Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Steerpike

Sturgeon’s swipe at Scottish voters

There was a lot more rubbish than usual at the Edinburgh festivals this August. With refuse workers out on strike, the debris piled high in the Scottish capital and other cities, much to the dismay of visiting tourists. But one attendee who remains clearly undaunted is Nicola 'friend of the stars' Sturgeon, who last night returned to make her fifth appearance at Edinburgh’s festivals to interview pro-independence actor Brian Cox. And it wasn't just the local bins overflowing with garbage, as Sturgeon and Cox shared in an orgy of congratulatory nationalist self-love. ‘I just don’t give a fuck any more,’ he declared. ‘I can’t wait to reach that stage,’ she replied. ‘Nicola, you’ll reach that stage,’ he retorted.

Stephen Daisley

Can Lord Frost save the Union?

Lord Frost is tipped to head up the Cabinet Office under Liz Truss, making him the Prime Minister’s point man on the constitution. Is he the right man for the job? It’s hard to tell. He was willing to say what others wouldn’t about the Northern Ireland Protocol and the government has been nowhere on that matter since he left. He recently penned a piece on the looming constitutional crisis in Scotland, making him perhaps the only senior Westminster figure aware there is a looming constitutional crisis in Scotland. On the other hand, Unionists have been burned before. I remember one chump who heralded Michael Gove as the man to secure the Union.

Gareth Roberts

The Tory party myth isn’t real

The Conservative party leadership contest (sometimes referred to as a ‘race’, which is pushing it) is nearing its end. It’ll be hard getting used to the world without it. We’re all such different people now, 900 years on. At least we’ll always have the misty water-coloured memories. One thing that both candidates agree on is that things have come to a pretty pass, and something, possibly even lots of somethings, must be done, and done urgently. This has been very strange to behold, as if the Tories have just woken up in a parallel universe where some other mysterious and nefarious political party has been in power for the last 12 years.

Monday

Steerpike

Truss pulls out of Nick Robinson interview

With a week to go until a new prime minister enters 10 Downing Street, the frontrunner Liz Truss has been criticised so far for limiting her media appearances – instead focussing on meeting the membership and making plans for government. So her decision to belatedly agree to a BBC interview with Nick Robinson won her praise. As the former BBC political editor wrote in this week's Spectator: '[Viewers] want to see and hear their leaders questioned, challenged and tested about the decisions which shape their lives. Credit to Truss and Sunak for agreeing to just that.' Alas, it appears Robinson spoke too soon. This evening the BBC has announced that Truss has pulled out of the interview which was scheduled for prime time on Tuesday evening.

Jonathan Miller

The culture wars are coming to France

The infection of France by le wokisme continues apace. Last year, president Emmanuel Macron vowed to stand against intersectionality only to see his parliamentary majority swept away in the recent National Assembly elections in part by the leftist coalition of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Now a new woketarian front is opening against the mores of traditional France as transgenderism asserts itself with a campaign by Le Planning Familial, the non-profit association influenced by the movement created originally in the United States, active in France for 62 years and that has recently transitioned itself. The movement, which is subsidised by the government, has moved from offering advice on contraception and abortion to a new focus on racism, white privilege and transgenderism.

Svitlana Morenets

Ukraine stuns Russia with a counter-offensive in Kherson region

The southern city of Kherson, which fell to Russian forces in the first few days of the war, is one of the places Ukraine would need to liberate if Putin’s army is to be repelled. But what realistic chance is there? Many argued that the Russian occupation is a one-way process: that having taken Crimea, Putin would extend his reach northwards and westwards – with the only question being how long Ukraine could hold off an offensive from its far-bigger enemy.  But that conversation is changing, and fast. This morning, the Ukrainian army broke through the first line of the Russian defence in Kherson region – a move that was only recently seen to be beyond the capability of Ukrainian troops.

