Politics Archives

Monday

14 Mar 2022

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,

David Patrikarakos

Iran and Russia are probing Biden’s weaknesses

The world seems to have got a lot more dangerous since Joe Biden took office last January. It wasn’t long after his inauguration that Russian President Vladimir Putin started massing troops on Ukraine’s border. The Kremlin believes that its American opponent is old and weak, and began testing him as soon as he took office. Now war has come to the European continent once again. Last night it was the turn of the Iranians to test Washington. According to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) at around 1:30 a.m., 12 missiles struck near a new US consulate under construction in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. ‘The attacks resulted in no

Matthew Taylor

Starmer: refugee numbers should be ‘uncapped’

Sir Keir Starmer – Refugees numbers should be ‘uncapped’ The Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer returned to the hot seat this week, this time with Sophy Ridge. Starmer echoed the Prime Minister’s description of Putin as a ‘war criminal’, and derided the government’s efforts to accommodate refugees as ‘too slow, too narrow, too mean’. Ridge asked for his blueprint for what a Labour government would do in this situation: Labour would levy ‘windfall tax’ on oil and gas companies The fallout from the war in Ukraine is destined to exacerbate the cost of living across the world, putting pressure on everything from the price of wheat to the

Steerpike

Will Gove host a refugee?

Whoops! Cripes! The government is in another mess. The cry goes out: send for Gove. Like the elegant Jeeves to Boris’s Bertie Wooster, he answers his master’s desperate call, ready to extricate him from another self-inflicted mess. Now the PM’s latest troubles are not aunts but Ukrainians and the many thousands now fleeing their country. The Home Office are predictably ineffective so it’s once more unto the breach for the oleaginous Aberdonian, the man with more jobs than George Osborne. Levelling up, saving the Union, intergovernmental relations and now processing refugees: is there anything the Gover can’t do? In his interview this morning with Sophy Ridge, the over-worked minister explained how he intends to

Debbie Hayton

Keir Starmer’s gender identity muddle

If you needed any sign that the Labour party is still deeply confused about gender identity and sex, look no further than the Labour leader Keir Starmer’s comments this week. Asked by the Times to define a woman, Starmer replied that: A woman is a female adult, and in addition to that trans women are women, and that is not just my view — that is actually the law. It has been the law through the combined effects of the 2004 [Gender Recognition] Act and the 2010 [Equality] Act. So that’s my view. It also happens to be the law in the United Kingdom. If Keir Starmer thinks that I am

Casey Michel

Who is Ihor Kolomoisky?

The city of Cleveland, Ohio, is hardly considered the most cosmopolitan or globalised city in the U.S. If anything, the Rust Belt city – whose population is less than half of what it was a century ago – is a symbol of industrial decline across America’s heartland, for a region whose best days are clearly behind it. Which is why, as other major American cities like New York or Miami opened their doors to all kinds of oligarchic money out of places like Russia or Ukraine, Cleveland hardly got any attention as a destination for the kinds of illicit wealth spilling out of the former Soviet Union. Investigators searched out

Fraser Nelson

Michael Gove’s new deal for Ukrainian refugees

After last week’s shambles over the handling of Ukrainian refugees, Michael Gove has announced a big shift in UK policy with his version of the so-called ‘Air-Refugee’ schemes that have sprung up on the continent. It’s an Airbnb-style set up where hosts register online saying they’re willing to sponsor guests. Germany’s version (website here) has so far led to 350,000 offers. But the UK system is designed with more friction. Hosts will not be paired with refugees but will have to name someone – when they do, both parties will then have to be vetted by the government. Gove says his version, while uncapped, is likely to lead to ‘tens of thousands’ of offers with hosts and refugees vetted by the government – a

Mark Hollingsworth

Why did it take so long to sanction Roman Abramovich?

On 28 October 2016, I received an email from a well-connected former senior MI6 officer who asked me if I had any material about properties in London owned by wealthy Russians. I was a natural person to ask because I had written a book about the Russian oligarchs and had become an expert on the ownership of expensive houses and luxury apartments in central London. I then discovered that the discreet inquiry was on behalf of the National Security Council who were reviewing the activities and assets of the oligarchs in the UK, including Roman Abramovich. And so I was expecting legislative action soon. After all, I also knew that

David Cohen

Could New Zealand’s property bubble bring down Jacinda Ardern?

