Politics Archives

Tuesday

26 Sep 2023

Suella Braverman is right to take the UN to task on refugees

Suella Braverman is right. The United Nations Refugee Convention is no longer fit for purpose. As the Home Secretary will explain today in an address to the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, the convention makes a mockery of genuine refugees. ‘Simply being gay, a woman or fearful of discrimination’ is enough to qualify for refugee status, Braverman will tell her audience. This means that 780 million are entitled to protection, a figure she describes as ‘absurd and unsustainable’. The Home Secretary wants the refugee convention, which was in her view an ‘incredible achievement’ when it was introduced in 1951, to be reformed because in its current

Vivek Y. Kelkar

Has Trudeau allowed Khalistani extremism to flourish in Canada?

On September 18, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the bombshell announcement that: ‘Over the past number of weeks Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.’ Trudeau has since strengthened his language, and argued that he has ‘credible reasons to believe that agents of the government of India were involved in the killing of a Canadian on Canadian soil.’ India has called the accusation ‘absurd and motivated’: ‘Such unsubstantiated allegations seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada

Ross Clark

Equal pay claims are a disaster for local councils

Bankrupt councils have gotten into trouble through profligate spending on loony projects like month-long Pride events and training staff in critical race theory. That might be true, but it is only partially true. Another big factor, it is becoming painfully clear, is equal pay claims – which have cost Birmingham City Council up to £760 million alone. Next in the firing line is Sheffield, where the GMB union claims to have opened the lid on a simmering pot of injustice which it plans to follow up with multi-million pound claims against the council. Personally, I wouldn’t pay a council diversity officer a tenth of what I would pay a loo-cleaner,

Monday

25 Sep 2023

Ian Acheson

Who can blame armed police officers for handing back their guns?

The Metropolitan Police has, for now, staved off a crisis. The force says that enough armed officers have returned to work that they don’t need to draft in the army. Officers walked out following the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to charge a serving officer with the murder of Chris Kaba, a black Londoner who was shot and fatally injured during a planned police operation in September 2023. But while Londoners won’t be seeing soldiers on the streets today, this row is far from over. It’s been a over a year since Kaba, a 24-year-old, was hit and killed by a gunshot fired by an officer into a

Steerpike

Lib Dem leadership embarrassed by housing defeat

The Lib Dem conference is still in full swing in Bournemouth and the party’s long-suffering activists seem to have something of a spring in their step. After a triumphant local elections and a quartet of by-election victories, the party looks set to double their parliamentary contingent, come next year’s contest. Lib Dem aspirations in the Blue Wall were demonstrated by leader Ed Davey’s visit to a Winchester farm this morning to pose with various sheep in front of the assembled snappers. Talk about Have I Got Ewe for News… But not all has gone Davey’s way. A big battle was waged over a motion to scrap the party’s plan to

Yiannis Baboulias

How did an ex-banker end up leading Greece’s Syriza party?

The past decade has not exactly been short of surprises in Greek politics. But even to seasoned observers, the election of Stefanos Kasselakis as the new leader of Syriza, Greece’s main opposition party, stands out as one of the strangest developments yet. A former banker now leads a party founded on an anti-banker platform A 35-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader with no prior political experience, Kasselakis has shattered conventional expectations by defeating his rival, Effie Achtsioglou – a party insider favoured by many senior officials – with a 56.69 per cent majority. His victory comes as Syriza wrestles with internal divisions and existential questions. It is most likely because of

Danny Shaw

Why Met firearms officers want to hand in their guns

The decision by up to 300 Metropolitan police firearms officers to withdraw from armed duties is a serious and worrying development – the gravest that Sir Mark Rowley has had to face since he took over as Commissioner 12 months ago. It follows last week’s announcement by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to charge a Met firearms officer with murder over the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba in south London in September 2022. The 24-year-old, who was black, was shot through the windscreen of a car which police had followed and tried to box in. Police had believed the car was linked to a firearms incident the previous day. No

