Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Katy Balls

Will lockdown be extended by a month?

As Boris Johnson wines and dines world leaders and their partners in Cornwall, ministers are increasingly pessimistic over the pace of the government roadmap out of lockdown. The Prime Minister isn't due to make a final decision on whether the June 21 unlocking will proceed until Sunday with an announcement due on Monday. Yet in Whitehall, reports are circulating that a delay is near inevitable and that rather than the two week delay floated in the papers last week it could actually be for a month. Government aides are gloomy over the chances of any substantial reopening – pointing to rising case numbers as reason for caution.

Rod Liddle

Why did Scotland reverse their decision to ‘take the knee’?

Game One Turkey 0 Italy 3 The start of the tournament and the first game was overshadowed by the exciting news that Scotland’s players intend to kneel, when they play England next week. They had originally not intended to 'take a knee' – thinking it rightly (to judge from their press statements) a pointless and embarrassing bit of showing off. But they changed their mind, presumably after fevered phone calls from south of the border. They should have stuck to their guns: the kneeling has become a ludicrous vanity project for Gareth Southgate and the Football Association. It gets sillier by the day. Needless to say, neither the young Turks nor the more elderly Italians did anything so stupid as to kneel and nor will Croatia on Sunday.

Steerpike

‘Hitler was right’ journalist leaves BBC

Tala Halawa, the BBC journalist who was found to have tweeted ‘Hitler was right’, is out at the Corporation. Almost three weeks ago, Steerpike highlighted how media watchdog organisation Honest Reporting and others had uncovered a string of tweets posted on Halawa’s Twitter account from 2014. These included pronouncing that ‘Israel is more Nazi than Hitler’ and ‘Hitler was right’. Halawa had also declared ‘ur media is controlled by ur zionist government’ and tweeted a graphic of a child being burned on a menorah, the Jewish ritual candelabrum.

Stephen Daisley

The progressive imperialism of Keir Starmer’s Palestine policy

There are two ways to look at Sir Keir Starmer’s call for the Prime Minister ‘to press for a renewed international agreement to finally recognise the State of Palestine’ at the G7 summit. The first is cynical: that the intended audience was not the government benches or the international community, but the voters of Batley and Spen, currently weighing up whether to elect another Labour MP in next month’s by-election. At the 2011 census, almost one in five residents were Muslim and knowing what we know about how progressives view religious and ethnic minorities, it is not a stretch to assume Sir Keir was merely electioneering.

James Forsyth

How to fix the protocol

The blame game between London and Brussels over the Northern Ireland protocol obscures the fact that there are solutions waiting to be found. There are, as I say in the Times today, ways to reform the protocol and better protect the Good Friday Agreement while not threatening the integrity of the single market. Three changes would render the protocol far more acceptable Three changes would render the protocol far more acceptable and would better position it to withstand the undoubted pressures it will come under when the EU and UK start to diverge their regulations.  The first of these is a trusted trader scheme for food. This would allow registered suppliers to move goods — including, yes, sausages — from Great Britain to Northern Ireland without checks.

Steerpike

Watch: Boris plays gooseberry at Biden-Macron bromance

This morning saw the G7 summit formally kick off in Cornwall with a traditional awkward 'family photo' of the different premiers and presidents together. As Boris Johnson led the leaders off the stage, he turned around to be confronted with an unsettling sight: french president Emmanuel Macon clasping the septuagenarian Joe Biden to his bosom. With one hand behind Biden's back, Macron marched his partner across the beach, conversing as he did so while our poor PM could only watch helplessly at the affected entente cordiale.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLMmBb8qStQ Far from being embarrassed by such a show of transatlantic tactility, Macron clearly revelled in the moment.

Kate Andrews

Will the third wave stop our economic recovery?

