Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Saturday

Ross Clark

Why the UK shouldn’t engage in vaccine nationalism

There is a big, big hole in Ursula von der Leyen’s strategy of threatening to ban exports of the Pfizer vaccine to Britain unless Britain hands over shots of UK-made AstraZeneca vaccine to make up for a shortfall in EU-made supplies. Well, several holes perhaps – not least that EU member states have done their utmost to undermine public confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine, with the result that millions of doses have sat unused in fridges. What is the point in extracting AstraZeneca vaccines from Britain if they, too, are left to languish in fridges while Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and others put people off accepting the vaccine?

Cindy Yu

Should Britain engage in vaccine diplomacy?

23 min listen

America has belatedly joined the vaccine diplomacy arena, the progress of which by Russia and China has been covered by The Spectator. On this episode of Saturday's Coffee House Shots, Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls, James Forsyth, Kate Andrews and Fraser Nelson about the latest developments in the race and whether Britain should be altogether more noble in its vaccines distribution.

Douglas Murray

Leading article, Douglas Murray and Philip Hensher

26 min listen

On this episode, Cindy Yu starts by reading the leader - The Spectator has a fight on it's hands as the Scottish Crown Office threatens a six-figure fine. (01:30) Then, Douglas Murray says the Church of England has morphed beyond recognition. (06:40) Finally, Philip Hensher says Jordan Peterson's new book, Beyond Order, is 'pretty odd'.

Colin Brazier

The Queen has a secret weapon in the War of the Waleses

It was a big call, sending the royals out and about straight after the Oprah interview. We have to be seen to be believed, as Her Majesty is said to have once observed. It’s a philosophy more complicated than it appears and one which should have the Sussexes worried. As a strategy, it’s not risk-free. Within 24 hours of ITV’s broadcast of the Meghan and Harry interview, Charles went to a vaccination centre in North London. A couple of days later, William was at an East End school. It’s amazing how rarely these things go wrong. True: appearances aren’t widely trailed in advance, armed officers are at hand, and to a great extent crowds police themselves. Even so, it just takes a moron with a brass neck and a grudge to make trouble.

Patrick O’Flynn

Diane Abbott has exposed Keir Starmer’s Red Wall dilemma

Were Keir Starmer more like Gordon Brown in temperament then by now he’d be throwing his mobile phone at a wall and ranting about the bigotry of the electorate. Instead, he plods on. Or perhaps we should confine ourselves to saying merely that he plods given the lack of any discernible sign of progress. YouGov produced more terrible numbers for Starmer this week when its monthly tracker poll on public views of his performance emerged. A month ago, it showed him in net negative territory for the first time, at -6 in the split between those saying he was doing well compared to those saying he was doing badly.  Now that rating has deteriorated to -13. He scored especially badly with the over-50s (-19) and men (-22).

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Let’s call time on Britain’s gerontocracy

The boomers are eating their grandchildren. They don’t see it this way, of course, but they are doing it nonetheless. Covid, or rather the British state’s response to the pandemic, is just the latest evidence of this. Whatever you make of Boris Johnson's handling of the pandemic, one thing is clear: the cost of lockdown will be funded by young people in taxes for years to come. But it will most of all be paid for with time. We can find ways to minimise the impact of the government debt, but we can’t give people a year of their lives back. It is a natural part of history that good fortune is not distributed evenly. That some generations are lucky and others are not is obvious, as is the fact that some will be called upon to make greater sacrifices.

Friday

Katy Balls

Nicola Sturgeon to face no confidence vote

Since the pandemic began, Nicola Sturgeon has been a regular sight at the daily Covid press conferences in Scotland. Where Boris Johnson's appearances at the Westminster version are infrequent at best, Sturgeon rarely misses a day. But today the First Minister was nowhere to be seen. Following reports overnight that a majority of MSPs on the Alex Salmond Committee will say she did mislead parliament, it was Sturgeon's Health Secretary Jeane Freeman who went out to bat.  Asked whether Sturgeon should resign, Freeman replied that 'this is a Covid briefing' before adding that she believed her colleague did not mislead parliament and that she should not resign.

