Politics Archives

Thursday

2 Jul 2020

The Labour left are purging themselves

Ever since Keir Starmer was elected leader in April a phoney peace has prevailed in the Labour party. While it looked inevitable to most outsiders, the ease with which Starmer beat Rebecca Long-Bailey – the continuity Corbynite candidate in all but name – took many on the left by surprise. Their disorientation only increased as Starmer swiftly removed key Corbyn loyalists from the Shadow Cabinet and Labour headquarters while establishing a majority on the party’s governing National Executive Committee. Most have consequently spent the last few months in a dazed shock. Starmer’s surprise sacking of Long-Bailey from his front bench last week has seemingly kicked the left back into life.

Katy Balls

Keir Starmer’s quiet revolution

For the first time in 13 years, the public, when polled, think a Labour leader would make the best prime minister. To be fair, Sir Keir Starmer has been helped in this regard by the Conservatives, who haven’t done wonders for their reputation as the party of competence in recent weeks. But the opposition leader has had a decent start. Yes, Starmer is right when he says his party has a ‘mountain to climb’ to win power following Jeremy Corbyn’s historic defeat, but the Tories are on their fourth term and no party has ever won five times in a row. When Iain Duncan Smith was elected leader of the

James Forsyth

Mission impossible: Boris’s attempt to rewire the British government

It’s never a good sign when a government relaunches itself. Look what happened at the end of Theresa May’s time in power — there was a relaunch almost every other week, each one with diminishing effect. But although it has been over-hyped, Boris Johnson’s attempt to start again isn’t a mere re-branding exercise. It is not just about rehashing policy proposals but about trying to tackle the dysfunction at the heart of the state. The PM is attempting to do something past leaders have thought to be an impossible job: to rewire the whole system. Johnson has time on his side — four years to get things back on track

Wednesday

1 Jul 2020

Stephen Daisley

Boris doesn’t understand the Union

Boris Johnson’s statement that ‘there is no such thing as a border between England and Scotland’ is born of ignorance and neglect. In a legal sense, there is and always has been a jurisdictional boundary separating the two nations. It is what has made a separate legal system possible and the divergent laws and regulations that come with it. It is why homosexuality was still a criminal offence in Scotland until 1981, 14 years after decriminalisation in England and Wales, and why Gretna Green became an improbable destination for eloping English teenagers. The Prime Minister may have been speaking rhetorically — he does that a lot — and rejecting the

Sam Leith

Andrew Adonis: how Ernest Bevin was Labour’s Churchill

43 min listen

In this week’s books podcast I’m joined by Alan Johnson and Andrew Adonis to talk about the latter’s new biography of a neglected great of British political history: Ernest Bevin: Labour’s Churchill. He was, in Andrew’s estimation, the man who did most to save Europe from Stalin. So why has Bevin been so forgotten? In what way was he Churchillian? What would he have made of the current state of the Labour party? And will we ever see his like again?

Cindy Yu

Should the government go further on Hong Kong?

17 min listen

China’s new national security law has been passed in Hong Kong, and from this morning it has been implemented as handfuls of protestors have already been arrested under its new wide-ranging powers. Dominic Raab has pledged to speed up the process to offer British residency for Hong Kong’s BNO passport holders and their dependents. Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about whether or not the government should go even further. Also on the podcast: the local lockdown in Leicester and Keir Starmer’s new strategy.

