Politics Archives

Monday

15 May 2023

Steerpike

Varadkar red-faced after his boyfriend’s coronation messages leak

Oh dear. It was all meant to be going so well for British-Irish relations. Earlier this month both the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Republic’s president, Michael D. Higgins, flew out to London for King Charles’ coronation – the first Irish nationalist leaders to attend a British coronation in over a century. Even Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s First Minister, managed to swallow her pride and make the visit, saying ‘I am an Irish republican. I also recognise there are many people on our island for whom the coronation is a hugely important occasion.’ It appears that some did not treat the ceremony with quite the same respect though.

Owen Matthews

Erdogan faces runoff vote in the Turkish elections

Turkey is a strange kind of democracy. But nonetheless it is a democracy where an apparently invincible strongman can – in theory at least – be deposed after two decades in power by the will of the electorate. With over 99 per cent of the votes of Sunday night’s presidential vote counted, it looks like neither the 69-year-old Erdogan nor his challenger, the 74-year-old veteran leader of the Republican People’s party (CHP) Kemal Kilicdaroglu, have managed to break the required 50 per cent threshold to prevent a runoff. Erdogan is currently on 49 per cent, according to estimates by the official Anadolu Agency, while Kilicdaroglu is on 45 per cent.

Sunday

14 May 2023

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Ousting Boris was a mistake, says Rees-Mogg

‘Managed decline’, or ‘steely determination’? The fallout from the Conservatives’ disastrous local election results continued this week, with the inaugural conference of the rebellious Conservative Democratic Organisation. During the conference, former home secretary Priti Patel accused Rishi Sunak of presiding over the ‘managed decline’ of the Tory party. Energy Secretary Grant Shapps was determined to spin his party’s predicament in a more positive light however, telling Sophy Ridge there was an atmosphere of ‘steely determination’ among his fellow MPs: Shapps – ‘Sunak’s pledge was to grow the economy and we’re starting to see it grow’ Shapps rejected the notion that the Conservatives needed to make significant changes. He told Laura

James Heale

Tory grassroots plot to ‘take control’

Insurrection was in the air in Bournemouth this weekend as MPs and activists descended on the seaside town for a Tory grassroots jamboree. ‘Take control’ was the aim of the Conservative Democratic Organisation’s inaugural meeet, with 250-odd diehards defying the ‘communist barricades’ of the rail strikes to pitch up at the Bournemouth International Conference. The venue was the scene of Margaret Thatcher’s final conference and the long shadow of the Iron Lady looms large over her greying party today. Most attendees were middle-aged with fond memories of the Thatcherite heyday: of party conferences by the seaside, Mrs T in her pomp, three election triumphs and nights out celebrating in Blackpool

Zoe Strimpel

What Miriam Cates gets wrong about working mothers

Miriam Cates and I have a different idea of what Thatcherism was all about. To me, the Lady T era was more feminist than any other before or after because it included all people, including women, in its vision of work, wealth, power and success. It did so without all the carry on about menstruation and endometriosis and menopause and who knows what else that comes with female empowerment discourse today. ‘I felt like nothing more than a drudge,’ said Thatcher in a 1954 interview in Forward, a Conservative pamphlet, of being at home with two babies and the housework after the mental stimulation of chemistry and law. Later, she

Daniel Thorpe

Erdogan is unlikely to go quietly

The Turkish election is just hours away, and an opposition victory seems more likely than ever under president Erdogan’s rule. Everywhere from cafés to the civil service, from social media to newspapers, the big question on everyone’s lips is whether Erdogan will concede after 21 years in power. Fears of escalation and violence on the streets are high. As Turkey’s electoral system is old-fashioned and analogue, irregularities and small-scale fraud are common, especially in rural areas. However, the system leaves little to no room for mass election fraud. Losing an election does not necessarily mean the end of a strongman In the 2019 local elections, the opposition Republican People’s party

Norman Davies

How Russia lost Kazakhstan

Prior to Russia’s invasion in February 2022, few westerners knew much about Ukraine, and even less about Kazakhstan. We all suffer from Moscow-centred perceptions and the bad habit of equating the Soviet Union with Russia. But now we know that Putin is driven by spurious historical theories, in which Ukraine has no right to exist, one needs to ask how they might apply to other ex-Russian provinces. Nowhere is more affected than European Russia’s eastern neighbour, Kazakhstan, which separates Muscovy from China, in the same way that Ukraine and Belarus divide it from the EU and Nato. Ukraine is half as big again as France or Germany. But ‘KZ’

Kate Andrews

What if Rishi fails to deliver all five pledges?

