Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

James Snell

Why Germany’s far-right coup was doomed from the start

Twenty-five people have been arrested by German authorities on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. A failed coup attempt – and a series of raids involving 3,000 officers – seems like the sort of story that might happen in a far-flung part of the world, not the largest economy in Europe. But early reporting indicates there was something fairly typical about this coup attempt: it involved a group of delusional far-rightists and ex-military officers. The false idea that if these men simply waltzed into parliament and placed politicians under arrest, the state would fold and they would get to run the place, seems to have been a factor in their attempt. A similar attitude was held by those who plotted to stage a coup in Portugal in 1975, and Spain in 1981.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Christmas rail strikes, Lady Hussey’s resignation and Indonesia’s sex ban

Home The RMT union decided to add a couple of rail strikes just before and after Christmas to those planned. Nurses, ambulance workers, driving test examiners, baggage handlers at Heathrow and bus drivers joined in. Postmen hoped to fit in another six strikes before the end of the month; Currys stopped using Royal Mail parcel delivery. ‘This is a time to come together and to send a very clear message to Mr Putin that we’re not going to be divided in this way,’ said Nadhim Zahawi, chairman of the Conservative party. ‘Our message to the unions is to say this is not a time to strike.’ Conor Burns had the Tory whip restored after being cleared of misconduct.

Steerpike

Matt Hancock to quit the Commons

It is a dark day for comedy indeed. After a dozen years of trying (and failing) to become PM, Matt Hancock has today announced he is quitting parliament and will stand down at the next election, just 24 hours after launching his 'pandemic diaries'. Only nine days ago, his spokesman was furiously insisting to reporters that Hancock had 'no intention of standing down or stepping away from politics.' But now the lothario legislator suggests that his recent experiences on I'm a Celebrity have changed his views on politics, musing in his farewell letter to Rishi Sunak that 'there was a time when I thought the only way to influence the public debate was in parliament' but that now 'I've realised there's far more it than that.' As a minor media celebrity perhaps?

Isabel Hardman

Sunak and Starmer tussle over who is weaker at PMQs

Rishi Sunak will have suspected that Keir Starmer was going to bring up housebuilding at Prime Minister’s Questions today, and so he came prepared. The Labour leader has been using the Tory revolts on the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill to build his case that the Prime Minister is weak, and today he did indeed open on the latest U-turns on housing. He said Sunak had broken the manifesto promise to build 300,000 homes without consulting voters about it, asking: ‘What changed?’Sunak was indeed well prepared.

Philip Patrick

Let’s kick penalties out of football

Spain crashed out of the World Cup on penalties last night, despite dominating possession against Morocco for two solid hours. Pretty much everyone bar Spaniards will be delighted by this giant-killing by Morocco, who are just the fourth African team to reach the quarter-finals in football history. But their penalty success is nothing to celebrate. Much as it would be great to see less-fancied nations do well at the World Cup, it would be better if this was achieved by scoring more goals, rather than parking the bus and running down the clock.  Spain were the better team last night. While it’s fun for footballing giants to lose now and again, penalty shoot-outs are not good for the game.

Isabel Oakeshott

The truth about Matt Hancock

Matt Hancock and I have almost nothing in common. For starters I’m terrified of spiders and hopelessly squeamish. I physically retched as I watched him eating unmentionables in the Australian jungle. Far more importantly, we fundamentally disagree over his handling of the pandemic. The passage of time has not left me any less angry about lockdowns. My blood still boils when I think of the unnecessary suffering: the broken homes and broken businesses; the lost last moments with loved ones; the missed cancers and operations; a generation of children scarred forever.

Katy Balls

Rachel Reeves: ‘Attack is the best form of defence’

‘Attack is the best form of defence,’ declares Rachel Reeves, sitting in a block purple dress in her office in parliament. The shadow chancellor is discussing what lessons for politics she learnt from chess. She was the British girls’ champion at the age of 14. ‘Thinking ahead. Trying to think what your opponent might do – and how you would respond to that. I was a very aggressive chess player: attack, attack, attack. All the time!’ She has kept such tactics since she entered politics, having previously been an economist at the Bank of England.

Douglas Murray

Britain doesn’t need reinventing

What is the most hubristic line ever written? Against some very stiff competition I would say it is that famous line of Thomas Paine, from the February 1776 appendix to his pamphlet Common Sense: ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ One of the problems of the line is that even just typing it or reading it brings goose bumps. Not just because it is perfectly phrased, but because it appeals to such a basic emotion. It is an emotion similar to the one which always makes me well up at the end of Peter Grimes: ‘Turn the skies back, and begin again.’ It’s moving, in that case, because it is impossible.

Lionel Shriver

What Trump really wants

Over the years, I’ve received my share of green-ink author’s mail. You know, from folks who’ve discovered an exciting variety of textual special effects: lurid colours, freaky fonts, creative insertions of upper case, frenzies of inverted commas around standard vocabulary and lashings of exclamation marks. Calling these letters ‘fan mail’ would be a stretch. They are universally hostile, and their authors are crazy. Rule of thumb: DO NOT ‘respond’! Trump wants to run, but he wants to lose – and throwing the contest should prove a cinch But how do you ignore green-ink communiqués sent to the world at large from a former president of the United States?

James Heale

Inside Team Truss’s tussle for titles

In the final hours of the Liz Truss regime, a key question was obsessing advisers: who would get a seat in the House of Lords? Her inner circle was divided as to whether, after just 49 days in office, such privileges were even appropriate. As a few aides tried to convince Truss that honours would be a mistake, her chief of staff, Mark Fullbrook, was adamant a select few would become the lords and ladies of tomorrow. A prime minister determined to appoint a peer will almost always get his man As a former prime minister, Truss has the right to put forward a list of ‘resignation honours’. The jury is still out as to whether she will choose to do so.