Nick Tyrone

Where ‘Rejoiners’ are going wrong

‘Rejoiners’ – who want Britain to once again be a part of the EU – took to the streets of London this weekend. It was a sorry sight. ‘We want our star back,’ the protesters yelled, as they waved EU flags and donned Brussels-branded berets. But who do they think they are actually persuading to change their mind? I think Brexit was a grave mistake and I hope to one day see the United Kingdom enter back into the fold. But the plain truth is that continuity Remain – those campaigners who want the democratic result reversed – are doing the hard work for Brexiteers. It sometimes feels like the

Katy Balls

Is Sunak helping Starmer on HS2?

13 min listen

Rishi Sunak is on his tour of hard truths, saying the unsayable on areas of policy where he believes his predecessors didn’t want to be honest with the public. First we had the net zero pivot – scaling back the government’s environmental commitments – and over the weekend there has been speculation that HS2 could be the next victim of tough talking Rishi Sunak. What’s the latest? Is Rishi gifting Starmer an easy ride by clearing the weeds on this controversial project? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Lisa Haseldine

The West and Russia are at war, says Sergei Lavrov

The United States and Britain are at war with Russia. So said the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a UN press conference on Saturday. ‘You can call this whatever you want,’ said Lavrov. ‘But they are directly at war with us. We call this a hybrid war but that doesn’t change the reality.’ Lavrov was answering the question: ‘At what point does this actually become a direct conflict with the United States, not simply a proxy conflict via Ukraine?’ Earlier that day it had been announced that President Biden had agreed to supply Ukraine with long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMS), capable of hitting targets 190 miles away. Ukraine

Jonathan Miller

Macron’s political relaunch was a masterclass in self-belief

After months of inbound slings and arrows, Emmanuel Macron, powdered by the star dust of the royal visit, relaunched himself on Sunday night. His presidential address from the Elysée Palace was officially described as an interview but the French journalists who were on set posing the questions were purely props. The star of the show was Macron. Macron ignored and patronised Anne-Claire Coudray, a Grande Dame of French television. ‘Attendez, attendez,’ he ordered her at one point, when she dared to ask him a question. Not that he paid much more attention to the handsomely coiffed Laurent Delahousse, another establishment French TV journalist. The president talked incessantly. He has mastered

Steerpike

Johnsons deny sacking their nanny for having a drink with Boris

Childcare can be a contentious issue at the best of times. So Mr S was intrigued to read of reports that Boris and Carrie Johnson have fallen out with their ex-nanny, Theresa Dawes. She claims that she was unfairly dismissed three days into the job after having a drink with the former PM while his wife was still in hospital with their third child. In allegations described as ‘untrue’ by Johnson’s spokesman, Dawes, 59, said that she was given 15 minutes to pack her bags by Carrie Johnson the day after she returned to the couple’s Oxfordshire home this summer. When she went to speak to the former Tory leader

Katy Balls

Sunakism meets the Tory party

As the Liberal Democrats attempt to seize the political agenda at their annual conference in Bournemouth, Rishi Sunak is facing a series of decisions on how far to go with his policy shake-up. Last week, he diluted a number of the UK’s net zero commitments – including delaying the ban on petrol cars by five years. Now, other policy changes are planned as the Prime Minister attempts to pitch himself as the minister for hard truths, a politician who will do things differently by being up front about trade-offs. The snag is that such changes have the potential to be divisive with Sunak’s own side. First up, the HS2 Birmingham-Manchester

Gavin Mortimer

The Pope is wrong to criticise Europe over the migrant crisis

Pope Francis spent the weekend in Marseille where he admonished Europe for their attitude towards migrants. Specifically, the Pontiff took to task those who used words such as ‘invasion’ and ‘emergency’ when discussing the millions of migrants who have arrived in Europe in the last decade. ‘Those who risk their lives at sea do not invade, they look for welcome,’ he pronounced. Those who said otherwise were ‘fuelling alarmist propaganda’ and acting contrary to the teaching of the Catholic church. The Pope reiterated the Vatican’s four-stage approach to migrants: welcome, protection, promotion and integration, the overriding aim of which is ‘the safeguarding of human dignity’. He continued: ‘Those who

