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In what I supposed we should see as a sign of progress, the government has decided not to destroy its own school reforms, by revoking the first 18 clauses of the recently-published Schools Bill. I disclosed two weeks ago in the Daily Telegraph that many ex-ministers were up in arms at what they saw as the revenge of ‘The Blob’, the bureaucratic forces that have been against school reform.
Liz Truss has been in Madrid this week, talking tough on Taiwan. In the face of continued Chinese aggression, Truss is keen to support the island republic, such as by boosting arms sales there. Yet when pressed this morning on LBC, Truss struggled to add more detail, suggesting that 'the defence that Taiwan need is already being provided through commercial providers by a variety of nations.' It comes after a mixed performance at the Foreign Affairs committee on Tuesday, in which Truss appeared baffled about reported delays to the UK's China strategy, which was supposed to be passed to the cabinet last week. Her top official, Sir Philip Barton, claimed it was almost finalised but that he couldn't remember when he last saw it.
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and his four deputies submitted themselves to a public grilling last Tuesday. The State of London debate was chaired by James O’Brien and broadcast live on LBC. ‘I will endeavour to speak as little as possible,’ quipped the garrulous radio host who maintained his line of larky, locker-room banter throughout. ‘Sadiq Khan and the deputies,’ he said, ‘It sounds like the most rubbish band of all time.’ And he ribbed the mayor for ‘dancing like a crazy man’ at the premiere of Abba Voyage in the East End. Clearly a tight and cosy friendship there. Khan opened with a sermon about how ‘humbled’ he felt by his re-election as mayor last year.
So we come to the end of Pride month. We’re all now familiar with the rituals: the rainbow flag plastered across everything from sandwiches to mouthwash, the vapid statements of obeisance from big businesses and institutions. 2022 has seen a bumper crop of these. Rainbow bullets displayed on Twitter by the US Marines. Central London bedecked with the ‘progress Pride’ flag and its ever-expanding mysterious arrows and circles. Even the Halifax piled in, suggesting its customers close their bank accounts if they oppose a policy allowing staff to display their personal pronouns on name tags.
Most of the time I have an easy time of it on social media, with tweeters being nice about my colourful attire, liking my cooking hacks or flowers. But this week I had a dose of toxic hate. My son, the MP Danny Kruger, was unwise enough to join a debate in the Commons, saying he didn’t think women should have complete ‘bodily autonomy’ in the case of abortion as there’s another body – the baby’s – involved. I don’t agree with him, any more than I agree with his stance on assisted dying. He’s anti, I’m in favour. But that’s fine. I still love and admire him.
No one should be too perturbed by Nicola Sturgeon's latest referendum pronouncements. There will not be a referendum next year. The thought of the First Minister flying to London to start secession negotiations after gaining a majority of votes in Scotland at the next general election is Pythonesque in its absurdity. At some point this century a politician might emerge who kicks off an era-defining trend of breaking apart established liberal democracies – but that politician is unlikely to be Nicola Sturgeon. Scotland can, and will, ultimately shrug its shoulders at this week's Holyrood melodrama. The same goes for the First Minister's latest attempt to create an economic narrative to justify exiting the UK.
What with Covid, Ukraine and the levelling-up agenda, fiscal probity is somewhat old-fashioned now in Westminster. So it's unsurprising then that the billion-pound boondoggle of HS2 carries on winding its way through the political process, despite mounting costs and time delays. Having dragged on for more than a dozen years, the, er, high-speed rail project has acquired something of a reputation for mismanagement. So it's perhaps unsurprising then that the company between the scheme, HS2 limited, is now hiring for a new 'narrative manager' to develop and maintain the 'core HS2 story' on a salary of up to £45,000. Looks like the 'story' will have a happy ending for the lucky hire at least.
It is a great and ancient right of all freeborn Englishmen, stretching back far beyond the reaches of our recorded history. From Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution, it has been woven into each of the defining constitutional moments of the British story, a principle bled and died for on the battlefields of Europe. It is, of course, the right to make a tit of yourself. Whitehall’s Stop Brexit Man has been the most vociferous pursuer of that right in recent years. Steve Bray, with his Brussels blue top hat and shouty megaphone demeanour, loves to make a tit of himself. He marches around Westminster barking inanities at any unsuspecting Tory MP, usually something demented about Russia and Brexit.
As if the Church of England didn’t have enough to worry about with leaky roofs, empty churches and lack of money to pay priests, it now has the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice, or ACRJ. Appointed a year ago, this group of twelve of the great and good, under ex-Labour Cabinet minister Paul Boateng, has just published its first report. This document is certainly full of good intentions. Whether it has much to offer the ordinary churchgoer, or for that matter the Church of England as a whole, is rather more doubtful. Go into any church this Sunday, and it’s a racing certainty that you won’t find much old-fashioned racism.
Oh dear. We all remember Captain Tom, KBE, beloved national icon and centenarian philanthropist. In the depths of Covid, the second world war veteran raised Britain's spirits with his 100 laps of his back garden to raise oodles of cash for the NHS. But now the charity set up in Moore's memory could be in a bit of a jam. For the foundation is facing a formal inquiry into its set up following concerns about the way in which it is spending its funds. Whoops! Earlier this year the Charity Commission started probing the foundation amid concerns about the way it is governed. But now that has escalated into a full inquiry after fresh evidence emerged of potentially serious misconduct.
