Politics Archives

Wednesday

31 Mar 2021

Steerpike

Merkel and Macron’s Sputnik U-turn

The last three months have seen a litany of humiliations for Brussels as its leaders try to procure and roll out much needed vaccines across the continent. Whether it’s been Ursula von der Leyen almost erecting a hard border in Ireland or Handelsblatt being briefed misinformation from a misread excel table, impounded meningitis jabs in Italy or doctors forced to destroy unwanted vaccines in Germany, every week seems to bring fresh ignominy and embarrassment. But now a new low appears to have been reached with today’s news that France and Germany are in negotiations to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine from their implacable opponent Vladimir Putin. Putin of course was the man

Matt Dryden

How can we save youngsters from getting radicalised?

Arrests for terrorist-related activity give a worrying insight into the rate at which young people are being targeted and radicalised. All age groups witnessed a fall in terror-related arrests for the year ending September 2020, except for one: those under eighteen, which doubled to account for eight (and subsequently 10) per cent of all such arrests. This is the highest proportion ever seen in any annual period to date. We also know that, all too often, the friends and relatives of those who are in danger of becoming radicalised are failing to act on their concerns. Referrals to Prevent, which aims to ‘stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism’, saw

Tuesday

30 Mar 2021

Steerpike

Boris’s Barnard Castle quip backfires

This afternoon the Prime Minister chaired the second meeting with business bigwigs on his ‘Build Back Better’ council, whose membership includes John Lewis supremo Sharon White, Heathrow chief Lord Deighton and Charlotte Hogg of Visa. The dry-as-dust press release to mark the occasion is replete with the usual jejune platitudes beloved of Whitehall mandarins for the government’s ‘Plan for Growth’ and forthcoming ‘Innovation Strategy.’ What the dispatch did not mention however was a typically Johnsonian jibe at the expense of his former chief adviser. Following the news yesterday that GlaxoSmithKleine will support the manufacturing of up to 60 million doses of the Novavax coronavirus vaccine at its Barnard Castle plant, Mr

Isabel Hardman

Did police ‘act appropriately’ at the vigil?

11 min listen

A report on the Met Police’s handling of Sarah Everard’s vigil has concluded that the force ‘acted appropriately’. Was the conclusion a surprise, and has the new Policing Bill given them too much power? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Kate Andrews

Can we see the vaccine effect?

Britain’s Covid data is moving in the right direction. Today’s update from the Office for National Statistics confirms this on one of the most critical measures: excess deaths. For the second consecutive week, deaths in England and Wales are below the five-year average. In the latest week ending 19 March, there were 10,311 registered deaths — 676 fewer deaths than the week before and down 8 per cent on the average. The good news doesn’t stop there. Not only are deaths down (more than 90 per cent below the peak of the latest wave) but the vaccine factor is also showing its effect. According to the ONS’s latest antibody survey, 55

Steerpike

Will Lindsay get his chariot back?

As Speaker, John Bercow could never be accused of underselling his position. During his tenure the diminutive parliamentarian attracted criticism for everything from his £37,000 portrait and coat of arms to his £45,000 apartment refurbishment to a £1,000 taxi journey. But one free ride Bercow did decline was the official Speaker’s State Coach, a gilded 17th century carriage traditionally used for coronations. The oldest of the three great State coaches – alongside equivalent vehicles for the monarch and Lord Mayor of London – Bercow had it loaned out in 2011 to the National Trust’s Arlington Court Carriage Museum in Devon, saying: ‘Now it no longer has any practical role in

Philip Patrick

Can Alex Salmond’s plan to ‘game’ Holyrood’s voting system work?

Alex Salmond’s reemergence on the Scottish political scene as leader of the Alba party had a pantomimic quality – some cheers, some boos, and a lively mix of interest and anxiety about where the plot would now go with the principal boy back centre stage. But working out how the appearance of Salmond’s new party affects what happens is a considerable challenge, thanks to Scotland’s infernally complex voting system. To paraphrase Lord Palmerston’s reference to the Schleswig-Holstein question, it may be that only around three people truly understand the D’Hondt voting system employed in Scottish parliamentary elections, though there are probably more, who like the fabled German professor, have gone

Steerpike

Is Macron the new Trump?

