Politics Archives

Saturday

2 Apr 2022

It’s time to bring the Falklands into the United Kingdom

Today marks 40 years since Operation Rosario, when Leopoldo Galtieri’s commandos landed on the Falkland Islands and began an invasion that prompted the Falklands War. The Guardian has commemorated the occasion with an unapologetic op-ed by the Argentinian government swearing itself to reasserting control over the islands. Foreign minister Santiago Cafiero, author of the op-ed, declares that ‘the recovery of sovereignty is an inalienable objective of the Argentine people’ and says ‘no Argentine government will cease in its pursuit of our sovereign claim’. Cafiero’s op-ed is full of self-pity but utterly lacking in self-reflection. There is no acknowledgement that his country, then a military dictatorship, overran a tiny, peaceable island population who chiefly spent

Sam Holmes

Christopher Howse, Richard Florida and Olivia Potts

28 min listen

On this week’s episode, we’ll hear from Christopher Howse on the destruction of Ukrainian churches. (00:50) Next, Richard Florida on how Covid has changed London for the better. (13:52) And finally, Olivia Potts on her love of the crisp sandwich. (23:56) Produced and presented by Sam Holmes Subscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher.

Cindy Yu

What does victory for Ukraine look like?

24 min listen

This week it looks like the war in Ukraine is turning. The Ukrainian resistance has moved from the defensive to the offensive against their invaders and American intelligence has reported that the Russian forces are struggling by almost every metric. Though for the Western world this is a very encouraging sign what does a true victory look like and what should our attitude to Russia be if this conflict ends in a fully free Ukraine? Cindy Yu is joined by Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Paul Mason to discuss.

Friday

1 Apr 2022

Paul Wood

Can the west end the Ukraine war?

45 min listen

The Spectator’s contributing editor Paul Wood interviews Dr Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution, who also served as a director within President Trump’s national security council, where her brief focused on Europe and Russia. This conversation was a joint production with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Founded in 1991, IWPR is a non-profit organization that works with independent media and civil society to promote positive change in 30 countries around the world. IWPR has been working with media and civil society in Ukraine since 2016 and has local staff in Kyiv, Lviv, and Bila Tserkva, as well as contacts at more than 50 local media and civil society

James Forsyth

Boris Johnson’s party management problem

The U-turns on conversion therapy last night reveals a problem for Downing Street. After its partygate troubles, No. 10 is very keen to avoid issues that cause tensions with Tory MPs. I understand that desire, in part, lay behind the decision to drop legislation to ban LGBT conversion therapy. But the problem is that there are a host of issues on which Tory MPs don’t agree. So as soon as news of the U-turn broke last night, taking several of the ministers you would have expected to have been involved by surprise, there came pressure from another set of Tory MPs for a U-turn on the U-turn. The result: No.

Cindy Yu

Does national security need to be redefined?

11 min listen

The cost of living crisis became a reality as millions today face a £700 per year price hike to their energy bills. What can the government do to support those that fall into fuel poverty? Also on the podcast, the government has quietly approved the takeover of Newport Wafer Fab by a Chinese owned technology company, Wingtech. As the largest microchip firm in the country, what could this mean for China’s dominance in the semiconductor market? ‘China wants to create a market-dominant position which could create vulnerabilities for the UK’ -James Forsyth. All to be discussed as Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth.

Ross Clark

Did P&O use an EU loophole?