When Rishi Sunak delivered his five key pledges at the start of January, the latest data we had for the inflation rate was for last November. It was up 10.7 per cent on the year, having fallen from a peak of 11.1 per cent the month before. Everyone thought this was the start of a fast and spectacular fall, with virtually all forecasts showing a welcome decline in the rate of inflation. Off the back of those forecasts, the Prime Minister oozed confidence when he promised to ‘halve inflation’ by the end of this year. Speaking to an audience in Stratford, Sunak promised that an ‘ease’ to the cost-of-living crisis and greater

Mark Galeotti

The Black Sea is Nato’s new front line against Russia

Earlier this month, an unarmed Polish aircraft monitoring potential human smuggling and illegal fishing on the Black Sea almost ditched into the sea when a Russian Su-35 fighter engaged it over international waters. It was a reminder that while attention is inevitably focused on the land battles anticipated when Kyiv launches its spring counter-offensive, this is also a war playing out at sea. It was also a reminder that what happens offshore has far wider implications. The twin-engine L-410 Turbolet, more commonly used as a small commuter aircraft, was being used by Frontex, the European Union’s border security agency, as part of its Western Black Sea 2023 operation. It was

David Martin-Jones

How a small Welsh village became embroiled in a slave trade controversy

You’ve probably never heard of Abergynolwyn, which sits in the Dysynni valley in Merioneth in Wales. The village, established in the nineteenth century to house workers at the nearby Bryn Eglwys slate quarry, is home to just 400 people. But now Abergynolwyn has found its name besmirched by tenuous links to the slave trade. Abergynolwyn falls within the jurisdiction of Gwynedd council, which manages ‘the slate landscape’ on behalf of Unesco. In April, the council announced that this tiny village must publicly acknowledge its relationship to the slave trade. As part of what Gwynedd council, led by Dyfrig Siencyn (Plaid Cymru), sees as its broader plan to expose the slate landscape’s links to slavery, a

Saturday

13 May 2023

Steerpike

Rees-Mogg rallies the troops behind Rishi

To Bournemouth, where two-hundred odd attendees of the Conservative Democratic Organisation are meeting for their first conference. The CDO has been labelled a ‘Tory Momentum’ and a ‘Bring Back Boris’ effort by its opponents, though its chairman David Campbell-Bannerman insists that it is nothing of the sort. ‘We are not enemies of Central Office’ he told attendees this morning, despite warning that current membership trends suggest ‘the party is dying as an institution’ and bemoaning the ‘coup against Boris.’ Lord Cruddas, the CDO’s president, went further still, under the watchful eye of the Eastleigh enforcer Paul Holmes, CCHQ’s man on the scene. Cruddas lambasted the ‘shameful behaviour’ of the MPs

Katy Balls

Coffee House Shots Live: Coronation special

71 min listen

The coronation will commemorate the start of a new era, but what will this mean for the United Kingdom? How will Charles III secure his place in history – and what kind of monarch will he be? From pageantry to the polls: will the coronation distract voters from the Tories’ predicted heavy losses in the local elections? And will Rishi Sunak be able to turn his party’s fortunes around for the general election? Fraser Nelson speaks to Katy Balls and special guests Camilla Tominey and Matthew Goodwin for a special edition of Coffee House Shots Live.

James Heale

Where next for Richard Tice and Reform?

