Politics Archives

Friday

25 June 2021

The Katie Perrior Edition

35 min listen

Katie Perrior is a public relations expert who co-founded inHouse Communications. She's worked for two prime ministers and several senior Tory MPs, and today her clients include the spiritsmaker Diageo and the football Super League. On the podcast, she talks about leaning into Boris Johnson's rambunctious style on the London mayoralty campaign; coming into blows with Theresa May's chief advisors Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill; and, reflecting on the Super League disaster, how there are more liars in football than even in politics.

Thursday

24 June 2021

Lara Prendergast

The house mafia: the scandal of new builds

29 min listen

This week…Why should the first time buyer be so scared of new builds? (00:36) Plus… will the catholic church come to the defence of the word mother? (09:33) And finally… Why does it take so long to understand Japanese culture, even for the Japanese? (18:50)With John Myers founder of YIMBY, Vickey Spratt housing correspondent of the I newspaper and author of the up coming book Tenants, Spectator Columnist Mary Wakefield, theologian Theo Hobson, former editor of The Tablet and author of Martyrdom: Why Martyrs Still Matter Catherine Pepinster, Professor Philip Patrick and comedian Ollie Horn (@olliehorntweets).Presented by Lara Prendergast.Produced by Cindy Yu, Natasha Feroze and Sam Russell.

James Forsyth

A home counties rebellion is brewing

With the polls regularly showing double-digit Tory leads and the Covid restrictions on course to go on the 19 July, you might expect Tory MPs to be in a fairly relaxed mood. But, as I say in the new edition of the magazine, last week’s by-election, which saw the Liberal Democrats replace a 16,000 Conservative majority with an 8,000 majority of their own, has sparked a panic among Tories sitting for similar seats. ‘You can’t overstate the rage of southern MPs at the moment,’ says one ‘blue wall’ Tory. ‘Whatever their gripe is, it is why we lost Chesham and Amersham.’ There is a view among southern Conservatives that northern seats have been getting No. 10’s attention because their MPs shout louder.

Cindy Yu

Will Brits be welcomed abroad this summer?

10 min listen

Daily new cases are just under 17,000 today, and Angela Merkel has advised other EU leaders to make British tourists quarantine upon entry to the bloc. So even if the British government allows a more liberal green list, would British tourists be welcomed abroad? Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls. Katy points out that this bodes well for July 19: 'So I wouldn't be surprised if you get some scientists used to commenting on this sounding the alarm in the coming days if it keeps going up at this rate.

Steerpike

Mumford & Sons banjoist quits in cancel culture row

Oh dear. Back in March, Mumford & Sons banjoist Winston Marshall landed himself in hot water after praising a book by conservative American journalist Andy Ngo. Following the publication of Unmasked – Ngo's recent critique of the antifa movement – Marshall tweeted his praise, declaring: 'Finally had the time to read your important book. You’re a brave man.' The subsequent backlash over Ngo's alleged status as a 'notorious right-wing agitator' forced Marshall to take 'time away from the band' culminating in today's announcement that the latter is leaving his band after 14 years.

Stephen Daisley

Ever weaker Union: The Tories lack a constitutional theory

No doubt Michael Gove is satisfied with how his latest comments on Scottish independence have gone down. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, de facto minister for the Union (even though that’s meant to be someone else’s job), told the Telegraph he couldn’t see any circumstances under which the PM would allow Nicola Sturgeon a second referendum on breaking up Britain. This is exactly what Scotland’s embattled unionists want to hear and seem not to tire of hearing, even though they hear it a lot. Sturgeon has obliged by accusing Gove of ‘sneering, arrogant condescension’, ‘completely refusing to accept Scottish democracy’ and helping ‘build support for independence’. And so on this dull, dishonest dance goes.

Christopher Snowdon

Boris’s junk food crusade is absurd

The government is to ban 'junk food' adverts before the 9 p.m. watershed as well as restricting online food ads. Boris Johnson seems to have realised that he is overweight and so now we must all be subjected to an ever-growing assortment of gastronomic restrictions. The first of many problems, however, is that civil servants don't actually have a definition for 'junk food'. The category used instead is 'high in fat, sugar and salt' (HFSS), a designation that is ridiculously broad. So now certain foods that would normally fall into the category are exempt. Honey, olive oil, avocados and Marmite are among those reportedly saved.

