Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
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Thirty thousand people waited 12 hours or more in A&E, new figures showed today – the highest number on record. The NHS usually runs into trouble during the cold winter weather, but it looks like the annual crisis has already arrived. Is there any solution? Max Jeffery speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.Produced by Max Jeffery.
39 min listen
In this week’s episode:Who’s to blame for the water shortages?James Forsyth, The Spectator’s political editor and Ciaran Nelson from Anglian Water join us to discuss the UK’s deteriorating water supply. (0.29)Also this week: Is it time for some old-fashioned Tory state-building?Tim Stanley from the Telegraph shares his vision for a Conservative future. He’s joined by Annabel Denham, Director of Communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs. (11.19) And finally: What’s behind France’s new sexual politics?Jonathan Miller writes about a new civil war in France between the nudes and prudes. He’s joined by Louise Perry, columnist and author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. (23.08)Hosted by Lara Prendergast.
Do you hate Russia, or do you hate Putin? That’s the central question behind a current debate about whether to suspend tourist visas to the EU for all Russian citizens. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky started the ball rolling last week in an interview with the Washington Post, where he said that the 'most important sanction' that the EU could impose on Russia was to 'close the borders, because the Russians are taking away someone else’s land'. He added that Russians should 'live in their own world until they change their philosophy.
Is the EU about to shatter? There is increasing talk of it after the bloc’s well-publicised difficulties with Poland and Hungary in the last week or so. This is almost certainly premature: nevertheless, the events are significant, and even if they do not break the EU they could precipitate some profound changes. For some time, undeclared guerrilla war has subsisted between the EU and its two maverick eastern members. Both face multiple court complaints from Brussels about what it sees as rule of law issues and they see as their internal affairs. Hungary is facing allegations of infringement of media freedom and LGBT rights, Poland on stated threats to judicial independence and the supremacy of EU law.
It's the Glorious Twelfth tomorrow and participants are looking forward to an excellent day of shooting. The Countryside Alliance are expecting a bumper supply of grouse, thanks to excellent weather, with the birds doing their best to avoid the guns of the finest shooters in England. One of those who'll presumably be joining the fray is Sir Nicholas Soames, of whom surprisingly little has been heard since he stepped down from parliament in 2019. His once overactive Twitter account is now largely confined to retweets and there's sadly far less of his familiar face in the media than there once was. Now tipped for a peerage in Boris Johnson's resignation honours list, the longtime grandee and former Spectator wine critic, does still make time for certain favoured media outlets.
Three cheers for Suella Braverman. The Attorney General has made clear that it is not appropriate for schools to teach young children that gender is a choice. Speaking at the think tank Policy Exchange on Wednesday, Braverman stated that teachers should not be in the business of indoctrinating children with ‘one sided and controversial views on gender’. To do so, she warned, may leave them in breach of government guidance. What’s more, Braverman indicated, schools should not allow children to change gender – whether by using a different name or pronouns, wearing a different uniform, or using the toilets meant for the opposite sex – without their parents’ consent. Thank goodness this has finally been said.
Twelve-hour A&E waits are at a record high. Doctors fear that tens of thousands will die because of delays in treatment. Already some 10,000 people have waited more than three months for urgent cancer treatment, a consequence of turning the NHS into the national Covid-but-nothing-else-service during lockdown. Excess deaths at home, the number of people dying above the five-year average, is nearly 17,000 in England and Wales. Meanwhile, fewer people seem to be dying in hospital. That suggests many patients aren’t even getting proper medical attention. We’re used to hearing about NHS crises in winter, but winter now seems to be all year round.
The policing bible could not be clearer: 'Police officers must not take any active part in politics. This is intended to prevent you from placing yourself in a position where your impartiality may be questioned.' But has anyone told the British Transport Police? The BTP's officers were out in force at Brighton's Pride festival at the weekend, holding up a 'Police with Pride' flag. Officers were also using the festivities as a recruiting opportunity. 'We want you to apply to be part of a modern, diverse and inclusive police force,' said BTP superintendent David Rams. As well as encouraging diversity, the BTP was clear about who they don't want signing up: people who might be offended by the police taking an active role at Pride.
In the battle to become prime minister, both Liz Truss and RIshi Sunak have vowed to crack down on Britain’s enemies. As China bullies Taiwan and Russia bombards Ukraine, whoever wins is likely to see their resolve tested from day one in No. 10. What is less clear is how either candidate would deal with the tricky issue of Britain’s 'frenemies': those countries that say warm words about the West but can't always be trusted. Putin's war has exposed the divided loyalties of several countries around the world – including India and Turkey – who purport to be friends of Britain. When we have needed these nations to take a stand, they have either refused to help, worked to undermine us, or worse, are actively helping our enemies.
It can be difficult now to cast one's mind back to the beginning of last month, when the field for next Tory leader was wide open and an exciting array of candidates were jostling for attention. Among them, of course, was Tom Tugendhat, the great bright hope of the One Nation group. He crashed out in fifth but there is one aspect in which he appears to have been the winner of this contest: his recorded donations have blown his rivals out of the water. According to the register of MPs' interests, the most recent returns show Tugendhat receiving donations worth more than £123,000 for the sole purpose of his leadership campaign.
