Politics

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

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Corbynite academic: I’ll leave the UK if Starmer wins

Spare a thought for the Corbynites. Not only have they spectacularly crashed the only viable parliamentary vehicle for the left, they’ve also managed to screw up what was meant to be a socialist coronation. So it must be particularly difficult for David Graeber, an anthropology professor at the LSE and avid Corbyn supporter. He tweeted earlier today that he would consider emigrating if the soft left former director of public prosecutions won the leadership race: Given the odds of a Starmer win, Professor Graeber should probably start packing for his new life now. Could Mr S suggest Venezuela or Cuba as possible destinations for the fleeing academic?

Steerpike Steerpike

Starmer: the most exciting thing I’ve done is go to a football match

Keir Starmer is the favourite to take over from Jeremy Corbyn, but is he too boring for the top job in the Labour party? Starmer’s critics insist he is and that he lacks the personality to take on Boris Johnson. Unfortunately his attempt to counter that argument rather backfired this morning. Asked by Nick Ferrari on LBC what was the most exciting thing he has ever done, Starmer responded by saying: Starmer: ‘I’ve done lots of exciting things, you know?’ Ferrari: ‘No, tell me’ Starmer: ‘Well, you know, with playing football with…going to football with my kids’ Ferrari: ‘Going to football with your children is the most exciting thing Sir

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Can Macron halt the rise of Islamic extremism?

Emmanuel Macron has unveiled his plan to combat the rise of Islamic extremism in France. Stressing that his fight was not against the religion but political Islam, ‘which has no place’ in the Republic, the president outlined a series of measures in a speech last week. Notably, his plans involve an end to the hosting of imams from countries such as Turkey and Algeria, and more rigorous control on foreign financing of mosques from the likes of Qatar. Macron stopped short of introducing an ‘Islam of France’, which had been mooted two years ago, but his intention is to eliminate the malevolent influence of outsiders. But is it too late

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Priti Patel and the ugly prejudice of her critics

Isn’t it amazing how all the woke rules for how to talk about women and people of colour go flying out the window when it comes to Priti Patel? You can say anything you like about Patel and the PC set won’t bat an eyelid. In fact they will cheer you on. Patel is possibly the only female, Asian-heritage public figure in the UK who enjoys absolutely none of the protections of political correctness. It’s always open season on Priti. So for years we have been told that we shouldn’t call successful women ‘bossy’ or ‘bitchy’. Those are sexist insults against women who have simply shown the kind of resolve

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Left-wing feminism is no ally of women

It’s increasingly popular to say feminism can never be capitalist; no exceptions. Capitalism, by its nature, supposedly exploits women. But if feminism cannot be capitalist, how does one explain Katharine McCormick, the woman who single-handedly financed the development of the pill? McCormick was a committed feminist, a campaigner for women’s voting rights, and a signed-up member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In the 1950s, when the U.S. government would not invest in contraception research, McCormick used her own capital to advance the studies eventually leading to the pill. Is this the kind of story that today’s feminists would sweep under the rug, in order to advocate for socialism

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Labour’s trans rights problem

How do you save a party that doesn’t want to be saved? Tony Blair doesn’t know but it hasn’t stop him trying. He is now warning Labour against retreating into a safe space of identity politics and angry, hectoring progressivism. Specifically, he has in mind the transgender movement and its astonishingly swift march through the institutions, including the Labour party. Blair cautioned: ‘You have got to distinguish between the advocacy of things that are right — gay rights, transgender rights, whatever it is — and launching yourself politically into a culture war with the right. If you go, “Transgender rights is our big thing,” and the right goes, “Immigration controls

Sunday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Auditions for Sturgeon’s replacement are already taking place

Nicola Sturgeon has told Andrew Marr: ‘I do intend to lead my party into the next Scottish Parliament election and hopefully win that and stay as First Minister.’ What’s this all about, then? Didn’t she just record a stonking General Election victory north of the border? Yes, she did. Isn’t polling support for the SNP at levels that would impress even Kim Jong-un? Not quite, but not far off. The SNP leader finds herself in an unusual position. Electorally, she is her party’s most successful leader – winning three Westminster elections in a row and a third term in office at Holyrood. But Scottish Nationalists didn’t become Scottish Nationalists to

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Former Brexit Secretary’s jibe at special adviser Dominic Cummings

David Davis – Huawei decision could be among worst ever made The former Brexit Secretary David Davis joined Andrew Marr this morning to argue the case against involving the Chinese tech giant Huawei in the UK’s rollout of 5G infrastructure. Davis said that because this arrangement had the power to compromise the ‘Five Eyes’ agreement on intelligence sharing between the UK and its Anglophone partners, it could pose a serious risk to national security: DD: China will score a success with this if what they do is fracture the ‘Five Eyes’… [Johnson] will not want… historians to look back and say that was the worst decision a British Prime Minister

Daniel DePetris

When will Joe Biden accept it’s all over?

