Politics Archives

Tuesday

6 December 2022

Baroness bra quits the Lords (for now)

Farewell and thanks for the mammaries, Michelle Mone. The lingerie tycoon has today announced that she will be seeking a leave of absence from the House of Lords with immediate effect. It means she will not attend sittings of the House, vote on any proceedings nor be able to claim any allowance. At 51, she ought to have years of such joys ahead of her – but fate, and the Guardian newspaper, intervened. According to a spokesman: With immediate effect, Baroness Mone will be taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her.

Iain Macwhirter

Gordon Brown doesn’t understand what Scottish voters want

Only Gordon Brown could come up with a 40-point plan for constitutional renewal. ‘Less is more’ is not a principle with which the former Prime Minister is familiar. When his UK constitutional commission was launched in 2020 we were promised a ‘radical alternative to nationalism’ and a ‘constitutional revolution’ to remake Britain along federal lines. What has emerged looks like fiddly, modish reforms with lots of hubs and clusters and the inevitable citizen's juries. Plus, of course, more devolution to Scotland and a reformed upper house that Conservatives will no doubt portray as a new battering ram for the SNP. Has Brown’s review landed well? Sir Keir Starmer has certainly endorsed his proposed abolition of the House of the Lords.

Charles Lipson

Did US officials suppress political speech on Twitter?

The ‘Twitter files’ Elon Musk released to two journalists have produced a cloud of confusion. So far, we have not seen the files themselves, only what one journalist, Matt Taibbi, has reported about them. The main findings reinforce what we have known all along: Twitter’s former management strongly favoured Democrats and used its powerful platform to aid them. It was far more likely to suppress the speech of conservatives and Republicans than of progressives and Democrats. Twitter’s systematic bias went far beyond its most famous instance, when it killed the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Freddy Gray makes these important points in his recent piece here at The Spectator.

Gavin Mortimer

Unlike Britain, France is far from finished with Covid

Twelve months ago Britain rebelled against Covid hysteria. As Boris Johnson and his Sage modelling committee prepared to lockdown the country for Christmas, they lost control of the narrative. First 100 Tory backbenchers MPs voted against the PM’s vaccine passport scheme, and a few days later Lord Frost resigned as Brexit Minister. In his resignation letter he expressed his concern about the government’s handling of the pandemic. Urging Johnson to ‘learn to live with Covid’, Frost warned against giving into the sect of the worst-case scenario. ‘I hope we can get back on track soon and not be tempted by the kind of coercive measures we have seen elsewhere.

Gareth Roberts

King Charles should ignore Ngozi Fulani

If a visitor to my house suggested they had been abused and verbally attacked when they came to tea, I probably wouldn’t be in a particular hurry to invite them round again for nibbles. If that person had subsequently caused a very public stink and embarrassed and humiliated a valued family friend of extremely long standing, I would most definitely give them up as a bad idea. I certainly wouldn’t invite them for ‘talks’. But this is pretty much the approach taken by the King and Queen Consort to Ngozi Fulani, the domestic abuse campaigner who says she was asked repeatedly where she was 'really' from when she visited Buckingham Palace last week.

Monday

5 December 2022

John Ferry

The SNP’s colonialism myth

There have been strange goings on in Scotland. A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court clarified that the Scottish parliament does not have the power to unilaterally call a second independence referendum. The ruling was never going to have gone down well with the SNP, but has the Supreme Court’s slap down sent the nationalist movement doolally? Take the strange case of Michael Russell’s comparison of the current UK government to the British Raj in the days of the Empire. On Sunday, the president of the SNP and former Scottish government minister defended an article he had written in the pro-independence newspaper The National which appeared to draw this parallel. Is such a comparison appropriate, mused the host of BBC Radio Scotland’s The Sunday Show, in an interview with Russell.

