Politics Archives

Tuesday

19 Dec 2023

Will the SNP finally abandon its gender reforms?

Perhaps the Scottish government thinks it’s a good time to put out the rubbish. With the news agenda dominated by the Scottish Budget and with the Christmas recess imminent, First Minister Humza Yousaf has reportedly decided to abandon his appeal against the UK government’s Section 35 order on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The bill, intended to make it easier for trans people to obtain gender recognition certifications, was attacked by ‘gender critical’ feminists, including former SNP leadership contender Kate Forbes. Westminster put the brakes on the legislation – a decision which sparked an SNP backlash. But now, if reports in the Herald are accurate, it seems Yousaf has finally seen sense. If

Isabel Hardman

Sunak gets tetchy during Rwanda and Israel grilling

If Rishi Sunak still doesn’t recognise the description of himself as ‘tetchy’, then he could do worse than to watch back his performance before the liaison committee this afternoon. The Prime Minister was not in a good mood when the questions started, though he did seem to relax a little as the 90-minute session wore on. The opening exchanges were testing – they covered the UK’s response to the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza – and Sunak was rather testy with some of his answers. Some of the later questions from a few of the Labour and SNP MPs on the committee weren’t very much to do with their briefs

Steerpike

Rishi and Keir launch festive charm offensives

It’s a Christmas tradition as old as the nativity itself: the annual lobby drinks party. Each year, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition host rival shindigs to entertain Westminster’s press pack with their best quips and warmest wine. First, it was Sir Keir Starmer’s turn to roast the lobby, having neatly skewered Andy Burnham at the same event last year. He joked that some of the hacks in the room ‘were lucky enough to be the only people this government has actually managed to fly to Rwanda’ and jibed that he had designed a policy to ‘really hit [journalists] where it hurts – putting VAT on private

Ross Clark

Michael Gove’s housing fantasy

Remember ‘localism’ – when David Cameron was going to return powers to local people when it came to things like planning? If that is how the Conservatives’ 14 years in power began, they seem to be ending with the opposite: with Michael Gove threatening to seize the planning reins from Sadiq Khan and get more houses built. ‘If you cannot do what is need to deliver the homes that London needs, I will,’ he wrote in a sniffy letter to London mayor Sadiq Khan ahead of his speech on planning this morning. He has set up an investigation to see whether Khan’s London Plan is holding up housebuilding. If you

Debbie Hayton

This transgender schools guidance leaves a lot to be desired

The government has finally published its transgender guidance for schools. Teachers have been waiting a long time. We were promised we would have this document ‘for the summer term’. Well, it has arrived just in time for Christmas. But was it worth waiting for? On the surface, this long awaited document looks like it will please nobody, upset everyone and leave schools still unclear about what they should do when parents get on the phone and explain that their son John is now their daughter Janet. It’s all well and good to advise that schools do not have a duty to let children change their gender identity but, when it

James Heale

Liz Truss leads backlash to schools trans guidance

The government’s guidance for schools on transgender pupils was finally published this morning – prompting an immediate backlash which demonstrated why it had been delayed so many times. For years, with increasing numbers of pupils questioning their gender, ministers have grappled with the thorny issue of whether children ought to be allowed to ‘socially transition’. This involves them choosing their preferred pronouns, names and type of uniform while at school. Liz Truss was among those arguing that the draft guidance ‘does not go far enough’ The guidance from the Department for Education today clarifies that teachers in England ‘do not have to and should not’ accept all requests for ‘social

Francis Young

The Ministry of Justice is engaged in historical vandalism

This week, the Ministry of Justice launched a consultation on its plan to digitise its vast archive of wills. The only problem is that it also wants to destroy its original paper copies – which date from 1858. This destruction is supposed to save the taxpayer £4.5 million per year, although wills that ‘belong to notable individuals or have significant historical interest’ will be retained. The proposal has been met with strong disapproval by historians and archivists – not because digitisation is inherently a bad idea, but because digitising an archive and then destroying the originals was never how it was meant to work. Digitisation does have a role to play in

Andrew Tettenborn

The CofE’s same sex blessings stance is even more illogical than the Vatican’s

Traditionalists in the Church of England and the Catholic church don’t, of course, always see eye to eye. But on the issue of gay marriage and same-sex relations they may have found some common ground. In a landmark ceremony last week, the Church of England blessed a same-sex couple’s relationship for the first time. Prayers for two women – Catherine Bond and Jane Pearce – were held at St John the Baptist Church, in Felixstowe, Suffolk. As if by chance, this week we also heard about the same issue from the papal Dicastery, the Vatican body tasked with maintaining sound doctrine. Five conservative cardinals had submitted a dubium (i.e. awkward question) about whether

Peter Wood

Harvard’s plagiarism hypocrisy

Claudine Gay is the self-declared ‘transformational’ president of Harvard university. She campaigned for the job by promising to retire the old Harvard of privilege and patrimony and to bring into being a new Harvard founded on principles of anti-racism and social justice. How is she doing? At the moment, she is a bit distracted by allegations of plagiarism in her slim portfolio of publications. But she has a whole sea of troubles to take arms against. Let’s let her rest a moment on the shore and consider a small story from the not-always-illustrious past of America’s greatest university. In 2007 Harvard admitted as a transfer student a young man, Adam

Monday

18 Dec 2023

James Heale

Is British support for Israel wavering?

