Politics Archives

Monday

28 Oct 2024

I fear for Georgia’s future

Following this weekend’s fraughtly awaited election ‘results’ in Georgia – as important for the country’s direction as any since the end of the Cold War – a potentially explosive situation is developing. While exit polls suggested the Georgian Dream (the incumbent, pro-Kremlin party) would gain no more than 42 per cent to the collective opposition’s 58 per cent, Sunday morning saw GD leader Bidzina Ivanishvili declaring victory and claiming 54 per cent of the vote. ‘It is rare for any party anywhere in the world to achieve such success in such a difficult situation,’ Ivanishvili crowed. Yet amidst widespread allegations of rigged ballots, intimidation and voter fraud, opposition parties are refusing to accept

Charlie Gammell

Regime change in Iran is a bad idea

In 2012, as the Islamic Republic showed signs of buckling under the weight of US and EU sanctions, Senator John Kerry spearheaded a series of backchannel meetings with his Iranian counterparts to begin exploring the deal that became the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an arms reduction agreement between Iran and western nations in which Iran would receive sanctions relief in exchange for caps on uranium enrichment. The US and its allies sought to strike a bargain with an Islamic Republic desperate for foreign investment, eager to accept terms. Yet in the years leading up to the JCPOA’s signing in 2014, another strand of thought emerged from within US

Sam Leith

Keir Starmer, Karl Marx and the cant of ‘working people’

Labour has promised that, come what may, they will not be increasing taxes on ‘working people’. Well, jolly good. Those of us who work for a living will tend to welcome such a promise. So will hedge fund managers, who go to work every day, and the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and the lawyers and accountants who manage vast offshore tax efficiency schemes. Working people all. ‘Working people’ is a cant phrase, which – as Bridget Phillipson was forced to admit when she struggled to say if small business owners counted – means nothing concrete at all. It has the advantage, as all such cant phrases do, of denoting

Sunday

27 Oct 2024

Steerpike

Labour MP suspended after CCTV punch

After a miserable few days involving a diplomatic row about reparations at the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, Keir Starmer will have been hoping for a more positive start to this week ahead of the Budget on Wednesday. Alas, it appears not to be. Tonight the Labour party announced the suspension of Mike Amesbury, after CCTV was published by the Daily Mail, appearing to show the Labour MP punching another man in the street, before continuing to strike him while he was on the ground. Absolutely shocking footage from any old thug, let alone a sitting MP.https://t.co/m4eb5Jdlas pic.twitter.com/XBRJM9VjZk — Tom Harwood (@tomhfh) October 27, 2024 A Labour spokesperson said: ‘Mike Amesbury MP

Steerpike

Tory candidates trade blows on final weekend

The Tory leadership contest looks set to end next week without a single ‘yellow card’ being awarded. But the two remaining candidates seem to be making a late bid for a reprimand from Bob Blackman. Both Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch have this morning traded verbal blows with each other, four days before polls close on Thursday. Talk about a Halloween massacre… In an interview with today’s Sunday Telegraph, Kemi Badenoch was quoted as saying that ‘Integrity matters… with me you’d have a leader where there’s no scandal. I was never sacked for anything, I didn’t have to resign in disgrace or, you know, because there was a whiff of

Katy Balls

How did Keir Starmer end up in this reparations bind?

Ahead of the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, Keir Starmer told the travelling press pack that he wanted to look forward rather than have ‘very long endless discussions about reparations on the past.’ Rather than discuss the possibility of payments to Commonwealth countries to apologise for Britain’s historical role in the slave trade, Starmer wanted to talk about areas of collaboration on climate and humanitarian work. By his own metric, the Prime Minister appears to have failed. While government figures repeatedly said reparation talks were not on the table, Starmer leaves Samoa having agreed with Commonwealth countries that Britain will discuss reparations for slavery next year. Despite opposition from the UK

