Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Wednesday

Posie Parker Posie Parker

Why should I be ‘cancelled’ for arguing that biological sex is real?

‘I just get the impression she hates men’, said a wound-licking James Max, on TalkRADIO, after he interviewed me on Wednesday. It’s a familiar accusation from those who fail to drum up rational arguments for the destruction of women’s rights. Max is currently filling in for Julia Hartley-Brewer this week on the station, which is a self-styled ‘home of free speech’ radio and TV station. In our interview, which lasted less than ten minutes and in which I appeared under my real name, Max offered a masterclass in how to ignore women’s concerns and centre men’s feelings above all. The tone was set when Max tried to link the views of

Steerpike Steerpike

David Cameron winds his office up

In 2021 we bid many things farewell: Philip Green’s retail empire, England’s Euro chances and Donald Trump’s presidency. And now, joining them on the ash heap of history, appears to be David Cameron’s short-lived career as a lobbyist, after months of damning revelations about his multi-million pound efforts for Greensill Capital. After the conclusion of the Brexit wars, the onetime Prime Minister might have harboured some hopes of a retrospective rehabilitation but the collapse of Greensill and the release of the Old Etonian’s accompanying cringe-worthy texts has put paid to that. It’s not just Greensill that suffered in 2021 of course: since leaving office Cameron has acquired something of the reverse Midas touch. Last month

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The pure cynicism of David Lammy

David Lammy says he regrets nominating Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader. We are meant, presumably, to be impressed by this admission. Given that it was delivered at Limmud, a Jewish festival of ideas, it sounds perilously close to an expression of contrition. Lammy has every reason to be contrite given the part he played in the Corbyn catastrophe. The guilty men of the Corbyn era typically belong to one of four categories. There were the True Believers — the pensionable Bennites and millenarian millennials with righteous faith in the leader and the (never properly defined) ideology he represented. There were the Fellow Travellers — the spineless soft-leftists (but I repeat

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MP demands ‘free movement for all’

New year, old Labour. As 2021 draws to a close and Keir Starmer’s managers seek to establish Labour as A Very Serious Party again, it’s good to be reminded of some of the talent found on his backbenches. The Corbyn era may be over but Jezza’s children remain, still sitting in the Commons, the legacy of a dozen different local selection squabbles. One of them is 25-year-old vegan socialist Nadia Whittome, who since her election in 2019 has used savvy social media skills to launch herself as a sort of ersatz Dawn Butler – like Zarah Sultana, without the comebacks. Like many of her brethren in the Socialist Campaign Group, Whittome has quickly become

Alicia Kearns

No, babies shouldn’t be allowed in the Commons

Babies have no place in the chamber. I’ve asked to leave debates to feed my child a few times and have never been turned down. This is a debate about childcare that is wrongly being presented as one of rights and representation. Is this a question of being banned from doing our jobs unless babies are allowed? No. The ultimate way MPs have their say is when we vote. New mums have proxy voting for six months, where we tell someone else how we want to vote each time so we don’t have to be in parliament. But what about MP mums wanting to take part in debates? You can — I came

Steerpike Steerpike

David Lammy’s Labour lament

Foreign affairs is a difficult brief, demanding tact, sober judgement and discretion of the highest order. So who best to embody all these qualities than Labour’s recently promoted man of the hour, David Lammy? The Shadow Foreign Secretary made his first diplomatic foray this week while appearing at this year’s Limmud festival, a Jewish event where he attempted to atone for the sins of his past.  The Talleyrand of Tottenham apologised to his audience for being one of the 35 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn for leader in 2015, declaring that ‘If I knew what I do now, I never would have nominated him… I never believed he would become leader. That was a mistake

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Around the World In Eighty Days is the worst TV this Christmas

‘In many ways, Phileas Fogg represents everything that’s alarming and peculiar about that old sense of British Empire. Potentially, it’s a story about an England that should elicit very little sympathy,’ says David Tennant, explaining, better than any review ever could, exactly why every fraction of a second’s time spent watching him in Around the World In 80 Days (BBC1) is life spent utterly squandered. Truly if David Tennant had been offered the role of a giant, steaming dog turd, he could hardly have approached it with less enthusiasm than he gives to his sour, bloodless, joyless impersonation of Jules Verne’s upper class English adventurer. So unbearably lame is his