The news this week that the price of an average UK home has hit £260,000 came as a bit of a jolt for New Zealanders. Kiwis who obsessively follow such matters were left wondering how even property in London can be cheaper than buying a house over here. The average home in New Zealand costs £520,000, and significantly more again in either of our two major cities, Auckland and Wellington. When Jacinda Ardern became prime minister she promised to address our unsustainable property market which has locked out all but the most privileged youngsters from getting on the ladder. The continued spike in prices shows how little Ardern has delivered.

Saturday

12 Mar 2022

Fraser Nelson

Why isn’t the UK doing more to help Ukrainian refugees?

18 min listen

‘Watch this space,’ the armed force minister James Heappey said when asked whether Britain would make it easier for Ukrainian refugees to come to the country. Still, though, refugees – even those with family connections to the UK – are stuck in Calais and Paris trying to make to our shores. What more should we be doing? Would a Polish model, where refugees are welcomed first and registered later, work? The Spectator’s editor Fraser Nelson speaks to our economics editor Kate Andrews.

Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray, Mary Wakefield and Nicola Shulman

29 min listen

On this episode of Spectator Out Loud, Douglas Murray starts by explaining why C. S. Lewis was right about war. (00:56) Mary Wakefield is up next, looking at the founding myth that Russia and Ukraine are fighting over. (10:18) Nicola Shulman finishes the podcast, reading her piece about Philip Larkin’s big problem. (16:53)

Friday

11 Mar 2022

James Forsyth

Can Boris get the Saudis to pump more oil?

The oil price is up by more than 40 per cent since the start of the year. It is being driven up by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the lack of investment in oil and turning the world economy on and off again: US production is still not back to pre-pandemic levels. In the immediate term, as I say in the Times today, pretty much the only way to bring the price down is to get Saudi Arabia – which has 1.5 to 2 million barrels a day of spare capacity – to pump more. The West’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has always been morally problematic. The justification for it, despite Riyadh’s appalling

Gavin Mortimer

Why are British soldiers deserting to fight in Ukraine?

When my brother was an infantry officer in the early 1990s the soldiers under his command were hard men. Most hailed from the north-east of England; in an earlier era they might have mined coal for a living. They smoked and drank and swore, and they were superb soldiers, as they proved in South Armagh and in Bosnia. It’s safe to assume these men would have struggled as infantrymen in today’s British army. Even the word ‘infantrymen’ would cause problems today. Last year, the Ministry of Defence recruited for a director of diversity and inclusion (salary £110,000 per annum, compared to the £20,000 an infantryman is paid). Meanwhile, in November, it

Fraser Nelson

Boris Johnson rejects Europe’s open approach to Ukrainian refugees

One of the most extraordinary (and moving) videos to have emerged since the invasion of Ukraine shows scenes at Berlin Central Station where refugees are paired upon arrival with locals offering accommodation. An unprecedented crisis has been met with an unprecedented public response – some 350,000 beds have been offered in Germany now. Over a million in Poland. People’s generosity has risen to the challenge – without government getting in the way to slow things down. Could it happen here? We risk ending up doing more than any European country to arm the Ukrainians but less than any other to help refugees Michael Gove is set to launch a British

Steerpike

John Bercow’s unlikely rehabilitation

It’s been a tough week for poor John Bercow. The release of the report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards into his Speakership on Tuesday saw 21 counts of bullying being upheld against him. Since then there have been calls for universities to strip him of his academic posts, while Commons bosses have delivered the ultimate insult: removing his name from the parliamentary gym spin room. Talk about purging the last remnants of a hated former regime. And Steerpike can reveal that Bercow has also now quit as a trustee of Holland Park school, known as ‘the socialist Eton’. His term was due to end in November 2024. A spokesperson for the school told

Katy Balls

What’s the point of the latest sanctions?

11 min listen

While the world is hearing mummers that Vladimir Putin is considering using chemical weapons in Ukraine, the UK government has imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russian Parliamentarians. But will this latest move make the Kremlin pause or is it a largely symbolic gesture? Katy Balls talks with Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.