Politics Archives

Saturday

16 Sep 2023

How museums lost their way

What’s the point of museums? According to researchers at the University of Leicester, museums should help children explore their gender identity. Academics have issued 44-pages of detailed guidance on how museum directors can tackle ‘growing uncertainty and anxiety surrounding trans-inclusive practice’ while stimulating ‘positive explorations of gender’ for children. The University of Leicester has got this all wrong. Whether it is school sex education classes, TikTok videos, libraries hosting drag queen story hours, picture books about grandad attending Pride, or television programmes about boys who want to become girls, children are bombarded with opportunities to explore their gender identity. Yet despite almost every area of life having already been colonised

Fraser Nelson

Was Liz Truss wrong – or wronged?

A year ago, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng had just announced that they would hold a mini-Budget. It turned out to be the tax-cutting Budget that people like me had long been arguing for. So why wasn’t I more supportive at time, and since? I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column and it takes us to a debate we have quite often at The Spectator’s offices: where Truss got it right and where she didn’t. During the Tory leadership campaign my sympathies were more with Truss and her tax-cutting growth message. James Forsyth was leaning a bit more towards Sunak and Kate Andrews was asking why Truss’s numbers didn’t add up. Kate and I

Friday

15 Sep 2023

Michael Simmons

How the SNP botched Scotland’s census

Scotland’s first census results have finally been released: just 444 days after England managed to publish theirs. The once-a-decade count of the population was disastrous at worst and botched at best. As the first deadline for returning the census loomed last April, some 700,000 households – a quarter of the country – were threatened with £1,000 fines for not completing it. It had taken over a month to reach a 74 per cent response rate. Eleven years ago it took just ten days. Now that the results are in, the final response rate was 89 per cent: well short of the official target of 94 and the 97 per cent

Freddy Gray

Are the Republicans wrong to impeach Biden?

7 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to author and lawyer Alan Dershowitz who wrote Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law. On the podcast Freddy speaks to Alan about the Republican’s formal impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, claiming they have unearthed a ‘culture of corruption’ surrounding the president.

Steerpike

David Lammy slams Tories’ ‘little England’ Brexit vision

The Labour party is on a charm offensive – not with Brits, but with our European cousins over the water. Keir Starmer has unveiled plans to drop the Rwanda deportation programme and cosy back up to Brussels in the hope of striking a new asylum deal. But it seems Labour’s plans to present themselves as the party who will kiss and make up with the EU following Brexit might be much grander still. Taking to the airwaves, Labour shadow foreign secretary David Lammy lined up to take a pop at the Tories and woo the EU all in one fell swoop. ‘There are two visions of Britain’, he said, speaking to Nish Kumar and Coco

Ross Clark

The dangerous dog crackdown shouldn’t stop with banning Bully XLs

There isn’t much you can do in modern Britain without encountering some licensing scheme, but one area of life which really does need regulating remains free of any kind of bureaucratic control. You can, for now, go out and buy an American Bully XL puppy with no need for any kind of training – for you or the dog – before letting it loose on the High Street where it might take a fancy to shins of a passer-by and, quite possibly go onto kill them. Should that happen, you may well find yourself in the magistrates’ court, but why not some kind of pre-emptive system to keep violent dogs off the

Lloyd Evans

Osborne, Balls and a glimpse of Westminster’s rotten culture

Podcast mania continues at Westminster. Discarded grandees from all parties have noticed the success of The Rest is Politics, the hit podcast by Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell, which has now become a lucrative roadshow. The two gasbags sold out the Albert Hall in a matter of minutes, and their popularity has drawn new players into the marketplace. Yesterday, George Osborne and Ed Balls showcased their contribution to the hot-air industry with Political Currency. The old prize-fighters buried their differences and treated listeners to 50 minutes of rambling chitchat about their half-forgotten careers. Ostensibly the ageing chatterboxes focused the discussion on financial matters but they kept shifting aimlessly from topic

Kate Andrews

Britain is heading for an autumn of discontent

Train drivers will strike for two days in the coming weeks, on 30 September and 4 October. These dates are no coincidence: they directly overlap with when MPs and attendees will be travelling to and from the Conservative party conference in Manchester. This move from Aslef and the RMT is far from subtle: the unions may be locked in a pay battle with train companies, but it’s the government’s attention they are hoping to get. The train strikes add to a growing list of other walkouts planned over the next few weeks. Consultants and junior doctors will also be walking out separately this month. But then in an unprecedented move,

Katy Balls

Is it right to cut back HS2?

12 min listen

The government is reportedly looking into whether it should cut the second phase of HS2. But with so much money having already been pumped into the project, should they just see it through to the end? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews.

Mary Dejevsky

20mph isn’t plenty: the war on motorists has gone too far

‘Absolutely insane’ is the verdict of Penny Mordaunt MP on the Welsh government’s introduction of a 20mph speed limit on residential roads. Having driven along not a few residential roads in Welsh towns and cities earlier this year, I can only agree, with one caveat. There are quite a few places in Wales, and not just in Wales, where the combination of narrow roads, parking and other traffic makes any thought of reaching even 20mph optimistic. Urban areas, in particular, are quite adept at imposing their own speed limits, in the form of traffic conditions. This is a reality that probably influences someone’s decision about what form of transport, if

Theo Hobson

In praise of Justin Welby’s ‘less bossy’ Church of England

Justin Welby is not my sort of Anglican. Or maybe he is, in a way. I’m not really sure who he is. And I don’t mean that entirely negatively. When he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, the Church seemed to be opting for cheesy banality after the intellectual roller-coaster of his predecessor, Rowan Williams. It was a slightly dangerous roller-coaster, to be sure, with some alarming rusty bits, and stomach-plunging drops, but always interesting. Welby looked like a beta male from the Alpha course, the slick evangelical outfit led by public school officer-class types. I had my gripes about Williams, but he seemed a Hyperion to this satyr. I have