Philip Patrick

Japan’s cult of safetyism

The Japanese government has launched an initiative to encourage young people to drink more alcohol. Yes, really. The national tax agency’s ‘Sake Viva’ campaign is an appeal for ideas to get youngsters boozing after taxes on alcohol products, which accounted for 5 per cent of total revenue back in the hard-drinking 1980s, fell to just 1.7 per cent in 2020. So, at a time of economic hardship, Japan’s youth are being asked to do their patriotic duty and get hammered. The falloff in social drinking is being attributed in part to the pandemic. Japan didn’t have a full-blown lockdown imposed from above, but the more subtle bottom-up lockdown that demonised anyone frequenting bars and restaurants worked pretty well.

Sam Leith

We still love our failing NHS

A new poll about the NHS, the Sunday Times tells us, has discovered ‘a decline in support’ for the National Health Service. The story spoke of ‘wide dissatisfaction about the state of the health service’, under the headline: ‘Britain falls out of love with the NHS’. The figures from the poll itself tell a slightly different story. The headline finding was that three people in five are now not confident that they would receive timely treatment were they to fall ill tomorrow. But these three people in five aren’t necessarily saying they’ve ceased to approve of the NHS. It seems to me that they are simply affirming what they’ve read in the papers and heard about on telly and experienced, piecemeal, themselves.

Peter Wood

One worldview has taken over the historical profession

Professor James H. Sweet is a temperate man. He seeks to avoid extremes. But he also seeks to be bold in his temperance. You can do that by emphatically stating an opinion that seems above reproach. But Professor Sweet miscalculated. His emphatic bromide blew up, and he was left offering emphatic apologies. For those who have not followed this little academic circus, Professor Sweet, who teaches history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is also the president of the American Historical Association (AHA). That’s an important post. The AHA has more than 11,500 members. It publishes the American Historical Review, ‘the journal of record for the historical profession in the United States’. And AHA holds a huge conference each January.

Mary Dejevsky

Why Crimea could be key to Ukraine winning the war

Over the six months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the ambitions of President Zelensky and his compatriots have only grown. From an early readiness to engage in talks – first in Belarus and then in Istanbul – Kyiv has progressed to an insistence that Ukraine can win, and from there to a definition of victory that includes not just a return to the status quo before the war, but the restoration of Ukraine’s post-independence borders, and now also the recovery of Crimea. Zelensky himself has often seemed slower than some in his entourage to expand the mission. But he has been adding his voice to those calling for the recovery of Crimea for a few weeks now, with Independence Day prompting these ringing words: ‘Crimea is Ukraine. And we will return it.

Mark Nayler

Europe still hasn’t learned from its lockdown debacles

In his fascinating interview in the current issue of The Spectator, Rishi Sunak revealed the black hole at the centre of the British government’s 2020 lockdown policies. The former Chancellor claims that two crucial things were lacking at the time of the lockdowns – political candour and a ‘grown up conversation’ between Boris Johnson’s government and the quarantined population. Two and a half years later, though, there’s been no such conversation, especially in the European countries where the legality of lockdowns has already been questioned. France was one of the first countries to challenge hastily-enacted measures that criminalised normal behaviour.

Katja Hoyer

Olaf Scholz needs to deal with the Putin appeasers in his party

'The weapons have to fall silent,’ the left wing of Germany’s ruling Social Democratic party suggested this week, in their latest public appeal for peace in Ukraine. The authors argued that it is time to find a way of living with the Russian government, putting pressure on the Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The intervention could well be a watershed moment for the Chancellor, whose own support for Ukraine during the conflict has been mixed to say the least. Now Scholz has been presented with a choice: either he faces down the appeasers in his own party, or signals once again that Germany is an unreliable ally to Ukraine. The left-wing SPD appeal itself demands a ceasefire in Ukraine even if that means ‘accepting realities one may not like.

Sunday

Julie Bindel

Why are lesbians no longer welcome at Pride?

