Politics Archives

Friday

20 Aug 2021

Sturgeon’s coalition deal is a masterstroke

The deal struck between Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Greens takes Scotland’s devolved government into new territory. For one, it is the first time a Green party has been part of a ruling administration anywhere in the UK. For another, it is a different kind of governing alliance from that which we’re used to in Britain (though less so in Northern Ireland). It is not quite a full-blown coalition like the Cameron-Clegg government — the pact, published this afternoon, outlines areas where the two parties will continue to express separate positions — but nor is it a mere confidence and supply arrangement like the one Theresa May secured with Arlene

Ross Clark

Greta Thunberg is right

I am not usually on the same page as Greta Thunberg but she is absolutely right when she accuses the UK of lying about cutting its carbon emissions by 44 per cent since 1990. I have heard ministers repeatedly make this claim on radio and television while hardly ever being challenged on it — so I am thankful that Thurnberg has done what others have failed to do. The government’s 44 per cent claim is based on its official figures for territorial emissions — i.e. those physically spewed out within the UK. It excludes emissions from international shipping, aviation, the manufacture of goods elsewhere in the world for the benefit

Cindy Yu

Is Raab the victim of a witch hunt?

14 min listen

While Dominic Raab continues to weather charges of incompetence and call for resignation, it is the Health Secretary Sajid Javid who might not have any time for a holiday come autumn. Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, is seeing a rush of new Covid cases. Could mean a wave of Covid and flu, later this year? Cindy Yu talks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman.

Steerpike

Which lobbyists run MPs’ interest groups?

David Cameron’s links to Greensill have brought the issue of lobbying back into the spotlight. Next month the Committee on Standards will be progressing its wide-ranging inquiry into All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) – the informal cross-party organisations run by and for MPs. Many choose to bring in organisations from outside Parliament to administer their activities. The early stages of the resumed inquiry will focus on the risks of APPGs being used as a vehicle for improper access or influence. It’s the first investigation of its kind since the last Standards Committee probe in 2013; since then the number of such groups have ballooned further, with more than 700 APPGs now active

Isabel Hardman

Raab comes out fighting

Dominic Raab is not budging in his conviction that he did everything he could for Afghanistan while he was on his Cretan holiday. The Foreign Secretary has issued a statement in which he argues that the recommendation from his civil servants to call the Afghan foreign minister was ‘quickly overtaken by events’ and that he passed the call onto a junior minister ‘because I was prioritising security and capacity at the airport’. He then argues that this priority ‘was the right one’ and points out the numbers of people who have been evacuated. ‘They simply do not have a plan. They looked so small compared to the backbenchers like Tom

Steerpike

Britain’s wokest club returns

Steerpike was delighted to see the return of Cherie Blair to the spotlight this week. The leading barrister and better half of former PM Tony has joined a campaign to force the men-only Garrick club to admit women, signing a petition which calls on the establishment fixture to change its rules. The Garrick boasts cabinet ministers, academics and mandarins among its members and has long-enjoyed a reputation as a favourite haunt of Supreme Court justices. Signing the petition, Cherie recalled watching her fellow trainee barrister and future husband Tony being admitted into the club in 1976, while she was shut outside, describing the lack of progress since as ‘outrageous.’ And the top QC has been doing her bit to tackle

Gavin Mortimer

France is nervous about welcoming a wave of Afghan refugees

Emmanuel Macron has once more infuriated many in France, but this time it has nothing to do with Covid passports or mandatory vaccination. In an address to the nation this week, the president discussed the disturbing scenes from Kabul as the Taliban invaded the capital of Afghanistan. France, he said, would be a haven for those Afghans ‘who share our values’ but nevertheless the country must ‘anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migratory flows that would endanger the migrants and risk encouraging trafficking of all kinds.’ His rhetoric went down badly with much of the French left. ‘Sordid’ was how two MPs of La France Insoumise summed up the

