Politics Archives

Tuesday

14 Feb 2023

Is Richard Sharp ‘damaging’ the BBC?

There’s nothing the BBC loves talking about more than the BBC. And a perfect demonstration of that iron rule of politics was shown this afternoon when Radio 4 discussed the survival prospects of BBC Chairman Richard Sharp. Sir David Normington, who served as the Commissioner for Public Appointments under David Cameron, was invited on to the BBC’s World at One programme to warn that: I think the present position is very damaging, it’s damaging Mr Sharp, it’s damaging the BBC and the government and more important – it’s undermining public confidence in the appointments system. When I was Public Appointments Commissioner between 2011-2016 , there was a huge amount of

Freddy Gray

Does race trump merit in America?

50 min listen

Heather Mac Donald joins Freddy Gray for this week’s Americano podcast. Heather is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book When Race Trumps Merit. Heather breaks down what she describes as a ‘regressive equity epidemic’ in which race overtakes merit in almost all areas of society.

Steerpike

Did Partygate kill the Whitehall party?

Partygate claimed many victims in Westminster, not least Boris Johnson’s premiership. But one consequence of the relentless focus on the shenanigans of 2021 meant that 2022 proved to be a far less festive occasion than some in the great ministries of state had hoped. Officials have grumbled to Mr S that there was a certain reluctance on the part of some departments to help organise shindigs in the most recent Christmas season. A raft of Freedom of Information requests to seven Whitehall departments has found, surprise, surprise, that no records exist of any office or departmental parties being held at their central London premises in November and December. ‘There is

Andrew Tettenborn

Solar farms and the trouble with net zero

Say it quietly, especially when there’s a Green listening: but there’s one certainty about Net Zero 2050. It won’t happen. As any honest MP will admit in private, it is stymied not only by the need to keep the lights on following the Ukraine energy shortage, but also for another reason: because no democratic majority will tolerate the cutbacks in their quality of life necessary to maintain the headlong dash to carbon neutrality in 27 years’ time. Unfortunately there is also another certainty about Net Zero. While it remains official policy, however quixotic, corporate capital is being handed a heaven-sent opportunity at the expense of you, me and the country

Ellie Wilson

Rape in a relationship is the last taboo

The charges against Mason Greenwood, the Manchester United footballer who was accused of assault and attempted rape, have been dropped. Yet the trial of both him and the woman involved in the case continues unabated online. The ongoing discussion of the case brought back painful memories of my experience at the hands of my rapist – and the verdict of online trolls about what happened to me. When the reports about the conviction of my ex-boyfriend and abuser were published online, I did my best to ignore the coverage. But one afternoon, I scrolled through the comments on a tabloid news article about my case. I knew I shouldn’t look,

Daniel Thorpe

Syrian earthquake survivors are being scapegoated in Turkey

It’s been over a week since the devastating twin earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria and the death toll continues to rise. The number of known casualties has passed 30,000 and tens of thousands more are injured. Hundreds of thousands people have lost their homes. Alongside the plight of the Turkish population, Syrian refugees in southern Turkey have suffered a second disaster. Turkey hosts over 3.6 million Syrians who fled their country’s civil war. Almost half a million live in the Hatay region, which was the worst hit by the quakes. Amidst the overwhelming tragedy, there are moments of joy: three elderly members of the Gezer family were brought out from

Steerpike

Parliament works hit £216 million

Ah parliamentary renovation: they talk of little else in the Red Wall. For more than a decade now, Westminster has been obsessed with the subject of our crumbling Commons, with staff forced to dodge falling masonry, leaking pipes and impudent rodents as they navigate the estate. Last month, Dame Meg Hillier of the Public Accounts Committee warned that there was an ‘unacceptable cloak of secrecy’ around the ongoing restoration programme. And perhaps we now know why. For figures were published yesterday which show that some £216.5 million was spent on the Restoration and Renewal Programme between spring 2020 and March 2022. The total forecast spend for the current financial year

Monday

13 Feb 2023

Katy Balls

What’s behind the secret Brexit summit?

Is there a plot to unravel Brexit? Tory Eurosceptics are asking this question after the Observer published details over the weekend of a ‘secret summit’ to address the ‘failings’ of Brexit. The paper reports that the two-day event in Ditchley Park was a cross-party affair. Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy – who previously backed a second referendum – was in attendance, as was Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, who under Theresa May backed the Chequers deal. Lammy and Gove were in a group which included Peter Mandelson and David Lidington, May’s former deputy. There were several Brexiteers in attendance, such as former Tory party leader Michael Howard and former Labour

Sarang Shidore

Will Lula’s Brazil turn away from the West?

Joe Biden has promised to bring Brazil and America closer together. ‘Both of our democracies have been tested of late’, Biden told reporters last week as he met with president Lula da Silva for the first time. The two leaders were on the ‘same page’, Biden said. But that feeling isn’t entirely mutual. When Lula was sworn in as president on New Year’s Day, he promised ‘dialogue, multilateralism and multipolarity’, and there’s good reason to believe he’ll deliver it. In Lula’s first two terms, he was key to founding the Brics, an economic grouping with Russia, India, China and South Africa. In the post-Cold War era, Brics was important in

Julie Bindel

How did the Tavistock gender scandal unfold?

Another week, another blast of evidence as to why putting kids on hormone blockers is an abomination. Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by BBC journalist Hannah Barnes, which is released on 16 February, is dynamite. The revelations it contains are horrifying: former clinicians at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London, detail how some children were placed on medication after one face-to-face assessment, despite many having mental health or family issues. More than a third of young people referred to the service had moderate to severe autistic traits, compared with

Ross Clark

Is Brexit really costing households £1,000 each?