Steerpike

Exclusive: No. 10 comms chief hired by the Sun

Having been appointed as the Prime Minister's Official Spokesperson way back in February 2017, James Slack has earned himself the reputation of being one of the most trusted operators in Westminster. One of the few old hands to make the transition from Theresa May to Boris Johnson, Slack found himself being shuffled in January to the role of Downing Street Director of Communications – the post previously filled by Lee Cain. However after just two months in the post, Slack has now quit the post to go to Rupert Murdoch's soaraway Sun. An email went out this afternoon from Sun editor Victoria Newton which Mr S was first to get his hands on: Dear all, I am delighted to let you know that I have appointed James Slack as deputy editor-in-chief for The Sun.

Steerpike

Yours for £66, an official Whitehall flagpole

Flags are suddenly all the rage in British politics, with scarcely a day going by it seems without a fresh row over the Union Jack. First a leaked Labour report last month on how to win back voters was splashed on the front page of the Guardian along with its recommendations that Labour make 'use of the flag, veterans [and] dressing smartly' — an uncontroversial observation that triggered days of handwringing from the usual suspects.  Then there was the continued comment about ministers on Zoom with an ever-growing number of flags in the background. And just yesterday BBC stars found themselves in hot water for sniggering at Robert Jenrick's Union Jack in the background of his office and his portrait of the Queen on the wall. https://twitter.

Kate Andrews

Will Covid cost less than expected?

It’s no surprise that the bill for Covid-19 keeps racking up. The Office for Budget Responsibility's latest forecast predicts borrowing will reach £355 billion for the financial year: decisions to extend furlough, boosting public sector spending and supporting businesses that have been closed for months at a time all come with a price tag attached. But that doesn’t stop the sums from creating shock and awe each time they’re announced. Today’s update from the Office for National Statistics shows that government borrowing hit £19 billion last month — more than £17 billion from the previous year and the highest borrowing recorded for February since records began in 1993.  Source: ONS.

Nick Tyrone

Why are so many Labour supporters keeping shtum about Sturgeon?

What now for Nicola Sturgeon? Labour MP Jess Phillips isn't sitting on the fence. ‘At best Nicola Sturgeon was unprofessional with those women’s lives; at worst, she misled parliament,' Phillips told Question Time viewers last night. Keir Starmer has also said Scotland's First Minister must go if she did indeed break the ministerial code in the course of the Alex Salmond saga. But why are so many others in the Labour ranks unwilling to speak out against the SNP? Sturgeon's departure is, after all, in the Labour party's best interests. In two months’ time, Labour will be looking to take seats from the SNP at the Scottish election. And, politics aside, given the gravity of the situation, it's not hard to make the case that this should be a resigning matter.

Katy Balls

What’s next for Sturgeon?

14 min listen

Nicola Sturgeon misled the Scottish Parliament, a special Holyrood committee concluded yesterday. In a defiant response, the First Minister said that 'opposition members... made their minds up before I uttered a single word of evidence.' Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about the fallout.

Gavin Mortimer

Is the US to blame for the far-left takeover of France’s universities?

There is a belief in some quarters of the Anglosphere that the French are too wise to succumb to what is known across the Channel as 'wokisme'. It's true that in recent weeks Emmanuel Macron and his education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, have expressed their concern about what the latter described as a battle against 'an intellectual matrix from American universities'. But the battle has already been won by the far-left in France who are largely in control of all forms of education.  The front cover of this week's edition of the conservative magazine, Valeurs Actuelles, says it all: 'Universities: laboratory of the lunatics' Inside, the magazine describes how radical feminism, decolonisation and cancel culture are rife on the country's campuses.

