Politics Archives

Friday

6 January 2023

Did Stonewall invent 300,000 non-existent trans people?

How many people in Britain are transgender? Until today, there hasn’t been an official answer to that question. New census data give us a number: there are 262,000 people living in England and Wales in March 2021 who ‘identified with a gender different from their sex registered at birth’, in the words of the Office for National Statistics. Making some broad assumptions for Scotland and Northern Ireland, we might therefore guess that the trans population of the UK is around 300,000. Which raises some slightly awkward questions for people and organisations who have been keen to suggest that the trans population is much bigger. Organisations like Stonewall, for example.

Steerpike

Harry steals Starmer’s thunder

Sex, drugs and Nazi costumes: Harry's memoir certainly had it all. And Fleet Street has gone to town on the revelations in the book, dedicating acres of space to rural romps behind Windsor pubs and two dozen dead Taliban fighters. Unfortunately all that coverage means poor old Sir Keir's long-awaited big speech has been knocked out of the headlines. In vain, did Mr S scan the front pages of the papers today, searching for any sniff of Starmer's musings. The Express and Sun – two papers whose readers are being targeted by Labour – didn’t deign to mention it until page 10. The Telegraph and the Times both put their write-ups on page 12. But the Mail takes the gong for not mentioning it until page 22, thanks to its mammoth 17-page report on Harry’s ‘truth bombs.

Lisa Haseldine

Putin violates his own Christmas ceasefire in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s 36 hour ceasefire in Ukraine, which came into effect at noon today, didn’t last long: less than two hours in, the Russian army broke it. The temporary truce had been announced yesterday by the Russian president to allow soldiers and civilians to celebrate Orthodox Christmas and attend church. But shortly before 2pm local time, air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine, including in the capital Kyiv. Artillery fire and shelling were reported in the eastern cities of Bakhmut and Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, later confirmed by the Ukrainian presidential administration. One unverified video quickly surfaced, showing two Ukrainian soldiers who claimed to be recording the sound of shelling in Bakhmut.

Charles Lister

Isis and the ticking time bomb facing the West

You thought Isis was old news. The world celebrated its territorial defeat nearly four years ago. The group that once controlled an area the size of the UK had been battered by more than 30,000 airstrikes, and tens of thousands of its militants had been killed. It was over. Really, though, the war against Isis never stopped. The US military has just announced that last year some 700 Isis militants were killed and 400 captured in operations in Iraq and Syria. The group was responsible for more than 500 attacks on Iraqi and Syrian soil. Isis is not going away. When Isis was ‘defeated’ at Baghouz in eastern Syria in March 2019, the group was left weaker than it had been in a decade.

Max Jeffery

What is Prince Harry thinking?

13 min listen

Prince Harry describes losing his virginity, taking drugs, and scrapping with his brother in his upcoming book, Spare. Will Buckingham Palace have anything to say about it? And junior doctors are threatening to stage a walkout for three days in March. Can the government stop them? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman.

Tom Slater

Simon Pegg’s anti-Tory rant is embarrassing

If you haven’t seen Simon Pegg’s viral video about Rishi Sunak yet, you’re in for a real treat. It’s a genius bit of satire, a brutal send-up of left-leaning, self-righteous. middle-class midwits. In it, the cult Brit comic actor turned bona fide Hollywood star does a pitch-perfect impression of the sort of unkempt craft-beer botherer who gets all of his news from James O’Brien clips. In character, Pegg rages against Sunak for daring to say people should learn maths up to 18. ‘Rishi Sunak wants a f***ing drone army of data-entering robots. F*** the Tories’, he thunders. Genius. Only it isn’t really. I watched it, hoping it was a joke. I like Spaced and it’s a shame to see talented people be so basic and preachy when it comes to politics.

