Politics Archives

Wednesday

15 June 2022

Putin’s Davos flops after sanctions

Oh dear. It seems that starting an unprovoked war is not the best way to inspire foreign investment in your country. For 25 years, the Kremlin has touted the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) as Russia's equivalent of the World Economic Forum, using the summit to try to attract the forces of capital. But after a string of sanctions, it seems that no one from the West now wants to be seen at 'Putin's Davos' this week (quelle surprise). No names of American and European companies or their CEOs are on the published schedule for SPIEF, which begins today and ends Saturday.

Nigel Jones

Keir Starmer has got the Zzzz…Factor

Is it a fatal handicap for a politician to be dull? Since he became Labour leader two years ago, there has been a growing feeling that Sir Keir Starmer not only lacks the magical ‘X Factor’ that makes for political success, but is in proud possession of its polar opposite – what might be called the ‘Zzz.. Factor’: that he is, in a word, boring. This week, Labour’s fears about the soporific nature of their chief finally surfaced with a report in which unnamed Shadow Cabinet members accused Starmer of ‘boring everyone to death’. Earlier, in a coded rebuke of her boss, his deputy Angela Rayner begged him to put more ‘welly’ in his political style. Finally, the pollsters J.L.

Steerpike

Met police refuse to release beergate details

Ello, 'ello, 'ello, what's goin' on 'ere, then? Boris Johnson might have shrugged off partygate but Sir Keir Starmer is not so lucky. The investigation by Durham police into whether the Labour leader and his deputy broke lockdown restrictions in April 2021 is still ongoing, with no end date yet announced. Sir Keir has pledged to quit if he is fined; that curry could yet become the most expensive takeaway of his life... One intriguing detail about the fateful night in question was the presence of a protection team from the Metropolitan police. The Sun reported that Met bodyguards accompanied the Labour leader on the Durham trip, as part of his efforts during the Hartlepool by-election campaign.

Stephen Daisley

Progressives, don’t cheer Rwanda’s setbacks

The last-minute halting of the first flight to Rwanda is humiliating for Boris Johnson’s government. An urgent interim measure from the European Court of Human Rights prompted a domino effect of domestic court orders that ended with the plane returning to base without passengers. The ECtHR’s order came down to three factors. First, that evidence from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and others suggested asylum seekers transferred to Rwanda ‘will not have access to fair and efficient procedures for the determination of refugee status’.

Katy Balls

The Rwanda policy is about sending a message

Is the UK on course to leave the European Convention on Human Rights? This is what some Tory MPs are pushing for after judges in Strasbourg blocked, at the last minute, the first deportation flight scheduled to take asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. After unsuccessful bids in the UK courts, a judgement from the ECtHR halting the deportation of one passenger triggered a series of new legal challenges back in London. This led to the government removing all the passengers from the plane. In response to the judgment, Home Secretary Priti Patel said she was 'disappointed' but undeterred – insisting work for the next flight was already underway.

Gus Carter

What’s the alternative to the Rwanda plan?

Last night, a Boeing 767 that was supposed to fly 130 asylum seekers to Rwanda returned to Spain without a single passenger on board. Throughout the day, the number of people planned for that flight had been whittled down by multiple legal challenges. Then, minutes before take-off, the European Court of Human Rights made an injunction stopping an Iraqi man known as KN from being taken to Central Africa because, it said, he faced ‘a real risk of irreversible harm’. The question some are asking is why the Home Secretary didn’t wait. There is supposed to be a broader challenge at the High Court next month which would, perhaps, have dealt with Strasbourg’s concerns – namely, that there was no legal mechanism for asylum seekers to return to the UK.

