Why Sunak wants to ban vapes
11 min listen
Rishi Sunak has outlined plans to ban disposable vapes, and is hoping to change vape packaging to make it less appealing to children. Why? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.
Politics
Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Monday
Ireland is falling out of love with Sinn Fein
Is the Sinn Fein star starting to wane? Support for the party has hit its lowest level for four years according to a poll for the influential Business Post newspaper. While Sinn Fein still remains the most popular party in the Republic, it has dropped seven points since October 2023. Sinn Fein can only be all things to all people for so long A reason for the loss of support has been its prevarication around the question of immigration; riots gripped Dublin in late November after an attack by an Algerian man on three children in the heart of the city. Since then, the so-called ‘land of a thousand welcomes’ has grappled with arson
Banning disposable e-cigarettes won’t stop kids vaping
The government thinks it has finally found a popular policy. Better still, it is a policy that it can implement, or at least legislate for. According to a press release from the Department of Health and Social Care, a ban on disposable vapes is supported by ‘nearly 70 per cent of parents, teachers, healthcare professionals and the general public’. The British public love a ban. Last month a survey found that 29 per cent of us want to close the nightclubs to deal with the remnants of Covid-19 and 20 per cent want to re-introduce lockdown. So, vox populi, vox dei? I think not. Support for banning disposable e-cigarettes needs
Time is running out to crack down on Iran
Three American soldiers on the Syria-Jordan border were killed by Iranian drones on Sunday. Since October, Iranian drones and missiles have injured nearly two hundred American troops. The pipe dream that was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the Iran deal – could not seem more distant. The equation at the heart of the deal, more money for more Iranian concessions, vanished shortly after an agreement was concluded in 2015. In the years since, Iran’s funding to its regional proxies exploded, and its proxies’ attacks on Israel and the Gulf states continued unabated. The Houthis in Yemen, who emerged in earnest after the deal was struck, are now a
Estate agents shouldn’t need A-Levels to sell houses
Last week the shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycook tabled an opportunistic amendment to the government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. This would require the government to closely regulate all estate agents selling leasehold properties or properties carrying management or service charges (in essence flats, or houses on managed estates). There is a lot that is wrong with this idea. It derives from a 2019 report by a committee chaired by the crossbench peer and social housing campaigner Lord Richard Best. Featuring among its demands were a proposed licensing regime of enormous complexity more appropriate to lawyers or doctors and a dedicated governmental regulator. The committee also recommended multi-tier rules and codes, the
What explains the rise of Austria’s Freedom Party?
We don’t hear much about Austrian politics in Britain, which is not perhaps surprising since the landlocked Central European republic of some nine million souls, is scarcely a major player on Europe’s chessboard. Nonetheless Austria, like Britain, will hold elections this year, and a populist party with Nazi roots looks certain to emerge with the most votes. On Friday, thousands of young Austrians took to the streets of Vienna and Salzburg in demonstrations spilling over from neighbouring Germany against the rise of right-wing anti immigration parties in both countries. They were specifically protesting about a recent meeting of far-right activists near Berlin that discussed a plan to deport migrants to
Dorries goes left field with Sunak replacement
Nadine Dorries has never been shy about publicising her disdain of Rishi Sunak. Whether it’s criticising his £3,500 Prada suit or accusing the former Chancellor of sabotage, the former I’m a Celebrity… star could never be accused of being a card-carrying Sunakite. But Mr S was nevertheless surprised to hear who she thinks ought to replace him as Prime Minister. Appearing on the BBC’s flagship Laura Kuenssberg show yesterday, Dorries was asked which popular figure from outside politics ought to become Britain’s next premier. A focus group of voters produced names like Carol Vorderman and Martin Lewis but Dorries’ own choice was anything but predictable. For the Boris-backing Brexiteer said
The Tory cigarette rebellion will likely go up in smoke
Back when Rishi Sunak was trying to pitch himself as the change candidate, he used his party conference speech in October to announce three big policies: the scrapping of HS2, a ‘new Baccalaureate-style qualification’ to replace A-levels and a plan to create the first smoke free generation. The latter idea was inspired by a similar policy introduced in New Zealand by the Labour party that has since been scrapped after the conservative National party triumphed in the recent election. Despite this, Sunak plans to press on and today on a visit to a school will announce further measures to ‘protect children’s health’ when it comes to vapes. The government plans
Trump is right – the world is less stable under Biden
Donald Trump said yesterday that we’re ‘on the brink of world war three’ after a suicide drone killed three US soldiers and injured a further 34 in Jordan. ‘This attack would never have happened if I was president, not even a chance – just like the Iranian-backed Hamas attack on Israel would never have happened, the war in Ukraine would never have happened, and we would now have peace throughout the world,’ said Trump. ‘Our country cannot survive with Joe Biden as Commander in Chief.’ It’s cynical, of course, to score political points over military deaths. Yesterday’s US combat fatalities were reportedly the first in three years under Joe Biden.
