Politics Archives

Tuesday

6 Dec 2022

Gordon Brown is deluding himself about the SNP

Gordon Brown needs a hobby. Golf, perhaps, or jazzercise. Anything but meddling in the constitution. He means well but his answer is always the same: make things worse but in a way that sounds really clever to Westminster types. To a hammer everything is a nail and to Gordon Brown there isn’t a problem in all Creation that doesn’t call for a commission, a committee or a convention. His own commission into ‘the UK’s future’ has now reported and all I can say is the future ain’t what it used to be. A New Britain is a backwards-looking prospectus, its new constitutional settlement largely doubling down on the old settlement. That old settlement has

Steven Fielding

Starmer is more brutal than he is boring

On the day he unveiled Gordon Brown’s 153-page report into renewing Britain’s democracy Keir Starmer showed his steely side and helped us better understand the evolving character of ‘Starmerism’. Up till now, when asked what they think about the Labour leader, many voters, after scratching their heads, have said something like: ‘boring’, ‘dull’ and ‘bland’. These are tags that have plagued Starmer ever since his election as leader. Indeed, over the summer Starmer even had to order his own Shadow Cabinet to stop briefing journalists about how boring he is. As Rishi Sunak is discovering, it is hard to demonise someone widely seen as boring The reality behind the bland

Ross Clark

Striking railway workers can’t avoid reality for ever

Rail strikes on a couple of days when no trains would be running anyway might not seem the biggest inconvenience facing the British public at the moment, yet the announcement of yet another walkout from the evening of 24 December to the morning of 27 December will have implications for many services: this is the window when a lot of track maintenance is scheduled. That now promises to spill over into the New Year to an even greater extent than in normal years. By calling a Christmas strike – something he previously said he wouldn’t do – RMT leader Mick Lynch is not looking like a man who is close to

Steerpike

Baroness bra quits the Lords (for now)

Farewell and thanks for the mammaries, Michelle Mone. The lingerie tycoon has today announced that she will be seeking a leave of absence from the House of Lords with immediate effect. It means she will not attend sittings of the House, vote on any proceedings nor be able to claim any allowance. At 51, she ought to have years of such joys ahead of her – but fate, and the Guardian newspaper, intervened. According to a spokesman: With immediate effect, Baroness Mone will be taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her.

Iain Macwhirter

Gordon Brown doesn’t understand what Scottish voters want

Only Gordon Brown could come up with a 40-point plan for constitutional renewal. ‘Less is more’ is not a principle with which the former Prime Minister is familiar. When his UK constitutional commission was launched in 2020 we were promised a ‘radical alternative to nationalism’ and a ‘constitutional revolution’ to remake Britain along federal lines. What has emerged looks like fiddly, modish reforms with lots of hubs and clusters and the inevitable citizen’s juries. Plus, of course, more devolution to Scotland and a reformed upper house that Conservatives will no doubt portray as a new battering ram for the SNP. Has Brown’s review landed well? Sir Keir Starmer has certainly endorsed his proposed

Charles Lipson

Did US officials suppress political speech on Twitter?

The ‘Twitter files’ Elon Musk released to two journalists have produced a cloud of confusion. So far, we have not seen the files themselves, only what one journalist, Matt Taibbi, has reported about them. The main findings reinforce what we have known all along: Twitter’s former management strongly favoured Democrats and used its powerful platform to aid them. It was far more likely to suppress the speech of conservatives and Republicans than of progressives and Democrats. Twitter’s systematic bias went far beyond its most famous instance, when it killed the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Freddy Gray makes these important points in his recent piece here

Gavin Mortimer

Unlike Britain, France is far from finished with Covid

Twelve months ago Britain rebelled against Covid hysteria. As Boris Johnson and his Sage modelling committee prepared to lockdown the country for Christmas, they lost control of the narrative. First 100 Tory backbenchers MPs voted against the PM’s vaccine passport scheme, and a few days later Lord Frost resigned as Brexit Minister. In his resignation letter he expressed his concern about the government’s handling of the pandemic. Urging Johnson to ‘learn to live with Covid’, Frost warned against giving into the sect of the worst-case scenario. ‘I hope we can get back on track soon and not be tempted by the kind of coercive measures we have seen elsewhere.’