In Iowa, Americans had to wait the entire night before a caucus winner was declared. Today in Nevada, the wait was much, much shorter – with barely four per cent of the state’s precincts reporting, Bernie Sanders was announced as the victor. That the result was declared so decisively and so early on, was a fitting illustration of how superior the senator’s get-out-the-vote organisation was on the ground. Democratic voters in Nevada know Bernie, and they like what they see. While MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was comparing a Bernie Sanders victory in the Democratic primaries to the fall of France in 1940, Bernie’s supporters were jubilantly celebrating a big win in

The Spectator

The UK is booming – despite Brexit

After the vote for Brexit, it was often said that our departure from the EU was most likely to harm the very people who voted for it: the industrial workers of the Midlands and North. Didn’t they know that a vote for Brexit would, in itself, lead to 500,000 more job losses? Couldn’t they see that Nissan was bound to wind down its operations in Sunderland and move business to mainland Europe? Almost four years on, it’s safe to say that most of the economic doom-mongering was nonsense. This week’s figures on jobs and earnings show that, since the referendum, employment is up by one million — and it is

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Trust issues mean Heathrow’s third runway is unlikely to ever take off

Downing Street is acutely aware that one of the biggest dangers to this government is losing voters’ trust. As I say in the Sun today, if people come to see this administration as just another bunch of politicians who don’t do what they said they would, then it is doomed. Number 10 also knows that Boris Johnson’s opponents love to attack him as ‘untrustworthy’. This didn’t hurt him too much at the election because voters regard most politicians as untrustworthy. But if there was a clear and compelling example of him breaking his word to voters then that could change, and very quickly. The whole emphasis on promise-keeping is bad

Ross Clark Ross Clark

In defence of the wood burner fuel ban

Open the papers this morning and you would think the government had just announced plans to slaughter the first-born. The cause of the outrage? The environment secretary has just said that the sale of coal and damp logs for burning in domestic properties is to be banned from next year. Apparently it is an attack on people who live in the countryside, and on the Tories’ new-found voters in the north of England – whom some Conservatives in the south still no doubt think keep coal in their baths. Maybe there are still a few coal-burners in the likes of Bolsover – although the business of that particular town was

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Trade talks between the UK and the EU are heading for a blow-up

‘The reality is the talks will blow up shortly’. As I say in the Sun this morning, this is the verdict of one Downing Street figure on the UK / EU negotiations. The EU might still be finalising its negotiating mandate. But if you read the draft of it and David Frost’s speech this week, it is clear just how far apart the two sides are. This is going to come to a head quickly as the EU line is that there must be agreement on ‘level playing field’ and governance before the talks proper can commence. If the EU side insists on these preconditions in the opening round of

The Spectator

Barometer: Who actually goes on a cruise?

Breeding controversy A Downing Street aide, believed to have been recruited as a result of Dominic Cummings’s advert for ‘weirdos and misfits’, resigned after it was revealed he had spoken favourably of eugenics in the past. Where did eugenics come from?— The term was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. As well as studying meteorology and introducing the first weather map to the Times, he proposed experiments to test the heredity of intelligence — including the somewhat unethical proposal of separating twins at birth. The weak, he proposed, should be prohibited from breeding. Galton himself failed to have any effect on the gene pool because,

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Battle of the billionaires: Trump vs Bloomberg could be the nastiest election ever

‘There are two things that are important in politics,’ said Mark Hanna, the American senator, in 1895. ‘The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.’ In 2020, Hanna’s maxim could be updated: the second thing is being an old white guy from New York. The presidential election is 36 weeks away and it looks as if the winner will be one of three men. There’s the Manhattan billionaire incumbent, Donald Trump, 73, whose fortune is estimated at $3 billion (he claims eight). There’s the socialist outsider from Brooklyn, Bernie Sanders, who is 78 and worth $2.5 million. And last but not least is 78-year-old Mayor

Douglas Murray

I’ve seen wars more amusing than BBC comedy

Last weekend’s papers claimed that the government desires a ‘massively pruned back’ BBC. Former Conservative cabinet minister Damian Green and someone called Huw Merriman spoke out against this, which allowed the BBC to put the headline ‘BBC licence fee: Tory MPs warn No. 10 against fight’ atop its characteristically impartial coverage. I suppose there are various reactions one can have to this, ranging from outrage at supposed ‘cultural vandalism’, via a vague shrug, all the way through to the full Charles Moore. In recent years I have moved through all these stages. The discovery that mattered most was the realisation that the less BBC I had in my life, the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Brexit reshuffle: every great office of state is now held by a Leaver

One of the Tories’ tactical successes has been to push Brexit down the news agenda. But even if it no longer dominates front pages and news bulletins as it once did, the task of sorting out Britain’s future relationship with the European Union remains the government’s biggest challenge. Brexit also provides the best explanation for some of No. 10’s other actions. Last week’s cabinet reshuffle, for instance, can only be properly understood in the context of Brexit. The purpose was to create an all-powerful centre. The three greatest parts of government — No. 10, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office — have now been joined together. There is a combined

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Time for new leadership at Barclays and HSBC – and a new name at RBS

After a dull interlude, the big banks in their annual results season look a bit more interesting again. First to report was Barclays, where pre-tax profits were up 25 per cent to £4.4 billion but attention focused, yet again, on Chief Executive Jes Staley, whose name rarely appears in print without ‘accident-prone’ attached to it. The trouble this time is his link to the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was Staley’s client at JP Morgan in his earlier career: under investigation is whether Staley was sufficiently ‘transparent’ with his board and regulators in declaring that relationship. Staley survived previous embarrassments, including a £642,000 fine imposed by the Financial

Paul Collier

Northern lights: Seven steps for levelling up Britain

If you ever need a reminder of what northern Britain has achieved, I’d recommend a trip to York. The National Railway Museum brilliantly evokes the local creative energy that produced Stephenson’s Rocket which ran on the world’s first inter-city passenger railway and ushered in the railway age. Just over the River Ouse is the chocolate museum, which celebrates York’s chocolate-makers and their entrepreneurial legacy. It’s easy to be scornful about Boris Johnson’s talk of ‘levelling up’. Real levelling up would mean that for the foreseeable future, the North will grow faster than London, which seems almost unimaginable to Whitehall and in the City. But whatever the cocktail of culture and