Politics

Next week, when Keir Starmer appears on stage at Labour conference in Brighton, it will be the first time he has spoken to a packed crowd of party members since he became leader. Covid restrictions meant his inaugural leader’s speech at party conference in September 2020 was delivered to an empty hall and shared via a video link. It was a blessing in disguise. Starmer had an excuse for failing to make much of an impression. He was also able to deliver criticism of the Jeremy Corbyn era without fear of boos from the delegates. His audience will be less forgiving now. Over the past year, his position as Labour

In the space of just a few years, Britain has gone from China’s would-be best friend to part of a pact to counter it. When President Xi Jinping came to London in 2015, Downing Street pulled out all the stops. Xi stayed at Buckingham Palace, visited Chequers and signed — of all things — a cyber security agreement. The police went to extraordinary lengths to clamp down on protests by Free Tibet supporters and a Tiananmen Square survivor. Yet just six years later the UK has now joined with Australia and the US in Aukus, a new alliance designed to check China’s power in the Pacific. Britain is no longer

America’s left-wing progressives won a victory this week in their long-running battle with Israel. They managed, at least temporarily, to block $1 billion (£730 million) in U.S. funding to replenish the missile interceptors Israel used to shoot down the latest barrage of terror rockets from Gaza. The funding was initially included in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s stopgap spending measure to raise the debt ceiling and fund the U.S. government. The victory was short-lived since House leaders stuck the funding into another bill after the public outcry. Who opposed the funding? The leaders were the ‘Squad,’ particularly congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Like others on the hard left across America and

Will it turn out to be Boris Johnson’s Jim Callaghan moment? Briefing reporters on his plane to the US on Sunday, the current PM tried to play down the energy crisis, saying:  ‘It’s like everybody going back to put the kettle on at the end of a TV programme, you’re seeing huge stresses on the world supply systems.’  The gas price spike would be over just as soon as it occurred, he implied, and was caused by nothing more than the global economy rebounding after many months on the Covid couch. It all had faint overtones of the moment during the Winter of Discontent 42 years ago when the then

Listening to Boris Johnson delivering his pearls of climate wisdom to the United Nations this week, Steerpike could not help but wonder from where the Prime Minister draws his eco-inspiration. Luckily a resurfaced clip this week serves as a useful reminder of the top scientific advisors the Tory leader once relied on: none other than discredited weatherman Piers Corbyn. At one of his regular London Assembly grillings during his time as Mayor, Johnson was hauled up by Green AM Jenny Jones for citing Corbyn as his source for a Telegraph article casting doubts on global warming. The Old Etonian hailed the work of Corbyn – the brother of future Labour leader

For a movement dedicated to dramatically reducing the world’s CO2 emissions, Britain’s eco-warriors certainly produce a lot of hot air. That at least appeared to be the case when Liam Norton of Insulate Britain appeared on Good Morning Britain today. Norton was on the show to explain why his fellow activists were currently blockading the M25 – a stunt which prevented a woman reaching a hospital before she was paralysed – as part of their campaign to get the government to insulate everyone’s homes. The argument quickly became heated after Norton was asked – considering the immense inconvenience his eco-stunts were causing – if he had actually bothered to insulate