The UK economy continued to rebound in April, with this morning’s update from theOffice for National Statistics showing GDP grew 2.3 per cent — slightly better than the consensus prediction of 2.2 per cent. The reopening of non-essential shops and outdoor hospitality on 12 April contributed to the boost. GDP now sits 3.7 per cent below its pre-pandemic levels, the closest we’ve come to achieving full recovery. Forecasters are increasingly confident that we’ll be back to pre-pandemic levels in 2021, even possibly before Q4. Capital Economics says ‘early indicators suggest that GDP growth was strong in May as well,’ when more indoor activity opened and numbers on indoor and outdoor socialising relaxed further.

Steerpike

Meet the academics behind the Rhodes boycott

On Wednesday it was revealed that 150 Oxford academics are boycotting Oriel College and refusing to teach its students in protest at its decision to keep the Cecil Rhodes statue. Steerpike has been sent a copy of the letter – which sets out the academics' collective view that 'Oriel College's decision not to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes undermines us all' – and a full list of the co-signatories, republished here for the first time. Reading through, Mr S was struck by the number of proud imperialists who gave their names to posts currently held by the anti-Rhodes protesters.

Ross Clark

How serious is Britain’s third wave?

The link between Covid cases and hospitalisations has been broken, we keep being told – vaccination having reduced the severity of infections, especially among more vulnerable older groups. It is a point reinforced this morning by Public Health England which reveals that the number of cases of the delta (formerly Indian) variant have increased from 12,431 to 42,323 in a week, but without a corresponding rise in hospitalisations. But how true is it that what looks like a third wave in new infections will not be accompanied by a large wave of hospitalisations? Previous experience with Covid – using PHE data – suggests there is not a very long lag between cases and hospitalisations.

Mary Dejevsky

Is it time to end the G7 spouse circus?

Turn on any television news broadcast and peruse any news stand on the eve of the G7 summit, and what was the favourite picture? Carrie and Jill take a barefoot walk along the Cornish sand beside the blue Cornish sea, and enjoy a frolic with little Wilfred (just past his first birthday).  Ahhhh. Isn’t that lovely, so natural, so normal, you say. Melania (snarl) would never have done that. Oh, and by the way, Jill’s jacket said 'Love' on the back, contrast with Melania’s during a visit to a migrant detention centre, which said (if you have already forgotten) 'I really don’t care, do U?' Well, you might care. Then again – like me – you might not. And in a moment I will explain why.

Cindy Yu

Can the G7 beat Russia and China’s vaccine diplomacy?

8 min listen

As the G7 rolls on and the world leaders learn where their peers stand on certain issues post Covid...  'There's still a chance the Northern Ireland protocol could come up at the G7 and cause some problems...' - Katy Balls ...the wealthy western nations need to decide how best to help vaccinate the world's poorer countries without risking their own rollouts at home.  'It's a very unusual leader who's going to take risks sending vaccines abroad until they've done their own population...' - James ForsythCindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth.

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Why the Oxford Queen portrait row matters

The sheer scale of the outrage over Magdalen College Oxford electing to remove a portrait of the Queen from the postgraduate common room can seem on the face of it to be absurd; why should we care what pictures a group of students choose to put on the wall? We didn’t care when they put it up in 2013. Why should we mind if they happen to have better decor available today?  A little digging however shows that, as is generally the case, this latest flashpoint is less about the putative cause and more to do with ideology. The portrait was taken down because 'for some students depictions of the monarch and the British monarchy represent recent colonial history'.

James Kirkup

Euro 2020 and the search for a new Englishness

A soccer contest is upon us. I know nothing of football as a sport, but even a dunce like me knows that these things are about more than 22 men chasing a ball for 90 minutes. Big sporting events such as Euro 2020 matter, especially for England and Englishness. Any big England game is a rare chance for people to fly the flag and briefly talk about Englishness. But we need to do more than talk about this when the football team is playing. A proper national debate about English identity is overdue and badly needed. New polling from British Future this week showed that only two thirds of BAME people think 'Englishness' is open to them. Worse, 14 per cent of white English people still think only white people can be English.

