Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Steerpike

Team Truss turns on each other at eco-hustings

The Tory leadership teams rolled into Belfast this afternoon, clad in metaphorical red, white and blue and eager to display their unionist credentials. But while all eyes were on Ulster, elsewhere the real scrap was happening at the Conservative Environment Network where proxies were battling it out for the two final contenders. In team Truss's corner was Lord Goldsmith, the former MP now ensconced in ermine, while George Eustice, the soon-to-be-departed Environment Secretary, did the honours for Rishi Sunak. The two men have both been jousting for their patrons but there was little sign of courtly behaviour on show. Eustice, who serves as Goldsmith's boss in the department, accused Truss of refusing to recognise the importance of animal welfare in post-Brexit trade deals.

Matthew Lynn

Crypto keeps bouncing back

This time it was surely all over. As inflation started to rise towards a 40-year high, as central banks started raising interest rates for the first time in more than a decade, and as the monetary printing presses finally stopped running, the cryptocurrencies crashed.  What a crash it was. Bitcoin, the best-known crypto, fell all the way from $61,000 last November to less than $19,000 in June, a spectacular drop of more than two thirds. Ethereum, Solana and other, frailer ‘coins’ – as well as the even flimsier digital collectors’ items known as NFTs – all tanked. This appeared finally to confirm what the doubters had said all along.

Ross Clark

Tony Blair’s Covid grift

Have we yet seen the end of Covid restrictions? It is tempting to think so. For many people, Covid and the lockdowns have receded into history, replaced by Ukraine and the energy crisis. It would be easy, but foolish, to dismiss Tony Blair’s proposals as the ramblings of a bored ex-PM But perhaps we have parked the whole business in our memories a little too soon. Some are already pushing for restrictions to be re-enacted this winter. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has just published a paper, Three Months to Save the NHS, demanding that the government consider re-imposing mask mandates on public transport and other enclosed settings.

Stephen Daisley

What the abuse of a BBC journalist says about Sturgeon’s Scotland

James Cook, the BBC’s Scotland editor, is ‘a traitor’. He is ‘scum’, ‘a scumbag’ and ‘a liar’. At least he is according to the Scottish nationalists who howled those epithets at him last night as he tried to report on the Tory leadership hustings. Outside Perth Concert Hall, a mob had gathered, as they invariably do when any of Scotland’s pro-Union parties meet, not for a spirited protest but to shout abuse and spew vitriol. These are the people who love Scotland so much they hate half the people living there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Steerpike

Met social media spend doubles in two years

It's been a difficult year for the Metropolitan Police. Commissioner Cressida Dick was forced out in April after a string of scandals while the force's broader handling of issues around racism and sexism has also been called into question. Given all that, it can be difficult to hire new officers willing to join the force; hence why it's probably shelling out oodles on adverts urging LGBT+ applicants to sign up and a further £400,000 on a trailer which looked like a Bond film. And social media is being used more and more to further that goal it seems. For despite criticism that police forces across the country are too obsessed with social media, the Met has only doubled down on its online efforts.

Freddy Gray

What next for Liz Cheney?

20 min listen

Yesterday Liz Cheney lost the Republican nomination for Wyoming's House seat to the Trump-backed candidate Harriet Hageman. Freddy Gray is joined by the author and journalist James Pogue to discuss the impact of the result.

Terry Barnes

Has Scott Morrison become Australia’s Richard Nixon?

In May 1940, Winston Churchill was not only appointed Prime Minister but Minister for Defence. In doing so, Churchill ensured that he, and not the three traditional cabinet secretaries traditionally responsible for the armed services, had ultimate responsibility for Britain’s war effort. This was an open, and very public, move which was welcomed and praised at a time Hitler was on Britain's doorstep. In March 2020, the then Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, found himself leading his own national battle – this time against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Isabel Hardman

Finally, some justice for the infected blood scandal’s victims

Why has the greatest patient scandal in the history of the NHS rumbled on for so long before its victims even start to see justice? It shouldn’t have taken 40 years for there to be an answer Today the government awarded £100,000 in interim compensation to around 4,000 survivors of the contaminated blood scandal, as recommended by Sir Robert Francis, who published a report on the matter earlier this year. They have been fighting for 40 years for justice that, as yet, does not cover the bereaved parents and children of those who were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C when they were given dirty blood products for their haemophilia or blood transfusions. For that, they will have to wait until the conclusion of the public inquiry led by Sir Brian Langstaff later this year.

Katy Balls

Inflation hits double digits: what next?

12 min listen

The UK inflation rate is now at 10.1 per cent according to the Office for National Statistics. Is there much that the government can do to relieve its effects? Also on the podcast, the leadership contenders are in Belfast for the next hustings: how will the audience respond to the candidate's position on The Northern Ireland Protocol? Katy Balls is joined by Kate Andrews and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson.

Steerpike

Lords a leaping over declining standards

It’s not easy being a Lord. No, really, it isn't, judging by the latest poll of the Upper House. Mr S has obtained a copy of the most recent Members' Survey – conducted in March of this year – and it shows that dissatisfaction in the House of Lords is at record levels. Responses from 355 peers reveal concerns over internal governance, working spaces and catering, with just half of peers under-65 giving it a 'positive' satisfaction rating. Overall opinion of the facilities and services provided by the House of Lords Administration has slumped from 80 per cent reporting it as 'good' or 'excellent' in 2008 to just 63 per cent now in 2022.

