Politics Archives

Wednesday

4 January 2023

Sunak: judge me on my priorities

Rishi Sunak’s new year speech was more about what he wants to fix rather than how he plans to fix it. That is generally what start-of-the-year speeches intend to do, painting in broad strokes rather than going into endless policy detail. The Prime Minister came to office with a promise to fix the turmoil left by Liz Truss, but now his challenge is to give a sense he's here to do more than just keep the markets calm. He set out five 'immediate' priorities, some of which may happen regardless of any new policies the Prime Minister introduces. Sunak claimed that they are 'the people's priorities', and listed them as follows: 1. Halve inflation this year.2. Grow the economy.3. National debt falling.4. NHS waiting lists will fall and people get the care they need more quickly.5.

Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak: My vision for a better future

New Year should be a time of optimism and excitement. Yet I know many of you look ahead to 2023 with apprehension. I want you to know that as your Prime Minister, I will work night and day to change that, and quickly. Not just by providing relief and peace of mind for the months to come – although we will. But also by changing our country and building a better future for our children and grandchildren. A future that restores optimism, hope, and pride in Britain. Let me first address two issues that I know are at the forefront of everyone’s minds. I know there are challenges in A&E – people are understandably anxious when they see ambulances queuing outside hospitals.

Steerpike

Nadine fumes at Channel 4 U-turn

It’s Rishi Sunak’s big day today. All of Westminster is eagerly awaiting his first major speech since taking office in October. The Prime Minister is expected to set out his plans this afternoon to encourage pupils to study maths until the age of 18. But ahead of Sunak’s address, the hoary issue of Channel 4 privatisation has reared its head again, ruining No. 10’s carefully planned ‘grid’ in the process. Lewis Goodall of LBC has managed to get hold of a letter to Sunak from Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan. It outlines her recommendation against privatising Channel 4, concluding that ‘pursuing a sale at this point is not the right decision and there are better ways to secure C4C’s sustainability and that of the independent production sector.

Katy Balls

Sunak vs Starmer: the race is on

There’s a new rule for members of Keir Starmer’s team on their WhatsApp group: no messages linking to opinion polls. It’s not because the Labour leader dislikes the figures. Labour polls consistently on about 45 per cent and the Tories on 25 per cent, which is landslide victory territory. The fear is that too much focus on such numbers will breed complacency. ‘We are a party scarred by its losses,’ says a member of Starmer’s office. Yet with the election expected next year, Labour and Tory MPs are talking less about whether Rishi Sunak can turn things around and more about the scale of Starmer’s victory. Will Labour have a majority of 20 or 200? It’s rare to find any MP, on any bench, who believes the Tories will win a fifth term.

Freddy Gray

Six more years: how long can Biden go on?

The presidency of the United States is hard work, everybody knows that. It’s also a pretty sweet gig for should-be retirees. The 80-year-old Joe Biden and First Lady Jill just spent six days holidaying on St Croix in the Caribbean. Biden’s critics have been quick to point out that he has so far spent some 260 of his 715 days in office on vacation. That’s more than even the famously self-indulgent septuagenarian Donald Trump spent chillaxing at his estate in Florida. Who knew that leading the free world could be a part-time job? And with so much downtime, plus such power and perks, why would any proud gerontocrat quit? Bidenologists all make the same point: he spent five decades trying to be president, so why stop now?

Steerpike

Is Boris going to do the chicken run?

Is 2023 going to be the year of Boris? Much of the commentariat seems to think it’s possible, with the supremely-connected Paul Goodman writing this week in the Times that Johnson’s return to No. 10 ‘has a certain plausibility to his Westminster supporters.’ And now that same august paper of record has published another intriguing article by a onetime Tory MP, hinting at Bozza’s possible new year plans. Matthew Parris writes in his notebook today about rumours sweeping the Peak District that Johnson is about to do the infamous ‘chicken run’ by switching from his London base to a safer seat ahead of the next election.

