Politics Archives

Wednesday

7 April 2021

George Osborne gets another new gig

What do you get for the man who has everything? Newspapers, banking, venture capital, think tanks and speaking engagements – former Chancellor George Osborne has done it all since he left Parliament in 2017 and earning himself a considerable fortune in the process. So it seems only right that the former Evening Standard editor has now chosen to splash some of that cash on an engagement ring for longtime girlfriend Thea Rogers. Osborne opted to follow the example of Benedict Cumberbatch and go for a traditional announcement, placing a simple notice of the forthcoming nuptials in the Times today which reads: 'Miss T Rogers and Mr G Osborne. The engagement is announced between Thea and George.

Kristina Murkett

Vaccine passports are a kick in the teeth for young people

After a year in which young people have lost their jobs, been denied time in the classroom and at university and not been allowed to see their friends, could they now be penalised again? Boris Johnson said we 'have to be very careful how you handle this and don't start a system that is discriminatory' when vaccine passports, or 'Covid status certification', were raised at a briefing this week. Yet it's hard to imagine a more grossly unfair, discriminatory system than introducing vaccine passports before young people have the opportunity to be vaccinated. Young people have sacrificed so much for a disease that they are relatively invulnerable to.

Dr Jade Norris

The creeping authoritarianism of the Covid-19 restrictions

How can a country abide a government that consistently says one thing and then does the exact opposite? Whether it’s lockdown two, lockdown three, or masks in schools, the government has consistently stated one thing and then changed its mind months, weeks, or even hours later. This not only exacerbates the problem of trust in politicians, but in ‘the science’, which they have clutched as a shield to cower behind whilst making political decisions. The latest example is the shifting of the goalposts around when lockdown will finally end. Ministers began by saying they would ‘cry freedom’ when the vulnerable were vaccinated, but now it seems entirely possible that we will still face restrictions even after everyone is offered a vaccine.

Joel Diggory

Now isn’t the time to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum

Who will educate the educators, when the educators get things wrong? This week, one of Britain's leading teaching unions passed a motion to 'decolonise' all subjects in the secondary school curriculum: not just history or English, but all subjects, including food technology, computer science, geography, and maths. Black history must be 'fully embedded' across the curriculum, NASUWT’s president, Michelle Codrington-Rogers, said. What started out as a laudatory attempt to teach black students that their history is much more than slavery and colonialism, has led to a sad, pathetic, hyperbolic overreaching. Black Maths? What is that?

Arabella Byrne

How to solve Joe Biden’s dog problem

Pity poor Major Biden, First Dog of the United States, FDOTUS for short. Thrust first from the lowly surroundings of a shelter in Delaware then on to the porticoes of the Biden HQ and finally the White House, he appears to be experiencing teething problems as he adapts to his new life. And teeth are, quite literally, the problem. Prone to biting, the German Shepherd has now been found guilty of two biting incidents having first injured a member of the Secret Service and now a White House staffer whilst out on one of his walks. But this is not all. Major is also suspected of pooing outside the Palm Room doors of the Diplomatic Room in the carpeted sanctuary of the West Wing.

Tuesday

6 April 2021

Steerpike

Watch: SNP’s ‘creepy’ party broadcast

Tonight the Scottish National party released its latest party political broadcast on Twitter. Featuring a young red-haired woman sitting on a stool, striding around a stage, it flashes various images onto the back of a screen complete with melodramatic background tones. Ignoring the Scottish government's own record of the last 14 years on health, education, social mobility and every other matter of public policy, it asks: 'Who will care? When you see your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your grandpa and nan, how can we get governments that care about them. The governments that we can trust to work tirelessly for Scotland, day after day after day.' https://twitter.com/theSNP/status/1379484798251626497?

