Politics Archives

Friday

29 Dec 2023

Geoff Hill

What’s the truth about South Africa’s ‘genocide’ of white farmers?

Is a crime against humanity at risk of unfolding in South Africa? Elon Musk, the Pretoria-born billionaire who owns X (Twitter) and Tesla, fears that there might be. Earlier this year, he wrote that he’d heard of calls for ‘a genocide of white people’ in his former homeland. Musk isn’t alone in his concerns. Steve Hofmeyr, a South African singer with a cult following, thinks that the ‘g-word’ is an appropriate way to describe what is unfolding: ‘If you think that the slaughter of South African farmers is not genocide enough, ask them about their land, language, religion, education, universities, heritage, monuments, safety, dignity and the race-based regulations imposed upon them and their

Thursday

28 Dec 2023

Katy Balls

Why Sunak hasn’t yet decided when to call an election

When will the election be? It’s the question that is asked whenever MPs meet. Over the Christmas recess, the issue has once again been driven up the news agenda. The reason? The announcement from the Chancellor that the Spring budget is due to take place March 6. Given this is the earliest the annual fiscal event has been scheduled for since the Tories entered government in 2010, it has added to talk that Rishi Sunak could opt for a spring election rather than waiting until the autumn. As shadow cabinet minister Emily Thornberry put it this morning, a May election is ‘the worst kept secret in Westminster’. Sunak confirmed this

Brendan O’Neill

Why don’t anti-racists care about anti-Semitism?

Where have all the anti-racists gone? You couldn’t move for anti-racists in recent years. They thundered from their newspaper pulpits about the evils of ‘white privilege’. They were in schools, universities, workplaces, re-educating the throng in racial correct-speak. They loudly wrung their hands over Brexit, and us dim gammon who voted for it, warning that leaving the EU would unleash a 1930s-style hate fest. They colonised football: every match came with a BLM knee-taking ritual and finger-wagging warnings about racial prejudice. They hit the streets, hollering ‘Stand up to racism!’ and ‘Silence is violence!’. They saw racism absolutely everywhere. In every nook of society, every innocent utterance. Remember when Sarah

Nick Cohen

The QAnon-style in anti-Israel conspiracy theories

On Boxing Day pro-Palestine demonstrators met customers at the Zara sale in the Westfield shopping centre, in Stratford, east London. They were not there to wish them the compliments of the season. ‘Bombs are dropping while you’re shopping’, they chanted, as police stood by to make sure the protests did not turn violent. ‘Zara is enabling genocide’, their placards read. Quite what they wanted bargain hunters to do about the Israeli forces bombing the Gaza Strip, they never said. Lobby their MPs? Politicians are on their Christmas holidays. Join the Palestinian armed struggle? It was unclear whether the shopping centre had a Hamas recruitment office. But on one point the demonstrators were

Rupert Shortt

Do evil and suffering discredit Christian belief?

It is the question of questions for most believers, let alone countless others either drawn to religion or repelled by it. Our planet is steeped in suffering and cruelty. If we are lucky or wealthy enough to have avoided first-hand experience of these scourges, they are nevertheless on plain view at one or two removes from our doorsteps. Yet various major creeds – especially Judaism, Christianity and Islam – teach that the world owes its existence to a creator who is all-loving as well as all-powerful. Standing in a line of thinkers reaching back to Epicurus, David Hume famously sums up the challenge with disarming bluntness: Is God willing to

Daniel DePetris

Why 2024 will be tough on Joe Biden

In the United States, presidential elections are rarely won or lost on foreign policy. Domestic matters like the economy, crime, and the overall state of the country are far more relevant to candidates. Even so, incumbents can’t allow the world to degenerate in front of them. Just ask Jimmy Carter, whose 1980 campaign against challenger Ronald Reagan shrivelled away in part to the lingering Iranian hostage crisis. As Joe Biden looks to 2024, his administration is juggling a cornucopia of conflicts, challenges and crises. Whether events outside America’s borders will help or hurt him at the polls next November is anyone’s guess. But there is a sense that the next

Steerpike

Will Khan’s comrades close Keir’s favourite pub?

