Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

Peter Apps

The dark side of ‘insulating Britain’

Let me start with some statements of fact. The planet is heating up dangerously fast with devastating consequences for everyone that lives on it and if we don’t stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere we have no future as a species. In the UK, a major source of our carbon emissions comes from homes and a large part of that is because we burn gas whenever we put the radiators on. Each UK household emits around 2.7 tonnes of carbon every year heating their home. That’s utterly unsustainable and must stop. To some the answer is to insulate our homes so tightly that we no longer need to use much energy heating them, if any at all.

Saturday

Annabel Denham

Boris Johnson should trust the market to solve climate change

In a 368-page document published this week, the government announced its strategy to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 and confirmed its target for all electricity to come from low carbon sources by 2035.  It’s difficult to imagine worse timing for the release. An energy crisis is exposing the failures of decades of massive state meddling in the market. Insulate Britain have been picnicking on the M4 and M25. And on Wednesday a leak of documents showed Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels. None of this has weakened the Prime Minister’s resolve, though that’s hardly surprising.

Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray, Owen Matthews, Lionel Shriver

29 min listen

On this week's episode, we’ll hear Douglas Murray on how the Prevent scheme has lost sight of its founding intention. (00:43)Then Owen Matthews on Rome’s rubbish. (12:35)And finally, Lionel Shriver gives her review of Dave Chappelle’s transgressive new Netflix Special.

Steerpike

LSE takes £1.5 million from China

Boris Johnson might insist that the UK will not ‘pitchfork’ Chinese investment but it seems not everyone in government agrees. Liz Truss, the new Foreign Secretary, has made headlines today for saying what many on her back benches believe — that Britain cannot be dependent on China and allow it a role in our nuclear plants or the G7.  That fundamental divide on how to approach Beijing is not merely confined to Westminster, but rather something that extends across industry, civil society and of course, academia. One of the ways the Chinese Communist Party has sought to extend its overseas cultural influence is by Confucius Institutes.

Peter Wood

Liberty is the American virus

If I wanted to persuade my fellow Americans to eat more cheese, I would begin by launching a campaign to ban cheese. This might start with the argument cheese clogs arteries or lowers IQ. I’d find some doctors willing to testify that cheese inhibits testosterone, and some other doctors to insist it fouls up estrogen.  Then I would move on to the damage cheese does to the climate: too many cows, goats, sheep — methane, don’t you know. Greenhouse gases. Deforestation brought to you by cheddar. 'Cheese kills!' might serve as a motto. Next, I would sort out the cheese-producing states that would have to be melted into submission, perhaps with the promise of extravagant subsidies.

Friday

Kate Andrews

Rishi’s Budget wriggle room

Whisper it, but Rishi Sunak looks to be heading into the Budget next week with the public finances in a far better state than once predicted. The Office for National Statistics update on public sector net borrowing showed September’s total — £21.8 billion — coming in several billion pounds below the Office for Budget Responsibility's official forecast and economists’ consensus. It fits a trend: total borrowing for 2021/22 is over £40 billion lower than expected, giving Sunak far more leeway than he thought he’d have at the start of the year. On the whole, tax receipts have been higher than forecast, as growth (while somewhat lacklustre over the past few months) has broadly been strong, with the UK still in the lead for recovery.

James Forsyth

No. 10 moves to kickstart the booster campaign

In a move that as important as any in the recent Cabinet reshuffle, Emily Lawson is returning to run the Covid vaccination programme. Lawson headed up NHS England's vaccination team during the rollout, and after its success, she was moved to take charge of the new Number 10 delivery unit. The hope was that she would bring the rollout mindset to public services more broadly. The delivery unit, modelled on its Blair era predecessor, is meant to ensure that the government actually does what it says it is going to do. Such is its importance that Lawson addressed the first meeting of the newly reshuffled Cabinet. The fact that she is now going back to the rollout shows how worried ministers are about the booster programme.

Steerpike

Labour MPs pose with convicted harasser

Irony was officially pronounced dead this week after disgraced MP Claudia Webbe launched an attack on 'wrong, bad and exploitative' bosses. Webbe is facing a possible jail sentence after being convicted of harassment last week but is still merrily carrying on as if nothing has happened, regularly launching Twitter attacks on the government and blithely ignoring all calls to resign — even those from the official Labour press office. https://twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe/status/1451520225573281812?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Still, even Mr S was surprised to learn of Webbe's latest act of brazenness.

Cindy Yu

What will Sunak reveal in next week’s Budget?

11 min listen

The Chancellor is making final preparations to his Budget, announced next Wednesday. On the podcast, Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about the major themes coming up, and whether this is the moment when Rishi Sunak sees a turn in his popularity.

