Politics Archives

Monday

3 June 2024

The Northern Irish law posing a threat to free speech in Britain

On Friday, the High Court in Northern Ireland deflected a serious threat to the right to free speech, not only in the province but also in the country as a whole. It was, however, a very close-run thing, and the affair is still highly worrying. A Northern Ireland Assembly law that came into effect last year, the Justice (Sexual Offences and Trafficking Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, made it an imprisonable crime to publish the fact that someone had come under police investigation for a sexual offence unless and until they were charged. If they were never charged the matter had to be hushed up until 25 years after their

Katy Balls

Revealed: Sunak and Starmer’s plans for battle in first TV debate

The parties are gearing up for their first full week of campaigning since parliament was dissolved on Thursday. This means one-time MPs are now just candidates, and the spending limits are on. Both parties revealed their battle buses over the weekend – Labour’s is emblazoned with ‘Change’ while the Tories have gone for a three-point slogan: ‘Clear plan. Bold Action. Secure Future.’ This week, all eyes will be on the north-west – where Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will go head-to-head in the first debate of the election. The duo will be appearing on ITV on Tuesday at 9 p.m. for their first televised showdown. So far there aren’t many

Geoff Hill

Jacob Zuma remains a problem for South Africa

More than 30 years after the Berlin Wall came down, leaders of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s long-time ruling party, still refer to each other as ‘comrade’. Unless, that is, you’re seen as a problem. ‘Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa will be here,’ ANC secretary general Fikile Mbabula told journalists on Sunday morning as he explained how, around 5 p.m., the President would receive the final election results at the main counting centre between Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria. ‘There’s nothing to celebrate in terms of performance of the ANC,’ he said. Zuma has come away with 14.6 per cent of the vote but still claims it was rigged against

Sam Leith

Keir Starmer is treating the House of Lords with contempt

We have different approaches to tidying up, my wife and I. It bothers her very much that the house we share with three chaotic children is so untidy. Over the years unsightly, useless, out-of-date items accumulate in every room: incomplete jigsaws, dried-out paints, barely-played boardgames, broken furniture, too-small and obscurely stained clothes, collections of shells and pebbles, or that vibration-sensitive fluffy penguin which flaps its stubby wings and blares out a tinny version of ‘Rock Around the Clock’ when a spider stamps its foot anywhere within a kilometre of it. My fantasy, when the clutter gets intolerable, is to have a clear-out in which everything that doesn’t spark joy goes

Sunday

2 June 2024

Steerpike

Tories to amend Equality Act to protect biological sex

The Tories have continued their habit of making a big election pledge at 10:30 p.m every weekend. Last time, it was the reintroduction of national service; this week it is their plans to overhaul the Equality Act. Yes, that’s right, after 14 years in government, the Conservatives have finally decided that it might be worth taking a look at one of the most contentious pieces of legislation which Labour passed in its dying days of office. Better late than never eh… The Tories claim that if they are re-elected they will amend the Equality Act in order to make clear that the protected characteristic of sex is ‘biological sex’. This

Steerpike

Diane Abbott confirms she will stand for Labour

Oh dear. It seems that Diane Abbott has outmanoeuvred Keir Starmer once again. Week one of Labour’s much-vaunted election campaign has been overshadowed by the row over the status of the Hackney North MP. Having lost the Labour whip in April 2023 for her ill-judged Observer letter, Abbott’s status was still unresolved when the campaign began ten days ago. Following the BBC’s revelation on Tuesday that the investigation into Abbott had actually concluded back in December, Keir Starmer was forced to endure three days of questions about appropriate action before declaring on Friday that she was ‘free to go forward as a Labour candidate’. The hope among some Starmer allies

