Politics Archives

Monday

2 Dec 2024

Sir Chris Wormald is the new cabinet secretary

Keir Starmer has today resolved one of his longstanding headaches: who to appoint to lead the civil service. The man chosen to replace Simon Case as cabinet secretary is Sir Chris Wormald. The 56-year-old has served as permanent secretary of the Department of Health since 2016, leading colleagues throughout the ups and downs of the pandemic. Prior to that, he was permanent secretary at the Department of Education (DfE) from 2012 to 2016. Government is very much in Wormald’s blood: his father Peter served as under secretary in the DHSS from 1978 to 1981. The task that faces the new cabinet secretary is considerable With 33 years of continuous service

Andrew Tettenborn

Why did the state let Kneecap win?

There was something predictable in the government’s agreement last week to accept defeat in the Belfast High Court. The overtly republican Irish band Kneecap had brought a judicial review over the withdrawal of an offer of a £14,500 state grant to support artists overseas, alleging unlawful political discrimination. The government lawyers caved at the door of the court. It is going a bit far to expect government to directly fund something so contrary to its own interests and values Put simply, there were many advantages for the government in acting as it did. The sum at stake was chickenfeed, and blame for the whole affair could be conveniently placed on

Cindy Yu

Is Keir Starmer turning into Rishi Sunak?

11 min listen

The government is trailing a major policy speech ahead of Thursday, in which the Prime Minister will set out key ‘milestones’ that he wants to hit, in terms of healthcare, living standards, the climate and so on. It’s all sounding a little like a previous prime minister… Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and James Heale about the opportunities and perils in setting public targets. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The Oxford Union has disgraced itself

The chamber of the Oxford Union, that once-proud institution, has been breached by the forces of bigotry, hatred, and mob rule. Invited to speak against an anti-Israel motion, I attended with three colleagues, each bringing unique expertise and experience to the room. But what unfolded on Thursday night was not a debate at all. It was an assault on the very principles the Union once claimed to uphold, presided over by organisers who behaved more like a mafia than custodians of an august society dedicated to free speech. This was an extremist mob dressed up like a wolf in black tie The motion for debate was itself a grotesque provocation: “This

Simon Cook

How does the NHS tackle eight million missed appointments?

One of the perennial scapegoats of the NHS is the patient who doesn’t turn up for their GP appointment. The headlines write themselves: millions of pounds wasted and other patients can’t get seen. But while missed GP visits have become a symbol of inefficiency, a far bigger – and often overlooked – problem lies within our hospitals. Every day, there are more than 300,000 outpatient appointments at hospitals, from MRI and breast scans to plaster casts and blood tests. And every day, 20,000 patients don’t turn up. On the surface the data looks like a success story for the NHS, with the percentage of appointments that patients miss gently falling over the last

Ross Clark

Tony Blair is wrong to love nuclear energy

Towards the end of his time in office, Tony Blair came over all nuclear. A new generation of atomic energy plants, he told a CBI conference in 2006, would provide Britain with clean, carbon-free energy as well as boost national energy security. He didn’t last long enough in Downing Street to see it through, but this week he is banging the drum for nuclear energy again. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has published a polemic, A New Nuclear Age, which dismisses fears over safety and cost to propose that Britain once more plunges headlong into new nuclear plants. ‘Public perception of the risk of nuclear power is not

Freddy Gray

Joe Biden was always going to pardon Hunter

Joe Biden’s whole presidency has been built on untruths. We were led to believe, for instance, that since 2021 the Commander-in-Chief has been fit and well enough to serve, when everybody could see that he was not. So the latest proof-of-dishonesty over the pardoning of Hunter Biden comes as no great surprise. Of course, Joe was going to grant clemency to his errant and only living son. He just pretended he wouldn’t all year for electoral reasons. The maudlin love of the father used to dress up the presidential deceit ‘I believe in the justice system,’ said the president in a statement. ‘But as I have wrestled with this, I also believe

Katy Balls

Is Keir Starmer turning into Rishi Sunak?

Keir Starmer is only 150 days into his premiership and his team are already planning a reset. Officially, no one in Downing Street is using the R word when it comes to the speech the Prime Minister is due to give on Thursday. But the plan to use the event to signal a new phase for the government – as part of his ‘plan for change’ – points to how Starmer and his team are trying to turn the page on a torrid start to his premiership. The Prime Minister is expected to set himself a series of new ambitious targets in a bid to show he is listening to

Steerpike

Joe Biden pardons his son Hunter

There are less than 50 days until Donald Trump takes back the White House – so the Democrats are now doing some last-minute future-proofing. In a bombshell announcement overnight, President Biden revealed he has signed a pardon to a victim of a ‘miscarriage of justice’ whose case has been ‘infected’ by ‘raw politics.’ Who is this hapless victim you ask? Why, none other than the President’s own son Hunter Biden. And they call the Trumps nepotistic… The U-turn comes just weeks after the White House denied that the President would make such a drastic move in the final months of his lame duck presidency. Biden, himself, said as recently as June that he

Niall Gooch

Parliament has fallen

Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill passed its Second Reading in the Commons on Friday, which means that it is considerably more likely than not to end up on the statute book. Normally, when momentous legislation is before the House, the media is full of glowing tributes to the quality of the speeches, and we hear many warm words about MPs rising to the occasion and so forth. If you read Hansard from even 30 years ago, let alone 50 or 60, the sophistication and rigour of parliamentary argument is quite remarkable It may be my imagination, but there seems to have been rather less of that

Steerpike

The National’s latest journalistic triumph

Oh dear. It seems that Scotland’s self-identifying ‘newspaper’ is at it again. On Saturday, the great and the good of Edinburgh gathered to say farewell to Alex Salmond at St Giles’ Cathedral. Among those who assembled at the memorial service was First Minister John Swinney who – unlike his predecessors Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf – at least had the decency to turn up. But his presence there caused something of a stir – as the National was only too quick to point out. ‘The service of Alex Salmond has just started,’ reported reporter Laura Pollock, breathlessly. ‘A dramatic start as John Swinney took his seat, shouts of “traitor” and

Gavin Mortimer

Is Marine Le Pen ready to bring down Macron?