James Kirkup

Why Starmer shouldn’t relaunch

Yesterday’s Times carried a report that will only add to Sir Keir Starmer’s troubles. It quoted several members of the shadow ministerial team suggesting that Starmer is dull and unimpressive.That will only sharpen the perception, held by quite a few Westminster people, that the Labour leader isn’t doing as well as he should be, given the government’s weaknesses and failings. ‘Keir Starmer is not dragging his party down but he's not transforming its fortunes either’. That was the conclusion of a New Statesman analysis a few weeks ago, and probably a fair one. The problem for Starmer is the fact that Labour needs that transformation. One of the most overlooked facts of political life is just how badly Labour did in 2019.

Stephen Daisley

It’s time for Westminster to take on the SNP

There will not be a legally binding referendum on Scottish independence next year. It’s important to bear this in mind when chewing over Nicola Sturgeon’s latest pronouncement. The SNP leader held a press conference on Tuesday morning to publish a paper on independence in advance of a plebiscite Sturgeon says will be held in 2023. She claims a mandate for such a vote from the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, in which the SNP and Greens ran on pro-referendum manifestos and won a majority of seats between them.

Tuesday

14 June 2022

John Ferry

Nicola Sturgeon’s Potemkin independence bid

In one sense Nicola Sturgeon’s new independence campaign launched today – which assumes there will be a second referendum within the next 18 months – does not signal anything new. Sturgeon did not unveil any new legislation. Nor did she submit a formal request for the UK government to allow a referendum to take place. The legal and political impediments to having a rerun of the 2014 vote remain. Most people in Scotland do not want a referendum next year. Polling shows there is no majority for secession, while the constitution is way down the list of people’s priorities. There is no incentive for Downing Street to concede even an inch of ground to the SNP-Green administration’s demands for having another go at ‘Scexit’.

Patrick O’Flynn

Is Boris willing to make the Rwanda plan work?

Priti Patel’s first go at deporting migrants to Rwanda is turning before our eyes into one of those answers from the TV quiz show Pointless – when you see the on-screen counter drop remorselessly towards zero. At the time of writing, the counter for the number of migrants to be flown out to Rwanda is down to seven – from an original list of 130. While Home Office officials continue to insist their chartered plane will take off tonight with at least some migrants on board, other parts of government do not seem so sure. So we could still be about to witness a completely pointless answer.

Steerpike

Parly bosses propose ‘Stop Brexit’ man clampdown

There's a spectre haunting Westminster: the spectre of Steve Bray. Steerpike envies those readers unfamiliar with the loud-mouthed protester, who has spent much of the past four years making life miserable for those who work in the House of Commons. Bray, known to many as 'Stop Brexit' man, spends a lot of his time disrupting interviews, shouting at parliament and heckling MPs and their staff. He and his supporters sometimes film the reactions of Tories they berate for social media, with past victims including backbenchers Lee Anderson and Paul Bristow. At least one parliamentary assistant has publicly confronted him in the street. Now though, it seems that Commons bosses have finally had enough.

Fergus Butler-Gallie

In defence of meddlesome priests

The British constitution is best understood as a dinner party. Imagine the key institutions of national life personified and sat around a table debating the issues of the day. True, as you and I picture this scene it is now a little late in the evening, the surroundings are worn and some hitherto unheard voices are beginning to loudly bark above the polite murmur of the older interlocutors. But the conversation carries on. One of the longest-standing participants in this national conversation is the Church of England; indeed, perhaps only the Crown has been part of it for longer. The traditions of Toryism and liberalism are comparative newcomers, Labour even more so. The BBC and the NHS have barely graduated from the children’s table.

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The police have bowed to the mob

On Saturday immigration enforcement officers went to Peckham to pick up a man suspected of overstaying his visa. When they arrived, a crowd of protesters turned up to stop the ‘immigration raid’, blocking the van from departing. When the police turned up, they also found their way blocked. Eventually, they gave up. The arrested man was released on bail. The Home Office released a statement which said that ‘preventing immigration enforcement teams from doing their job is unacceptable.’ This was accompanied by the universally understood but officially unstated caveat: not that we’d prevent you from preventing officers doing their job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Katy Balls

Is the row over Rwanda good for the government?