France’s furious farmers are marching on Paris
Paris will be under siege from 2 p.m. today as farmers intensify their protest action and attempt to cut off the capital from the rest of France. They have announced plans to blockade all roads leading to Paris with their tractors, a threat that prompted interior minister Gérald Darmanin to summon police chiefs to his office on Sunday. Darmanin ordered them to ‘deploy a major defensive operation’ to ensure the farmers are not successful, particularly in their ambition to prevent access to airports and the international food market at Rungis. Prime minister Gabriel Attal had hoped he’d defused the anger of the agricultural industry on Friday when he travelled to
Sunday
Labour suspend MP over Holocaust Memorial Day comments
Oh dear. Every time Labour looks just about electable, up pops one of Keir Starmer’s MPs to help make that harder. Today it is the turn of Kate Osamor, one of the hard-of-thinking Corbynites who populate the opposition backbenches. She shot to fame back in 2018 when she threatened a Times reporter with a baseball bat after he had the temerity to ask her about her son’s conviction for drug offences. Nice, eh? This weekend, Osamor has brought her famed diplomatic talents to the sensitive subject of Holocaust Memorial Day. She used the occasion to, er, call for the Israeli military action in Gaza to be remembered as ‘genocide’, in a message to party
Kemi Badenoch: Tory plotters are ‘not my friends’
This week there have been reports of Tory ministers calling for Rishi Sunak to be replaced by Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who consistently tops polls on the popularity of cabinet ministers. On Sky News this morning, Trevor Phillips showed Badenoch a graph which gave her a favourability rating of 64 per cent, contrasted with Rishi Sunak on minus twenty-six per cent, and asked her if she was involved in plotting for a leadership change. Badenoch said she was not, and said prime ministers ‘cannot be treated as disposable’, and Tory MPs needed to ‘stop messing around and get behind the leader’. Later on with Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC, Badenoch
John Fetterman’s noble support for Israel should be no surprise
Politicians are like bad boys: never fall in love with them, they’ll always hurt you in the end. But try as I might, and I have tried mightily, I can’t fight it anymore. I’ve fallen head over heels for the junior senator from Pennsylvania. Friday night tipped it for me. John Fetterman was at home in Braddock, a rundown Pittsburgh suburb where he lives with his wife and three children, when an anti-Israel mob gathered outside and began chanting: ‘Fetterman, Fetterman, you can’t hide; you’re supporting genocide!’ Another Democrat might have requested a police evacuation or issued a cuckish statement of solidarity with the demonstrators in the hopes they would
Tory MPs must share the blame with Sunak for the party’s troubles
Rishi Sunak is a drab technocrat mired in a failed political paradigm and with a tin ear for public opinion. And yet to blame him for the current dreadful state of the Conservative party is largely to miss the point. The Tory party is facing an extinction-level general election result, not primarily because of Sunak but because it has reached a philosophical dead end. It has proved time and again over the past few years that it is incapable of addressing the foundational issue of border control, even while in possession of a bumper House of Commons majority. As I have pointed out many times before, restoring robustness to our
A (partial) defence of the ‘Jewface’ Oscars
How could I be Jewish, my friend wondered out loud, when I didn’t have the… She paused as she mimed a big old nose, coming far out from the face in a grotesque outward bulge. I was shocked. My friend was a sophisticated Cambridge graduate, yet still she had imbibed the anti-Semitic cartoons that have caricatured and justified violence against Jews for time immemorial. That was in 2004, long before most people knew what critical race theory and BAME groupings were. It was also a time in which one of the most popular shows on TV, Little Britain, featured actors in blackface: characters played by Matt Lucas and David Walliams
The ludicrous saga of India’s butter chicken war
Butter chicken, one of India’s best-known dishes and a favourite all over the world, is at the centre of an extraordinary curry war in India. Two rival restaurant chains have asked the courts to rule over who invented the recipe for the signature dish, made with tender pieces of chicken in a tandoor oven, mixed in a rich tomato, cream and butter sauce. It’s a dispute that has captured the attention of the nation, with television stations covering the story and widespread debate across social media. It amounts to a somewhat bizarre legal battle that’s piqued the interest of millions of ordinary Indians The 2,572-page lawsuit was brought by the Gujral family
Saturday
Should foreign governments own UK newspapers?
The Emirati / RedBird IMI bid for the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator is opening up a wider conversation: how much of our national infrastructure should autocracies be allowed to buy? The Emiratis have been on a bit of a spree in recent years. They have 10 per cent of Heathrow airport, 15 per cent of Vodafone, 49 per cent of the Dogger Bank wind farm, Man City FC and now they want the Telegraph and Spectator. It would be the first time that a dictatorship would own a newspaper in a democracy, thereby setting a precedent. Much is riding in whether the UK government approves the deal. LBC radio
Will Jon Stewart still be funny?
35 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Jonathan Askonas, assistant professor of politics at the Catholic University of America about Jon Stewart’s return to TV, and what role, albeit inadvertent, he played in Tucker Carlson’s success.
Paul Waugh loses Rochdale selection
It’s the race that has had all of Westminster gripped. No, not the Republican presidential primaries in New Hampshire; nor the mayoral contest between Susan Hall and Sadiq Khan. Instead, all eyes this week have been on Rochdale, where the local Labour Party today met to decide their candidate for the forthcoming by-election. The contest is being held following the sad death of the incumbent Labour MP Tony Lloyd, who won it in 2019 with a majority of 9,968. The three-man shortlist for the Rochdale selection attracted particular interest from the parliamentary lobby after it was revealed that longtime member Paul Waugh had thrown in the ring. Waugh, the chief
Richard Dawkins, Douglas Murray and Cindy Yu
31 min listen
On this episode, Richard Dawkins explains how to convert an atheist like him to a Christian (00:37), Lisa Haseldine says the German army is in a dire state (05:53), Douglas Murray looks at the return of the Trump show (12:44), Cindy Yu reviews a Chinese intelligence officers account of life under the CCP (20:14), and Mary Wakefield wonders if it’s wrong to track her child (25:14).
