Politics Archives

Friday

7 April 2023

Kyiv wants to make it untenable for Russia to hold Crimea

Crimea matters to Russians – whether they adore or abhor Vladimir Putin – in a way none of the other claimed or occupied Ukrainian territories do, and as such the peninsula’s fate will probably be central to any eventual resolution of the current war. That some Ukrainian sources are now talking about a military reconquest in the summer campaign season and others of diplomatic solutions suggests the possibility of movement. Whatever the official line, there are also many in Kyiv who are uncertain if they really want Crimea To be sure, there is no fundamental shift in Kyiv’s official position, that Crimea – like all the occupied territories – must be returned to its control, and that this could be by military force if necessary, negotiation if possible.

Iain Macwhirter

Scotland’s sentencing nightmare

Not content with putting trans rapists in women’s prisons the Scottish government is now accused of keeping heterosexual rapists out of prison altogether. A furious row has broken out after 21-year-old Sean Hogg was given a community payback sentence by a Scottish judge after being found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl in a country park in 2018. This bizarre situation has arisen from those good intentions which so often pave the path to perdition What does the SNP have against women? cried rape victims. JK Rowling reached for her keyboard to condemn ‘progressive Scotland’ for failing to protect women's safety. ‘Young Scottish men’, she told her 14 million followers on Twitter , ‘are effectively being told “first time’s free.

Kevin Toolis

The Good Friday Agreement and the amnesia over the Troubles

It was an overcast Sunday morning in January 1983 and two IRA gunmen were waiting outside Belfast's St Brigid’s church. After attending mass, judge William Doyle was settling into the driver’s seat of his green Mercedes. He was hoping to escape the congregation throng when two Provisional IRA killers, wearing duffel coats with their hoods up, fired at point blank range through the side driver’s window. As the gunmen fled, they passed Doyle's daughter, Liz, who saw them hand their weapons to a girl walking a dog. In the chaos, the gunmen and the girl disappeared.

Lisa Haseldine

Are Germany’s Greens on borrowed time?

Have cracks started to show in Germany’s traffic light government? Less than 18 months after chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SDP) formed a coalition with the Green and Federal Democratic (FDP) parties, collaboration and harmony have been replaced by division – not least when it comes to the push for net zero. Scholz summoned his coalition partners to a three-day summit last week. Their mission? To hash out policy differences that had been hanging over the government for several months. Emerging from 30 hours of negotiations, however, the SDP, FDP and Greens seem further apart than ever. The main point of contention for the three parties is, perhaps surprisingly, the environment.

Thursday

6 April 2023

Steerpike

Humza Yousaf turns on Sturgeon

For all his praising of Nicola Sturgeon’s governance and Peter Murrell as an ‘election winner’, it now looks as though continuity candidate Humza Yousaf is cutting ties with the SNP establishment. Questioned on the raid of his predecessor’s house and the party’s Edinburgh headquarters, Yousaf has, for the first time, dared to criticise his former boss. Speaking to journalists at his official residence Bute House today, Yousaf commented that he was ‘very, very clear that the governance of the party was not as it should be’ and that ‘a review of transparency…is clearly needed’.

Max Jeffery

Why don’t Brits love Starmer?

11 min listen

Rishi Sunak’s personal poll ratings are on the up, by why don't the public love Keir Starmer? We talk through the latest polling. And Mark Spencer, now the farming minister, has been cleared by an investigation into whether he made Islamophobic investigations to fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani. Is the row over? Max Jeffery is joined by James Heale and James Johnson, the co-founder of polling firm JL Partners. Produced by Max Jeffery.

William Moore

The lost shepherds

40 min listen

On the podcast this week: In his cover piece for the magazine, journalist Dan Hitchens examines whether Archbishop Justin Welby and Pope Francis can heal the divisions threatening to tear apart the Church of England and the Catholic Church. He is joined by Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley to ask whether these two men – once heralded as great unifiers by their respective Churches – can keep their flocks in order. (01:05) Also this week: In his column, The Spectator’s associate editor Douglas Murray questions whether the English countryside can be considered exclusionary, after the news that the green and pleasant land will be studied by ‘hate crime’ experts. He is joined by the explorer and broadcaster Dwayne Fields to ask is the countryside racist?

