Politics Archives

Tuesday

22 Mar 2022

Does anyone still believe in low taxes?

Speculation over which taxes the Chancellor will slash or, more likely, hike at tomorrow’s spring statement seems to have settled on two areas. First, a cut to fuel duty and, second, an increase in National Insurance thresholds, a way of tweaking the already announced tax hike to reduce the burden on the poorest. On the first point, a cut in fuel duty could cost the Treasury around £2.5 billion a year (although the government is unlikely to get much political credit if Sunak does go down this route given how quickly energy costs are rising). On the second, it looks almost certain that the Chancellor will proceed with his planned 2.5 point rise in NI

Julius Strauss

The terrifying prospect of Putin escalating the war

Battered Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second most populous city, is showing no signs of falling. The column of Russian tanks outside Kiev has gone to ground. The capital itself seems to be off Moscow’s menu entirely, at least for now. In Russia FSB chiefs are reported to be under house arrest. The economy is in freefall. There are rumours swirling of a potential coup d’etat. Nearly four weeks into Russia’s full-throated attempt to seize Ukraine, things are not going the Kremlin’s way. Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedic actor leading a country that has long been considered an also-ran, has bloodied Putin’s nose. But far from this being a time to relax, or, even

Steerpike

Commons confiscates hundreds of potential weapons

It’s five years today since the Westminster terror attack. Outside the gates of parliament stands the memorial to PC Keith Palmer, stabbed to death, defending the place where he worked. And the policemen and women at the Palace has clearly been working overtime to prevent a repeat attack from ever occurring again. For Mr S has obtained figures from the parliamentary security services which show that almost 2,000 items have been confiscated from going onto the estate since the beginning of 2019. The bulk of these are 1,874 so-called ‘legal items’ such as hundreds of pen-knives, padlocks and scissors. These items are returned to the owner upon their departure from the estate; those

Steerpike

Hacks in uproar about Nazanin briefing

Welcome home Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, released after six years imprisonment. The 43-year-old returned to the UK last week after the government settled a historical £400 million debt owed to Iran over a cancelled 1970s order for British tanks. But it seems the mother-of-one is not done generating headlines yet, after she caused something of a stir yesterday with her comments at a press conference in parliament about her return from Iran. ‘How many foreign secretaries does it take for somebody to come home?’ she said. ‘What happened now should have happened six years ago.’ The drama of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s appearance in the Macmillan room though was nothing compared to what was going on outside the room. For

Monday

21 Mar 2022

Steerpike

Mandarins humiliated at Foreign Affairs Committee

The shadow of Afghanistan darkened Westminster again this afternoon as the Foreign Affairs Committee gathered to discuss the farce of Operation Ark. Two of Whitehall’s top mandarins – Sir Philip Barton, the Foreign Office’s permanent secretary, and Nigel Casey, the PM’s special representative for Afghanistan – were hauled up before the panel of MPs. It came after whistleblowers Raphael Marshall and Josie Stewart released evidence which suggested that Boris Johnson personally authorised the evacuation of Pen Farthing’s Nowzad animal sanctuary. Given the recent revelations, Mr S was expecting fireworks and this afternoon didn’t disappoint. For, after today’s appearance, perhaps the two mandarins should be applying for sanctuary with the Nowzad charity. For an hour-and-a-half,

Steerpike

Boris cuts short Saudi trip for wife’s party

In recent weeks, partygate has felt all but a distant memory in Westminster. After Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Boris Johnson has focussed on recasting himself as a statesman focussed on the foreign affairs crisis. Even as the Metropolitan police announce their investigation has reached the stage of ‘interviewing key witnesses’, Johnson’s supporters are keen to play down the whole affair in light of the international situation – with Jacob Rees-Mogg suggesting it is ‘trivial fluff’. Meanwhile, signs of the new regime are visible – with MPs at a recent drinks reception with the Prime Minister disappointed to be served soft drinks only. However, that’s not to say