Thursday

5 January 2023

Adam Holloway MP

Sorry Harry, good soldiers don’t publicise their kill count

Years ago I was, like Prince Harry, an army officer. Since then I have spent a lot of time with long-serving professional soldiers. I don't think I’ve ever heard anybody talk publicly about how many people they’ve killed. Yet in his new book, the Duke of Sussex reportedly details that he flew on six missions that resulted in ‘the taking of human lives’ – something of which he says he is neither proud nor ashamed. He apparently writes that, in war, soldiers do not usually know how many enemies they have killed. But: In the era of Apaches and laptops [he was able to say] with exactness how many enemy combatants I had killed. And it seemed to me essential not to be afraid of that number. So my number is 25.

William Moore

Six more years: how long can Biden go on?

43 min listen

On the podcast this week: The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray writes the cover piece looking ahead to the possibility of another 6 years of President Biden. He is joined by Amie Parnes, senior staff writer at The Hill and co-author of Lucky: How Joe Biden barley won the presidency, to discuss whether anyone can stop Biden running in 2024 (01:00). Also this week: In the magazine Fr Patrick Burke writes a moving tribute to Pope Benedict XVI. He joins the podcast to discuss Benedict’s intellectual legacy and what the Church gained from his theological work (16:05). We are also very lucky to have a special recording from Melanie McDonagh who dials in from St Peter’s Square to give her reflections on the late Pope’s funeral (29:43).

Steerpike

Theresa May gets her pay day

It’s safe to say that most Conservative MPs will want to forget about 2022: three Prime Ministers, four Chancellors and nose-diving polls to boot. But for one MP at least, it wasn't all bad. The Tories’ fortunes may have taken a drubbing, but unlike her party, Theresa May had a pretty successful year. Accounts published today show that in the year up until March 2022, the former PM’s eponymous company declared more than £1,186,000 in net assets – some £338,000 up on the previous twelve months. It’s all thanks to the Maidenhead MP's success on the speaking circuit, with her speeches regularly commanding six-figure sums. While her successors in No.

Max Jeffery

Why did Starmer steal ‘take back control’?

12 min listen

Keir Starmer said this morning that communities would ‘take back control’ under a Labour government. In a speech delivered just down the road from where Rishi Sunak spoke yesterday, the Labour leader promised to expand devolution. Is his vision radical enough? Max Jeffery speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Heale.

Steerpike

Watch: Starmer’s Dalek impersonation

Oh dear. The stage was all set this morning for Sir Keir's big speech, responding to yesterday's Blairite tribute by Rishi Sunak. His sleeves were rolled up, the podium looked reassuringly solid and the factory backdrop was suitably metaphorical. But then came the technical issues: the curse of any aspirant Prime Minister hoping to show he has grip on detail. The microphone this morning unfortunately made Sir Keir sound like a Dalek hell-bent on regional devolution. His croaky voice eventually cut out completely, just ten minutes after he had begun, no doubt devastating his army of Keirleaders across the country. And just when he had got to the good bit about 'restoring trust'.

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer promises to take back control

Keir Starmer’s new year speech was better than Rishi Sunak’s. It’s easier to give a speech about fixing problems when you’re in opposition and someone else has caused them. But it was just more interesting than what the Prime Minister had to say yesterday. There was the politically audacious decision to pick up Vote Leave’s ‘take back control’ mantra, not just as a slogan but also in the form of a ‘Take Back Control Bill’ which will devolve new powers to local communities and give them the right to request more authority from central government.

Alexander Larman

The war between the Windsors hits a new low

It was inevitable, with a book as highly anticipated as Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, that there would be a leak of its contents ahead of its release next week. Given the Duke of Sussex’s antipathy towards his family, it is fitting that the newspaper that landed this exclusive is the republican-leaning Guardian. Nonetheless, it is something of a marmalade-dropper to see the headline ‘Prince Harry details physical attack by brother William in new book.’ We might have thought we have heard all the details of the acrimonious relationship between the two royal siblings before: clearly, there is still more to come. The accusation is an unedifying one.

Isabel Hardman

Is Starmer’s lack of ambition holding Labour back?

