Politics

According to an adviser to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, sanctions-hit Moscow intends to slowly move the finance of state companies and political players away from London, Zurich and Frankfurt toward Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. ‘We think we can match what we lose from the West with what China offers,’ the adviser told Politico. The Cameron government hit back with anonymous quotes in the same Politico story, dismissing the notion that Chinese financing could replace Western money: ‘The Chinese cannot and will not give them this money.’ Carl Bildt, who also spoke to the magazine, seconded the emotion, noting the ‘great fanfare’ when Russian officials land in Beijing,

What a godsend to Ukip José Manuel Barroso must be.  On his recent short visit to the UK he not only managed to tell the British public that limits to immigration (desired by the overwhelming majority of the British public) would be ‘illegal’.  He also managed to tell us that if we left the EU, Britain would have ‘zero’ influence in the world. I do wonder who bureaucrats like Mr Barroso think they are going to persuade.  Are they simply relying on swaying or scaring us on the presumption that we have no historical knowledge or memory?  Because this latest message can’t possibly work, can it?  Most British people don’t

The British recruits who have joined Isis are not exceptions. They flourish in a culture in which it is so commonplace to offer support to authoritarian regimes and movements that few bother to condemn it. Free speech ought to mean the freedom to challenge and criticise in all except the most tightly defined circumstances. Instead in Britain tolerance has become indifference; a lazy desire to live in our comfortable bubbles. The dominant culture views vigorous criticism as rude or insensitive – or, to use that popular and completely meaningless school-prefect putdown, “inappropriate.” More often that not, criticism is taken down and used as evidence of the critic’s failings, his or her

In a 1978 interview to mark her third year as leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher addressed public concerns with immigration, stating that ‘people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped’. Goodness knows what word she would use to describe the situation we face today. Anyone who has knocked on doors or surveyed their constituents in recent years will tell you the public have had enough. Immigration into the UK is the number one concern to the British public and, in my judgment, a party that does not address it will not win. In 2003 427,000 people arrived in Britain. In the years that followed

When I first learned about Athenian democracy as a teenager I was baffled that they could have decided government positions by lottery; what was to stop someone totally unsuitable and useless from ending up in control? But then I look at the current Labour front bench and think, how bad could it be? I’m thinking in particular of Shadow Leader of the House Angela Eagle, whose performance on Question Time last night was a perfect illustration of how low the tone of so much political debate is – especially that involving manufactured outrage. The outrage in question was over Lord Freud’s comments about the disabled and the minimum wage, which Labour cooked up in

Is Number 10 really preparing for a U-turn on the European Arrest Warrant? After Coffee House reported some odd manoeuvres by chief whip Michael Gove involving him suggesting to Tory MPs that it might be better for the government not to opt back into the EAW, the topic came up at this afternoon’s lobby briefing. The Number 10 spokesperson told journalists that: ‘The government has set out the areas where it is, in principle, seeking to opt back in. We want to secure European agreement on that and then we will take a final view on which ones we opt back into.’ That sounds rather like there is room for