Politics Archives

Tuesday

2 Mar 2021

A guide to parliamentary gadgets

After famously criticising Rishi Sunak for his ‘£180 Bluetooth coffee mug’ back in July last year, Labour’s Angela Rayner seems to have started something of a gadget war. On Monday she came under fire for claiming a pair of Apple AirPods on parliamentary expenses. It was then swiftly pointed out that Peter Bone has also splashed out on some tax-payer funded ear gear. When it comes to the latest tech trends, Westminster is clearly leading the way. So here’s where to procure some parliamentary gadgetry of your own: Bluetooth coffee cup, Rishi Sunak Angela Rayner’s online sleuthing may have led her to the conclusion that Rishi’s snazzy bluetooth self-heating mug set him back £180 but there are less expensive models

Monday

1 Mar 2021

Steerpike

Another stitch-up in the Salmond inquiry

It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up: just as Watergate exposed the workings of the Nixon White House the Salmond inquiry is giving the world a glimpse of how the SNP works in Edinburgh. And how the SNP-led committee investigating Nicola Sturgeon is shameless in its determination to rig the system. First, the committee tried not to publish Alex Salmond’s full evidence against Nicola Sturgeon citing legal reasons. That defence fell apart when The Spectator went to the High Court. Then, outrageously, the Crown Office (Scotland’s state prosecutors) told the committee to censor Salmond’s evidence. Leading to a question: what on earth was it playing at by interfering with parliament? Would the Crown Prosecution

Isabel Hardman

Is Gavin Williamson doing enough for deprived children?

There are just days until all pupils return to English schools, and Conservative MPs are becoming increasingly concerned about what state many of these students will be in when they arrive back in the classroom after the best part of a year trying to learn from home. At today’s Education Questions in the House of Commons, a number of backbenchers pressed Education Secretary Gavin Williamson on the work the government is doing to get the most disadvantaged children back up to speed. Both Jack Brereton and Julian Sturdy had tabled questions asking ‘what support his department is providing to help children catch up on lost learning during the Covid-19 outbreak’.

Katy Balls

The UK’s Covid strategy gets a vaccine boost

Matt Hancock had good news for today’s press conference: the Health Secretary said the effectiveness of vaccines was beginning to show in the data. While hospitalisations are falling across the board, they are falling the fastest among the priority groups that have received the vaccine. Deputy Chief Medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam said that both the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccine are reducing hospitalisations by 80 per cent in the over-70s. Hancock said that the most recent data showed that protection from the Oxford vaccine after 35 days is even greater than Pfizer – though both vaccines produce an 80 per cent reduction in hospitalisations. He said the vaccine results could ‘help

Steerpike

EU leaders’ vaccine sniping backfires

The eyes of the world have been on Britain’s vaccination programme in recent months, as the UK government embarked on a dramatic push to get our population inoculated by prioritising first doses. During this time, the naysayers have been plentiful – with some UK commentators and plenty of politicians abroad keen to cast doubt over the strategy. What everyone agreed was that time would tell. But now it appears we have promising results, with a new pre-print of a study published by Public Health England today. The study shows that just one dose of both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines has significantly reduced Covid-19 infections among those aged 70 and

Mairia Cahill

Why did Roy Greenslade demonise me when I accused an IRA member of rape?

Does it really matter if someone who was a newspaper editor, columnist and journalism professor has now admitted to being an unapologetic supporter for the ‘physical force’ carried out by the IRA? In short, yes it does, very much. You might not have heard of Roy Greenslade until the story this weekend that the former Daily Mirror editor, and Sun executive outed himself as an ardent IRA supporter. But we now know that, while Greenslade had platformed himself in some very powerful publications as commentator and champion of media ethics, he was, arguably, a master of cognitive dissonance when it came to his own profession. As one of the targets of

Henry Hill

Welsh politics shows how devolution has failed

Wales often gets left out when people write and think about the Union. People denounce Brexit as an ‘English’ project despite the Principality voting Leave. Now Scotland is (finally) stealing the headlines with the Salmond scandal, and Northern Ireland looks like it will soon be centre-stage as Unionist opposition to the Government’s Northern Irish Protocol hardens. But something genuinely interesting is happening in Welsh politics. If a new poll published for St David’s Day is any indication, politics in Cardiff Bay could be about to become much more polarised around the constitutional question. Labour have held office in Wales ever since the advent of devolution in 1999, and always been

Ian Acheson

What Roy Greenslade doesn’t understand about the Troubles

Belleek is the most westerly point in the United Kingdom. It’s a small village, right on Northern Ireland’s frontier where Country Fermanagh reaches out towards the Atlantic. The final destination for many motorists driving across a now invisible border are the beaches of County Donegal. It is the place we learned this weekend where journalist Roy Greenslade was persuaded to support the violent extremism of the provisional IRA in the 1970s and 80s. Greenslade’s views on republican terrorism were, of course, an open secret for many years, as he rose to senior positions at the Sunday Times, the Daily Mirror and, latterly, became a professor of journalism at City, University

Isabel Hardman

Can the government contain the Brazilian variant?

10 min listen

Contact tracers are trying to find a person infected with the Brazilian variant of coronavirus, after they incorrectly returned their testing form. How serious is the new strain’s arrival, and could it have been stopped with a stricter quarantine policy? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Annabel Denham

20 taxes Rishi should bin

When Rishi Sunak takes to the Despatch Box on Wednesday it will be against a backdrop of colossal national debt, the recent rise in government bond yields and the ongoing Coronavirus crisis. The British state owes £2.1 trillion, ten times the size of the entire economy of an independent Scotland. Yet some concerns over the health of the public finances are misguided – or at least exaggerated. The increase in borrowing to pay for Covid does not itself have to be repaid (at least in the short term). Why? Because provided the government can continue to make the interest payments, debt can simply be rolled over. What’s more, the UK

Tom Goodenough

Why did I pay £9,000 for Roy Greenslade to lecture me on media ethics?

