Politics Archives

Monday

8 January 2024

Why Anas Sarwar is succeeding

Few politicians had a better 2023 than Anas Sarwar. The Scottish Labour leader began last year with his party still in the doldrums, languishing behind a seemingly impregnable SNP led by a seemingly indefatigable Nicola Sturgeon. A resignation, a camper van, and an incompetent successor later, and that has all changed. Scottish Labour is now in the ascendency and looking towards the coming general election in not with its normal trepidation, but with newfound relish. That much, at least, was clear from Sarwar’s speech – notionally kickstarting the party’s general election campaign – earlier this week (MON). This desire for change is Sarwar’s strongest suit As in the rest of

Ben Lazarus

Is a new front about to open up in Israel’s war?

Two days after the Israel Defence Forces announced that it had dismantled Hamas’s ‘military framework’ in the northern Gaza Strip, a new front in the war could now begin after the IDF took out a senior Hezbollah commander. Wissam al-Tawil, the deputy head of a unit within the group’s elite Radwan force, was killed this morning in an Israeli air strike on his car in southern Lebanon. ‘This is a very painful strike,’ one unnamed security source told Reuters. ‘Things will flare up now,’ another security source added. Since 7 October, more than 130 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in skirmishes between the group and Israel (another 19 died in Syria). Some

Kristina Murkett

Parents should share blame for plummeting school attendance

Is school optional nowadays? In summer 2022, 140,000 children were classed as ‘severely absent’ from the classroom, a rise of 134 per cent on before the pandemic. Some 1.5 million pupils – one in five children – are ‘persistently absent’, which means they miss more than 10 per cent of lessons. The problem is getting worse: for secondary students, absence rates in the first half of the 2023 autumn term were higher than in the same period a year before. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has vowed to make ‘tackling attendance’ her ‘number one priority’. Today, the government has announced £15 million of investment to expand its ‘attendance hubs’ programme to over 2,000 schools. Yet this money

Ross Clark

Boris Johnson can’t lecture Sadiq Khan on rail strikes

London mayor Sadiq Khan has just given us a foretaste of a Labour government by capitulating to the RMT and averting a tube strike at the last moment by, to borrow Nye Bevan’s phrase, stuffing the rail workers’ mouths with gold. That, at least, is Boris Johnson’s assessment of the 11th-hour agreement to avert the walkouts. Johnson is right, except is it really much different from what has been going on for years under his and other Conservative governments? It wasn’t Labour which gave us train drivers on £65,000 a year – far more, in some cases, when you add on overtime. That puts some train drivers in the top

Cindy Yu

What lies at the root of the India-China rivalry?

45 min listen

India is the fifth largest economy in the world, and now has a population larger than China’s. It’s no surprise, then, that officials in Washington often see India as a powerful non-western bulwark to growing Chinese power. On this podcast, I look at where China and India’s rivalry comes from. How much have long-lasting skirmishes on the China-Indian border damaged relations? How have demographics, economic competition and recent international conflicts affected the relationship between the two countries? And are the domestic politics of China and India in fact more similar than most westerners like to admit? I speak to Avinash Paliwal, an international relations expert at the School of Oriental

Jawad Iqbal

What’s the truth about the US defence secretary’s mystery illness?

Questions are growing over who knew what, and when, about the hospitalisation of the American Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, the most senior official in the chain of command between the president and the military. Austin was taken to hospital on New Year’s Day but the news was kept secret. Astonishingly, even president Joe Biden does not appear to have been told that Austin was unwell until last Thursday, four days after his admission to the Walter Reed National Medical Center in Maryland. Key figures in the Pentagon and members of Congress were also kept in the dark, and only informed on Friday. There have even been claims that senior members of his

Steerpike

Watch: shadow education secretary mauled over private schools

Labour might be ahead in the polls but it’s not all plain sailing. With an election looming later this year, members of the shadow cabinet have been reticent about setting forth their policy platforms for fear that the Tories either trash or nick their ideas. And a perfect demonstration of the perils of a flagship policy was demonstrated yesterday by Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, when she appeared on GB News. The Sunderland MP was keen to talk up Labour’s plans to levy VAT on independent schools. Such a move, she claims, will raise between £1.3 to £1.5 billion – money that can be invested in funding further mental

Steerpike

Will Ed Davey have to quit over the Post Office scandal?