Brexit, as Boris reminded us many times during the referendum campaign, would give Britain the power to make its own laws, unencumbered by constant directives from the European Commission. But it will take a long while to disentangle UK laws from the influence of the EU, as the government may be about to discover in its attempt to punish P&O ferries for sacking 800 workers and replacing them with agency staff. It will take a long while to disentangle UK laws from the influence of the EU At last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Johnson declared that P&O had contravened section 194 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992,

Kate Andrews

Normal people are paying the price for NHS failures

Most people don’t need reminding about the cost-of-living crunch: food, petrol, bills and transport all provide a daily reminder that prices are going up. But today’s energy price cap rise – lifting by almost £700 – provides a headline example of the increasing costs of essential goods.. Alongside it, the National Insurance hike (a 2.5 percentage point rise split between employers and employees) and an average council tax rise of 3.5 per cent both kick in too. But what about the essential services that are supposedly ‘free’? It seems these are getting expensive too. This week the Private Healthcare Information Network released its data on the number of NHS patients

John Ferry

The SNP ferries fiasco has taken another nasty turn

It started as farce but is quickly turning into something more ugly, perhaps even sinister. When Audit Scotland last week released a report shining a light on the SNP’s costly ferries fiasco, all the talk was of painted on windows and a comical ‘launch’ event for an unfinished ship. It was Carry on Up the Clyde but with a rather dull cast of characters. This week the story has taken a different turn. Jim McColl, the Scottish billionaire who took over the shipyard at the centre of the controversy, has come out fighting. He gave an interview to the Sunday Times in which he accused Nicola Sturgeon’s administration of hastily pushing

Thursday

31 Mar 2022

Steerpike

Rachel Reeves rapped over interests

Oh dear. Following the spring statement, Labour have been keen to make political capital in recent days, touting their credentials as responsible guardians of the nation’s finances. Not for them, the financial mismanagement and sleaze of Boris Johnson’s Tories: Labour have been reborn as the party of fiscal probity. So it must have been with some dismay that shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves last month found herself being investigated by the parliamentary commissioner for standards over her entries in the register of members’ interests. Now the commissioner, Kathryn Stone, has concluded her report into the MP for Leeds West. And it looks like that Stone may well be a reader of Steerpike’s columns

William Moore

Biden’s war

36 min listen

In this week’s episode: Is Biden’s approach to the war in Ukraine more calculating than it seems? For this week’s cover piece, in this week’s cover piece, Matt Purple examines Biden’s response to the situation in Ukraine. The good, the bad and the gaffs. He joins the podcast along with the founder of Political Human Emma Burnell. (00:52) Also this week: How many of Ukraine’s churches have been destroyed? In this week’s issue, Christopher Howse writes poignantly on the destruction of Ukrainian churches and how Vladimir Putin, a man claiming to be a defender of Christianity is desperate to keep the images of destroyed holy sites out of the news.

Steerpike

Starmer changes Labour’s slogan… again

Given the Tories’ current woes with everything from parties to ferries, surely now is the chance for the long-awaited Labour revival? Keir Starmer has been talking a good game recently but polls still show the two main parties in close contention. To aid his chances in the upcoming local elections, the Labour leader has unveiled a new slogan: ‘On your side’ – a battlecry that will echo down the ages like Ed Miliband’s ‘Better Plan for a Better Future’ and Gordon Brown’s ‘A future fair for all.’ Reading the latest PR speak from party HQ, Mr S was struck by a sudden realisation. For Keir Starmer’s latest effort appears to

Ross Clark

Zelensky has saved Boris

Labour will try all it can to bring up the subject at every opportunity; as will a few backbench MPs. But partygate just doesn’t feel likely to prove fatal to Boris Johnson anymore. War in Ukraine has changed the dynamic: fussing over lockdown parties seems trivial and out of date. Keir Starmer’s continued plugging away on the matter makes him look even duller than normal. Rishi Sunak’s stock has plummeted after what many saw as a bungled spring statement. But if Boris Johnson does stage a revival, the figure he will have most to thank is Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian President has made it quite clear on more than one

Steerpike

Ian Blackford’s six step guide to untold riches

Inflation. Energy spikes. Tax hikes. Low growth. It’s a tough time for hard-pressed Britons at present. The cost of living crisis has begun to bite and millions are starting to suffer. But not to worry: in these dark times, one man has emerged to champion the destitute and the needy. Step forward, Ian Blackford, the doughty defender of the dispossessed, who used yesterday’s Prime Ministers’ Questions to take up the cudgels of the nation’s underclass. The SNP’s Westminster leader – posing as a kind of Scottish Martin Lewis – inquired of Boris Johnson, with trembling lip, how British families are expected to afford April’s energy price spike. Noble stuff, even if Blackford’s own leader

Isabel Hardman

Can Boris convince Nato to send tanks?

