Politics Archives

Tuesday

2 May 2023

Ealing’s ‘women-only’ tower block is regressive

Designs for a tower block in Ealing just for women – the first in Britain – have been given the thumbs up by planners. On the surface of it, the scheme, proposed by the Women’s Pioneer Housing association, which was founded in the 1920s by women’s rights campaigners, sounds rather good. It offers a permanent, refuge-style living arrangement for vulnerable and poor women, including victims of domestic violence. Some utopian touches are in the offing too: deeper balconies designed to keep prying eyes away, slightly lower kitchen work surfaces, even ventilation systems suited for menopausal women (presumably the option to open the window wide on the 15th floor will be limited).

Matthew Lynn

Why Liz Truss fans might come round to Keir Starmer

We might have thought Trussonomics was dead and buried for a generation after its author’s short-lived premiership last autumn. But all of a sudden it has a high-profile, if slightly unexpected, convert: Sir Keir Starmer. In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Starmer was sounding a lot like Kwasi Kwarteng last September: We’ve got the highest tax burden since the second world war. What we’ve had from the government is tax rise upon tax rise on tax rise. If they’ve proved one thing, it’s that their high-tax, low-growth economy doesn’t work. The Labour leader is absolutely correct, even if he is a little late to the party.

Steerpike

Arron Banks to receive £35,000 in Cadwalladr libel damages

Oh dear. It seems that the always-online Observer writer Carole Cadwalladr has come unstuck in her never-ending war against Aaron Banks. Back in February, the Brexit-backing businessman won a partially-successful appeal of an earlier libel ruling from June 2022 over her TedTalk claims that he had a 'covert relationship with Russia.' The Leave.EU donor initially lost his case last summer against Cadwalladr, who won using the public interest defence. High Court judge Mrs Justice Steyn decided it was reasonable for Cadwalladr to believe what she said was in the public interest – even though it caused harm to Banks’ reputation.

Lucy Dunn

The Scottish Tories can’t continue to rely on SNP failures

The Scottish National party's implosion brings good news for the Scottish Conservatives. At the Tories' party conference in Glasgow, delegates had a spring in their step about their party’s rising chances. Poll results show that the Unionist parties are seeing their support gradually increase, while the SNP’s grip on power looks to be weakening, Meanwhile, support for the Greens, though not especially high to begin with, has halved. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross was joined in Glasgow at the weekend by an all-star cast from Westminster, including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, secretary of state for Scotland Alister Jack and levelling up secretary Michael Gove.

Patrick O’Flynn

What Sue Gray-gate says about Keir Starmer

In British politics the first order effect of any report into a past furore is always about how it impacts current party leaders. So the various early inquiries related to the invasion of Iraq, for example, were not really about honestly learning from mistakes, but about the extent of the damage they would inflict upon Tony Blair. Equally, the public inquiry into the handling of Covid was most eagerly anticipated when it was supposed that Boris Johnson would still be in 10 Downing Street upon its publication, as his opponents looked for a political bomb to blow him up. Now he has gone it rarely gets talked about at all.

Nicholas Sheppard

Is New Zealand that bothered about becoming a republic?

The prime minister of New Zealand, Chris Hipkins, has said he wants his country to end constitutional ties with Britain and become a republic. Speaking just days before he attends the coronation of King Charles, Hipkins said: ‘Ideally, in time, New Zealand will become a fully independent country, will stand on our own two feet in the world, as we by and large do now.’ Hipkins, who replaced Jacinda Ardern as Labour leader in January, told a press conference in Wellington on Monday that while he imagined it would eventually happen, he was not planning any moves for the country to become a republic. ‘I’m on record as being a republican. You know, I think I’ve never made any secret of this. But I’ve also indicated it’s not a priority for me.

Steerpike

Starmer breaks one of his ten pledges. Again.

So, just what exactly does Keir Starmer stand for? In the latest wheeze to distract from the Sue Gray drama and prove that Labour is now a Serious Party of Government, the spin doctors at Labour HQ have opted to ditch the party's long-standing pledge to abolish tuition fees. As recently as 2021 he was lambasting it as 'a huge debt for young people that they carry around for a long time' which is 'why we rightly committed at the last election to get rid of tuition fees.' Yet all that has now changed apparently, as the party seeks to embrace a new-found spirit of fiscal probity – an approach that doesn't extend to Labour's eye-watering Net Zero commitments.

