Politics Archives

Saturday

7 September 2024

America’s Russian influence media scandal is unlikely to be the last

Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin and Lauren Southern aren’t household names, but they each have enormous, dedicated followings online. Their podcasts and videos all promote similar narratives: liberal values are destroying the West, Ukraine is America’s enemy, Covid vaccines are harmful and pointless and that Donald Trump, though flawed, is the United States’ last hope before it becomes a Communist murderdome ruled by trans Venezuelan drug gangs. When these influencers came together in November last year to launch Tenet Media, it didn’t make a lot of sense. Each already had their own brand and platform. How would this new media company benefit them? RT is awash with cash despite

Limor Simhony Philpott

Israelis have had enough of Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu is the great survivor of Israeli politics, but his grip on power is slipping. ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.’ Abraham Lincoln’s saying applies now more than ever to Israel’s prime minister. Netanyahu’s time will surely soon be up. Netanyahu cannot escape his inevitable legacy Motivated by self-preservation, Netanyahu has desperately tried to evade responsibility for the many failures that led to Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7. In the months since, Netanyahu has done his best to block a ceasefire

Friday

6 September 2024

Freddy Gray

Has everyone got election fatigue?

37 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Bridget Phetasy, comedian and Spectator World columnist. They discuss whether everyone is suffering a bit of election, and Trump fatigue – including Trump himself. They also cover Putin trolling America, and Bridget gives her predictions for the upcoming presidential debate.

Svitlana Morenets

Inside Zelensky’s not-so-fresh reshuffle

In Ukraine, there is a joke: never waste time memorising the names of ministers – they’ll be replaced soon enough. Volodymyr Zelensky’s penchant for firing and rehiring every few months has become a signature of his presidency since 2019. This week has not been different, with the largest government shake-up since the full-scale war began. Or, as it turned out, just a reshuffle of the same familiar faces. ‘We need new energy today,’ Zelensky declared, as he instructed the Ukrainian parliament to dismiss and reappoint almost half the cabinet – eight ministers in total. ‘Autumn will be important for Ukraine. Our institutions must be set up so the country achieves all

Steerpike

Veterans’ champion quits with blast at Starmer

Labour have been encouraging plenty of controversy recently with the growing allegations of cronyism surrounding recent civil service and public appointments. Today, however, it’s a resignation that’s bringing yet more heat upon the flailing government. Northern Ireland’s Veterans Commissioner, Danny Kinahan, appointed in 2020 to champion the cause of 60,000 veterans yesterday left his position after an ‘open and frank’ conversation with Hilary Benn. In his resignation letter, he blasted the government for their approach, declaring that: ‘I cannot provide the independent voice that veterans require. There is a feeling among some veterans in Northern Ireland that they have been forgotten and… do not enjoy the same protections as their

Jonathan Miller

Marine Le Pen is crucial to Michel Barnier’s survival

Michel Barnier, the OAP appointed yesterday as Prime Minister of France, is a sensible fellow, even if at 73 he should be putting up his feet after decades in the political trenches. And he has plenty of pensions to draw on. He’s not exciting. Scandal free, socially conservative, a master of dossiers – not intrigue, he’s not even a graduate of the École National d’Administration, the finishing school of the French elite. He’s a former choir boy and Scout who seems never to have made a memorable speech in his long career. He’s rather boring, and normal. His two memorable achievements seem to have been as the EU’s Brexit negotiator, in

Kate Andrews

Expanding the sugar tax won’t save any lives

Labour may not have been forthcoming about most of their tax and spend plans during the election. But on one topic the party was crystal clear: a Labour government would beef up the nanny state. Politicians weren’t shy about this. It was Wes Streeting’s idea to adopt New Zealand’s (now abandoned) plans for a generational smoking ban, picked up months later by Rishi Sunak. Keir Starmer kicked off the year embracing the nanny state, saying he was ‘up for that fight’. It’s no surprise then that health campaigners and groups are flocking towards new government aides to discuss what can be taxed or banned next. According to reports today, an extension of

Fraser Nelson

Does Rachel Reeves need an ‘escape route’ on winter fuel?

