Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Steerpike

Poll: voters back Sunak blocking Sturgeon’s gender plans

Welcome to the Terf wars. There's just two days ago until the deadline when Rishi Sunak has to decide whether or not to block Nicola Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The legislation was passed last month by a majority at Holyrood of 86 to 39 votes and made it easier for people as young as 16 to change gender without seeing a doctor. However under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, UK ministers can stop a bill getting royal assent if they think it would alter laws reserved to Westminster – in this case equalities law and, specifically, the Equality Act. Sunak must decide by Wednesday whether to use this mechanism to stop the legislation or accept it, amid fears that it could lead to 'gender tourism' across the border.

Steerpike

Shock as the New York Times praises Britain

Ah, the New York Times. For years now, the world's worst newspaper has painted a grim picture of Britain as a quasi-dictatorial kingdom. It's a country drowning in 'imperial nostalgia', where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of the great metropolis, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in swamps. Our late Queen 'helped obscure a bloody history of decolonisation'; our judicial system is racist for daring to lock up slave masters. So deranged is the newspaper that it even hired a former Russia Today contributor to sneer that Britain is 'a nation falling apart at the seams.' Who on earth would ever want to live here? Well, it turns out, er, the New York Times actually does.

Freddy Gray

Is university the enemy of American progress?

48 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to author and founder of the venture capitalist fund 1517 Michael Gibson, about his new book Paper Belt on Fire.  On the podcast they discuss the parallels between universities and the 16th century Church and how investors are spearheading a revolt against these old institutions.

Michael Simmons

Keir Starmer is right about the NHS

Keir Starmer's diagnosis of the NHS is correct. 'If we don’t get real about reform, the NHS will die,' he says. The Labour leader, and odds-on favourite to be next PM, has called for an ‘unsentimental’ shake-up of a service that is undeniably failing. Millions are waiting for treatment, ambulance waits are so long they are stretching the axis on graphs and good luck even getting your GP to answer the phone. ‘The idea that the service is still “the envy of the world” is plainly wrong,’ he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. Two thirds of us now consider the NHS to provide a bad service So why have we not seen meaningful reform yet? Starmer points to the esteem in which the health service is held.

Theo Hobson

Did the Church of England let Prince Harry down?

Prince Harry is not a Christian believer, he tells us in his book Spare. Fair enough. Every British person is entitled to choose what religion, if any, to follow. Well, almost every British person. His father has a bit less freedom to decide that traditional religion is not his thing. So does his 'arch nemesis'. The point underlines the culture of constraint from which he has freed himself. If William said the same, a constitutional crisis would ensue. It’s a good example of how unreasonable his whole crusade is. His stance only makes sense if he goes all the way and denounces the monarchy entirely. He wants to be fully royal and also fully honest - an edgy and frank royal rather than a yes-man, a square.

Steerpike

Will porngate Parish return to parliament?

There's a spectre haunting Westminster: the spectre of Neil Parish. The former Tiverton MP spent twelve years in parliament in happy backbench obscurity. Until, that is, he became the new poster boy of Tory sleaze last April when he admitted watching pornography twice in the Palace of Westminster. Parish first tried to brazen it out, telling GB News that the MP 'should be dealt with and dealt with seriously' before his identity was known. He then suggested he was merely trying to look at pictures of tractors online. After that failed, Parish resigned as an MP, turning Tiverton's 24,000 Conservative majority into a Lib Dem majority of 6,000 on a 38-point swing. It was one of two by-election defeats for Boris Johnson that ultimately led to the Prime Minister's downfall.

Kate Andrews

The real problem with Davos and the World Economic Forum

The political and financial elite are gathered in Davos in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual meeting, which starts today. Yet before the conference has even kicked off, the narrative around it has already been crafted: the WEF will have to pivot away from the free-market and globalist outlook Davos usually promotes, and switch its focus to inequality instead. In a cost-of-living crisis, images of the glamorous Swiss resort and delegates quaffing champagne are not a good look.  This problem was pre-empted by many. Neither Rishi Sunak nor his chancellor Jeremy Hunt will be attending this year’s conference (trade secretary Kemi Badenoch and business secretary Grant Shapps will be representing the government instead).

Sam Leith

Goldman Sachs and the culling of the surplus elites

Goldman Sachs laid off 3,200 employees with as little as half an hour’s notice. It will probably please the petty, pinched, Schadenfreude-prone sort of little people who have never worked for a predatory investment bank to imagine the scenes. I know it did me. All these huffy guys dressed like Christian Bale in American Psycho, ties wrenched from necks, belongings tumbled into cardboard boxes (lucky gonks, family photos, stress balls, wrinkled twists of cocainey paper and whatnot), stepping out on to Wall Street like goddamn civilians, faces black with fury. Masters of the Universe demoted at a stroke to citizens of the universe.  It’s quite the retrospective performance review What’s more unusual is what happened next.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Rishi Sunak should welcome lively MPs, not shun them

Rishi Sunak has a rebel problem: we already know that. He's got factions of Tory MPs prepared to vote against the government on a range of issues, and the Prime Minister knows that on each issue, there are different rebels, rather than just one easy-to-identify awkward squad. Even when he is, as Katy explains in the magazine this week, focusing on issues that unite the party rather than reforms that will provoke some rebels such as planning reform, he still has trouble on his hands.  The current trouble comes in the form of the Online Safety Bill, which has a phalanx of Conservatives prepared to vote against their party whip in order to toughen up the legislation.