Gavin Mortimer

Marine Le Pen is revelling in the mayhem of Macron

It is almost six years to the day since Marine Le Pen went head to head with Emmanuel Macron in a live television debate that came to be seen as the defining moment of the 2017 French presidential campaign. It did not end well for the leader of the National Front, the party she has since rebranded as the National Rally. Le Pen was ripped apart by her young opponent on the evening of May 3. Macron combined boyish charm with a head for facts, outmanoeuvring Le Pen in every argument and on every subject. It’s increasingly hard to find anyone in France who respects their president. Le Pen was accused of being too aggressive and too personal, as encapsulated in her opening statement. ‘Monsieur Macron,’ she announced to the 16.

Mary Dejevsky

Move over Help to Buy – we really need Help to Sell

When I learned that the Prime Minister was thinking of launching a new Help to Buy scheme, my first response was ‘Oh no’. My second response was the same, with the caveat that we are in the last days of campaigning for local council elections, with a general election a year or so down the line, so anything that looks like a political promise now may not actually happen.If it does though, my objections will be the same as when David Cameron and George Osborne launched the first version – except there is now more evidence of Help to Buy’s deleterious effects. ‘Help to Buy Mark I’ mostly assisted those with the means to buy anyway. For everyone else it pushed up house prices, then kept them higher than they might otherwise have been.

Monday

1 May 2023

Kate Andrews

Reviving ‘Help to Buy’ would be disastrous for the housing crisis

It’s hard to imagine the housing crisis getting much worse. But according to the front page of today’s Times, the prospect of buying one’s first home may get pushed even further out of reach. According to the newspaper, officials in No.10 and the Treasury are working on plans to revive ‘Help to Buy’. This was the supposedly ‘affordable’ housing scheme which enabled first-time buyers to purchase a property with a 5 per cent deposit and access an equity loan from the government worth up to 40 per cent of the property, paid back interest-free for five years.

Tom Hodgkinson

What Jacob Rees-Mogg gets wrong about the four day week

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, has attacked the good people of South Cambridgeshire District Council for introducing a four day work week following a trial. The MP for North East Somerset labelled the idea an 'idler’s charter'. He added, somewhat slow-wittedly: 'Councils need to remember they are providing a public service and the public expect it to be provided five days a week.' There’s always a mean-spirited Rees-Mogg waiting in the wings to carp when progressive ideas approach reality He doesn’t appear to realise that a four day week doesn’t mean that every council worker will now spend the whole of Friday tippling in the alehouse and playing shove ha’penny. What it means in practise is that a shift system is put in place. Efficiencies result.

James Heale

What does success look like in the local elections?

It's local election week which means all parties are engaged in the great game of expectation management. Just over 8,000 seats in 230 unitary, metropolitan and district councils are up for grabs this time, with seven in ten voters in England able to cast their votes on Thursday. The last time these seats were contested was May 2019 – when Labour and the Tories both did poorly, polling just 28 per cent each. Jeremy Corbyn actually lost dozens of seats, becoming the least successful Opposition leader in 40 years. Theresa May was forced to quit three weeks later, having shed 1,300 councillors. This time, the picture looks similarly bleak for the Tories – but much better for Labour.

Steerpike

How much longer has Simon Case got?

Another quiet, uneventful weekend for the Cabinet Secretary. The resignation of Richard Sharp as BBC Chairman on Friday re-opened questions about Simon Case's involvement in facilitating a loan for Boris Johnson. On Saturday, Case was reported to have been sidelined by Johnson's successor Rishi Sunak. Then on Sunday he was embroiled in questions about the use of Chevening as Liz Truss's leadership base last summer. And now on Monday, he has become engulfed in a briefing war with Sue Gray and her allies amid claims that he is blocking her from being Starmer's chief of staff as part of a 'personal vendetta.' Four headline stories across four consecutive days – what would Sir Humphrey have to say about that?

Mark Galeotti

What’s behind Putin’s digital crackdown on draft dodgers?