Andrew Kenny

What the end of sole ANC rule means for South Africa

Election day on 29 May was a tumultuous, wonderful day for South Africa. 30 years of corruption and ruin under the sole rule of the African National Congress (ANC) party came to an end. The ANC, which won 63 per cent of the vote in the first democratic election in 1994, and 70 per cent in 2004, now only won 40 per cent. When the ANC took power in April 1994, South Africa had the strongest economy and the best infrastructure in Africa. We had a plentiful supply of the world’s cheapest electricity and the world’s greatest mineral treasure. The horrible apartheid laws had been scrapped by the last white

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Diane Abbott bullied by ‘overgrown schoolboys’

Questions over whether Diane Abbott had been banned from standing as a Labour candidate were a distraction for Keir Starmer’s campaign this week, eventually ending with Starmer confirming that Abbott was ‘free to go forward’ for Labour. Some in the party are unhappy with Starmer welcoming Tory defectors while suppressing left-wing candidates such as Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Faiza Shaheen, who were both barred from standing for Labour this week. Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, Baroness Chakrabarti claimed Diane Abbott had been bullied by ‘overgrown schoolboys in suits’ sending anonymous briefings. Chakrabarti said she had been ‘personally assured’ by the Labour leadership that those briefings were unauthorised, but implied that Abbott had

Steerpike

Watch: Yvette Cooper flails over private schools

It seems barely five minutes ago that Mr S was writing up the last exchange between Camilla Tominey and a Labour frontbencher on their plans to put VAT on independent school fees. Back in January, it was Bridget Phillipson, the Shadow Education Secretary, who scored an ‘F’ for her failure to answer Tominey’s questions. Today it was the turn of Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Home Secretary, who felt the wrath of the GB News star after six minutes of prevaricating on the subject. Tominey asked Cooper about a triumvirate of stories critiquing the policy in today’s papers, including union warnings that it could cost jobs. Unsurprisingly, the Labour MP chose

John Keiger

Macron is to blame for France’s dismal economy

Standard & Poor’s downgrading of France’s credit rating on Friday is a hammer blow to President Macron’s reputation. The ratings agency has reduced France from AA to AA-, putting it on a par with the Czech Republic and Estonia and one notch below the UK. It is the first time S&P has downgraded France’s debt since 2013, although the firm Fitch did so in April 2023. This is comeuppance for years of ‘as much as it takes’ spending by a president haunted by the gilets jaunes movement. The credit rating downgrade comes just a week before the European elections, where Macron’s Renaissance party is trailing the Rassemblement National (RN) by over 16

Patrick O’Flynn

The Tories have handed Starmer a gift on immigration

To turn Keir Starmer, of all people, into someone who can credibly promise to bring immigration down is an act of perverse genius by the Tory party that is unparalleled in the modern political era. Presented with an open goal, the Labour leader has today stuck the ball in the net by telling readers of the Sun that his changed party will prove it is back in the service of working people by ‘not just talking about sky-high migration but acting on it’. A pledge by Starmer to cut the immigration levels seen under the Tories has got past Labour’s activist base on the grounds of being pitched as a

Steerpike

Could Diane Abbott go to the Lords?

The Diane Abbott saga rumbles on. After questions over whether the former shadow home secretary would be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in the election dominated the news agenda this week, Keir Starmer sought to end the media circus on Friday by declaring that the Corbyn ally was ‘free to go forward as a Labour candidate’. Abbott has suggested she will hold off popping the champagne corks at Starmer’s comments until after Tuesday’s National Executive Committee meeting when the candidates are finalised. But could another option tempt Abbott? The Sunday Times reports that a string of Labour MPs – including Abbott – have been offered peerages in return

Steven Fielding

Has Starmer really changed the Labour party permanently?

