Politics Archives

Tuesday

19 Sep 2023

The truth about Bedales

Every now and again, my alma mater is in the news, and why wouldn’t it be? Britain is obsessed with schools and class. Bedales provides ample fodder for both: the boarding school in Hampshire is famously ‘liberal’ – and was so even when England was famously illiberal. Bedales, whose graduates include Lily Allen, Kirstie Allsopp and Daniel Day-Lewis, is the educational equivalent of Tatler smashed together with Vogue. Bedales hit the headlines again this week because it is the first school in the country to ditch GCSEs – those entering now will take just two, in maths and English. The rest will be a mixture of the usual subjects like

Debbie Hayton

Are the Tories still going to ban conversion therapy?

The clock is ticking on a bill to ban conversion therapy, at least for this year. Let’s hope that time runs out before it becomes law. The Tories had previously promised to ban the practice of attempting to change someone’s sexuality or gender identity, but the government appears to have had second thoughts. When Lib Dem MP Wera Hobhouse asked last week if the bill would be ready in time for the King’s Speech in November, Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt avoided the question. Instead, Mordaunt pointed out that, ‘those are abhorrent practices that sometimes have lifelong impacts on those who have had to endure them.’ Quite. So

Gavin Mortimer

Macron and Starmer are made for each other

It is Keir Starmer’s misfortune that he arrives in Paris today for a meeting with Emmanuel Macron at the moment Europe faces one of its gravest challenges of recent years. More than 11,000 migrants have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa in the last week, an unprecedented influx that has exposed the deep divisions within the EU. Labour’s leader reportedly wants to discuss how to better improve relations between Britain and the EU, but he may not have the full attention of the French president. Not only is Europe arguing amongst itself over how to tackle the migrant crisis, but Macron’s own party, Renaissance, is also at loggerheads over the

Steerpike

Humza Yousaf’s awkward Russia Today appearances

There’s nothing the Nats wouldn’t do to give their independence obsession a little more airtime. They’ll take the publicity from wherever they can get it – and that includes the pro-Putin Russia Today programme. It has emerged that First Minister Humza Yousaf appeared on the controversial channel twice in the past, first in 2013 and then again in 2017, when he was transport minister, after the annexation of Crimea. The SNP’s minister for Europe at the time, Yousaf talked in 2013 about how his party’s white paper on independence had helped people get ‘their questions answered’. ‘I’ve got no doubt at all the polls will continue in the trajectory that

Monday

18 Sep 2023

Steerpike

Red Wall poster girl Dehenna Davison quits as minister

With the polls pointing to a Tory thrashing, how many of the 2019 Red Wallers will win their seats next time? One who isn’t hanging around to find out is Dehenna Davison, the 30-year-old MP for Bishop Auckland. She announced back in November that she was standing down from parliament and today she has also declared that she is quitting her post as a junior minister for Levelling Up. In her resignation letter, Davison said it was ‘impossible’ to stay in the job while battling chronic migraines and that she wants to spend more time on constituency work. She now intends to focus her efforts on campaigning for one punch assault victims;

Kate Andrews

Liz Truss is no fiscal hawk

Was Liz Truss a fiscal hawk inside No. 10? That is the rather startling claim made by the former prime minister, speaking today at the Institute for Government about the future of economic growth. She has claimed public spending would be £35 billion lower over the next few years had her plans been followed, due to the real-term spending cuts that would have followed from not reopening the latest Spending Review. Moreover, she insists that her mini-Budget was not just about going for growth, but rather a ‘three-pronged approach’ that included ‘targeted tax freezes and reductions, supply side reform and holding public spending down.’ This is the first time we’ve

Ross Clark

Will Germany be the first to ditch its net zero commitments?

Things are not going well in Germany’s bid to reach net zero by 2045, five years earlier even than Britain’s own unrealistic target. For months, the German government has been trying to devise a way to save its heavy industry from high energy prices which are sending production fleeing to Asia. Just last year, chemicals giant BASF announced that it would invest in a new £10 billion plant in China rather than Europe, thanks to the cost of energy. Now, the government seems to have found a way. It is going to raid its £200 billion climate transition fund, which was supposed to invest in green technology. The fund was also

Gareth Roberts

Are we heading for a Sunak and Starmer podcast?

