Politics Archives

Tuesday

13 December 2022

James Cleverly’s shameful silence on the fate of Jimmy Lai

Have you heard about the British citizen facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a Chinese prison? Perhaps not, because the case – the cause, indeed – of Jimmy Lai has not attracted quite the level of attention in this country that you might expect. Last week, Lai – founder of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper – was convicted of fraud in Hong Kong. To the outside, lay, observer the case seemed suspicious: it involved the subletting of an office and a five year prison term, a disproportionate response even if you accept – as you need not – a crime had been committed. The fraud case, however, is merely an amuse bouche.

Steerpike

Listen: Strike leader Mick Lynch loses his temper on BBC’s Radio 4

Britain's railways have ground to a halt for a second day running – but this time it's strike action, rather than snow, that is causing the chaos. Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), has been out on the airwaves again justifying why workers are right to walk out. And the union firebrand was not happy with the BBC's Mishal Husain for her line of questioning. https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/mick-lynch-blasts-mishal-husain During their clash on the Today programme this morning, Husain asked Lynch how much workers had lost as a result of the walkouts.

Mary Dejevsky

It’s no surprise Britain can’t cope with snow

If you've managed to avoid the dimly-lit pictures of people's back gardens, count yourself lucky. Yes: snow has arrived in the capital. The Foreign Secretary made a point of thanking London-based diplomats for showing up to his speech in Westminster yesterday – or, as he put it, ‘battling through’ two or three inches of snow to get there. James Cleverly had a point: St James’s Park next door was a veritable winter wonderland; Whitehall was now clear, but had received a generous covering of the white stuff the evening before, while the capital’s transport was as disrupted as it inevitably is during a 'snow event'. This morning, the snow continues to cause chaos. For readers outside London, let me apologise.

Monday

12 December 2022

Lucy Dunn

Is Scotland’s strike momentum slowing?

Finally, good news on the strike front: NHS staff in Scotland have decided against walking out after voting to accept an improved pay offer from the Scottish government. The deal means healthcare workers will get pay rises ranging from £2,205 to £2,751. But this isn’t an offer to end all strike threats yet – nurses and physiotherapists are yet to decide whether they will halt strike action after the government’s latest offering. For now, Nicola Sturgeon is hailing the announcement as a victory: the SNP's health secretary Humza Yousaf – who has faced calls to resign as NHS waiting lists continue to grow – welcomed the decision by Unite and Unison to accept the 'record pay offer'.

Steerpike

The National Archives fires back at Matt Hancock

Oh dear. It seems that Matt Hancock has been called out on his Covid record, again. In his newly-published 'Pandemic Diaries,' the former Health Secretary appears to pin the blame on the National Archives in Kew for the late publication of restrictions introducing the 'rule of six' on 13 September 2020. Hancock suggested that the new rules – which were made public just 15 minutes before they were due to take effect – were nearly derailed thanks to the Archives closing early that day. He wrote in his memoir that: As far as I was aware, everything was in place, until I received a message from the office saying there was an issue with the National Archives… The issue really was in Kew. It turns out that until they receive a new law, it isn't legal – and at the stroke of 4 p.

Katy Balls

The polite radical: Rishi Sunak on economic repair, migrants and faith

After Rishi Sunak lost the summer Tory leadership contest, he started on Plan B: to be selected for the Kirby Sigston cricket team in his Yorkshire constituency. He had hoped to play for the club when he was first elected as an MP seven years ago, but politics got in the way. Suddenly with more time on his hands, he began to enquire about this ‘friendly, sociable and inclusive’ team – only to find out that its inclusivity had its limits. ‘They told me that I shouldn’t assume I could make the starting XI, because they’d won their league for two years in a row. They said I might have to go and play for the next village down.’ Sunak started practising, but did not in the end try out.

Katy Balls

Is the Tory party undemocratic?

10 min listen

Rishi Sunak has now served as prime minister longer than his predecessor Liz Truss, but that doesn't mean that it's all plane sailing. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel has backed a campaign to 'restore democracy' in the Conservative party. Should the government be worried? Also on the podcast, as Rishi prepares to set out his agenda, is there a narrow path to conservative re-election? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Steerpike

Can anyone curb the ever-growing Privy Council?