Isabel Hardman

Starmer will regret his submission to liberal intolerance

Keir Starmer obviously regrets visiting Jesus House last week because of the furore it has caused in his own party. But he will likely come to regret his reaction even more. The Labour leader posted a full apology for the Pentecostal church visit, saying: ‘I completely disagree with Jesus House’s beliefs on LGBT+ rights, which I was not aware of before my visit. I apologise for the hurt my visit caused and have taken down the video. It was a mistake and I accept that.’ The whole thing is, as Brendan O’Neill points out, rather awkward, given Starmer chose to visit this church during a key Christian festival and given non-mainstream views on homosexuality are a feature not just of many churches but many other religious groups.

Steerpike

No. 10 director of communications: runners and riders

Last month Mr S was first to report that Downing Street veteran James Slack was off to the Sun after four years in No. 10. Slack, who survived the transition from May to Johnson but had only served as Lee Cain’s replacement since January, was well-regarded from his time as the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson and viewed by the lobby as a ‘safe pair of hands.’ Attention now turns to who will replace Slack in the role. Key attributes needed for the role will be the strength to work gruelling 18-hour days, unflappability under relentless questioning about interiors and the experience to manage Westminster’s unruly press pack.

Alex Massie

Alex Salmond is a gift to the Unionist cause

If Alex Salmond and his new Alba party did not exist, pro-Union parties would find it necessary to invent them. Perhaps, of course, that is what has happened. Be that as it may, Salmond’s emergence from the swampy waters of his own disgrace is the best thing to have happened for Unionism in a long, long time. Salmond may be an innocent man in the eyes of the law, but he is not a good one in the eyes of the public. Remarkably, he is less popular in Scotland than Boris Johnson. That reflects, doubtless, the manner in which Nicola Sturgeon’s friends and agents have turned against him and the sad lack of charity still bestowed upon him by his longstanding Unionist opponents. Even so, it is quite an achievement.

Cindy Yu

Is Boris being ‘honest’ on vaccine passports?

12 min listen

The government needs to be 'honest' about vaccine passports, Labour's shadow health minister Jonathan Ashworth said today. Boris Johnson yesterday said the 'certificates' would not be needed for pubs or shops, but a recent paper from the government said venues could scrap social distancing rules if they're used. Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about the proposals.

Andrew McQuillan

Why is nobody talking about Northern Ireland?

It is depressingly appropriate that a weekend which started on Good Friday was one which illustrated the shaky foundations of the agreement which brought a form of peace to Northern Ireland. Twenty three years on from that landmark deal, discontent among the Province's unionist and loyalist community is beginning to mount. Violence once again erupted on the streets of Derry last night. It was a repeat of the ugly scenes that played out over Easter weekend in Belfast’s loyalist Sandy Row area. Petrol bombs were flung and a total of 32 police officers were injured. The latest spark is mounting unhappiness among unionist pro-British groups at the Northern Ireland Protocol.

David Adler

The problem Dominic Cummings’s ARPA won’t solve

The UK might be the most inventive country in the world. Think of all the technologies which only came about thanks to British research: the world’s first commercial jet, computers based on Charles Babbage and Alan Turing’s ideas, lithium-ion batteries which stemmed from the research of John Goodenough at Oxford. And now think of the countries that currently dominate these technologies. Britain doesn’t come to mind. Our inability to turn inventions into domestic industries is almost a disease. Which is where the government’s new plan for an Advanced Research & Invention Agency (ARIA) comes in. ARIA aims to ‘fund the most inspiring inventors to turn their transformational ideas into new technologies, discoveries, products and services.

Katy Balls

Does Keir Starmer really oppose vaccine passports?

As opposition grows to government plans to introduce vaccine passports, not even the Prime Minister appears keen to defend the proposals. In Monday's press conference, Johnson refused to be drawn into a conversation about the plans and wouldn't even say whether there would be a Commons vote on the policy. However, government figures suggest the proposals will be put to a vote should they be given the green light in government. So, how will Keir Starmer vote when the time comes? Today Labour have suggested they will oppose the plans for domestic vaccine passports in their current form. A Labour source told Politico they were unlikely to support the plans 'on the basis of what we’ve seen and discussed with ministers'.