Steerpike

The G7’s calorie-busting menu

As the nation waits to hear whether life can finally return to normal come 21 June, world leaders have jetted into Cornwall for the G7 junket in a bid to set the world to rights. Covid-19 and climate change are top of the agenda – but it isn't all work and no play. Various social meets are on the cards as well as extravagant dinner as leaders chew over the fat.  That food menu, however, is enough to make Jamie Oliver sob featuring cheese, cream and carbs galore. Only last year, Boris Johnson was telling aides that it was a bad idea to be a 'fatty' in your 50s, only Mr S is unsure the menu for G7 would get past Public Health England or the government's new obesity strategy.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

The third wave: it’s here – but it shouldn’t delay our reopening

39 min listen

Experts are saying we are now officially in a third wave but how concerned should we be? (00:56) Also on the podcast: What will the mood be like when Boris meets Biden (14:33)? And are UFOs no longer a laughing matter?(23:00) With Scientist Simon Clarke, mathematician Philip Thomas, spokesperson for Republicans Overseas UK Sarah Elliot, Spectator World editor Freddy Gray, astrophysicist Tim O'Brian & author Lawrence Osborne Presented by Lara Prendergast. Produced by Cindy Yu, Max Jeffery and Sam Russell.

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn: Luciana Berger was not hounded out of Labour

Jeremy Corbyn has spent the past few weeks going on something of a road trip of British universities. Now sitting as an independent for Islington North, Corbyn spoke at the Oxford Union last month where he was asked if he had any regrets about his time as Labour leader to which he replied: 'Regrets? I’m really with Frank Sinatra on regrets actually – I’ve got a few but too few to mention.'  Sangfroid that will be of little comfort to the 46 MPs who lost their seats 18 months ago... Today it was Cambridge who played host to Corbyn for an hour.

Cindy Yu

Could Brexit scupper the G7?

14 min listen

The long-anticipated G7 meeting in Cornwall has got off to a rocky start today, as it transpired that the US had lodged a 'demarché' - a diplomatic ultimatum - with David Frost, earlier in the week, over the UK's position on the Northern Ireland Protocol. Could tensions spill over? James Forsyth points out that the US side clearly did not want this to become public knowledge: 'In the reaction from the US side this morning, they are clearly trying to walk this to a more moderate position.' On the podcast, we also discuss Matt Hancock's evidence to MPs today, and the ramifications of the Dominic Cummings hearing from a few weeks ago.

Steerpike

Watch: Biden’s Carrie teasing

'I was thrilled to meet your wife,' Joe Biden told Boris Johnson during their first meeting at this week's G7 summit. The PM’s eyes sunk. Where could this be going? 'Yes, they’ve gone off to do something else,' Boris replied, seemingly in the hope that Biden would too.  The President was in a playful mood though. He murmured 'I told the Prime Minister, "we have something in common".' A concerned look broke across Boris's face. What could it be? 'We both married way above our station'. https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1403000551105728512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Vigorous nodding, vague murmuring, the desperation not to say something contradictory.

Henry Hill

Joe Biden doesn’t understand Northern Ireland

Even a pessimist could be forgiven for being surprised by Joe ‘I’m Irish’ Biden’s ham-fisted intervention in the ongoing row over the Northern Ireland protocol. If Boris Johnson’s remark that the phrase ‘special relationship’ didn’t ring true before, they certainly must after the President opened his visit by quoting Y.B. Yeats on the Easter Rising… while visiting a Royal Air Force base. It will also be a wearisomely familiar routine for Ulster unionists, who have been scorning American pressure to abandon Britain since at least the days of Woodrow Wilson. How will the government respond? There remain many on the right bewitched by yesterday’s Atlanticism.

Isabel Hardman

Matt Hancock isn’t out of the woods just yet

Matt Hancock enjoyed an early boost in his evidence session to the select committees investigating the lessons learned from the government’s handling of the pandemic, when one of the committee chairs Greg Clark confirmed that Dominic Cummings had not submitted written evidence for the allegations he had made in his own session. Those allegations included that Hancock had lied to the Prime Minister about testing of patients being discharged into care homes; that he had been told by the chief scientific adviser that not everyone who needed treatment received it; that the Cabinet Secretary had ‘lost confidence’ in the minister’s honesty; and that he had interfered in the expansion of testing capacity.