Andrew Roberts: Henry, at Davos, you said the dividing line between Russia and Ukraine should return to the status quo ante because pursuing the war beyond that point could turn it into a war not about the freedom of Ukraine but into a war against Russia itself. You came under a good deal of criticism for that, not least from Mr Zelensky. How is the world going to find a new equilibrium after this, however the war ends? Henry Kissinger: The purpose of the Davos statement was to point out that the issue of war aims needed to be faced before the momentum of war made it politically unmanageable. When Zelensky commented, he hadn’t read what I had said. In his most recent statements he has essentially accepted what I outlined in Davos.
If you had to take a guess on which American political party would produce the first Mexican-born Congresswoman, which one would it be? The Democrats? Or the party of Donald Trump? As though to prove that nothing in American politics today is predictable, it is indeed the latter. Two weeks ago Mayra Flores flipped a Democrat-friendly Texas Congressional seat in a special election and became both the first Republican Latina representative from the state of Texas and the first Mexican-born member of the House. She even thanked Trump for her victory. Everything about her win bucks the expectations of the country that now exist outside its borders. For instance, consider the campaign against her. For the foreign press, the Democrat party is presumed to be the party of anti-racism, right?
I made it through the airport crush to Berlin at the beginning of last week to see how Germany is faring under Olaf Scholz, Angela Merkel’s tough-minded centre-left successor. Under Merkel, Germany was important because it was the key to EU decision-making, but towards the end of her chancellorship, the country slowed down, there was too little change and, as we now know, Merkel misjudged Vladimir Putin’s revanchist ambitions and thirst for personal glory. In talking to Scholz, I did not get the impression that he has any illusions about whom he is dealing with.
Nicola Sturgeon presents Scotland as a country outraged by Brexit and straining at the leash of the United Kingdom. She said she wants a second referendum on 19 October next year. But she has no powers to call one and has already referred herself to the Supreme Court, which is likely to confirm that only the UK parliament can bring into being a referendum on the future of the UK. So her call for a referendum date is, to all intents and purposes, a stunt. The SNP and their Green allies stood on pro-referendum manifestos last year and between them captured a majority of Holyrood seats. Sturgeon feels that justifies another vote. But that logic has already been rejected by the UK government, which says that now is not the time.
Boris Johnson has always been a celebrity politician. It is one of the reasons why the normal rules of politics have so often not applied to him. This status has given him political reach and put him on first-name terms with the public. It makes it easier for him to command media attention than other politicians: a fact that he turned to his advantage in 2016 and 2019. But this strength is now becoming a weakness. Johnson’s ability to dominate politics means that the country is now polarising into pro- and anti-Boris camps. The worry for him is that he has more opponents than supporters. Last week’s by-elections suggest people are prepared to vote tactically to give him a kicking. ‘His celebrity is working against him,’ laments one secretary of state.
The UK's economy grew by 0.8 per cent between January and March this year, according to this morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics. This means real GDP is now just 0.7 per cent above its pre-pandemic levels. On the face of it, it's fairly grim news. The spectacular growth originally forecast for this year, making up for lost time in lockdown, did not transpire in the first three months of the year. Signs of a weak economy are starting to show. While consumer spending was up by 0.6 per cent in the first quarter, business investment fell by the same amount, down 9.2 per cent overall from its pre-pandemic levels.
Boris Johnson divides Britons in a way few other politicians manage. To his dwindling group of supporters, he is the hero who Got Brexit Done; to his detractors, he is a villain, edging the country towards a dark place. He is, according to Alastair Campbell, Britain’s ‘accidental fascist’. But if you stand back from the Westminster hurly-burly you can see Boris for what he is: a carefully constructed empty space onto which Britons have, over the years, been invited to project their hopes and fears; one whose purpose has been to further the personal ambition for power of the very real but (so far as the public are concerned) largely unknown Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
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The campaign for a second independence referendum is well and truly on, as Nicola Sturgeon tours the airwaves this week. But can the SNP will Indyref2 into existence, given Boris Johnson is very unlikely to allow it? Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth on the podcast, in which James suggests that, perhaps, Sturgeon doesn't even want an independence referendum right now.
A tasty duel at PMQs today. The party leaders were absent and their understudies, Dominic Raab and Angela Rayner, traded insults across the dispatch box. Their styles are polar opposites. Raab is laconically deadly. Rayner is brashly entertaining. And their sartorial choices reflect their different approaches. She wore a chic white frock offset with black side panels – quietly fetching. He was in a dull, slush-grey suit – a ruthless advocate reporting for duty. Battle commenced. Rayner claimed that Boris’s overseas trip was proof that he had ‘fled the country’. And she mocked his promise to remain in office for years on end. ‘Limping on until 2030. Will the cabinet prop him for this long?
What is it about Angela Rayner that so thoroughly irks so many Conservative MPs and their friends in the press? The Daily Telegraph could scarcely contain itself last week when it reported – exclusively! – that Labour’s deputy leader had attended a Glyndebourne performance of The Marriage of Figaro even as – get this! – other things were happening elsewhere. Not only had she attended the opera, she was seen attending it. Worse still, she was spotted drinking champagne. The nerve and the state of her! Dominic Raab, whose parliamentary performances make Iain Duncan Smith’s seem alert, agile and vibrant, was at it again today. ‘Where was the right honourable lady when the comrades were on the picket line last Thursday?’ he demanded.