Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Gavin Mortimer

Why is Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party trying to disarm the police?

A French police officer was attacked with a knife in Cannes this morning. The victim – whose bullet-proof vest saved him from serious injury – was at the wheel of his stationary car when the assailant opened his door and plunged the weapon into his body. There are reports that the attacker uttered the words 'in the name of the Prophet'. The man was 'neutralised' by another policeman and is now in a serious condition in hospital. As the attack unfolded, left-wing MP, Mathilde Panot, appeared on a popular morning radio show and was asked about her party's controversial stance on giving weapons to police officers.

Fraser Nelson

Who is responsible for the recent fracas around Tory sleaze?

15 min listen

Over the weekend most media tore into the Owen Paterson affair, with a lot of talk about MPs' second jobs like those of Geoffrey Cox... ‘I think if you go down this route of essentially banning all these outside interests, we’re going to end up with far more people of inherited wealth in the House of Commons, who don’t need to earn any other money, and I think you will lose some knowledge and expertise.’ - James Forsyth ...How Conservatives pick their peers, and even Lords reform. But how did it come to this? Who should have told Boris that last week's actions and reactions were bad politics? 'I know some MPs who think the way that they voted last week will be held against them at the next election. They can imagine Labour running an anti-sleaze ticket.

Steerpike

Top MoD mandarin: supporting BLM is ‘not political’

Is it political to support Black Lives Matter? Not according to No. 10's most senior security adviser. Stephen Lovegrove (he/him) was until March this year the top civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, before being promoted to national security adviser in Downing Street. During an MoD staff call in June last year, Lovegrove stated supporting BLM is: 'Not a political position whatsoever. It’s not a gesture of support for any particular organisation. It is about the general principle of recognising that, at the moment, there is a problem that we, as a society, need to fix.' Now, Mr S isn't sure about this one.

Ross Clark

The trouble with Austria’s vaccine passport plan

Are vaccine passports being used in other countries in an attempt to cut Covid infections – or to try and boost vaccine take up by curtailing the social lives of those who refuse? The latest change in policy in Austria would appear to confirm that for them, it’s the latter. From today, access to restaurants, bars and any event with more than 25 guests will be limited to people who can prove they have been fully vaccinated, that they have previously recovered from Covid or that they have had one jab and a negative PCR test. In four weeks’ time, only the double-jabbed and those who can show they have recovered from Covid will be allowed in. Austria, like many EU countries, has had a vaccine passport scheme for several months.

Steerpike

Qatari cash splashed on jet-setting MPs

Case rates are falling, booster rates are sky-rocketing and Westminster is consumed by the Owen Paterson affair: what more signs are needed that normal life is resuming? And more proof, if needed, was provided by this week's release of the updated Members' Register of Interest, in which under-fire MPs revealed that jet-setting junkets have now resumed.  Some 16 Labour and Conservative MPs were last month flown to Qatar as part of the British-Qatari All Party Parliamentary Group, at a cool cost of some £120,000, paid for by the country's embassy. According to their entries, the MPs were there for discussions on the country's 'humanitarian and political response to the Afghanistan crisis, preparations for the World Cup, workers' rights reform and bilateral relations.

Katy Balls

Can the Paterson Tory sleaze row continue to damage Boris?

After a bruising week for Boris Johnson over the Owen Paterson lobbying row, the government U-turned on its plan to rewrite MP standards rules and Paterson quit the Commons. Yet the whole saga is far from over: the Prime Minister is likely to spend the next week dealing with the fallout from his botched plan to spare the Tory MP a one-month suspension over a breach of lobbying rules. Although Johnson's environment secretary George Eustice declared on Sunday that the row amounts to a 'storm in a teacup', Tory MPs are furious and raising concerns over the No. 10 operation. To make matters worse, the government is now facing a spate of Tory sleaze stories from peerages for donors to lobbying over Covid contracts.

Rupert Darwall

Are we heading for a net zero crash?

So far, the big message from the Glasgow climate conference is the role of finance in decarbonising the global economy. It’s a dangerous development. In his speech to COP26 last week, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, pledged action to 'rewire the entire financial system for Net Zero.' Finance has taken centre stage in large part because of inadequate government policies. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, around two-thirds of global emissions are linked to private household activity. Reducing them requires major changes in people’s lifestyles, UNEP says.

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Starmer calls Boris ‘corrupt and contemptible’ over Paterson

Keir Starmer: PM’s actions over Paterson ‘corrupt and contemptible’ If the government could write its own headlines, the last week would doubtless have been awash with the litany of pledges being churned out at Cop26. Instead, Boris Johnson has managed to earn the ire of not just the opposition, but also his own side of the House of Commons, after putting forward some hastily-retracted plans to reform Parliament’s disciplinary process. To cap it all, Owen Paterson, the MP whose career the proposals were transparently designed to save, has announced that he will be leaving the House after all.

John Ferry

The strange greenwashing of Nicola Sturgeon

It was only a matter of time. When the Scottish Green party entered government alongside the SNP in August, it was clear Nicola Sturgeon would use the party as a shield against her questionable record and stance on the environment. The surprise is that it happened so quickly and so blatantly. This week we had the extraordinary situation of the Scottish Greens attacking Greenpeace for daring to push the First Minister to explicitly come out against exploitation of the Cambo oil field off Shetland. Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie said Greenpeace was unfairly criticising Sturgeon and is ‘not particularly politically active in Scotland’.