Steerpike

Watch: Harry and Meghan’s latest cringe-fest

Quick, nurse, pass the sick bag! The wokest couple in all the West is at it again. Harry and Meghan have today released another trailer ahead of their Netflix series, before its release on Thursday. The streaming giant is keen to recuperate the many millions it spent on hiring the dilettante duo back in the heady days of the pandemic, with the Sussexes now required to sing for their proverbial supper in the upcoming tell-all documentary. The trailer for this 'global event' bears all the hallmarks of Harry and Meghan's 'brand': slick shots, moody music, tear-stained cheeks and Hollywood jargon more hackneyed than a Hallmark movie. In one glorious snippet, Harry – that embodiment of English aristocracy – bemoans how 'there's a hierarchy of the family'. In the royals? Who knew!

Katy Balls

Why is Labour so keen to reform the House of Lords?

12 min listen

Today former prime minister Gordon Brown has released a review which includes recommendations to overhaul the constitution and replace the House of Lords. Could Labour push through reform? Also on the podcast, after Kier Starmer said that he doesn't see Jeremy Corbyn standing at the next election, has Starmer finally silenced the far left faction in his party? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

James Forsyth

Three reasons Labour wants to talk about Lords reform

There are reasons why Labour wants to talk about constitutional reform despite all the other challenges facing the country. First, there is no financial cost to it. At the moment, Labour is severely hemmed in by the fact that it doesn’t want to make new spending commitments as it knows the Tories will immediately ask how they will be paid for. Political reform is one area where Labour can be radical without it costing anything. Second, it punches a Tory bruise. As Gordon Brown said this morning, Labour knows that Boris Johnson’s resignation honours will push the issue back up the agenda and make the current arrangements hard to defend.

Patrick O’Flynn

Will Braverman turn on Sunak over the Channel crisis?

Finally the Tory government appears to have realised that its serial mishandling of the Channel boats issue is the top cause of the voter disaffection that is killing its re-election prospects. Rishi Sunak’s administration now understands that the position he has set out so far – saying there is no 'silver bullet' to solve the dinghy problem, and that progress will require careful and patient work across many fronts – will not suffice, if well-briefed pieces in the weekend newspapers are anything to go on .

Steerpike

Starmer surge leaves Burnham eclipsed

Poor Andy Burnham. This time last year the Mayor of Manchester was riding high in the Labour leadership stakes, having cruised to re-election with a whopping 67 per cent of the vote, as Sir Keir Starmer struggled to cut through in Westminster. Now the fortunes are reversed: Starmer is 20 points ahead in the polls, while Burnham – the onetime 'king of the north' – would be forgiven for looking enviously on at his rival's kingdom down south. Having clashed with Sir Keir in recent months on picketing and voting reform, there are perhaps some indicators that Burnham is feeling slightly bruised from being out of the action in SW1.

Katy Balls

Does Starmer have the stomach to scrap the House of Lords?

It’s Labour’s turn to take centre stage today as Keir Starmer attempts to seize the agenda with the launch of his party’s constitutional review. The report – A New Britain – is written by Gordon Brown and has been over two years in the making, with the former prime minister set to present it alongside the Labour leader in Leeds later this morning. Given the party currently enjoys a 20-point lead over the Tories, it’s safe to say the plans will receive plenty of attention and scrutiny. The general thrust of the 155-page report is devolving power, with Labour aides keen to pitch it as what would amount to the biggest transfer of power outside of Westminster to date.

Jack Smith

Will the EU’s oil price cap hurt Russia?

The EU's import embargo of Russian oil – which comes into force today – plus a price cap on non-EU seaborne exports is intended to hit Russia without damaging the West. It sounds too good to be true, and it probably is. First, there’s the price cap level itself. Originally, the EU had wanted to push for a more comprehensive ban on maritime shipping insurers providing any coverage to vessels carrying Russian oil. But this frightened the US, so what we’re left with is the cap. The final figure, which the EU agreed on at the end of last week, is $60 (£49) per barrel.

Steerpike

Keir Starmer rules out a return for Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn has been an MP for 40 years, but Keir Starmer has confirmed Corbyn's time in the Labour party has come to an end. Starmer was asked three times on the Today programme whether Corbyn – who was kicked out in 2020 over his response to the equalities watchdog’s report into antisemitism in the party – would stand as a Labour candidate in Islington North at the next election. Three times, Starmer said his predecessor as Labour leader would not be coming back: 'I don't see the circumstance in which that can happen. I don't see the circumstance in which Jeremy Corbyn will stand as a Labour candidate.