The role of the Liberal Democrat leader is normally a simple one: sit on the sidelines, demand resignations and attack the Tories for being so beastly. But the incumbent Sir Ed Davey is now in a bit of jam over the ongoing Post Office scandal. For prior to reinventing himself as the scourge of Conservatives everywhere, Davey served from 2010 until 2012 as the postal affairs minister in the Coalition government. In this role, he was told of concerns about the Post Office’s faulty Horizon software, which eventually led to hundreds of postmasters being prosecuted over fraud, theft and false accounting. Davey is accused of ‘fobbing off’ those affected. Campaigner

Sunday

7 January 2024

Steerpike

Theresa May gets her Brexit dividend

There’s nothing so ex as an ex-Prime Minister. But while the likes of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and David Cameron are busy off respectively writing columns, making speeches and, er, running the Foreign Office, Theresa May has been content to quietly reside on the backbenches. As MP for Maidenhead, she has spent much of the past year promoting her new book – Abuse of Power – which proved to be the best-seller at October’s party conference. But such a low-key approach continues to reap dividends. For recently-published accounts show that in the year up until March 2023, the former PM’s eponymous company declared more than £1,540,000 in net assets –

Isabel Hardman

The Post Office scandal was too boring for politicians to fix

The government is now ‘under pressure’ over the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. The pressure comes in the form of a petition calling for Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, to lose her CBE. It has garnered more than 920,000 signatures as of this evening. Then there’s the push from a number of MPs for the compensation process for the victims to be sped up, and for those responsible in the Post Office and Fujitsu to be identified and held to account. The Sunday papers carry reports that Justice Secretary Alex Chalk is examining ways of exonerate those who were wrongly convicted of stealing from the

Steerpike

Peter Bone’s partner selected to fight his seat

A trifecta of by-elections are looming for the Tories, with campaigns expected to shortly be underway in Kingswood and Blackpool South. But before that there’s the Wellingborough contest, held to replace Peter Bone. The outgoing MP continues to protest his innocence but his pleas have thus far been to no avail. His constituents in Northamptonshire voted him out of his seat in a recall petition last month, following his six-week suspension from the Commons. That came after an inquiry found he had subjected a staff member to bullying and sexual misconduct. Parliament’s Independent Expert Panel ruled that Bone had engaged in ‘a wilful pattern of bullying’ which included ‘an unwanted

Fraser Nelson

Fact check: Sunak’s ‘tax cut’ claims

Rishi Sunak seems to have a New Year’s resolution: to claim that taxes are falling and say it so often that people start to believe him rather than their own lying payslip. He says that the last Budget was the biggest tax-cutting event since the 1980s, etc. He tells today’s Sunday Telegraph that more welfare reform will allow him to cut taxes even more. I was on the panel after he spoke on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC1 show and said was stretching the truth a bit too much. For every £1 cut by his National Insurance tax reductions (which have now come into effect) he is raising £4 by stealth taxes.

Joe Bedell-Brill

Does the Prime Minister believe in the Rwanda scheme?