Theresa May always had a camp appeal. The clumsiness, the dancing, the incredible squareness. Mrs Thatcher never took that crown – she had too much of a hard edge – though it was a surprise to me to discover that Australians and Americans saw only the hair and the handbags and made her that most tedious and reductive of things: a gay icon. Bantering podcasts are now an essential part of public rehabilitation But unlike Thatcher, May had a dissociation from reality not only about trivialities but also about the really important stuff. Her recent declaration that she is ‘woke and proud’ is typical of her. It’s almost gloriously out-of-touch, and her adoption of it surely

Matthew Lynn

Mark Carney’s attack on Liz Truss has disgraced the Bank of England

He was a ‘global superstar’. He was the smartest finance official of his generation. He would bring global contacts and experience. When Mark Carney was appointed as the first foreigner to run the Bank of England he was meant to be a refreshing, technocratic figure who would blow some of the cobwebs off the institution. And yet, with his attack on Liz Truss for creating ‘Argentina on the Channel’, Carney has become a disgrace to the Bank. No former governor should ever be so openly partisan. Indeed, if anyone imposed Argentinian-style monetary policies it was possibly Carney himself. It is unheard of for a former governor of the Bank of

Steerpike

Liz Truss takes aim at the BBC, OBR and Mark Carney

She’s back! One year on from the mini-Budget, Liz Truss arrived at the Institute for Government, flashing grins and firing off one-liners. The speech was of the pure Trussite vintage – little humility but much recrimination, with fingers labelled at the Usual Suspects of ‘corporatist social democracy’. Then it was on to the Q&A – the first time she has faced questions in such a format since departing No. 10. And Truss certainly did not disappoint, giving both barrels to her myriad of critics. What did she think about Mark Carney and his claims about ‘Argentina on the Channel?’ A snort and then a dismissal of the ‘finger-pointing’ from those

Katy Balls

What Liz Truss’s big speech was really about

14 min listen

Liz Truss took the stage this morning for her first major intervention on the economy since leaving No. 10. Her speech at the Institute for Government comes almost a year to the day since her mini-Budget saw the markets panic and her premiership come to an abrupt end not long after. What did she have to say? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson, Kate Andrews and James Heale. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Andrew Tettenborn

Who cares if this UCL academic ‘undermined’ Britain’s history?

There’s a long list of academics, some of whom are on the right, who have had their lives made difficult by fellow academics. Now, for a change, a left-wing academic is feeling the heat. Dr Jenny Bulstrode, a history lecturer at University College London (UCL), has been accused of ‘undermining the history of Britain’ without evidence. The allegation came after Bulstrode claimed in a paper that an English ironware maker, Henry Cort, stole his invention from slaves. Before conservatives engage in too much self-congratulation, however, they should stop and think carefully about whether this attack against Bulstrode is really something to celebrate. History and Technology, where Bulstrode’s article appeared in June, is a

Peter Fortune

Why did Sadiq Khan say I was ‘thick’?

Sadiq Khan thinks that I’m ‘thick’. That, at least, is what he told me during a fractious Mayor’s Question Time last week. The Mayor lashed out after I said he was ‘a bit slippy’. Khan then responded by saying: ‘Honestly chair, for someone who reads a lot, he ain’t half thick is he?’. To be fair to the Mayor, he has since said sorry – and I’ve accepted his apology. But the exchange was a telling one: it reveals that Khan, who has been London’s Mayor since 2016, is rattled. And the backlash over Ulez (Ultra Low Emission Zone) is to blame. I’ve been digging away on Ulez for months. Khan

