Politics Archives

Tuesday

31 Dec 2024

Why is Israel being blamed for the battle of Kamal Adwan Hospital?

Every good reporter knows you never bury the lede. You never smother the key point of a story with fluff and verbiage. And yet that’s exactly what much of the media is doing in its coverage of the Battle of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza. They’re burying, if not outright hiding, the most vital, most unsettling part of this tale – namely, that a neo-fascist militia is using a hospital as a base from which to plot the murder of Israel’s soldiers and citizens. When I watch news coverage of the clashes in and around Kamal Adawn, I feel like I’m losing my marbles. This is very clearly a fight

Gareth Roberts

The joy of Kemi and Farage’s Christmas feud

A feud can be very tedious and tiring if you’re one of the combatants. But let’s be honest: for onlookers, feuds are fun. Videos of spats in which one or other party is ‘schooled, owned, destroyed’ ratchet up millions of views. It’s even more fun when both sides don’t lose their temper and civility is maintained. There is glorious entertainment in watching people ‘throwing shade’ at one another without it ever quite coming to the boil. The smaller the differences, the funnier the feud Now we have a new one to enjoy, in the classic mould. Ding ding, in the blue corner is Kemi Badenoch. While in the slightly different shade

Robin Ashenden

Vodka and the Beatles on a New Year’s Eve in Narva

Narva, the northern Estonian city right on the border with Russia, has been much in the news of late. Not only is it where the Estonians expect any Russian invasion to take place – most of the rest of the frontier passes straight through the middle of Lake Peipus – but it has also become the scene of constant provocations from the Kremlin. There have been border-demarcation symbols snatched by night, local sat-nav jamming, and a host of psychological wind-ups. In the past month reports have come of a clunky Russian surveillance-zeppelin flying over Narva, sporting the letter ‘Z’. This city – in which an estimated 96 per cent of

Justin Brierley

Most-read 2024: A Christian revival is under way in Britain

We’re closing 2024 by republishing our five most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 1: Justin Brierley’s article from our Easter issue on the revival of Christianity. Tom Holland recently invited me to attend a service of Evensong with him at London’s oldest church, St Bartholomew the Great. Holland, who co-hosts the phenomenally popular The Rest is History podcast, has been a regular congregant for a few years. He began attending while researching Dominion, his bestselling book which outlined the way the 1st-century Christian revolution has irrevocably shaped the 21st-century West’s moral imagination. It also recounts how Holland, a secular liberal westerner who had lost any vestige of faith by

Monday

30 Dec 2024

Steerpike

Sadiq Khan gets a knighthood

Farewell to 2024, the year in which no incumbent was safe. Whether it was the Democrats in the White House or the Tories in Downing Street, the tide of change carried all before it, from the LDP in Japan to the BDP in Botswana. But one man successfully bucked the trend: Sadiq Khan was re-elected for an historic third term as mayor of London. Who says democracy doesn’t work, eh? And now Khan has added reason to celebrate: he has been given a knighthood in the New Year Honours List. Yes, that’s right, Sir Sadiq has been handed a ‘K’ by King Charles for ‘Political and Public Service.’ One wonders

Ross Clark

Elon Musk is the real leader of the opposition

No wonder the left hates X so much. Elon Musk is using it to carve himself a role as Britain’s unofficial opposition – a role at which he is proving rather more effective than the official opposition. His latest interjection into UK politics is deadly. Responding to Scottish politicians who would like him to set up a Tesla factory in Scotland he replied simply: ‘very few companies will be willing to invest in the UK with the current administration.’ Ouch! It is so damaging to the Keir Starmer and his ministers because Musk is exactly the person whom they should want to be investing in Britain. He makes all the

Rod Liddle

Is Reform unstoppable?