Fraser Nelson

Boris’s Brexit-Ukraine comparison was a mistake

After years of post-Brexit rancour, the last few weeks have been a striking display of European (not just EU) unity. Britain was the first to send arms to Ukraine, now the EU is (for the first time) buying weapons so it can follow suit. No one forced Norway’s strategic wealth fund to disinvest all Russian assets, but it chose to. Even Switzerland is marching in lockstep with the sanctions. Putin had counted on European divisions, which had certainly been on display when Germany was still going ahead with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, in defiance of protests and pleas from Eastern Europe and the European parliament. The invasion turned this squabbling

Brendan O’Neill

Boris is right about Brexit and Ukraine

Boris was right to compare the vote for Brexit with the struggle for freedom in Ukraine. And here’s the thing: deep down, his fulminating critics know it. It’s why they’re so angry, why they’ve been lashing out so furiously against the PM. Because Boris has drawn attention to something that they would prefer to leave in the shadows – the fact that the very same members of Britain’s chattering classes who are currently cheering the Ukrainian people’s fight for national sovereignty waged a reactionary crusade against the British people’s vote for national sovereignty back in 2016. The hissy fit over Boris’s comments has been mad. You could be forgiven for

Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama on Ukraine, liberalism and identity politics

This week, Sam Leith spoke to Francis Fukuyama – the author of ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ and the newly released ‘Liberalism and its Discontents’ on the latest episode of The Book Club. You can watch their conversation below, listen to it here or read this transcript. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Sam Leith: Liberal is a word that means something very different in Tennessee than it does in Muswell Hill. What exactly are the parameters of what you call classical liberalism? Francis Fukuyama: It does have a very different meaning in the United States than it does in Europe. My definition of it is closer

Katy Balls

Was Boris’s Ukraine/Brexit comparison a mistake?

16 min listen

Over the weekend, Boris Johnson sparked a wave of criticism after he linked the Ukraine crisis to Brexit. During his speech at the Conservative Party’s Spring Conference, the PM suggested that Ukraine’s decision to ‘choose freedom’ was reminiscent of Brexit. ‘I think it was up there with the Jimmy Saville joke which he made about Keir Stamer in things which should not have been said.’ – Fraser Nelson. Also on the podcast, will Rishi Sunak be forced to u-turn on his commitment to low taxes? In the week of the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine means that the goalposts have moved. All to be discussed as Isabel Hardman is joined

Steerpike

Operation Ark returns to haunt Boris

Boris Johnson is doing rather well on Ukraine at the moment, thanks to Britain’s role in sending arms and training instructors there. But now another military crisis from the not-so-recent past threatens to block the greased pig’s escape from political danger yet again. For this afternoon the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) will be taking evidence on Operation Ark, the evacuation of Pen Farthing’s sanctuary Nowzad from Afghanistan amid claims that the lives of animals were put before Afghans. The blame game about who was responsible for the sorry episode has raged since August. In December, Foreign Office whistleblower Raphael Marshall released a devastating account of Britain’s exit from Afghanistan, including

Isabel Hardman

What lessons can Britain learn from Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ordeal?

‘How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? Five?’ Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has spoken for the first time in public, giving a press conference alongside her husband Richard and MP Tulip Siddiq this lunchtime. She was grateful for her release from Iran, but also very clear that she wasn’t as thankful to the British government as Richard, who praised the foreign secretary and officials for saying they would bring Nazanin home and for doing that. She argued that she should have been brought home six years ago, and that she had given up hope after hearing multiple foreign secretaries over the years assuring her that they would

Katy Balls

Can Sunak prove he’s a low tax Tory?

When Rishi Sunak first envisaged this year’s spring statement, the idea was that it would be policy light. Instead, it would serve as an economic update on the latest forecast and give him a chance to lay out his broad tax aspirations for the year ahead. However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine means that the goalposts have moved. The Chancellor has had to adjust to the fact that he has come to the end of one crisis only to be greeted by the next. With the economic fallout from Ukraine only exacerbating the cost of living crisis, Sunak is under pressure to announce measures to ease the pressure on households. So, what

Steerpike

Parliament full of vermin: official

It was Nye Bevan who claimed that the Conservative party was ‘lower than vermin.’ But in today’s House of Commons, it is not just the Tories who have to serve cheek by jowl with some of nature’s less attractive creatures. Since the return of Westminster last year, Steerpike has heard nothing but complaints about the state of parliament’s mouse problem. Across the House, staffers talk of horrified encounters with tiny rodents across the estate, be that in cramped researchers’ offices, over coffees in Portcullis House or the grandeur of Westminster Hall. One caseworker has promised photographic evidence the next time they find one on their desk while another moans: ‘No working WiFi

