Politics Archives

Wednesday

16 Mar 2022

Steerpike

Fact check: did Farage get £548,000 from Russia?

Chris Bryant has been keen to make the most of the Ukraine crisis, demanding greater sanctions on Putin’s cronies at every turn. The Labour MP scored an early hit when he used parliamentary privilege to reveal that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich was identified by the Home Office in 2019 as having links to the Russian state as well as to ‘corrupt activity and practices.’ But his latest effort to repeat the stunt seems to have backfired somewhat, after the Standards Committee chair turned his guns on a new target: Nigel Farage. Bryant read out a list of names to MPs yesterday, demanding that further sanctions be imposed on them too. He told the

Tuesday

15 Mar 2022

Steerpike

Why do Russian tennis stars need to condemn Putin?

Nigel Huddleston is Under-Secretary of State for Sport, Tourism, Heritage and Civil Society, hardly the biggest job in government. Yet he seems a little inebriated on what little authority he has – at least if his latest remarks to the Department for the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee are anything to go by. Huddleston has taken on board the mood of the moment. He appreciates that sport must make a stand against Vlad the Invader and the invasion of Ukraine, and which sensible person would disagree? But boycotting Russia from major competitions and clamping down on dodgy oligarch football owners isn’t sufficient, apparently. Huddleston wants more. He suggested to the

James Forsyth

David Frost’s solution to cool UK-EU relations

Since David Frost quit the government in December over its political direction, he has not said that much about the future of UK-EU affairs. But in the Churchill lecture at the University of Zurich tonight, he sets out a potential new basis for relations. His tone is warm and marks a deliberate attempt to move on from the scratchy relations of the last few years: he argues that there is a ‘need to recognise that the EU is a natural ally of the United Kingdom, and that we should seek – as sovereign equals – ways to cooperate and work together more.’ Frost’s speech is a sign of a reminder that there is

Cindy Yu

Is China’s zero Covid game up?

Omicron has broken through China’s Covid wall. On Tuesday, the country saw a record-high of more than 5,000 cases, the highest number since the original Wuhan outbreak. To Brits (and most people around the world), that might sound like a laughably small number – but, as you might expect, China’s zero Covid machine has jumped into action, leading to a disproportionate, severe response. In the most afflicted areas like Shenzhen and Changchun, public transport has been suspended, non-essential businesses closed, residential compounds locked down. People can leave their homes to take part in compulsory city-wide mass testing (social media is flooded with videos of lengthy unsocially-distanced queues at test sites)

Henry Hill

Will Westminster ever fix the Northern Ireland protocol?

Last night’s spat between the Foreign Office and the Treasury was hardly reassuring for Unionists. If you missed it, a Treasury amendment proposed a change to customs regulations where ‘UK’ was replaced with ‘Great Britain’. What’s so bad about that, you might ask. The answer is that it would have codified the carving-out of Northern Ireland as a separate legal entity. This is something that the protocol establishes: Northern Ireland continues to follow EU customs rules while Great Britain is able to diverge. But this breaking off of Northern Ireland is something the government was supposed to be trying to prevent. Sure enough, the amendment was pulled and Liz Truss

Steerpike

Have sleazebusters gone soft on MPs?

It was just 12 weeks ago that a sleaze scandal threatened to rock the Commons to its core. Owen Paterson’s efforts to overturn the findings of a probe into his lobbying activities triggered weeks of revelations, controversy and bad headlines about MPs’ outside earnings and second jobs. But three months on, are things going back to the bad old ways already? Take the register of members’ interests, on which our elected masters detail their consultancies, part-time gigs and share dealings. This list – supposedly designed to encourage transparency and enable scrutiny – is already difficult to scrutinise. Data scientists complain that it lists information in a highly variable free text

Katy Balls

Tory unease builds over the Northern Ireland protocol

Will Boris Johnson ever trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol? The Prime Minister has been under increasing pressure to do so from the right flank of his MPs – particularly in the wake of partygate. Conservative MPs have been going into No. 10 with a list of demands in return for their continuing support. However, the situation in Ukraine has moved the dial for many in government. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has reportedly backed a delay in triggering Article 16 Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has reportedly backed a delay in triggering Article 16 and instead wants to help Northern Irish businesses with an ‘economic stimulus’ package, including tax cuts. There

Max Jeffery

Will Saudi oil really fix Britain’s energy crisis?