Steerpike

Shock, horror! COP26 has an electric car problem

If absurdity were a source of renewable energy, the COP26 climate change summit might achieve its aim of saving the planet. Yesterday Mr S brought news that local lawyers are set to join rail engineers, transport operators, catering staff and refuse collectors in timing industrial action to coincide with next week’s eco-jamboree. Now Steerpike learns of a fresh crisis afflicting the UN conference: there’s not enough places to power the luxury electric cars needed to ferry delegates around the city. Some 240 Jaguar Land Rover vehicles including its I-PACE SUVs will be laid on by the UK government to move the 120 visiting heads of state and their entourages between their hotels and the SEC venue.

Charles Parton

How to counter China

When another country does something to upset the Chinese Communist party, it gets accused of ‘a Cold War mentality’. This is psychological projection, in Freudian terms, a defence mechanism which projects onto others the negative aspects of one’s own self. But the CCP is right in a way: we should have more of a ‘Cold War mentality’ or at least a ‘values and systems war’ mentality. China is not the Soviet Union. We never co-operated with the USSR on trade and investment or science and technology. We do with China. Indeed the CCP sees itself as fighting a ‘values and systems war’.

Katy Balls

The Nikki da Costa Edition

43 min listen

Nikki da Costa is the former director of legislative affairs at No 10 Downing Street. She served under Theresa May and Boris Johnson and was pivotal in the government's wrangles with Parliament over Brexit. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about why she and David Davis didn't quite get on; why she quit May's government and rejoined under Johnson; and what it was like to carry through her brainchild - the prorogation of Parliament - under scrutiny from the entire country and, eventually, the Supreme Court.

John Ferry

Is Brexit making Scexit seem impossible?

This month we’ve seen the UK government introduce temporary visas for butchers after farmers were forced to slaughter healthy pigs, the extension of cabotage rights (whereby foreign lorry drivers can do additional pick-up-and-drop off jobs within a country) and a move to replace Brexit’s controversial Northern Ireland protocol. Supply chain problems can’t all be pinned on Brexit – and you could argue endlessly about which factor, Covid or Brexit, is dominant in the disruption we’re seeing – but most people would agree that leaving the EU single market and customs union has not helped matters. Which brings us to the issue of a Scottish exit from the UK (Scexit).

Thursday

Steerpike

Is Laura Kuenssberg leaving Westminster?

Is Laura Kuenssberg’s time as BBC political editor coming to an end? That’s the suggestion tonight after the Guardian reported she is in talks to step down from the role and move to a plum gig hosting the Today programme.  Rumours of Kuenssberg’s impending departure have been circulating around Westminster for some time now to little avail. But this time it is being talked up as part of a wider shake up of the Beeb’s lead presenters, with Jon Sopel recently announcing he is ending his US beat and returning to the UK. Rumours of Kuenssberg’s impending departure have been circulating around Westminster for some time now Kuenssberg’s time in the role has not exactly been smooth sailing.

Lara Prendergast

Plan Z: the rise of Éric Zemmour

34 min listen

In this week’s episode: Who is Eric Zemmour – can he take on President Macron? In our cover story this week, Freddy Gray looks at the rise of Eric Zemmour, the TV presenter who looks set to stir up French politics ahead of next year’s election. Freddy is joined on the podcast by Sophie Pedder, Paris bureau chief for The Economist and a biographer of French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss. (00:46) Also this week: Is the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme failing?Douglas Murray says in this week’s issue that Prevent is failing to tackle Islamic extremism in the UK. He talks about the changes Prevent needs to make along with William Baldet, a Prevent Coordinator. (11:46) And finally: what’s it like to dine naked?

Cindy Yu

Who’s to blame for the booster delay?

14 min listen

Compared to our extremely strong vaccine rollout, the booster numbers are not doing so well. But what is causing the slow take-up? Cindy Yu is joined by James Forsyth and Katy Balls to discuss this as well as the ever-rising covid figures, partisan mask wars, and a potential new trade deal with New Zealand.

James Forsyth

Rethinking MPs’ safety is not a victory for terrorism

Whenever a killing is investigated as an act of terror, there is always a tendency to think that any changes made are a victory for terrorism. While a few MPs have called for changes to how constituency surgeries are held, many more want them to carry on as they were.  But as I say in the magazine this week, given the circumstances, the rethink of MPs' safety should be a practical exercise, not a philosophical one. In response to IRA bombing campaigns, Margaret Thatcher put a gate across Downing Street. Without it, an IRA mortar would have killed the war cabinet in 1991. That was not a ‘victory’ for the terrorists but a wise security measure. The same applies to the protective cars for US presidents: open-top vehicles were ditched after John F.

Andrew Montford

The void at the centre of Britain’s net zero strategy

Boris Johnson wants to turn your house green. This week, he published the plan for doing it. In fact, the strategy for delivering net zero carbon emissions is, in essence, to convert the whole economy — including your home — to electric power and then to deliver most of that power using offshore windfarms. We are rapidly approaching a time when wishful thinking collides with reality The fundamental problem with this approach, however, is what we will do when the wind isn’t blowing, or, just as importantly, when it unexpectedly stops blowing. The failure to address this issue upfront means that net zero is likely to fail, expensively. The stubborn refusal to do so, even now, means that failure may well be a catastrophic one.