Politics Archives

Friday

4 Nov 2022

Why Albanians come to Britain

A friend of mine works in a surgery in London where lots of asylum seekers go for treatment. The caseload is a snapshot of current trends in illegal immigration, and at present that means lots of Albanians. Yep, that’s the migrant influx across the Channel we’ve been hearing so much about, and which the Albanian PM, Edi Rama, has been blaming on the British government: ‘It’s not about Albanians or aliens or gangsters, but it’s about failed policies on borders and on crime,’ he said this week. Three cases give an idea of what’s going on. One patient was a nurse from Tirana, Albania’s capital, but had found it impossible

Steerpike

Will Diane Abbott lose the whip?

Oh dear. It seems that another hard-of-thinking Corbynista has shown themselves up again. Labour has been enjoying the chance to make political capital out of Suella Braverman’s current woes, with the Home Secretary on the ropes amid an avalanche of questions about her judgement and competence. But never doubt the ability of Sir Keir’s barmy backbench band to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. Cometh the hour and cometh the woman, with Diane Abbott – a socialist who could have been designed in a CCHQ laboratory – riding to the rescue to lower the tone, once again. Having failed in the 2017 election, failed in the 2019 election and

Francis Pike

Who tried to assassinate Imran Khan? And why?

At the end of August I warned in The Spectator that, in Pakistan politics, ‘death by assassination is always a risk.’ And so yesterday’s attempted assassination of Imran Khan – while shocking – should have come as no surprise. Perhaps the bigger surprise was that he survived. As Imran himself stated immediately afterwards, ‘Allah has given me another life.’ It seems that he owes his life to a young man wearing a snazzy FILA sports shirt who wrestled with the assassin as he was firing his pistol – though some reports have it that there was a second assassin firing an automatic rifle. The circumstances of the aftermath of the assassination attempt

Matthew Lesh

The Online Harms Bill still threatens free speech and privacy

The Online Safety Bill became a lightning rod for criticism during the Conservative party leadership contest over the summer. A wide array of candidates, from Kemi Badenoch to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, promised to take another look at how the legislation, and its attempt to crack down on online harms, could interfere with free speech. The ‘legal but harmful’ duties, now being removed, required the largest digital companies to address state-determined categories of legal speech – like ‘disinformation’ or ‘hate speech’ – in their terms and conditions. But in practice ‘legal but harmful’ was never the most problematic part of the proposed legislation. While the impetus was for more

Matthew Lynn

Why interest rates are still lower than you might think

Anyone with a mortgage will be in serious trouble. Small businesses will go to the wall. Demand will be hammered. And the cost of government debt will soar. After the Bank of England upped interest rates yesterday to 3 per cent, the highest level in more than a decade, there was one point on which everyone agreed. The Bank might be moving too fast or too slow, but it is imposing steep rises in rates. But hold on: is that right? After all, when you take into consideration rising inflation, the real cost of money has hardly ever been cheaper. The Bank’s decision to hike rates by 0.75 percentage points

Senay Boztas

The wheels are coming off the Dutch green revolution

Another day, another success in the courts for Dutch environmentalists. This week, the country’s highest court, the Council of State, decided that building is no longer exempt from EU environment protection rules. In one of the world’s most densely-populated countries, where new homes are badly needed – and a 900,000 home building spree had just been announced – this spells trouble: within hours, building association Bouwend Nederland called it a ‘tragedy’ and experts warned it will exacerbate the Netherlands’ housing crisis. This isn’t the first time the green lobby has enjoyed a victory that leads to confusion and chaos. Farmers continue to vent their fury at plans aimed at reducing emissions that involve cutting livestock numbers and reducing intensive farming. They recognise that

Thursday

3 Nov 2022

William Moore

At sea: can Sunak navigate the migrant crisis?