Lying in bed pissed on Boxing Day night, I was visited by the ghost of Christmas Future, dressed in a grey jacket with a velvet collar, hovering over my pit cackling and in a similar state, alcohol-wise, to myself. It seemed very happy, this ghost. It led me to a graveyard where it pointed, in jubilation, at a headstone which had the words ‘Kemi Badenoch 2024-2026’ on it. ‘You shouldn’t joke about people passing away, Nigel,’ I told this phantom a little sententiously. ‘She’s not actually dead, you idiot,’ replied the wraith, lighting a fag. ‘It’s a metaphor.’ When I awoke 12 hours later, my mobile phone flashed a message

James Kanagasooriam and Patrick Flynn

Right move: will Britain benefit from the global conservative turn?

The world appears to be turning on its axis – and moving hard to the right. The New World is tilting hardest. In Argentina, Javier Milei is taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy. In the US, Donald Trump is poised to deport migrants, deregulate the economy and drill, baby, drill. Canada’s tendresse for the maple-syrupy liberal Justin Trudeau has chilled into a bitter determination to oust him in favour of the anti-woke, pro-growth ‘true conservative’ Pierre Poilievre. And where the New World has led, the Old is following. Giorgia Meloni is now Europe’s most consequential leader – upholder of some pretty traditional values with a strikingly hard policy on migration. Germany goes to the polls next

James Heale

Rachel Reeves’s new year’s resolution

On Christmas Day, 12 million people watched the will-they-won’t-they couple Smithy and Nessa finally marry after 17 years in the finale of the hit BBC comedy series Gavin and Stacey. Yet for all the cheery sentiment, it’s a depressing thought that – statistically – in the real world the characters would be earning roughly the same amount at the series’ end in 2024 as they were at its beginning in 2007. Rachel Reeves’s task this year is to spring Britain from its low-growth trap. The early signs are not encouraging. Those captains of industry whom she once so assiduously courted are turning hostile. The Confederation of British Industry says private

Patrick O’Flynn

When will Keir Starmer ‘smash the gangs’?

It’s been a busy Christmas in the English Channel. The small boat arrivals have continued at a startling pace through the start of winter. Nigel Farage is nonetheless a credible champion for the wronged masses There were 451 arrivals on Christmas Day, 407 on Boxing Day, 305 on Friday and 322 on Saturday. Yesterday we know at least three more people drowned in the Channel near the coast of France, taking the number of migrants who have died or gone missing attempting the crossing this year to at least 77. As the Mayor of Sangatte, Guy Allemend, told the French news agency AFP: ‘It’s crossing after crossing, without any let-up.’

Daniel DePetris

Jimmy Carter was a master of conflict resolution

On 29 December, former US president Jimmy Carter died peacefully at his ranch house in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 100. Over the last few years, most people knew him as the old head of state in the rocking chair, surrounded by family and friends, whose sense of morality and numerous good works were the stuff of legends. Whether it was building houses for the poor or establishing an institution that monitored elections around the world, nobody could accuse Carter of living an unproductive life after the presidency. The former peanut farmer from Georgia, however, was also given a bad wrap. He is frequently remembered as the bumbler whose one-term

Andrew Tettenborn

Angela Rayner’s devolution plans encourage petty authoritarianism

Hidden in the hot air of Angela Rayner’s devolution white paper published just before Christmas – there are promises, for example, to empower councillors to ‘convene local people to engage in their community as respected leaders’ – there lurk some proposals which need careful investigation. By-laws currently passed by local authorities are subject to confirmation by central government. But in Rayner’s white paper this rather prudent requirement is pooh-poohed as ‘hundreds of years old and outdated.’ Local leaders, the proposed legislation says, should have the final say over what they want to ban. Furthermore, it continues, authorities should probably get powers to enforce prohibitions by using on-the-spot fines rather than criminal prosecution.

