Politics Archives

Thursday

17 Aug 2023

Why the Kremlin sees Britain as the ultimate bogeyman

Perfidious Albion is at it again. The Kremlin’s increasingly unhinged obsession with seeing a British hand behind its various upsets has now manifested itself in a claim that the UK is behind the establishment of a death squad operating in Africa. The claim, trumpeted across Russia’s state-run media, is that MI6 is behind a ‘punitive saboteur unit consisting of Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis’ being trained for operations in Africa. According to an unnamed ‘military-diplomatic source,’ London requested in July that the Ukrainian government help it recruit this force. Russians are at once warmly Anglophile and deeply Anglophobe, a paradoxical relationship unlike any other In response, the Ukrainian Security Service and

Wednesday

16 Aug 2023

Iain Macwhirter

Humza Yousaf is becoming a master at alienating Scottish voters

At last, a target Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf should have no trouble meeting. Waiting lists? The attainment gap? Dualling the A9? Of course not. Humza Yousaf says his forthcoming government reset can be expected to ‘p**s people off’. When it comes to annoying people the First Minister is a veritable virtuoso. He has certainly irritated many in the SNP with his insistence on perpetuating the controversial alliance with the Scottish Green party. Mr Yousaf clearly knows what side he’s on; unfortunately, Scottish voters are increasingly on the other side Yousaf is quite serious though. Yesterday he told the Holyrood Sources podcast that, as a ‘conviction’ politician, it is his righteous duty to curry unfavour with many

John Ferry

Even high oil revenues can’t fix Scotland’s deficit

It’s Scotland’s annual Gers shenanigans this week. If you don’t already know, Gers stands for ‘Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland’. It is an official Scottish government statistics report that provides an estimate of the total amount of government revenue raised in Scotland versus the total amount of public spending benefitting the country. The gap between the two highlights the notional fiscal deficit. As the best available guide to the fundamentals a newly independent Scotland would start off with, the annual Gers updates create something of a feeding frenzy on the constitutional debate. On the build up to the 2014 referendum, the Nationalists loved the Gers numbers because they showed how

Stephen Daisley

Oliver Anthony and the snobbery of American conservatives

If there is a right-wing cultural aesthetic in America, it is low-brow resentment. The old liberal-conservative tradition prized truth, beauty and the ‘the best which has been thought and said’. This has been shunted aside by a hair-trigger populism drawn to any cultural expression that scandalises progressive tastes. If people with graduate degrees hate it, today’s conservatives will love it. Right-wing populists have a new cultural pin-up in Oliver Anthony, an ex-factory worker and singer-songwriter from Virginia. His track ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ has garnered 15 million views on YouTube in the space of a week and 1.5 million plays on Spotify in just five days. For each of

James Heale

The Greens are coming for the Tories

So far, Keir Starmer has been unmoved by complaints from left-wingers that his policies differ little from those of Boris Johnson’s at the last election. After all, if left-wing voters don’t like his low-key approach, where else would they go? The problem in British politics – as David Cameron found out – is that disgruntled voters do find somewhere else to go. In Cameron’s case, it was to Nigel Farage; in Starmer’s case, it may be to the Greens. Once dismissed as idealistic hippies, the Greens now serve in seven governments across Europe, including Germany, Belgium and Scotland. Even under the UK’s majoritarian system, they’re doing well with 800 council

Cindy Yu

Will Rishi hit his inflation target?