What qualifies Roy Greenslade to lecture students on media ethics? It certainly doesn’t appear to be his own attitude towards telling the truth. When he taught me at City, Greenslade liked to hold forth on the vices of the tabloid press. He was quieter on his own red top past, neglecting to often mention his rise to the top of the ranks at the Sun and the Daily Mirror. Nor, too, did he talk much about allegedly having a hand in faking a spot the ball competition. It is now clear there was something else Greenslade was eager not to talk about during his long career in journalism: his secret support of

Nick Tyrone

What’s the point of Nigel Farage?

Nigel Farage is in some ways a victim of his own success. It was the political threat he posed during the coalition era that more than anything else caused David Cameron to pledge to hold an in-out referendum on EU membership if he won a majority. It is safe to say that without his persistence, we would never have left the European Union. Yet Farage is now politically redundant and what’s so strange about that is that he did it all to himself. When Farage declared that the Brexit ‘war is over’ after the government announced its trade deal with the EU on Christmas Eve, my first thought was that

Sunday

28 Feb 2021

Kate Andrews

Donald Trump tightens his grip on the Republican party

‘Do you miss me yet,’ Donald Trump asked the crowd in his opening remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference this afternoon: the most important annual conference for the Republican party. The former president was given the keynote address at CPAC, with anticipation that he might have a big announcement to make about his future plans, including the possibility of another run for the White House. In a speech that ran for roughly 90 minutes, Trump never committed himself to a 2024 bid, but he teased it several times. ‘I may even decide to beat them for a third time,’ he said at the start of the speech: the first

Patrick O’Flynn

The greatest threat to Boris’s legacy

The government is starting to have an opinion poll problem, but it has nothing to do with any great threat from Keir Starmer or the Labour party. While the Tory ratings have gone from high to low 40s and Boris Johnson is not as extraordinarily popular as he was in January last year before the advent of the first dry cough of coronavirus, that’s not the issue of concern at all. On the contrary, the problem is that the Prime Minister may be getting addicted to favourable ratings and increasingly unwilling to put them in jeopardy by taking difficult or unpopular decisions. The latest evidence for this view came in

Kate Andrews

Labour doubles down on opposition to tax hikes

Rishi Sunak kept his Budget cards close to his chest this morning as he toured the studios for both BBC One’s The Andrew Marr show and Sky News’ Ridge on Sunday. The Chancellor batted away questions about spending and possible tax hikes, repeating over and over again that it’s only ‘appropriate’ to wait until the fiscal event this Wednesday to reveal the details of his plans. There were hints towards areas that have taken the Chancellor’s interest, including a passing comment about ‘business investment’ on Sky News – a bugbear of many on the right, who have long-argued that the UK’s corporate tax rate regime is ungenerous to businesses that

Benedict Spence

The sad decline of The Simpsons

In the latest episode of ‘Americans Do the Funniest Things,’ it has emerged that The Simpsons is to replace the white voice actor for the character of Dr. Julius Hibbert with a black actor. Hibbert, for those who don’t know him, is a mainstay of the show — a family doctor recognised by his white lab coat, gentle manner and signature chuckle. He is perhaps the least offensive character, despite being a Republican, a suspected morphine addict, and a member of Mensa, who revised his official position on the safety of binge eating after buying a 12 per cent stake in an all-you-can-eat restaurant, and who won’t conduct unethical procedures himself, but

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Chancellor says rebalancing the books won’t ‘happen overnight’

Rishi Sunak – Government will do ‘whatever it takes’ to protect people and businesses Ahead of the Budget this Wednesday, both Andrew Marr and Sophy Ridge were joined by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. With the government’s roadmap for ending the lockdown having been published last week, all eyes are now on Sunak and the economic levers that he will be pulling as the pandemic hopefully begins its journey out of the news and into history. Sophy Ridge asked the Chancellor if the government’s furlough scheme would be extended beyond the current deadline of April. Without going as far as to say ‘yes’, Sunak suggested that an extension

Anthony Browne

The Budget could be an awkward moment for fiscal conservatives

There is no getting around the fact that these are awkward times for fiscal conservatives, such as myself. It has never been harder to make the case for lower taxes. We have the largest national debt for half a century as we come out of the worst recession for three hundred years, with zero political appetite for public spending cuts. It is essential – for both the Conservative party’s political prospects and the country’s economic prospects – that the UK retain our reputation for sound finance. This is why the Treasury Select Committee have been gathering evidence on the options for tax after coronavirus, with our recommendations to be published

Freddy Gray

Is CPAC now TPAC?

14 min listen

Freddy Gray, Amber Athey and Matt McDonald discuss 2021’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, ahead of Donald Trump’s appearance tomorrow.

Saturday

27 Feb 2021

Kate Andrews

Are the Tories about to ditch one of their biggest policy achievements?

We already know much of what will be in Rishi Sunak’s Budget next week. Another £30bn for Covid-relief measures: furlough scheme into the summer, stamp duty holiday and the uplift in universal credit (which is also expected to be time-limited, despite pressure from the opposition to make a permanent adjustment). But this year’s spending splurges are becoming a footnote in a Budget dominated by the prospect of tax rises, for which the Chancellor is already receiving backlash from the left and right. Rumours of a corporation tax hike, circling for a week now, have not been denied. There’s also talk of capital gains tax coming under the Treasury’s spotlight, with