Douglas Murray

How to get nothing done

I sometimes wonder whether our government makes any decisions at all. In fact I’m trying to think of any area of public policy that is not the subject of a review, commission, inquiry or similar. The most charitable explanation for this trend is that it worsened in the coalition years. Whenever the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives couldn’t agree on anything they could always kick the matter into the long grass by commissioning a review. So much better than risking upsetting Nick Clegg. All this of course has a deep impact on the country, because it means nothing actually gets done. I am sure you will all remember the Casey review (2016). This was commissioned by David Cameron’s government from the admirable Louise (now Baroness) Casey.

James Heale

Simon Clarke: What the PM can learn from Liz Truss

After Liz Truss’s spectacular fall from power, it was hard to find Tories who were happy to admit to having supported her. ‘Trussonomics’ became a punchline. Most of her plans were scrapped, including, this week, her childcare proposals. But among the wreckage of the Truss experiment, there is one survivor who is willing to defend its principles, loudly and publicly. And now he’s waging a lonely fight on the backbenches. ‘If the leadership dramas have taught us anything, it is that a battle for the soul of the Tory party is under way’ Simon Clarke had little profile when he was a Treasury minister under Boris Johnson, but as Truss’s levelling up secretary he was one of the most vocal advocates of her ideas.

Isabel Hardman

Is this really the time for a maths lesson, Rishi?

Rishi Sunak is resurfacing today after the Christmas break and amidst the NHS meltdown to talk about maths. The Prime Minister's new year speech contains an announcement that has provoked a visceral personal reaction in many of the mildly innumerate inhabitants of the Westminster village. It's the sort of response that will underline to the PM and his team why Britain needs to take maths more seriously than it does. His solution to this country viewing maths as something to bunk off as soon as possible is to make it compulsory to 18, though he is not expected to make all students sit Maths A level. The overriding reaction in Westminster is 'why maths?

Steerpike

Geordie Greig returns to Fleet Street

They say you can't keep a good man down. Geordie Greig, one of the finest networkers in British journalism, has returned to Fleet Street after a brief 13-month hiatus away. The Old Etonian was axed as the Daily Mail editor in a power struggle in November 2021 and since then he's kept a low profile, setting up his own company and chairing the Friends of the National Libraries. Now though, he's back, taking up the reins as editor in chief of the Independent with immediate effect. Lord Lebedev is the major shareholder in the Independent's parent company: Greig previously edited the Evening Standard for the peer and still owns five per cent of that paper, in which the Russian press baron also has a stake.

Jacob Heilbrunn

The Republican party goes to war with itself

Florida's governor Ron DeSantis declared as he was sworn in for a second time yesterday that, under his reign, Florida 'will never surrender to the woke mob'. Meanwhile, woke or not, a different mob was disrupting the proceedings in Washington, D.C. at the nation’s Capitol. The same lawmakers who plotted to disrupt Joe Biden’s inauguration as president are now training their firepower on Kevin McCarthy. Right now, no House of Representatives exists. No House speaker exists. No committees have been formed. Nada. To the delight of their political foes, Republicans aren’t battling Democrats; they are battling themselves. Three times McCarthy sent up his name. Three times he was rejected. A perfect whiff.

Mary Dejevsky

Striking railway workers are fighting a losing battle

The greatest danger presented by the rail strikes – for the Government, that is – has passed. The trade unions, chief among them the RMT, fronted by the alternately reasonable and hectoring Mick Lynch, threw everything they could at ministers in the run-up to the holidays. It did not work. Much the same applies, to a greater or lesser degree, to other public sector strikes. There was a cynical – and concerted – attempt to use the Christmas and New Year break as an emotive deadline. This was apparently based on a gamble that enough of the public would blame the Government for 'ruining Christmas' to force a generous settlement. There were times when this looked set to become a general strike in all but name and it seemed the gamble could pay off.

Tuesday

3 January 2023

Steerpike

Will Beijing block Britain’s embassy?