Does Rishi Sunak believe in Rwanda? An election year has begun, with Rishi Sunak still struggling in the polls and continuing to face great challenges home and abroad. His first appearance of the year on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg didn’t get off to an easy start. Kuenssberg surprised him with leaked documents she said implied he had had major doubts about the efficacy of the Rwanda returns deal, when acting as Chancellor in 2022. Sunak said he hadn’t seen the documents, but brushed off the accusations, claiming it was his job as Chancellor to ask tough questions about any proposal. He told Kuenssberg that his actions on getting returns deals

Mark Galeotti

Russia’s egg shortage is panicking Putin

The fall of the house of the Romanovs in 1917 may have been a long time coming, but arguably it was finally triggered by bread prices. It would be ironic if another Russian autocrat fell to food, which may help explain why the Kremlin has been moving so decisively to address Russia’s egg crisis, after prices rose by over 40 percent last year. On Friday, the Investigatory Committee – loosely analogous to an FBI on steroids – ordered an enquiry into potential price fixing, following on the heels of Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov’s decision to launch his own probe. Rather more directly, the much-feared Federal Security Service (FSB) has been

Patrick O’Flynn

Keir Starmer says it best when he says nothing at all

There is a modern country music standard called ‘When You Say Nothing At All’. The song, taken to the top of the UK pop charts by the Irish singer Ronan Keating a quarter of a century ago, is a treatise on the power of non-verbal communication. The central ‘hook’ line involves someone telling their lover: ‘You say it best when you say nothing at all.’ That sentiment came to mind in an altogether less romantic context on Thursday, as I was listening to radio news reports of Keir Starmer’s opening salvos in this crucial year in politics while on a long drive. After a couple of weeks of blessed Christmas

Katja Hoyer

Why German farmers are rebelling

He wanted to get away from it all. The splendid solitude of the tiny North Sea island of Hooge was a momentary refuge from the waves of political tumult buffeting his country. But when Germany’s vice chancellor Robert Habeck returned from his holiday on Thursday, a group of furious farmers prevented his ferry from docking on the mainland. Germany’s 2024 began as 2023 ended: with public confidence in the government at a low ebb. The anger of farmers is currently the most visible expression of Germany’s disillusionment with the ruling coalition. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration has manoeuvred itself into a corner from which there is no easy way out. Its problems escalated when a landmark

Philip Patrick

Is Japan finally embracing immigration?

Japan has long been known for its steadfast refusal to submit to the allure of large-scale immigration, as a country that puts social cohesion and societal harmony well ahead of any desire for diversity. Notoriously as hard to get into as Switzerland or Monaco for would be migrants, and even refugees, the ‘yokoso’ (welcome) sign that greets you at Narita Airport is clearly provisional and time limited. But is all that changing? There are signs of a major shift in policy, from an active dissuasion of foreigners to stay (Japan once paid laid-off Brazilian auto workers to go back home for good after the financial crash) to the door being

Sasha Lensky

Why hasn’t Russia collapsed?

Following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the calamitous, early missteps of the Russian army, many Western experts fairly crowed over the possibility of Russia disintegrating. ‘It’s high time to prepare for Russia’s collapse,’ ran a typical headline on the Foreign Policy website, while a survey of 167 foreign-policy experts by the Atlantic Council think tank last January found that 40 per cent of them expected Russia to break up internally within ten years due to ‘revolution, civil war, political disintegration’ and so on. Meanwhile, an article from the Hudson Institute was more prescriptive, issuing a list of points to consider when ‘Preparing for the Final Collapse

Jawad Iqbal

The dark side of Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina

Politics in Bangladesh is very much a one-woman show, starring prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who has ruled the country for the last 15 years. When voters go to the polls in elections today, they face little choice but to re-elect her and the ruling Awami League party. The main opposition – the Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) – is boycotting the vote, citing government interference. Many leading opposition figures are under house arrest, behind bars or in exile. An array of independent candidates and a few smaller opposition parties standing for election is meant to convey the impression of an electoral contest of sorts but this shouldn’t fool anyone. Hasina’s long and

Saturday

6 January 2024

James Heale

How will Sunak and Starmer run their election campaigns?

15 min listen

Rishi Sunak has all but confirmed that this year’s general election will take place in autumn. How will the Prime Minister, and Keir Starmer, run their campaigns? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katie Perrior, former director of communications for Theresa May, and now a director at iNHouse Communications.