Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

How the Isle of Man can save the Tory party

If you ask a typical member of the Conservative party what they want Britain to look like, you’ll get the usual list: low taxes, high growth, strong borders, low crime, sensible regulation, green countryside. If you ask a Conservative MP how Britain might achieve these things, you’ll get a long list of excuses: it simply can’t be done, it’s a bit more complicated than that, the budget isn’t there. And yet we know for a fact that these things are possible because we can see them elsewhere. Our neighbours are wealthier than us, our politicians promise to copy Australia’s immigration system, and Singapore and Japan show that crime is not an immutable fact of life.

Freddy Gray

Most-read 2022: Drama queens: the return of Meghan and Harry

We’re finishing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles from 2022. Here’s number three: Freddy Gray’s piece from September on Meghan and Harry’s return to Britain. We’ve all spent months bracing ourselves for what our leaders assure us will be a dreadful winter. As the weather turns, we can look forward to ruinous energy bills, runaway inflation, collapsing health services, strikes, blackouts, more strikes, violent crime, and perhaps even – why not? – a nuclear war with Russia. As if that weren’t bad enough, Meghan and Harry are back, wafting over all the way from Montecito, California on billowy clouds of bonkers publicity, self-pity and self-help mumbo-jumbo.

Wednesday

Lucy Dunn

We need to stop junior doctors leaving the NHS

Quit your job, leave the country, move to Australia. This may once have sounded like a hastily-planned midlife crisis, but in 2023 these life plans are more representative of doctors' across the country. Four in ten junior doctors plan to leave the NHS as soon as they can find another job, a survey by the British Medical Association (BMA) has found.  The poll asked over 4,500 junior doctors about their plans for the future. A third want to leave the country within the next year to work abroad, Australia often being their number one destination. Over 80 per cent cited real-term pay cuts as the reason they wanted to leave the health service. A similar number referenced poor working conditions.

Stephen Daisley

The 2024 election will be cataclysmic for the Conservatives

I spend a lot of my time fantasising about the death of the Conservative Party. I like to picture election night 2024 and Huw Edwards struggling to keep up with the mounting Tory defeats: ‘Labour gains Chingford from Iain Duncan Smith, former leader of — Wait, I’m being told Labour has also gained Chipping Barnet. I think that’s been Tory since Reginald Maudling won it in — Goodness. We go live to Laura Kuenssberg with some significant news about Priti Patel. Laura, we understand Witham is heading for a recount…’  The fantasy reaches a crescendo with the election’s Portillo moment: Suella Braverman — out. This reverie is not motivated by any enthusiasm for Labour. I doubt if I’ll ever be able to vote for them again.

John Keiger

All is not well in Macron’s France

The relationship entertained by French elites to their homeland is very different from their English counterparts. 'England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality', wrote George Orwell in 1945. That derisory sentiment continues today among Britain's urban elites. French elites by contrast – though they can be highly critical of their country among themselves – do not shy from exalting its status abroad. French nationalism, born of the French Revolution, only came to be embraced by the right a century later. From then onwards, basic patriotism crosses political boundaries. While Britain’s position is not rosy, France’s is certainly no better Elite francofilia has long been a facet of English snobbery.

Ross Clark

How Britain’s economy might bounce back in 2023

Whatever happened to the economic boom that was supposed to follow the Covid pandemic? The 2020s, some argued, would be like the 1920s, with an economy roaring its way out of recession, to be remembered as a time of unprecedented wealth and opportunity. That is not how things have turned out so far.  While economic growth in the UK during 2022 is still likely to come out positive, the growth was concentrated in the first half of the year – in the third quarter GDP fell by 0.3 per cent. The economy, according to the Office of National Statistics, is now 0.8 per cent smaller than it was on the eve of the pandemic at the end of 2019.

David Gunnlaugsson

Why Britain will feel the cold more than Iceland this winter

A winter of discontent is underway in Europe. Germany, France and Britain are the biggest economies in Europe: all face a battle to keep the lights on over the coming months. There are warnings of energy rationing, blackouts and the forced closure of factories as the continent weans itself off Russian gas. How did it come to this? The countries that drove the industrial revolution are out in the cold. Europe is stuck in a quagmire of its own making. But these countries could do worse than look north – to Iceland – for inspiration on how to make it through winter. As the name suggests, my home country can get rather cold in winter when the temperature can hit -30 °C. In fact, it is chilly in Iceland most of the year; even in summer, the average temperature is 10°C.