The local elections last week proved to be a disappointing night for Reform UK. Prior to polling day, its leader Richard Tice had talked up the ‘huge appetite’ among voters for Reform but the party averaged a mere six per cent of the vote in the wards where it stood. It won just half a dozen seats on on Derby City Council out of 471 hand-picked seats. Ukip, its effective forerunner, lost all its remaining councillors, going from almost 500 in 2016 to zero. Tice’s response was to argue that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and to focus instead on the next electoral test: the London mayoralty. Petrolhead Howard

Terry Barnes

Trudeau’s ‘coronation gift’ is just lip service to the monarchy

Cynically dressed up as a coronation-related gift to the Canadian nation, just days after the coronation, the country’s leader Justin Trudeau has unveiled a Royal Crown of Canada. Trudeau is paying lip service to the monarchy Canada shares with Britain and the King’s other realms Not a physical gold and jewelled crown, mind you, but a virtual crown, designed to replace St Edward’s crown – the very crown placed on the King’s head a week ago – on Canada’s coat of arms, official documents, and armed forces and Mountie badges and insignia. This new Canadian crown replaces the crosses and fleur-de-lys of St Edward’s Crown with stylised maple leaves. The rim is

Philip Patrick

The SNP’s Brexit strategy is bound to backfire – again

The SNP has announced that if the next general election results in a hung parliament it will, as power brokers, ‘undo Brexit as far as possible’. Alyn Smyth, the SNP’s EU accession spokesperson, said his party would demand the UK has a close relationship with Brussels in any negotiations with a minority Labour government. There might be a few titters at this and jokes about signing cheques that can’t be cashed from a scandal-beset party whose relevance and even long-term viability is in serious doubt. But the SNP clearly think this is a winning strategy that can arrest their decline and boost their chances. Whether it truly is, and whether

Stephen Daisley

The importance of Joanna Cherry

Well, that didn’t take long. Barely had the ink dried on a lawyer’s letter from Joanna Cherry than The Stand comedy club performed a screeching U-turn on its decision to cancel an event featuring the SNP MP. Cherry had been due to appear in an ‘In conversation with…’ interview at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. However, The Stand nixed the function last week, saying ‘a number of The Stand’s key operational staff, including venue management and box office personnel, are unwilling to work on this event’. Cherry has become persona non grata among progressives for raising concerns about the interaction of legal gender reform and the rights of women and girls. However,

Friday

12 May 2023

Steerpike

Watch: Alastair Campbell’s Newsnight meltdown

Oh dear. It seems that the king of spin’s onetime winning touch has deserted him. The omnipresent Alastair Campbell popped up again on Newsnight to continue his latest ‘forever war’ – this time the never-ending crusade against Brexit. Campbell was up against Alex Phillips, the former MEP, and managed in the space of just seven minutes to patronise both her and the host Victoria Derbyshire in an astonishingly ill-judged performance. Following a barrage of Campbell’s huffing and puffing, Phillips remarked on the irony of how ‘It’s very rich a man who essentially was part of telling lies to invade a country to accuse me of dishonesty.’ Campbell sneered ‘I think

Theo Davies-Lewis

The brutal downfall of Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price

The mantra was simple: ‘Yes Wales Can’, as Adam Price declared after ousting Leanne Wood in a brutal leadership contest in 2018. Wood had been unable to halt the ruthless coup launched by Y Mab Darogan, the son of prophecy, as Price was known to his followers. Plaid Cymru has been in Labour’s shadow in Wales for close to a century. Yet Price was deemed to have the intellect, oratorical flair and media savvy to launch a nationalist turnaround to replicate the fortunes of the SNP. At times, if paraphrasing Obama was any evidence, Price indulged the intoxicating legend that surrounded him. It was bound to end in tears. By the

Freddy Gray

What do Donald Trump’s children want?

39 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by filmmaker, Alex Holder who had access to Trump’s inner circle when making the documentary Unprecedented. On the podcast, they discuss Trump’s supporter base, his relationship with his children and why Ivanka is the favourite.

David Shipley

How prisons teach inmates that crime pays

John Major is wrong when he suggests only violent offenders should be automatically locked up – and as a non-violent ex-offender I should know. But focusing on the number of prisoners in Britain is a distraction from the real issue: reoffending. British prisons churn out prisoners who simply go on to commit more crime. Given what goes on behind bars, it’s little surprise. A functioning, effective prison system should teach inmates to respect rules and behave in a proper manner so that they are more likely to be productive and law-abiding members of society on release. Many prisoners, however, learn a different lesson in jail: that breaking rules pays off.