For the last three months journalists across the world have been missing the curious mix of bombast, arrogance, untruths and showmanship that was President Donald Trump. But is a new unlikely figure now filling that void? As an embattled, insecure incumbent staring down the barrel of defeat in an upcoming presidential contest dominated by Covid, Emmanuel Macron must be hoping his fate doesn’t play out like the Donald’s. But as France’s third wave of Covid gets underway, the country’s president appears to be taking tips from his one time counterpart on pandemic leadership. The French newspaper Le Monde today reports a series of fawning quotes from Macron’s aides who now call him ‘the president epidemologist.’ One

Steerpike

Northern Independence leader fails to whippet into shape

After the melodrama of Milf-gate and the shenanigans of Richard Tice, Mr S was not sure how much farce was left in the Hartlepool by-election. Thankfully, a whole new comedy of errors has now arrived in the form of the recently launched Northern Independence party. In its bid to break the mould of British politics, the party has (naturally) turned to a failed former Labour MP Thelma Walker, a one-time wonder who lost her Colne Valley seat in 2019. A natural choice for Hartlepool then, a mere 90 miles away. The new party was founded in October by Philip Proudfoot, an international development studies lecturer at Sussex University with the goal of making the

Katy Balls

Gove hints at vaccine passport app

It wasn’t so long ago that ministers were lining up on broadcast to insists vaccine passports were out of the question when it came to the UK. While they could be used for travel abroad, the UK was — as Matt Hancock put it — not a ‘papers, please’ country. Instead, the UK appears to be turning into an ‘app, please’ nation. On Monday, Michael Gove met with MPs across the House for a private ‘listening exercise’ on immunity IDs. Although the purpose of the session was supposedly to gather MPs’ thoughts on the issue of vaccine passports, attendees were left with the distinct impression that they would be going ahead regardless of

Peter Apps

The dark heart of the cladding scandal has been exposed

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry has exposed the dark heart of the building safety crisis in recent weeks, as it examined the role of cladding and insulation firms in causing the fire. We have learned that the products used in the tower’s cladding system were known to be severely flammable and that tests pointing this out were suppressed by the manufacturers as they chased lucrative contracts for high rise buildings. There is no underplaying the size of what has been revealed by this section of the inquiry. This is a monstrous corporate scandal, enabled by failures of some of the construction sector’s most respected institutions. The effects reach far beyond Grenfell,

Steerpike

Europe’s jab jibes at UK rollout

The last ten weeks have been a depressing time for those few believers in the EU’s lofty ideals. The saga of the vaccine procurement and roll out would be funny if it was not so tragic, beginning with Ursula von der Leyen trying to erect a hard border in Ireland in January and now culminating in Italy impounding meningitis jabs to America. You would have hoped such incompetence would have made some in Brussels reflect on their hubris. Not a bit of it, judging by the briefing of an anonymous EU official last weekend. Sounding like a menacing two bit Bond villain, the ‘senior diplomat’ told CNN: ‘You might feel very happy

Ashis Ray

Myanmar’s killing fields and the weakness of the west

The killing fields of south-east Asia are tragically alive and kicking. Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia, may be long cremated. But the military in Myanmar are maintaining his heinous heritage. On Saturday, they indiscriminately gunned down over 100 people, including children. It was the bloodiest sequence in two months of continuous brutality, which has led to the deaths of at least 400 civilians. The demonstrators’ only crime has been to object to the unlawful overthrow of an elected government by the murderous men in uniform. The khaki has tragically trampled over this land of rich natural resources for much of its existence since independence from Britain in 1948. ‘The continuing military

Ross Clark

Are cryptocurrency transactions the future?