36 min listen

On this week’s podcast: Can Rishi Sunak steady the ship? Patrick O’Flynn argues in his cover piece for The Spectator that the asylum system is broken. He is joined by Sunder Katwala, director of the think tank British Future, to consider what potential solutions are open to the Prime Minister to solve the small boats crisis (00:52). Also this week: Should we give Elon Musk a break? In the aftermath of his sensational purchase of Twitter, Mary Wakefield writes in defence of the tech billionaire. She is joined by James Ball, global editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, to ask what his plans are for the social media platform (14:27). And

Katy Balls

Are we heading for a recession?

11 min listen

Alongside an interest rate hike of 3 per cent, the Bank of England have today warned the economy will ‘be in recession for a long period’. How much of the blame can we place on Truss’s economic policy? What will this recession look like? Also on the podcast, Rishi Sunak plans to remove the ‘legal but harmful’ censorship clause from the Online Harms Bill, what will this mean for online safety? Katy Balls speaks with Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Kate Andrews. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson.

Lisa Haseldine

‘Wrong visit, wrong time’: What Germany makes of Scholz’s Beijing trip

This afternoon, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz goes to China. His one-day visit to Beijing is the first by a democratic leader since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic nearly three years ago. But before he has even touched down on Chinese soil, Scholz’s trip is going down badly back home. ‘It’s the wrong visit at the wrong time,’ declared the broadsheet newspaper Die Welt. Scholz will be the first Western leader to meet with President Xi since he secured his unprecedented third term in power. For many China-watchers, Xi’s consolidated rule and zombification of the country’s Communist party marks a watershed moment for the country – not one, according to

Ross Clark

Nicola Sturgeon’s oil paradox

Is oil extraction a form of environmental vandalism which threatens life on the planet, or a source of revenue which could propel Scotland and its people to new levels of wealth? It is little use asking Nicola Sturgeon: she appears to believe it is both. Three years ago, when striking schoolchildren and Extinction Rebellion were telling us that the world must become carbon-neutral by 2025 or face massive loss of life, she told the SNP spring conference: ‘I met some of the young climate change campaigners who’ve gone on strike from school to raise awareness of their cause. They want governments around the world to declare a climate emergency. They

Fraser Nelson

Sunak drops ‘legal but harmful’ censorship clause

For some time now, The Spectator has been highlighting the danger posed by the so-called Online Safety Bill which would order social media firms to censor content regarded as ‘legal but harmful’. This was, in effect, a censorship diktat. Rather than have Orwellian figures employed by the government to censor articles, the Online Safety Bill would use the Chinese method of censorship-by-proxy and order digital giants to do this instead. A radical threat to free speech – but one only a handful of politicians spoke out against. One of them was Rishi Sunak. A new version of the Online Safety Bill is soon to be published, and we’re told it will

Steerpike

Labour steps up its game on China

Tory MPs often like to talk a tough game on China – but is it Labour who are now making the running? While the Conservatives are often at pains to wrap themselves in the flag and bang the drum for King and country, Mr S can’t help but notice in recent weeks how frequently members of the Labour party like Lisa Nandy and Stephen Kinnock are to be found urging a firmer line on Beijing. First, there was the appalling attack on the Hong Kong democracy demonstration in Manchester outside the Chinese consul, in which suspected Chinese consular officials destroyed posters and assaulted a protester. The government response was assailed

Andrew Lilico

Why should the NHS be protected from spending cuts?

The new Prime Minister has said this week that NHS funding will be ‘prioritised’ when it comes to spending decisions, while NHS bosses seek up to £7 billion in extra funding. That is wrong. In 2000, government health expenditure in the UK was equivalent to about 14 per cent of total public spending. By 2009, as the Labour government came to its end, that had risen to 16 per cent. Then came the period of Tory austerity, from 2010 onwards. Other departments were cut dramatically, but the NHS was ringfenced and NHS expenditure continued to rise. Total health expenditure reached the equivalent of 17 per cent of public spending by 2013, 18 per cent by 2018 and 19 per cent by 2019, an inexorable ratchet.

