Politics Archives

Saturday

19 Nov 2022

Rishi Sunak’s image problem

Back in February the New Statesman reported that Keir Starmer’s inner-circle had concluded that Rishi Sunak was no longer to be feared as a potential successor to Boris Johnson because he was ‘crap at politics’. At the time this appeared to be a pronouncement that fell under the ‘doth protest too much’ rule, coined by William Shakespeare back in the day, especially given that the briefing also alleged Labour considered Liz Truss a more formidable threat to its electoral fortunes. But the first month of Sunak’s premiership suggests the Labour briefer was onto something. After the disastrous collapse of Truss’s economic strategy, the failure of which had been accurately predicted

Friday

18 Nov 2022

Stephen Daisley

Britain is no country for young men

If I had to give one piece of advice to Britons under 30 it would be this: go. Leave. Skedaddle. Get one of those work visas for New Zealand or Canada and start a new life. Fret not over the details. Those can be worked out once you’re there. Don’t make excuses, don’t defer, don’t delay. Trust me, you’ll regret it one day. Think of Britain as the creepy, cobweb-bound manor from a thousand schlocky horror movies: get out while you still can. Aptly for a horror flick, the call is coming from inside the House. In delivering his Autumn Statement to the Commons, the Chancellor announced ‘the biggest ever increase in the state pension’. This

Katy Balls

Tory truce weathers the Autumn Statement

One of the most striking parts of Jeremy Hunt’s performance in the Commons chamber yesterday was how quiet MPs on the backbenches behind him were. There was little in the way of cheering as the Chancellor used his Autumn Statement to set out a series of tax rises and spending cuts. The front pages today reflect the unappetising package Hunt presented – with the Daily Mail accusing the Tories of ‘soaking the strivers’ and the Daily Telegraph lead headline quoting an economist who says the Chancellor has combined ‘the rhetoric of George Osborne and the policies of Gordon Brown’. While Conservative MPs don’t like parts of it, there is a sense that it could

James Forsyth

Britain needs its missing workers back

Amid all the economic gloom at the moment, the unemployment figure is one bright spot. It is just 3.6 per cent, down from 3.8 per cent this year, and close to a historic low. But, as I say in the Times this morning, even this glimmer of hope is tarnished. The low unemployment number disguises how many people have left the labour force: more than 20 per cent of working-age Brits are economically inactive, meaning they are neither in work nor looking for it. More than five million are claiming out-of-work benefits. Even in the coming recession, unemployment won’t exceed 5 per cent, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. (Remember

Michael Simmons

Ian Blackford clings to power following attempted coup

Last night was shaping up to be a night of the long sgian dubhs for the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford. SNP backbenchers have grown unhappy with Blackford’s leadership after several scandals during his tenure. Yesterday a challenge briefly emerged from Aberdeen South MP Stephen Flynn, though Blackford has managed to survive the attempted coup. Flynn has reportedly been on manoeuvres against Blackford for months. Yesterday he made his move, informing the party’s compliance officer Ian McCann he planned to challenge Blackford at the Westminster group’s AGM in December. The next step of the plan was for a gang of so-called men in grey kilts, led by culture spokesman Brendan

Cindy Yu

Will Hunt’s budget survive scrutiny?

9 min listen

The front pages are almost universally bad today, but the government is more concerned with the reaction from the markets, which, so far, have not turned against yesterday’s budget. Could this high tax low spend fiscal statement yet pass scrutiny, given the torrid economic climate at large? Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Steerpike

Chris Bryant blunders (again)

Oh dear. It seems that the Scarlet Pimpernel of politics is at it again. Chris Bryant likes to portray himself as the sleazebuster-in-chief, fearlessly standing up for standards in public life. But in his haste to hold his fellow politicos to account, it seems that Bryant has blundered in his eagerness for retweets. Steerpike’s colleague Kate Andrews appeared on Question Time last night, prompting Bryant to fire off a post complaining that the BBC hadn’t accompanied her appearance with a mention that she ‘is part of the Institute for Economic Affairs, which is notoriously secretive about their funding’. But as others were quick to point out, the BBC did refer

Wolfgang Münchau

The UK is getting caught in an austerity trap

The teenagers are once again in charge of UK fiscal policy. The teenagers are not the Chancellor and his team, but those who set the tone of the fiscal debate in the media and the financial markets. The reasons the Conservatives are now embracing austerity is the fear that higher interest rates will kill house prices. This is mad The teenage scribbler is usually a young, pro-austerity banker, with no formal education in economics or economic history. The scribbler pretends that whatever happens is happening for the first time. The scribbler was still on the playground when the previous generation of scribblers talked their governments into austerity. That was not

James Kirkup

Cutting immigration means higher taxes

‘Only the higher-than-expected numbers of migrants coming to the UK under the post-Brexit migration regime adds materially to prospects for potential output growth over the coming five years relative to the assumptions that we made in March.’ That’s from the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) assessment accompanying the Autumn Statement. It’s a pretty striking line: the state’s official analyst of the public finances says that the only good thing to happen to the UK economy since March is higher immigration. How much higher? In March, the OBR produced an economic forecast that assumed net migration would run at around 130,000 a year for the next five years. Now it puts

Naï Simpson

Cambridge University is blind to reality in the gender debate

Newnham College, Cambridge, was once a bastion of feminist activism. No longer. This summer my curiosity was drawn to two women whispering to one another in the college cafe. They were, as it happened, a senior fellow and doctoral student; leaning over their table, they spoke furtively for fear that someone might overhear their conversation about gender politics. At Cambridge, professors and students alike are afraid to speak critically, or at all, on the subject of gender. Believing that biological sex is binary and unchangeable – and that gender is culturally constructed – may not seem controversial. Yet gender-critical feminists who hold such mainstream views are often slapped with a

John Connolly

Jeremy Hunt defends his Autumn Statement

The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has woken up to a harsh set of front pages this morning following his Autumn Statement, with the Mail accusing the Tories of ‘soaking the strivers’ and the Telegraph lead headline quoting an economist who says the Chancellor has combined ‘the rhetoric of George Osborne and the policies of Gordon Brown’. In particular the Chancellor has come under fire for raising the tax burden to a post-war high while also overseeing what the Office for Budget Responsibility says will be the biggest fall in living standards over the same period. The Chancellor therefore set out this on the morning broadcast round to steady the ship and see

Ali Ansari

Is Iran going to execute its protestors?

