Politics Archives

Sunday

5 February 2023

Tories gear up for selection battles

The Tory grassroots are revolting – and they clearly aren’t happy either. This weekend has seen two selection battles engulf different Conservatives associations. Local Tories are currently picking their prospective parliamentary candidates, ahead of the expected general election next year. For incumbent MPs, reselection is normally a formality: the sitting member is proposed and re-adopted by the party activists who live in their constituency. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to have been the case for several sitting Conservatives. First, there was an unfortunate bun-fight for the new Penrith and Solway constituency.

Matthew Lynn

Trussonomics is slowly winning the argument

It was self-indulgent, whinging. Dull in places while completely batty in others. All the usual insults will be hurled at former prime minister Liz Truss for her essay defending her short time in Downing Street, published today. Perhaps it would be better for her to retire gracefully from public life and let some ambitious young revisionist historian in the 2060s make the case that she was treated unfairly. Except she still has one key card to play. Events are gradually showing that she was right along: Trussonomics, or whatever it will be called next, is gradually winning the intellectual argument. Her argument has something else going for it: a ring of truth There won’t be many people in the Conservative Party welcoming Truss’s return, and certainly not in the government.

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Truss thwarted by ‘powerful economic establishment’

Liz Truss - Thwarted by a ‘powerful economic establishment, and a lack of political support’ After Liz Truss claimed in a Telegraph essay that the ‘economic establishment’, and flaws in the Conservative Party’s preparations, had prevented her from enacting her policies, Laura Kuenssberg pressed Business Secretary Grant Shapps on whether he agreed with any of Truss’ claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAnhc3a5KWA Liz Kendall - Liz Truss is back with ‘no apology and no humility’ Former Conservative party chair Jake Berry told Kuenssberg that he still agreed in principle with Liz Truss’ policies, even if they weren’t delivered in the correct way.

Nicholas Farrell

Giorgia Meloni’s first 100 days have proved her critics wrong

Macho Italy’s first woman prime minister Giorgia Meloni has now governed for 100 days and I cannot help but notice the enormous elephant in the room: the failure of the global media even to acknowledge, let alone apologise for, how wrong they were to warn the world that Italy was on the verge of a far-right, ergo fascist, take-over. During the election campaign and immediate aftermath the crème de la crème of the world’s media were chock-a-block with warnings that Meloni and her party – Brothers of Italy – were the equivalent of a Biblical plague of locusts in jackboots about to engulf Italy and from there Europe.

Iain Macwhirter

Time is running out for Nicola Sturgeon

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has led a charmed life. Even her sternest critics agree that she is immensely talented, one of the UK’s most successful politicians, a master of detail and an effective communicator. She has been at the pinnacle of public life for two decades. But all things must pass. Nearly ten years after she took over as leader from Alex Salmond just about everything is going wrong at once. Hospital waiting lists lengthen, teacher strikes roll on, council service cuts deepen, the ambitious plan for a Social Care Commission has stalled. Across the board the SNP government appears to have made a right royal mess of just about every policy for which it has responsibility.

Coffee House

Liz Truss speaks exclusively to The Spectator

Liz Truss has broken her three-month long silence since leaving No. 10 at the end of October. In a 4,000 word article for the Sunday Telegraph, she reflects for the first time on the mini-Budget, the challenges she faced within government and the mistakes she made in her 49-day premiership which made her the shortest-serving Prime Minister in British political history. Today, she has given her first interview to reflect on her time in No. 10. Truss speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson exclusively on Spectator TV to talk about where she went wrong, what she thinks she got right and her plans for post-premiership life. You can watch the interview on The Spectator's channel here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Kate Andrews

Was Liz Truss denied a ‘realistic chance’ to succeed?

‘I assumed upon entering Downing Street that my mandate would be respected and accepted. How wrong I was.’ This is the crux of Liz Truss’s defence of her 49 days in Downing Street: the shortest-ever stint for a Prime Minister. It is also the start of her attempt at a political comeback. Writing in today’s Sunday Telegraph, Truss gives us, for the first time, her account of things: 4,000 of her own words on ‘what happened’ last autumn and what she’s learned from it. Mistakes were made, she admits: in fact, they were all-but-guaranteed, she says, as she had ‘a vast amount to do and very little time in which to do it’. She repeats, as she did last year, that ‘communication could have been better.

Saturday

4 February 2023

Joanna Williams

Playgrounds are no place for Pride parades

Parents standing at the school gate have all kinds of hopes and expectations. They want their children to be happy, well looked-after and to learn something. Thankfully, most teachers agree. But for some classroom activists, education is less about the three Rs and more about LGBTQ+. Rather than geography and history, they teach gender identity and sexuality. Instead of team sports, they might encourage ten-year-old girls who bind their chest to do something less energetic. And rather than Easter bonnet parades there are Pride marches. That’s right. Playground Pride Parades. For four year-olds. Back in 2018, the head teacher of Heavers Farm Primary School in south east London decided to line her tiny charges up for an LGBT pride march.

Svitlana Morenets

Svitlana Morenets, Rana Mitter and Mia Levitin

20 min listen

This week: Svitlana Morenets explains why Ukraine won't accept compromise in any form (00:56), Rana Mitter details Japan's plans for an anti-China coalition (05:43), and Mia Levitin reads her review of Muppets in Moscow by Natasha Lance Rogoff (13:17). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Katy Balls

Are Sweden’s liberal laws incubating violent crime?

15 min listen

In his column for the Telegraph, Fraser Nelson says that Sweden has become a gangster's paradise, with its liberal approach to criminal justice allowing a shocking subculture of violence. He is joined by Katy Balls and Fredrik Erixon, Swedish economist and writer, to discuss how the country should respond to gun violence.