11 min listen

The government is fighting on two fronts today. Firstly defending is Rwandan immigration plan from a unified front of Bishops as the first flight is set to take off tonight. Secondly, the Northern Ireland protocol bill which was announced yesterday afternoon faces scrutiny on many fronts.Katy Balls talks with Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Ross Clark

Levelling up is failing

First the good news: the Office for National Statistics figures released today show that pay is rising at its fastest rate in two decades, with regular pay up by 4.2 per cent in the three months for February to April compared with a year earlier. Now the bad news: such is inflation that, in real terms, regular pay was actually down 2.2 per cent – lower than at any time in the past two decades except for a brief period in the autumn of 2011. So, yes, it isn’t just an illusion: we really are getting poorer. That is a big problem not just for households trying to make ends meet but also for the government, which at some point over the next two years will have to try to persuade voters to trust it with the economy.

Steerpike

Michael Gove’s mandarin meditation lessons

It's a stressful time in government. Inflation, strikes, Northern Ireland – it's all a bit 1970s, but without the decent tunes. Central to Boris Johnson's hopes of re-election is the levelling-up agenda: a task entrusted to the ever-effective Michael Gove, the Tory equivalent to Pulp Fiction's Winston Wolf. Managing all of Gove's responsibilities – which also include the Union, intergovernmental relations and the housing of refugees – is a near-impossible task: especially when trying to reverse decades of regional inequality. So Mr S was relieved to see that Gove and his mandarins are doing their bit to cater for their underlings.

Steerpike

Sturgeon squirms over Salmond

The economy is tanking, the public services are in peril. So what do you do if you're Nicola Sturgeon? Promise another independence referendum! That's right, the queen of the nats is out on tour again, dusting off all the great classics to keep her fanatical fan base happy. The First Minister will today publish the first in a 'series of papers' making the case for Scottish independence, amid much excited SNP chatter about a plebiscite in 2023. And why not? After all, the same trick worked for Sturgeon in 2016, 2017, 2018... Fortunately though, some of Scotland's less pliant media have grown tired of yet more press conferences at which ministers proclaim that independence is imminent and another poll is to be held (just not yet).

Roderick Crawford

The EU never understood Northern Ireland

At the heart of the crisis over the Protocol is its failure to deliver on its own stated aims. To understand this crisis, it is necessary to know some key aspects of the Protocol’s genesis and history. Exactly a month after Theresa May triggered Article 50, the European Commission was instructed by the member states (the European Council of 27) with ensuring the UK’s orderly withdrawal from the EU, including finding arrangements for the island of Ireland. That meant securing the Good Friday Agreement and avoiding a hard border.

Monday

13 June 2022

Katy Balls

The next Brexit battle

12 min listen

The Foreign Secretary has outlined fresh legislation to change the post-Brexit trade agreement with the EU today – allowing ministers to override parts of the Northern Ireland protocol. Whilst the government insists that this is not a breach of international law, critics remain unconvinced.‘I had one member of government say to me this bill is going to be a proxy on Boris Johnson’s leadership’ - Katy Balls.If this were a proxy, could this work in the Prime Minister’s favour? And why has the government not used the safety valve in the protocol itself which is to trigger Article 16?James Forsyth speaks to Katy Balls.

Brendan O’Neill

Carole Cadwalladr’s staggering victory against Arron Banks

Arron Banks, the pugnacious Brexiteer, has lost his claim for defamation against Carole Cadwalladr, the darling of the Brexit-loathing bourgeoisie. Banks brought the action in relation to two public utterances made by Ms Cadwalladr. First, her TED talk of 2019, in which she said: ‘And I’m not even going to go into the lies that Arron Banks has told about his covert relationship with the Russian government.’ And second, a tweet she posted, also in 2019, in which she linked to her TED talk and said: ‘If you haven’t watched it please do. I say he lied about his contact with the Russian govt. Because he did.