Steerpike

Shock as NYT praises Britain

In recent years Britain has become something of a Bermuda Triangle for the New York Times. Since voting for Brexit in 2016, the UK has become reimagined in the reporting of the Gray Lady's esteemed reporters. It is a strange, desolate place, where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of London, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in swamps during the summer, ever fearful of the despot Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. But has all that now changed? Mr S was minded to call the Tower to check on London's ravens after seeing an article published today titled: 'Britain's 'One-Jab' Strategy' with the subheading 'Britain’s “one-jab” strategy is working, offering lessons for the world'.

Steerpike

France u-turn jab: AZ you were

It has been difficult to keep up with all the the twists and turns of Europe's vaccine procurement programme these past nine weeks though Mr S has tried his best. Few countries have vacillated on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine more than France, where last month nearly 1 in 4 said they would not be getting the vaccine. In a country where vaccine hesitancy is rampant, you might have hoped that political and medical leaders would have offered a strong lead to the public but apparently not. At the beginning of March, French medical authorities finally recommended the jab to over 65s, two months after president Emmanuel Macron called the AstraZeneca jab 'quasi-ineffective' for this age group.

Francis Pike

Has Britain fallen victim to the Asian vaccine war?

The success story of Britain's vaccine rollout has hit its first major obstacle: five million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be held up for a month. But how many of us knew it was India, not manufacturing plants in the UK or Europe, that was supplying a considerable amount of our vaccine needs? And does the delay show that Britain is now caught in the middle of an emerging vaccine war in Asia? The delayed jabs are being manufactured in the Indian city of Pune (pronounced Poona).

Steerpike

Revealed: Labour readmits councillors suspended over anti-Semitism claims

Since his election as Labour leader Keir Starmer has pledged to take a 'zero tolerance' stance on anti-Semitism, in a bid to mark a break with Jeremy Corbyn's tenure. So Mr S was disturbed to learn that not one but two Labour councillors suspended for anti-Semitism last September were yesterday readmitted to the Haringey CLP and are now part of the Labour group once again. A leaked email seen by Mr S from Amy Fode, the London Labour regional party, confirms that 'Cllr Preston Tabois and Cllr Noah Tucker suspensions have ended today and any restrictions on attending group meetings or being part of the group are now lifted.

Meghan Murphy

Feminists should fear the SNP’s hate crime bill

The SNP's new hate crime legislation is bad news for women. Yet the sad reality is that too many feminists have failed to speak up about the importance of free speech – and now we may all end up paying the price. The legislation creates a new offence of 'stirring up hatred' on the grounds of religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, or transgender identity. But while it provides a power for Scottish Ministers to make regulations adding the characteristic of sex to this list, for now, sex is not included. This leaves women like me, who don't agree with the emerging gender identity ideology, in danger of being targeted.

Andy Shaw

A handy guide to Marklism

Many of us have been watching in awe at the profound impact that Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview has had on the fight against endemic injustice. There has been an outpouring of empathy for the Duchess's suffering at the hands of the British. Not only has she had to live through the public spectacle of a royal wedding, she has had to endure the indignity of public scrutiny every time she wishes to travel by private jet. This is not how a victim should be treated. The Duchess is riding on a wave of American support and has challenged one of the oldest institutions on earth. She shows us that the world can be turned upside down when the power of suffering is successfully harnessed.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Sturgeon’s future now hangs in the balance

At First Minister’s Questions this afternoon Nicola Sturgeon accused Ruth Davidson of peddling baseless conspiracy theories, dredged up from 'the bottom of the barrel'. For all that Davidson, like the rest of Sturgeon’s political opponents, might profess that their interest in the Salmond-Sturgeon affair rests on nothing more than ‘just the facts, ma’am’, the First Minister was clear their concern is primarily opportunistic and political. If they wished to pal around with Alex Salmond and his cronies in some kind of 'old boys club' that was their prerogative, but the people of Scotland will deliver their verdict in May’s elections. And there is, of course, some truth in that charge.