11 min listen

Boris Johnson is travelling to the Middle East tonight, where he’ll be meeting Gulf leaders and trying to convince them to pump more oil. With Britain’s energy price cap likely to rise to £3,000 in October, how important is it for the Prime Minister to get what he wants? And will more supply alone fix the problem? Max Jeffery speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Annabel Denham

Can Britain afford to spend more on defence?

With rumours swirling that the Ministry of Defence will see its budget boosted in next week’s spring statement it’s hard not to wonder: was Donald Trump right? The former President repeatedly criticised Nato members in Europe for not contributing enough to support the alliance, relying instead on the US to shoulder the burden. And while the UK has met the Nato commitment to spend 2 per cent of its GDP on defence, we’ve seen a massive decrease in our defence budget over the last half century. As war returns to Europe, a consensus view has emerged – that the UK grew complacent when it came to security. We recoiled at

Steerpike

Coming soon: Barry Gardiner – The Movie

With the BAFTAs last Sunday and the Oscars next week, film award season is well underway. And while it’s too late for new entries this year, Mr S hears of a dark horse for next year’s competitions. Step forward, Labour’s Barry Gardiner, who is the unlikely star of a documentary about his recent private members’ bill to ban ‘fire and rehire’ practices. Gardiner, Jeremy Corbyn’s colourful shadow trade secretary, ran a series of eye-catching stunts to raise publicity for the campaign, including gatecrashing the 1922 drinks at Tory party conference: a move that prompted frenzied speculation of an imminent defection. His efforts to change the law might have been unsuccessful but at least

Steerpike

Watch: peer rapped for snoozing

War in Ukraine, soaring inflation, spiralling energy bills and the shadow of the bomb – things are all looking pretty grim in Westminster at present. So what better place to find solace and a quiet moment to reflect than the rarified atmosphere of the House of Lords? Unfortunately for one septuagenarian, meditative contemplation went slightly too far yesterday after the ageing peer accidentally drifted off to sleep. The offender in question was the ironically named Anthony Young, who at 79, is by no means the oldest member of their noble lords’ chamber. Popping up last night in the genetically modified organisms debate, Lord Young, a trade unionist and Labour party peer, was slapped down by

Monday

14 Mar 2022

Steerpike

Macron, the reverse Zelensky

Which Western leader has been the most shameless when it comes to Ukraine? America’s Vice President ‘Calamity’ Kamala Harris is another contender, given her bizarre, hysterical laughter when asked at a press conference about Kiev’s refugees. Nicola ‘Strangelove’ Sturgeon is up there, after her no-fly zone intervention while Mario Draghi looked like Marie Antoinette without her charms after reportedly demanding opt-outs from sanctions on luxury Italian goods. But for Mr S, there’s only one winner. Step forth Emmanuel Macron, the politician whose pronouns are moi/moi/moi. The French president has not had a great war, trying to negotiate mano a mano with Putin down an absurdly long table and ending up being played like

Isabel Hardman

Gove is clearing up Patel’s mess

Michael Gove has a reputation as a minister for clearing up colleagues’ messes – often the secretary of state he has replaced in a department – in a polite but very conspicuous fashion. Today it was Home Secretary Priti Patel’s turn to see what it was like to get a visit from Gove and his dustpan and brush. As Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary, Gove is responsible for one of the routes by which Ukrainian refugees can come to Britain, and he announced the details of the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme in the Commons this afternoon. This has largely been passed to him because the Home Office is in such