Saturday

Steerpike

John Major attacks Boris Johnson (again)

Shock! Horror! Sir John Major has attacked Boris Johnson! In a breathlessly reported appearance on the Today programme, the former Tory PM lambasted his successor for his 'shameful' handling of the Owen Paterson row, denouncing Johnson's behaviour as 'politically corrupt' and 'damaging at home and to our reputation overseas.' Pretty strong stuff. Or it would be, perhaps, if Major hadn't made a number of similar such comments before. In Johnson's two years in office, his predecessor has launched at least half a dozen attacks on him over Brexit, the Supreme Court prorogation, the Internal Markets Bill, foreign aid and the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Wolfgang Münchau

What is the Bank of England playing at?

Last week, the Bank of England sent a number of confused messages. One was almost shocking: Andrew Bailey said that it isn’t his job to steer markets on interest rates 'day by day and week by week'. But as economic commentator Matthew C. Klein dryly noted this is literally his job. It is debatable whether the Bank of England needs to manage the entire yield curve (ie, buying and selling bonds in an attempt to set interest rates years into the future) but the central bank should be in charge of the short end. Those opposing an interest rate rise say that central banks should never shock markets. The Bank of England should copy the ECB, it’s argued, and start giving guidance on interest rate rises months in advance.

Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver, Kit Wilson, Peter Hanington, Robert Porter

28 min listen

On this week's episode, we’ll hear from Lionel Shriver on how the Biden Administration’s border policies are a gift for Trump and the Republicans. (00:52)Then Kit Wilson on what we can expect from Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse. (09:53)Third, it's Peter Hanington talking about his love of haikus. (18:48)And finally, Robert Porter’s notes on the bagpipes.

Patrick O’Flynn

The Tice is right: is Reform about to break through?

History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes, said Mark Twain. Right now the commentariat is looking for something that will rhyme with the famous Battle of Knutsford Heath of 8 April 1997. In that face-off, Neil Hamilton and his formidable wife Christine were ranged against the white-suited 'anti-corruption' independent candidate Martin Bell. Though the Hamiltons gave as good as they got for the cameras, Bell had the last laugh by comfortably winning the formerly impregnable Tory seat of Tatton in the general election held a month or so later. With a by-election now looming in Shropshire North following the sleaze scandal that engulfed departing Tory MP Owen Paterson, leftish opinion is excitedly searching around for a new man or woman in white to pull off the same trick.

James Forsyth

Sleaze isn’t the biggest danger to Boris Johnson

This week’s events have undoubtedly done the government damage. But I suspect that ultimately its fate will be determined by whether its gamble of raising taxes to put more money into the NHS results in much lower waiting lists — or just grumpy taxpayers. Reducing the backlog will require more capacity. So, it is worrying that the Department of Health doesn’t know how many extra doctors and nurses it will need to clear the backlog. The government is currently miles off even its pre-pandemic target of 6,000 extra doctors by 2024. Optimistic numbers suggest there might be 300 more than in 2019, but others think things have gone backwards.

Nick Rosen

A net zero referendum? Bring it on

The left-green axis has been in uproar in recent weeks because several right-wing commentators have suggested holding a referendum on the government’s net zero measures. If the Telegraph, Sun, and Reform party support it, say critics of a referendum, then it’s got to be a bad idea. As an environmental campaigner since the 1970s, I say bring it on. Even if the initial impetus for a referendum came from right-wing groups, net zero will affect our livelihoods and basic freedoms for decades. The way to counter accusations that it is the invention of a woke elite is to widen the debate. What will be the terrain of that debate?

Ross Clark

‘Climategate’ still matters – but not how the BBC thinks it does

It is 12 years now since a tranche of emails were scraped from the server of the University of East Anglia in what became know as Climategate. An East Anglia climate server was hacked, and the documents were pored over. The story won’t go away, not least because the BBC has just put out two programmes on the subject: a TV drama called the Trick, and a Radio 4 documentary called ‘The Hack That Changed the World’.

Friday

Steerpike

MPs in the dark about Beijing’s threats

Following the killing of Sir David Amess, there has been much discussion in recent weeks about the safety of elected representatives. But while the public conversation has largely focused on radicalised loners, constituency surgeries and online abuse, Steerpike fears that the commentariat have overlooked the dangers still posed by hostile nation states to parliamentarians here in Westminster – particularly those who speak out about China. Earlier this year Mr S reported that MPs who have been sanctioned by Beijing for speaking out on the regime's human rights abuses have received 'zero substantive help' from the Foreign Office.

Katy Balls

How did Boris misjudge the Paterson backlash?

15 min listen

Owen Paterson has resigned as an MP after being embroiled in a lobbying row. Allies of the Prime Minister have blamed the Chief Whip, Mark Spencer, for the fiasco, while other Tory MPs are fuming at the Prime Minister's miscalculation. How did Boris not realise the potential backlash? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.On the podcast, James says: 'It was really obvious how the press, the public, the opposition, were going to react to the Tory party trying to upend the standards rules and stay a guilty verdict against one of their own MPs. This is not an unexpected reaction to that kind of action.