Ah, the true meaning of Christmas: an excellent chance for some photo opportunities. And while the Tory tech bros of No. 10 have been goofing around for their Home Alone remake, Labour kept it simple. Sir Keir posted a picture of himself and his wife enjoying, in his words, a ‘traditional Christmas drink with neighbours in the local’ – every inch the normal beer-drinking bloke. Get out the sandwiches and he’ll be ready for the unions in No. 10… Yet Mr S wonders for how much longer Sir Keir’s local is going to survive under the ever-blundering regime of Sadiq Khan’s City Hall? As every Westminster obsessive knows, Starmer’s favourite

Ross Clark

The Conservatives are indulging in fantasy economics

Finally it seems to be dawning on many Conservative MPs that abolishing – or seriously cutting – inheritance tax at the same time as jacking up income tax for millions of low earners is not a great way to tackle a strong Labour lead in the polls. Several backbenchers have written to the Prime Minister in response to reports that he is considering taking the axe to inheritance tax in the Budget on 6 March. They have suggested that the government should be cutting income tax instead, or at least raising the thresholds which have been frozen until 2028. At a time of elevated inflation, that is dragging millions more into

Debbie Hayton

A Labour government could spell trouble for trans people like me

This has been a year to forget for the transgender lobby. This time last year, Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP government had just forced its Gender Recognition Reform Bill through Holyrood following an acrimonious late night sitting in the run up to Christmas. It seemed likely then that anyone over the age of 16 would be able to change their legal sex much more easily, without the need for a psychiatric diagnosis of gender dysphoria. For some of Sturgeon’s Scottish Green allies, the only regret was that they had not gone far enough. Maggie Chapman MSP suggested that consideration should be given for allowing children as young as eight to be able

Mark Galeotti

Does Putin use body doubles?

It has become something of a fad to try to identify and quantify the body doubles of Vladimir Putin. There are even outlandish claims that the man himself is dead and has been replaced by one. But why the fascination? It is hardly unusual for autocrats to have doubles – as a shield against assassination or simply as handy proxies to take on the more tedious and less important duties. Stalin had at least a couple; Panamanian strongman Manual Noriega apparently had no fewer than four. North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was once photographed chatting with two of his identically-dressed doubles. The likelihood is that those uncharacteristic public events were, indeed,

Wednesday

27 Dec 2023

Patrick O’Flynn

The Tories’ only hope is tax cuts

In the old days, when the Conservatives were chalking up opinion poll ratings in the forties, their strategists knew they needed robust offers on four key subjects in order to secure their electoral base. These were Europe, law and order, immigration and taxation. Brexit has largely removed the need for the first, on the second the Tories are not taken seriously – having just scrapped short jail terms and presided over a collapse in everyday policing – while the least said about their catastrophic record on the third the better. This just leaves tax cuts. Having presided over record taxation, it will be difficult to sell the idea that the

Steerpike

SNP ferries farrago gets worse for taxpayers

A new year brings the same old headaches for hapless Humza Yousaf. There’s plenty of problems awaiting the in-tray of Scotland’s flailing First Minister from drug deaths and school standards to Michael Matheson’s iPad data. But perhaps no policy area sums up his party’s failures in office than the ongoing farce over CalMac ferries. The state-owned ferry network has been plagued by issues in recent years, with extensive delays and costs ballooning in the building of two ships at the Scottish Government-owned Ferguson Marine shipyard. Just this week its chief executive admitted that MV Glen Sannox – the partially-built ferry already almost six years late and £100 million over budget

Eliot Wilson

Why can’t the Tories come up with a good nickname for Keir Starmer?

When a nickname really hits its target, there is a satisfying beauty about it: a quippy sobriquet that catches the attention and goes to the heart of some aspect of a person’s character. It is a measure of the Conservative party’s inability to get a convincing hold on Sir Keir Starmer that they have tried tag after tag – Captain Hindsight, Sir Softy, the dismal Captain Crasheroony Snoozefest – but none has yet found its mark. To real nail Starmer and come up with a nickname that sticks, the Tories should perhaps look across the pond for inspiration. Donald Trump, for all his faults, is in a category of his

Theo Hobson

Did Richard Dawkins’s ‘New Atheists’ spark a Christian revival?