Steerpike

Alan Duncan’s burn book of insults

Alan Duncan's diaries are currently being serialised by the Daily Mail ahead of their release next Thursday. As a long-serving MP of 27 years who knew four successive Tory premiers, who lent Major his leadership headquarters, was part of May’s Oxford generation and worked alongside both Cameron and Johnson, surely such chronicles would be brimming with brio and insight? Unfortunately thus far revelations appear to have been fairly short on the ground, despite the Mail's best efforts to puff its 'hilarious' purchase as 'one of the most explosive political diaries ever' by claiming the cabinet had been 'rocked' by its contents.

Brendan O’Neill

Starmer’s Jesus House apology is an insult

‘Some Christians believe homosexuality is a sin — get over it.’ I feel like this needs to be made into a poster. Or put on the side of a bus, perhaps. Because, amazingly, there are people out there who seem not to realise that traditionally minded Christians think it is wrong for a man to lie with a man as he would with a woman. Consider the mad controversy over Keir Starmer’s visit to Jesus House in London on Good Friday. Jesus House, in Brent, is part of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a Pentecostal ‘megachurch’ founded in Nigeria in the 1950s. It has a large following among traditionalist African Christians in particular. And — brace yourselves — it isn’t the world’s biggest fan of gay sex or gay marriage.

James Tooley

When ‘white privilege’ doesn’t count

First off the blocks criticising Dr Tony Sewell’s report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities was Professor Kalwant Bhopal from the University of Birmingham. Writing in the Guardian and focusing on her specialism of education (she is director of the Centre for Research in Race and Education), she took exception to the statistics that showed the majority of ethnic minority groups 'perform better than White British pupils'. If this were true, of course, it would put to bed the whole idea of institutional racism in education and 'white privilege', for it wouldn’t be a racism worth its salt if whites systematically came bottom or near-bottom.

James Kanagasooriam and Archie Hall

Salmond will help the Nationalists, but Galloway’s party is bad news for Unionists

Two decades after devolution, the Scottish Parliament’s election system still confuses ordinary voters and seasoned political observers alike. Politicians on both the Unionist and Nationalist sides have capitalised on this complexity, putting forward new parties – most prominently George Galloway’s Alliance for Unity (A4U) and Alex Salmond’s Alba – that aim to game the system and maximise their side’s (on the matter of the constitution) number of MSPs by pulling regional list votes away from the major parties.

Alexander Larman

‘I couldn’t possibly comment’: Novels about political scandals

Thanks to the indelible characters found in the Houses of Parliament, and beyond, it sometimes seems as if there is nothing especially shocking that novelists could dream up for their fictitious political scandals. This means that stories about political naughtiness and shenanigans have to be that much more dramatic in order to ring true. Here are seven novels that mix fiction and reality in the most readable of ways. Rest assured, our current Prime Minister looms large in at least two of them, too. Seventy-Two Virgins, Boris Johnson To date, Boris Johnson has only written one novel, along with several works of non-fiction, but it’s surely one for biographers to seize upon.

Monday

5 April 2021

Fraser Nelson

Johnson is in trouble over vaccine passports – and it’s showing

The biggest question facing Boris Johnson is the future of his so-called vaccine passports. A few months ago, the idea was dismissed by No. 10 as 'discriminatory'. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said: 'We are not a papers-carrying country.' But now, without debate or democratic scrutiny, vaccine passports are quickly heading from unthinkable to unstoppable. Today, No. 10 released more details — hence the questions Johnson is facing. But bizarrely, the Prime Minister was unable to admit to any of it, and pretended to be confused by what he was being asked. This matters.

Cindy Yu

Is the exit roadmap still what it seemed?

12 min listen

The next stage of lockdown easing is going as planned, but some caveats around international travel and vaccine passports are being floated for further down the line. What did the government's announcements today clear up? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.