Politics Archives

Wednesday

6 Mar 2024

Geri Halliwell can never be wrong

Watching the current scandal around Christian Horner play out, I didn’t feel any of the glee I usually do when tabloids dissect the private lives of well-known people. (To be fair, I had zero sympathy for myself when the Daily Mail did it to me, twice – if you dish it out, you’d better be able to take it.) Rather, I felt an emotion that I rarely feel: protectiveness for my adored Ginger Spice – a.k.a Geri Hallwell Horner, wife of the Red Bull boss. It’s a weird one. We’re used to feeling various emotions towards pop stars – lust, love, loathing – but it’s not often that we feel protective of

Tuesday

5 Mar 2024

James Heale

MPs demand veto on foreign state press ownership

More than 100 MPs have tonight backed an amendment in the House of Lords which would give parliament a veto on foreign states owning UK media outlets. Robert Jenrick, the former Housing Secretary, has organised an open letter among colleagues, following the attempt by the UAE-owned RedBird IMI to take over the Telegraph and Spectator titles. Signatories include a string of former Cabinet ministers including Sir John Redwood, Therese Coffey, Sir Simon Clarke, Robert Buckland, Stephen Crabb, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers and Sir Geoffrey Cox. Jenrick’s letter to Lucy Frazer, the Culture Secretary, says that: ‘If major newspaper and media organisations can be purchased by foreign governments, the freedom of the press has

Steerpike

Science minister forced to pay damages

Another day, another government figure in a spot of bother. Michelle Donelan, Science and Technology Secretary, has today had to retract false accusations she made about an academic and agreed to pay the damages and costs. It’s a rather embarrassing case of the science minister unable to get her facts right: sub-optimal to say the least. Last October, Donelan accused Professor Kate Sang, an academic working at Heriot Watt University, of expressing sympathy for Hamas in the aftermath of the 7 October attack. She also accused another academic, Dr Kamna Patel, of sharing extremist material. Both woman, Donelan claimed, had breached the Seven Principles of Public Life and should be

Kate Andrews

Would another cut to National Insurance be enough to move the polls?

We’ll know tomorrow afternoon what exactly Jeremy Hunt has included in his Budget, but reports this evening suggest we’re looking at another 2p cut to employee National Insurance: a move that is estimated to put £450 back in the pocket of the average worker, which Hunt will try to sell as a £900 tax cut, if you combine it with the additional 2p taken off NI in his Autumn Statement last year. The decision to opt for NI will be driven by fiscal restraints rather than political desire. Tory MPs, and workers, have been expecting something bigger than what was already delivered last autumn, and an income tax would have

Kate Andrews

What tax cut will Hunt deliver tomorrow?

13 min listen

Kate Andrews speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman as the speculation grows over what taxes Jeremy Hunt will cut in tomorrow’s budget. National Insurance is looking most likely – it’s a giveaway but does it go far enough?

Eliot Wilson

The flaw in the SNP’s plan to ‘build a new Scotland’

The SNP seems determined not to stick to the day job of actually running the country. Scotland’s government this week launched a publication called ‘Building a New Scotland: an independent Scotland’s Place in the World’. It set out policies for something that doesn’t exist – an independent Scotland – in areas in which the devolved administration has no responsibility. Angus Robertson, the party’s constitution and external affairs secretary who launched the report, hardly seemed fazed by those facts: he spoke fluently and familiarly about ‘defence, peace and security’ and Scotland’s role as ‘a good global citizen’, even if his party’s plan is unlikely to ever see the light of day.

Stephen Daisley

Vulnerable children don’t belong in jail

Britain’s prisons brim with vulnerable people but perhaps the most vulnerable are children. At 30 September 2023, there were 301 children in prison in England and Wales alone. Wetherby Young Offender Institution in Yorkshire is home to 165 of them and a new report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons makes for troubling reading about the conditions inside. There are the usual observations, familiar to regular readers of these write-ups, about broken heating systems and smashed windows, faulty electrics and insufficient time out of cells. But then there is this: ‘We had considerable concerns about the use of all-male teams to cut the clothes of vulnerable girls under restraint and

Jawad Iqbal

Who cares that Rishi Sunak makes his own bed?