Katherine Bayford

How America failed to learn its lessons from Vietnam

The hasty withdrawal from Kabul has inevitably been compared to the Fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. Pictures of a Chinook flying over the US embassy in the Afghan capital to pluck staff to safety did bear something of a resemblance to the airlift of 1975. But is the comparison fair? Joe Biden, at least, has been keen – for understandable reasons – to deny that Afghanistan is anything like Vietnam. A month ago, Biden told a reporter he saw ‘zero’ parallel between the Vietnamese and Afghan withdrawals: ‘The Taliban is not the same as the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of

Thursday

19 Aug 2021

Steerpike

Labour frontbencher hires Paul Mason’s services

This week Labour has been making much hay out of the Afghanistan debacle. Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy is all over the news berating Boris Johnson for not taking enough refugees, not being prepared for the collapse of the Afghan army and for not sacking Dominic Raab over his holiday shenanigans. There have, admittedly, been few actual policy suggestions for what could have been done differently but the collective tone of Nandy and her colleagues has been one of shock, angst and despair at the way Western forces have left the conflict-ravaged country. So Mr S was intrigued to discover that Nandy’s fellow frontbencher John Healey has been paying for the services of one comrade who

Cindy Yu

Should Dominic Raab be sacked?

11 min listen

Pressure on the Foreign Secretary is piling up after the Daily Mail revealed today that Raab had rejected the strong advice of Foreign Office civil servants to call his counterpart in the Afghan government before the weekend, to ensure the safe departure of interpreters from the country. Instead, his junior minister Zac Goldsmith took the call. Could – or should – Dominic Raab be sacked? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman.

Paul Wood

America abandoned this fight before the Afghans did

39 min listen

On this week’s podcast: In the latest issue of The Spectator, we cover the Afghanistan issue extensively, looking at everything from why the West was doomed from the start, to how events in Afghanistan have transformed central Asian politics. On the podcast, journalist Paul Wood and our own deputy editor Freddy Gray, both of whom feature in this week’s issue, join Lara to talk Biden, Boris and the new ‘progressive’ Taliban. (00:37) ‘This is not your father’s Taliban’ – Paul Wood Next up, thousands of women whose menstrual cycles have been affected by the Covid vaccine have now come forward to make their symptoms known, including our host Lara Prendergast,

Steerpike

The only way is Essex for cash strapped Commons

If politics is show business for ugly people, then parliament is the stage on which they shine. And since 2014 – when the first major Hollywood film was shot at the Palace of Westminster – Commons bosses have raised desperately needed funds for the site by charging media crews access to shoot here. Despite fears that such plans risked turning the institution into a ‘theme park’, figures obtained by Mr S show that parliament raised some £223,883 from 106 requests for such filming between January 2014 and November 2020. Steerpike was intrigued to peruse the records of such requests to find out who exactly has been filming here. Many of the requests are, as expected,

Steerpike

Test and Trace’s multimillion merchandise

Before the vaccine roll out, it’s easy to forget now how much faith was placed in NHS Test and Trace. Announcing the new system in spring last year, the then Health Secretary Matt Hancock lauded contact tracing, claiming it would enable an NHS clinician and the person with the virus to work together ‘like detectives’ to identify the possible movements of the virus. Fifteen months on, such optimism has long gone as costs have spiralled. In June this year, the National Audit Office reported there were still significant weaknesses in the system, particularly around slow turnaround times for test results. It came two months after the Commons Public Accounts Committee concluded there was ‘no clear

Freddy Gray

The Afghan withdrawal may not hurt Joe Biden

When was the only time America’s left-liberal media gave President Trump any real credit? The answer is 7 April 2017, after he threw a few fairly pointless missiles at Assad’s forces in Syria. ‘I think Donald Trump became the President of the United States last night,’ gushed Fareed Zakaria of CNN. The New York Times said Trump had shown ‘heart’. Brian Williams, an anchor on MSNBC, went so far as to quote Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.’ In recent days, the same outlets have for the first time started airing heated criticisms of President Biden over his decision to pull America’s troops out of

Katy Balls

How much trouble is Dominic Raab in?