David Loyn

Afghanistan’s guerrilla generation: an interview with Ahmad Massoud

Fighting has continued against the Taliban in Afghanistan while the world has not been watching. The commander of the main opposition force, Ahmad Massoud, began with 643 fighters after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, and now claims to have a force of 5,000 across six provinces in a belt in the northeast of the country. In a rare meeting in Tajikistan, where he commands remotely from across the northern border of Afghanistan, the 34-year-old resistance leader told me that western countries are making a mistake by trying to engage with the Taliban. Massoud inherited the mantle of resistance leader from his father, the legendary guerrilla commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed in an al Qaeda terrorist attack two days before 9/11.

Sam Leith

The shabby dishonesty of Matt Hancock’s ‘diaries’

‘Standing in my kitchen in Suffolk after a quiet New Year's Eve, I scanned my newspaper for clues as to what might be lurking around the corner.’ So run the opening words of yesterday’s first extract of Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against Covid. 1 January. New Year’s Day. And our hero – modest, unassuming, but eternally vigilant, eyes always scanning the horizon – is on duty, even when most of us are nursing a foggy head. Of course, we know now what this man of destiny didn’t know then: that the ‘news-in-brief story about a mystery pneumonia outbreak in China’ that catches his eye is the harbinger of the vast global story that is to change all of our lives.

Sunday

4 December 2022

Steerpike

Eddie Izzard loses (again)

Oh dear. It seems that the curse of Izzard has struck again. The stand-up comedian and staunch Labour member has something of an unenviable track record when it comes to personal endorsements, having backed the euro, Ken Livingstone in 2008, Gordon Brown in 2010, 'Yes2AV' in 2011, Ed Miliband and then Andy Burnham in 2015, before subsequently advocating Remain in 2016 and then suffering personal defeat in that year's Labour NEC elections. Undaunted by this litany of failure, Izzard opted in October to stand as the party's candidate for the safe seat of Sheffield Central. Much hand-wringing followed, with Sir Keir Starmer refusing to say if Izzard, who identifies as genderfluid, would be eligible for an all-women shortlist.

Steerpike

New Labour’s children make hay in exile

Life is good in the Labour party right now – which is perhaps why it's no surprise that a few old faces could be making a comeback. In the late nineties and early noughties, a crop of talented young New Labour advisors were dubbed 'the golden generation'. Much like their footballing equivalents in the England team of that period, they flattered to deceive, with many leaving politics in the arid years after the 2010 election. Some lost their seats; others declined to waste their prime years in opposition under the plodding leadership of Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn. Now though, with the Starmer army 20 points ahead in the polls, one or two New Labour golden boys are looking to rejoin the fray.

Lucy Dunn

Letting pharmacists prescribe would ease the strain on the NHS

The NHS is facing its own winter of discontent: A&E waiting times are surging, GP availability is plunging and a strike is brewing. The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), says Britain is facing a 'de facto general strike': from nurses to ambulance drivers to doctors – even in emergency departments and cancer centres – as they ask for pay rises. Today the Sunday Telegraph reports that (privately-run) pharmacies may be called in to help and given power to prescribe for simple conditions to help ease pressures in A&E departments. I argue in the current edition of The Spectator how they could easily help plug plug the gap that exists between GPs and A&Es by prescribing for minor ailments.

David Abulafia

Why the Rosetta Stone shouldn’t be returned to Egypt

The Rosetta Stone is said to be the most visited object in the British Museum. By and large the most popular, most beautiful or most impressive objects are found at the top of the shopping list of those who want to send objects back to their place of origin. Yet here is a piece of debris that, if installed in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, would look as out of place as a dirty pair of trainers in the Athenaeum. This, after all is (or rather will be, after endless delays in its opening) the final resting place of Tutankhamun, a museum rich in gold and lapis lazuli lying in the shadow of the Great Sphinx and the three massive pyramids built by a much earlier dynasty of Pharaohs.