Steerpike

Women’s Equality party to abolish itself

So. Farewell then the Women’s Equality party. Founded to much fanfare by Sandi Toksvig and Catherine Mayer in 2015, the self-proclaimed ‘intersectional feminist organisation’ has decided to push for its own abolition at a special conference next month. It comes after a decade of stunning electoral success that saw them win a single seat in Hampshire in this year’s local elections. At this general, they then fielded four candidates across the country who won a combined total of 1,275 votes. How will Westminster cope with their absence? In a lengthy self-justificatory piece for the Observer today, the co-founders cite financial challenges and a changed political and media context as reasons for why

Jason M. Brodsky

Israel has exposed America’s cowardice towards Iran

On Saturday, Israel launched a retaliatory strike against Iran which targeted around 20 military sites across the country, using over 100 combat aircraft. This was an unprecedented operation by Israel against Tehran – in both its breadth and depth. Israel’s aim was to degrade and deter. And in the process, it has reminded the world of the weaknesses of America’s current policy towards Iran. So far, Iranian media has been downplaying the Israeli strikes. Even as the bombing campaign was underway, pro-regime Telegram channels were posting videos showing placid scenes of Iranian cityscapes. In April, when Israel launched an attack on Esfahan, Iranian state television broadcast the morning traffic with

Mark Galeotti

Can Russia really ban smoking?

The UK isn’t the only place which has been toying with the idea of introducing a ‘generational’ tobacco ban. Rishi Sunak’s bill that would ban sales to anyone born after 1 January 2009 was taken over by Labour following the election, but now it is Russia that is debating a similar measure. The Ministry of Health is reportedly close to proposing a ban on the sale of tobacco and other nicotine-containing products to everyone born after 31 December 2009. A draft bill has already been circulated and has been adopted by the New People party, one of the government’s tame pseudo-opposition factions, although it has not yet been reviewed by

Caleb Quinley

Is this the end for the Philippines’ Duterte family?

For the last decade, the Duterte family has been known throughout the Philippines as almost untouchable – respected, feared, and seen by many as above the law. Take Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs when he was president of the Philippines. Despite a bloody crackdown, Duterte remained largely unchallenged both domestically and internationally during his presidency. His son, Paolo, has enjoyed similar immunity: several years ago, he was implicated in a multi-billion peso drug-smuggling operation, but got off easy – with rumours that the judicial system was rigged to protect the family. The Duterte family has remained a powerful political dynasty in the Philippines, even after President Rodrigo Duterte left

Sam Meadows

Uruguay’s elections have become overshadowed by a referendum

Uruguayans have long been able to look across the Rio Plata to their larger and louder neighbours in Argentina and roll their eyes at the endless economic crises and political chaos. Not for much longer, perhaps. Uruguay heads to the polls today to elect its next president, but election fever has been roundly overshadowed by (if economists are to be believed) referendum also taking place today. Analysts have described it as a possible ‘Brexit moment’ The national plebiscite has been proposed by trade unions and would radically overhaul the country’s entire pension system. The retirement age would fall by five years to 60, pension payouts would be pegged to the minimum wage,

Saturday

26 Oct 2024

Fabian Hoffmann

The strike on Iran marks a dramatic change in Israel’s tactics

On the night of 26 October, Israel conducted an aerial strike on Iran, marking the latest move in the ongoing tit-for-tat conflict between the two countries. The attack, which had been anticipated and was announced by the Israeli government, was in response to an earlier Iranian missile strike on Israel at the beginning of October, named Operation True Promise 2. The Iranian attack was itself a retaliation for Israel’s assassination of senior leaders within Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard over the preceding months. Details of last night’s airstrike remain unclear, but reports suggest that Israel targeted approximately 20 Iranian military sites. Prior to it, there was speculation that Israel might

Steerpike

Police probe alleged Labour MP assault

It’s a big week for Labour ahead of the Budget on Wednesday. So it is somewhat sub-optimal then that a viral video threatens to derail their carefully calculated media grid. In footage shot by a member of the public early this morning, Labour MP for Runcorn and Helsby Mike Amesbury appeared to threaten a man who has been knocked onto the road in Frodsham, Cheshire. Amesbury shouted at the floored man: ‘You won’t ever threaten me again, will you? You won’t ever threaten me again.’ After others pointed out that he’s the local MP, he responded: ‘Yes I am, and you won’t threaten the MP ever again, will you?’ One onlooker quipped