10 min listen

Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps have signalled a shift in the British position towards the Israel-Gaza conflict, suggesting that British support for Israel’s actions may be time-limited. James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Stephen Bush. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Jawad Iqbal

How Britain failed Jimmy Lai

There is something shameful about the government’s reluctance to publicly call for the release of Jimmy Lai, a British citizen and democracy campaigner, held in solitary confinement in Hong Kong. Lai, the founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, and one of the most prominent critics of China’s Communist Party, has languished in prison for more than 1,100 days. His trial, on national security charges, finally got underway today. Yet it is only now that a British minister has summoned up the courage to properly condemn Lai’s prosecution for the politically motivated sham it undoubtedly is. Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, said he was ‘gravely concerned’ about the trial, and joined the United

Brendan O’Neill

Is identity politics to blame for the rise of anti-Semitism?

Anti-Semitism is surging among the young. It is now positively hip to view Jews as ‘problematic’. Consider the recent Harvard/Harris poll which found that 67 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds in the US view Jews as an ‘oppressor class’. If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine, then I humbly suggest you read a few more history books. The poll results have horrified observers, as well they might. ‘Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?’, people were asked. ‘Oppressors’, answered two-thirds of the Gen Z respondents. Welcome to the era of TikTok fascism.

Ross Clark

A Trump presidency could be good for Britain

Donald Trump may be offensive in many ways. He may have defiled his office during his previous stint as president by claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him. But at some point over the next ten and a half months before polling day in 2024 even his detractors are going to have to start asking themselves: might a second Trump presidency actually be in Britain’s self-interest? Had Trump remained in office it is very likely that Britain would by now have a fully-working trade deal with the US – which is after all the largest single country which we export to. It would have required some compromise – dropping,

Steerpike

Michelle Mone hits back at Sunak

‘When you’re in a hole, stop digging.’ It’s a famous mantra known to all; everyone that is, except for Michelle Mone. The lingerie tycoon has spent most of the past 24 hours railing against critics on her Twitter/X account, following her disastrous interview with Laura Kuenssberg in which she admitted she lied when denying involvement with a company that won UK government deals to provide personal protective equipment during the pandemic. Having criticised moderators for inserting a ‘reader added context’ note in one post about PPE Medpro’s contracts, she suffered the indignity of having another added in her follow-up complaint about it being ‘very biased and factually incorrect’. But now ‘Baroness

Freddy Gray

Nikki Haley’s popularity is probably because of media desperation

Nikki Haley is now the favourite ‘not Donald Trump’ candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. The former Ambassador to the United Nations has been making a big push among Republicans in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s primary vote on 23 January. And her efforts seem to be paying off. A new CBS polls from New Hampshire puts Haley on 29 per cent, behind Donald Trump on 44 per cent, with flailing Ron DeSantis a distant third on 11 per cent. The survey suggests Haley making inroads among New Hampshire’s more moderate voters thanks to her less right-wing positions on issues such as abortion and

Limor Simhony Philpott

How much longer can Netanyahu resist a hostage deal?

Thousands of protestors have taken to the streets of Tel Aviv following the killing of three young Israeli hostages by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in a friendly fire incident in Gaza. The demonstrators, who set up tents on Friday morning in front of the Kirya military base where the Israeli cabinet holds its meetings, are calling on the government to reach a deal with Hamas to secure the release of the remaining hostages. They have vowed to remain there until a deal is reached, with some saying they will stay until all the hostages have been returned. There is wide public support for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to strike a deal to bring the hostages home; only a small group on the far-right object

Sam Leith

Michelle Mone and the rise of the ‘fight back’ documentary

You can’t turn on the telly or fire up the internet these days without stumbling across some celebrity or other baring their soul in a glossily produced documentary. Three hours, was it, of David Beckham – taking us from talented nipper playing keepy-uppy to grizzled paterfamilias wiping down his barbecue in wistful retirement? Or Renaissance: A Film, which showed Beyonce as flawed and human in the same way and with much the same aim as the Bible shows Jesus Christ as flawed and human. Or there was that interminable Robbie Williams doc, in which – for no reason that was completely obvious – he spent about four hours sitting glumly in his underpants in front

Steerpike

SNP’s social media game backfires

If there’s one thing the SNP are good at, it’s spin. But lately even the skill of self-promotion seems to have deserted Holyrood’s rulers, judging by their increasingly shaky grip on power. A perfect example of this was offered yesterday in the form of some shiny new graphics pumped out by the Scottish government’s official Twitter/X account. Run by civil servants, it is supposed to be Scotland’s voice to the world. But in Humza Yousaf’s Scotland, its relationship to the SNP increasingly resembles that of Pravda to the Kremlin. The Scottish government declared that: ‘Below-inflation funding uplifts in England impact Scotland’s budget. In the UK government’s Autumn Statement, only £10.8

Gavin Mortimer

Why is the French left so willing to excuse Hamas apologists?

One hopes that the arrest of seven suspected members of Hamas last Thursday by European police has embarrassed numerous politicians in the West. Those, like Daniele Obono, of the La France Insoumise (LFI) party, who described the terror group as a ‘resistance movement’ not long after they’d slaughtered 1,200 Israeli men, women and children back in October. According to reports, the seven terrorists were arrested in Germany, Holland and Denmark as they prepared to launch attacks against several Jewish sites in Europe. One of the most disturbing elements of the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel in a European context was the reaction of many on the political and cultural left.

Sunday

17 Dec 2023

Steerpike

Eddie Izzard loses, yet again

Oh dear. Labour’s biggest loser has done it again. Poor old Eddie Izzard has a pretty poor track record when it comes to backing political campaigns. Among the comedian’s greatest hits include Yes2AV, backing Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn in successive general elections, endorsing the Euro and Remain in 2016 and bidding to end restrictions on Westminster street performers. Such a track record has not discouraged Izzard. On the contrary, the longtime luvvie has recently begun to branch out from national campaigns to standing for high office himself. Thus far, this has included failed tilts for Labour’s National Executive Council and the party’s Sheffield Central selection. And today