Sam Leith

Bono’s ‘poem’ was an insult to the craft of verse

Poet’, said Robert Frost, ‘is a praise-word’. So it is. That explains in part the unabashed delight with which Colm Tóibín, speaking in our current Book Club podcast, talks about publishing his fine first poetry collection Vinegar Hill – decades of international acclaim as a novelist notwithstanding. Poetry is a high-status artform, perhaps the highest. Yet unlike most other artforms, very many people seem to think of it as something that anyone can do. You wouldn’t expect to be able to write a symphony, or build a suspension bridge, or win Wimbledon, without many years of apprenticeship and intimate attention to the work of those who have excelled in those

Sunday

20 Mar 2022

Steerpike

Did the SNP leak the Salmond inquiry report?

Cast your minds back to March 2021. Back then, Britain was emerging from lockdown, the Americans were in place in Afghanistan and Thorntons still had shops. Up in Edinburgh meanwhile, the Salmond Inquiry was raging. The timely leak from a parliamentary committee which concluded that Nicola Sturgeon had misled Holyrood prompted a flurry of accusations as to who was responsible. Now though, a year on, an answer might finally be available. For Andy Wightman, then an independent Member of the Scottish Parliament, has used the one year anniversary of the leak from the committee to speak out about who he believes is responsible. Wightman was one of the nine MSPs on the

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Sunak says Ukraine and Brexit are not ‘analogous’

Rishi Sunak – Brexit vote and Ukraine resistance ‘are not analogous’ The Chancellor was in the TV studios this morning, ahead of the Spring Statement that he will deliver on Wednesday. Economic issues, like much else, have been cast into the shadows over recent weeks as the spotlight has inevitably focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even today was no exception, as in his interview with the BBC’s Sophie Raworth, Rishi Sunak was first asked to address a stir caused by the Prime Minister’s remarks at the Conservative’s spring conference yesterday in Blackpool: Government’s energy support ‘will make a difference’ Turning to Sunak’s brief, Raworth asked about the rising cost of living

Kate Andrews

Rishi keeps coy on this week’s mini-Budget

What support might the Chancellor dish out to help with the cost of living squeeze in the Spring Statement this week? In line with his previous media appearances, Rishi Sunak’s statements ahead of his mini-Budget this morning on the BBC didn’t give much away, as the Chancellor ‘can’t speculate’ on what’s to come in his announcements this week. But the pressure is on to address the energy and basic goods prices which have been skyrocketing since we emerged from the height of the Covid emergency: the energy price cap lifts nearly £700 this spring, and is likely to rise again in the autumn. Sunak reiterated that his job now is

Francois Balloux

Should we worry about the BA.2 Omicron variant?

When the Omicron variant (now categorised as BA.1) swept across the world at the end of last year it was seen by optimists as the final chapter in the Covid story – it was so contagious it would infect essentially anyone, but would be far less likely to cause serious illness. Now a new wave of Omicron – the BA.2 variant – is becoming dominant in many parts of the world. In the UK, cases are again on the rise. Genomic surveys show that BA.2 made up 76 per cent of new cases in England as of 5 March. The below is from the Sanger Institute: So what’s going on? Firstly, both

Stephen Daisley

The naive idealism of Gordon Brown’s Nuremberg trial

Vladimir Putin hasn’t won the Ukraine war yet and already they’re talking about putting him in the dock. Gordon Brown’s call for the establishment of Nuremberg-style trials, ‘indicting President Putin and his inner circle for the crime of aggression against Ukraine’, is well-meaning and emerges from a sincere Christian socialist worldview. I once termed Brown a ‘moral romantic’ and his Nuremberg proposal is pure moral romanticism. In a world governed by right and wrong, he is obviously right but in the world as it is, fallen and wicked, his plan to bring Putin before an international tribunal is little more than wishful thinking. Except through some fundamental change in the