Steerpike

Sturgeon’s pay rise grandstanding

After apologising to witches and advocating nuclear armageddon, what next for Nicola Sturgeon? Why, a healthy dollop of virtue-signalling, of course. The selfie-loving satrap spotted an opportunity to put some clear blue water between her and Westminster this morning, leaping on a tweet from today’s No. 10 briefing that confirmed Boris Johnson would accept the forthcoming pay rise being given by IPSA to all MPs. Sturgeon declared to her 1.4 million followers on Twitter that: Ministers in @scotgov have not taken a pay rise since 2008 and I can confirm we will not do so this year either. We donate increases back to the public purse for spending on services. Where

Steerpike

Matt Hancock’s refugee embrace

Who should be on this year’s Honours’ List? For Mr Steerpike, the answer is clear: Matt Hancock, MBE, for services to comedy. In recent months the rule-breaking romantic has performed a series of eye-catching antics to try and aid his bid back to power. There was the Capital Jingle Bell Ball where he rocked up with Gina looking like a metrosexual Bond villain. There was the Serpentine swimming sesh when he ended up in hot water and the excruciating podcast interview in which he spoke about casual sex. And then of course there was the HarperCollins incident where the American publishing house had to distance themselves from reports Hancock was planning a

Steerpike

Saj’s struggling NHS revolution

Sajid Javid was something of a breath of fresh air when he was appointed as Health Secretary last June. Gone was the libidinous, lockdown-loving Matt Hancock; in came the Thatcherite free-marketeer promising a ‘return to normalcy.’ Since then, some of the shine has come off the Saj. First, there was the debacle over Covid passes at Christmas. And now the Health Secretary faces the perennial problem which faced his predecessors: how to pay for a creaking health service with an ageing population? In his first major policy speech last week, Javid spoke candidly to the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). He warned that the NHS is on an ‘unsustainable financial trajectory’ and urged new methods to ‘reduce

Katy Balls

Will Boris Johnson charm the Saudis?

14 min listen

Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has caused the prices of oil and gas to skyrocket. One of the Prime Minster’s strategies to combat this appears to be a visit Saudi Arabia this week, where he’ll ask Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman to release more oil. But what’s the chance of this working? Katy Balls is joined by James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Steerpike

Priti’s battle against tech giants backfires

Priti Patel is not a fan of big tech. The Home Secretary has spent much of her three years in office decrying the giants of Silicon Valley, frequently railing against the likes of Facebook, TikTok and Twitter for various failings. She’s ordered them to remove posts promoting illegal Channel crossings, ‘live up to their moral duty’ by tackling online child abuse and attacked them for publishing ‘appalling hate’ on their platforms. Her department has also mooted banning online anonymity and proposed an advertising campaign which criticises Facebook for daring to use end-to-end encryption for its messages. Given all the dastardly things which occur on their platforms, just who exactly is funding such firms? Turns out the answer

Sam Leith

Britain’s shameful response to the Ukraine crisis

Perhaps you’re of the opinion that Ukrainian refugees aren’t our problem, that the world has always been full of foreigners doing ghastly things to each-other, and we can’t be expected to change the settled migration policy of our country just because of a war. Perhaps you wonder why, if we’ve been talking about using gunboats to repel boatloads of Libyans or Syrians and were forced to be ‘realistic’ about the number of people we could accept from Afghanistan, we’re now getting sentimental about Ukrainians. Perhaps you think that taking people in sounds great on paper but someone’s going to have to pay for it – and what with the energy

Sunday

13 Mar 2022

Stephen Daisley

The uncertain future of the Equality Act

Sir Keir Starmer’s interpretation of the Equality Act has caused something of a stir. The Labour leader cited the Brown-era legislation to support his assertion that ‘trans women are women’ and that this ‘happens to be the law in the United Kingdom’. This reading of the Act has drawn criticism from gender-critical feminists, including the trans writer Debbie Hayton, who states: If Keir Starmer thinks that I am a woman, I am delighted to tell him the truth. Transwomen (like me) are male, while women (like my wife) are female. Biology does not lie, male is not female, and therefore transwomen are not women. For all my many other sins,