Politics Archives

Sunday

4 December 2022

Sunday shows round-up: Zahawi’s plea to striking unions

Nadhim Zahawi: We may deploy the military to ‘minimise disruption’ over Christmas Conservative party chairman Nadhim Zahawi was in the hot seat this morning. He spoke to Sophy Ridge about strike action over the coming weeks, urging unions not to disrupt people's Christmases. With industrial action not just limited to the railway network, but spreading to the NHS, teachers, the fire service, immigration officials, postal workers and many more, Zahawi stressed that the government was looking at all the options to try and keep the country’s public services operating over a December of discontent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5KiUJigzes Zahawi: ‘I’m very proud’ of the Online Safety bill The Online Safety bill returns to Parliament this week.

Charles Parton

Is Xi losing control of China’s zero Covid protests?

Tony Blair recently described the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s zero-Covid policy as 'completely irrational'. He is completely wrong. Within the context of the CCP’s interests, it makes sense. 'Completely political' would have been nearer the mark, but not a bull’s eye. When Covid first appeared, the CCP got it right. Lockdowns and restrictions meant the China largely escaped deaths and serious illness. Later the mistakes – or rather the inevitabilities of the system – kicked in. China’s home-produced vaccines were insufficiently effective, but the CCP refused to use foreign vaccines, even though they had been licensed for use within China. Partly, this was misplaced nationalistic pride.

Samuel Ramani

The paradox at the heart of Russia’s missile strategy

Russia has launched five waves of missile strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructures since 10 October. These strikes have damaged or destroyed almost half of Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure and made blackouts a way of life across Ukraine and neighboring Moldova. Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has aptly accused Russia of ‘weaponising winter’ against Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia will not ‘calm down’ as long as it has missiles. Russia’s deployment of a warship capable of carrying Kalibr missiles to the Black Sea suggests that the worst may be yet to come for Ukraine’s war-ravaged cities.

Saturday

3 December 2022

Freddy Gray

How Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story

For weeks now, Twitter’s new chief Elon Musk has been promising to reveal what really happened behind the scenes at the social media platform in the run up to the 2020 presidential election. Well, yesterday, Musk did — through the journalist Matt Taibbi. It’s a big story, one that free speech supporters everywhere should take seriously, especially in the United Kingdom where we are on the verge of passing the Online Safety Bill. What happened at Twitter in 2020 shows how easily concern about ‘safety’ can, under political pressure, morph into corruption and censorship.

Dalibor Rohac

The EU and America are sliding into protectionism

Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Washington this week and the upcoming meeting of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council on Monday are important tests of whether the western world can avoid a return of destructive beggar-thy-neighbour policies which already once destroyed the global trading system in the 1930s. The most recent point of contention centres on the American Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions aimed at supporting US manufacturers of electric vehicles, to the exclusion of European ones. While at a joint press conference with his French counterpart, the US President Biden vowed to fix the ‘glitch’ in his signature piece of legislation. But doing so remains a tall order, particularly with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Cindy Yu

Is Rishi Sunak going soft on China?

14 min listen

Katy Balls speaks to Cindy Yu, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson about the Prime Minister’s attitudes towards China and how to deal with the challenges it presents for the UK and the world.

Danny Shaw

Why the Met struggles to sack rogue police officers

This week, the charity CrimeStoppers, which receives anonymous tip offs from the public, launched a new hotline – for people to report corruption and abuse by police officers. It’s part of a drive by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, to ‘expose those who have undermined the Met’s integrity’ following a series of scandals which have shattered confidence in the force and left it in ‘special measures’. Sir Mark says he employs 3,000 officers who can’t do their job properly because of health, performance or misconduct concerns, including 500 who are suspended or on restricted duties. About 100 are allowed to work only in backroom roles.

Mark Galeotti

Putin’s peace talks bluff has been called out

It is almost as if Vladimir Putin doesn’t mean it when he claims to be open to peace talks with Ukraine. Having originally said they have ‘no preconditions’ on peace talks with Ukraine, the Russians are now throwing obstacles in their way, as their bluff is called. As one US official told me, ‘we are not at all backing away from our support for Ukraine, but it is time to start at least thinking about endgames’ After US President Joe Biden, in a joint press conference on Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron, made very vague suggestions of being ‘happy to sit down with Putin to see what he wants, has in mind,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov struck an uncompromising note in return: ‘what did President Biden say in fact?

Friday

2 December 2022

Steerpike

Schools minister’s unfortunate mix-up

Tory politicians are dropping like flies at the moment – with former cabinet minister Sajid Javid the latest in a growing line of MPs to announce that he won’t be standing for office at the next general election. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Tory ministers are currently looking for silver linings wherever they can find them. Mr S wonders if that’s why schools minister Nick Gibb was so happy to see Labour Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves at the National Teaching Awards last Saturday. According to Mr S’s mole at the event, Gibb wandered over to Reeves, who was chatting with a group of head teachers, and began to boast about all the great work the Conservatives had done for the school she went to growing up in Bromley.

Andrew Tettenborn

The EU’s bid to control Hungary may backfire

To anyone looking in from the outside, the ongoing argument between Budapest and Brussels over EU subsidies, which flared up again this week, looks both drearily legalistic and eye-glazingly boring. However, as often happens with the EU and its member states in eastern Europe, there is a good deal more to all this than meets the eye. At issue is a tad over €13 billion: €7.5 billion in ‘cohesion funds’ (i.e. regular subsidies to help out poorer states) and €5.8 billion in Covid recovery funds. Both would normally have gone to Hungary without serious question. However, these are not normal times.