Gavin Mortimer

Why rugby fans love to hate Macron

Emmanuel Macron was in Lille on Thursday evening to watch France defeat Uruguay as the Bleus made it two wins from two in the Rugby World Cup. The president was photographed swigging from a bottle of beer, just your normal rugby fan enjoying the game. Rugby fans and their president have little in common. He is the strutting epitome of the aloof Parisian elite Macron was also present last week in Paris when France beat New Zealand in the tournament opener, which suggests that either he hasn’t a busy agenda this month or there is a political purpose to his rugby supporting. The president has long been the self-appointed

Juan P. Villasmil

Hunter Biden indicted on gun charges

Hunter Biden, the ne’er-do-well son of the president, has been indicted by federal prosecutors on gun charges. Last night, a Delaware federal court indicted Biden on three counts following an investigation by Special Counsel David Weiss. Two of the counts concern the president’s son allegedly lying on a form when purchasing a Colt Cobra revolver five years ago, where, according to the indictment, he falsely claimed that he was not using illegal narcotics at the time of sale. The third count alleges that he was using the drugs while in possession of the firearm. The indictment attempts to lay out how Biden fibbed to the authorities when he agreed ‘that

Thursday

14 Sep 2023

Max Jeffery

What is Starmer’s small boats plan?

14 min listen

Keir Starmer today unveiled Labour’s plan to stop illegal migration. Trying to deport migrants to Rwanda is a waste of money, he said – the millions would be better spent on a ‘new security agreement’ with Europe. But what does that mean? Max Jeffery speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.

Matthew Lynn

Is the EU sacrificing net zero to protect its electric car industry?

They are too expensive. There are not enough of them on the market. It’s too much hassle to charge them. There are lots of reasons why people are still reluctant to switch from petrol to electric cars, with their cost right at the very top of the list. Still, with the world about to be flooded with cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), that is about to change. You might think that anyone seriously worried about combating climate change would welcome that. Except now it turns out that the EU, for all its rhetoric, cares more about protecting its own auto industry and is planning to slap tariffs on Chinese imports.

William Moore

Bombshell: Why aren’t we giving Ukraine what it needs?

36 min listen

On the podcast this week: Boris Johnson writes The Spectator’s cover piece, urging the West to supply more military assistance to Ukraine, in order to bring a swift end to the war. Former commander of the joint forces Sir Richard Barrons and The Spectator’s Svitlana Morenets join the podcast to ask why aren’t we giving Ukraine what it needs? (01:21) Also on the podcast: Charlie Taylor, His Majesty’s chief prisons inspector, writes in the magazine about the state of crisis in British prisons. This is in light of Daniel Khalife’s escape from Wandsworth prison last week. Charlie is joined by David Shipley, commentator and former inmate at Wandsworth to discuss the state of crisis

Ross Clark

Brexit Britain can benefit from Apple’s spat with Europe

Are the EU and the US heading for a trade war by dirty means? I ask because for the second time in a week Apple finds itself on the sharp end of European regulations. First, the company was obliged to provide a standard USB socket and charger for its iPhone 15, as opposed to the specific charger previously used by Apple. Now, French regulators have declared that the iPhone 12 doesn’t reach Europe’s radiological protection standards. According to the Agence Nationale des Frequences, the device emits 5.74 watts of electromagnetic radiation per kilogramme – above the 4.0 watts allowed by European product standards. Apple insists that the device is fully-compliant.

Steerpike

Sadiq Khan apologises after calling Tory rival ‘thick’

Ding ding! Over the river at City Hall things got heated this morning with London Mayor Sadiq Khan forced to apologise for labelling a Tory rival ‘thick’. Khan was being grilled over the expanded Ulez zone during Mayor’s Question Time, with Conservative London Assembly member Peter Fortune trying repeatedly to pin Khan down on when reports on the scheme’s expanded zone might be published. Frustrated by the Mayor’s refusal to give a straight answer, Fortune continued to probe Khan and said: ‘You know, you can be a bit slippy. You’re very good at this!’ After a bit of back and forth, the Mayor shot back, claiming his exchange with Fortune was ‘like

Steerpike

China hawks urge unity on spy row

It’s been a difficult week for Sinosceptics in Westminster, following the revelation that a parliamentary researcher was arrested in March on suspicion of spying for China. Much of the media attention has focused on the MPs to whom the researcher was linked: namely Alicia Kearns and Tom Tugendhat. For the past three years they have championed the ‘cautious engagement’ school of thought on China. This is in contrast to the more hardline position adopted by Sir Iain Duncan Smith and supporters in the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. The two bands have sometimes clashed since Ipac’s formation in June 2020. But now, amid attempts by Chinese state media to turn the national

Patrick O’Flynn

Starmer’s migrant plan is even worse than the Tories’

Labour’s long-awaited approach to stopping the Channel boats is so pusillanimous that it ought to be a political gamechanger for the Conservatives. But it probably won’t be. As Sir Keir Starmer outlines in various newspapers today, an administration led by him will abandon the Rwanda removals plan and get rid of the Illegal Migration Act which puts in place a bar against people who have arrived illegally claiming asylum. Instead, he will enter talks with the EU about the UK taking a percentage of the ever-increasing flow of irregular migrants over its southern and eastern borders. As a quid pro quo, he hopes that EU nations, especially France – whose