We know many water companies are themselves guilty of profligate waste through unrepaired leaks. So to snitch on a neighbour, who is making a comparatively tiny personal contribution to the drought, seems petty. But we are only human and it is hard to watch your flowers and vegetables wither and die while your neighbour is still drenching his own produce with gay abandon. If you have a smart water meter you might be more careful about over-use as Big Brother is watching you. Candy, a wife and mother of three in my nearby town, showed me her own bill for water use. It announced that her total water use was 93m3 between January and July 2022. The bill declared: ‘That’s the same as about 372,000 cups of tea, OR 1,240 showers OR 1,163 baths.
For residents of the London borough of Islington whose homes were flooded this week by a burst water main, Thames Water’s decision to announce a hosepipe ban the following day must have come across as a sick joke. Just a few days before the flood, the company sent out an email asking its customers to be a ‘hot spell hero’. ‘Every drop you save really is another drop more in your local river or reservoir.’ But Thames Water seemed unable to follow its own advice: five million litres of water were lost during the leak. The episode neatly encapsulated much of what is wrong with Britain’s water industry: crude, 1940s-style rationing on the one hand and a failure to prevent much of the product leaking away on the other.
Outriders are all the rage these days in British politics. Liz Truss has Kwasi Kwarteng and Lord Frost: Rishi Sunak has Dominic Raab and Mark Harper. They act to deliver the messages their candidate can't, launching attacks, fighting fires and speaking home truths. So it's no surprise then that Gordon Brown, the Giffnock grouch, is now unofficially performing that role for Sir Keir Starmer, his beleaguered successor as Labour leader. Brown is close to team Starmer, and performs the role that John Major did for David Cameron in the coalition years, acting as a trial balloon to test how ideas will land. The cost-of-living crisis has been a tricky challenge for Labour: their supporters demand more action but Rachel Reeves and the self-proclaimed 'sensibles' preach prudence.
The Conservative leadership contest has descended into a low-tax auction, which is not a good thing. The implication is that the Conservatives think government should be minuscule at the very moment when private enterprise is letting us down – the energy companies are raking in cash and spending it on stock buybacks – and the state seems to be on its knees. We live in a country where it’s become widely accepted that if you call an ambulance, it won’t show up for several hours; the borders are wide open; social care is under-funded; and the police have ceased investigating certain crimes. If anything, this is a moment to rediscover an older Tory tradition of state-building.
Between 1992 and 2002, the UK experienced a period of benign economic growth. Known as the Nice (non-inflationary constant expansion) decade, it feels like a very long time ago. According to the Bank of England’s latest forecast, Britain today faces the opposite: high inflation and a recession. This grim prediction is why the Tory leadership contest is so grouchy; in these circumstances, there are no good fiscal options, only least-worst ones. The world economy veers from one emergency to another, with the frequency of crises having intensified since 2008 and, particularly, since Covid. Lockdowns and pandemic disruption were rapidly followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is causing havoc in energy markets.
For most Russians, the brutal realities of Vladimir Putin's 'special military operation' have not really struck home. Ukraine's attack on the Saki airbase near Novofedorivka in western Crimea on Tuesday begins to change all that, marking a new stage of the war, one with both dangers and opportunities for Kyiv. The Kremlin’s spin doctors tried to claim that the explosions filmed by horrified Russian holidaymakers were caused by an ammunition fire. However, as videos began going viral on Russian social media, there was no question in the posters' minds but that this was an attack. They voted with their feet, or at least their wheels, and the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the mainland became one long traffic jam as panicked holidaymakers fled the peninsula.
Whatever side they're on, most Tory MPs now think the leadership contest is getting a bit much. They're worried about the attacks across camps - though of course those who have declared for a candidate tend to think it's their rivals who are doing the worst mudslinging. Labour’s attack unit need scarcely lift a finger as the lines for future campaign leaflets and PMQs are writing themselves One MP who has gone public with his complaints is Justin Tomlinson, who resigned as deputy chairman of the party so he could back Kemi Badenoch.
Well, you have to hand it to them. After an outcry, Manchester University has now told Mr S that they're investigating a PhD student who published a research paper in which he detailed how he masturbated for three months to extreme Japanese comics featuring young boys. The saga started earlier today after Tory MP Neil O'Brien tweeted a link to an article in the journal Qualitative Research titled 'I am not alone - we are all alone: Using masturbation as an ethnographic method in research on shota subculture in Japan.' O'Brien noted that 'the non-STEM side of higher education is just much too big, producing too much that is not sociallly useful.' That's putting it mildly...
Funny, isn’t it, the way people bandy the word 'bastard' nowadays, without any notion that it pertains to the condition of being born outside marriage? It says lots about how illegitimacy was once regarded that its descriptive noun is now simply a bad word. And yet most children who were born last year are what we’d once have called illegitimate; the Office for National Statistics finds that 51.3 per cent were born to mothers who were neither married nor in a civil partnership. It’s the first time this has happened since records began, in 1845. The most troubling aspect about it is that we’re really not troubled. Time was, this situation would have raised uproar in the press. Politicians would have sounded off.
It’s hardly surprising that China feels emboldened. Xi Jinping must look at America and see not just a superpower in decline but a gerontocracy that has lost its marbles.Last week, Nancy Pelosi, the 82-year-old Speaker of the House of Representatives, visited Taiwan as a gesture of solidarity, in spite of China’s fierce warnings that her arrival would be treated as a grave provocation. Presumably Pelosi felt that, by not being cowed, she’d shown China who’s still global boss. And other photo-opportunistic politicians are expected now to imitate her. What for, though? In the following days, China intensified its military drills around the Taiwan Strait.