Sunday

24 Sep 2023

Steerpike

Lib Dems pay Truss tribute in Glee Club anthem

What is Liz Truss’s legacy? It’s a question that will no doubt entertain future historians. But one thing they will never be able to take away from her is a place in the annals of Lib Dem history. As a former card-carrying member, Truss earned an entry in the party’s infamous ‘Glee Club’ songbook – a collection of tunes sung on the last night of the Lib Dem annual conference. Her 1994 call to abolish the monarchy was subsequently immortalised in a song called ‘The week we went to Brighton’. Sung to the tune of ‘Day Trip to Bangor’ by Fiddler’s Dream it concludes: Didn’t we have a lovely time,

Steerpike

Lib Dem conference 2023: in pictures

Is there any greater anthropological experiment than the Lib Dems’ annual conference? Britain’s third party has not had such a jamboree since 2019 and the delegates are determined to make the most of it. Mr S certainly saw some sights at last night’s disco, where Munira Wilson and Wendy Chamberlain were among the MPs to man the decks. ‘You say Brexit, I say bollocks’ was one of the chants of the night, as young hopefuls mingled with old veterans. Never has the Cha Cha Slide been conducted in quite the same way before, with many of the same party animals looking forward to tomorrow night’s Glee Club. As one attendee

Steerpike

Watch: Ed Davey confronted by word cloud

The Lib Dem conference is well underway and the party has a spring in its step. After four by-election gains in this parliament, there’s much excited talk in the conference bars about the party doubling their MPs next year. So what’s behind the orange surge? Clearly, er, not their less-than-charismatic leader. Sir Ed Davey was wheeled out on the BBC this morning for his annual hit interview. And Victoria Derbyshire opted to use the occasion to show the Kingston MP just what voters think of him. Davey was confronted by a striking ‘word cloud’ of the words most associated with him. They are, in descending order, ‘Don’t know’, ‘no idea’

Jane Stannus

Canada’s parents are taking to the streets

In the biggest demonstration since the Freedom Convoy, large numbers of Canadian families and supporters took to the streets across the country on 20 September to assert the rights of parents as primary educators and protectors of their children with the slogan, ‘Leave our kids alone!’ The ‘1 Million March 4 Children’ was spearheaded by Muslim Canadians in response to increasingly aggressive policy and curriculum changes in publicly funded schools, pushing radical gender ideology and putting content before children that protesting parents say is indecent or age-inappropriate. Turnout was impressive, with many thousands of participants in over 100 cities and up to 10,000 marchers reported at the largest gathering in Ottawa. Yes, it was the biggest

Sergey Radchenko

Zelensky is in a serious bind

The recent spat between Kyiv and Warsaw over grain – with Ukraine suing Poland at the WTO – has come at bad time. In normal times, a trade dispute (however meaningful for those directly affected) would barely register. At a time of mortal danger, however, rifts between allies are grounds for profound concern. For Poland’s right-leaning Law and Justice Party (PiS), banning the sale of Ukrainian grain is an electoral matter. With a mid-October parliamentary election it may well lose, the populist PiS wants to appease Poland’s rural constituencies (the party’s base) by being seen to be protecting farmers from a deluge of foreign grain. Responding to Ukrainian criticism in his speech to

Ross Clark

Why is Sunak cutting a tax only paid by the rich?

Last week, Rishi Sunak struck a blow for ordinary people against the elitist project that is net zero, assuring them that a government led by him will not be loading them with tens of thousands of pounds in costs for fitting heat pumps, forcing them to buy an impractical electric car or stinging them in taxes for flying off on holiday. The opposition, at least in the shape of Ed Miliband, fell right into his trap. As polls have shown over and over again, public support for net zero tends to melt away very fast when it comes to asking them about issues which threaten to affect them personally. So