A right royal row blew up this year over which of the great and the good were eligible to attend the Accession Council to confirm Prince Charles as King. According to the Mail on Sunday, in April Richard Tilbrook – clerk to the body of the Monarch's advisers – 'sparked fury' by revealing that only 200 Privy Counsellors would attend this meeting that ended up happening just five months later. A priority list was drawn up, with only a select group – including current Cabinet Ministers, former Prime Ministers and senior judges, as well as the Archbishops of Canterbury and York – being automatically qualify for an invitation.

James Forsyth

A year is a long time in politics

The year of the three emperors in Prussia changed world history. In 1888, Wilhelm I died and was succeeded by his more liberal son, Friedrich III. However, Friedrich’s reign was cut short by cancer. He died after just 99 days. He was followed by his 29-year-old son Wilhelm II – better known in this country as Kaiser Bill, whose more bellicose approach increased tensions in Europe and led, eventually, to war. If Friedrich had survived, the first world war – and, therefore, the second world war – might never have happened. He was a reformer, an Anglophile (he was married to a British royal) and not motivated by the same militarism that his son was. The year of the three British prime ministers will not have such a dramatic effect on the world.

James Snell

Can the EU recover from the Qatar corruption scandal?

Four people associated with the European parliament have been arrested in what seems to be the beginning of a major corruption scandal. The political career of Eva Kaili, a Greek politician and one of the vice presidents of the European parliament, has already been derailed. She has been suspended from office by the parliament's president, Roberta Metsola – and thrown out from her previous parties and affiliations. Kaili has been arrested and, according to the BBC, has had her assets frozen. It is unclear as yet whether she has been charged with anything; some media outlets say she has, others that she soon will be.

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Russia invades Ukraine, the Queen dies and Britain gets through three prime ministers

January Civilians participate in a Kyiv Territorial Defence unit training session as Russia amasses troops on its border, 29 January 2022 (Getty Images) The first day of the year reached 16.3°C in St James’s Park, London. In France, 874 cars were set alight for the new year. Southern Railway suspended services because of staff absence through Covid. The legal obligation to wear face coverings in England ended. Sue Gray delivered her report into Downing Street parties. Together Energy became the 28th energy supplier to go bust as wholesale gas prices rose. Inflation reached 5.4 per cent. Some 1,339 migrants crossed the Channel in small craft. Around 100,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukraine border.

The Spectator

A Christmas hope for Ukraine – and the world

This year, for the first time, millions of Ukrainians will celebrate Christmas on 25 December. The Orthodox Church had used the Julian calendar and marked the nativity on 7 January – but parishes are moving to a new ecclesiastical hierarchy, dropping ties with Moscow. The invasion has accelerated the forging of a distinct Ukrainian identity: a people united by spending winter without power or running water due to the Russian strategy of firing missiles at power stations and using the cold as a weapon against the general population. Moscow’s aim is to erode morale – and the will to fight. Like much of Vladimir Putin’s strategy, though, this isn’t working. Ukraine has spent months preparing for this winter and the ordeal has, if anything, stiffened public resolve.

Owen Matthews

Voices in the wilderness: Russia’s exiled media

Before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, there was a narrow but clearly defined space for Russia’s opposition media. The fearlessly anti-Kremlin Novaya Gazeta – whose editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year – was not only tolerated but funded by a regime-friendly oligarch at the behest of the deputy head of Putin’s presidential administration Sergei Kiriyenko. Radio station Ekho Moskvy was owned by Gazprom media but regularly aired scathing criticisms of the regime. And the independent Dozhd TV (‘TV Rain’, motto: The Optimistic Channel) continued to broadcast online from increasingly cramped Moscow offices as advertisers and landlords were pressured to pull their support.

Lionel Shriver

Xi, Covid and seasonal schadenfreude

’Tis indeed the season to be jolly. Over the holidays, we can all put our feet up to view a cracking remake of David and Goliath, ‘The Microscopic Nullity vs Winnie-the-Pooh’, in which a giant bear-like bully has been pushing around 1.4 billion people but cannot prevail against an opponent too tiny to be seen by the naked eye. Inverting the customary balance of power, the narrative arc is classically satisfying: a would-be omnipotent despot is driven to crazed distraction by the sneaky afflictions of the infinitesimal. I’m reminded of a favourite newspaper clipping: ‘Drunk tries to kill spider, sets house ablaze.’ Because you cannot lock up a coronavirus. You can’t censor a coronavirus or send a coronavirus to a re-education camp in Xinjiang.

