Politics Archives

Sunday

15 October 2023

Why Australia’s Voice vote failed

Since 1999, asking how many referendums Australia has had – then how many have passed – has been a pair of standard pub quiz questions. Everyone knew we’d had 44 since Federation in 1901 and only eight had ever passed. Well, questioners in pubs across the country will have to make a minor update. Australia has now had 45 referendums, for a meagre harvest of eight changes to its written constitution. The Voice to parliament has been voted down even more comprehensively than the Republic was in 1999. It lost in every state and one of the country’s two sparsely populated territories. If it were possible to kill it any

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Israel defends the Gaza siege

This week’s political shows were dominated by the Israel-Palestine conflict, as Israel prepares for a land, sea and air assault on Gaza. Israel has said it will not supply water, fuel or electricity to the region unless Hamas releases its hostages and has instructed the people of Gaza to head south to avoid the imminent attack. A humanitarian disaster looms in an already densely populated area, and Victoria Derbyshire asked Israeli government adviser Mark Regev to respond to allegations that the actions of Israel could be breaking international humanitarian law and even amount to war crimes. Regev denied the allegations but he implied that Israel would target civilian zones because

Steerpike

Stephen Flynn’s shameless conference speech

To Aberdeen, where the great and the not-so-good of Scotland’s independence movement are gathering to pay tribute to that once mighty juggernaut known as the SNP. These days though the Nats are having a tough time, suffering an embarrassing defeat in the Rutherglen by-election and seeing one of their own defect to the Conservative party… Still, to listen to Stephen Flynn you would think all is rosy in the nationalist world. With more front than Jenners, the SNP Westminster leader boldly told the party faithful that, with education, health and economic ratings all tanking, he had at last discovered who is to blame: Politics does too easily and too often

Ian O’Doherty

Ireland’s troubling response to the Israel attacks

It’s a widely known secret within Israeli diplomatic circles that Ireland is seen as something of a lost cause. While the Irish left is quick to react with fury to any accusations of anti-Semitism, insisting instead that they are merely opposed to Zionism and the Israeli government’s policies, sometimes that seems a distinction without a difference. This week has certainly been one of those times. The Irish like to pride themselves on their internationalist outlook, but as a frustrated Israeli diplomat once informed me, the Irish are ‘Jew blind’ As the true horrors of what happened in Israel began to emerge this weekend, I naively remarked to my wife that

Austin Williams

Israel’s war with Gaza has exposed China’s impotence

Only last week, China was pushing itself forward to be the regional eminence grise in the Middle East, the powerbroker driving renewed Palestine-Israeli peace talks. In August this year, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi said that Chinese-mediated detente was driving a ‘wave of reconciliation’ in the Middle East. China’s inflated sense of its influence in the region came to a juddering halt in the light of the horrific attacks on Israel by Hamas militants last weekend. As a self-declared mediator in the region, China refused to condemn the Isis-style barbarity of Hamas, instead choosing to chide Israel for refusing to enter talks. It called for both sides ‘to remain calm

Natasha Voase

Where did all the boomer bankers go?

There aren’t many Alex types in banking anymore. The popular middle-aged cartoon banker, greyer and greyer since the 1980s, is regularly depicted in the Daily Telegraph gazing sagely over the heads of panicked young traders, safe in the knowledge he’s seen it all before. Older traders like him are few and far between now. Instead, Britain’s banks and investment firms have been left largely in the hands of the youngsters, a generation too used to working in an era of free money. It’s a troubling thought. Since the 2008 financial crisis, expensive and experienced senior bankers have been cast out, replaced by younger, cheaper rivals. Credit Suisse was forced into a desperate rehiring scramble in

