Politics Archives

Saturday

21 August 2021

China’s state broadcaster is back on British airwaves

It's a hard tasking trying to sell China these days. What with the crackdown on Hong Kong, the subjugation of Uighur Muslims, sabre-rattling on Taiwan and the coronavirus cover-up, even the most adept propagandists would struggle to present Beijing's rulers in a good light. And sadly for the Chinese Communist Party their current spin-doctors are far from adept, judging by the laughably poor wolf-warrior social media tactics deployed by embassies around the world. Now though, one weapon has been returned to the regime's armoury here in the UK. Back in February, China’s state TV station CGTN was taken off the air in Britain after Ofcom established that it was controlled by the country’s Communist Party.

Isabel Hardman

Can ministers ever go on holiday?

14 min listen

With Dominic Raab in the firing line for his £40,000 Crete holiday, the Coffee House Shots team reflects: can ministers ever go on holiday? And if they do, should they be sticking to the domestic ones, and at what point of a political crisis does one decide to turn back? Isabel Hardman talks to Fraser Nelson and former special advisor for Sajid Javid, Salma Shah.

Max Jeffery

Lara Prendergast, Cindy Yu and Gus Carter

17 min listen

On this week's episode, Lara Prendergast asks if it's so wrong to talk about whether the Covid vaccine affects periods. (01:05) Cindy Yu says China's 'zero Covid' strategy can't last. (06:50) And finally, Gus Carter spends an hour in a sensory deprivation tank.

Saqib Qureshi

Defence contractors were the real winners in Afghanistan

The fall of Kabul, like the fall of Saigon, will be taught in classrooms for decades to come. But the dramatic images coming out of Afghanistan don’t necessarily hail the beginning of a post-American world. If America learns the right lessons, it has the chance to pursue a more sustainable foreign policy. One lesson it could learn is to stop outsourcing its war-making and foreign policy to overpaid private firms. In a less politically correct era, these groups would be called what they really are: mercenaries. The corruption and graft expended on contracts of dubious value is legendary. In one episode, some £20 million was spent on forest camouflage for the now-collapsed Afghan National Army.

Rodric Braithwaite

Afghanistan and the end of the American hegemony

We used to sneer at the way the Russians were chased out of Afghanistan by a ragtag of mujaheddin armed only with Kalashnikovs and American Stinger rockets. No longer. The last superpower to be defeated in Afghanistan withdrew in good order, having negotiated the arrangements with Kabul and the mujaheddin. They left behind a competent government, and an Afghan army capable of fighting the mujaheddin to a standstill. That government survived as long as the Russians went on supplying food and ammunition. Then the Russian government, close to meltdown, stopped deliveries. The mujaheddin swept to victory and fell straight into a bloody civil war. Many Afghans were relieved when the Taliban restored order.

John Ferry

When will Nicola Sturgeon see sense on Scotland’s mounting deficit?

UK borrowing in 2020-21 hit a record level of almost £300 billion, representing 14.2 per cent of British GDP, reported the Office for National Statistics in June. In the face of the biggest spending challenge since the Second World War, the Treasury, backed by one of the world's most established central banks, stepped up to supply all the funding needed to pay for furlough, business support and a highly successful vaccination programme.

Dan Hitchens

Will Alta Fixsler be allowed to die at home?

If your severely disabled two-year-old daughter is dying, should you be allowed to take her home for her final hours? It sounds like the answer should be a simple ‘yes’. But in the law surrounding parents, children and healthcare, nothing is that simple. Alta Fixsler’s parents have been repeatedly thwarted in their efforts – as they see it – to do their best for their daughter. First, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust sought to withdraw life-saving treatment for Alta. A judge subsequently agreed that it was in Alta's 'best interests for the treatment that is currently sustaining her precious life...to be withdrawn'. This was in spite of her parents seeking to take her to Israel for treatment.

Patrick O’Flynn

Is Theresa May in any position to criticise the PM?

When Theresa May told a joke at her own expense at a reception of Tory MPs held to celebrate Boris Johnson’s landslide election victory in December 2019, the assembled audience breathed a sigh of relief. Many had expected the freshly re-elected May to be a thorn in the side of her successor during the ensuing parliamentary term. But her deferential joke, about her own botched 2017 election campaign, seemed to amount to an acknowledgment of the superior appeal of Boris Johnson. In fact, the pessimists were right first time, and this has been underlined by May’s extraordinary speech about Afghanistan in the Commons this week. Almost everything she said appeared designed to cast the Prime Minister in a negative light.

Friday

20 August 2021

Stephen Daisley

Sturgeon’s coalition deal is a masterstroke

The deal struck between Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Greens takes Scotland’s devolved government into new territory. For one, it is the first time a Green party has been part of a ruling administration anywhere in the UK. For another, it is a different kind of governing alliance from that which we’re used to in Britain (though less so in Northern Ireland). It is not quite a full-blown coalition like the Cameron-Clegg government — the pact, published this afternoon, outlines areas where the two parties will continue to express separate positions — but nor is it a mere confidence and supply arrangement like the one Theresa May secured with Arlene Foster after the 2017 election.

Ross Clark

Greta Thunberg is right

I am not usually on the same page as Greta Thunberg but she is absolutely right when she accuses the UK of lying about cutting its carbon emissions by 44 per cent since 1990. I have heard ministers repeatedly make this claim on radio and television while hardly ever being challenged on it — so I am thankful that Thurnberg has done what others have failed to do. The government’s 44 per cent claim is based on its official figures for territorial emissions — i.e. those physically spewed out within the UK. It excludes emissions from international shipping, aviation, the manufacture of goods elsewhere in the world for the benefit of UK consumers and the burning of biomass in UK power stations.

