Politics Archives

Saturday

30 December 2023

Glasnost grips Whitehall, at last

The Cabinet Office is sometimes described as the ‘thinking brain of government’. So it’s a pity then that so little thought is applied to making it an open one. With a Freedom of Information (FOI) team that is infamous for their excuses, the ministry is frequently ranked as one of Whitehall’s worst-performing departments for transparency. But it seems that the Cabinet Office might now have tested the patience of its long-suffering watchdog once too often. Just before Christmas, the Information Commissioner handed down a decision notice in a case which neatly highlights the extent to which the Cabinet Office will go to avoid disclosing even the most trivial information. At

Steerpike

Rishi’s favourite author gets her damehood

It’s gongs galore today as Liz Truss’s resignation honours’ list is published alongside the traditional new years’ one. And while the former is attracting more comment than the latter, Mr S couldn’t help but note the inclusion of one Tory favourite. The Prime Minister is a well-known lover of a Jilly Cooper bonkbuster – so it’s perhaps no surprise that the Riders author finally gets her damehood. Others from the world of the arts on the list include Glastonbury’s Michael Eavis, who receives a knighthood, Leona Lewis gets an OBE while Shirley Bassey joins the Companion of Honour. Naturally though, the focus of Westminster is on those recipients who work

Lloyd Evans

Why are theatres so cowardly?

Looking back at the year’s West End theatre, a few shows stand out. First, the best. Vanya, starring Andrew Scott at the Duke of York’s Theatre, was an audacious and frankly barmy attempt to reimagine Chekhov’s sprawling family melodrama, Uncle Vanya, as a monologue. The risk was that it might come across as a lengthy pitch for a TV show performed by an incorrigible show-off. But Scott made it work. Copycat projects are bound to follow. One of the year’s worst efforts, A Little Life, was based on an American novel about sexual torture and self-harm. The star, James Norton, spent most of his time on stage at the Harold

Katja Hoyer

Can things get any worse for Olaf Scholz?

A ‘smurf’, a ‘plumber’, a ‘know-it-all’: Olaf Scholz has been called many things. But so far Germany’s chancellor has brushed off the criticism. ‘I like the smurf thing,’ he told German media, ‘they are small, cunning and they always win.’ Being associated with the ‘honourable craft of plumbing’ made him ‘proud’. And of all the epithets to acquire, ‘know-it-all’ may not have been the worst; unless, that is, you run out of answers. Scholz has had a tricky year in 2023. With crisis after crisis engulfing his administration, few Germans now trust him to offer viable solutions. A survey earlier this month suggested that only a fifth of voters are

Alexander Larman

Was 2023 Meghan and Harry’s annus horribilis?

If ever Prince Harry writes another volume of memoir, he may choose to look back on 2023 as his annus horribilis. The year began in high-profile fashion, with the publication of his autobiography Spare. This book swiftly became the fastest-selling non-fiction work of all time; he marked its appearance with promotional interviews that alternated between defensive, irritable and unduly arrogant. Yet Harry’s year is ending with myriad humiliations. These include losing one of his apparently innumerable court cases, he and his wife, Meghan Markle, being described as the ‘biggest Hollywood losers’ and a much-ridiculed video clip of the various endeavours of their charitable foundation Archewell over the past twelve months.

Patrick O’Flynn

Will Nigel Farage team up with the Tories?

How is the idea that Nigel Farage might join the ‘broad church’ Conservative party going then? Given that he floated the notion mainly to troll the party’s high-ups and then they breathed life into it mainly to try and keep right-leaning voters on board, it’s going about as well as one might expect. Which is to say terribly. On Thursday, Farage replied as follows to a tweet by James Cleverly that had sought to claim credit for the lack of small boat Channel crossings over Christmas: ‘You may be called Cleverly but you are clearly a moron. I am close to Dover now, the wind has been gusting 50 mph…That

James Kirkup

I voted Remain, but there should be more pro-Brexit lords

Liz Truss has sent Matthew Elliott to the House of Lords in her resignation honours list. There are some obvious and predictable reactions to this. First, the sheer effrontery of our least successful PM in exercising her traditional right to an honours list. She lasted less time than that lettuce. She was awful. How dare she? Etc etc. To which I can only say this: Yes, it’s appalling, but don’t be surprised. Truss is incapable of self-doubt or reflection. She can’t imagine that she did anything wrong so why shouldn’t she have a list, just like any other former PM? Don’t waste pixels on indignation. Second, sending the sinister dark money Brexit boss to