James Heale

Tory MP Mark Spencer spared over Islamophobia claims

Sir Laurie Magnus, Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser, has delivered his long-awaited report into Mark Spencer’s alleged Islamophobic comments. Spencer, the farming minister, faced claims from fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani that he had told her that her dismissal as a minister in 2020 was partly due to concerns about her ‘Muslimness’. But Sir Laurie has concluded that it is not possible to determine what the then-chief whip said, and criticised ‘shortcomings’ in Spencer’s response. Sir Laurie said: Despite a review of considerable evidence, it has not been possible to draw a clear picture of what was discussed between Mr Spencer and Ms Ghani during two meetings which both agree took place on 4 and 23 March 2020.

Steven Fielding

Why Starmer’s lack of vision might not matter

Tradition dictates married couples receive gifts made of leather on the third anniversary of their union. Labour leader Keir Starmer – whose party enjoys a sustained 15-20 per cent poll lead over the Conservatives – has marked his third anniversary in office this week by receiving an old-fashioned leathering in the press. 'His party remains a mystery to voters', according to the Guardian, which chose his anniversary to issue one of its regular ex-cathedras criticising Starmer for his dullness, lack of ambition and the absence of the ‘vision thing’. The paper was not alone: the Times revealed that nearly half of voters were not sure what Starmer stood for, while the Evening Standard published findings that showed he was only level-pegging with Rishi Sunak.

Ben Domenech

Trump’s indictment has broken America

It was a bright blue-skied July day in 1861, so the Washington elite decided to have a picnic and take in a battle. They brought sandwiches and opera glasses to admire the scene of Union recruits, who had signed up for 90-day enlistments, march by in their unblemished uniforms to put the rebels down. But the Confederates at Bull Run had other ideas. They brought reinforcements – and by the afternoon, a rout was on. Union soldiers threw down their weapons and fled, as picnicking senators tried ineffectively to block the road and threatened to shoot deserters. They came out expecting a lark, and instead saw the nation torn asunder. This would not be a 90-day war, after all.

Jawad Iqbal

Is Elon Musk really a ‘free speech absolutist’?

Elon Musk, the Twitter owner, is in his own words a ‘free speech absolutist’. He promised to combat censorship and allow a broader range of voices on the social media platform as part of his pitch for acquiring the company last October. It is, then, hard to square his free speech bombast with recent events in India where the social media giant is playing corporate lackey to a government hooked on using censorship as a way of silencing political dissent and debate. Twitter is facing a growing backlash after bowing to the latest official demands by prime minister Narendra Modi's government to block the accounts of government critics, including more than a 100 prominent activists, journalists and politicians in India and abroad.

Dalibor Rohac

Will the EU finally see sense over its Common Agricultural Policy?

What should be done about Ukraine’s grain exports? Ongoing controversy in Poland over the country’s imports into the EU, which currently face zero tariffs, gives a flavour of the fights to come if Ukraine becomes a fully-fledged member of the bloc. It also presents an opportunity to start a much-overdue conversation about the EU’s worst, most damaging policy programme: the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In a striking move, Poland’s agriculture minister Henryk Kowalczyk announced his resignation yesterday – the day of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s official visit to Warsaw on his third trip outside Ukraine since Russia’s invasion last year.

Iain Macwhirter

What next for the SNP?

With police surrounding the home of Nicola Sturgeon, and the arrest of her husband yesterday, the people of Scotland need answers – and fast. For once, Humza Yousaf was only telling it like it is. ‘This has been a difficult day for the party,’ he said, after the former Chief Executive of the SNP, Peter Murrell, the husband of the former SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, was arrested by police in Glasgow. He was released without charge almost 12 hours later pending further investigations. As for the Scottish National party, as it staggers from crisis to crisis, long suffering members must wonder if things will ever be the same again. It's a difficult time for the new First Minister too.

