Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

Frank Furedi

Britain is not a basket case

It’s a dinner party in Brussels and I try to turn the conversation to the war in Ukraine. My host is having none of it. She is determined to initiate another round of discussion on the theme of ‘isn’t Britain a basket case?’ From bitter experience I know that I am in for a lengthy diatribe about ‘nothing works’ Britain.  At times it feels as if there is a veritable crusade targeting Britain. Media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic constantly refer to Britain as if it is a country in the throes of an existential breakdown.

Saturday

Mark Galeotti

Putin is using fear to mobilise the masses

There was nothing subtle about it, as cranes lifted truck-based Pantsir-S1 air defence systems onto the roofs of the sprawling Defence Ministry building on Frunzenskaya Embankment and another structure in the Taganka neighbourhood, south-east of the Kremlin. As a former president and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church both warned of the risks of Armageddon, one would be tempted to assume that Vladimir Putin was deeply rattled. Yet much of this is more performative than anything else. This is all part of the new phase of the Kremlin's effort to sell the war to a sceptical or disengaged Russian people The Pantsir is a short-to-medium range gun-and-missile point air defence system that can handle targets from drones to cruise missiles, and which has shown its value in Syria.

James Jeffrey

Ukraine is lucky to have Britain’s Challenger 2 tanks

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. So wrote William Shakespeare in Henry V. He could well have been writing about the British Army’s main battle tank, the mighty 62-tonne behemoth that is Challenger 2, which is now being sent to Ukraine.  The Challenger 2 is a weighty sort of greyhound. But ‘Chally’, as it was affectionately known by those of us crewing it, could really move. It had close to that ideal balance all tank designers are aiming for, providing protection, manoeuvrability and firepower (each of which deteriorates when you improve one of the others).

Jamie Whyte

Jacinda Ardern was the queen of coercive kindness

Jacinda Ardern has resigned as Prime Minister of New Zealand. After a period of reflection over the summer break, she concluded that she no longer had ‘enough left in the tank’ to do the job justice. Fakery wasn’t the problem with Ardern. Sincerity was Cynics claim she is jumping ship before the electoral defeat that opinion polls suggest she and her Labour party will suffer in October’s general election. That’s an unkind thing to say. It must disappoint Ardern that, after almost six years at the helm, New Zealand still contains such unpleasant people. If there is one thing that Ardern is all about, and to which she has dedicated herself as Prime Minister, it’s kindness.

Richard Madeley

With Richard Madeley, Daniel Johnson and Melinda Hughes

17 min listen

This week: Richard Madeley reads his diary in the magazine, including recollections of his Sunday lunch with George Michael (00:58). Also, Daniel Johnson shares a touching tribute to his late father Paul Johnson (05:36) and Melinda Hughes asks why BBC Radio 3 is dumbing down (12:28).  Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Kate Andrews

Why did Jacinda Ardern resign?

24 min listen

Kate Andrews talks to Fraser Nelson and the New Zealand based journalist and author Andrea Vance about the surprise announcement from Jacinda Ardern that she will be leaving the world stage next month.

Julie Burchill

The insipid cult of saint Jacinda Ardern

Watching Jacinda Ardern’s departure speech, I reflected that even though I invented the word cry-bully – ‘a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper, duplicit Pushmi-Pullyus of the personal and the political’ – in this very magazine way back in 2015, it’s never had so many adherents as in the past couple of years, especially in the political arena. From Trump refusing to accept he’d lost an election to Matt Hancock ‘looking for a bit of forgiveness’ from his jungle camp-mates, the age of the over-emotional politician is upon us.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Sunak fined by police for a second time

In the past few minutes, Lancashire Police has confirmed that Rishi Sunak has received a fixed penalty notice for sitting in a moving car without wearing a seatbelt. The Prime Minister filmed a video while touring the north west on Thursday which showed he had taken his seatbelt off, and a statement from the constabulary this evening said: You will be aware that a video has been circulating on social media showing an individual failing to wear a seatbelt while a passenger in a moving car in Lancashire. After looking into this matter, we have today (Friday, January 20th) issued a 42-year-old man from London with a conditional offer of fixed penalty.

Katy Balls

Should Sunak be fined over seatbelt-gate?

14 min listen

Rishi Sunak may be facing a fine from the police for not wearing a seatbelt in the backseat of a car on his tour around the country yesterday. Is this all a storm in a teacup or is there a legitimate point to the row? Kate Andrews and Fraser Nelson debate on the podcast, hosted by Katy Balls. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Melanie McDonagh

Assisted dying is a slippery slope

What are your thoughts on assisted dying and assisted suicide? That's the question asked by a Health and Social Care Committee consultation, closing today, that could shape changes to the law on euthanasia. Having had intimate experience of what can happen when a vulnerable person feels themselves to be a burden, I'm against. My mother had Parkinson’s, and once she burst out to me that: 'You’d have so much more time and money if it weren’t for me'. It would be the easiest thing in the world to push someone in that condition towards feeling that it would be better for everyone if she were given a dignified death. Actually my mother did have a dignified death, at home, even though, by then, she had to have everything done for her.

Brendan O’Neill

The Sunak seatbelt row is a pathetic ‘scandal’

Remember when Britain knew how to do a good political scandal? Secretaries of State sharing showgirls with Soviet attachés. A member of parliament faking his own death. The Tories launching a ‘Back to Basics’ moral crusade even though half the party seemed to be getting their leg over someone who wasn’t their wife. Those were the days. You were guaranteed a good kick out of a scandal back then. Fast forward to 2023 and what is scandalising politics now? The fact that the PM didn’t wear a seatbelt in the back seat of his car. The fact that Rishi Sunak was not strapped in while he was filming a little video about levelling up for his Instagram page. ‘Beltgate’, some people are calling it. Shoot me now. This has got to be the lamest, daftest ‘gate’ of modern times.