Sadie Nicholas

Most-read 2022: The dos and don’ts of getting a wood-burner

We’re finishing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles from 2022. Here’s number four: Sadie Nicholas’s piece from earlier this month on wood-burners. Of all the money we’ve spent on our barn conversion since we moved in 13 years ago, the wood-burner we installed in our living room trumps bathrooms, oak flooring and even a beautiful garden room extension as our best investment. At £2,000, the neat cast-iron stove was worth every penny – and never more so than now, when the temperature is plummeting and our smart meter informs us that we’re blowing a zillion pounds a day on gas and electricity despite being frugal with the heating and, well, everything else.

Tuesday

Christopher Snowdon

Why does Jamie Oliver always get an easy ride?

There are many annoying things about the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, but none of them grates my gears as much as the media’s obsequiousness towards him. I suspect that his political campaigning is largely a self-serving gimmick to keep the Jamie Oliver brand in the public eye, but that is besides the point. The point is that he would be the first to describe himself an activist and yet he is never asked the questions that activists, let alone politicians, are asked. He gets the celebrity interview when he should be getting the political interview. He has never been hauled up on the facts. He has never been given a grilling. Hardened journalists become starstruck in the presence of a man who, in media circles if not in the country at large, is regarded as a national treasure.

Patrick O’Flynn

Sunak could learn from David Cameron

Our naturally centrist and establishment-minded Conservative prime minister trails Labour badly in the polls even though the electorate is at best lukewarm about the leader of the opposition. Former Tory voters are drifting away, outraged about a perceived abandonment of sound Conservative principles and European interference in the immigration system. Economic austerity may have convinced financial markets that the PM is serious about rebuilding the battered public finances, but the tax rises and spending restraint involved are making popularity a stranger to him. With the Commons in Christmas recess, a threat is growing on the Conservative right flank which will make the next election impossible to win unless it is dealt with decisively.

Tirthankar Roy

The Raj revision: why historians are thinking again about British rule in India

Is there anything good to be said of British rule over India? The verdict of many politicians, museum curators, TV presenters and even journalists in India is clear: the Raj existed only to exploit and oppress. It caused poverty and famine in the east, and made the western world richer. The writer and politician Shashi Tharoor in a best-selling book Inglorious Empire blames the Raj for ‘depredation’, ‘loot’, ‘rapaciousness’, ‘brutality’, and ‘plunder’. He is far from alone in that withering verdict: social media posts spread similar messages with religious zeal. Oddly though historians have moved away from similar damning verdicts on the Raj.

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

How to save the NHS from itself

Britain’s ageing health infrastructure comes close to breaking point every winter, but this year something is going to give way. On top of the usual litany of complaints about funding and increasing demand on the NHS from an older population, we can add covid backlogs, waiting times stretching into multiples of nominal targets – and now even the workforce downing tools and walking out. As usual, the government is going to try to keep things functioning with short-term sticking plasters. There will probably be more millions shovelled onto the ever-burning furnace of the NHS budget, with little to show in terms of patient outcomes. There will, at some point, be a resolution to the issue of staff pay. And then next year, there will be a new crisis.

Petronella Wyatt

Most-read 2022: In defence of Lady Susan Hussey

We’re finishing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles from 2022. Here’s number five: Petronella Wyatt’s piece from earlier this month on Lady Susan Hussey. Lady Susan Hussey resigned from the Royal household yesterday after 60 years of loyal service to King and Country. Lady Susan, who is 83, has survived world crises, royal scandals and machinations and the death of her friend Queen Elizabeth, to whom she was a beloved companion and longest serving lady in waiting. But she could not survive a meeting with the activist Ngozi Fulani and the arbitrary ‘rules’ that apparently now govern 21st Century social discourse.

