Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Carl Heneghan

It’s time to fix the NHS’s looming winter crisis

My patient has sepsis. The window for treatment is short; in less than an hour, he could die. In urgent care, the direct line to ambulance control bypasses 999: it lets the call handler know a doctor requires urgent attention for a sick patient. Ten minutes: no response. I’m on a second phone to central dispatch: what is going on? A critical incident has been called; the service is overwhelmed. Finally, after 15 minutes, the phone answers and help is on its way.  Worryingly, this is far from an isolated incident. Last week, it was reported that an ambulance service sent a taxi to a GP practice in Bristol to collect a patient with a broken hip after a nine hour wait.

Lara Prendergast

Toil and trouble: Europe faces a new form of warfare

37 min listen

In this week’s episode: Are migrants the new munitions? In our cover story this week, our political editor James Forsyth looks at the growing troubles in Eastern Europe and how this small part of the world stage could end up splintering the scaffolding of global peace. He is joined on the podcast by Mary Dejevsky, a columnist for the Independent. (00:42) Also this week: Will the monarchy survive past Elizabeth II? The royal family is not in a good way, with the Queen missing multiple appearances due to ill health, a prince under investigation, and the continuing cold war between William and Harry, will the monarchy survive past Elizabeth II? That’s the question Freddy Gray asks in this week’s Spectator.

Steerpike

Labour at war in Starmer’s backyard

Sir Keir Starmer has become accustomed to Labour in-fighting since he became leader 18 months ago. But as the former DPP battles to drag his party into some kind of vaguely electable shape, has he been neglecting matters closer to home? For in northwest London, on Keir Starmer's doorstep, a vicious party battle has broken out involving smears, lies and a case of mistaken identity, all splashed across the pages of the Labour leader's local newspaper.The Camden New Journal – on which Sir Keir has spent more than £3,500 in adverts since April 2020 – has been breathlessly reporting this past fortnight all the twists and turns of some vicious skulduggery plaguing the local Labour party.

Damian Reilly

What did Michael Vaughan do wrong?

Is Michael Vaughan a racist? I hope not. Certainly, referring to Asian cricketers as 'you lot', as he is accused of doing – and which he strongly denies saying – would suggest he is. Or, at the very least, that in the past he has been guilty of being egregiously politically incorrect. I’ve met Vaughan several times and once sat next to him on a flight from Abu Dhabi to London. On each occasion I was struck by his openness, and by his enthusiastic and enquiring nature. He certainly didn’t seem a racist to me – the opposite, in fact – but perhaps he was just very good at hiding it. Who knows?

Alex Massie

Boris’s rail betrayal is no surprise

A promise made is merely a promise waiting to be broken. If events complicate life for all governments it is nevertheless apparent some governments are more likely to abandon their promises than others. And by now no-one should be surprised that a government led by Boris Johnson finds it easier to jettison its pledges than to honour them. It is the nature of the creature. Today it happens to be High Speed Rail, but yesterday it was something else and tomorrow it will be another thing altogether. The Prime Minister’s inconstancy is his constancy.

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s tense showdown with Tory MPs

It’s been a long and bruising week for Boris Johnson. The Tory sleaze row has dragged on – and even the Prime Minister’s attempt to bring the matter to a close by supporting a crackdown on outside jobs has run into problems. After a tetchy appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions and then the Liaison Committee, Johnson addressed his party at the 1922 committee on Wednesday night. This session took place while the debate on MP standards was ongoing in the Commons chamber – a reminder of the ongoing fallout from the Prime Minister’s botched attempt to spare Owen Paterson a 30-day suspension for a breach of lobbying rules.

Katy Balls

The sleaze row is a crisis made for Angela Rayner

Almost no MP has emerged with dignity from the sleaze debacle of the past three weeks. Boris Johnson’s botched attempt to spare Owen Paterson a 30-day suspension has badly damaged his credibility with his own party. The 2019 intake of ‘red wall’ MPs have turned on the old guard, accusing their colleagues of damaging the party’s reputation through outside interests. Opposition leaders have struggled to capitalise on Tory disarray. Ed Davey’s £78,000-a-year job as a consultant has left him out of the debate and Keir Starmer has faced questions over his outside earnings for legal work. But there is one politician who suffers from none of these problems: Angela Rayner.