Mr and Mrs Sunak of Downing Street have given a joint interview to Grazia magazine in which they give answers to the most pressing questions facing the country. They don’t bother sweating the small stuff like the state of the economy, the upcoming Budget, or the election prospects of the beleaguered Tories, but instead share their carefully considered thoughts on dividing up the household chores. Akshata Murty gushes that Rishi’s ‘special skill’ is tidying the bedroom. Rishi is not to be outdone when it comes to spilling the secrets of their home life. He confesses to breaking away from his day job (just the small matter of running the country,

Steerpike

GB News suffers big losses as TalkTV goes online

What a week for TV broadcasters: it’s been non-stop breaking news about, um, themselves. After BBC Verify’s debacle yesterday, it’s TalkTV that is making headlines today. The television channel, launched to much fanfare in 2022, is moving entirely online from this summer. Staff were informed by email on Tuesday, just a month after the channel’s most famous presenter Piers Morgan announced that his shows would be broadcast solely on YouTube. The station has struggled with fluctuating viewing figures for some time, and it racked up 2 million viewers in December 2023 – significantly less than BBC News’s 11.4 million and falling just behind its main competitor, GB News, which reached

Steerpike

Tories demand probe into Khan’s ‘night czar’

Following an ill-timed interview with the BBC, Londoners have been reminded of the existence of the capital’s underwhelming ‘night czar.’ Amy Lamé has a claim to being Sadiq Khan’s worst mistake in office, having presided over a disastrous decline in London’s nightlife since taking up the post in 2016. Since then, her pay has been hiked by a whopping 40 per cent, with Mr S revealing last year that her annual salary is now almost £117,000. Talk about money well spent. Lamé’s re-emergence this week has sparked a campaign on social media, with Londoners sharing their #LameLondon snaps to highlight her failures in the job. And if things weren’t bad enough,

Amy Wilentz

Gangs are on the verge of taking over Haiti

Haiti seems to be on the verge of complete collapse. In the past few days, the country’s gangs – which already controlled 80 per cent of the capital city of Port-au-Prince – have waged a serious assault against the government while the de facto prime minister Ariel Henry is in Kenya. On Saturday there was a mass prison break, with around 5,000 former prisoners on the loose, some of them notorious gang leaders. Just in the past few days, there have been attacks against police stations, the port, the police academy, border force officials and the international airport. Threats have been made against the state hospital, which was forced to close, and the national palace. US based airlines have

Steerpike

Will Jeremy Corbyn sue Nigel Farage?

They say opposites attract but the battle brewing between Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn is evidence to the contrary. The pair have become embroiled in a war of words and now Jezza has got the long arm of the law involved. Last night Corbyn took to Twitter to announce that he was planning to sue Farage. The GB News presenter, he complained, had made ‘a highly defamatory statement’ about the Independent MP, who went on to rage about the ‘disgusting and malicious lies’. Corbyn’s spokesperson has alleged that Farage accused the former Labour leader of ‘subscribing to an antisemitic conspiracy theory’ on his GB News show on Wednesday 28 February.

Andrew Tettenborn

In defence of Judge Tan Ikram

Judge Tanweer Ikram is not your usual judge. Ikram, who has a CBE to his name for services to diversity, has tirelessly insisted that minorities need to see people looking like them in senior positions (he has Pakistani Muslim heritage). Whether you see him as an innovative radical or a dreary progressive, Ikram is now mired in less savoury controversy. Last month, he notoriously gave a 12-month conditional discharge to three women guilty of publicly displaying paraglider images supporting Hamas, a banned terrorist group. It was quickly pointed out afterwards that he had previously ‘liked’ a post on LinkedIn accusing Israel of terrorism in Gaza (something he says he did

