Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Ross Clark

What’s the truth about the UN’s ‘code red’ climate warning?

Predictably enough, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has been greeted with hyperbole about fire, flood and tempest. It is 'code red for humanity,' according to UN general-secretary Antonio Guterres. 'This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet.' As ever with IPCC reports, the content doesn’t live up to the hysterical reviews. If the vision presented in it were the basis of a disaster movie you would want your money back.  No, it doesn’t say that the German floods were caused by man-made climate change – something implied by much of the press coverage, which used photos of the damage in Rhineland towns to illustrate the publication of the report.

Peter Lampl

Let’s end the lottery of predicted grades

Try explaining the British university admissions system to a foreigner. They look at you as if you’re mad. 'What you do is, you apply to university in January on the basis of what your teacher thinks you will get in a series of cliff-edge exams you sit in May/June called A-levels. Only once you get your results in mid-August – which is to say, about a month before you’re due to start – is your place at university confirmed. But that’s only if you’ve actually achieved your predicted grades. If you haven’t, you go into this thing called 'clearing' where you scrabble around trying to pick up places that might have fallen free…' Perhaps the kindest way to describe our universities admissions system is 'archaic'.

Katy Balls

What’s wrong with grade inflation?

11 min listen

A record number of students got As or A*s in their A levels this year. After last year's fiasco, teachers were given the responsibility of grading their own pupils. Has leniency put less well-off kids at a disadvantage, and will the achievements of future students now look worse? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Melanie McDonagh

Is letting Alta Fixsler die really in her ‘best interests’?

There’s something grimly familiar about the case of little Alta Fixsler, the brain damaged toddler whose parents are contesting the decision of the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital to withdraw her life support treatment. She hasn’t eaten or spoken since she was born, tragically prematurely, a misfortune that left her with permanent brain damage. The hospital wishes to turn off her support but her parents want her to be transferred to a hospital in the United States – her father has an American passport – or to Israel – her parents are Israeli citizens, as is she – where the leading paediatric hospital has volunteered to take her.

Esther O'Reilly

An interview with Hatun Tash, the Christian preacher stabbed at Speakers’ Corner

Hatun Tash is recovering well after being assaulted at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park last month. The attacker, who is still at large, appeared to aim for her neck, but Hatun deflected the knife so that it broke off in the folds of her clothes. Her bandaged right hand and scarred forehead are the only visible clues of her near escape. She tells me she started watching footage of the incident but couldn’t bring herself to finish. ‘All I can say is, it wasn’t my time.’ She speaks with the calm of a woman who has faced death before. In May, a mob surrounded her screaming for her blood. Last October, she was punched in the face.

Steerpike

Theresa May’s £850,000 pay day

It's not just David Cameron who has been making a mint from his time in No. 10. The BBC's revelations yesterday that the Old Etonian earned around £7 million from Greensill came just days after Theresa May's eponymous company published its first set of accounts since being incorporated in November 2019. Cameron's successor has chosen to focus her efforts on public speaking – an interesting choice perhaps given her infamous 2017 conference coughing fit. While the pay on the after-dinner circuit doesn't quite match up to the stratospheric dividends of Greensill lobbying, May will take comfort from the fact she can at least expect to command high fees for years to come – something her tainted predecessor might now struggle to do.

Steerpike

Watch: Gavin Williamson refuses to reveal his A-level results

It's A-level results day today as students across the country eagerly await their results. But for Gavin Williamson the day began with a morning media round worthy of an F as the education secretary repeatedly refused to tell LBC host Nick Ferrari what he got in his own exams. The South Staffordshire MP seemed to be taking a leaf out of the Partridge playbook as he extolled the virtues of his alma mater Bradford university in the 1990s, laughing and talking over Ferrari as the latter inquired as to whether the matter was in fact a 'state secret.' https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1424992999575015425?

Debbie Hayton

Don’t blame teachers for this year’s grade inflation

Today’s A level results are unprecedented, but not unexpected. On Friday, Professor Alan Smithers  of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham said, ‘The early signs are that it will be another bumper year for grades.’ He went on to suggest that this might be, ‘justified as compensation for all the disruption suffered’. The impact of Covid-19 on the education of children cannot be dismissed as mere disruption. While adults might now be returning to the office after 18 months working from home, children struggled through two terms of lockdown learning and two more cocooned in bubbles. Grades will be high but they have been earned. Teachers held it all together too.

Samantha Smith

A level students have been failed again

The world was turned upside down in 2020. Schools closed, shops shut, and planes were grounded as the global health crisis hit the world. The great institutions of our society seemed to crumble under the pressure of the pandemic. This was particularly the case for the UK’s education system, which is still failing students 18 months on. This morning, students will be receiving their A level grades, after a year of learning interrupted by constant lockdowns. I can sympathise with students this year – I experienced first-hand the devastation caused by last year’s A level algorithm fiasco. After the algorithm gave me a B, E and U, I was rejected by both my first and second choice universities.

Monday

James Kirkup

Has David Cameron any shame?

$10million, or £7million. That’s what David Cameron is now reported to have made from Greensill Capital, the company he helped lead to ruin. The number, reported by the BBC, is news, not least because Cameron himself had refused to disclose it. Speaking to a Commons committee investigating his failed lobbying for the failed company, the failed former PM would say only that he had been paid a 'generous' sum by Greensill. That one word, 'generous', speaks volumes about Cameron and the Greensill episode. Let’s start with the obvious fact that Cameron used a word rather than a number to describe the money he got (I’m not sure 'earned' is the right term) from Greensill. It seems fair to ask if that was because he was in some way embarrassed by it.

