Politics

There are eerie parallels with 1970s at the moment, I say in the Times today. The inflation of that decade was principally caused by the abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 and the oil shock of 1973-4, which saw the price of a barrel of oil go from $3 a barrel to $12. Today, we have seen huge amounts of quantitative easing from central banks to keep the economy going through Covid – and unlike the post-financial crash QE, which was largely used to repair banks’ balance sheets, it has gone into the real economy. On top of that, we have now seen the gas price rise fourfold. There are other supply issues too; just look at how the shortage of lorry drivers is affecting petrol deliveries.

It didn’t take long for the open-borders brigade to try and politicise the magnificent feat of British teenager Emma Raducanu in winning the US Open women’s singles. Rather than just revelling in the general outbreak of joy in the country, or praising the astonishing maturity of Emma’s performance, the usual blue-tick suspects piled onto Twitter within minutes of her victory to argue, or imply, that the fact Emma was born in another country (she moved here from Canada aged two) proved that immigration in all its guises is always a good thing. Times columnist Sathnam Sanghera stated the case plainly: ‘Half Romanian, half Chinese. Born in Canada, brought up in the UK. Immigration enriches us, and always has done.

Today was the first PMQs clash between Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer in a packed Commons chamber. Starmer tried to pin down Johnson on whether he could guarantee that no one would have to pay their home to fund their care. Johnson dodged the question. But Starmer was limited by the fact that Labour can’t say how it would raise funds for the NHS backlog and social care, allowing Johnson to claim that Labour has no plan. Starmer is a naturally cautious politician, but his caution is leaving the field clear for Johnson on social care. Things would have been more difficult for the Prime Minister today if Labour was explicitly backing a tax on assets.

This afternoon, the JCVI has essentially passed the buck on vaccinating 12- to 15-year-olds. It has declared that the health benefits of a vaccine for this age group are ‘marginally greater' than the risks of Covid. But it has left the decision on whether to actually vaccinate them to the chief medical officers. It would surely have been better for the committee to have made a decision one way or the other In the past few weeks, tensions between ministers and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation have been rising. Ministers are keen to get on with an autumn booster shots campaign for the elderly and to vaccinate more school children. Yet the JCVI has only approved boosters for those with weaker immune systems.

Nietzsche would have been great at Twitter. He excelled at epigrams, which are to philosophy as the fortune-cookie motto is to Chinese takeout, and he loved to hate. Scholars divide as to whether his epigrammatic excellence came from using a typewriter — he was the earliest philosophical adopter of this technology — or because he was no good at joined-up thinking but very good at vituperating about the news. It was Nietzsche who spotted that the emerging theme of democratic society was not the reign of reason and universal brotherhood, but the ‘stupidification of the world’ and resentment. He called it ressentiment. Philosophy goes better in French, and Nietzsche had lately turned against Wagner, anti-Semitism and German nationalism.

J.D. Vance is the man Republicans have been praying for since the day Donald Trump stormed to the party’s presidential nomination five years ago. He has a lot of the traits conservatives liked about Trump: Vance, too, is a political outsider with proven appeal to an audience beyond politics, thanks to his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Like Trump, Vance offers himself as an avatar for the people who have been discarded by globalization and demonized by a left-wing media and education establishment. And he is as radical as Trump — maybe more so — in his willingness to reject the merely liberal side of American conservatism. Trump defied elite orthodoxy on trade and immigration. Vance adds proposals to curb the tech companies and tax Ivy League endowments. But if J.D.

John Bercow – ‘I do not identify with the Conservative party’ Last night, it was revealed that the former Commons Speaker John Bercow had not merely distanced himself from his former party, but had disowned it altogether. Interviewed by the Observer, he castigated the Conservative party as ‘reactionary, populist, nationalistic and sometimes even xenophobic’. Bercow’s jump across the divide may come as no surprise to some, but in doing so he has become the first ex-Speaker to ever make such a move back into the political arena. Trevor Phillips spoke to Bercow, once an enthusiastic figure on the Tory right, about the reasons for his change of allegiance: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1406523980979355655?

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s June 2021 World edition. Click here to subscribe. Somewhere along the way, Jon Stewart discovered he could make stupid people laugh by smirking at Fox News clips — and the world has never been the same since. Stewart, who anchored The Daily Show until 2015, is often remembered as the progenitor of a long line of left-wing topical comedians, from Stephen Colbert to John Oliver to Samantha Bee. Yet before that he was something else: the most gloriously subversive personality on television. The Daily Show’s heyday came at the turn of the century, just after Stewart had taken it over from Craig Kilborn.

Oh dear. Appearing on BBC Two's Politics Live this afternoon, Labour left winger Nadia Whittome refused to condemn the violent protesters in Bristol last night that left 20 policeman injured including two in a serious condition.  Despite being asked four times by presenter Jo Coburn, Whittome would only say 'I'm not going to get into condemning protesters when we don't know what's happened yet. We need a full investigation into what has happened.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlxijNsB6kA It is worth noting that all four of Bristol's Labour MPs and the city's Labour mayor Marvin Rees have already criticised the actions of the protesters, with Rees claiming it was 'selfish, self-indulgent, self-centred violence.' https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1373921295054831616?