Gareth Roberts

King Charles should ignore Ngozi Fulani

If a visitor to my house suggested they had been abused and verbally attacked when they came to tea, I probably wouldn’t be in a particular hurry to invite them round again for nibbles. If that person had subsequently caused a very public stink and embarrassed and humiliated a valued family friend of extremely long standing, I would most definitely give them up as a bad idea. I certainly wouldn’t invite them for ‘talks’. But this is pretty much the approach taken by the King and Queen Consort to Ngozi Fulani, the domestic abuse campaigner who says she was asked repeatedly where she was ‘really’ from when she visited Buckingham Palace

Monday

5 Dec 2022

John Ferry

The SNP’s colonialism myth

There have been strange goings on in Scotland. A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court clarified that the Scottish parliament does not have the power to unilaterally call a second independence referendum. The ruling was never going to have gone down well with the SNP, but has the Supreme Court’s slap down sent the nationalist movement doolally? Take the strange case of Michael Russell’s comparison of the current UK government to the British Raj in the days of the Empire. On Sunday, the president of the SNP and former Scottish government minister defended an article he had written in the pro-independence newspaper The National which appeared to draw this parallel.

Steerpike

Watch: Harry and Meghan’s latest cringe-fest

Quick, nurse, pass the sick bag! The wokest couple in all the West is at it again. Harry and Meghan have today released another trailer ahead of their Netflix series, before its release on Thursday. The streaming giant is keen to recuperate the many millions it spent on hiring the dilettante duo back in the heady days of the pandemic, with the Sussexes now required to sing for their proverbial supper in the upcoming tell-all documentary. The trailer for this ‘global event’ bears all the hallmarks of Harry and Meghan’s ‘brand’: slick shots, moody music, tear-stained cheeks and Hollywood jargon more hackneyed than a Hallmark movie. In one glorious snippet,

Katy Balls

Why is Labour so keen to reform the House of Lords?

12 min listen

Today former prime minister Gordon Brown has released a review which includes recommendations to overhaul the constitution and replace the House of Lords. Could Labour push through reform? Also on the podcast, after Kier Starmer said that he doesn’t see Jeremy Corbyn standing at the next election, has Starmer finally silenced the far left faction in his party? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

James Forsyth

Three reasons Labour wants to talk about Lords reform

There are reasons why Labour wants to talk about constitutional reform despite all the other challenges facing the country. First, there is no financial cost to it. At the moment, Labour is severely hemmed in by the fact that it doesn’t want to make new spending commitments as it knows the Tories will immediately ask how they will be paid for. Political reform is one area where Labour can be radical without it costing anything. Second, it punches a Tory bruise. As Gordon Brown said this morning, Labour knows that Boris Johnson’s resignation honours will push the issue back up the agenda and make the current arrangements hard to defend.

Patrick O’Flynn

Will Braverman turn on Sunak over the Channel crisis?

Finally the Tory government appears to have realised that its serial mishandling of the Channel boats issue is the top cause of the voter disaffection that is killing its re-election prospects. Rishi Sunak’s administration now understands that the position he has set out so far – saying there is no ‘silver bullet’ to solve the dinghy problem, and that progress will require careful and patient work across many fronts – will not suffice, if well-briefed pieces in the weekend newspapers are anything to go on . As Nick Timothy – co-author of a radical new pamphlet on the issue that recommends withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, blanket

Steerpike

Starmer surge leaves Burnham eclipsed

Poor Andy Burnham. This time last year the Mayor of Manchester was riding high in the Labour leadership stakes, having cruised to re-election with a whopping 67 per cent of the vote, as Sir Keir Starmer struggled to cut through in Westminster. Now the fortunes are reversed: Starmer is 20 points ahead in the polls, while Burnham – the onetime ‘king of the north’ – would be forgiven for looking enviously on at his rival’s kingdom down south. Having clashed with Sir Keir in recent months on picketing and voting reform, there are perhaps some indicators that Burnham is feeling slightly bruised from being out of the action in SW1.