Steerpike

Has Starmer’s Davos gambit backfired?

Ah, the World Economic Forum: that annual jamboree for plutocratic banksters, avaricious industrialists and superannuated spongers to come together in an orgiastic eulogy to global capital. Sir Keir Starmer is among those in Davos this week as part of the party's latest enterprise initiative. For where better place for a Labour leader to demonstrate his progressive credentials? The purpose of such schmoozing is two-fold. It is intended to show Labour as a pro-business party, which has put the bad old days of Comrade Corbyn well behind them and make Starmer seem 'Prime Ministerial' by having him endure the tedium of meeting various satraps, flunkeys and apparatchiks which comprise the Davos elite. But has this initiative backfired?

Freddy Gray

Sorry, folks, Donald Trump isn’t going away

Almost all of us can recite the reasons why Donald Trump’s political career should be over. We hear them again and again. He lost the presidency in 2020 after four exhausting years. His angry fans stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, a now infamous day in American history. He lost his media clout after being banned from Facebook and (until recently) Twitter. He has clung to his ‘election denial’, as Democrats like to call it, and that makes all his political antics now seem petulant and tired. In the mid-terms in November, a fair number of the candidates he backed lost crucial senate and gubernatorial races which his party should have won. Even his supporters – not to mention some rich donors – seem to be losing faith.

Katy Balls

The Nimco Ali Edition

33 min listen

Nimco Ali is an activist, government advisor, author and FGM survivor. Born in Somaliland, Nimco moved to the UK as a child fleeing civil war. On holiday in Djibouti aged 7, she was subjected to female genital mutilation, a traumatising moment in her life that led her to become one of the world’s leading anti-FGM activists today. She went on to set up Daughters of Eve, a survivor-led organisation that has helped transform approaches to ending FGM, as well as the Five Foundation, a global coalition for the same cause. Now, Nimco travels the world to lobby governments to ban FGM and recognise the practice as a human rights issue.

Thursday

Cindy Yu

What’s behind the Tory rift on levelling up?

10 min listen

Rishi Sunak faces the fury of Red Wall MPs and other Tories today as he announced the distribution of the second round of the government's levelling up fund. Of all the regions receiving money, the southeast will in fact receive the most (£210 million), while the government would rather point to the fact that, on a per capita basis, the North and Wales benefit more. Cindy Yu discusses with Katy Balls and James Heale. Produced by Cindy Yu.

William Moore

Gender wars: the Union’s new battle line

39 min listen

On the podcast this week:  In his cover piece for the magazine Iain Macwhirter writes in the aftermath of the government’s decision to block the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill from gaining Royal Assent. He joins the podcast with Observer columnist Sonia Sodha to discuss the Union’s new battle line (01:03).  Also this week: why are our prisons still in lockdown?  Charlie Taylor, HM’s Chief Inspector of Prisons writes about some of his recent observations visiting institutions around the country. He says that control measures are failing both inmates and the taxpayer. He is joined by journalist David James Smith to examine this post-Covid inertia in UK prisons (16:48).

Sam Collins

Jacinda Ardern over-promised and under-delivered

And just like that, she’s gone. In one of the biggest shocks to hit New Zealand politics since that late night in 1984 when a clearly inebriated Robert Muldoon called a doomed snap election, Jacinda Ardern has announced her resignation as New Zealand prime minister after five years in power.  Some may argue that she is ‘getting out at the top’. But anyone with serious knowledge of New Zealand politics can recognise the sight of a prime minister getting out before an election they feel they are unable to win. Kiwi political leaders (as with our cousins in Australia) have a proud tradition of leaving office (either voluntarily or not) if defeat appears to be on the horizon.

Isabel Hardman

Are the Tories serious about levelling up?

How serious are the Conservatives about levelling up? Their MPs have reportedly been told not to use the phrase in their campaign literature, presumably on the basis that it is meaningless. Today, however, ministers are fanning out across the country to make a big fuss about the latest round of levelling up funding. The biggest problem with levelling up is that local government is not strong in many areas Rishi Sunak is in the north west promising to 'build a future of optimism and pride in people's lives and the places they call home'. It's all nice and good, but even the MPs who are getting funding today are struggling to feel a sense of optimism about the future of their seats.

Toby Young

When did Steve Baker become a social justice warrior? 

About ten years ago I thought seriously about becoming a Conservative MP. I jumped through a series of hoops and managed to get myself on the candidates’ list. Had I taken the next step, I might have been selected to fight a marginal seat and, given the party’s success in 2019, could have been elected. But in 2018, when the offence archaeologists did a number on me, I decided to withdraw and spare Central Office the embarrassment of removing me from the list. Probably just as well because if I had won a marginal seat in 2019 I’d now be worrying about how to earn a living after the next election. I might even have gone woke, which is what a number of Conservative MPs who are worried about losing their seats are doing.

Stephen Daisley

The SNP’s positive discrimination plan is too little, too late for Scottish students

Will no one think of the middle classes? It’s not the most stirring call to arms. When Scottish Labour MSP Michael Marra complained that ‘the doors are closed’ at universities to ‘Scottish pupils from ordinary families and an average school’, Nicola Sturgeon quipped that she ‘used to be regularly criticised for the fact that too few young people from deprived communities were going to university’, but now she was ‘being criticised for the fact that too many of them are going to university’. As ever with Sturgeon, the rhetoric is facile and the reality much more prosaic. That more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are getting into university is no bad thing, but nor is it a symbol of an egalitarian Scotland.