5 min listen

Today we had the – seemingly – good news that the headline rate of inflation for July has come down to 6.8%. This is in line with Bank of England targets which suggest that Rishi could be set to meet his pledge to halve inflation. Is this cause for celebration in Number 10? Or should we be wary? Cindy Yu speaks to Michael Simmons, The Spectator’s data editor. Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson. Check out The Spectator’s data hub: https://data.spectator.co.uk/

Euan McColm

Graham Linehan and the Fringe’s new puritanism

Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, Moira Knox was one of the biggest names on the Edinburgh Fringe. She was guaranteed acres of newspaper coverage and never had to update her routine. Knox, a Tory councillor in the Scottish capital, was a rumbling – but entirely approachable – outrage machine. A tabloid reporter looking for a quick hit could depend upon her to condemn the ‘offensive’ content of a whole range of Fringe shows. Whether it was the use of profanity or the exposure of genitalia during a performance, Councillor Knox was ready to react. No good will come of this cowardice. Any erosion of freedom of expression is bad

Steerpike

Is Jordan Peterson’s book all it’s cracked up to be?

Jordan Peterson has never been shy about dispensing advice. But has the court of the Canadian philosopher king now overreached itself? A copy of Peterson’s book ‘Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life’ sparked something of a Twitter storm yesterday, when critic James Marriott noted how a truncated form of his Times review has appeared on the back of Paterson’s book. Here’s how publishers Allen Lane quoted Marriott’s words on the book of Peterson’s paperback edition: A philosophy of the meaning of life… the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has written. Pretty gushing right? But here’s what Marriott’s review actually wrote in the Times in March 2021: Peterson calls in

Nigel Jones

Is Putin outsourcing his espionage to Bulgaria?

Bulgaria is a country that doesn’t often feature on Britain’s radar – beyond being a location for cheap package holidays and even cheaper wine. But the arrest of three Bulgarian citizens who have lived in Britain for a long time and are being charged with spying for Russia may change that. For the country bordering the Black Sea has long been Russia’s closest ally in Eastern Europe, and Moscow has a history of outsourcing its dirtier espionage operations to its Slavic sister state. During the Cold War, Bulgaria was the most reliably compliant of the Kremlin’s Warsaw Pact vassal states. Bulgaria shares its Orthodox religion, its Cyrillic script and linguistic similarities

Ross Clark

I’m afraid of higher wages

So, Britain has finally awarded itself the real-terms pay rise that the unions would say workers ‘deserve’. This morning’s inflation figures show that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) is up 6.8 per cent in the year to July. Yesterday’s earnings figures showed that wages grew by 7.8 per cent. So, in other words, the UK workforce as a whole has received a real-term pay rise equivalent to a whole percentage point. The period of falling real incomes is finally over – at least for the majority of earners. Some, of course, will still be seeing falling real wages. In the absence of productivity growth, any wage rises will turn out

Philip Patrick

Is it really not safe to extradite someone to Japan?

In November 2015 three men entered a jewellery shop in Tokyo’s upmarket Omotesando district, beat and injured a security guard, smashed a showcase and stole 100 million yen’s (£600,000) worth of goods. The suspects identified by the police fled to the UK, where, after the intercession of Interpol, they were arrested. Japan, unsurprisingly, wants them back. But in the absence of an extradition treaty with the UK it needed to make a special request. Last week, the extradition request for one of the men was turned down – with the court noting that the suspect’s human rights could not be guaranteed by the Japanese criminal justice system. This is on its face

Steerpike

Captain Tom’s daughter does it again

It’s an ITV drama just waiting to be filmed. The saga surrounding the family of the late Captain Sir Tom Moore has now taken a fresh twist, following a Newsnight investigation. The programme alleges that Moore’s daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, was paid thousands of pounds via her family company for appearances in connection with her late father’s charity. In 2021 and 2022, she helped judge awards ceremonies which heavily featured the Captain Tom Foundation charity. Promotional clips suggested she was there to represent the charity but her fee was paid not to the Foundation but to Ingram-Moore’s family company instead. Surely shome mistake? The awards ceremony in question was the Virgin