Vazha Tavberidze

The man behind Georgia’s pro-Putin turn

‘He wasn’t my first billionaire, so I kind of knew my way around him’, a senior US diplomat who plied his trade in Georgia told me at the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. ‘And the weirdest thing? He was starry-eyed about Nato and the West in the beginning. I remember at one meeting with a US delegation, he outright asked, “So what I” – notice the I, not we – “what I gotta do to get into Nato by 2016?” We all looked at each other, then gave him the usual line about democratic reforms and so on. He listened for a while, then interrupted, “But what do I really

Stephen Daisley

What Fight Club got right

There are three great makers of popular man-art working in Hollywood today – Michael Mann, Christopher Nolan and David Fincher – and all three work with broadly the same materials: male identity, its associated violence, and post-industrial societies with no place for either. Mann’s neon-noir aesthetic focuses on status, whether James Caan’s safecracker in Thief, with his $150 slacks, silk shirts, and $800 suits, or Jamie Foxx in Collateral, who dreams of running his own limo firm, but only idly, having long since sunk into his reassuring routine as night-time cab driver. Nolan’s theme is personal darkness, whether Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight trilogy, or Al Pacino’s

Kate Andrews

Not even ‘working people’ will be protected from tax hikes

Does Labour regret its decision to redefine the meaning of a ‘working person’? The original understanding of the term seemed to be working just fine, until ministers decided to make it the metric for who would and would not be subject to tax rises. Now the party finds itself in the strangest of situations: having to talk down British entrepreneurs and employers, all for the sake of muddling through a painful Budget next week. It was just a few weeks ago that Labour was hosting its highly anticipated investment summit, trying to attract new business, and funding, to the UK. When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Prime Minister

Limor Simhony Philpott

Israel does not want full-scale war with Iran

Just over three weeks after Iran attacked Israel with 200 ballistic missiles, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) finally launched a retaliatory airstrike on Iranian military facilities last night. The IAF strike reportedly lasted three hours, and was carried out in three waves. It was based on impressively precise intelligence and targeted the missile manufacturing facilities where the ballistic missiles used in Iran’s attack earlier this month were made. The IAF also struck surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missile arrays. As soon as reports of the attack emerged, the Iranian disinformation machine whirred into action. Through official channels as well as online influencers and bots, Iran denied that its facilities were successfully bombed

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Will Israel strike Iran again?

Israel’s major airstrike operation deep within Iranian territory last night was unprecedented, reportedly targeting over 20 military sites in a coordinated, multi-wave attack. For the first time, Israel not only conducted such a large-scale operation but also openly acknowledged it as it unfolded. According to Israeli sources, the operation achieved its objectives, dealing a decisive blow to the Iranian regime’s military infrastructure. The entire mission returned safely to Israel, sending a clear message of the Jewish state’s total aerial superiority over Iranian defences, all while presumably avoiding or minimising civilian casualties. Yet despite these early indications of success, the full scale of the damage remains unconfirmed, and Iran’s attempts to

James Heale

Should Britain pay reparations to Commonwealth countries?

16 min listen

This week, Keir Starmer has been in Samoa for a summit with delegations of the 56 nations which make up the Commonwealth. Between having to answer questions on Donald Trump and the budget, he has also been pressed on the issue of slavery reparations, with the leaders of some Caribbean countries insisting it is ‘only a matter of time’ until Britain bows to demands of handing over billions of pounds in compensation. Speaking today, Starmer addressed the issue. He said, ‘I understand the strength of feeling’ but insisted that he would be ‘looking forward, not back’. So what are the arguments for and against reparations? And why is this debate

Philip Womack

Philip Womack, Ian Thomson, Silkie Carlo, Francis Young and Rory Sutherland

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Philip Womack wonders why students can’t tackle university reading lists (1:12); Ian Thomson contemplates how much Albania has changed since Enver Hoxta’s dictatorship (6:12); Silkie Carlo reveals the worrying rise of supermarket surveillance (13:33); Francis Young provides his notes on Hallowe’en fairies (20:21); and Rory Sutherland worries that Britain may soon face a different type of migrant crisis (24:08). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.