James Heale

Why 2025 could redefine politics

22 min listen

Santa will have had a tricky time this year fulfilling all the Christmas wish lists in Westminster. Keir Starmer is desperately hoping for a change in the political weather, and Kemi Badenoch would like an in with Donald Trump. Ed Davey dreams that Labour’s electoral troubles will get so bad that proportional representation starts to look appealing. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, wants to avoid what usually happens with him and keep his party from falling out – or perhaps Elon Musk will give him a Christmas bonus in the form of a generous donation. What’s certain is that 2025 will prove to be one of the most defining in recent political

Freddy Gray

Jimmy Carter’s mistake was telling America it was wrong

It’s hard to think of a political oration that has backfired as famously as Jimmy Carter’s ‘crisis of confidence’ speech, delivered from the White House on 15 July, 1979. The fact that it is still today called the ‘malaise’ speech, despite the fact he never used the word, speaks to the scale of its failure. Amid an energy and inflationary crisis, Carter, who died yesterday, wanted to redefine the political moment by addressing America’s tendency ‘to worship self-indulgence and consumption’. He aimed to inspire Americans to rediscover their self-sufficiency and lose their dependence on foreign oil. His poll numbers did in fact improve in the days after the speech, but the message was

James Heale

Jimmy Carter offered dignity in failure

He was the peanut farmer from Georgia who rose to become the leader of the free world. Jimmy Carter, who has died at the age of 100, served as president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. While his term in office was not a success, his post-presidency – the longest in American history – was unparalleled in its public service. Uniquely among America’s modern leaders, he will be remembered more for what he did after the White House than what he did in it. Carter’s long life was characterised by service: service to country as a decorated lieutenant in the US navy just after world war two, service

Steerpike

The ten most-read Steerpikes of 2024

Farewell 2024. It’s certainly been an eventful year. Elections across the globe have taken up much of the newscycle, leaving Britain with a new Labour Prime Minister and the US seeing President Trump return for a second term. The Russian invasion of Ukraine surpassed its 1000th day, while conflict in Gaza continues to rage. Scotland saw her third First Minister in the space of 18 months, while former Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon’s husband was charged with embezzlement of SNP funds. Quelle surprise, the Nats have had a pretty poor year yet again – with their iPad scandal, taxpayer-funded limo trips and ongoing police probe all making headlines. And the BBC

Nick Boles

Keir Starmer, conservative prime minister?

According to Keir Starmer’s critics, the Prime Minister has spent his first six months in office re-enacting Henry VIII’s plunder of the monasteries, Stalin’s liquidation of the kulaks and Herod’s slaughter of the firstborn. But while there may be good grounds to oppose the imposition of VAT on private school fees, the extension of inheritance tax to farmland and means testing of pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, revolutionary acts of Marxist Leninism they are not. The hyperbolic reporting of these modest adjustments to a few taxes and benefits affecting the better off has hidden a more surprising truth about the UK’s first Labour government for fourteen years: the soft left human rights lawyer from

Gavin Mortimer

Democracy is rotting in Europe

Last Friday, America announced sanctions against Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Georgian tycoon who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was imposing the punishment because Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream party was ‘undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation’. Georgian Dream triumphed in October’s parliamentary elections and on Sunday a new president, allied to the party, was sworn in as street protests take place in Tbilisi. Might the ‘lawfare’ that eliminated Georgescu from Romania’s presidential election also be deployed against Marine Le Pen this spring? The West claims that it was not a free and fair election,

David Butterfield

Most-read 2024: Decline and fall – how university education became infantilised

We’re closing 2024 by republishing our five most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 2: David Butterfield’s cover piece from October on the decline of British universities. Last month, after 21 years studying and teaching Classics at the University of Cambridge, I resigned. I loved my job. And it’s precisely because I loved the job I was paid to do, and because I believe so firmly in preserving the excellence of higher education, in Britain and beyond, that I have left. When I arrived in Cambridge two decades ago, giants were still walking the earth. Students could attend any lecture, at any level, in any department; graduate and research seminars

Sunday

29 Dec 2024

Steerpike

Has 2024 been the BBC’s worst year yet?

It’s certainly been an eventful year for Britain, what with the snap election, a change in government and yet another new Tory leader. But 2024’s drama hasn’t only been political. The UK media landscape has also faced a number of challenges this year – with our public service broadcaster very often making the news rather than, um, breaking it. This year, the Beeb has come under fire over dodgy presenters, the accuracy of its own verification service and what it does and does not choose to report. Mr S has gathered some of the most memorable BBC slip-ups from the last 12 months to remind readers just how far the