Julie Bindel

No man should ever be sent to a women’s prison again

It’s interesting, the way that laws and policy can change seemingly out of the blue. In April last year, following a massive outcry from feminists and others concerned about trivial matters such as the safety and wellbeing of incarcerated women, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) released a press statement about changes to the policy on transgender prisoners, which was presumably in response to public disquiet about the creeping invasion of extreme transgender ideology into state agencies. Prisons are full of women who have been sexually assaulted and raised in homes with domestic violence, sexual abuse and neglect. The current conviction rate for reported rapes is currently less than 1 per cent in England and Wales.

Friday

3 February 2023

Francis Pike

China and the strange history of balloon warfare

China’s ‘spy’ balloon, (or is it an errant weather balloon?), is currently being tracked across America. Picked up above the Aleutian Islands, it was buzzed by US planes above Montana and is now headed eastwards as it is pushed by the prevailing Jet Stream. The Pentagon has decided not to shoot it down; it does not want debris landing on middle America. China insists the balloon is used for meteorological research and strayed because of bad weather. But the incident has prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his trip to China that was scheduled for next week. Was the balloon inspired by Japan's Emperor Hirohito?

Oscar Edmondson

Is Rishi about to get radical?

10 min listen

In her Times column this week Katy Balls says that Rishi Sunak is about to roll his sleeves up on EU trade and small boats, potentially setting him against both the right and the left of his party. What should we expect? Also on the podcast, as allegations about Dominic Raab's bullying continue to swirl, is this another area where Rishi will be forced to get tough? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Stephen Daisley

Women prisoners are being let down

The safety of women in prisons cannot be allowed to plummet back down the news agenda after the latest Sturgeon saga is over. Not least because today has seen the publication of a report into one women’s prison in Gloucestershire that makes for troubling reading. HMP Eastwood Park, which holds 348 women, was the subject of an unannounced inspection in October last year. Staff from HM Inspectorate of Prisons made several findings that you’d expect: high levels of mental ill health; backgrounds of criminality, homelessness and substance abuse; and prison understaffing. However, they found plenty more. There was ‘no central record or oversight of the number of women who had been segregated, the reasons why or for how long’.

Stephen L. Miller

What is the point of another Trump presidential campaign?

It was always assumed that the moment Donald Trump walked out of the White House on the morning of Joe Biden’s inauguration, he would begin angling for a second non-consecutive term in 2024. A year ago, he launched his own Twitter imitation platform, Truth Social, and then in November he officially launched his presidential campaign. His speech was met with tepid enthusiasm, even by some of his most ardent supporters. The only apparent reason for another Trump candidacy is because he wants to avenge his 2020 loss like a boxer In the weeks since, Trump has spent his time on Truth Social attacking Republicans and prospective rival candidates and once again defending himself from the many lawsuits and scandals he finds himself in.

Ross Clark

Mick Whelan gives the game away over striking railway workers

We’re all familiar with the usual trade union cliches: it’s not about us, it’s about passenger safety; staff morale is low; and strikers are being ‘victimised’. Or, in the words of Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, train drivers are being ‘demonised’. More so than government ministers, who are forever portrayed by union leaders as callous evil-doers? But it is what Whelan said next that really catches the ear. Asked whether he thought the public should be sympathetic towards train drivers on £60,000 a year turning down an offer which would take their pay to £65,000 a year, he said: 'It isn’t about what we earn, it is about what other people don’t earn.

Lloyd Evans

Piers Morgan is no match for slick Rishi Sunak

Gold wallpaper? All gone. That was the first big revelation of Piers Morgan’s interview with Rishi Sunak to mark the PM’s 100th day in No. 10. Every trace of Boris’s trailer-trash décor has been replaced with squeaky-clean white visuals. Piers and Rishi went head-to-head in a characterless kitchen-diner that looked like the show-home of a new-build flat in Milton Keynes. Piers got straight down to business and raised the issue that obsesses the entire nation: himself. He boasted that he’d reached No. 10 long before Rishi when he interviewed Tony Blair many years ago; he recalled that the Blairs had a singing fish nailed to the wall that crooned, ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy,’ at the touch of a button. ‘What’s your mantra?’ he asked.

Gavin Mortimer

Europe has lost control of the migrant crisis

Piers Morgan brought out the bulldog in Rishi Sunak during their interview on Thursday evening. ‘If you come here illegally – if you're an illegal migrant here – then you will not be able to stay here,’ thundered the Prime Minister, in as much as he ever can thunder. People who arrive in Britain illegally, like the 46,000 who made the journey across the Channel last year, will be deported if they are judged to be ineligible for asylum. Sunak also promised that claims will be heard ‘in a matter of days or weeks, not months or years’. Failed applicants ‘will be sent to an alternative safe country, be that where you've come from if it's safe, or indeed Rwanda’.

Nigel Jones

Why Putin is channelling his inner Stalin

Vladimir Putin has journeyed to the southern city of Volgograd – better known by its former name of Stalingrad – to take part in the 80th anniversary celebrations of the great Soviet victory in the city this weekend. The battle was the turning point of the second world war. While there, the Russian president specifically linked his invasion of Ukraine with the Nazi attack on Russia – turning history inside out as he did so. ‘It’s unbelievable but true,’ Putin said. ‘We are again being threatened by German tanks. Again and again we are forced to repel the collective aggression of the West.

Katy Balls

The Miriam Cates Edition

27 min listen

Miriam Cates is the Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge. Before becoming a Member of Parliament, Miriam worked as a science teacher and business owner and spent many years raising her three children at home. On the podcast, Miriam talks about her entry into politics through village life as the local Parish Councillor; how her life as a mother has shaped her views on gender and online harm; and how the 2019 caucus operates. Produced by Natasha Feroze.