Quentin Letts

How to fail upwards

Steam, which is largely insubstantial, rises. The same goes for soap suds, methane bubbles and numerous politicians. We naively consider 21st-century Britain a meritocracy, yet serial failures still float to the top of our public life. It has been a good year for these latter-day Widmerpools. Two changes of prime minister provided rich openings. One failer-upper made it all the way to 10 Downing Street; another leads HM Opposition. They are not just in parliamentary politics. In the civil service, journalism, art, football, business, the church and elsewhere, duffers drift upwards, grinning inanely while the rest of us gasp: ‘How did that happen?’ Resistance is pointless. We should embrace these lemons as part of the serendipity of life. Failer-uppers give hope to us all.

Mary Wakefield

The greatest threat to Holy Island since the Vikings

It’s hard to explain how sad it will be if, after Christmas, Defra officials ban fishing on Holy Island, also known as Lindisfarne, in the North Sea, where the Lindisfarne gospels were written and where men and women have fished for hundreds if not thousands of years. For some reason no one can quite work out, Holy Island has been placed on the shortlist to become a Highly Protected Marine Area – HPMA – in which no fishing of any sort is allowed. But banning all fishing will destroy the village; Lindisfarne, which has been inhabited since long before its most famous residents, St Aidan and St Cuthbert, set up there, will fade away. There’ll be tourists, but no actual community, no life. Even the Vikings didn’t manage that.

Steerpike

Labour’s troubling Rotherham selection

Earlier this month, the Rother Valley Labour party made its pick for the next election, selecting Dominic Beck as its candidate for the Tory-held seat. Who he, you might ask? Well thanks to the work of GB News' documentary-maker Charlie Peters, we now know. Beck is a local politician who has served on Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (RMBC) since May 2011. In August 2014, Professor Alexis Jay published her report which found that at least 1,400 children were subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. The RMBC cabinet resigned: Beck was appointed in the subsequent reshuffle with responsibility for business growth and regeneration in September 2014.

Steerpike

Jolyon Maugham’s meltdown continues

Christmas is just two weeks away, and with it comes an inauspicious anniversary. It will be three years since the Boxing Day massacre, when the kimono-wearing, baseball-bat wielding KC Jolyon Maugham brutally beat a fox to death, incurring much mockery and the opprobrium of the RSPCA for his boastful tweets about the slaying. Maugham – a self-made man who worships his creator – subsequently apologised but the damage was done to both the opportunistic omnivore and the lawyer's own reputation. Perhaps then that looming milestone is why the Babe Ruth of the bar has been in such a huffy, hysterical mood this weekend.

Kate Andrews

GDP grows – but the UK isn’t out of the woods on recession

Have the prospects of a recession been overstated? That would be the most optimistic reading of this morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics, which released the latest set of monthly GDP data showing 0.5 per cent growth in October. This is the biggest monthly rise since January, when the economy was bouncing back from a voluntary slowdown in activity when the Omicron variant of Covid hit last Christmas. Unfortunately, a breakdown of the data waters down that optimism. October’s 0.5 per cent growth followed a 0.6 per cent contraction in September, half of which the ONS thinks was directly linked to the bank holiday added to the calendar for the late Queen’s funeral.

Sunday

11 December 2022

Kate Andrews

Wes Streeting and the urgent need for NHS reform

The NHS England waiting list stands at 7.2 million – and the shadow health secretary is one of them. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph today, and subsequently on the media round, Wes Streeting is speaking openly about being ‘mucked around’ by the NHS. He has been trying for months now to get a scan to confirm his kidney cancer is gone. But the appointment was pushed back, and then his time was wasted where he showed up for the results and discovered they had not been processed yet. Streeting insists this is about ‘the system’, not the doctors and nurses who work inside of it. He says Labour is pledging more money and resources to the NHS, but only on the condition of better results for patients.