Freddy Gray

Why the NeverTrumper dream isn’t coming true

In perhaps the least surprising electoral result we’ll see in America this year, the Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney lost to her Trump-backed opponent in Wyoming last night. Harriet Hageman absolutely monstered Cheney in the end ­– beating her by some 30 percentage points, ten more than most experts predicted. Cheney knew long ago she was going to lose. She had become a pin-up for that strange and stubborn alliance of Bush-era Republicans and the pro-Democratic US media; another darling of the old NeverTrump front. These darlings don’t win Republican primaries. It is unfair to cast Cheney as a classic NeverTrumpist, of course: she voted with Trump 93 per cent of the time, as many have pointed out. She voted against impeaching him in 2019.

Katja Hoyer

Is Germany afraid of China?

The German air force has taken off for its first deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. It will take part in Australia’s biennial warfare exercise Pitch Black from Friday, side by side with other western nations as well as regional partners such as Japan, Singapore and South Korea. Berlin’s show of solidarity will be welcomed by Nato allies, but it will also draw pushback from China. It’s an opportunity for Germany to show that it can make a meaningful contribution to the deterrence of Chinese aggression in the Pacific. But in order to do so convincingly it will have to resist pressure from Beijing with more confidence than it has in the past. Germany’s commitment looks promising.

Ross Clark

Can inflation be brought under control?

That today’s inflation figures would come as an immense shock to anyone who has returned from a year in the wilderness goes without saying. A little over a year ago, in May 2021, the Bank of England was predicting that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) would peak at no higher than its two percent target. CPI is now in double figures for the first time in 40 years, at 10.1 per cent – exceeding even the already-grim expectations of many economists. The Bank of England may yet again have to revise its forecast for the inflationary peak – which just two weeks ago it put at 13 per cent. The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee has been asleep on the job and it is a wonder that its governor, Andrew Bailey, is still in his job.

Kate Andrews

Inflation hits double digits. Is it out of control?

Long gone are the days when politicians and experts dared to claim inflation was simply ‘transitory’. Now it’s hang-on-to-your-hats as prices spiral faster than anyone predicted. This morning the Office for National Statistics reveals that headline CPI inflation hit 10.1 per cent on the year in July. This double-digit figure takes inflation to a 40-year high, outpacing consensus yet again, which was 9.8 per cent. That figure means all those horrors that have been discussed for months have become more immediate: the instability that comes with spiralling prices, the risk of stagflation, increasing fears of recession as consumers grow more cautious, not to mention the very real fear that people will struggle to afford basic necessities.

Ross Clark

Why the City made a mistake in writing off coal

For anyone tempted to believe warnings from Mark Carney and other City figures about ‘stranded assets’ in the fossil fuel industry, while simultaneously buying the idea that renewable energy is the investment which can’t go wrong, here is a cautionary tale. Just over a year ago the mining giant Anglo American demerged its thermal coal division into a new company, Thungela Resources. At the time it seemed to some a bit like Northern Rock being divided into a ‘good bank’ and a ‘bad bank’.

Steerpike

The Guardian’s Truss attack falls flat

The sound of moralising was in the air this morning, as Steerpike emerged bleary-eyed from his hangover. Is it Sunday already? No, just the standard self-righteous squawking from the usual suspects of the left. Today's topic of sanctimonious one-upmanship? Leaked comments made by Liz Truss on the need for British workers to show 'more graft'. Grab the smelling salts! When were these comments made? Yesterday, in the face of the baying mob outside the Tory hustings? Last month when she unveiled her plan to get Britain out of the economic mire? No, er, back in the heady days of Theresa May's government when Truss was Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Nick Cohen

Is Keir Starmer a populist?

No one thinks of the careful, polite Keir Starmer as a populist hero. But his intervention in the fuel crisis is a classic example of a barnstorming populist intervention that pushes aside complexity and forces a complacent elite to think again. The fuel cap must be frozen at today’s level until March 2023, Labour says. Everyone’s fuel cap, that is, without exception. No clever pointy-headed schemes to target help at this group of energy consumers but not at that. Just a big, bold, simple policy that Labour politicians can explain in a sentence. Biff, Bash, Boff, the Starmster gets it sorted. Labour believes Liz Truss has walked into a trap of her own making.

Stephen Daisley

What exactly can the new PM do for Scotland?

Last night’s Tory leadership hustings in Perth saw Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak interrogated on their plans to tackle the energy crisis. As with other occasions on which they have fielded this question, neither of them gave particularly convincing answers. Both candidates have struggled to articulate an energetic government response to crippling increases in fuel bills for households and small businesses. At a time of acute anxiety for voters, when they are looking for reassurance, the message they are hearing from the Tories is that there’s only so much the state can do and it’s not very much at all. This pall of Whitehall impotence hangs even more heavily over Scotland.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Truss charms the Scottish audience, while Sunak struggles

Judging by the show of hands in the auditorium of the Perth Concert Hall tonight, both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak had a fair bit of work to do to win over Scottish Tories. Many put their hands up to say they hadn't yet decided who to back when asked by the host Colin Mackay. Mind you, many of them then went on to boo Mackay for asking questions of both candidates that they found annoying. Normally when an audience boos a journalist in Scotland, it's blamed on the SNP and that party's dislike of scrutiny. Tonight, though, it was the Conservative party.  Neither candidate has said that much about their plan for Scotland prior to today's hustings.

Katy Balls

When will the inflation rate fall?

13 min listen

New figures released this week show that wages have fallen significantly behind the rising cost of living. Is there more trouble ahead? Also on the podcast, as Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss attend hustings in Scotland: which candidate is favoured the most north of the border? Katy Balls is joined by Kate Andrews and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Max Jeffery and Oscar Edmondson.