To most of us, cryptocurrencies remain an esoteric world, beloved by nerds and incomprehensible to the rest of us. Does Visa’s announcement this week that it will now process payments directly in a cryptocurrency called USDCoin change that, and hasten us to a day when we will all have cryptocurrency accounts which we use to do our day-to-day shopping? You don’t need to understand the mathematics of cryptocurrencies and blockchain to work out that the prospect of shopping with crypto is rather concerning for two reasons. Firstly, cryptocurrencies are an unregulated Wild West. While the pound in your pocket is backed by the Bank of England and the pound in

Monday

29 Mar 2021

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s vaccine problem

On the day that people are finally allowed to gather in groups of six outside, tennis games get underway and wild swimmers take to Instagram en masse, Boris Johnson attempted to land a message of caution with the nation. Speaking at today’s press conference, the Prime Minister spoke of the need to ‘proceed with caution’ as the country takes a ‘small step to freedom today’. The nerves in government point to a problem that will only grow as the vaccination programme continues at pace The PM pointed to Covid cases rising across the Channel as a cause for concern that shows the need to ‘continue flat out to build the immunity

Freddy Gray

The alarming rise of Big Dope

18 min listen

Young people are now more likely to consume marijuana than smoke tobacco. Is weed just a benign stimulant, or is Big Dope pushing a drug that could lead to a schizophrenia epidemic? Freddy Gray speaks to Madeleine Kearns, staff writer at National Review and the author of the cover piece in the new US edition of The Spectator.

Stephen Daisley

Nicola Sturgeon reinvents herself as a social democrat. Again

It’s the surest sign there’s an election on in Scotland: Nicola Sturgeon has become a social democrat again. Addressing her party’s spring conference today, the SNP leader vowed to double the Scottish child payment to £10 per week for under-16s in low-income families if the Nationalists are returned to government after 6 May. She explained: ‘I want to make ending child poverty a driving mission for the next parliament. It is time to end the scandal of child poverty, and this will help us do it. And it is a down payment of what will be possible when we have the full powers over tax and social security that only

Steerpike

Boris puts Barnard Castle back on the map

All eyes were on Downing Street’s spanking new £2.6 million media suite, unveiled for the first time at this afternoon’s press conference. Speaking in front of a sea of blue backdrop, Boris Johnson was flanked by a brace of Union Jacks and his covid lieutenants Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance. Johnson revealed that a deal has been agreed to support the manufacturing of up to 60 million doses of the Novavax coronavirus vaccine in the UK. Big pharma behemoth GlaxoSmithKline will provide ‘fill and finish’ manufacturing capacity from the beginning of May – the completion stage of vaccine manufacturing, preparing vials of the final vaccine and packaging them for

James Kirkup

In praise of David Lammy, a true Englishman

David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, has been doing his LBC radio phone-in show. If you believe LBC, he has ‘schooled’ a ‘caller’ who told him he is not English. If you listen to the exchanges in question, you’ll realise he did something much more impressive, and important than that. The clip, which is all over social media, is here: The short summary is that ‘Jean’ tells Lammy he cannot be English because of his Afro-Caribbean heritage. Lammy, who was born in London, politely examines her arguments and disagrees. There is no shouting and no fighting – that suggestion has been added by LBC to stir up anger and get some

Jesse Morton

The Batley Grammar school row is the perfect jihadist recruitment tool

As controversy continues to rage after pupils were shown an image of the prophet Muhammad by a teacher at Batley Grammar School, the primary beneficiaries will be violent extremists, both jihadist and far right. As a former jihadi extremist who once used similar circumstances to spew hate and spread dissension worldwide, I should know. But, here’s the truth: I couldn’t have cared less about the portrayal of the cartoon, and neither did those preachers I once worked with. In the wake of 9/11, I ran Revolution Muslim, which was described as a ‘relay station for Al Qaeda’s broader message’. Then, in April 2010, when the writers of South Park announced the show’s 201st episode would portray