George Chesterton

Banana republic Britain and the curse of reverse exceptionalism

A day did not go by on social media in 2021 without some high-profile performative outrage about Boris Johnson and the hell hole he has bequeathed us. Britain is a ‘banana republic’ apparently. We live in a ‘tinpot dictatorship’ and are an ‘international embarrassment’. This sort of thing is most often touted by talk radio hosts, former Labour spin doctors, actors and anyone who’s ever appeared on Live At The Apollo. The consequences of this language, both for the health of the nation and for those wishing for some especially humiliating deposition in Number Ten, is that it achieves nothing. It merely legitimises the idea of reverse exceptionalism: that Britain’s

John Keiger John Keiger

France has the most to lose from Britain’s turn away from Europe

It was Napoleon who declared that ‘a state has the politics of its geography’. We do well to remember that in taking stock of European international relations as we speculate on a new year and beyond. By Europe is meant the European continent, ‘from the Atlantic to the Urals’, in de Gaulle’s words. Not the 27-member European Union, which Brussels linguistically and imperialistically conflates with the 44 sovereign states that the UN defines as Europe. Of those 44 states, four are still the European great powers, as they have been since at least 1870: Britain, Germany, France, and Russia. They are still the continent’s most populous, wealthiest (except Russia), and

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

The ten most-read Steerpikes of 2021

Farewell then 2021 – what a year it’s been. Twelve months of Covid craziness brought with it ample opportunities to lampoon the great and the not-so-good in British public life, from narcissistic royals to inept Europhiles.  Below is a round-up of Steerpike’s most read articles from 2021, covering some of the year’s biggest moments such as the vaccine procurement wars and the death of Prince Philip to lighter episodes like Prince Harry’s thoughts on freedom of speech.  But while the dilettante Duke and Duchess of Sussex took both bronze and silver medals, gold could only go to the Guardian for its attempted self-immolation over how to cover transgender issues. Mr S

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Remember panic-buying? Here’s what will happen next time

It’s post-Christmas, and there are already murmurs about supermarkets with empty shelves. Just as with the petrol shortage in September and shortages of loo paper at the beginning of the first lockdown, these things can rapidly develop into major crises, purely as a result of panic-buying. Tesco, whose store on the Isle of Wight is reportedly especially empty post-Christmas, denies it has any problem with its supply chain — which had been threatened with disruption thanks to an industrial dispute involving the company’s lorry drivers in early December. People may, on the other hand, have stocked up more than usual in response to fears of a post-Christmas lockdown — a fear which

Steerpike Steerpike

Five howlers from Jenny Harries

It’s just two days to go until the New Year’s Honours List is announced and already speculation is rife as to who the lucky names will be. Tennis teen Emma Raducanu is set to become the youngest MBE recipient ever while outgoing 007 Daniel Craig should get a gong for his many years of fictitious sacrifice on Her Majesty’s secret service. And in light of the ongoing pandemic, it’s no surprise that the list is set to be stuffed full of NHS heroes being recognised for their work, with Chris Whitty among those tipped for a knighthood. The Lancelot of the lancet, if you will. But one name unlikely to be on the list will be that of Dr Jenny

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Boris’s lockdown gamble could spell big trouble for Labour

Has Boris Johnson just been thrown a lifeline by a devolution settlement that has caused nothing but trouble for UK prime ministers over the past 20 years? The PM’s decision not to impose further restrictions on social mixing before New Year celebrations has been underlined in the public consciousness by the opposite choices of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Among the UK nations, only in England will people be free to indulge in New Year festivities on anything like a normal basis. In Scotland, in particular, where the occasion customarily eclipses Christmas as the key celebration of the year, there is growing resentment that Nicola Sturgeon has