It's not been the best few years for Sino-British relations, what with Huawei, Hong Kong and the whole Covid thing. So it was no surprise when, last month, Tower Hamlets council voted to block China's new 'super-embassy,' with councillors citing security fears and the concerns of local residents. The borough of Tower Hamlets is more than 38 per cent Muslim: many constituents were outraged by the ongoing atrocities by the Chinese Communist Party against Uyghur Muslims. The local authority's decision has been greeted with delight by many Sinosceptics – but not by some in the Foreign Office.

Steven Barrett

Why can’t the UK remove EU laws in a year?

As is increasingly common, government policy was leaked to the Times this week by a ‘senior government source’. The source stated that the government’s plan to remove Retained EU Law (REUL) from the British statute book by the end of the year must now be put off for another four years (meaning ten years after the Brexit vote). REUL is not all the laws the EU ever made which apply in Britain. Lots of EU law was made by our own parliament becoming our own law. REUL just covers the laws made directly here by the EU, or by our ministers if the EU told them to. Theresa May decided it was too risky and the government too busy to remove all of these laws five years ago. So we kept it all ‘just in case’.

James Heale

Will Brits shun trains?

15 min listen

Millions of Britons will forever shun trains because of the ongoing strikes, a government sources told the Times today. Are the strikes proving as effective as unions hoped? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Steerpike

Fact check: did Rishi back the euro?

It's a new year but Lord Cruddas is not giving up an old causes. The onetime milkman turned billionaire led the campaign last summer to put Boris Johnson back on the ballot after the latter was forced out of No. 10. After that failed, Cruddas suggested he would stop funding the Conservatives unless it rewrote its constitution to prevent another PM being toppled. In October, he unsuccessfully urged Johnson's return in the brief contest that followed Liz Truss's downfall. And now the former Tory treasurer is ploughing his considerable energies into a new initiative: the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO).

James Snell

America’s flip flopping has exacerbated Venezuela’s tragedy

Amid New Year celebrations, and a tide of high-profile obituaries, you might have missed something small and far away, but nonetheless significant. The opposition in Venezuela has dissolved its government-in-pretence. By 72 votes to 29, the country's national assembly voted its parallel government out of existence. Juan Guaidó can no longer say that he is Venezuela’s legitimate president-in-waiting. Venezuela has, for many years, been a basket case. A country with immense natural resources and an energetic population, it has long languished in poverty.

Steerpike

Leo Varadkar (belatedly) admits his Brexit mistakes

They say time can be a great healer. And, in the case of Leo Varadkar, it seems that even the most festering of wounds can be fixed by a brief stint away from the premiership. Varadkar, who became Taoiseach again in December, was one of the great antagonists in the Brexit battles during his first stint as Irish leader between 2017 to 2020. He suggested that Europeans no longer felt welcome in Britain, accused Leavers of ‘chasing unicorns’ and claimed last July that the government was not being ‘even-handed’ on post-Brexit arrangements. The Taoiseach has now accepted that the protocol which he negotiated with Boris Johnson is ‘too strict’ So it was with some surprise then that Mr S awoke to see news of a volte-face from Varadkar.

Ben Domenech

Trump’s war on pro-lifers is a sign of desperation

Donald Trump just made his first significant political error of the 2024 nomination battle, and it’s a doozy. After being asked about the abortion issue, Trump took to Truth Social to post the following: 'It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms. I was 233-20! It was the “abortion issue,” poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters. Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the US Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again. Plus, Mitch stupid $’s!

Monday

2 January 2023

Steerpike

Coming soon: Meghan’s memoir?

And you thought we'd seen the last of them in 2022. The new year kicks off with some old score-settling: for next week will see the publication of Prince Harry's pithily-titled memoir Spare (or Going Spare, quips one royal insider). As the title suggests, the book is expected to focus on the fraternal frictions between the runaway royal and his brother William. Other topics covered include Harry's hatred of the press (quelle surprise) and his reflections on Diana's death. And, in a delicious irony, Harry will be forced to give multiple media interviews to promote the book. Sadly, he has ducked the chance for a no-holds-barred, sit-down grilling with one of Britain's popular papers like the Sun or the Mail on Sunday.