Matthew Lynn

Has the Bank of England just blown its chance to stop inflation?

The economy is growing at a blistering pace, and likely to recover all its Covid losses by the autumn. Labour shortages are emerging across a range of industries, as the supply of Eastern European workers dries up. Prices are starting to edge upwards, house prices are soaring, and commodities are getting more expensive. But, hey, it is probably a good moment to keep the printing presses rolling and pump plenty of freshly minted pounds into the economy. The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided not just to keep base rates at 0.1 per cent today – that was largely expected – but also to maintain its programme of quantitative easing at £875 billion. And it may well have blown its chance to nip inflation in the bud before it starts to escalate.

Isabel Hardman

Are Hancock’s health reforms doomed from the start?

Are the Conservatives going to repeat their mistakes of a decade ago on NHS reform? If a week is a long time in politics, perhaps ten years is such a lengthy period that it erases the memory entirely. The current Health and Social Care Bill is due for publication any day now and contains much of the same potential for an almighty political row as the Andrew Lansley reforms of 2011. Senior Whitehall figures and MPs have predicted that Matt Hancock's new legislation could be 'Lansley mark ii', as I write in today's i paper. In talking to MPs across the Conservative party, from backbencher to minister, and from lockdown sceptic to restrictions enthusiast, I've found members fall into two groups on this reform.

Kate Andrews

Boris must face the truth about the ‘triple lock’ pensions promise

The Tories have a pension problem – and it’s not strictly financial. Over the coming weeks, the cost of pension promises is likely to be in the spotlight. The pensions ‘triple lock’, which the Prime Minister reportedly refuses to scrap, means that the state pension is upgraded each year in line with average earnings, the Consumer Price Index or by 2.5 per cent – whichever is higher. This year, it’s likely that earnings will be the highest of these figures by a long way. Here we encounter a problem: the triple lock was not designed with a pandemic in mind. The crazy world of 'Coronomics' has led to the biggest recession in 300 years, yet average wages increased quite dramatically; they are currently up 5.6 per cent on the year.

Steerpike

George Osborne grabs his eleventh gig since No. 11

Journalist, banker, academic, think tanker and now culture vulture — is there nothing to which George Osborne cannot turn his hand? The former chancellor has today been appointed the chair of the board of trustees of the British Museum — an institution that incidentally was spared from the 20 per cent cut he forced on the culture department back in 2015. It was of course just last month that culture secretary Oliver Dowden pledged to replace 'metropolitan bubbles' with Red Wall voters. Osborne admittedly has long been a fan of the museum, writing for The Spectator in February about how he tried to impress China’s vice premier by touring the site and regaling him with the Sutton Hoo treasures.

Rod Liddle

Keir Starmer’s days are numbered

I think Keir’s had it. This may not discomfort you terribly, I know. Still less the fact that Labour will rummage around in its idiot box and find someone even more un-electable to lead the party. Cheeky Nandos perhaps, or Angela No-Brayner. Someone mental for whom patriotism is an anathema and who finds it difficult to rise up for a moment off their knee, all the while banging together saucepans for the NHS, Cuba and transgender rights. Starmer’s days are numbered because of what just happened in Chesham and Amersham and what is about to happen in Batley and Spen. Sacking his closest ally and election edgelord supremo, Baroness Chapman of Darlington, and then giving her a job to be useless in somewhere else will not stave off the crisis.

Kristina Murkett

Don’t blame ‘white privilege’ for the plight of working-class kids

Tory MP Robert Halfon is right to say that the underachievement of white working-class students is a ‘major social injustice’. He is also correct to call for ‘a proper funding settlement’ so that we have an ‘education system fit for purpose’. But this much-needed debate has been overshadowed by a red herring in the Education committee's report: the use of the term ‘white privilege’. The report claims that the use of such phrases may have contributed to the neglect of disadvantaged white kids. Of course, as Halfon says, ‘it is wrong to tell a white disadvantaged family that they are white privileged even though they may come from a very poor background and may be struggling’.

