Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Sturgeon: I’m not the ‘Liz Truss of the SNP’

She’s back! It wouldn’t be a proper SNP jamboree without an appearance from the dear Leader, the self-identifying Chief Mammy of nationalist fervour, Nicola Sturgeon. As hard as she tried to claim her surprise visit to Aberdeen was not overshadowing her successor’s first party conference, Mr S wasn’t convinced that even she believed that… With her entrance to the annual conference given a hero’s welcome, Sturgeon was swarmed by adoring activists as she crowed to journalists about her ‘fair amount of electoral success’. Asked about her successor, she declared to the assembled press pack: ‘I think Humza is doing a fantastic job as leader of the party and as First

Euan McColm

The SNP’s new independence strategy is worse than the last

SNP members really are the cheapest dates in UK politics — they’ll lap up any old swill dished out by their leaders. After the Yes campaign in the 2014 independence referendum was defeated, the nationalist faithful unquestioningly accepted repeated promises from Nicola Sturgeon that they’d soon have a second chance — and that, this time, they’d win. The problem with the former Scottish First Minister’s position was that, for all her energising rhetoric, she didn’t have the authority to run another vote on the constitution. Sturgeon could, and frequently did, claim to be in possession of a mandate to deliver Indyref2 but she did not. Constitutional matters are reserved to

Limor Simhony Philpott

Netanyahu’s greatest failure

Over the weekend, the IDF confirmed that it killed the Hamas terrorist who commanded the attack on Israel a week earlier. It was later disclosed that the terrorist was arrested by Israel in 2005 for abducting and killing Israelis. He was released in 2011 by Netanyahu’s government in return for a captive Israeli soldier abducted in 2006 as part of a prisoner exchange deal. Netanyahu knew that Hamas received money, weapons and training from Iran The deal included the release of over 1,000 prisoners, many of them dangerous terrorists who returned to Gaza and rose through the ranks of Hamas. This controversial agreement exemplifies Netanyahu’s failed policy of containment and

Steerpike Steerpike

Peter Bone gives Sunak another by-election headache

Poor Rishi Sunak is stuck in a Sisyphean circle from hell. Each month, he prepares himself for a much-hyped reset, only to find himself fighting yet another by-election not of his own making. This Thursday he faces a brace of defeats in Mid-Bedfordshire and Tamworth thanks to the misdemeanours of Nadine Dorries and Chris Pincher respectively. A Tory defeat in the former would be the largest numerical majority to be overturned in British electoral history; a defeat in the latter would foreshadow the landslide that Tony Blair won 26 years ago. Now Sunak faces yet another by-election not of his own making – this time in Peter Bone’s Wellingborough seat.

David Cohen

Is New Zealand about to return to the world stage?

After six years of Labour party rule in New Zealand, the country’s foreign policy brings to mind the line about everything being at sea except the fleet. While the conservative National party of prime-minister-elect Christopher Luxon won on familiar-sounding domestic problems – galloping consumer prices, spiking interest rates and urban crime – the importance of foreign policy was not that far away.   For decades, New Zealand has made much of its independent foreign policy stance Luxon, a former airline boss, has hinted that he will be on board the diplomatic jet as soon as he has finished hammering out a coalition agreement. While the National party mustered an emphatic majority on

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France’s teachers are scared

Rarely has the publication of a book been so providential. The Teachers Are Scared was released in France last Wednesday, written by Jean-Pierre Obin, a former teacher who rose to become the General Inspector of France’s National Education.   Two days later, Dominique Bernard was stabbed to death in his school in Arras. The man arrested on suspicion of his murder is a young Islamist of Chechen origin, the same profile as the extremist who killed Samuel Paty in 2020.   Two dead in three years, and France’s teachers live in fear that there will be more Two teachers murdered in three years. No wonder, as Obin states, ‘80 per

Dalibor Rohac

Law and Justice has lost. Where does Poland go now?

