring that the relationship is ‘not what the international community expects from us’. The first in-person meeting between Biden and Xi since Biden became president does seem to have moved US-China relations on from the depths they fell to after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. In a sign of the relative détente, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to visit China in the New Year. But the aggressive Chinese language about the status of the island is

Svitlana Morenets

Ukraine’s huge victory in Kherson

Less than two months ago, Putin declared four occupied regions of Ukraine as part of Russia. Some speculated that Moscow would view any attempt to liberate those territories as equivalent to an attack on Russian soil. Yet today Volodymyr Zelensky visited the recently liberated Kherson, awarded Ukrainian soldiers and watched them raise the country’s flag. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Zelensky’s visit to Kherson and reiterated that it was ‘Russian territory’. Zelensky did what Putin couldn’t manage to do in eight months of Russian control over the city – he faced its residents. Asked where Ukrainian forces might advance next, Zelensky said: ‘Not Moscow… We’re not interested

Steerpike

Rishi gets the Budget bubbly in

With just three days to go until the awful Autumn Statement, Westminster is agog to find out just how truly terrible it’s going to be. Taxes? Up! Cuts? Aplenty! Growth? Flatlining! So, as we await with morbid fascination to see what the new season of Jeremy Hunt’s Fiscal Drag Race has in store for us, what better to drown your sorrows than the latest tin-eared stunt from CCHQ? It seems that the wonder kids over at Tory high command have cooked up a deal with Virgin Wines to give long-suffering party members some liquid respite from their woes. In an email that went out on Friday, activists were invited to

Ross Clark

Crypto is being hoisted by its own petard

Like Liz Truss, Sam Bankman-Fried will be the stuff of pub quizzes: who lost his entire $16 billion fortune in days? A quick trawl of the internet suggest his only real challenger in losing so much money so quickly was Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, who was estimated to have made a paper loss of $70 billion in the dotcom crash. But he wasn’t completely wiped out, and retained considerable wealth as Softbank rose again. Bankman-Fried, on the other hand, is believed now to be worth pretty much zero following last week’s collapse of the crypto exchange he founded, FTX. At its peak, Bankman-Fried’s stake is estimated to have

Isabel Hardman

What can we expect from the G20 summit?

11 min listen

The G20 summit kicked off as world leaders arrived in Bali overnight. Ahead of the summit, Biden and Xi met to discuss tensions over trade, tech and human rights. The two claim they are ready for candid exchanges as China-US relations are at their lowest in decades. Rishi Sunak also flew to his first G20 summit. The Prime Minister is expected to hold multiple bilateral meetings as he tries to make his mark on the world stage. Meanwhile, can he keep a grip on domestic issues ahead of the Autumn Statement this Thursday? Isabel Hardman speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Joanna Williams

Matt Hancock has united Britain

Some people deal with failure better than others. Matt Hancock, it seems, has spent the past three years trying to get over losing his bid to be leader of the Conservative party. But good news! Finally, Hancock has found solace. Upon being declared leader of the I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here jungle, he told his campmates his new position ‘more than makes up for’ his previous loss. Hancock has, yet again, attempted to explain why he is in the game show jungle. ‘What I’m really looking for is a bit of forgiveness,’ he declared. Whether that was forgiveness for discharging Covid-patients into carehomes, preventing people visiting dying

Steerpike

Rayner’s war chest is wound up

Cast your minds back sixteen months ago. Back then, Boris Johnson was in his pomp, having narrowly missed out on winning the Batley by-election. The vaccine roll-out was underway, with the UK leading the world out of Covid. And in the Labour party, there was much excited talk of a challenge by Angela Rayner to Keir Starmer’s flatlining leadership. How the picture has changed, one year on. Labour is twenty points ahead in the polls, with Johnson (temporarily?) consigned to the history books. Now Starmer reigns supreme in his party, with the Tories in disarray. And rather than mount a challenge, Rayner’s allies have now moved to wind up her

