Politics Archives

Thursday

23 Dec 2021

Labour looks like a proper opposition. That doesn’t mean they’ll win

There’s no point denying it, Labour is doing a bit better these days. Its poll rating is averaging a 39, which is back where it was this time last year after a long dip down into the low thirties that coincided with Boris Johnson’s ‘vaccine bounce’. These days it is the Tories languishing on an average score of 33 per cent. Labour’s shadow cabinet looks more plausible as well. Rachel Reeves is a big step up from Anneliese Dodds as shadow chancellor and Yvette Cooper has been subbed in for the low wattage Nick Thomas-Symonds as shadow home secretary. Wes Streeting seems like a bit of a star in the making

Steerpike

The BBC’s mysterious missing Xinjiang evidence

Parliament has packed up for the holidays, with MPs and peers spending their final days in SW1 desperately dodging the omnipresent Omicron variant. But Mr S was intrigued to see an interesting intervention in the Lords on the day that recess was declared. Crossbench peer Baroness Finlay popped up to grill Foreign Office minister Lord Ahmad about China’s treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, an unusual topic for the professor of palliative medicine to raise. She told Ahmad that she understood the BBC ‘has film evidence of the atrocities’ that have been addressed in the Uyghur Tribunal, but that the Corporation has been ‘reluctant to show the programmes to date, having set the evidential test so unrealistically

John Ferry

Sturgeonomics would have crashed an independent Scotland

The Omicron variant is upon us, which means the return of the Scottish First Minister’s news conferences. These can be testy affairs, as Michael Blackley, the Scottish Daily Mail‘s political editor, found out at a recent one. Blackley had the temerity to politely question the Scottish government’s support for the hospitality sector, asking if Sturgeon had considered relaxing isolation rules for staff. ‘Yeah, that would really help,’ came the sarcastic response. Blackley was then asked if he had ‘listened to a single word I said?’ With the First Minister finishing off by complaining that she doesn’t have the borrowing powers the Treasury has to fund support schemes. Who could have

Steerpike

Did Sturgeon’s publicity trip break NHS rules?

Nicola Sturgeon is continuing her crusade against the Scottish press. Just yesterday, Mr S was pointing out the First Minister’s habit of criticising journalists who question her Covid policies, only for her government to then abruptly U-turn a few days later. Shortly after the article was published, Sturgeon took to Twitter to boast about her latest ‘media-free volunteering session’ at an Edinburgh vaccine centre, declaring that she was ‘not sure I was much help’ but that ‘it gave me good insight into how it all works.’ An apt metaphor for her party’s handling of the Scottish health service. Steerpike isn’t exactly sure how a visit that is publicised to, er, 1.4 million followers can be described

Ross Clark

Sage modellers start to accept that Omicron is milder

Public health officials in Britain and South Africa were on different planets for about a fortnight. While those in South Africa kept presenting data suggesting that Omicron caused less severe disease than earlier variants, scientists in Britain continued to claim it was too early to say. Scenarios published by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) last week pictured a frightening picture of January, suggesting that hospitalisations could peak above previous waves. An assumption was made that Omicron was just as likely to land you in hospital or kill you compared with Delta. As LSHTM admitted, quite a big assumption:- Due to a lack of data, we assume Omicron has the

Wednesday

22 Dec 2021

Steerpike

Mail exodus to The Times continues

The shenanigans at Northcliffe House have given Mr S much to write about in recent months. Whether it’s Geordie Greig’s sudden fall from grace, Ted Verity’s promotion or Lord Rothermere’s designs on DMGT, it appears that the Daily Mail creates as much drama as it reports. Unfortunately it seems that the shock return of Paul Dacre last month has ruffled a fair few feathers in the newsroom, with some hacks fearing a return to what they call the ‘bad old days’. Amid the uncertainty and conflicting reports about comings and goings, it’s unsurprising that some young guns now see their futures elsewhere. For tonight the Times has proudly sent around an email to its staff announcing that the

Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews

Sage memo makes the case for lockdown

On Monday, Covid restrictions were rejected after the cabinet debated the issue robustly for the first time since the pandemic started. The Prime Minister said he’d revisit the decision, so the debate is very much still ongoing. But it wasn’t just ministers meeting that day. Sage assembled its experts as well, with over 70 scientists and government officials in attendance. The minutes, seen by The Spectator, give an interesting summary of the official case for more lockdown restrictions. Everyone is wrestling with two questions; if there are no more restrictions, how far will Omicron case numbers rise? And how will that translate into hospitalisations? If there is reason to believe

Steerpike

Sturgeon’s sneers at the Scottish press

Nationalism, grievance politics and a refusal to accept results which don’t go your way are not the only things Nicola Sturgeon has in common with Donald Trump. For Scotland’s First Minister has launched something of a war on the press in recent weeks, repeatedly rubbishing reporters and outlets which dare to question her handling of Covid. Unfortunately for Sturgeon, this crusade against supposed ‘fake news’ has worked about as well as the SNP’s handling of education, health and criminal justice over the past 14 years. For her hapless Holyrood government has been forced into no less than three U-turns in five days – despite Sturgeon ridiculing journalists who point out the error of

Patrick West

It’s too late to save comedy from ‘cancel culture’

Will comedy become the latest victim of ‘cancel culture’? Dame Maureen Lipman fears as much. ‘Cancel culture, this cancelling, this punishment, it’s everywhere,’ she told the BBC yesterday. She says that the world of comedy is in danger of being ‘wiped out’ because comedians are scared that audiences will take offence, and that they self-censor their material as a precaution. ‘It’s in the balance, whether we’re ever going to be funny again,’ she said. It would be an ironic tragedy if this were true, because in no other field of entertainment as comedy has ‘cancel culture’ been at its most insidious, relentless and blatant. Lipman’s warning is therefore unfounded, superficially

Steerpike

Coming soon: Andrew Adonis’s Blair best-seller

It’s always difficult to know what to get a politics-mad relative at Christmas. Another Private Eye annual perhaps? Tickets to see Matt Forde’s stand-up tour? A Blu Ray box set of The Thick Of It? Or yet another ‘hilarious’ satirically themed book like ‘Five on Brexit Island‘ or ‘The Illustrated Tweets of Donald Trump.‘ Fortunately for those long-suffering politicos anticipating several cheeseboards and a ‘witty’ festive mug, help will be at hand for next year due to the imminent arrival of what will surely be the Christmas bestseller of 2022. For word reaches Mr S that Lord Adonis, Britain’s most ironically-titled peer, is turning his quill to a subject very close to his

Julie Bindel

Most-read 2021: The Green party’s woman problem

We’re closing 2021 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 10: Julie Bindel’s piece from March on the Green party’s muddle over trans rights: At the Green party spring conference this weekend, a motion which sought to introduce a party policy on women’s sex-based rights was defeated. A whopping 289 delegates (out of 521) voted to not include biological females in the party’s list of oppressed groups. All the motion aimed to do was simply add a paragraph to the Green party’s ‘Our Rights and Responsibilities Policy’. The motion reads: This is to include the protected characteristic of sex as currently our Record of Policy statements supports

James Kirkup

In praise of Harry Miller’s fight for free speech

Almost three years ago, I spoke on the phone to a man called Harry Miller. A Lincolnshire businessman, he’d just been interviewed by the police because someone had complained about things he’d written, on Twitter, about sex and gender and transgenderism. He was angry, and rightly so. After all, he’d broken no law, and even the police force involved confirmed that. Instead, he was contacted and a record was made of his conduct under rules around ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (NCHIs). These were introduced after the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, with the intention of giving the police a means of tracking behaviour that, while not crossing the threshold of a

Tuesday

21 Dec 2021

Kate Andrews

Covid restrictions could make it almost impossible to lower taxes

After growing calls from retail and hospitality for financial support to weather the ‘unofficial lockdown’ plaguing these industries, the Treasury today has responded. After a week of conversations with business leaders, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a £1 billion support package this afternoon, which includes one-off grants worth up to £6,000 for hospitality and leisure businesses in England, as well as government cover of Statutory Sick Pay for workers off with Covid-related illness, which can be claimed by small and medium-sized firms. Sunak’s decision to deliver a support scheme isn’t all that surprising, given the Chancellor’s generous track record with these packages in the past. While businesses legally remain open,