Kate Andrews

Sunak and Hunt’s energy windfall tax is put to the test

And so it begins. French energy company TotalEnergies SE has become the first out of the gate to announce a change of plans for investment directly linked to the energy profits levy brought in by Rishi Sunak this spring, and expanded by Jeremy Hunt. The company says it will cut back its investment plan by 25 per cent next year, which will see roughly £100 million directed elsewhere. While this is one of the first companies to officially announce investment changes in the North Sea due to the windfall tax, it may not be the last. Shell is making similar noises; the company, so far, has used a loophole which was intentionally worked into the system to allow it to avoid most of the windfall tax by reinvesting its profits instead.

Katy Balls

Sajid Javid to stand down at next election

Sajid Javid has become the latest Conservative MP to signal that they will be standing down at the next election. Announcing the news in a letter to his party chairman posted on social media, the former chancellor said the current boundary review deadline – which has seen MPs asked to signal by 5 December whether they want to stand again – had 'accelerated' his decision, which he'd come to 'after much reflection'. Javid says it is a decision he has 'wrestled with for some time'. But the timing of it – with 11 other Tory MPs set to step down at the next election – means that it will inevitably be seen as part of a bigger narrative of Tory decay as the party trails behind Labour in the polls.

Katy Balls

Are the Tories in terminal decline?

14 min listen

Sajid Javid has announced that he won't be standing for re-election, while also today, the Chester by-election saw the Conservative party suffered the worst loss in seat since 1832. Is the party in terminal decline? Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Patrick O’Flynn

Why do so many people now hate the Tories?

When Labour lost Hartlepool to the Tories in a parliamentary by-election 18 months ago, Keir Starmer was reported to have asked aides: 'Why does everybody hate us?' After the heavy Tory defeat in last night’s City of Chester by-election, Rishi Sunak would do well to pose the same question to his own lieutenants. Because the result confirms him as the second Conservative prime minister in a row not to receive any kind of electoral honeymoon. That Labour held Chester will in itself raise few eyebrows. After all, opposition parties are supposed to find defending their own seats at by-elections pretty straightforward.

Katy Balls

The Kezia Dugdale Edition

Kezia Dugdale was the leader of the Scottish Labour party from 2015 to 2017, taking on the job at a tough time following a near-wipeout defeat at Westminster. She served as an MSP for the Lothian region until 2019, and now runs the John Smith Centre for Public Service at the University of Glasgow. On the podcast, Kezia talks about her rapid rise through the ranks, the impact of the independence referendum on Scottish Labour; her own stint on 'I'm a Celebrity...'; whether she is ‘SNP curious’ and what can be done to stop young people leaving politics.

Nick Tyrone

The Chester by-election marks the end of Sunak’s honeymoon

The biggest question in British politics at the moment is whether the massive poll leads Labour has over the Conservative party will hold. With Labour polling as high as 51 per cent and the Tories as low as 21 per cent in the past month, the next election could see a 1997 style result – or even worse, from a Conservative perspective. The prospect of existential oblivion can’t be totally discounted. That’s what makes yesterday’s City of Chester by-election so interesting. It was Sunak’s first electoral contest as prime minister. A chance to see if he could beat the bad news expressed in every national survey of voting intent. A moment for him to show that things aren’t as bad for the Conservatives as they seem.

Katy Balls

Labour wins Chester by-election with increased majority

Keir Starmer has reason for cheer this morning after his party comfortably held the City of Chester following yesterday’s by-election. Labour candidate Samantha Dixon increased the majority her predecessor Christian Matheson won in the 2019 general election from 6,164 to 10,974. Labour had a swing of just over 13 per cent from the Conservatives – securing 61 per cent of the vote. Following the result, the new Labour MP was quick to pitch the result as damning for the Tories: 'Tonight the people of Chester have sent a clear message. They have said Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives no longer have a mandate to govern'. Dixon said she was confident that in a general election 'Labour will win as decisively as I have done today'.

Thursday

1 December 2022

William Moore

The new vandals

31 min listen

This week: In his cover piece Douglas Murray writes that museums are turning against their own collections. He is joined by the historian Robert Tombs to discuss whether a culture of self-flagellation is harming British museums (00:56). Also this week: For the magazine The Spectator’s assistant editor Cindy Yu writes that the tune is changing in China. She is joined by Professor Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London to consider what the recent protests could mean for the Chinese Communist Party (13:24). And finally: Nicholas Lezard writes in The Spectator about how to beat London's expanding Ultra Low Emissions Zone. He is joined by journalist Tanya Gold to investigate an elegant loophole in the plans (24:56).

Michael Simmons

Ian Blackford resigns as SNP Westminster leader

Ian Blackford has resigned after five years as Westminster leader of the SNP. In a statement he said the time was right for ‘fresh leadership’ and that he will not be standing for reelection at the group’s AGM next week. The announcement comes just a fortnight after the Ross, Skye and Lochaber MP survived an attempted coup. He is continuing as an MP. Just weeks ago Blackford survived a challenge from the Aberdeen South MP, Stephen Flynn, who attempted to overthrow him. SNP backbenchers had grown unhappy with Blackford’s leadership after several scandals during his tenure. Flynn had been on manoeuvres against Blackford for months.

Matthew Lynn

When will Covid fraud catch up with Rishi Sunak?

Remember Rishi-mania? It came around the time of the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme, which was designed to help the restaurant trade recover from the Covid lockdowns. As chancellor, Sunak won over stomachs – and hearts – with his generous financial scheme to help everybody through the crisis. Cometh the hour, cometh the Treasury. But it is now quite clear that hundreds of millions, even billions, of pounds were stolen from the taxpayer through these schemes. And for all his supposed competence as a technocratic administrator, in reality, Sunak presided over fraud on an unprecedented scale. It may be just a matter of time before this massive scandal catches up with him.