The battle between New Atheism and religion was never likely to have a clear winner. It was never very likely that the arguments of Richard Dawkins and co would topple the towers of theology. Nor was it likely that the atheists would provoke the sleeping giant of faith into rising up and crushing the impertinence for good. I suppose atheists can claim that their cause is making steady progress, with organised religion continuing its gentle decline in the West, but the more honest among them might admit that the energy of their movement fizzled out long ago. Secular idealism opted for identity politics instead, making the pontifications of white male

Tuesday

26 Dec 2023

Mark Galeotti

Why Ukraine’s attack on the Novocherkassk warship matters

It was not quite in time for Christmas (which Ukraine now celebrates on 25 December, after switching this year from the Russian Orthodox Julian calendar), but Kyiv will still be celebrating today’s apparently successful Storm Shadow missile attack on a landing ship in a Crimean port. There are no seasonal ceasefires on either side in this increasingly bitter conflict. The Ropucha-class landing ship Novocherkassk (BDK-46) had already had a rather unhappy war. In March 2022, it was damaged by Ukrainian shelling when docked in Berdyansk in occupied southern Ukraine. Later in the year the Novocherkassk, along with its sister ship, the Tsezar Kunikov, were reportedly immobilised by a lack of

Fraser Nelson

UK becomes first G20 country to halve its carbon emissions

A major milestone has just been passed: Britain has become the first major country to halve its carbon emissions. The rapid pace of UK environmental progress means that our output is now below 320 million tonnes – less than half the 652 million tonnes of our 1970 peak. This is in spite of Britain now having a far larger population than 50 years ago and an economy more than twice the size. Had things gone the other way – if our carbon emissions had doubled, for example – this would be front page news. But I’m not sure you can expect to read about this good news anywhere other than The Spectator.

Kate Hoey

The shameful legacy of Tony Blair’s Hunting Act

Most laws enacted nearly 20 years ago become uncontroversial with the passage of time. The Hunting Act, though, is not one of them. As hunts gather today for their traditional Boxing Day meet, the latest chapter in this ongoing story involves fresh claims about Labour and past ‘cash for commitments’. Central to these is the allegation that the pledge to ban hunting with hounds in the 1997 party manifesto was effectively purchased by a £1 million donation. Shortly before the election, the Labour party received that figure from Political Animal Lobby, now known as Animal Survival International. It has always been a fair assumption that such a large sum had

Colin Freeman

Has the West forgotten about Ukraine?

When Hamas murdered 1,200 people on October 7, I was in eastern Ukraine, researching a long piece for the Telegraph on how the summer’s counter-offensive had gone. The death toll in Israel’s 9/11 was equivalent to just a week or two’s heavy fighting in the Donbas. Yet immediately it was clear that the massacre 3,000 miles away would mark a new phase in Ukraine’s conflict: no longer would it be the sole international crisis in western leaders’ in-trays. Until now, one of things that has buoyed morale here is the sense that the world is cheering Ukraine on, and that despite the privations and bloodshed, a glorious Victory Day awaits.

Robin Ashenden

Can Jilly Cooper wreck your life?

What do the names Octavia, Prudence, Harriet, and Imogen all have in common? If you don’t know the answer to that, you’re probably – unlike our current prime minister – not a fan of Jilly Cooper. Cooper has just published her latest bonkbuster Tackle, one of the doorstep-sized Rutshire Chronicles series that also includes Riders and Rivals. These books are set in a fictionalised Cotswolds and are as reliably comforting as a tin of Quality Streets. But in the good old, bad old days of the seventies and early eighties many of us came to this writer through her ‘name-books’ – six romantic novels (and one collection of short stories)

Monday

25 Dec 2023

Angus Colwell

Is the West at war in the Red Sea?

Britain and the US are getting ever more drawn in to the conflict in the Red Sea, as Iran-backed Houthis fire missiles at commercial ships. The USS Carney has downed 14 attack drones launched from Houthi-controlled territory and the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Diamond is also there shooting down missiles. The Houthis are firing from Yemen, and the Iranian regime is reportedly sending them real-time intelligence and weaponry. The Houthis claim that they are only targeting ships headed to Israel, but evidence suggests otherwise. On Saturday a ship travelling from Saudi Arabia to India was struck. Christmas Eve was one of the busiest days yet: US Central Command said that