Politics Archives

Monday

2 Dec 2024

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

Michael Murphy

Ireland’s voters have chosen to stick with the devil they know

At first glance, Ireland’s general election has bucked global trends: the centre has held. If the exit polls are borne out, the century-long dominance of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael appears set to continue, with another coalition government likely. But storm clouds are gathering. The most recent ill-winds stirred when Simon Harris, the Taoiseach, faced what is perhaps the most exotic and daunting task for Ireland’s liberal establishment: an unscripted interaction with a voter. Today, Ireland voted sheepishly for the status quo In a painfully awkward exchange at a Cork supermarket – later immortalised online – Harris transformed from the ‘TikTok Taoiseach’ into Ireland’s answer to The Thick of It. Confronted

Ian Williams

The corruption scandal gripping Xi Jinping’s army

In an effort to create a cutting edge force, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) has spent billions of dollars expanding and modernising its armed forces at a pace rarely seen in peace time. But on the evidence of the last few days, the most cutting edge features of its top ranks remain corruption and political intrigue. Miao Hua, one of China’s top commanders has been suspended and is under investigation for ‘serious violations of discipline’ – CCP-speak for corruption, according to the defence ministry. Miao, a navy admiral, is one of six members of the party’s powerful central military commission, chaired by President Xi Jinping. He was also head of

Freddy Gray

Is Labour’s football regulator an own goal?

30 min listen

The Football Governance Bill is currently being considered in the House of Lords. It’s designed to establish an independent football regulator. No team in the football pyramid will be allowed to play professionally without the regulator’s permission. Does the Premier League really require these sorts of regulations? Will such a rigid system, and unprecedented powers, change the game for the better? Paul Goodman, Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange, wrote about the bill in The Spectator. He discusses alongside Rod Liddle, Spectator columnist, and Freddy Gray.

Jane Stannus

Prepare for the National Suicide Service

Tragically, British lawmakers voted on Friday in favour of a bill legalising medically assisted dying. Despite all the talk of ‘safeguards’ and determination to make it ‘the best bill it can be’, the horses are out of the stable now. Once assisted suicide is enshrined as a moral good for even the tiniest, most carefully screened subset of the population, pro-euthanasia campaigners have won the war. It’s all over but the shouting. There will be more battles to come, of course, as the inevitable attempts to expand the subset of those thought to be ‘better off dead’ moves from terminally ill adults, to suffering adults, to ‘mature minors’, to infants and the