In his first speech of this election campaign, Keir Starmer made what is likely to become an extremely familiar claim. Focusing on the concerns of those who abandoned Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019 he argued that voters could trust him with the economy as well as Britain’s borders and security ‘because I have changed this party permanently’. As leader, Starmer has certainly sought to distance himself from the policies and personnel and even imagery of the Corbyn leadership. He talks about his patriotism, surrounds himself with Union Jacks, has rowed back from commitments to nationalise various industries and has become much more friendly with business while

Mike Adams

The problem with Biden’s soft stance on cannabis

Indiana When Joe Biden directed a review into the classification of cannabis two years ago, no one – not the stoners nor the industry – expected a volte face from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the agency with the last word on the drug’s status. It has, after all, rejected countless attempts in the past. But late last month, the DEA revealed that it would reclassify the drug from Schedule I to a Schedule III. Not only does this shift acknowledge that cannabis is safer than heroin, but that it also has some medicinal function with a low level for physical and psychological dependency. For the cannabis industry this amendment is seen

Saturday

1 June 2024

Ross Clark

Who will survive to lead the Tories?

In spite of his conviction for falsifying business records, Donald Trump is still expected by many to make a remarkable political comeback in November’s US election. Could we see an equally remarkable comeback this side of the Atlantic, too, with Liz Truss returning to the stand for the leadership of the Conservative party? It’s possible to see a scenario where Truss is one of the few hopefuls remaining Today’s Electoral Calculus poll predicting that the Conservatives could be reduced to just 66 seats on 4 July raises the question: who would still be around to lead the party after the almost certain resignation of Rishi Sunak? Electoral Calculus’s model is

Rohit Kachroo

Why South Africans lost faith in the ANC

A red dawn had just broken when Stephanie Sathege joined the queue to vote at her local polling station in the Johannesburg township of Alexander on Wednesday. The voting booths hadn’t yet opened, but she and dozens of other people were enthusiastic enough to be there ahead of time. A 62-old black South African, this was the seventh time she had been allowed to vote in a general election, having lived under democracy only half her life. Today, just as she did 30 years ago, Stephanie is contributing to an historic outcome. But this election day would be different to all the previous ones. ‘Since 1994, I have been voting for the

James Heale

Can Keir handle Trump?

12 min listen

The news that Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies meant that the Labour leader faced questions about the former president on Friday morning, rather than the Diane Abbott selection storm. On his visit to Scotland, Starmer told the BBC that a Labour government would be willing to work with ‘whoever’ was elected in November’s presidential contest. But how would Starmer deal with Trump? James Heale speaks to Kate Andrews and Freddy Gray.

Nicholas Lezard

Peter Parker, Wayne Hunt, Nicholas Lezard, Mark Mason and Nicholas Farrell

33 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Peter Parker takes us through the history of guardsmen and homosexuality (1:12); Prof. Wayne Hunt explains what the Conservatives could learn from the 1993 Canadian election (9:10); Nicholas Lezard reflects on the diaries of Franz Kafka, on the eve of his centenary (16:06); Mark Mason provides his notes on Horse Guards (22:52); and, Nicholas Farrell ponders his wife’s potential suitors, once he’s died (26:01). Presented and produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Laurie Wastell

Free speech will be in peril under Labour

Threats to freedom of speech in Britain today typically stem from a combination of two ways of thinking. First, the kindly authoritarian view that it should be the job of the state to protect its citizens from ‘harmful’ speech – and to censor and punish those who cause offence. And second, woke ideology, which means that harm-protection only applies to its favoured groups. So, a trans activist who tells a public audience ‘If you see a Terf, punch them in the… face’ is found to have only been seeking ‘publicity’; while a Christian street preacher is convicted of harassment after calling a trans woman a ‘gentleman’. For the Labour party, statism coupled with identity

Niall Gooch

The triumph of Labour’s centrists

Barring an extraordinary electoral turnaround, Sir Keir Starmer is about to join an elite club, which is even more pale, male and stale than the Garrick: Labour leaders who have won a majority in a general election. He will be only the fourth since the party first fielded candidates in a general election, after Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair. The conventional wisdom about such victories – particularly about those achieved by Wilson and Blair – is that they are the fruit of Labour moderates taking control of the party from the left, thus reassuring the conservative-minded middle classes. You still see this narrative about Starmer surprisingly often. He