James Kirkup

The vaccine cheer is gone

I am 45, which means I’ve now had my third Covid vaccine. The experience of getting that injection crystallises a thought: Britain is starting to take the miracle of vaccination for granted, and that spells trouble for Boris Johnson. I don’t use that word ‘miracle’ lightly. The development and distribution of working vaccines with such speed and scale is surely a historical event, and one that should give both big-state left-wingers and the free-market right pause for thought, since it relied on the partnership between public and private. The politics of the vaccine have always been slightly under-appreciated in the Westminster village.

Steerpike

Nadine battles the BBC

It seems that the fruits of high office haven't changed Nadine Dorries. The Culture Secretary, who took up her brief eight weeks ago, last night hit out at Laura Kuenssberg on Twitter after the BBC's political editor reported receiving a text from a Tory MP at the 1922 committee which said Boris Johnson 'looked weak and sounded weak' and that his 'authority is evaporating.' Dorries responded angrily, declaring: Laura, I very much like and respect you, but we both know, that text is ridiculous, although nowhere near as ridiculous as the person – obviously totally desperate for your attention – who sent it. Shortly thereafter the tweet was deleted but not before numerous screenshots went viral.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Johnson’s liaison committee skewering

Boris Johnson didn't enjoy his two hours in front of the Liaison Committee this afternoon, and not just because he was asked repeatedly about his handling of the Tory sleaze row. He also struggled with questions about what his government was up to more generally, and appeared at times exasperated with the select committee chairs who asked them. Having spent the past couple of months riffing on Kermit the Frog's mantra that ‘it's not that easy being green’, it seemed Johnson was starting to realise that it's also not that easy being Prime Minister. There is just so much to do, after all.

Steerpike

Geordie Greig out as Daily Mail editor

It's all change at Mail towers. In shock news on Fleet Street, Geordie Greig, the well-connected editor of the Daily Mail since 2018, is to step down from his current post at the end of this week. Ted Verity, the current editor of the Mail on Sunday, will instead be Editor of Mail newspapers, a position that will include overall responsibility for both the Sunday and daily papers and You magazine. In an email sent out on behalf of the paper's chairman Lord Rothermere, staff were told that since the Mail's foundation 125 years ago: The paper has never shown fear, nor sought favour, in pursuit of its founding ideals to inform, entertain and fight for its readership and the people of this great country.

Cindy Yu

How long will the ‘Tory Sleaze’ scandal run?

11 min listen

Now entering its second week, the foray around members of parliament holding second jobs shows no sign of dying down. And, unfortunately, it seems whatever Boris Johnson tries to do to get himself out of this situation, he appears to just be digging himself and his party a deeper and deeper hole. 'Boris Johnson hadn't thought these proposals through, which has really upset Conservative MPs on both sides of this divide.' - Isabel HardmanCindy Yu talks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth about just how long this political hurricane will blow.

Lloyd Evans

Boris Johnson is the Katie Price of politics

What a crazy muddle that was. Boris has spent two weeks digging a hole for himself and Sir Keir Starmer’s job at PMQs was to give him a shove and watch him disappear. The Labour leader pointed out that some in the cabinet have apologised for backing Owen Paterson but the PM has failed to follow suit. ‘Do the decent thing and say sorry,’ urged Sir Keir, ‘for trying to give a green light to corruption.’ Boris admitted to making a mistake, and then he raised Sir Keir’s receipt of £25,000 from the law firm, Mishcon de Reya. Speaker Hoyle leapt up and declared that Sir Keir’s affairs are outside the PM’s remit. Everyone knows this – not least because Hoyle mentions it virtually every week.

Jonathan Miller

Why has London’s Royal Institution cancelled Eric Zemmour?