Kate Andrews

The Covid divide: there’s one rule for the elite, another for us

This week was meant to be the moment when we could celebrate the return of freedom. Instead, we’re left still navigating a maze of rules. Couples are working out what a ‘Covid-secure wedding’ means (spoiler: no dancing or hugging). Family reunions — once planned for Christmas, then delayed to Easter — are being pushed back into the autumn. Birthday parties have been axed again. No one wants to break the law, or risk asking others to do so. Ministers make a great show of obeying the rules. The weekend before Boris Johnson announced the delay to ‘freedom day’, he was bumping elbows with Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau at the G7 in Cornwall, posing for socially distanced photos. It was the picture of Covid security.

James Forsyth

Life is about to get harder for Boris Johnson

Covid restrictions are meant to end on 19 July. But parliament will not return to normal until September. The Commons goes into recess on 22 July and there’s no desire in government to end proxy voting for the dregs of the session. The chief whip has told colleagues that he might struggle to get MPs to come to Westminster for just the last three days of term. The Commons chamber has been a strange place during the pandemic: less bear pit, more petting zoo. Since so few MPs have been allowed in, it has been far harder for them to persuade their colleagues by force of argument or to put a minister under sustained pressure. This has neutered the chamber as a force. The Covid restrictions have distorted things in other ways too.

Fredrik Erixon

What Sweden’s political crisis says about Europe’s collapsing centre

Uppsala Nooshi Dadgostar is Sweden’s new political star. A young, softly spoken politician with Iranian immigrant parents and an unfinished degree in law, she became the leader of the Vansterpartiet (‘Left party’) late last year — taking over from Jonas Sjöstedt, a bleeding-heart version of Jeremy Corbyn who struggled to shake off the party’s communist past. Most of her predecessors have tried but failed to become a central part of the national political conversation. But this week, she succeeded: by taking out the Swedish Prime Minister. If he tinkered with rent controls, she said, she’d topple him with a vote of no confidence. She was as good as her word.

The Spectator

The virus threat has changed. Now Test and Trace must too

Under what circumstances can a government restrict the liberty of the people? An example was given last year: in a public health emergency, to contain a pandemic which threatens to overrun the health service. Opinions may differ on how close we came to this in March 2020, but the question remains relevant now. Is there any realistic threat, today, of the NHS being overwhelmed? And if not, why is Test and Trace still pinging and confining thousands of people every day? When the Test and Trace system was introduced in May last year, it was supposed to prevent another lockdown.

Nick Cohen

Beware Boris’s sinister crackdown on free speech

A Conservative government that boasts it is a defender of free speech against the attacks of 'the woke' is about to impose the severest censorship this country has seen in peacetime since parliament abolished press controls in the 1690s. In an extraordinary power grab – which is all the more extraordinary for the absence of opposition – ministers want to silence views that carry no criminal penalty. This is more than a much-needed crackdown on racial attacks on black footballers or incitements to violent crime or any other crime; it is an unmerited attack on free speech. The government’s draft Online Safety bill imposes a ‘duty of care’ on internet companies to remove content that may cause ‘psychological harm’.

Mark Galeotti

The real reason Putin targeted HMS Defender

When military personnel talk of ‘theatres’ they mean a zone of conflict. Moscow seems to take the term increasingly literally, though, regarding spin as an essential tool of martial statecraft. This was especially visible in yesterday's claims that its Border Guard ships fired warning shots and Black Sea Fleet Su-24 bombers dropped OFAB-250 fragmentation bombs because the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender ‘intruded’ onto Russia’s ‘territorial waters.’ After which, Moscow smugly noted, Defender ‘left’ those waters. Except that very little of that seems to be true. First of all, the waters in question were off Cape Fiolent, at the southern tip of the Crimean peninsula.

Wednesday

23 June 2021

James Forsyth

Five years later will we ever truly move on from Brexit?

13 min listen

It's the five year anniversary of when the UK decided to leave the European Union and while the opposition are looking to try and put the referendum behind them, the government still seems keen to put any UK success squarely on the shoulders of Brexit. 'There is an asymmetry in British politics now between about who wants to keep talking about it and who doesn't' - James ForsythBut with nationalist sentiment rumbling on in both the north and west are the Conservatives ignoring the battles to come? And also are the prospects of vaccine passports looking better? James Forsyth and Katy Balls discuss... with another surprise visit from Fraser Nelson.