With the break-neck pace with which it tends to respond to measures coming from the Kremlin, this month Russia’s parliament rushed through a new measure intended to make it harder for draftees and mobilised reservists to dodge military service. In the process, it highlighted the country’s slide into techno-authoritarianism. Until now, the law demanded that the state prove that it had presented the potential serviceman (or his family) with the appropriate draft papers. Although they were meant to be signed for, this still created opportunities for the individuals in question to claim they had never received them. – or make a dash for the border. Hundreds of thousands of reservists did just this in September and October, during the first mobilisation wave.

Sam Leith

Why don’t the Tories want to help genuine asylum seekers?

It’s not the genuine asylum seekers that Suella Braverman and her crew are determined to prevent reaching our shores, we are often told. It’s the illegals. With our traditional British values of tolerance and fair play, we are one of the most welcoming nations on earth to those in real need. The issue is, we hear again and again, with those who show contempt for the rule of law and turn up in this country without permission. That all sounds, on the face of it, a perfectly reasonable position: kindness to genuine refugees in a humanitarian crisis; stern measures for criminals and opportunists. And how do we separate the two?

Lisa McKenzie

What Keir Starmer doesn’t understand about the Red Wall

The polls are tightening but Labour remains the odds-on favourite to triumph in the next general election. Keir Starmer's party enjoys a 15-point lead in the polls over the Tories. But those who think the election is in the bag for Labour, should take a visit to the Red Wall. Voters here are disappointed by the failed promises of the Tories. But they are equally scornful of a Labour party they think has much in common with those in power. The jaded feelings about the Conservatives are easy to understand: the Tories look tired and have run out of ideas after 13 years in power. But the lack of enthusiasm about Labour is more complicated and perhaps harder for Starmer's party to shake off.

Sunday

30 April 2023

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Tories should make ‘significant gains’ in local elections, says Starmer

This week both parties have been attempting to manage expectations ahead of the imminent local elections. The Secretary of State for Transport Mark Harper has been reiterating the worst-case prediction that the Conservatives could lose up to 1000 seats. But Keir Starmer told Sophy Ridge he thought the Conservatives should be making ‘significant gains’, given their result in the last local elections in 2019 was their second worst ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCWZfXIPaxk ‘Are you embarrassed when you look at that map?’ Mark Harper was questioned by Laura Kuenssberg over his record with the HS2 rail project, which has been plagued by soaring costs and delays.

John Curtice

Are the Tories heading for a night of a thousand losses?

It's easy to spot when a party thinks it is going to get the thumbs down from voters in the annual round of local elections each May. It tries to up everyone's expectations of just how badly it will do. It does so in the hope that the results themselves are not actually as bad as ‘forecast', so that the party can say it is, therefore, in a better position than everyone thought after all. For this year's elections taking place on Thursday, the Conservatives have adopted this stance. Its spokespeople have been happy to repeat an academic analysis of a couple of months ago. This suggested that, given where it stood in the opinion polls at that point, the Conservatives were likely to lose a thousand council seats.

Julie Burchill

Blairite ‘nepo babies’ are the worst of the lot

When the singer Lily Allen found herself flak-catching recently, she was quick to point out she was the OK kind of nepo-baby, because: ‘The nepo-babies y’all should be worrying about are the ones working for legal firms, the ones working for banks, and the ones working in politics, if we’re talking about real world consequences and robbing people of opportunity’. But Allen misses the point. People feel cross about the showbiz nepo babies – those who have made it thanks to their parents' fame – because being an actor, model or TV presenter seems far cushier than being a lawyer or a politician. In those jobs, you have to at least turn up at an office and get yelled at just like a regular person.

Patrick O’Flynn

Why Keir Starmer may have already blown the next election

On any objective assessment, things are not going well for Rishi Sunak. Despite being praised for bringing a sense of calm back to the process of government, the criteria by which he asked to be judged tell us that he is a failure. His five key objectives for the year, chosen allegedly on grounds of their achievability, are simply not on course. The small boats full of illegal immigrants continue to land on England’s southern coast in roughly the same preposterous numbers as arrived last year; the NHS remains a horror show of delays. Even his economic metrics are refusing to come right, especially the one about halving the rate of inflation by the end of 2023.