Katy Balls

Does Starmer have the stomach to scrap the House of Lords?

It’s Labour’s turn to take centre stage today as Keir Starmer attempts to seize the agenda with the launch of his party’s constitutional review. The report – A New Britain – is written by Gordon Brown and has been over two years in the making, with the former prime minister set to present it alongside the Labour leader in Leeds later this morning. Given the party currently enjoys a 20-point lead over the Tories, it’s safe to say the plans will receive plenty of attention and scrutiny. The general thrust of the 155-page report is devolving power, with Labour aides keen to pitch it as what would amount to the

Jack Smith

Will the EU’s oil price cap hurt Russia?

The EU’s import embargo of Russian oil – which comes into force today – plus a price cap on non-EU seaborne exports is intended to hit Russia without damaging the West. It sounds too good to be true, and it probably is. First, there’s the price cap level itself. Originally, the EU had wanted to push for a more comprehensive ban on maritime shipping insurers providing any coverage to vessels carrying Russian oil. But this frightened the US, so what we’re left with is the cap. The final figure, which the EU agreed on at the end of last week, is $60 (£49) per barrel. Russian crude oil sales have

Steerpike

Keir Starmer rules out a return for Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn has been an MP for 40 years, but Keir Starmer has confirmed Corbyn’s time in the Labour party has come to an end. Starmer was asked three times on the Today programme whether Corbyn – who was kicked out in 2020 over his response to the equalities watchdog’s report into antisemitism in the party – would stand as a Labour candidate in Islington North at the next election. Three times, Starmer said his predecessor as Labour leader would not be coming back: ‘I don’t see the circumstance in which that can happen. I don’t see the circumstance in which Jeremy Corbyn will stand as a Labour candidate.’ Starmer’s

David Loyn

Afghanistan’s guerrilla generation: an interview with Ahmad Massoud

Fighting has continued against the Taliban in Afghanistan while the world has not been watching. The commander of the main opposition force, Ahmad Massoud, began with 643 fighters after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, and now claims to have a force of 5,000 across six provinces in a belt in the northeast of the country. In a rare meeting in Tajikistan, where he commands remotely from across the northern border of Afghanistan, the 34-year-old resistance leader told me that western countries are making a mistake by trying to engage with the Taliban. Massoud inherited the mantle of resistance leader from his father, the legendary guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah

Sam Leith

The shabby dishonesty of Matt Hancock’s ‘diaries’

‘Standing in my kitchen in Suffolk after a quiet New Year’s Eve, I scanned my newspaper for clues as to what might be lurking around the corner.’ So run the opening words of yesterday’s first extract of Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against Covid. 1 January. New Year’s Day. And our hero – modest, unassuming, but eternally vigilant, eyes always scanning the horizon – is on duty, even when most of us are nursing a foggy head. Of course, we know now what this man of destiny didn’t know then: that the ‘news-in-brief story about a mystery pneumonia outbreak in China’ that catches his

Sunday

4 Dec 2022

Steerpike

Eddie Izzard loses (again)

Oh dear. It seems that the curse of Izzard has struck again. The stand-up comedian and staunch Labour member has something of an unenviable track record when it comes to personal endorsements, having backed the euro, Ken Livingstone in 2008, Gordon Brown in 2010, ‘Yes2AV’ in 2011, Ed Miliband and then Andy Burnham in 2015, before subsequently advocating Remain in 2016 and then suffering personal defeat in that year’s Labour NEC elections. Undaunted by this litany of failure, Izzard opted in October to stand as the party’s candidate for the safe seat of Sheffield Central. Much hand-wringing followed, with Sir Keir Starmer refusing to say if Izzard, who identifies as