Politics

Nothing scares politicians more than telling parents how to do their job, which is a shame because a bit more finger wagging might be just what we need. The Online Safety Bill returns to parliament this week to be debated by MPs once again – with the legislation aiming to stop kids looking at porn online.  Getting tough on Big Tech is easier than asking more of parents MPs have already spent around 40 hours debating this Bill, in previous forms. In this time only eight MPs have suggested that parents might just have some responsibility in stopping their children accessing porn online. Fifty MPs have so far opined on the merits of switching off

The UK government has had a fractious couple of weeks. First it was the Swiss EU deal rumours, then housing, then a panicked response to high immigration figures. The latest problem to crop up is a rebellion over onshore wind, which has effectively been banned in the UK since 2012. What each of these disparate issues have in common is that they fall within the scope of what is increasingly the most important political debate in the UK. This is the extent to which the government should prioritise economic growth, and, implicitly, who the country is run for.  Onshore wind and immigration are perhaps the clearest examples of this. The

The next UK general election will be a referendum on independence for Scotland. This is according to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, after the ‘disappointing’ Supreme Court ruling last week found that her administration did not in fact have the power to unilaterally rewrite the UK’s constitution. Will the people of Scotland really accept that the ballot box outcome in 2024 will represent a ‘de facto’ referendum that could lead to them being removed from the UK? With no legal or historic precedent for such an undertaking, the arbitrariness of the proposition would be comical if it were not so serious. But perhaps equally comical is the idea that Sturgeon’s team

One of Rishi Sunak’s pledges was to remove the ‘legal, but harmful’ censorship clause that Boris Johnson was poised to bring in via the Online Safety Bill. A few weeks ago it was said that he had done so and I wrote a piece congratulating him. I may have spoken too soon. The Bill as published would actually introduce (rather than abolish) censorship of the written word – ending a centuries-old British tradition of liberty. The censorship mechanism is intended for under-18s – an improvement on the original, draconian plan. But it still raises problems that I doubt have been properly discussed in Whitehall given the bias amongst officials desperate to

When it comes to policy, the area where the least is known about Rishi Sunak’s views is foreign affairs. As chancellor, the bulk of his time was spent focussing on the domestic front. During the (first) Tory leadership contest over the summer, Liz Truss’s campaign accused Sunak of being soft on Russia and China. Last night, Sunak began setting out his vision for the UK’s relationship with China at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, in his first major speech on foreign policy since entering 10 Downing Street. Sunak defined his approach in part through the differences between himself and his predecessors. In a move away from the Osborne/Cameron era, he said