On Friday night, the insurgent but still undeclared French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour was to address 600 of his supporters, the merely curious, and the media, in a ‘rendezvous’ at the Royal Institution in Mayfair. No prizes for guessing that the RI, a quintessential institution of the enlightenment prizing reason and inquiry above all, has now terminated the booking after performing ‘due diligence’ and discovering that the rightist Zemmour is not their sort. A spokesman for the RI declined to explain the reason why the London Friends of Zemmour were suddenly considered unsuitable to rent its magnificent theatre on Albemarle Street. Or why Zemmour himself might be unsuitable to speak there.

Michael Mosbacher

Christ’s Hospital shouldn’t lecture pupils on white privilege

Students and teachers at Christ’s Hospital, a £36,600-a-year boarding school in Horsham, West Sussex, are set to be given ‘diversity training’. The plans, announced in June 2020, mean lessons will be given on ‘micro-aggressions and stereotyping’. Christ’s Hospital is far from the only public school to march headlong down this route; they are following a path previously trodden by the United States’s private schools. But this doesn't mean they aren't making a big mistake.

Ross Clark

Insulate Britain are not martyrs

Throughout the Insulate Britain protests there was a suspicion that the group was deliberately trying to get its members behind bars during the COP26 conference — a suspicion that was enhanced when a spokesperson for the group told the Guardian on 24 October:  It’s fair to say that there is absolute disbelief and surprise that the campaign has lasted this long. We assumed that we would not be allowed to carry on disrupting the motorway network to the extent we have been. We thought that people would basically be in prison… if our actions are as dangerous and as disruptive as is being claimed, then I think the question has to be: why are we being allowed to continue day after day?

Michael Simmons

What’s the evidence for Scotland’s vaccine passports?

Nicola Sturgeon is considering extending vaccine passports to Scotland’s cinemas, theatres and pubs. ‘We are also considering whether an expansion of the scheme to cover more settings would be justified and prudent given the current state of the pandemic,’ the First Minister said yesterday: she’ll decide next Tuesday. As she mulls, what data will she have to go on? Her deputy, John Swinney, conceded earlier this month that the government doesn’t have much in the way of evidence: the data is ‘impossible to segment,’ he says. Yet he told The Spectator at an event this morning that he still believed vaccine passports had a ‘role to play’ — pointing to an increased uptake of the vaccine in under-thirties.

Kate Andrews

Inflation rises again. The BoE has questions to answer

Inflation is back, and while some people continue to cling to the idea that its resurgence is a temporary phenomenon, today’s figures further stamp out that optimism. Consumer inflation was up to 4.2 per cent in the year to October, a surge from just over 3 per cent the month before. This takes inflation to its highest level since 2011, with prices only set to rise further heading into 2022. Why has the Bank been so insistent about the temporary nature of this round of inflation? Much of the rise is due to increasing energy costs, which were always expected to worsen this winter: global shortages continue to bite as the world opens up again post-lockdowns.

The Spectator

It’s not too late to scrap HS2

There are government projects gone haywire – and then there’s HS2. The High Speed rail project should never have been given the nod in the first place. Costs spiralled out of control from the very beginning: it was estimated to cost £32.7 billion in 2012, now this is set to surpass £100 billion. The technology will be out of date before it even comes online. The government is right to ditch plans for an easterly arm of HS2 from Leeds to Birmingham. In contrast to the London to Birmingham section, no buildings have yet been flattened, no earth has been moved. Now is the chance to abandon it, before any more money and effort is spent.

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson shows his lack of grip

Boris Johnson has just had a particularly bad Prime Minister’s Questions, underlining his poor grip not just on the second jobs row but on other aspects of his own job. Sir Keir Starmer has had a fair bit of bad luck since becoming Labour leader, having to self-isolate five times as a result of positive Covid tests or contacts, but today he was able to make a rare appearance in person. And he really turned up to work. He was at his most forceful since he became leader, accusing Johnson of being a ‘coward, not a leader’ and giving the ‘green light for corruption’. Starmer opened his six questions by asking about the government’s forthcoming integrated rail review, which is expected to drop commitments on lines in the north of England.