The lesbian group Get The L Out UK, founded to protest gender ideology and the pressure on same-sex attracted women to date trans women, joined Pride Cymru yesterday to make their voices heard amidst a sea of hostility. Ever since the trans movement decided that lesbians who reject sleeping with trans women are somehow morally deficient, same-sex attracted women have been harassed, defamed and abused in the name of trans equality. Get the L Out represent those old-fashioned lesbians that reject the penis and all that is attached to it.

Gilbert T. Sewall

Los Angeles is in freefall

On August 9, a crazy homeless woman riled by community activists stormed a Los Angeles city council meeting, shouting obscenities and threats at members, closing the assembly down. A proposed ban on homeless encampments within 500 feet of schools had been on the table. For the city’s extremists, ‘criminalising homelessness’ is cause for mayhem. Last week, a thuggish mob shut an entire downtown Los Angeles street after midnight, ransacking a 7-Eleven and injuring the sole cashier. Residents citywide fear a future of unprosecuted criminal raids, ‘street takeovers’, and organised looting. Central Los Angeles is awash in homicides, break-ins, carjacks, shoplifting, and vandalism.

Steven Fielding

Liz Truss has a Boris Johnson problem

Can a honeymoon be over before the Wedding March has even begun? Liz Truss might be about to find out. For while the shoo-in for the Conservative leadership has been wooing members, amongst Conservative party voters in 2019, she is already beginning to lose her appeal. For the time being at least, it seems that the more Tory voters (as opposed to members) see of Truss the less they like her. Of course, Truss has so far been focusing on the only electorate that currently counts to her: Conservative party members. Constituting just 0.3 per cent of the electorate they like her talk of tax cuts, exiling refugees to Rwanda, fracking, winning the ‘war on woke’ as well as attacks on solar panels and the French – but care little for levelling up.

Nick Cohen

Would Russia change if Putin died tomorrow?

Suppose Vladimir Putin drops dead tomorrow – he has to drop dead one day, after all. Will a chastened Russian elite and public decide to abandon dreams of empire and vow never again to fall for the lure of the autocratic strongman? Putin will leave a sick country that ought to be yearning for change. The myth that Russia is a military superpower, which did so much to intimidate its neighbours, lies broken amid the burned-out ammunition dumps. Putin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine provoked Finland and Sweden to join Nato. His aggression has reinvigorated the West and pushed it into supplying Ukraine with advanced weaponry.

Marian L. Tupy

Abundance doesn’t end

Speaking to his ministers at the Élysée Palace last Thursday, the très sérieux Emmanuel Macron called for unity and sacrifice as he announced the end of the age of abundance because of a parade of horrors, including global warming, war in Ukraine and the ongoing supply problems. ‘What we are currently living through is a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval,’ said Macron. ‘We are living through the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance…the end of the abundance of products, of technologies that seemed always available…the end of the abundance of land and materials including water.’ What is abundance, though?

Saturday

Freddy Gray

Is Joe Biden… winning?

Well, well, well – Joe Biden seems to be making something of a comeback. His approval rating, which dropped to 37 per cent in July, has gone back up to 42 per cent, which is a reasonably healthy figure for a Commander-in-Chief at this stage in his first term. The last two Democratic occupants of the White House – Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – both scored somewhere in the low 40s in the August of their second year in charge. It’s a remarkable turnaround. For the last year, at least, the elderly president has looked clapped out and frail – a terrifyingly inept leader in troubled times. The embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan, the inflationary crisis, the violent crime waves, and the endless clips of poor Joe looking and sounding confused.

Svitlana Morenets

Svitlana Morenets, Cindy Yu and John Connolly

18 min listen

This week on Spectator Out Loud, Svitlana Morenets discusses the changes to the syllabus in Ukraine and the difficult decisions parents are having to make over whether to send their children back to school (00:59). Cindy Yu argues that she would be the perfect communist shill (07:45), and John Connolly tells us why cow attacks are no laughing matter (13:26). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.