James Kirkup is a partner at Apella Advisors and a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.
Watching anorak-clad Andy Burnham go toe-to-toe with Boris Johnson might leave Westminster-watchers of a certain vintage a bit bemused. How did the Burnham we used to know in the noughties become Manc lad-in-chief, a political brawler who gives brick-chewing interviews on the pavement? And perhaps more interestingly, what would have happened if the Burnham of
A ‘story’ covered by several outlets today about a ballerina and a government skills campaign is the latest evidence of how Twitter is making us all more stupid and should generally be ignored. The ‘story’ in short summary: a government campaign to encourage people to consider training to develop skills in ‘cyber’ is using images
This week in the Commons, the Government introduced the Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill. It’s a technical bit of legislation that will allow ministers to increase the state pension next year, keeping the ‘Triple Lock’ promise that pensions will rise in line with wages, inflation or 2.5 per cent, depending on which is highest.
Liz Truss, in her role as equalities minister, has confirmed to Parliament that the Government will not amend the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to allow people to change their legal gender without the approval of doctors and officials. ‘Self-ID’ is not happening. There is a lot to say about this statement, and the way it
I am from Northumberland. You might have heard of the place, or even been there: the glorious coastline is increasingly popular for holidays, though the Cheviot Hills (even more deserving of attention) are less well-known. Often, the county is lumped into a bigger mass known as ‘the north-east’. Which I suppose makes a certain sense,
‘Rashford slams MP’s tweet about feeding children’ That was a headline last night on the BBC News site. It neatly captures a tale that sums up just about everything that’s wrong with politics and journalism today. The ‘story’ – also in most newspapers today – is that Kevin Hollinrake, Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton,
It’s sometimes said that Rishi Sunak has been playing politics on easy mode: when you’re giving away loads of cash, it’s hard not to be popular. Now, as summer fades and autumn beckons, politics gets harder. The chancellor is facing his first real test with Conservative MPs over reports that his Treasury is considering a
Can I make a confession? I’m not really interested in the Last Night of the Proms. I don’t think I’ve ever watched it. I don’t really know the words to ‘Rule Britannia’. Or the other one. Does that mean I hate Britain and all it stands for? Does it mean I am callously indifferent to
I have recently read a fascinating new paper, via a Mail on Sunday report, about the growing number of children presenting as transgender to gender clinics. It raises all sorts of questions, and deserves to be read widely and carefully. The paper, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, can be found –
The summer ritual of A-level results day is so well known it’s easy to forget the thousands of students receiving their BTec National results. That’s the intro to a BBC News item on vocational qualification results issued today. It’s also the story of British culture and economics, told in a single, unwittingly revealing, sentence. Around
Kirstie Allsopp is in trouble. The posh-but-nice telly lady committed two cardinal errors of modern life: first by saying something interesting on Twitter, and second by assuming people would credit her with good intentions. She wrote: ‘If your job can be done from home it can be done from abroad where wages are lower. If
I’m starting to think that Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer have quite similar views about the politics of trans rights, sex and gender. I’m also inclined to think this could be a good thing. In the last couple of weeks, both the PM and the Labour leader have been invited to wade into the lake
‘Blackpool woman accessed child abuse images in hospital bed’. It’s a good headline, in that it catches your attention. But there are two things making it an effective headline, at least in the sense that it gets attention. One is the notion of someone looking at child porn in a hospital – that’s a shocking
Politicians give speeches all the time, but with differing levels of significance. Can you think of a genuinely important political speech given by a minister this week? Maybe your answer is Rishi Sunak’s fiscal statement, and I’m not going to suggest that speech isn’t a big deal. It is. But I am going to make
The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust carries out some of the most complex and contentious clinical work in the NHS. It deals with children and young people who are experiencing discomfort over their gender identity, but is it raising patient safety concerns? Some of the children it
One of my proudest moments as a Daily Telegraph leader writer came in 2015 when I managed to persuade my masters that their paper should bestow official praise on Harriet Harman as she stepped down (for a second time) as Labour’s interim leader and made way for Jeremy Corbyn. The resulting editorial (you can read
Helen Whately, the care minister, is being tarred and feathered. She wrote a letter to an MP about student nurses, saying they are ‘supernumerary and not deemed to be providing a service’. The outpouring of fury online and, sadly, from some traditional media outlets provides an object lesson in all that’s wrong with the way
No. 10’s screeching U-turn on food for low-income kids over the summer will not do the government or ministers serious harm with the wider public. That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. First, the public. They are not on Twitter. This fact cannot be repeated enough around Westminster. In a finding that should be tattooed
The Sunday Times says Boris Johnson is going to reject May-era proposals to allow people to “self-identify” changes of their legal gender. Some thoughts: 1. Trust this report. It’s by one of the best-connected reporters around and it’s consistent with public and private signals from inside government in recent months. The organised trans rights groups also
This will come as little surprise to anyone who has followed my writing over the last few years, but I have accepted that I simply do not understand politics at all. On Tuesday, the government announced that it was no longer urging primary schools in England to get all children back to school for some
