Politics Archives

Sunday

9 October 2022

The budget black comedy that foreshadowed the rise of Putin

‘The truth is with us,’ said Vladimir Putin in a speech after the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson ‘voted to rejoin’ Russia on 30 September. ‘And the power is in truth, and that means we will be victorious.’ Putin’s harping on ‘truth’ – even as he annexed four regions of Ukraine following referenda almost universally believed to be shams – has strong roots in Russian culture. Historically it has never been hard to sell the Russian people notions of their own rectitude, even at their darkest moments. The Russians, this world view assumes, are a uniquely spiritual people and incapable of actual malice – whatever they do – towards their neighbour countries.

Ian Williams

Is Liz Truss going soft on China?

In her speech to the Conservative party conference, Liz Truss rightly pointed out that we did not stand up to Russia early enough. ‘We became too dependent on authoritarian regimes for cheap goods and energy,’ she said. We can safely assume that those ‘other’ regimes include China, though curiously given how prominently the China threat figured in her leadership campaign, her speech contained no direct reference to Beijing. To be fair, Truss had a lot on her mind, and it is early days in her administration. But there are a number of reasons to believe she is wobbling on her commitment to a more robust and coherent China policy. It's time to ask whether her tough talk will soon be swept aside by the crisis facing her and the economy.

Saturday

8 October 2022

Ross Clark

Why the economy can’t get real

Markets, we are told, are rebelling against the government’s irresponsible fiscal policy, not least the now-abandoned plan to abolish the 45p tax rate. If that is what they are doing, it marks a sharp change in their behaviour. For most of the past decade they have whooped with delight whenever a fantastically expensive stimulus package has been announced and gone into a sulk whenever there have been rumours that the punch bowl is about to be withdrawn. In this Alice in Wonderland world, good news became bad and bad news became good. Why? Because bad news means greater likelihood of a stimulus package; good news means stimulus is likely to be withdrawn.

Lisa Haseldine & Svitlana Morenets

The Kerch bridge attack is devastating for Putin

It’s hard to overstate the impact of the bombing of the Kerch bridge. Opened four years ago to great fanfare, the 12-mile long bridge came to embody Vladimir Putin's claim on conquered Crimea. It symbolised his ability to protect and supply the area and reunify the ‘Russian world’ (Russkiy mir). At about 6am local time, just after Putin celebrated his 70th birthday, CCTV footage shows a huge explosion ripping through both the rail and road bridge. Parts of the road bridge have collapsed into the sea, destroying two of its four lanes. It has since reopened to some passenger traffic and plans to reopen to trains, but not to trucks - which suggests its substructure has been damaged too much to allow military use.

Max Jeffery

How will this end?

17 min listen

Max Jeffery, Katy Balls and James Forsyth discuss Liz Truss's premiership and walk through the various options being cooked up to replace her.

Kate Andrews

Kate Andrews, Anthony Whitehead and Michael Simmons

16 min listen

This week: Kate Andrews laments how Truss is hurting the free-market cause (00:51), Anthony Whitehead explains the 'arrogance' of the latest environmental activist movement the Tyre Extinguishers (06:42) and Michael Simmons reads his notes on barcodes (12:54).Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

John Keiger

Is Macron trying to lasso London?

Some supporters of the EU might struggle with the concept, but Europe is about much more than just what unfolds in Brussels. The EU’s 27 states may be a large part of Europe, but the two are not coterminous. Nor, more importantly, do they all have the same interests. The newly created European Political Community (EPC) had its first meeting in Prague over the last couple of days. Including those states on the fringes of Europe, as the EPC does, the number in attendance was 44 (with Belarus and Russia excluded). Beyond the EU 27 there is Turkey, the UK, Ukraine, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, six Western Balkans nations, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Patrick O’Flynn

A Boris Johnson comeback is ridiculous – but not impossible

It would obviously be ridiculous for the Conservatives to dump Liz Truss after just a few weeks and seek to re-install Boris Johnson as prime minister. To do such a thing would be akin to what the producers of the 1980s TV series Dallas did after realising they had made a horrendous mistake by killing off Bobby Ewing: writing a script for the next series in which the assassination was depicted as a dream had by his wife Pam. The Tories would be asking the British electorate, in effect, to observe Boris walking out of the shower, into his luxuriantly wallpapered boudoir and telling a dumbstruck Carrie: 'I’ve got to go and talk to Rishi about the economy. I say, are you OK? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.

Norman Davies

War of words: a history of Ukraine’s language debate

It’s not often that ex-KGB officers blame Lenin for anything. But in his speech of 21 February 2022, on the eve of his 'special military operation', Vladimir Putin rounded on the founder of Bolshevism for creating the artificial Ukrainian state. 'Modern Ukraine was entirely created by…Bolshevik, Communist Russia,' he declared; 'and…in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia…Soviet Ukraine can rightfully be called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine’. He was its creator and architect.' This false line of thought could equally accuse the Bolsheviks of having created the Ukrainian language. In reality, the concept of a separate Ukrainian nation and language long preceded the Bolsheviks.

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The Woman King’s flawed history lesson

As a general rule, it’s worth remembering that Hollywood is in the business of mythologising, rather than retelling history. The Woman King, which was released in cinemas this week, represents the latest effort at constructing a past more in tune with 21st century progressive political narratives. In the film, King Gezo of Dahomey and his loyal Amazons – an elite band of women warriors – struggle to free his kingdom and his people from the evils of the slave trade, the dominance of the Oyo empire, and the creeping tendrils of European colonisation. It’s a stirring tale of African resistance and female empowerment. It’s also deeply flawed. King Gezo, Dahomey, and the Amazons really existed, and did fight a war with the Oyo.