If it continues to hold, the likely electoral victory of Poland’s opposition last night is good news for all those concerned by the health of Polish democracy. In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum painted a dire picture of creeping state capture, suggesting that in some ways, ‘Poland already [resembled] an autocracy,’ and eloquently arguing why the election campaign was ‘neither free nor fair.’  She has a point. Yet, notwithstanding the ruling party’s vicious and paranoia-driven campaign, the election was bound to be a highly competitive one. But even if the Law and Justice Party (PiS) won enough mandates to form a government, it would hardly be in a position to

Seth J. Frantzman

Israel is trapped in a dilemma

Hamas’s attack was designed to massacre as many civilians as possible, while also striking at Israeli military posts along the Gaza border. Hamas knew that 7 October was going to be the biggest attack in its history, even if it didn’t know that it would be able to lay waste to 20 border communities, causing 50,000 to evacuate and leading to the deaths of 1,300. As the war grows and Iranian-backed groups begin to threaten a wider conflict, it’s worth looking at what might come next. To understand that we need to know how Hamas got to this point and what are its plans for the region.   If Israel

Travis Aaroe

Britain is not a technocracy

The term ‘technocracy’, or more often ‘technocrat’, is found everywhere. Both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are referred to as technocrats. But what exactly does it mean?   In the 15 years he served as prime minister, Lord Liverpool always put in the hours. He dutifully opened the latest despatches and read them in turn, though his delicate nature made him dread the task. He was scrupulously honest and always fair. He mastered the details. He was courteous towards colleagues and sensitive to their feelings. He was a devoted husband. He did not act rashly and sailed by no great ideological system. Had he lived today, Lord Liverpool would be what

Sunday

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP conference flops on day one

It seems the SNP’s prospects are as gloomy as the Granite City. Day one of the nationalists’ shindig in Aberdeen has already seen a range of, er, unorthodox contributions made on the main stage. It turns out that there are people madder than the SNP politicians: the party’s membership. From furious talk of ‘treason’ to a star turn from an SNP activist who recently launched a leadership bid to topple Humza Yousaf, it’s been another stellar outing for the self-identifying ‘natural party of government’. Today’s members’ discussion was focused on – what else? – independence. Lowlights included both independence minister Jamie Hepburn and Scotland’s First Minister being forced to defend

Helen Dale

Why Australia’s Voice vote failed

Since 1999, asking how many referendums Australia has had – then how many have passed – has been a pair of standard pub quiz questions. Everyone knew we’d had 44 since Federation in 1901 and only eight had ever passed. Well, questioners in pubs across the country will have to make a minor update. Australia has now had 45 referendums, for a meagre harvest of eight changes to its written constitution. The Voice to parliament has been voted down even more comprehensively than the Republic was in 1999. It lost in every state and one of the country’s two sparsely populated territories. If it were possible to kill it any

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Israel defends the Gaza siege

This week’s political shows were dominated by the Israel-Palestine conflict, as Israel prepares for a land, sea and air assault on Gaza. Israel has said it will not supply water, fuel or electricity to the region unless Hamas releases its hostages and has instructed the people of Gaza to head south to avoid the imminent attack. A humanitarian disaster looms in an already densely populated area, and Victoria Derbyshire asked Israeli government adviser Mark Regev to respond to allegations that the actions of Israel could be breaking international humanitarian law and even amount to war crimes. Regev denied the allegations but he implied that Israel would target civilian zones because

Steerpike Steerpike

Stephen Flynn’s shameless conference speech

To Aberdeen, where the great and the not-so-good of Scotland’s independence movement are gathering to pay tribute to that once mighty juggernaut known as the SNP. These days though the Nats are having a tough time, suffering an embarrassing defeat in the Rutherglen by-election and seeing one of their own defect to the Conservative party… Still, to listen to Stephen Flynn you would think all is rosy in the nationalist world. With more front than Jenners, the SNP Westminster leader boldly told the party faithful that, with education, health and economic ratings all tanking, he had at last discovered who is to blame: Politics does too easily and too often