Saturday

14 October 2023

Terry Barnes

The crushing defeat of Australia’s divisive Voice referendum

Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, urged his fellow Australians to take ‘the opportunity to make history’ today. And they did, but not in the way that Albanese had so fervently hoped. His government’s referendum, which aimed to change the country’s constitution to entrench an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory voice to Australia’s parliament and executive government, was defeated by a majority of voters in all Australian states. The final margin, 59 per cent to 41 per cent between Yes and No, was not just decisive. It was a landslide of resounding proportions, almost a mirror reversal of the polled support for the Voice as recently as April. The biggest

Jonathan Spyer

An Israeli ground assault would be devastating for Gaza

On a patch of scrubland outside the Zikim kibbutz earlier this week, I came across a platoon of Merkava 4 tanks positioned among the trees. One of the tank commanders recognised my colleague and we exchanged a few words. ‘This is our Yom Kippur,’ he told us. ‘We haven’t even begun to grasp the implications of this.’ Yom Kippur, in this context, isn’t a reference to the annual Jewish day of atonement. Rather, it recalls October 1973, when Israel was surprised by an attack on two fronts from the forces of Egypt and Syria. The Hamas assault on Israeli Jewish communities around the Gaza Strip came exactly 50 years and a day after what Israelis

Nicholas Sheppard

How the National party toppled Labour in New Zealand

Just three years on from Jacinda Ardern’s phenomenal outright victory, New Zealand’s Labour government has collapsed, slumping to half its vote from 2020. It is on the verge of losing some of its safest seats and languishing behind in most of the Māori electorates. The centre-right National party has won, with Labour prime minister Chris Hipkins calling Christopher Luxon to concede defeat. The National party and its libertarian coalition party, ACT, are in a strong position to form a government, with Luxon, a relative newcomer to politics, becoming the country’s next prime minister. With more than three-quarters of the vote counted, Labour’s vote was a shade higher than 26 per cent

James Heale

What is Israel’s army capable of?

17 min listen

James Heale speaks to foreign policy expert Sophia Gaston and defence correspondent Sean Rayment about what could be Israel’s next steps, the strength of their military and how much political backing they have worldwide.

Fraser Nelson

Why did Australia vote No in the Voice referendum?

I’m in Sydney for the Voice referendum result – and it’s already over. No has won, by what looks to be a 60/40 margin. So an ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice’ will not be added to Australia’s democratic apparatus after an Aboriginal-led campaign asking Australians to reject identity politics. The results had heavy overtones of Brexit: affluent cities voting Yes and the left-behind areas voting No. The Northern Territory, which has the highest concentration of aboriginal Australians, looks to have rejected the proposal by 65/35. Aussies have voted to protect the principle of everyone being equal before the law and in parliament. It’s hard to describe what the campaign

Iain Macwhirter

Humza Yousaf has irreparably damaged the independence project

As the SNP gathers for its conference in Aberdeen this weekend, Humza Yousaf faces a sea of trouble. But worst of all for the party leader, he faces disillusion with the ‘divisive’ independence project itself, as expressed by Lisa Cameron, MP for East Kilbride, who has (uniquely in SNP history) left the party for the Conservatives. Don’t expect many to follow her path. However, she is not alone in rethinking her support for the SNP’s independence strategy. Others, like former Yes campaign strategist Stephen Noon, have been saying this week that the referendum route has become a dead end and that the SNP should revert to its older, incremental approach to

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, James Heale and Robin Ashenden

23 min listen

This week Paul Wood delves into the complex background of the Middle East and asks if Iran might have been behind the Hamas attacks on Israel, and what might come next (01:11), James Heale ponders the great Tory tax debate by asking what is the point of the Tories if they don’t lower taxes (13:04) and Robin Ashenden on how he plans to introduce his half Russian daughter to the delights of red buses, Beefeaters and a proper full English (18:36). Produced and presented by Linden Kemkaran

Limor Simhony Philpott

Netanyahu must go – for Israel’s own good

Israelis were turning against the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu even before Hamas’s invasion. Over the past six months, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets against Netanyahu’s government and its controversial judicial reforms. Israel has been hit by strikes and road blocks and ministers have been heckled in the streets. In an unprecedented move, resistance even reached the army: some reservists vowed to refuse to serve in the Israeli army if the reform passed. Since the atrocity of last weekend, fury at the Israeli government has become even more widespread. When the war broke out, it was clear that Israel was caught napping. This caused an