Alasdair Palmer

Theresa May is right to be angry – the civil service is now at risk

Theresa May is back, and this time she’s angry. Not about Brexit or the Ulster Unionists, but about the politicisation of the civil service. This is not a matter that arouses ire in many people or even many politicians – but it should, because it is the main reason why Britain is governed better than Uzbekistan. In Britain, we take for granted relatively uncorrupt and effective government, based on at least some degree of rational decision-making. Historically, this has been extremely rare, and even today, in many countries, it does not exist. But as economists often point out, it is – along with the rule of law, which is an

Lloyd Evans

Sir Keir’s problem? He lacks the Saatchi & Saatchi touch

Today the prime minister tried out his ‘spoonful of sugar’ routine. Boris has decided that no political problem exists that can’t be solved with a dose of bonhomie, a chorus of ‘build, build, build’, and a £600 billion bung to rocket-boost the economy. This ramshackle strategy was all he brought to PMQs. Against him Sir Keir Starmer was keen to display his world-class mastery of detail. The king of the quibblers was on top form. At least by his own standards. His goal was to blame the PM for the heatwave that recently brought thousands of super-spreaders to Bournemouth beach. Having sleuthed his way through Boris’s recent utterances he found

Ross Clark

A Huawei U-turn must now be inevitable

The declaration by US authorities that Huawei and fellow Chinese comms firm ZTE are national security threats is likely to have a clear outcome. It will knock the UK government further down the path it already seemed to be travelling: reversing its decision to allow Huawei to play a role in Britain’s 5G communications network. Boris Johnson’s government surprised many earlier this year by approving Huawei to build what it called ‘non-core’ parts of the network, in spite of US threats to withhold the exchange of intelligence if Huawei was allowed to be involved. He made the decision in spite of warnings from Britain’s own security services. Head of MI6 Alex Younger has warned

Dr Priyad Ariyaratnam

Is the Lancet becoming too political?

Doctors have always been political. Medical school is often a cradle of social activism, driven by a syllabus underlining health inequalities and the cultural aspects of disease. Some medics inevitably take up politics: Che Guevara, Salvador Allende and Bashar al-Assad are just a few (notorious) examples. But there are plenty of others, and this crossover between medicine and politics highlights how the study of medicine can easily influence ideology. A different challenge posed, however, is when ideology begins to influence medical policy, corrupting medical decisions. This can be particularly problematic in the field of medical publishing. Medicine relies on the integrity of up-to-date published scientific evidence to find the right

Stephen Daisley

Boris’s ‘New Deal’ is nothing of the sort

The best thing I can say about Boris Johnson is that he’s not a real Tory. The Prime Minister belongs instead to the popular liberal right, though he seems to get less popular by the day. His appeal to right-wing voters is based on his promise to ‘get Brexit done’ and the demented, 30-tweet-thread rage-pain he stirs in the hearts of some progressives. What these supporters have not yet but one day will have to confront is the fact that Boris is not one of them. Not on immigration, not on climate change, not on the culture wars. Anyone who can establish a substantive difference between his response to the

James Kirkup

In praise of Harriet Harman

One of my proudest moments as a Daily Telegraph leader writer came in 2015 when I managed to persuade my masters that their paper should bestow official praise on Harriet Harman as she stepped down (for a second time) as Labour’s interim leader and made way for Jeremy Corbyn. The resulting editorial (you can read it here) raised a few eyebrows, but the most striking thing about it was the number of people on the right of politics who quietly agreed with it. You don’t have to agree with all, or even any, of Harman’s political positions to acknowledge her formidable resilience. There are mountain ranges with less endurance than

Tuesday

30 Jun 2020

Steerpike

Watch: Labour MP slams her phone on the floor

We’ve all been in a situation where our mobile phone starts ringing at the worst possible moment – whether it’s in a meeting, the middle of a play or in the silence of a church. Still, it was rather unfortunate for Labour MP Claudia Webbe that her phone went off right in the middle of a speech she was giving in the House of Commons this afternoon. Even worse, the mobile failed to turn off at the first attempt, leaving Webbe scrambling around in her bag, while attempting to continue. By the time she finally managed to turn the device off, the Labour MP was so aggrieved that she chucked

Nick Cohen

Boris Johnson wants a sycophantic civil service

This government may not be good for much but it knows how to manipulate language. Attacks on the ‘establishment’ are the cover it uses to smuggle ideologues and ‘yes’ men into the civil service. We all hate ‘the establishment,’ don’t we? Even when, and especially if, we have never met a permanent secretary. The establishment, by definition, is hidebound and complacent, white, male, Oxbridge and biased. Although the awkward fact remains that you can only join the civil service by passing competitive examinations, that can quickly be dispensed with. Since Lord (Michael) Young, father of the better-known Toby, wrote the The Rise of the Meritocracy in 1958, the attacks on

Kate Andrews

Does Boris’s ‘new deal’ offer anything new?