Steerpike

Rwanda Bill battered in the Lords

If you thought the Rwanda Bill was a headache last year, 2024 is shaping up to be no different. Rishi Sunak’s flagship legislation was debated in the House of Lords on Monday night and the government suffered no less than five defeats at the hands of the unelected chamber. While the amendments are likely to be stripped out in the Commons, defeats of such magnitude are likely to delay the implementation of the scheme… Peers sought to amend the Rwanda Bill in a variety of different ways, by a majority of 102 voting to ensure the legislation is fully compliant with domestic and international law. Another vote, again won by a

Ross Clark

‘Levelling up’ is finished

Just what has the government done to try to retain the Red Wall vote? It seemed when they won a majority of 80 in 2019, thanks largely to a big switch of working class votes in peripheral areas of the Midlands and North, away from the main cities – that Boris Johnson and his ministers got it. There was a very large constituency of former Labour voters which was is fed up of that party’s fixation of the sorts of issues which appeal to metropolitan liberals and they were looking for a new political home. It was a constituency which likes state intervention, but was socially conservative. Johnson’s government at first seemed

Jane Stannus

Canada’s Orwellian online harms Bill

There’s a way of getting children to eat something they dislike – medicine, for example – where you bury the goods in a spoonful of jam. Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are trying this method with their Online Harms Bill C-63. But it may not go down as well as they hoped. The stated intent of the Bill is something every decent person supports: protecting children from online victimisation. Yet behind this noble aim lurks the thought police. This is no exaggeration. This legislation authorises house arrest and electronic tagging for a person considered likely to commit a future crime. It’s right there in the text: if a judge believes there are reasonable grounds to ‘fear’

Gareth Roberts

Rishi Sunak can’t save Britain

The Tories have hit an all-time low: an Ipsos poll shows the party on a dismal twenty per cent, with the percentage of under-35s intending to vote for them in single figures. Never has a flush looked quite so busted as Rishi Sunak. It was against this bleak backdrop that the Prime Minister’s lectern was trundled on to Downing Street on Friday night. There was something about the suddenness and urgency of this occasion – asking the press to assemble just as the pubs fill up at the start of the weekend – that put a little spring in the heart. After months of blatant antisemitism on the streets, and

Carson Becker

How can Poland’s Law and Justice party revive its fortunes?

After narrowly losing power in October’s parliamentary elections, Poland’s conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) has spent the last four months battling the reforms of Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who co-founded PiS in 2001 and has served as its chairman since 2003, must now adapt to his role in opposition. On Saturday, Kaczynski said that he would seek another term as the leader of PiS, but this won’t be an easy task. After the excitement of the last few weeks, which has included showdowns with the government over its takeover of public media and the arrests (and subsequent presidential pardon) of two opposition figures, some members of PiS’s

Theo Hobson

Is there anything wrong with ‘Christian nationalism’?

When does radical religious conservatism become a dangerous bid for theocracy? It’s a question that some American commentators are pondering, in relation to ‘Christian nationalism’. David French has argued in the New York Times that we should be wary of the term ‘Christian nationalism’, which is often attached to Trump-supporting evangelicals. There is nothing very dangerous about Christians wanting their faith to be politically expressed, he says. If you define the term broadly, ‘then you’re telling millions of ordinary churchgoing citizens that the importation of their religious values into the public square somehow places them in the same camp or on the same side as actual Christian supremacists, the illiberal authoritarians

Monday

4 Mar 2024

Roger Kimball

The people should decide on Donald Trump, not the courts

In a big victory for democracy, but a big blow to the partisans of ‘Our Democracy™’, the Supreme Court of the United States just reversed the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, which had determined that Donald Trump could not appear on the ballot for president in that state. A coven of anti-Trump activists, desperate to stop the juggernaut that is the Trump train, argued that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment authorised them to remove Trump from the ballot because he had engaged in ‘insurrection’ on 6 January 2021. Let’s leave aside the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment, designed to apply to rebels who had joined the Confederacy during the Civil