Steerpike

Starmer squirms on trans rights

It may be winter but Sir Keir is already sporting flip flops. The Labour leader's appearance on Laura Kuenssberg's show this morning was the best advert for voting Tory seen in recent months, with Starmer unable to give basic answers to simple questions. Having broken most of the ten pledges on which he was elected – and which are still listed on his website – he refused four times to say whether he still stands by his pledge to abolish tuition fees. 'When I was running for leader I made pledges which reflected my values,' he sighed 'since then, we're now three years on, a lot has changed'. By that logic, Starmer's current policy platform, er, doesn't actually reflect his values? Such vacillation was on show again when Kuenssberg pressed Starmer on the tricky topic of trans rights.

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer is learning to love controversy

For a politician who has set much store by being pretty boring, Keir Starmer seems to be enjoying his current provocative spell. His desire to shake up the 'nonsense' bureaucracy in the NHS makes the Sunday Telegraph splash and was a key feature of his interview this morning with Laura Kuenssberg. He argued that 'the reason I want to reform the NHS is I want to preserve it' and 'I think if we don't reform the health service it will be in managed decline'.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Starmer challenged on whether voters can trust him

Keir Starmer – Ditched campaign promises ‘represented my values’ It was the Labour leader’s turn to face off against Laura Kuenssberg this morning. With Starmer currently in a commanding position, and the favourite to become the next prime minister, Kuenssberg looked back to the 2020 leadership contest to succeed Jeremy Corbyn. She asked him to explain why a significant number of campaign pledges had since fallen by the wayside: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AyVMe016L8 16 is too young to change gender Kuenssberg also inquired as to Starmer’s position on the thorny issue of gender self-identification.

Nick Cohen

Who will dare stand against Jeremy Corbyn in Islington?

Labour has announced whether its sitting MPs will step down or fight again at the next election in nearly every single constituency. By a weird coincidence, it stays silent about the one constituency Labour party members and the wider public are most interested in: Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington North. Sir Keir Starmer withdrew the whip from Corbyn because of the ex-leader’s response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission report on anti-Jewish racism in the Labour party. Rather than, for example, apologising for prejudice on his watch, Corbyn insisted that antisemitism had been ‘dramatically overstated for political reasons’ by his opponents. They’re not frightened of Jeremy Corbyn the man.

David Abulafia

Why has president Xi got my book about the Mediterranean?

A few days ago, an email arrived from someone I know in China: my book The Great Sea had been spotted on the bookshelves of president Xi when he delivered his beginning of the year address to China and the world. China watchers were expending plenty of energy identifying the other books on his shelves, and came up with 62 titles. The great majority were by Chinese authors, including famous classics: the history of ancient China by Sima Qian and the Full Collection of Tang Poems, not to mention works by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Admittedly there is a scattering of translations, including Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy and the complete works of Shakespeare, for whom Xi apparently has a particular fondness.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Is the Princess of Wales right about talking therapy?

The Princess of Wales is in hot water for some remarks she made while visiting the Open Door charity in Birkenhead, which helps teenagers with their mental health problems through arts and dance. She is reported to have said: ‘Talking therapies don’t work for some people, they’re not for everybody. It’s so important to have a range of therapies.’ Her remarks have naturally been interpreted as being a veiled swipe at her estranged brother-in-law and his use of psychotherapists. I’m not sure whether it is more po-faced to do that or take her at face value, but she does have an interesting point if she’s not thinking about her privacy-loving family author.

Lionel Shriver

Lionel Shriver, Theo Hobson and John Maier

25 min listen

This week: Lionel Shriver asks whether we are kidding ourselves over Ukraine (00:56), Theo Hobson discusses Martin Luther King and the demise of liberal Protestantism (09:28), and John Maier reads his review of Quentin Tarantino's new book Cinema Speculation (18:11). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Katy Balls

Is Boris on manoeuvres?

13 min listen

Boris Johnson's potential comeback has been dominating headlines for several months now. As Rishi struggles to unite the party, Katy Balls, Fraser Nelson and James Heale discuss whether the prime minister should be worried.

Friday

William Atkinson

Scrapping university personal statements is a mistake

The decision to scrap personal statements shows up our university system for what it really is: the priority is no longer about educating students, or academic endeavour, but expansion for expansion’s sake. Ucas (the Universities and College Admissions Service) plans to replace the current applicant essay with a survey. This will reportedly ask taxing questions such as why applicants are motivated to study a particular course, why they are ‘ready to succeed’ and any context for their academic achievements – or lack thereof – so far. The justification? That the status quo is unfair on those students without access to ‘high-quality advice and guidance’.

Svitlana Morenets

Has Soledar fallen to the Russians?

Moscow this morning hailed the ‘liberation’ of Soledar, a strategic point in the battle for control of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The Wagner Group’s Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Wednesday that his mercenaries – who are spearheading the offensive – were in control of the salt-mining town (or what remains of it). It was denied at the time, but the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has said it believes Russian forces have taken ‘most, if not all’ of the town.

Lottie Moore

An LGBTQ+ conversion therapy ban is bound to backfire

Advertising and promoting conversion ‘therapy’ to under 18s could soon be banned if a group of MPs get their way. Alicia Kearns, the Tory MP and leader of the Foreign Affairs committee, has laid an amendment to the Online Safety Bill which says ‘content which advertises or promotes the practice of so-called conversion practices of LGBTQ+ individuals must be considered as harmful'.  This amendment will have consequences that go far beyond its noble aim, with serious and dangerous results What’s wrong with that? On the surface, the amendment sounds both innocuous and sensible. Of course, we would hope and expect that all MPs would be against persecution.