There is a deadline today in France. It was set by Marine Le Pen last week for Michel Barnier. Show me you’re serious about respecting me and my party, she told the prime minister, or I will bring down your government. The ultimatum, ostensibly at least, concerns Barnier’s budget for 2025, and the ‘red lines’ that Le Pen demands must not be crossed if she’s to desist from supporting the left’s vote of no confidence. The sanctimonious hypocrisy of the French elite never ceases to amaze There have already been concessions of Barnier’s part, notably his withdrawal last week of a tax on electricity and a promise to reduce state

Sunday

1 Dec 2024

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Tories dodge migration questions

Louise Haigh resigned as transport secretary this week after it emerged she had committed a fraud offence in 2013, falsely telling police that her work mobile phone was stolen in a mugging. In 2022, Starmer had declared to the Commons: ‘lawbreakers cannot be lawmakers’. On Sky News, Trevor Phillips asked cabinet minister Pat McFadden if Keir Starmer had known about the offence before appointing her to the cabinet. McFadden denied having any knowledge outside of the public domain, saying he didn’t know ‘who knew what and when’. He did imply that ‘new information’ regarding Haigh had come to light, but he claimed not to know what that was, saying he

Nicholas Hopton

A pause between wars

‘What is to stop it happening again?’ was the pertinent question put to me by a Lebanese friend this week as we discussed over a mezze the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Given what we know of the terms agreed between the combatants, the answer seems to be, ‘Not a lot.’ Generally, I am not one to pour cold water or see the glass half empty. But beyond welcoming a cessation in the brutal meeting out of death by bombardment on the civilians in both Lebanon and northern Israel, it is hard to see the ceasefire agreement as sustainable in the long term. Since Hezbollah weighed in

Freddy Gray

Is ‘testosterone politics’ surging?

56 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Charles Cornish-Dale, an academic and bodybuilder known for writing under the pseudonym Raw Egg Nationalist. On the podcast they discuss the recent surge in testosterone politics on the right, what’s behind the fall in male testosterone levels, and why this could lead to the end of humanity…

Patrick O’Flynn

The Tory Flood has changed Britain forever

Some political disasters take a very long time to live down, as the Tories will discover over the coming years. One thinks of Labour’s winter of discontent during which, as folklore records, rubbish piled high in the streets and bodies went unburied. Or Black Wednesday, subsequently renamed White Wednesday, when the pound sterling crashed out of the European exchange rate mechanism, shattering the entire economic rationale of John Major’s Tory administration. Long exiles to the naughty step followed each of those disastrous episodes for the party that oversaw them. This week we were presented with another: the true scale of immigration presided over by the Conservative party between 2019 and

Emma Furnival

Why does Rachel Reeves want to destroy our family farm?

Living and working as a dairy farmer in Shropshire, I’ve witnessed firsthand the fallout from Rachel Reeves’ recent Budget. It has dealt a catastrophic blow to the farming industry, leaving many of us reeling. Just a year ago, the now Environment Minister Steve Reed promised us there would be no changes to agricultural property relief (APR). Now Labour has taken a bulldozer and smashed the policy to smithereens without any consultation with Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) or the farming community, leaving us scrambling to process the changes and adapt. The charges Labour have brought in will reshape British farming and our country’s landscape I come

Gavin Haynes

Make Schooner Scorer prime minister

The Schooner Scorer is a young man in a gilet with good bone structure, who glugs 2/3rd pints (schooners) in one fluid unbuttoning of the oesophagus. This is a talent. Or at least, it is a thing; 440ml is not exactly a yard of ale. Even Therese Coffey could manage a full pint. But if we are all to be famous for 60 seconds on TikTok, we must be famous for something, and it is almost as though SS took a life inventory: ‘What do I enjoy? Drinking beers in widely known taverns. Well then, that shall be my calling.’ Each video is inaugurated by his catchphrase: ‘Schooner Scorer here, sixty

Edward Howell

South Korea’s balloon barrage has hit a nerve in the North

Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has long been confined to her brother’s not-insignificant shadow. But, in recent weeks, Yo Jong has shown that she is far more than just her brother’s ashtray-carrying secretary. She has launched a series of fiery rhetorical attacks against South Korea, accusing “South Korean scum” of “polluting the inviolable territory” of the North by distributing “political and conspiratorial” material. The target of her ire is leaflets denouncing her brother’s regime, which have been distributed using balloons across the Korean border. Yo Jong’s way with words shows that she is a chip off the old block. Yo Jong’s way

Saturday

30 Nov 2024

Ian O’Doherty

Irish politics is stuck on a loop

It’s Green bin day! That was the general refrain of many Irish political wags as the country continues to tally the count from Friday’s election. The first indicators from the exit polls were that the Green party who had been minority, but deeply unpopular, members of the governing coalition had just been hammered by the voters. Speaking at the main count centre in Dublin’s RDS, an ashen faced party leader Roderic O’Gorman admitted that ‘this has not been a good day for us’. On this point, he is certainly correct. They are now on course to lose eight of the twelve seats they had previously held and he ruefully admitted