Friday

7 October 2022

Freddy Gray

Will Biden’s pot pardons pay off?

20 min listen

This week Freddy speaks to Madeleine Kearns, staff writer at the National Review, about President Joe Biden's decree that cannabis possession should no longer be a federal crime. Is this a vote winner or will the decision end in disaster?

Svitlana Morenets

What Elon Musk doesn’t get about peace

The power one person can hold should never be underestimated. They can take people’s lives, as Vladimir Putin does, or save them as Elon Musk did in Ukraine. Two days after Putin’s invasion, Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, tagged Musk on Twitter and asked him to help Kyiv with Starlink. The communication centres were one of the first targets for Russian missiles. ‘While you try to colonise Mars, Russia tries to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space, Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people!’ tweeted Fedorov. The answer was immediate. Musk tweeted: ‘Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.’ It was stunning – and transformative.

Isabel Hardman

Conor Burns sacked from government

In the past few minutes, Conor Burns has been told to leave the government after a complaint of 'serious misconduct' was made against him. Downing Street has released a statement saying: Following a complaint of serious misconduct, the Prime Minister has asked Conor Burns MP to leave the government with immediate effect. The Prime Minister took direct action on being informed of this allegation and is clear that all ministers should maintain the high standards of behaviour – as the public rightly expects. No. 10’s press release is keen to stress that the Prime Minister took immediate action Burns was moved sideways by Liz Truss in the recent reshuffle, from Northern Ireland to the same Minister of State position in the International Trade department.

Matthew Lynn

Opec will regret taking on the US

Production will be cut. Supplies to the rest of the world will be curbed. And inflation will rise just a little bit higher. No one ever expected the oil-cartel Opec(+), led by Saudi Arabia, to be friendly to the West, or to help out when it was needed. Even so, its decision this week to effectively side with Russia, and to make the energy crisis even worse, may quickly backfire. In reality, Opec was already in long-term decline. Picking a fight with the US will just make that worse. It was certainly the kind of news the energy markets didn’t need.

James Forsyth

Will the OBR torpedo Truss and Kwarteng’s growth plan?

It is easy to forget that tax cuts were meant to be the easy part of the Truss agenda. Far more difficult will be the supply side reforms and the spending restraint necessary to put the public finances on a better path. At the government’s medium term fiscal event, currently scheduled for November 23rd but which may be brought forward, Kwasi Kwarteng will have to say how he will sort the public finances. In the Times today, I look at his options. Those close to Truss are not optimistic that the OBR will significantly uprate its growth forecast Truss and Kwarteng hope that their approach will boost the trend growth rate of the economy to 2.5 per cent. If they can achieve that, then the public finances will begin to look an awful lot healthier.

Steerpike

‘Real feminist’ Nicola Sturgeon hits back at JK Rowling

JK Rowling is a feminist idol for lots of women. After the break-up of her marriage, Rowling became a single mum, whose literary ability eventually earned her fame and fortune. The Harry Potter author has campaigned tirelessly for women’s rights in recent years. For voicing her scepticism about whether men can transition to become women, she has been hounded and abused. Yet even her fiercest critics would find it difficult to deny her feminist credentials. Nicola Sturgeon, however, appeared to do just that in an interview this morning. The Scottish First Minister was asked for her views on Rowling’s decision to wear a T-Shirt that read: ‘Nicola Sturgeon ‘destroyer of women’s rights’’.

Kate Andrews

Will Truss’s growth target gamble pay off?

Liz Truss has bet the house on growth. The Prime Minister and Chancellor formally gave themselves the target of a 2.5 per cent growth rate in last month’s mini-Budget. But at the Conservative party conference this week, Truss used her speech to frame her premiership around growth, singling out as her enemies anyone she deems part of the ‘anti-growth coalition’. Anything the government does now needs to be approached with caution rather than revolutionary zeal As I say in today’s Telegraph, this was perhaps Truss’s most savvy political move to date. If the Prime Minister has had any success so far, it’s been to completely refocus the national narrative towards growth.

James Forsyth

Are Truss and Macron now ‘bons amis’?

13 min listen

Liz Truss attended the European Political Community summit in Prague, where her frosty relations with Macron came to a head. Rather than 'frenemies', there were signs of thawing relations between the two. After years of diplomatic tensions over Brexit, immigration and energy, can the two leaders kiss and make up?Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth.Produced by Max Jeffery and Natasha Feroze.

Ross Clark

Truss is foolish to block Rees Mogg’s energy saving campaign

When you have defined yourself against the nanny state and scorned the idea of limiting supermarket ‘two for one’ offers, it is only natural that you will go on to reject the case for a £15 million public information campaign to try to persuade people to take fewer baths and turn their thermostats down. The Prime Minister has rejected such a campaign in spite of it being backed by her business secretary, Jacob Rees Mogg – putting Rees Mogg in the unlikely position of the nation’s nanny-in-chief. These kind of campaigns have a bit of a poor history, as anyone who remembers the 1976 drought will recall.

Tahra Jirari

Biden is playing politics with his marijuana pardons

In a somewhat shocking turn of events, president Biden has pardoned all people with federal convictions for simple marijuana possession and asked his administration to reconsider the way marijuana is classified in current code. In his remarks yesterday, Biden said: 'Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana. It’s time that we right these wrongs.' While this is a major step toward decriminalising marijuana, the key terms here are 'federally convicted'. The number of people who are currently serving time for marijuana possession, excluding trafficking convictions, leaves only around 6,500 in prison — not including those who fall under the federal code.