12 min listen

We’ve learnt from a speech this morning from GCHQ director Jeremy Fleming that the Russian army is in even more disarray than was previously thought. This has led some to think that not only could the Ukrainians succeed in holding the Russians at bay but even opens up the possibility of them retaking some of the lands that the Kremlin has already captured. But to be successful in this they would need to be sent more offensive weaponry than the UK and Nato have given so far. Boris Johnson seems keen to help in this manner but will other allies be as enthusiastic? Isabel Hardman talks to James Forsyth and

James Bundy

Sturgeon’s face mask hypocrisy

Why is it that the Scottish government’s Covid restrictions permit people to attend a packed pub or nightclub without a face covering but require one in a place of worship? It’s a question to which there is no obvious answer, not least because Nicola Sturgeon herself is content to sit in a church without one, as she did during the Duke of Edinburgh’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey this week. Thankfully, the First Minister announced yesterday that this inconsistency will be coming to an end. As of Monday, it will no longer be a legal requirement to wear a face mask in a church, mosque, synagogue, mandir, gurdwara or other places of

Matt Purple

Biden’s war: does he know what he’s doing?

Anyone could see that Joe Biden veered off-script during his big speech in Poland. ‘For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,’ he said of Vladimir Putin, which sounded a lot like a cry for regime change. Luckily for him, though, and perhaps for world peace, Leon Panetta, a former secretary of defence under Barack Obama, was on hand to explain the comment away: ‘I happen to think that Joe Biden – you know, he’s Irish – really has a great deal of compassion when he sees that people are suffering.’ To be sure, to be sure. Still, even if Biden’s threat to Putin can be wholly attributed to

The Spectator

Why Boris Johnson should not resign over partygate

Afew weeks ago it seemed that the issue of Downing Street parties over lockdown had been usurped by a more serious matter: what to do about the invasion by a nuclear power of a neighbouring European state. But now partygate is back, fuelled by the news that the Metropolitan Police has issued 20 fixed penalty notices and may announce another tranche of fines at a later date. Some of the heat has left the whole affair. Several of the letters written to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, demanding a Conservative leadership election were withdrawn at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. The leader of the Scottish

James Forsyth

The three stumbling blocks to a Ukraine peace deal

A month in, and the war in Ukraine looks very different to how anyone expected. On the first day of the invasion, western intelligence sources believed that Kyiv would fall to Russian forces within 72 hours, underestimating the Ukrainians’ ability to defend their territory and overestimating the Russian military’s capabilities. Among Vladimir Putin’s many errors was his underestimation of western unity. He did not predict the severity of the sanctions against Russia or that his act of aggression would snap Europe (most notably Germany) out of its complacency over defence spending. In some ways, Putin, by going for a full-on invasion, made it easier for the West to adopt a

Wednesday

30 Mar 2022

James Heale

Five things we learnt from Johnson’s evidence to MPs

Boris Johnson rocked up at the Liaison Committee today, fresh from last night’s bonding dinner with 250 Tory MPs. And the Prime Minister displayed no trace of a hangover as he produced a competent performance during his largely uneventful ninety-minute grilling. Select committee chairs are generally a fairly hostile bunch: because they’re elected by the whole House, Tory critics of the PM tend to be more successful than his defenders. Today’s session was a much more muted affair than last year’s outing, with Johnson’s interrogators mainly choosing to focus on Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis. Even so, some news lines did emerge from Boris Johnson’s appearance. 1) His possible partygate defence