Cindy Yu

Is Raab the victim of a witch hunt?

14 min listen

While Dominic Raab continues to weather charges of incompetence and call for resignation, it is the Health Secretary Sajid Javid who might not have any time for a holiday come autumn. Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, is seeing a rush of new Covid cases. Could mean a wave of Covid and flu, later this year? Cindy Yu talks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman.

Steerpike

Which lobbyists run MPs’ interest groups?

David Cameron's links to Greensill have brought the issue of lobbying back into the spotlight. Next month the Committee on Standards will be progressing its wide-ranging inquiry into All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) – the informal cross-party organisations run by and for MPs. Many choose to bring in organisations from outside Parliament to administer their activities. The early stages of the resumed inquiry will focus on the risks of APPGs being used as a vehicle for improper access or influence. It's the first investigation of its kind since the last Standards Committee probe in 2013; since then the number of such groups have ballooned further, with more than 700 APPGs now active across Parliament.

Isabel Hardman

Raab comes out fighting

Dominic Raab is not budging in his conviction that he did everything he could for Afghanistan while he was on his Cretan holiday. The Foreign Secretary has issued a statement in which he argues that the recommendation from his civil servants to call the Afghan foreign minister was ‘quickly overtaken by events’ and that he passed the call onto a junior minister ‘because I was prioritising security and capacity at the airport’. He then argues that this priority ‘was the right one’ and points out the numbers of people who have been evacuated. 'They simply do not have a plan. They looked so small compared to the backbenchers like Tom Tugendhat.

Steerpike

Britain’s wokest club returns

Steerpike was delighted to see the return of Cherie Blair to the spotlight this week. The leading barrister and better half of former PM Tony has joined a campaign to force the men-only Garrick club to admit women, signing a petition which calls on the establishment fixture to change its rules. The Garrick boasts cabinet ministers, academics and mandarins among its members and has long-enjoyed a reputation as a favourite haunt of Supreme Court justices. Signing the petition, Cherie recalled watching her fellow trainee barrister and future husband Tony being admitted into the club in 1976, while she was shut outside, describing the lack of progress since as 'outrageous.

Gavin Mortimer

France is nervous about welcoming a wave of Afghan refugees

Emmanuel Macron has once more infuriated many in France, but this time it has nothing to do with Covid passports or mandatory vaccination. In an address to the nation this week, the president discussed the disturbing scenes from Kabul as the Taliban invaded the capital of Afghanistan. France, he said, would be a haven for those Afghans 'who share our values' but nevertheless the country must 'anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migratory flows that would endanger the migrants and risk encouraging trafficking of all kinds.' His rhetoric went down badly with much of the French left.

Katherine Bayford

How America failed to learn its lessons from Vietnam

The hasty withdrawal from Kabul has inevitably been compared to the Fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. Pictures of a Chinook flying over the US embassy in the Afghan capital to pluck staff to safety did bear something of a resemblance to the airlift of 1975. But is the comparison fair? Joe Biden, at least, has been keen – for understandable reasons – to deny that Afghanistan is anything like Vietnam. A month ago, Biden told a reporter he saw ‘zero’ parallel between the Vietnamese and Afghan withdrawals: ‘The Taliban is not the same as the North Vietnamese army. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of capabilities.

Thursday

19 August 2021

Steerpike

Labour frontbencher hires Paul Mason’s services

This week Labour has been making much hay out of the Afghanistan debacle. Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy is all over the news berating Boris Johnson for not taking enough refugees, not being prepared for the collapse of the Afghan army and for not sacking Dominic Raab over his holiday shenanigans. There have, admittedly, been few actual policy suggestions for what could have been done differently but the collective tone of Nandy and her colleagues has been one of shock, angst and despair at the way Western forces have left the conflict-ravaged country. So Mr S was intrigued to discover that Nandy's fellow frontbencher John Healey has been paying for the services of one comrade who struck a somewhat different note this week.

Cindy Yu

Should Dominic Raab be sacked?

11 min listen

Pressure on the Foreign Secretary is piling up after the Daily Mail revealed today that Raab had rejected the strong advice of Foreign Office civil servants to call his counterpart in the Afghan government before the weekend, to ensure the safe departure of interpreters from the country. Instead, his junior minister Zac Goldsmith took the call. Could - or should - Dominic Raab be sacked? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman.

Paul Wood

America abandoned this fight before the Afghans did

39 min listen

On this week’s podcast:In the latest issue of The Spectator, we cover the Afghanistan issue extensively, looking at everything from why the West was doomed from the start, to how events in Afghanistan have transformed central Asian politics. On the podcast, journalist Paul Wood and our own deputy editor Freddy Gray, both of whom feature in this week’s issue, join Lara to talk Biden, Boris and the new 'progressive' Taliban. (00:37)'This is not your father's Taliban' - Paul WoodNext up, thousands of women whose menstrual cycles have been affected by the Covid vaccine have now come forward to make their symptoms known, including our host Lara Prendergast, who writes about her experience in this week's Spectator.

Steerpike

The only way is Essex for cash strapped Commons

If politics is show business for ugly people, then parliament is the stage on which they shine. And since 2014 – when the first major Hollywood film was shot at the Palace of Westminster – Commons bosses have raised desperately needed funds for the site by charging media crews access to shoot here. Despite fears that such plans risked turning the institution into a 'theme park', figures obtained by Mr S show that parliament raised some £223,883 from 106 requests for such filming between January 2014 and November 2020. Steerpike was intrigued to peruse the records of such requests to find out who exactly has been filming here.