Freddy Gray

The Twitter Files just got a lot more interesting

As I wrote earlier, last week Matt Taibbi, the journalist chosen by Elon Musk to reveal what really happened behind-the-app during the 2020 presidential election, published the first instalment of the ‘Twitter Files’. He did it as a long Twitter ‘thread’ which showed various panicky corporate communications about the ethics of suppressing intriguing political information. This was important stuff but it wasn’t exactly explosive. We all knew that Big Tech censored information in order to help Joe Biden. Lots of Democrat-friendly journalists were therefore quick to pour cold water on the news. Nothing to see here, folks, move on.

Nigel Jones

The Tories need to get tough on the strikes

This Christmas, Britain is facing what is not far short of a general strike. Rail workers, ambulance drivers, nurses, postal workers, and firefighters have already announced a strike wave or are balloting their members for authorisation to do so. Rail traffic across the country will be paralysed. Families will be unable to easily get together for the festive season. Christmas gifts will go undelivered. In hospitals, an already overstretched NHS looks in danger of breaking down altogether. Seriously ill patients – already facing delays in getting to hospital – may now die before they can do so. Even if they do manage to get to a hospital, will there be enough nurses on hand to care for them?

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley

Nicola Sturgeon’s Stephen Flynn-sized headache

Nicola Sturgeon did not want Stephen Flynn to be the new leader of the SNP at Westminster. His victory represents not only a generational shift – Flynn is 34 and his deputy Mhairi Black is 28 – but a sharp left turn in political sensibilities. Where outgoing Commons leader Ian Blackford was cautious and loyal to Sturgeon, the Flynn-Black team is expected to be more independent-minded.  Their instincts are closer to those of the SNP grassroots: they are impatient with the pace of progress towards another referendum. The Supreme Court ruling on where the power to call a referendum lies has only thrown such frustrations into relief. The SNP will have to find a new way forward and a fresher, younger face was thought better suited to that task.

Isabel Hardman

This wind U-turn proves Sunak is a risk management PM

Another day, another U-turn: this time on onshore wind. To the surprise of no-one, the government has given in to rebel Tory backbenchers, including two former prime ministers, who had been pushing for the end to the moratorium on new onshore wind farms. The amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill from former Levelling Up secretary Simon Clarke would instead allow new windmills in areas where there was genuine local support. Tonight, the Levelling Up ministry announced a ‘technical consultation’ which will ‘explore how local authorities demonstrate local support and respond to views of their communities when considering onshore wind development in England’.

Winston Marshall

Graham Linehan: how the Father Ted musical got cancelled

38 min listen

Winston speaks with Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted, The IT Crowd and Black Books. Graham took a stand as a women’s rights activist which led to Father Ted: The Musical being cancelled. He was also suspended from Twitter for writing “men aren’t women tho”. Winston asks why he took a stand, and how his comedy career unravelled.

Lucy Dunn

Is lockdown to blame for the Strep A spike?

As of today, nine children have died in the UK after falling ill with Strep A. Now, more children under ten have lost their lives from severe infection caused by invasive Strep A (sometimes abbreviated to iGAS) than did from Covid in the first three months of the pandemic in 2020. In most cases, Group A Streptococcus, a bacterial infection common in school-age children, is mild. From ‘strep throat’ that can cause tonsillitis, to skin infections and scarlet fever, it can present in many forms. Spread by respiratory droplets (propelled outwards when you sneeze, cough or kiss), most cases result in mild symptoms and recovery after a short course of antibiotics.

Katy Balls

Can Sunak grip the Tory coalition?

8 min listen

The government has backed down in the face of the planning rebellion, watering down their targets for housebuilding. At the same time, another revolt is brewing over permissions to build onshore wind. Is Rishi Sunak facing a more unruly Tory coalition than his predecessors, and does he have a grip on the party? Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Stephen Daisley

Gordon Brown is deluding himself about the SNP

Gordon Brown needs a hobby. Golf, perhaps, or jazzercise. Anything but meddling in the constitution. He means well but his answer is always the same: make things worse but in a way that sounds really clever to Westminster types. To a hammer everything is a nail and to Gordon Brown there isn’t a problem in all Creation that doesn’t call for a commission, a committee or a convention.  His own commission into ‘the UK’s future’ has now reported and all I can say is the future ain’t what it used to be. A New Britain is a backwards-looking prospectus, its new constitutional settlement largely doubling down on the old settlement. That old settlement has been a stunning failure but can’t be acknowledged as such because Brown was partly responsible for it.

Steven Fielding

Starmer is more brutal than he is boring

On the day he unveiled Gordon Brown’s 153-page report into renewing Britain’s democracy Keir Starmer showed his steely side and helped us better understand the evolving character of ‘Starmerism’. Up till now, when asked what they think about the Labour leader, many voters, after scratching their heads, have said something like: ‘boring’, ‘dull’ and ‘bland’. These are tags that have plagued Starmer ever since his election as leader. Indeed, over the summer Starmer even had to order his own Shadow Cabinet to stop briefing journalists about how boring he is.

Ross Clark

Striking railway workers can’t avoid reality for ever

Rail strikes on a couple of days when no trains would be running anyway might not seem the biggest inconvenience facing the British public at the moment, yet the announcement of yet another walkout from the evening of 24 December to the morning of 27 December will have implications for many services: this is the window when a lot of track maintenance is scheduled. That now promises to spill over into the New Year to an even greater extent than in normal years.    By calling a Christmas strike – something he previously said he wouldn’t do – RMT leader Mick Lynch is not looking like a man who is close to doing a deal with his employers; rather someone who is knuckling down for the long-haul.