Friday

29 December 2023

Coffee House

Full list: Liz Truss’s resignation honours

Fourteen months after Liz Truss left Downing Street, her list of resignation honours has today finally been finally published. It contains eleven names, three of whom receive peerages and will take up seats in the House of Lords. Four of the recipients are, like Truss, sitting Conservative MPs in the House of Commons. Here is the full list of those who have received gongs: Peerages: Matthew Elliott Political Strategist and formerly Chief Executive of Vote Leave. Jon Moynihan Formerly CEO and Executive Chairman of PA Consulting Group. Formerly Chairman of Vote Leave. Ruth Porter Deputy Chief of Staff to the former Prime Minister in 2022. Order of the British Empire

Katy Balls

What Tories make of Truss’s resignation honours

Liz Truss’s resignation honours list has finally been published. After much speculation – and some outrage she was even doing one in the first place – Downing Street has opted to put out the former prime minister’s resignation list to match with the annual New Year Honours list. The intention is pretty obvious: No. 10 hopes that the other list means there is less of a focus on Truss’s. When it comes to who Liz Truss has chosen to honour, the list is fairly slim – and much shorter than Boris Johnson’s. Of course, this is in part because Truss was in power for a much shorter period of time

Ross Clark

What James Daly’s parenting jibe says about the Tories

I am guessing that Tory MP James Daly has given up trying to defend his majority of 105 in Bury North, has accepted that he will need to find a new job in the next 12 months and has decided to go out in style. I can’t think why else he would say, in an interview with the i newspaper, ‘When you think about the family, it’s about stability. Most of the kids who struggle in Bury are the products of crap parents and so what do we do to try to address that issue?’ He must surely know how his words will be used: that they will follow him around for

Fraser Nelson

Benefits caseload to rise by 920 a day – for the next five years

Back when Radio 4’s Thought for the Day was original and insightful, Lionel Blue was a regular source of rabbinical wisdom and dodgy jokes. Sometimes he’d come up with a phrase, a concept, that let you see the world in an entirely new way. One certainly changed how I see politics: his notion of ‘moral long-sightedness’. The ability to see and get worked up about problems thousands of miles away or a hundred years’ hence, while failing to see the scandal under one’s own nose. It sums up the indifference over welfare. It’s in crisis, with 4,000 claiming sickness benefit every day. Worklessness scars our great cities: in Manchester, 18 per

Steerpike

Tugendhat orders cyber-security overhaul

These days parliament seems less like an episode of House of Cards and more like a Spooks reboot. Whether it’s Chinese spies or cyber-attacks, the good men and women who work in the Palace of Westminster have rarely felt more conscious of their safety – and that’s not to mention the collapsing roof and crumbling masonry. And with fears growing over foreign interference in next year’s general election, Tom Tugendhat, the Security Minister, has now written to MPs outlining plans for a cyber-security shake-up. Among the measures include a new security advice and support service with ‘hands-on support from security-cleared technical consultants’ working for parliament. Booklets of advice have been

Jawad Iqbal

Thank God Tony Blair failed to meddle in football

It seems there is a side to the former prime minister, Sir Tony Blair, that few knew existed. Until now. Newly released government documents have bizarrely revealed Blair’s keen interest in football in Northern Ireland. So much so that during his time as prime minister, he was apparently prepared to go to quite extraordinary lengths to get an English Premier League football team to relocate there in the late 1990s. Blair wanted the struggling Premier League side Wimbledon FC, based in south London since 1912, to move to Belfast. A memo dated 16 July 1998 – just months after the Good Friday Agreement was signed – recorded Blair’s view that ‘it would be

Andrew Tettenborn

The Tories have messed up the return to imperial measurements

Cheers! You will soon once again be able to buy champagne and wine in pint bottles – Winston Churchill’s favourite measure. It will be possible for the first time since an overbearing Common Market (as it was then) effectively put an end to the practice in 1973. This is very good news, and I’m certainly looking forward to drinking my first pint of fizz – the ideal unit for one person – over dinner. But look further, and any satisfaction may well vanish in much the same way the bubbles in your celebratory glass might if you put it down too long. How this whole affair of reintroducing imperial measurements has been handled

Mark Mason

Is Keir Starmer too boring to be prime minister?

