Politics Archives

Saturday

20 Jan 2024

How Israel is failed by its war of words

Sitting in a room at the Israel Defence Forces’ Hakirya base in Tel Aviv, I listened – along with a room full of delegates, mostly European MPs and members of the House of Lords – to a briefing from an IDF spokesman. He was a British-born reservist recruited back to the front lines of Israel’s communications war, and he did not inspire. He repeated basics about what happened on 7 October, and the horror of those events – something that everyone in that room, all there as pretty major fans of Israel, desirous to see it triumph in its hour of adversity, already appreciated. We wanted new information: dispassionately and

Friday

19 Jan 2024

Freddy Gray

Nikki Haley says being Trump’s vice president is ‘off the table’

The theory that Donald Trump will pick Nikki Haley as his vice president refuses to die – in spite of the growing evidence that he won’t. Haley, for one, is adamant that it will not happen. Today, at a meet-and-greet with voters in Mary Ann’s diner in Amherst, New Hampshire, a voter floated the idea. She grimaced and said: ‘I’ve never said that. That’s my opponent saying that… I don’t want to be anyone’s vice president. That’s off the table.’ She could change her mind, of course. Politicians do, and analysts will keep saying that Haley would help Trump appeal to aspirational suburban women and so on. But Trumpworld loathes

Max Jeffery

Why won’t the Tories back Birbalsingh?

15 min listen

Katharine Birbalsingh, headteacher at the Michaela community school in Brent, is being challenged in the High Court over a policy which allegedly bans students from praying. Ms Birbalsingh has defended the policy, arguing that it is vital to ‘maintain a successful learning environment where children of all races and religion can thrive.’ Should the Tories step in? Max Jeffery speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Heale. Produced by Max Jeffery and Oscar Edmondson.

Limor Simhony Philpott

The real reason Netanyahu is opposed to a Palestinian state

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Biden administration earlier this week that he objects to the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intended audience was his base of supporters – or what little of it he has left. Since the start of the war on 7 October 2023, Netanyahu had zig-zagged between rejecting the idea of Palestinian rule over Gaza and showing some level of flexibility about the idea of a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA) managing Gaza’s day to day governance, with Israel managing the region’s security. Netanyahu is torn between his dependence on the approval of his right-wing voters and his reliance on American support. The American

Ross Clark

The madness of the Port Talbot closures

Hurrah! The UK is just about to reduce its carbon emissions by a further 1.5 per cent. As for Wales, it is going to get even close to the holy grail of reaching net zero, with 15 per cent of its carbon emissions wiped off its slate in one go. True, there will be 2,800 job losses, and it won’t actually reduce global emissions – in fact, it will probably increase them. But who cares about such trifles when you have a legally-binding target of net zero to reach by 2050? That pretty well sums up today’s announcement that Tata Steel is to close its two blast furnaces in Port

Steerpike

Prince Harry faces £750k libel bill

It seems the renegade royal has run away again. All of Fleet Street was eagerly anticipating the mother of all media showdowns this month, with Prince Harry due in court for his libel trial with the publishers of the Mail on Sunday, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL). The MoS is the biggest selling Sunday in the land while the Prince smelled blood after his Christmas triumph against the Mirror. Harry’s claim concerned a February 2022 article about his publicly funded security arrangements when visiting the UK. Lawyers for the dilettante Duke claimed the story ‘purported to reveal, in sensational terms’ that information from court documents ‘contradicted public statements he had previously

Isabel Hardman

Does Sunak have a relatability problem?