Are protestors in Iran going to be sentenced to death? That grim question will be on the mind of many Iranians today, after protestors reportedly threw petrol bombs last night at the former home of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Insults to supreme leaders past and present carry the death sentence in Iran. Further reports that 227 members of the Iranian parliament had signed a statement declaring the protestors ‘enemies of God’ and calling for them to be executed also went viral this week. The story managed to elicit a wave of condemnation across social media, the wider press and even led to Canadian prime minister Justin

Thursday

17 Nov 2022

Zoe Strimpel

Jeremy Hunt is wrong about ‘British compassion’

Delivering his Autumn Statement on Thursday, Jeremy Hunt specified two ‘great national’ qualities: genius and ‘British compassion’. The Chancellor’s announcements made it clear what he was doing: raiding the incomes of the decently well off to fund benefits rises and protect pensions. Talk of our shared compassion then seems a bit off. Politicians should exploit ideas of Britishness less, or at least do so less explicitly. They should focus on what Britain actually needs in order to be uniquely good in a British way. That isn’t hollow words for a population imagined to be at Key Stage One. It’s coherence: a decent economic model, a political philosophy, and a theory

Sally Feldman

Why didn’t Jeremy Hunt mention childcare in his Autumn Statement?

Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement had a curious omission: childcare. The pleas of desperate parents who gathered on Whitehall last month during ‘The March of the Mummies’ appear to have fallen on deaf ears. Demonstrators gathered outside Downing Street banging drums and shouting: ‘Dear Rishi Sunak, we want our choices back.’ So why didn’t the Chancellor listen? Britain’s childcare costs are already among the highest in the world, with the recession and soaring inflation increasing pressures on parents. One way to reduce the burden would be to make nurseries cheaper. For many parents, is cripplingly unaffordable, especially as the current subsidy of 15 hours a week only applies to three and four-year olds.

William Moore

The squeeze: how long will the pain last?

40 min listen

This week: How long will the pain last? The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews asks this in her cover piece this week, reflecting on Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement. She joins the podcast with Professor David Miles, economy expert at the Office for Budget Responsibility, to discuss the new age of austerity (00:58). Also on the podcast: After Donald Trump announced that he will be running for office in 2024, Freddy Gray writes in the magazine about the never ending Trump campaign. He speaks to Joe Walsh, 2020 Republican presidential candidate, about whether Trump could win the nomination (18:42). And finally: In the arts lead in The Spectator Mathew Lyons celebrates

Isabel Hardman

Will the Autumn Statement break the Tory truce?

12 min listen

The Conservative party is still digesting Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement, a far cry from the last fiscal statement from this party. Have the Prime Minister and the Chancellor managed to deliver a budget that hits the political sweet point of cornering Labour without splitting their own party? Isabel Hardman talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Lloyd Evans

Jeremy Hunt is the heir to Gordon Brown

Jeremy Hunt – known to broadcasters by a slightly different surname) – delivered his Autumn Statement today. He did so on behalf of ‘the British,’ he said. All the way through his speech, it was British this, British that. He vowed to ‘respond to an international crisis with British values,’ whatever that means. He talked of ‘a recession made in Russia but a recovery made in Britain.’ And he claimed, rather eerily, that ‘to be British is to be compassionate,’ as if this were a heritable quality conferred by evolution on one race alone. It sounded like jingoism fuelled by globalist arrogance. On and on he flannelled. ‘British innovation…British resilience…turning

Isabel Hardman

How Hunt wants to deal with the NHS

One of the few jokes in Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement was when the Chancellor started talking about himself. As is the custom in fiscal events, he praised a colleague who had come up with an idea that he was now adopting, though it was immediately obvious that this member was Hunt: On staff shortages, the former chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee put forward the case for a long-term workforce plan. He even wrote a book about them. I have listened carefully to his proposals and believe they have merit. So the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS will publish an independently-verified plan for

Nick Cohen

Labour can’t believe they are heading for victory

Last night, Labour politicians wondered how to respond to the challenges the Chancellor was sending their way. Do you accept the Conservatives’ real-term spending cuts and tax rises? How would you revive the economy? The best answer came from a shadow minister who told me ‘We should just say “imagine how good this country could be if we had a government that didn’t do mad stuff”.’ We Won’t Do Mad Stuff is not the most inspiring of electoral slogans. For years voters across the West have moved towards Trump-style politicians who promised to do precisely that. Where is the vision in not doing mad stuff? Where is the hope that

Steerpike

Murdoch stumps up for Boris’s Montana meeting

Boris Johnson hasn’t always enjoyed the best relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s titles, having once been sacked as a Times trainee for fabricating quotes. But relations between the former Tory leader and the Sun king himself have been cordial for much of the past decade. And evidence for that is found in the newly updated register of MPs’ interests. Johnson’s latest entry in the list shows that he flew out for a business meeting in Montana between 11-12 October last month – just over a week before Liz Truss’s resignation prompted Johnson to mount an abortive comeback effort to succeed her. Murdoch last year purchased the 340,000-acre Beaverhead Ranch in the