Monday

James Snell

Russia can stop the Ukrainian drone strikes. It can end the war

Almost as soon as the war in Ukraine began, strange things started to happen in Russia. Buildings connected to the country’s military and its war effort caught fire, saboteurs were suspected – and occasionally caught, according to state TV – and recently, air bases quite far away from Ukraine have started to blow up.  All of this gives the lie to the official Russian claim, from the early days of the war, that this was a special military operation – small in scope, limited in objective – fought between the Russian military and a few fanatics and drug addicts far away. The conflict was in fact a war, as we know – and it is between the armed forces of the Russian Federation, its proxy Wagner Group mercenaries and Iranian allies, and the entire nation of Ukraine.

Stephen Daisley

Yes, Rishi Sunak’s wealth is a problem

The Tories are finally coming to see what has long been plain to the rest of us: Rishi Sunak is a dud. He’s not a walking catastrophe like Liz Truss but he’s hopelessly out of touch, helplessly out of his depth and has no plan for turning things around. His conversation with a homeless man at a shelter, in which the Prime Minister chirpily enquired whether the bloke was a business owner, has been somewhat misrepresented by Labour and its colleagues in the activist media. Sunak did not blurt out his silly question from nowhere: the man had been questioning him about his management of the economy and the benefits to London of a booming financial sector.

Steerpike

Labour’s fallacious fox hunting battle

Boxing Day: a time for gifts, shopping and fox hunting – traditionally on horse back, unless you're Jolyon Maugham KC. These days of course, the actual hunt is nothing more than trail hunting, with hounds following a scent-based trail rather than live animals. But for some in Keir Starmer's new-fangled Labour party, even that goes too far. Jim McMahon, the baby-faced Shadow Environment Secretary, clearly smells an opportunity here. He is reported in the Guardian (where else?) as suggesting that trail hunting is little more than a 'smokescreen' for illegal activity and a loophole of the 2004 Hunting Act, which banned hunting wild mammals with dogs in England and Wales.

John Barton

Boxing Day and the true meaning of the feast of St Stephen

Few people in Britain know that Boxing Day is kept by the Christian churches as the feast of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr. But if they do know, it is not because they have a great familiarity with the church calendar. Many today do not even know, after all, what Christians commemorate at Easter, let alone on a day mainly set aside for turkey sandwiches and visits to the sales. Yet while the other two festivals within the Christmas octave, St John and the Holy Innocents, are hardly known at all, St Stephen’s day does still have a vague presence in popular thought because of John Mason Neale’s hymn or carol, published in 1835 and still a favourite, ‘Good King Wenceslas’.

Robin Ashenden

Putin’s unholy alliance and the sins of the Russian Orthodox church

Travel the length and breadth of Russia – as you could fairly easily before the outbreak of war last February – and you will find, in many cities, a museum called Russia: My History. These institutions have a clear message for visitors. Empire-building luminaries like Ivan the Terrible and the despots Nicholas I and Alexander III are depicted as heroes. Vladimir Putin is also exalted. The territorial gains strong rulers can achieve are something to celebrate, as is the state religion they aggressively propagate. But what many visitors don't know about these modern-day monuments to expansionism is the hidden hand that helped curate them: the Russian Orthodox church.

Seth J. Frantzman

Most-read 2022: The drone era has arrived

We’re finishing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles from 2022. Here’s number six: Seth J. Frantzman’s piece from March about how Ukraine's use of drones changed the war against Russia. The Ukrainian airforce has so far held out in the battle for the skies. Russia continues to rely on missiles for deep strikes into Ukrainian territory while the defenders have been able to contest the airspace by employing drones. Ukraine has proven a turning point in the age of drone warfare. The first great drone superpower, the United States, used its unmanned aerial vehicles in places like Afghanistan where few fighters had the technology to shoot them down.

Sunday

Steerpike

Cabinet minister gets an unwelcome Christmas gift

Happy Christmas Gillian Keegan. It's not been the easiest of weeks for the Education Secretary. She has faced media criticism for her comments about teachers' salaries and for wearing a £10,000 Rolex while urging public sector pay restraint. And now things have got even worse for the Chichester MP: she has had her Twitter account hacked on Christmas Day. The unfortunate minister has been locked out of her account, which has begun earnestly espousing the merits of 'dogecoin'. Dozens of tweets from Keegan's Twitter profile have been posted in the past few hours, urging followers of Elon Musk to sign up to an external website promising 'a special giveaway for all our fans and the crypto community.' 'It's gonna be awesome,' promises the bot posting in Keegan's name.