Rishi Sunak has been caught on camera apparently walking away from a woman who has just started telling him about his daughter’s ordeal waiting for NHS treatment. As she starts to complain, he is looking anxiously over his shoulder at his aide, and then says he needs to get to the next appointment. She then walks with him while he repeats what the government is doing on the NHS. He does not, as the initial clip circulated suggested, walk straight off, but the encounter remains awkward for the Prime Minister as he doesn’t seem to take any interest in the individual case at all. This clip was circulated first: Exclusive

Andrew McQuillan

Agreeing to power-sharing now could ruin the DUP

Once upon a time, a young unionist politician marched out of a talks process. Recalling the incident later, he said: ‘I asked myself the question, could I walk out of here and go down to my constituency, the people of Lisburn, look them in the eye and say this is a good deal. I could not do that in all conscience.’ That politician was Sir Jeffrey Donaldson speaking about Good Friday 1998, unable to support his then Ulster Unionist party leader David Trimble as he prepared to sign the Belfast Agreement. Donaldson then devoted his energies to championing the irascible anti-Agreement wing of unionism, monstering Trimble and chipping away at the

Steerpike

The curious case of Nicola Sturgeon’s missing WhatsApps

The saga of the Scottish Government’s WhatsApps continues to rumble on. The SNP regime has never been slow in condemning the Tories for a lack of transparency in the ongoing UK Covid Inquiry. So it was to Steerpike’s amusement then that Humza Yousaf and his Scottish government have been facing considerable criticism in recent months for not handing their key messages over to that same probe. Talk about being hoist by your own petard… This morning, attention at the Covid Inquiry turned to the flailing First Minister’s predecessor. Attendees this morning heard that Nicola Sturgeon ‘retained no messages whatsoever’ from the pandemic, which, er, explains her constant refusal to confirm which messages

Jim Lawley

How Catalan separatists are taking control of immigration

In Spain’s general election last July, the right-wing Partido Popular and the even more right-wing Vox won 170 seats, just short of the 176 they needed to form a government. The support of an MP from Navarre and another from the Canary Islands took them to 172 but that only added to the frustrating sense of ‘so near and yet so far’. 60 per cent of Catalans say there is too much immigration Then Pedro Sánchez, the incumbent left-wing prime minister, stepped in, cobbled together an alliance with six other parties and, with 179 votes, was duly re-elected. Promising that he would lead a stable, transparent and, above all, ‘progressive’ administration,

Kate Andrews

Jeremy Hunt has difficult decisions ahead of him on tax cuts

The Tory party’s plan to further cut taxes in the Spring Budget is not exactly a secret. Still, Jeremy Hunt’s suggestion at Davos that they are indeed coming has sparked imaginations – while his party continues to debate internally where these tax cuts should land. Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum’s conference in Davos, Switzerland, the Chancellor gave his biggest indication yet about his priorities for the upcoming fiscal statement. ‘We note that the economies growing faster than us in North America and Asia tend to have lower taxes,’ he said. ‘I believe fundamentally that low-tax economies are more dynamic, more competitive and generate more money for

Svitlana Morenets

Who is persecuting Ukraine’s journalists?

Investigative journalism has often been deadly for the careers of corrupt politicians in Ukraine, with stories leading to resignations and even imprisonment. Now, under the conditions of martial law (including the closure of public data services) and limited opportunities for society to control the actions of the authorities, Ukrainian journalists became the main watchdogs over the government. This week they found out they were being watched, too. Bihus.info, an investigative team exposing corruption among Ukrainian officials, came under attack. A questionable media outlet named People’s Truth released a video showing some Bihus employees (camera operators and social media managers) allegedly ordering and taking drugs at a New Year’s party. The

Gavin Mortimer

Is Emmanuel Macron secretly hoping for a Trump victory?

The great and the good of this world met in Davos this week to tell each other how wonderful they are. But amid all the bonhomie and back-slapping there loomed the spectre of You-Know-Who. Donald Trump’s landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses was his first significant step towards a second term in the White House. His first was bad enough for the Davos set, but the possibility that Trump and his Deplorables might triumph in November is too much for many to bear. Macron believes he’s the top dog among the 27 EU leaders Last week, Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, described Trump as ‘clearly a threat’

Katy Balls

The Theo Clarke Edition

28 min listen

Theo Clarke is Conservative MP for Stafford. She is the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Kenya and sits on the International Development Select Committee. Before being elected she set up and sold her business and then went on to be Chief Executive of an international development charity backed by Bill Gates. Theo got involved in politics after the election expenses scandal and stood in Bristol East in 2015 and 2017. She currently Chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Birth Trauma and recently launched a national inquiry into this issue.