Today Boris Johnson launched his ‘new deal’ for Britain – billed as an economic recovery plan to follow the Covid recession. It sounds positively Rooseveltian. It sounds like a new deal. All I can say is that if so, then that is how it is meant to sound and to be, because that is what the times demand – a government that is powerful and determined and that puts its arms around people at a time of crisis. What has changed is the PM’s political positioning, away from the market economy and towards state intervention But were the announcements really a ‘new deal’ – or a new anything? The vast

Katy Balls

What’s so new in Boris’s ‘New Deal’?

15 min listen

The country is facing a post-pandemic recession that will leave millions unemployed and businesses bankrupted, so despite all the noise, is Boris’s ‘New Deal’ tackling the right problems? Our Economics Correspondent Kate Andrews joins the podcast today, and tells James Forsyth and Katy Balls why she thinks today’s announcement was little more than rehashing of the Conservatives’ pre-coronavirus manifesto.

Steerpike

Watch: Furious May blasts Gove over Sedwill departure

Theresa May is known for having an icy side – and it certainly isn’t the first Michael Gove has felt the cold. However, those in the Commons this afternoon were subjected to a veritable blizzard when the former PM interrogated Gove over David Frost’s appointment to the role of national security adviser. May clearly felt a sense of double indignation, first at the sacking of her former ally Mark Sedwill (who she brought into No. 10 having served as her perm sec at the Home Office) as well as Frost’s supposed lack of security nous. Brrr!

Katy Balls

Can Boris’s relaunch escape the Leicester lockdown?

Boris Johnson had hoped to use today’s speech in Dudley to draw a line under the past 14 weeks of lockdown and return to his election agenda. However, with the government announcing overnight that Leicester is to go into a local lockdown, the ongoing challenge of coronavirus isn’t far away. The Prime Minister acknowledged that some might think his speech on Britain after Covid ‘premature’ but he said it was not sustainable to ‘simply to be prisoners of this crisis’. Instead, the country must ‘slowly and cautiously’ come out of hibernation. Reflecting on the crisis, Johnson did not go so far as to say mistakes had been made. Instead, he said he

Boris Johnson

Full text: Boris unveils his ‘new deal’

It may seem a bit premature to make a speech now about Britain after Covid, when that deceptively nasty disease is still rampant in other countries, when global case numbers are growing fast and when many in this country are nervous – rightly – about more outbreaks, whether national or local like the flare-up in Leicester. Yet we cannot continue simply to be prisoners of this crisis. We are preparing now slowly and cautiously to come out of hibernation and I believe it is absolutely vital for us now to set out the way ahead, so that everyone can think and plan for the future – short, medium and long term

Steerpike

Ed Davey’s costly leadership bid

The Liberal Democrats were once the progressive voice of fiscal restraint. Not anymore. Leadership hopeful Ed Davey has tabled nearly 130 written questions over the last two weeks in a bid to generate some much-needed coverage – costing an estimated £140 a pop. According to Mr Steerpike’s back-of-a-fag-packet calculations, these often pointless interventions set the taxpayer back a cool £18,000. Probing questions include a request for information about artworks depicting slave owners around the parliamentary estate, allowing the Lib Dem bigwig to moan to the Mirror about Britain’s ‘shameful’ past. Other time-wasting queries include a question involving sensitive intelligence related matters, which as an experienced parliamentarian Sir Ed must know can’t be answered. A spokesperson for Davey told Mr S: It is