They never give up, those Remainers. Like the Japanese soldier found on a Pacific island still fighting the second world war – in 1974, every other day there is another loose shot from the undergrowth. After last week’s Ditchley Park gathering involving Lord Mandelson, David Lammy and others, comes an interview in the Overshoot with Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member Jonathan Haskel. In it, Haskel makes the claim that Brexit is costing each British household £1,000 a year through lost trade and investment. The beauty of modelling is that you can get it to tell you pretty much anything you want it to Let’s start with the assertion that this is a

Steerpike

Who really owns Britain’s waterways?

Stop press: Fleet Street is officially full of sewage. Flicking through the papers this morning, Steerpike was intrigued to see water pollution feature prominently on the front page of both the Times and the i newspapers. ‘Water firms to be spared threat of £250m fines’ roared the former; ‘Sunak facing Tory rebellion over sewage in UK rivers’ retorted the latter. Both are worthy stories but neither were splashed across any of the other national newspapers. What’s going on? It turns on that the i are keen on the story because on Friday they proudly launched their new campaign to ‘Save Britain’s Rivers.’ It is a new UK-wide drive to rescue

Natasha Feroze

Is there a plot to unravel Brexit?

11 min listen

Whilst the government is in recess, a group of cross-party politicians joined a private meeting to discuss ‘How we can make Brexit work better with our European neighbours?’ Are the critics right that this is an attempt to unravel Brexit? Also on the podcast, Labour dropped their GPC files [government procurement cards] early this morning – what can be learnt from their big scoop? Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.

Steerpike

Red-faced Angela Rayner embarrassed over expenses

Labour have been out this morning, trumpeting their much-hyped ‘GPC files’ about the use of government procurement cards. Mr S has had a look and there’s some interesting things in there. But was Angela Rayner really the best choice to lead on this issue? Especially when it was Emily Thornberry who did all the work. It was Rayner whose quotes about ‘lavish spending’ and ‘a scandalous catalogue of waste’ led the Labour attack in the write-ups today, as part of her party’s attempts to paint her as the Prescott-like bruiser to Starmer’s sensible southern style. Unfortunately though Rayner has form in this area, having once charged the taxpayer £249 for

Steerpike

Six of the worst revelations from Labour’s procurement files

Labour got much of the lobby exercised last week with its latest wheeze: mysteriously rebranding its Twitter account as ‘the GPC files’ and sending out a link to ‘theGPCfiles’ to launch 7 a.m Monday morning. Sadly, for fans of the Global Powerlifting Committee eagerly expecting a string of revelations, the website in question focuses on government procurement cards. These allow purchases to be made directly against departmental budgets without going through regular invoicing procedures. Dozens of parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests have been tabled by Labour in recent months to try to find out what this money has been spent on. The website itself looks like an attempt

Gavin Mortimer

Has Macron turned France into America’s poodle?

A notable feature of how the French public view the war in Ukraine is that the strongest support for its continuation is among voters who identify as Centrists and Socialists. Those most in favour of a peace settlement are backers of the left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the right-wing Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour. A poll in December revealed that 69 per cent of the former and 77 per cent of the latter would prefer that negotiations take precedence over the delivery of weapons to Ukraine, a number that rose to 88 per cent among Zemmour loyalists. These dropped to 57 per cent for Socialists and 60 per cent for

Sam Leith

It’s time for ‘reality-based’ politicians to start addressing Brexit

Praise be. A day or two ago, something potentially quite exciting took place in Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire. It was a two-day conference and its guiding question – according to documents obtained by the Observer – was: ‘How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?’ Gathered there, and not a moment before time (though some might say five or six years ago might have been better still), were a number of politicians and public figures. It’s described as having been a ‘private discussion’. There are two things that seem worth noticing about this. The first, which is very encouraging, is that the meeting involved people who were both pro- and anti-Brexit in the first place, and

Sunday

12 Feb 2023

Steerpike

Watch: Andrew Mitchell flounders over Rwanda

We haven’t seen much of Andrew Mitchell since his recent promotion and today was perhaps a reminder why. For more than ten years, the onetime Chief Whip languished on the backbenches post-plebgate, until last October Sunak appointed him Minister of State for Development and Africa. It was Mitchell’s turn to do the government media round today but it proved to be a pretty tricky outing for the Old Rugbeian. His trenchant criticisms of Boris Johnson’s policies came back to haunt him today when Mitchell was asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg about his punchy past statements on the decision to cut Britain’s aid budget from 0.7 per cent of Gross

Rakib Ehsan

The Knowsley disruption shows the UK’s incompetence on asylum

This week’s public disorder outside a hotel accommodating asylum seekers in the town of Knowsley in Merseyside was in some ways inevitable. A total of 45,756 people entered the UK on small boats via the English Channel last year – which, according to the 2021 Census, is a number larger than the entire population of English towns such as Dover in Kent, Boston in Lincolnshire and Kirkby in the Metropolitan Borough of Knowsley. Britain’s asylum regime should be prioritising the world’s most persecuted peoples, especially women and girls at major risk of sex-based violence in their conflict-ridden homelands. Instead, it has been reduced to a survival-of-the-fittest system which has been

James Heale

Can the BBC’s chairman carry on?

It’s more bad news for the Beeb with a stinging set of Sunday papers today. The Culture select committee has released a report in the appointment of Richard Sharp as the Corporation’s chairman – and it makes for damning reading. The MPs accuse him of failing to publicly divulge his role in facilitating an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson by omitting key details in introducing Johnson to businessman Sam Blyth. He is accused of making ‘significant errors of judgement’ and undermining the selection process for his role. The omissions ‘constitute a breach of the standards expected of individuals’ applying for top public jobs. And while the MPs stop short of calling for