Terry Barnes

Australia’s Voice referendum is tearing the country apart

Almost 250 years after European settlement, many of Australia’s Aborigines still face appalling socio-economic disadvantages compared to fellow Australians: lower life expectancy and school completion but high welfare dependency and incarceration rates, domestic violence, and endemic unemployment, truancy, alcohol and substance abuse. These are sad realities in such a prosperous nation as Australia. Government statistics show overall per capita spending on an Indigenous person – about three per cent of the total population – is higher that for other Australians, funding health, welfare, education and employment programmes in a national effort known as ‘Closing the Gap’. Yet despite the billions spent over decades, that gap remains intractably wide. Prime minister

Andrew McQuillan

Sinn Fein’s troubling ‘solidarity’ with Palestinians

Black Mountain, which looms above West Belfast, acts as a blank canvas for Irish republicans to plaster their thoughts across. Over the years, banners covering a range of subjects, from Irish unity to Brexit, have been draped across it. In recent days, a Palestinian flag was placed there by a group styling itself Gael Force Art, claiming it was in ‘solidarity with the Palestinian people who launched their biggest operation in fifty years against the rogue state of Israel’. Gerry Adams shared a picture of the flag on Twitter/ X. ‘The Mountain Speaks! Free Palestine,’ he wrote. Irish republicanism has always been a reliable well-spring of support for their Palestinian equivalents. In

Jeff Fynn-Paul

Does the Native American case for reparations add up?

The University of Minnesota is at the centre of a battle for Native American reparations. The university sits on tens of thousands of acres of land that once belonged to indigenous tribes. That land was sold in the 1800s for a fraction of what it’s worth today – and some think the university, which has an endowment of around $3.2 billion (£2.6 billion), should fork out to the descendants of those who once lived there. Minnesota is not alone. Cornell University in New York is facing demands to cough up. The University of Wisconsin at Madison also benefitted from land taken from 250 tribes following the signing of the Morrill

Philip Patrick

Is sumo wrestling dying out?

For any young athletes harbouring ambitions of being a sumo wrestler, there was some good news this week. The Japanese Sumo Association (JSA) has decided to relax its height and weight requirements for young recruits, opening up the sport to those previously barred for being too short or too slight. Now all the beleaguered association needs to do is find them and keep them. Given that recruitment is just one of a host of problems the sport is facing, that won’t be easy. The rule change is in response to a precipitous drop in the number of applicants to train to be a rikishi (wrestler) and perhaps join the fabled

Friday

13 October 2023

Jawad Iqbal

India vs Pakistan is the world’s greatest cricket game

An India-Pakistan cricket match is always about much more than just cricket. It is a sporting rivalry and grudge match like no other, a titanic clash in which it is almost impossible to separate sport from politics. That’s why hundreds of millions of fans will be glued to their television screens for this Saturday’s match at the Cricket World Cup tournament in India. The stadium itself will be packed to the rafters, with more than 130,000 spectators lucky enough to get tickets. Some reports suggest that tickets have been selling for as much as $300,000 (£250,000) on the black market. Security will be tight, with thousands of extra police officers drafted

Dimi Reider

How Britain can save Israel – and Gaza – from bloodshed

The world changed on Saturday morning with Hamas’s attack on army bases and civilian communities in Israel. What began as a Palestinian military triumph became, within minutes, the greatest single atrocity of the entire conflict to date, by either party. Every assumption of the status quo ante has been swept aside, including much of the international etiquette around calls for restraint: Israel appears to be hours away from launching the most overwhelming assault on a modern city since Vladimir Putin’s attack on Grozny, with unreserved Western blessing. This will likely unleash every rocket in Hamas’s arsenal onto Israeli cities, and might well drag other parties into the fray, from external actors like