Tuesday

15 Aug 2023

Steerpike

Costs of leaky parliament double in ten years

Cast your minds back to the new millennium: Tony Blair was in power, Robbie Williams top of the chart. It was the year the Dome opened; so too did Portcullis House in Westminster. Back then, the £235 million parliamentary office was predicted to last two centuries when it opened, thanks to its supposed quality workmanship and premium materials. But fast forward 23 years and PCH is ageing about as well as Blair’s pledge to be ‘purer than pure’. Last month, water poured into the PCH atrium after a ‘huge bang’, leaving the area fenced off with scaffolding underneath. It was just the latest in a series of issues that have

Matthew Lynn

Working from home is the new British disease

Over mighty trade unions. Short-termist management that prioritises profits over investment. And an education system that doesn’t produce enough scientists or engineers. There have been many different versions of the ‘British disease’ over the years to explain the consistent under-performance of our economy compared to some of our main rivals. But right now there is a new one: the British don’t want to go back to the office – and that is hitting output hard. According to a survey by the consultancy AWA published this week, the British are more reluctant to go back to the office than workers in almost any other major developed country. Even as bosses plead

Fraser Nelson

Public sector pay pushes wage growth to record high

14 min listen

Natasha Feroze speaks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman about today’s wage growth figures which have reached a 22-year high due to public sector pay. Are these an accurate reflection of the economy? Also on the podcast, Isabel Hardman takes a look at NHS week – each day the government has announced new measures to improve the National Health Service. Is a ‘quit smoking’ campaign really want the system needs?

Freddy Gray

Will America eventually tire of Trump’s legal troubles?

In our age of mass attention deficit, the manifold legals trials against Donald Trump represent a big challenge. Maybe that’s the point. It’s hard to care when you can’t keep count. The whole objective of ‘lawfare’, as it is called, is to bully your enemy into submission through overwhelming paperwork. It might work. That doesn’t make it just. Let’s be clear: calling the multi-dimensional legal campaign against Donald Trump ‘lawfare’ isn’t a statement of support for Trump, necessarily. It’s more a summary of observable reality. The irony is that, at this stage in the presidential campaign, the legal warfare on Trump is increasing his appeal The latest of four criminal

Gavin Mortimer

Macron doesn’t care about migrants crossing the Channel

The British government is reportedly ‘frustrated’ with France for its failure to stem the numbers of migrants making their way illegally across the Channel. What’s new? It’s a gripe going back years and the solution has always been the same: to throw more money to France in return for a solemn promise from Paris that patrols will be increased to reduce the numbers looking to enter Britain illegally. Britain should wise up and understand that Macron has no intention of helping to reduce the numbers of migrants crossing the Channel In February 2016, for example, David Cameron’s government announced it was giving €20 million (£17.2 million) more to France –

Steerpike

Boris brings back cabinet tradition

When it comes to the Johnson government, ministers weren’t always judged to have done things by the book. But Mr S has done some digging and it turns out that the former PM did his bit to restore one of the lesser-known No. 10 traditions. In 1931, Ramsay MacDonald began the practice of incumbent and departing ministers being asked to donate a book to the Prime Minister’s library. The collection lines the walls of the cabinet room, offering inspiration to the ministers sat around the table there. In recent years though, the practice had fallen into abeyance. However Johnson was an enthusiast for the scheme and encouraged his ministers to

Freddy Gray

Why are Democrats winning on abortion?

39 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Inez Stepman, a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute who was last on Americano to discuss the overturning of Roe vs Wade last year. As seen in the November midterms, could this be a winning issue for the Democrats who are gearing up for the general election?

Michael Simmons

Public sector pay pushes wage growth to record high

Public sector pay growth has jumped 9.6 per cent, the fastest rate since current records began 22 years ago. Private sector wage growth, meanwhile, is slightly more modest at 7.9 per cent. The NHS bonus – a one-off payment of between £1,650 and £3,500 given in June – helped lift overall wages up by 8.2 per cent, higher than inflation (at 7.9 per cent), the first time that has happened since March last year. That bonus was agreed by the government in an attempt to put an end to industrial action among health workers. Around 160,000 working days were lost in June alone, the majority in the NHS. But with