Sasha Lensky

Can Europe match Russia’s remarkable rise in weapons production?

‘You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,’ Donald Trump reportedly told top European officials while he was U.S. president. In the present situation, with a war not seen on this scale since 1945 being fought in geographical (if not yet political) Europe, it’s now imperative for the region to review its reliance on the White House, its assumed ally and source of support since the end of WW2. This time round, it may well have to fall back on its own reserves and stamina – but does it have enough of either? As Mircea Geoanã, Nato deputy

John Jenkins

Missiles alone won’t solve the problem of the Houthis

Eventually then, enough was enough. After months of Houthi drone and missile attacks on Israel and vessels in the Red Sea, the US and the UK launched retaliatory strikes in Yemen last week. But how did we get here? The Houthis have been a nuisance for at least 30 years, when they emerged as a clan-based opposition movement in the northernmost governorate of Yemen. They had a number of grievances: endemic poverty, government hostility and Saudi-funded attempts to spread Salafism in their Zaidi Shia stronghold. The last Zaidi ruler had been deposed in 1962. The subsequent civil war set the stage for more or less continuous domestic turmoil ever since.

Thursday

18 Jan 2024

Kate Andrews

Javier Milei dismantles the Davos groupthink

Each year the World Economic Forum’s conference in Davos, Switzerland draws the attention of conspiracy theorists. In truth, nothing is happening in the ski town that doesn’t happen every other day of the year: it’s the world’s most senior politicians and biggest business leaders working together to implement their vision for the future. The only difference is that for one week in Switzerland, this is on full display for everyone to see. It’s not the funny business happening behind the scenes that should cause alarm, but what we can see so blatantly in front of our eyes: the calls for higher taxes, the support for a bigger state, the insistence

William Moore

How Britain sobered up

36 min listen

This week: The Spectator’s cover story looks at how Britain is sobering up, forgoing alcohol in favour of alcohol free alternatives. In his piece, Henry Jeffreys – author of Empire of Booze – attacks the vice of sobriety and argues that the abstinence of young Britons will have a detrimental impact on the drinks industry and British culture. He joins the podcast alongside Camilla Tominey, associate editor of the Telegraph and a teetotaler. (01:27) Also this week: could Mongolia be the next geopolitical flashpoint? The Spectator’s Wild Life columnist Aidan Hartley writes in the magazine about Mongolia’s fate, as the country tries to juggle a historic relationship with China and Russia, with desires for a stronger

Steerpike

Starmer flip-flops on his CPS record

He’s at it again. Like those unscrupulous bosses he professes to despise, Sir Keir Starmer enjoys taking the credit when things go right – but is rather less keen to take the blame when things go wrong. A prime example of this was offered today in an interview today with ITV, when he was asked about Rishi Sunak’s PMQs jibe about his legal record and his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013. Sir Keir replied that: If they want to attack me for decisions when I was Director of Public Prosecutions… we had 7,000 staff, we made nearly a million decisions a year. Will there be

Steerpike

Sergei Lavrov: War has had a ‘positive impact on life in Russia’

Just when you thought Putin’s regime couldn’t sink any lower, it somehow manages to. Like something out of George Orwell’s 1984, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov declared that, actually, the Kremlin’s bloody war in Ukraine had had a ‘positive impact on life inside [Russia]’. Speaking at a foreign ministry press conference, Lavrov said this was because Putin’s ‘special military operation’ had united the country and ‘enabled it to be cleansed of all those who felt no sense of belonging to Russian history or culture’ after thousands moved abroad in opposition to the war. It hardly needs saying that the nearly 20,000 Russians detained for protesting against the war, and the