14 min listen

Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls join James Heale to look ahead to a crucial week for Labour. On Tuesday, Parliament will hold a binding vote on the changes to winter fuel allowance – how are Labour expected to deal with this? Former shadow chancellor Ed Balls, and husband of the current home secretary Yvette Cooper, has argued that Labour need an ‘escape route’ from the policy. What can we read from this intervention? And how influenced are the government by the spectres of George Osborne and Liz Truss? Also on the podcast, Fraser talks about both the problems facing Germany, and the surprisingly successful measure that Sweden has introduced, to

Steerpike

Top Labour donor in ‘operation integrity’ storm

It’s a day ending in ‘y’, which means another Labour scandal. Today marks the return of Lord Alli, the media luvvy with more money than sense. Alli, famed for perfecting TV ‘presented by morons for morons’, hit the headlines last month for the ‘passes for glasses’ row. Now it seems he has also been making recommendations for posts and public appointments which are due to open up over the course of this parliament. Talk about the grift that keeps on giving… According to Bloomberg News, Alli was making recommendations while he was soliciting donations for the Labour party. The project, which he has apparently been worked on since early 2024, was

Damian Thompson

Losing faith: will Labour’s VAT policy hit religious schools hardest?

25 min listen

In this week’s copy of The Spectator, Dan Hitchens argues that a lesser reported aspect of Labour’s decision to impose VAT on private schools is who it could hit hardest: faith schools. Hundreds of independent religious schools charge modest, means-tested fees. Could a hike in costs make these schools unviable? And, with uncertainty about how ideological a decision this is, does the government even care? Dan joins Damian on the podcast to discuss. Raisel Freedman from the Partnerships for Jewish Schools also joins later, to discuss how the measure could threaten Jewish independent schools, when they provide a haven for students from a climate of rising antisemitism. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

James Heale

How select committees could cause trouble for Keir Starmer

It’s not just the Tories facing a big vote next week. Across the House of Commons, MPs will be choosing which of their number should chair the 26 select committees up for grabs. Every MP gets a vote but only backbenchers can stand: nominations close on Monday with voting done on Wednesday. Positions are allocated in line with the election result. Labour’s gargantuan majority thus ensures that they chair 18 of the 26 committees. The Tories are reduced to five with the Lib Dems awarded three. Select committees are another reminder that, for all the recent attention on the smaller parties, parliamentary institutions can often help the big ones. The

Steerpike

BBC bias on Israel set to be probed

More bad news for the BBC. Following the fall-out from the Corporation’s catastrophic handling of the Huw Edwards affair, a long-running controversy threatens to re-ignite once more. Steerpike understands that next week a major report is set to be published on the Beeb’s coverage of the conflict in Gaza, with a 100-page publication by a team of lawyers prepared to drop on Monday morning. Talk about a way to start the week off right… It is the first of two reports planned for successive weeks. The one released on Monday will use artificial intelligence to analyse the Corporation’s dispatches on the conflict, which has seen the broadcaster repeatedly accused of

Constantin Eckner

Could Germany resurrect Britain’s Rwanda migrant scheme?

When Keir Starmer became Prime Minister he immediately dumped the Tories’ Rwanda deportation scheme. The Labour leader said the £310 million scheme, under which those seeking asylum in Britain would be sent to Africa, was ‘dead’ and ‘buried’. But Germany is now considering resurrecting the plan and using Rwanda as a third party country for migrants with facilities paid for by Britain. Germany’s special commissioner for migration agreements, Joachim Stamp, proposed deporting asylum seekers coming through Russia and Belarus to Rwanda while their applications are processed. ‘We currently don’t have a third country that has contacted us with the exception of Rwanda,’ Stamp said on Thursday, stressing that the East

Steerpike

Watch: Miliband blasted over energy bill ‘false promises’