Debbie Hayton

Stonewall’s annus horribilis

The year 2021 has been an annus horribilis for Stonewall. For much of the last decade, the charity could do no wrong in the eyes of those who mattered. Stonewall’s influence cut straight into the heart of government. As Nikki da Costa, Boris Johnson’s former director of legislative affairs, pointed out: ‘There is no other organisation — no business, or charity, no matter how big — that can pick up the phone to a special adviser sitting outside Boris Johnson’s office and get that person to speak directly to the Prime Minister. But that is the kind of access that Stonewall has’ Through its Diversity Champions Programme, Stonewall advised businesses, police, NHS

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour in limbo over Covid curbs

Wes Streeting has enjoyed something of a dream start since his promotion to shadow health secretary a month ago. Confident at the despatch box and assured on a media round, his performance in the ‘Plan B’ debate had centrist dads of a certain vintage humming ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ once more. But while Labour’s poll lead has shot up in recent weeks, the spectre of Covid has emerged once more to remind Sir Keir’s Starm troopers of the unpredictable perils of pandemic politics. The emergence of Omicron just before Christmas posed a challenge to politicians of all stripes: should we reintroduce restrictions to stop the health service being overwhelmed? Boris Johnson, for

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Diane Abbott’s Zero Covid crusade

With Christmas over, the turkey consumed and Maughamtide been and gone, the eyes of an anxious nation have turned once more to No.10. Boris Johnson deferred the re-introduction of restrictions last week but met with Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance today to discuss the latest Covid data. Fortunately, current indications are that no such measures will be announced in England at the current time. But while most will celebrate the absence of yet more interminable mask-wearing, social distancing and indoor mixing bans, there are some who crave a Covid curb comeback. Among them include the zealots of the ‘Zero Covid Coalition’, whose activities are partly run out of the taxpayer-funded office of

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Exclusive: No new Covid restrictions until new year at earliest

Last week, the Cabinet decided to wait for a week before imposing any more Covid-19 restrictions for England. I understand that there was a meeting today between Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid, Chris Whitty, UKHSA’s Jenny Harries and others in which they agreed to wait another week and see the results of the booster programme. This means no further measures until at least the new year, and perhaps not even then. The last week of data vindicated the wait-and-see decision taken last Monday as it emerged.. That UK Omicron could be 70 per cent less likely to hospitalise those it infects Cases in South Africa are now falling fast, especially in

Matthew Lynn

What happened to the great Brexit turkey shortage?

Fights breaking out at the checkout counters in Waitrose as angry shoppers battled for the few remaining stocks. Reports of black market birds changing hands for thousands in the posher parts of London. Twitter feeds cluttered with pictures of nut roasts, tofu crowns, and chestnut bakes taking pride of place on the Christmas table, as people desperately tried out the alternatives. You probably noticed the Great Turkey Shortage this year. Christmas went ahead more or less as normal, but of course Brexit meant there weren’t any turkeys available anywhere, just as the farmers had warned. Only a couple of months ago, we were all being told that turkeys would inevitably

Steerpike Steerpike

Lebedev’s Lords’ launch

Evgeny Lebedev is a man of many talents. Since taking up the reins as Evening Standard proprietor in 2009, he’s turned his hand to everything from newspapers and restaurants to philanthropy and property. Theatre buff, elephant lover, a man who collects famous friends like his Francis Bacon paintings: is there anything this Russian renaissance man can’t do?  For during his Gramscian waltz through the institutions of the British establishment, Lebedev became close to Boris Johnson, Mayor of London when he bought the Standard. The pair have enjoyed caviar parties and Italian soirees together, with Johnson famously being spotted dishevelled, alone and without his security detail at an airport after one such bash in

John Ferry John Ferry

Prepare for Sturgeon’s ‘Indyref 2’ stunt

This is the time of year when economists and political scientists make their predictions for the upcoming 12 months. Will we finally see the back of Covid and economic recovery? Will Boris Johnson survive as Prime Minister? In Scotland, the politerati are speculating on what Nicola Sturgeon’s next move on the constitution will be. It seems likely the Scottish government will introduce a bill, without the agreement of Westminster, on a second independence referendum. This is expected to be challenged at the UK Supreme Court. The most likely outcome of that is the referendum bill failing on the grounds that it goes beyond the constitutional powers of the devolved parliament