Gabriel Gavin

The Istanbul bombing will deepen Turkey’s rift with the West

Istiklal Avenue is a picture of chaos at the best of times. Istanbul’s answer to Oxford Street, the bustling pedestrian area is lined with upmarket shops, cafes and overpriced kebab stands. Groups of men sit out till late at night on benches drinking tea and playing chess, while families pushing buggies jostle with tourists for ice cream and pastries. On Sunday, though, that chaos gave way to outright panic when an explosion ripped through the heart of the city, Europe’s largest and home to more than 15 million people. One shopper captured the moment the fireball erupted in the packed crowd, sending women and children scrambling to escape. Meanwhile, pictures

Gavin Mortimer

Only the EU can solve the Channel migrants crisis

Rishi Sunak’s remarks about curbing illegal Channel immigration are certainly bullish, but whether he translates words into action will make or break his political career. How many other busted PMs have over-promised on this issue? Sunak told the travelling press corps on a flight to Indonesia, where the G20 summit is being held, that tackling the Channel small boats crisis is his ‘absolute priority’. Other than the Autumn statement, Sunak added, nothing has occupied him more in recent weeks than what he described as ‘illegal migration’ between France and Britain. Admitting that there are no short-term solutions, the PM nonetheless struck a positive note speaking to journalists. ‘There’s a range

Patrick O’Flynn

Braverman’s Channel migrants scheme won’t work

One tries to find grounds for optimism about the resolve and capacity of Her Majesty’s Government in these testing times but there is none to be found in today’s deal with France on Channel migrants. In fact, the wearily familiar outline of the agreement – yet more UK taxpayers’ money going to the French in return for more beach police patrols, better information-sharing, embedded UK officers working alongside them, blah blah blah – fits very neatly into the failed approach of Boris Johnson and Priti Patel. Clearly having what Home Secretary Suella Braverman heralded as a ’40 per cent uplift in the number of French gendarmes patrolling the French beaches’ has

Sam Leith

Would the real Matt Hancock please sit down?

‘Politics,’ as the old quip has it, ‘is showbusiness for ugly people.’ That quote was minted in the good old days when there was, at least implicitly, some clear blue water between the two things: it intended to draw an arch point of comparison between two quite different spheres of activity. Politics was momentous, solemn, and consequential; showbusiness was vain, silly and inconsequential. The quip points to a sneaking sense that, secretly, those in the former realm were actuated by less high-minded concerns. These days, there is less and less sense, either among the general public or the practitioners of either art, that any such distinction exists. Both are now simply vehicles to attain the infinitely fungible currency

David Marcus

Dumping Trump could backfire for the Republicans

The walls are closing in on Donald Trump. Again. But this time it’s different. Again. In the wake of the Republicans’ performance in the midterms, which ranges from lacklustre to biblically awful depending on how many drinks the GOP consultant you’re asking has had, Trump is taking all the blame. There are two problems with this. First, it’s not really true that it’s all Trump’s fault. And second, it is very likely to backfire and empower an otherwise somewhat floundering Donald. As to the issue of blame, yes, Trump promoted some primary stinkers. Dr. Oz and Don Bolduc in the Pennsylvania and New Hampshire Senate races respectively performed particularly odiously.

Sunday

13 Nov 2022

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Hunt says ‘everyone’ will be ‘paying more tax’

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt joined Laura Kuenssberg this morning ahead of the Autumn Statement, which will be held on Thursday. Fans of a good fiscal event will no doubt reflect on 2022 as a stellar year, but for most people the outlook will not be rosy. Embracing the possibility of a recession ahead, Hunt laid the groundwork for some unpopular choices: ‘We need to understand’ why people left the labour force Kuenssberg challenged Hunt over why the UK had not yet managed to grow the economy back to where it had been before the pandemic turned everything on its head: The NHS is in ‘a very very

Claire Fox

We must protect freedom to protest, even for those we despise

One of the trickiest challenges of being in politics is defending the rights of those we disagree with vehemently. That dilemma has never been truer than in deciding how to approach the Public Order Bill, now making its way through the House of Lords. How can I defend the right to protest when I have little sympathy for those protestors targeted by the Bill? Take Just Stop Oil. These catastrophising eco-warriors – whose nihilistic stunts are aimed at causing maximum chaos to the public – are a real menace. Their disdain for democratic change is evident in how little they care about hindering ordinary working people going about their daily lives. Alienating the public is the only thing they have achieved with their