Jonathan Miller

The EU’s galactically bad space programme

Europe is lost in space. Ever since the Soviets orbited Yuri Gagarin and America landed men on the moon, Europe has proclaimed the ambition to compete on the final frontier. More than half a century later, Europe is unable to compete even with India, as in October it became incapable of launching its own payloads into space. Europe’s space agency is an example of European chauvinism at its absolute worst Protected by political and bureaucratic omertà, and with little curiosity on the part of politicians and journalists, Europe’s clumsy space exploration efforts have forced it to turn for launch services to the Twitter and Tesla tycoon, the anarchist squillionaire Elon

James Snell

Why King Bibi’s return is bad news for Israel

Israel’s longest serving leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is back. His return confirms once again an iron clad rule of Israeli politics: never write Bibi off. A few years ago, his opponents briefly thought they had vanquished him for good. Netanyahu lost an election in 2021 and two great American supporters, the late media tycoon Sheldon Adelson and former president Donald Trump, were gone. Netanyahu was under investigation for corruption in a wide-ranging criminal probe which he sought unsuccessfully to undermine. It seemed as if Bibi could soon exchange the prime minister’s residence for jail, and the TV make-up and dark suits he always wears for prison uniform. But that is not what

Charles Parton

Don’t read too much into Hu Jintao’s disappearance

Since being helped out of the Great Hall of the People at the end of the 20th Party Congress, Hu Jintao has not been seen in public. Nor is he likely to be. Retired senior party officials rarely are. Apart from at congresses and big party or state occasions, such as the 100th anniversary of the founding of the party in July last year or the military parade on the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war, they rarely emerge. The premature departure of Hu from the closing session of the congress has provoked much speculation. Three explanations are doing the rounds: that Hu was ejected because Xi Jinping wanted to

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Politicians haven’t been honest about immigration to Britain

What’s the most important story in Britain over the last 25 years? The financial crisis? Brexit? These events both changed our country dramatically. But neither has had such a big impact on the make-up of Britain than immigration. In 1991, Britain’s foreign-born residents made up 6.7 per cent of the population. In 2021, one in six people (16.8 per cent) living in England and Wales were born outside the UK, according to Census data released yesterday by the Office for National Statistics. The pace of change is both staggering and accelerating. Some four in ten of that foreign-born population arrived over the last decade. To put this into context, from 1981 to 1990, total net migration of non-UK citizens totalled 445,000.

Wednesday

2 Nov 2022

James Forsyth

How to balance immigration and jobs

Immigration is now at the top of the political agenda in a way that it hasn’t been since the vote to leave the European Union in 2016. Two factors have propelled it up the list, one very real (the small boats arriving across the Channel) and the other theoretical (economic modelling). The market reaction to Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget made the Office for Budget Responsibility’s next forecast all the more important. In an attempt to increase economic growth, Liz Truss wanted to formalise a more liberal immigration policy. She wanted to show the OBR that her policies would produce decent growth, but her tax cuts would not be enough to do

Katy Balls

Why is Rishi now going to Cop?

13 min listen

Rishi Sunak has said that he will now attend the Cop 27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, which begins on Sunday. What’s behind the U-turn, and should we expect more policy reversals from the new PM? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Max Jeffery.

Steven Barrett

Did Chris Bryant mislead parliament?

Labour MP Chris Bryant could not have been clearer: the ugly scenes that unfolded last month in parliament during the vote on fracking amounted to bullying: ‘I saw members being physically manhandled into another Lobby and being bullied. If we want to stand up against bullying in this house, of our staff, we have to stop bullying in the chamber as well don’t we,’ he told MPs. It was a serious allegation and the House of Commons responded by launching an immediate inquiry. The verdict is not good for Bryant. You can read the report, which was published this week, in full here. In short, it dismisses Bryant’s claims. ‘There is