Mark Jit

SPI-M modellers: a response to our critics

In late November, scientists in South Africa and Botswana identified a new variant of the virus that causes Covid. This variant — later named Omicron — was spreading rapidly throughout South Africa, particularly in Gauteng, its most populous province. As well as reporting these concerning epidemiological facts, South African scientists worked quickly to identify Omicron’s genetic sequence and to alert the world with further bad news: Omicron has a large number of mutations in the region of the virus that our immune system recognises after we are vaccinated. In other words, it would be harder for antibodies to latch onto the new variant and destroy it. The final key piece of

Steerpike

What is the point of the Metropolitan Police?

As the year draws to a close, it’s worth reflecting on which of our national institutions came out of 2021 in the worst shape. There’s the Foreign Office of course, whose failure to anticipate or prepare for the fall of Kabul was so brutally exposed by its top mandarin’s testimony earlier this month. There’s the Church of England, whose war on parishes came close to whipping up an Anglican insurrection. And then there’s the Conservative party, which seems to have embraced the dirigisme of Pompidou with none of the shiny infrastructure to match. But in a crowded field, the Metropolitan Police surely take the gold medal for the most incompetent and inept

Katy Balls

What happened at Boris’s Covid Cabinet meeting?

15 min listen

Boris Johnson chaired a Cabinet meeting yesterday to discuss the imposition of new Covid restrictions over Christmas. After three hours, the Prime Minister emerged to announce that no new restrictions had been decided on. These meetings are usually called for the Cabinet to rubber-stamp a decision made by Boris and his advisers, so what’s changed? Reports today suggest that the Prime Minister was actively encouraging opposing voices, and that a majority of the Cabinet was against bringing in new rules. After the resignation of David Frost, has Boris been forced to accept a new way of decision-making? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews. On the podcast, Fraser

Annabel Denham

Should businesses receive more Covid support?

As government considers whether to lock us down once again, should it put economic support for businesses affected back on the table? The combination of Plan B and Boris Johnson’s insistence that we modify our social behaviour has led to empty cinemas, ghost trains, cancelled gigs and ‘postponed’ Christmas parties. Just as the economy was getting back on its feet, the unofficial guidance to avoid social events is knee-capping it once again, forcing the Chancellor to not only drop his December plans but to announce yet more taxpayer-funded business compensation. So far he’s fallen down on the side of more support, though nothing (yet) like last time. Businesses in England that

Patrick O’Flynn

It’s time to end the era of forced lockdown restrictions

Monday’s Cabinet meeting held over Zoom was a fraught affair by the sounds of it. Michael Gove and Sajid Javid were reportedly the leading voices calling for more restrictions on household mixing and on the hospitality sector, while the likes of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss argued that the data did not warrant such a draconian and retrograde step. The Prime Minister seems to have been swaying somewhere in the middle. In the end it was agreed that no new restrictions would be imposed that day but the data would be constantly analysed with a view to imposing restrictions swiftly and before Christmas if alarming trends were picked up on

Steerpike

Foreign honours for Hunt and May

Not many people here in Westminster have a good word to say about the Theresa May years. But down in tiny San Marino, all that appears to be very different. For the landlocked republic recently chose to lavish two of its most prestigious honours on May and her Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, with both flying there in October to have their honours conferred. Hunt received the prestigious Order of Saint Agatha at the rank Grand Officer; May’s was even better, receiving the same order at the highest rank: Grand Cross. The awards were given, according to the Consulate of the Republic of San Marino to the UK, for May’s merits ‘not only as

Steerpike

Watch: darts fans jeer Johnson

Oh dear. It appears that Boris Johnson’s love-in with the great British public appears to have well and truly concluded. Let’s hope that in the wake of ‘Partygate’, Omicron and various scandals, our under-fire Prime Minister didn’t turn on the darts last night for some much-needed respite. For there, on primetime television, the crowd at London’s Alexandra Palace burst into loud and sustained chants of ‘Stand up if you hate Boris’ that echoed around the 2022 Darts World Championship arena. Others held up signs saying ‘All round to Boris’s for afters’ and with pictures of cheese and wine, branded ‘This is a business meeting.’ It’s not the first time a