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland’s troubling response to the Israel attacks

It’s a widely known secret within Israeli diplomatic circles that Ireland is seen as something of a lost cause.  While the Irish left is quick to react with fury to any accusations of anti-Semitism, insisting instead that they are merely opposed to Zionism and the Israeli government’s policies, sometimes that seems a distinction without a difference. This week has certainly been one of those times.  The Irish like to pride themselves on their internationalist outlook, but as a frustrated Israeli diplomat once informed me, the Irish are ‘Jew blind’  As the true horrors of what happened in Israel began to emerge this weekend, I naively remarked to my wife that

Austin Williams

Israel’s war with Gaza has exposed China’s impotence

Only last week, China was pushing itself forward to be the regional eminence grise in the Middle East, the powerbroker driving renewed Palestine-Israeli peace talks. In August this year, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi said that Chinese-mediated detente was driving a ‘wave of reconciliation’ in the Middle East. China’s inflated sense of its influence in the region came to a juddering halt in the light of the horrific attacks on Israel by Hamas militants last weekend. As a self-declared mediator in the region, China refused to condemn the Isis-style barbarity of Hamas, instead choosing to chide Israel for refusing to enter talks. It called for both sides ‘to remain calm

Natasha Voase

Where did all the boomer bankers go?

There aren’t many Alex types in banking anymore. The popular middle-aged cartoon banker, greyer and greyer since the 1980s, is regularly depicted in the Daily Telegraph gazing sagely over the heads of panicked young traders, safe in the knowledge he’s seen it all before. Older traders like him are few and far between now. Instead, Britain’s banks and investment firms have been left largely in the hands of the youngsters, a generation too used to working in an era of free money. It’s a troubling thought. Since the 2008 financial crisis, expensive and experienced senior bankers have been cast out, replaced by younger, cheaper rivals. Credit Suisse was forced into a desperate rehiring scramble in

Saturday

Terry Barnes

The crushing defeat of Australia’s divisive Voice referendum

Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, urged his fellow Australians to take ‘the opportunity to make history’ today. And they did, but not in the way that Albanese had so fervently hoped. His government’s referendum, which aimed to change the country’s constitution to entrench an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory voice to Australia’s parliament and executive government, was defeated by a majority of voters in all Australian states. The final margin, 59 per cent to 41 per cent between Yes and No, was not just decisive. It was a landslide of resounding proportions, almost a mirror reversal of the polled support for the Voice as recently as April. The biggest

Jonathan Spyer

An Israeli ground assault would be devastating for Gaza

On a patch of scrubland outside the Zikim kibbutz earlier this week, I came across a platoon of Merkava 4 tanks positioned among the trees. One of the tank commanders recognised my colleague and we exchanged a few words. ‘This is our Yom Kippur,’ he told us. ‘We haven’t even begun to grasp the implications of this.’ Yom Kippur, in this context, isn’t a reference to the annual Jewish day of atonement. Rather, it recalls October 1973, when Israel was surprised by an attack on two fronts from the forces of Egypt and Syria. The Hamas assault on Israeli Jewish communities around the Gaza Strip came exactly 50 years and a day after what Israelis

Nicholas Sheppard

How the National party toppled Labour in New Zealand

Just three years on from Jacinda Ardern’s phenomenal outright victory, New Zealand’s Labour government has collapsed, slumping to half its vote from 2020. It is on the verge of losing some of its safest seats and languishing behind in most of the Māori electorates. The centre-right National party has won, with Labour prime minister Chris Hipkins calling Christopher Luxon to concede defeat. The National party and its libertarian coalition party, ACT, are in a strong position to form a government, with Luxon, a relative newcomer to politics, becoming the country’s next prime minister. With more than three-quarters of the vote counted, Labour’s vote was a shade higher than 26 per cent