The battle of the New Year launch speeches enters its second day, with Labour leader Keir Starmer giving his own address in East London. Rishi Sunak said yesterday he had five 'immediate priorities' for fixing Britain. The Labour leader is offering a similar repair job this morning, while also trying to reassure voters this won't involve his party spending vast sums of money. Starmer will say that, while his party will 'give people a sense of possibility again', this is not 'code for Labour getting its big government chequebook out again'.

Nick Cohen

Why Labour think they’ve rumbled Rishi

Labour’s leaders do not rate Rishi Sunak. I don’t mean by this that they think his policies range from the wrongheaded to the disastrous – we can take these opposition criticisms as a given. I mean that as professional politicians they look at the Prime Minister and see a rank amateur. 'He’s rubbish,' a member of the shadow cabinet told me. 'I mean' he continued bursting into derisory laughter during his speech yesterday, 'what the hell was that maths thing about?' In case you missed it, from the morning papers through to lunchtime on Wednesday, the PM’s New Year message was that he wanted children to study maths until they were 18.

Wednesday

4 January 2023

Ben Domenech

Who would be the Republican House Speaker now?

The clash that has led to the historic abnormality of a House of Representatives without a speaker is fascinating in part because of the odd combination of factors at play. Rather than a battle over a single policy or ideological issue, the frustrations of the chaotic 10 per cent of House Republicans who voted against Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday are numerous and varied: from personal gripes to demands divorced from anything a different speaker could deliver. A chief motivation can be found in the make-up of this slim House majority itself – thanks to GOP successes in states like New York and the failures of several populist candidates, it’s far less Freedom Caucus-y and far more Main Street Republican than many conservatives had expected.

Fraser Nelson

Are Rishi Sunak’s five targets real?

In his speech today, the Prime Minister gave five targets: ‘Halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut [NHS] waiting lists and stop the boats.’ But are these real targets, or are they the old politician’s trick of promising what will happen anyway? Sunak’s job is made easier by the way economics is reported: everyone says what inflation is, but no one ever prints the forecasts. No one, that is, except The Spectator’s data hub. We like to think we show you what people think is coming, as well as what just happened. A trawl through the data hub shows that all of Sunak’s pledges are, in fact, statements of what was expected to happen under Boris Johnson, let alone Liz Truss. Let’s go through them in turn.

Kristina Murkett

Sunak’s maths plan doesn’t add up

In one particularly excruciating scene in The Office, manager David Brent tells everyone that they are about to lose their jobs, but ‘the good news is I’ve been promoted’. When challenged, he says, ‘Well I couldn’t come out and say I’ve got some bad news and some irrelevant news.’ A similar exchange seems to have just happened with Rishi rather than Ricky. The bad news is that the NHS is in crisis, with up to 500 people dying a week due to delays in emergency care and one in three ambulances waiting over an hour to hand over patients. The ‘good’ news though is that Sunak, after almost two months of silence, has announced that he wants all students to study maths up until 18. The strange and surreal timing aside, Sunak’s policy simply doesn’t add up.

Max Jeffery

Are Sunak’s five pledges enough to sort Britain out?

11 min listen

Rishi Sunak made five pledges to fix Britain in a speech in London today. Inflation will halve, the economy will grow, debt will fall, NHS waiting lists will be cut, and the government will pass laws to tackle the small boats crisis. Is the PM promising too much, or not enough? Max Jeffery speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Heale.

Lisa Haseldine

Moscow is playing a risky blame game in Makiivka

At one minute past midnight on 1 January, as Putin uttered the last words of his new year’s address, Ukraine sent six Himars rockets into the Russian-occupied territory of Donetsk. Four landed on a vocational school in the town of Makiivka, which had been acting as a temporary Russian military base, reducing its buildings to rubble. The domestic fallout for Russia is proving messy. From the moment they announced news of the strike, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has made considerable efforts to downplay the death toll and pin the blame for the incident on the dead Russian soldiers themselves. They, the MoD says, are the reason Ukraine knew where to find them.