Another day, another drama. This time Ed Miliband is in the firing line after his opposite number took aim at him in parliament on Thursday. Shadow net zero secretary Claire Coutinho pulled no punches as she attacked Labour’s Energy Secretary over his government’s controversial pensioner palaver, Sir Keir Starmer’s much-lauded GB Energy proposal and exactly how much money Labour policies will save the public. Addressing Miliband in the Commons, Coutinho poured scorn over his party’s claims that GB Energy would save voters from paying an extra £300 a year on their energy bills. ‘They said that on their election literature, on their social media and in hustings,’ she nodded at

George Llewelyn

A dispatch from Ukraine’s Pokrovsk: Heartbreak at the station

The sounds of protracted artillery battles boom and echo over the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk with a nerve-wracking consistency. From morning until night, the Ukrainians and Russians fire endlessly upon one another from the suburbs. Billboards with a simple message, ‘Evacuate’, daubed in giant red lettering line most of the major routes through the city. A message blared unerringly over tannoys from police cars that crawl the streets continuously, and one more than half of the city’s 60,000 population have taken to heart. Nobody knows when Pokrovsk will fall, but when it does its loss will be a crushing blow for Ukraine In the centre of Pokrovsk, the hundreds of

Brendan O’Neill

‘Paddy-bashing’ and the blind spot of progressives

There’s a new book out that depicts Irish people as gurning ginger-haired imbeciles who do Irish jigs in the garden and eat bacon and cabbage every day. Who produced this offensive tome? Must have been some Neanderthal bigots, right, who wish it was still the 1970s and still acceptable to Paddy-bash? Actually, it was a leading Irish publisher of school textbooks, and the book in question was intended for Irish schoolkids. Irish schoolkids were agog at the blatant Mickphobia in their textbooks Across the Irish Sea there’s a media storm about a textbook produced by the Educational Company of Ireland. It’s a study aid in Social, Personal and Health classes

Kristina Murkett

Labour’s term-time holiday crackdown won’t work

In the bestselling book Freakonomics, the authors Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt outline an experiment which involved fining parents who were late to pick up their children from daycare centres. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the financial penalty only made late pick-ups worse; the parents felt less guilty for the teachers they were delaying, and most parents were prepared to pay the price because they decided it was still worth being late. This experiment demonstrated the limit of economic incentives without other social motivations: something which seems very timely as we return to the debate around whether parents should be fined for taking their children on holiday during term-time. For Education Secretary

Len Shackleton

Starmer could regret trying to woo trade unions

The last two and a half years have seen a dramatic revival in trade union militancy, with working days lost through strikes reaching their highest level for more than thirty years. The arrival of a Labour government has already seen markedly more generous settlements than the Conservatives offered – and the new administration has committed to legislation intended to boost union power. It’s a situation that is unlikely to end well – for businesses and for workers. If the government is not careful, we could end up with a situation like that of France Keir Starmer has vowed to repeal the Conservatives’ 2016 Trade Union Act (which imposed voting hurdles

Thursday

5 September 2024

Steerpike

Night czar’s City Hall no-show

Over to the Mayor of London and his minions. While the Prime Minister has been busy giving pay rises to train drivers, it seems London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan continues to employ Amy Lamé as his night czar on, er, £132,846 per annum – after already receiving, as Mr S revealed, a 40 per cent pay hike. Good heavens… However it appears Lamé hasn’t being doing much work for that payout. Following six weeks of ‘unplanned sick leave’ – during which London’s night czar curiously still managed to host her BBC radio programme – Lamé then proceeded to take yet more time off work for a holiday in August, leaving the

Eliot Wilson

Labour’s plan to abolish hereditary peers is pointless

Labour’s House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill to the Commons – which was presented today and will have its first substantive debate at second reading later in the autumn – is simple: it essentially ends the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords, tying off what some will see as a loose end of Sir Tony Blair’s ‘stage one’ reform of the upper chamber in the House of Lords Act 1999. That legislation offered a compromise to opponents. At the end of 1998, Blair had concluded a secret deal with the leader of the Conservative peers, Viscount Cranborne, for 92 hereditary peers to remain in the