When MPs returned to parliament on Wednesday to debate the situation in Afghanistan, it was Joe Biden who received the most criticism during the debate. But a close second in the firing line was the UK Foreign Secretary. After Dominic Raab waited until Sunday night to fly back from his holiday in Crete, opposition MPs were quick to go on the attack. When Raab asked Starmer what he would do differently give the complexity of the situation, the Labour leader replied: ‘I wouldn’t go on holiday when Kabul was falling’. The SNP’s Ian Blackford also joined in – suggesting Raab ought to be ashamed of himself. While that strength of feeling isn’t

Lucy Morgan-Edwards

The Taliban’s lightning victory was no surprise

As the debacle in Kabul unfolds, in Washington and London the mud slinging about who is to blame is beginning. British Generals are blaming ‘spineless Johnson and Biden’ and the ex military MP, Tom Tugendhat, contends that we should have stayed put. That the spectacular ending of Afghanistan’s brief interlude in ‘Western Liberalism’ appears to have been such a surprise only underlines the utter delusion of the last twenty years. I worked for an aid agency in Kandahar at the height of the Taliban regime and remained in Afghanistan until just prior to the British deployment to Helmand. I travelled around the country working on electoral and justice issues, as

Robert Clark

Afghanistan will once again become a breeding ground for terror

‘Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan and it’s time to end the forever war’. So said Joe Biden earlier this year when he announced his decision to pull US troops out of the country. The scenes of chaos that have followed that departure makes it vital that this myth – that western troops had already outstayed their welcome in Afghanistan – is not allowed to go unchallenged. The reality is rather different: Biden’s decision to ‘end’ the war (or at least America’s involvement in it) was a politically motivated one, which suited the president. As the Taliban stormed into Kabul, Biden told the American public that:

Stephen Daisley

The blind spot in the SNP’s ‘war on drink’

Scotland’s grim reputation for abnormally high drug fatalities has become embedded in the public consciousness over the past year. The fact that fake benzodiazepines (‘street valium’) can be procured for 50p a pill on the streets of Dundee and Glasgow is now common knowledge, as is Scotland’s unenviable place at the top of Europe’s drug deaths league table. However, belated attention to this crisis should not allow signs of another to slip below the radar. New figures from National Records of Scotland (NRS) show a 17 per cent surge in alcohol-specific deaths between 2019 and 2020, a rise from 1,020 to 1,190 in the space of 12 months, what NRS

Wednesday

18 Aug 2021

Isabel Hardman

Did parliament’s Afghanistan debate matter?

Today’s Commons debate on Afghanistan was unusually and surprisingly good. It had the benefit of speeches from many MPs who had themselves served tours of duty in the country, or were veterans of military action elsewhere. It had the advantage of a former Prime Minister speaking with all the authority of someone who knows just how difficult these matters are, rather than the criticisms of backbenchers who had only run their own constituency office. It was a full day’s session operating under usual rules, rather than the hybrid parliament of the past year and a half. This meant that MPs could intervene on speeches, amid the normal hubbub of the Chamber. So

Isabel Hardman

Raab fails to reassure over Afghanistan

Dominic Raab’s speech closing the Commons debate on Afghanistan provided a neat summary of the government’s response to the crisis: defensive, sketchy on detail and irritated by valid criticism. The Foreign Secretary’s name had cropped up repeatedly today in the chamber as opposition MPs slammed his decision to stay on holiday as the Taliban surged back through Afghanistan. He did not address this directly (naturally) but instead paid tribute to the many speeches he had heard from across the House. None of them, as Lisa Nandy had just observed in her winding-up speech, was devoid of criticism for this government. Many were in fact full of it. The Foreign Secretary’s