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Help! I’m trapped in a 15-minute city

It’s a nasty moment when you receive a letter informing you that a fortnight ago, at a specific number of minutes past an hour, your car was photographed turning into a side road which, at the time, you had no idea you weren’t allowed to turn into. You vaguely recall the junction. There was no ‘No entry’ sign: just a torrent of words (‘except’, ‘through’, ‘motor vehicles’, ‘access’) that you didn’t have time to read. That outing will now be forever sullied in your memory by the £65 fine. Protesting ‘but the sat-nav told me to do it!’ is as ineffectual, legally speaking, as Adam bleating to God that ‘the woman gave me fruit from the tree and I did eat’. The punishment is still enforced.

Wednesday

5 April 2023

James Heale

The arrest of Peter Murrell

16 min listen

Nicola Sturgeon's husband, Peter Murrell, has been arrested today in connection with an investigation into the SNP’s finances. James Heale talks to Fraser Nelson and Conservative Home editor Paul Goodman on the episode. They also discuss Trump's arrest and ask whether Suella Braverman might need a new seat. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Rory Cormac

Can we brainwash our enemies?

Disinformation is on the rise, and Britain’s spies are on the back foot. Our intelligence leaders warn about election meddling, and our enemies are trying to undermine public trust in our national institutions. The United Kingdom needs to use covert means to disrupt anti-British activities at their source. That’s what Harold Macmillan said in the 1950s, shortly before becoming prime minister. Over half a century later, in 2017, the Chief of MI6 made the same point: adversaries should be ‘playing in their half of the pitch not ours.’ And half a decade on from that, here we are again. This week’s intriguing peek into the secretive work of the National Cyber Force conjures the old saying: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Fraser Nelson

The Spectator internship 2023: apply now!

2024 scheme is now live, click here The Spectator’s no-CV internship scheme is now open. We don’t care how old you are, where (or even if) you went to university, whether you’re a refugee or a baronet. All that matters in journalism is whether you can do it: do you have good, original ideas, and care about good writing? We have doubled our circulation in a market that has fallen by two-thirds because we believe that nothing matters more than the quality of the people we hire. We’re mindful that good people come in all shapes, sizes and locations, which is why we put a lot of effort into finding the very best staff. A dozen internship offers go to the people with the highest average scores on the anonymised applications.

Steerpike

Teaching union’s new leader calls for strikes against ‘brutally racist state’

Slowly but surely striking public sector workers have agreed to sit down at the negotiating table with the government and hammer out pay deals for themselves. But there is one sector that might prove more of a headache than others for Rishi Sunak to deal with: teachers. In September, the National Education Union (NEU) will have a new leader. New term, new start and all that. But it seems that this general secretary-to-be, Daniel Kebede, has some pretty strong thoughts on the state of British schools. So far this year, the NEU has shut down schools with four days of teacher strikes, and has announced five more to come before the summer is out. As with most of the other unions organising strikes the union has insisted its main reason for striking has been over pay.

Alexander Larman

When will Prince Harry break his Coronation silence?

Two thousand among the great and the good from around the world will soon receive a letter from King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The invitation to the coronation on 6 May, which has been unveiled today, is not what people might have expected. Elizabeth II’s coronation invitation was formal, and, even by the standards of 1953, old-fashioned: it looked like the sort of thing that Victoria would have issued for her eventful, near-disastrous ceremony over a century before. The implication was clear, namely that her reign would be a formal, decorous one, firmly in keeping with the high ideals of her predecessors, and it proved an apt portent for her highly successful time upon the throne.

Sean Thomas

Hola, here’s the first Brexit Benefit

Whenever Brexit is discussed these days, you will nearly always find a splenetic or exultant Remainer asking, often in a weirdly high pitched voicetone: where are the Brexit Benefits then? Can you name any? Mm? Just one? Where is the £350 million for the NHS? And to be fair to these people, since the Brexit vote, obvious, tangible, yay-look-at-this Brexit Benefits have been pretty thin on the ground. Or, in fact, utterly non existent. The first Actual Brexit Benefit is the ability to go and work in lovely sunny parts of the EU and pay way less tax For those who voted Leave on the basis of sovereignty, this does not matter much. For these people, Brexit is itself the benefit.