Steerpike

David Cameron’s Greensill riches uncovered

Shame, opprobrium and multiple select committee grillings – was the disgrace of Greensill worth it for David Cameron? The answer would now appear to be yes, judging from documents obtained by the BBC ahead of a Panorama special programme tonight on the story of the company's collapse. According to the Beeb, Cameron made about £7 million from the finance company prior to its collapse in March of this year. Documents indicate the Old Etonian received £3.25 million after cashing in Greensill shares in 2019 with details being revealed in a letter from the business to the onetime Tory leader. The letter suggests Cameron was going to be paid £3.3 million after tax for a tranche of his Greensill shares.

Henry Hill

Sinn Fein’s troubling veneration of terrorists

Sinn Fein is not a normal party. It sometimes feels impolite to point it out in the era of the Belfast Agreement. But the legal amnesty from criminal charges offered to IRA terrorists as part of the peace process does not oblige individuals to abstain from moral judgement of their political wing. Especially when it continues to venerate those terrorists. The past year offered a grim reminder of this when the party’s leadership turned out in force, in the middle of lockdown, for a show of strength at the funeral of Bobby Storey, a Provisional IRA ‘volunteer’ who spent 20 years in prison for various offences.

Steerpike

Revealed: the BBC guide for covering climate change

Climate change is once again dominating the news agenda. A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that even if emissions are cut rapidly, the effects of global warming will be felt across the world. The report – which Boris Johnson has declared sobering reading – leads the news today, with the BBC dedicating seven stories on its homepage today to climate change. So just as well then that BBC staffers were recently treated to an internal audience research briefing telling them how best to convey messages about climate change to different audiences.

Steerpike

Watch: anti-vaxxers storm wrong BBC centre

Oh dear. This afternoon an anti-vaccine demonstration marched on what they thought was BBC Television Centre in apparent protest at the media's supposed complicity in supporting vaccines, Covid certification and lockdowns.  Unfortunately for the protesters, the Corporation actually left the building in White City some eight years ago. Since 2013 the site has instead boasted luxury flats whose residents were presumably perturbed to be granted with chants of 'Shame on you!' and a wave of expletives. The building does however continue to serve one media purpose – part of it remains a studio where ITV films light entertainment programmes such as Loose Women and This Morning.  https://twitter.com/DJJASONJOY1/status/1424707991677321220?

Katy Balls

What will the next reshuffle look like?

Following reports over the weekend that Boris Johnson has threatened to demote Rishi Sunak to health secretary, Downing Street has today sought to downplay reports of a rift between the pair. After business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng used the morning media round to praise the Chancellor's work, the Prime Minister's spokesperson has insisted that Johnson has full confidence in Sunak. While it's clear both sides are keen to kill reports of tension, they are unlikely to have their wish granted. What's more, the comments have brought back speculation over a potential reshuffle.  As a general rule, all cabinet reshuffle speculation ought to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt.

Steven Fielding

What Starmer’s Blair bomb means for Labour

In a recent interview Keir Starmer dropped the B-bomb and Labour members are all a chatter about what it means. Speaking to the Financial Times the Labour leader said his party should be ‘very proud’ of what it achieved under Blair and Brown. As part of Labour’s campaign to regain power for the first time since 2010, Starmer believes the party should remind voters of the good it did when in government, and point out Labour’s successes in reducing poverty, improving the prospects of children and tackling climate change. This might seem a reasonable thing for the Labour leader to say.

Grace King

Can Australia escape its Covid lockdown cycle?

In the early days of the pandemic, Australia was the envy of the world. The country was lauded as a model of how to handle the virus. Australian states recorded few cases; and when there were outbreaks, authorities brought them under control quickly. All that has changed. Now, well into the second half of 2021, Australia is losing its grip on the virus. While other major cities such as New York, London, and Paris, are opening up, Sydney is under lockdown. Even outside the nation’s major cities, travel restrictions are severely limiting movement for Australians within the country. Australia’s politicians have sought to blame the Delta variant of coronavirus. But in truth, the new strain is only part of the story.

Steerpike

Cable goes from Mr Bean to Stalin

It seems like just yesterday that Vince Cable was the most popular Lib Dem in the land. Back in the heady days of the late noughties, Cable was regarded as the supposed seer who foresaw the banking crisis; a 'safe pair of hands' whose memorable jibe at Gordon Brown's transformation from 'Stalin to Mr Bean' provided much mirth to MPs across the House. But much has changed in the decade since and the once well-regarded Liberal Democrat has been undergoing a transformation of his own. Cable, who stepped down from the Commons in 2019, has earned notoriety during the last year for his comments on the Chinese Communist party and the plight of the Uyghur Muslims under the regime. https://twitter.com/BeijingToBrit/status/1419943540415676433?

Isabel Hardman

How deep is the Boris/Rishi divide?

12 min listen

With the Chancellor's leaked letter to the Prime Minister (which apparently he'd never seen) showing some disagreement about COVID policy, is this an omen signalling a fracas to come over future spending plans?

Steerpike

Whitehall’s £3 million Stonewall spend

It’s not been a great year for the LGBT rights charity Stonewall. In May founding member Matthew Parris accused the organisation of trying to delegitimise anyone who did not agree with its views after a free speech row at Essex University.  Stonewall was alleged to have misrepresented the law in its advice to the institution with barrister Akua Reindorf warning of 'potential illegalities' and suggesting the university should reconsider its ties to the campaigning group.  Then in June it was reported that the Ministry of Justice is preparing to leave Stonewall’s diversity scheme as part of an 'exodus' of government departments severing ties with Stonewall. Now, fresh questions are being asked about the source of the charity's funding.