Katy Balls

What Liz Truss’s big speech is really about

Liz Truss will take to the stage this morning for her first major intervention on the economy since leaving No. 10 last year. A year on from the mini-budget which saw the markets panic – and her premiership come to an abrupt end not long after – Truss will use her speech at the Institute for Government to argue that her original diagnosis was the right one: that the status quo cannot remain. The former prime minister will point to the fact there is agreement across the political divide that the lack of economic growth is a problem. Truss will lay the cause of the problem on ’25 years of

Steerpike

Watch: Mark Carney takes a pop at Liz Truss and Brexiteers

Poor Liz Truss. Today is the day Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister had hoped to launch an impassioned defence of her legacy. In a speech this morning marking the approaching anniversary of her disastrous mini budget, Truss planned to talk up her economic plan and attack her critics among ‘the London dinner party circuit’. But it looks like a member of that particular set has beaten Truss to it. Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney said that Brexiteers wanted to turn Britain into ‘Singapore on Thames’. Instead, he said, Truss and her colleagues, delivered ‘Argentina on the Channel’ because of their misguided views on economics. Carney’s withering verdict was delivered

Lloyd Evans

Russell Brand’s gags are coming back to haunt him

It has now officially all gone wrong for stand-up’s sex god. Ahead of Saturday night’s Channel 4 documentary about Russell Brand, and the newspaper disclosures in the Sunday Times, there was speculation that the witnesses could be opportunistic attention-seekers. The account of the first complainant appears to undermine that idea. On the same day as her alleged encounter with Brand, she apparently visited a rape crisis centre, according to medical records, and accused him of wrongdoing. If the case reaches court, her testimony could be hard for Brand – who strongly denies all the allegations against him, said his relationships have all been consensual and that he has ‘evidence directly

Sam Leith

The ‘naive cynicism’ of Russell Brand’s hasty defenders

I can’t imagine that Channel 4’s investigative slot Dispatches has had such an audience in living memory. On Saturday evening, many thousands of people who seldom if ever watch terrestrial television – I was one of them – will have tuned in at 9pm, just like the old days, to watch a conventional broadcast. Most of these people will already have known the substance of what was in the programme, because it was a joint investigation with a good-old-fashioned newspaper – whose version of the story was published a few hours earlier and was eagerly and widely read online. Quite a moment for the so-called ‘legacy media’. The gist of the

Alec Marsh

A driver’s case for 20mph limits

Speeding kills, we’re told. But in the right circumstances, exceeding the limit is no bad thing. Take motorways: few drivers seem to stick to 70mph, yet most journeys are perfectly safe. Indeed, when I’m behind the wheel, I like putting my foot down as much as the next driver. Fortunately in the 30 years since I passed my test I’ve been pretty lucky; I’ve clocked up two or three speed awareness courses, but somehow I’ve managed to keep hold of my licence. Yet despite my run ins with the DVLA, I firmly believe there’s a case for 20mph limits in certain areas. This new speed limit has been rolled out on

Sunday

17 Sep 2023

Dalibor Rohac

Poland and Hungary could come to regret their Ukraine grain ban

The row over Ukrainian grain imports shows that politicians in Eastern Europe can be their own worst enemies. Five Eastern European countries – Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, led by Poland and Hungary – failed to convince other EU member states that the existing ban on imports of grain from Ukraine, imposed earlier this year, should be extended beyond 15 September. As a result, at least three of them – Poland, Hungary and Slovakia – will now adopt their own restrictions, in defiance of the EU. What is all too clear is that the countries seeking a ban, particularly Poland, have elevated short-term political considerations above their own long-term interest in Ukraine. Their

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Cleverly says questions to answer over Russell Brand allegations

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly: We must be careful when listening to the voices of the ‘powerless’ Comedian Russell Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse. Brand denies the allegations against him and said his relationships have all been consensual. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg asked Cleverly if he thought there were ‘wider questions the industry must answer’. Cleverly agreed, and suggested that abuse was particularly challenging in places where there are ‘acute differentials in power’. On Libya: After devastating floods hit Libyan city Derna, Cleverly said that the UK was doing what it could to help, but pointed out that the lack of an effective government in