‘What do you know about Keir Starmer?’ My friend’s question came as we sat in the pub. It was part of an experiment, based on something he’d noticed. ‘Used to be Director of Public Prosecutions,’ I replied. ‘That’s the first thing everyone says. Anything else?’ ‘Er …’ John gave me a prompt: ‘Is he married? Does he have kids?’ ‘Pretty sure he’s married. And I think he has kids. But not totally sure on either. Certainly couldn’t give you names or ages.’ ‘Constituency?’ This was when it really hit me: Keir Starmer is anti-matter for facts. I had to know his constituency – like John, I’m an amateur political nerd. But somehow the

Nigel Biggar

The British Museum is the best home for the Elgin Marbles

Should the Elgin Marbles be returned? Greece’s argument, put forward recently by the country’s foreign minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is well rehearsed: the Marbles, he claimed, were ‘essentially stolen’ from their rightful owners by Lord Elgin at the turn of the 19th century – and they belong in the Acropolis, not the British Museum. Only when the looted sculptures are reunited with their siblings in Athens, we’re told, can the ensemble reveal its authentic meaning. The reality is rather more complex. The case for the British Museum returning the Marbles to Athens – albeit by the legal fiction of a ‘loan’ – is weak. The facts are these. The Acropolis, on which the Parthenon stands,

Geoff Hill

What’s the truth about South Africa’s ‘genocide’ of white farmers?

Is a crime against humanity at risk of unfolding in South Africa? Elon Musk, the Pretoria-born billionaire who owns X (Twitter) and Tesla, fears that there might be. Earlier this year, he wrote that he’d heard of calls for ‘a genocide of white people’ in his former homeland. Musk isn’t alone in his concerns. Steve Hofmeyr, a South African singer with a cult following, thinks that the ‘g-word’ is an appropriate way to describe what is unfolding: ‘If you think that the slaughter of South African farmers is not genocide enough, ask them about their land, language, religion, education, universities, heritage, monuments, safety, dignity and the race-based regulations imposed upon them and their

Thursday

28 December 2023

Katy Balls

Why Sunak hasn’t yet decided when to call an election

When will the election be? It’s the question that is asked whenever MPs meet. Over the Christmas recess, the issue has once again been driven up the news agenda. The reason? The announcement from the Chancellor that the Spring budget is due to take place March 6. Given this is the earliest the annual fiscal event has been scheduled for since the Tories entered government in 2010, it has added to talk that Rishi Sunak could opt for a spring election rather than waiting until the autumn. As shadow cabinet minister Emily Thornberry put it this morning, a May election is ‘the worst kept secret in Westminster’. Sunak confirmed this

Brendan O’Neill

Why don’t anti-racists care about anti-Semitism?

Where have all the anti-racists gone? You couldn’t move for anti-racists in recent years. They thundered from their newspaper pulpits about the evils of ‘white privilege’. They were in schools, universities, workplaces, re-educating the throng in racial correct-speak. They loudly wrung their hands over Brexit, and us dim gammon who voted for it, warning that leaving the EU would unleash a 1930s-style hate fest. They colonised football: every match came with a BLM knee-taking ritual and finger-wagging warnings about racial prejudice. They hit the streets, hollering ‘Stand up to racism!’ and ‘Silence is violence!’. They saw racism absolutely everywhere. In every nook of society, every innocent utterance. Remember when Sarah

Nick Cohen

The QAnon-style in anti-Israel conspiracy theories

On Boxing Day pro-Palestine demonstrators met customers at the Zara sale in the Westfield shopping centre, in Stratford, east London. They were not there to wish them the compliments of the season. ‘Bombs are dropping while you’re shopping’, they chanted, as police stood by to make sure the protests did not turn violent. ‘Zara is enabling genocide’, their placards read. Quite what they wanted bargain hunters to do about the Israeli forces bombing the Gaza Strip, they never said. Lobby their MPs? Politicians are on their Christmas holidays. Join the Palestinian armed struggle? It was unclear whether the shopping centre had a Hamas recruitment office. But on one point the demonstrators were