Politics Archives

Sunday

26 Jan 2025

My week in war-weary Ukraine

In the morning darkness at the reception of our central Kharkiv hotel, 25 miles from the Russian frontlines, the night porter’s face was creased with sleep. As we made our way towards the door to catch the early express to Kyiv, he handed us a small keyring with a yellow and blue plastic ornament. They had been made by local children. The man was large, muscled rather than hammy, and had a trim beard. In the several days we had stayed at the hotel, he had not shown a trace of emotion. Now he almost looked as if he might cry. ‘Perhaps next time we meet there will be peace,’

Saturday

25 Jan 2025

Steerpike

Rachel Reeves’ ironic artwork choice

To govern is to choose. So what have Labour’s ministers chosen to hung on their walls? Raiding the Government Art Collection for the pick of the portraits is one of the perks of being a minister, along with a red box, car and driver. Mr S has done some digging and via a Freedom of Information request is delighted to tell his readers that some Starmtroopers have opted for some ironic choices in their office furnishings. First up, it’s Rachel Reeves, that well-known friend of the farmers. The Chancellor, who whacked up inheritance tax on struggling rural landowners in her first Budget, has a watercolour on her walls in the

Lisa Haseldine

Elon Musk addresses AfD rally

With four weeks to go until Germany heads to the polls for its federal election, Elon Musk has just given his third public endorsement of the country’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. Beaming into the hall live from the States at the party’s campaign launch in Halle (Saale), Saxony-Anhalt, the tech billionaire appeared to loud whoops and cheers from the crowd. Referencing Germany’s Nazi past, he declared that there is ‘too much of a focus on past guilt and we should move beyond that.’ Musk started by stating he was ‘very excited’ for the party and repeated his belief that the party is ‘the best hope’ for Germany. Praising

Katy Balls

What Labour and the Tories can learn from Pierre Poilievre

13 min listen

For the past fortnight, Canada’s Parliament has been empty. After Justin Trudeau resigned as Liberal leader, all the polls are pointing to the likelihood that Canada will become another example of the West’s shift to the right. This is partly due to the incumbency problem (and the ongoing internal struggles in the Liberal Party), but also the Canadian Conservatives’ firebrand leader: Pierre Poilievre. A skilled communicator who seamlessly mixes the online and offline world, Poilievre is in many ways one of the first Conservative influencers. And he has been picking up a number of admirers in the UK: Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick have visited Canada to try to learn

Ross Clark

Skiing is ghastly

Is anyone else getting a bit fed up of reading weepy newspaper stories about how the skiing industry is being killed off by climate change? Apparently, 80 ski resorts in the Alps have already closed for good due to a lack of snow, and according to the OECD only 400 of the 666 ski areas in the Alps will remain viable if global temperatures rise by 2º above what they were in the mid 19th century. If we lose 250 ski resorts that would be a gain for the mountains, as far as I am concerned. I suspect many people who visit the Alps in the summer will agree with me. There

Tom Jones

Crying ‘fascism’ didn’t work before, and it won’t work now

‘Could we get a precise definition of fascism before all this kicks off today?’ So asked Merryn Somerset Webb, a senior columnist at Bloomberg, just before polling day in America. It was – and is – a question worth asking. The election of Donald Trump was inevitably going to draw the comparison, particularly after Kamala Harris (remember her?) said that she believed Donald Trump ‘is a fascist’. There is even a Wikipedia page on ‘Donald Trump and fascism’. When the guests on the Rest is Politics American election livestream asked themselves whether Donald Trump is a fascist, Rory Stewart answered ‘I don’t think yes or no is very useful’, Marina Hyde answered ‘potentially, yes’, Anthony

Daniel Thorpe

‘Bashar was my friend’: the former Assad minister on why he didn’t flee Syria

Amr Salem mingles cheerfully with foreign investors and members of Syria’s interim government in a five-star hotel in Damascus, and why not? Salem’s disposition, clothing, and manners fit the scene. Yet Salem was, in fact, a minister in Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the officials he warmly greets are members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), with whom the regime fought a brutal 14-year-long civil war. When Assad fled Syria last month, many of his officials escaped the country too. But not Salem. Salem chooses his words carefully, portraying himself as a patriot who loyally served his country from the inside ‘Bashar was my friend,’ Salem states firmly. ‘I think he really

Robert Service

Trump may turn on America’s new oligarchy

The word ‘oligarch’ returned to the media lexicon at Donald Trump’s inauguration this week when some of the world’s biggest technology entrepreneurs took their seats while US cabinet ministers were asked to sit dutifully behind them. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg felt the need to demonstrate loyalty to Trump. The President did not insist on them kissing his ring but allotted them places as if they were school prefects listening to their headmaster on speech day. Zuckerberg could not disguise his facial discomfort. The others were better actors. Earlier this century it was Russian big business that was famous for its so-called oligarchs. Under President Yeltsin some of

Michael Evans

Should Britain join an EU defence scheme?

The UK and Europe have had plenty of time to get to grips with the inevitable, that President Donald Trump will demand a substantial rise in defence spending. When he threw this demand at Europe the first time he served as president, the impact was like a fox entering a hen coop. Lots of fluttering wings and squawking. But in the end it worked. More Nato members met the minimum 2 per cent of GDP target for defence expenditure. Now Trump is back and the issue has become an even greater priority. Nearly three years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, every member of the western alliance is fully aware that President

Friday

24 Jan 2025

Stephen Daisley

Against the death penalty, even for Axel Rudakubana

Should the Southport killer swing? Lee Anderson thinks so. The Reform MP posted an image of a noose on X, with the words: ‘No apologies here. This is what is required!’ It’s not the first time Anderson has backed the return of the rope, and not the first time I’ve contended that he’s wrong, but there’s something I want to say before getting into the nitty gritty. Wanting Axel Rudakubana dead is a thoroughly mainstream and entirely understandable view. Among those who have children, I would go further and suggest that it is the natural response. On capital punishment, as on so much else, liberals think of ourselves as cool-headed

Mary Wakefield

The fight against gender madness isn’t over

Too many conservatives are behaving as if Donald Trump’s inauguration has somehow done to wokery what garlic does to a vampire; as if they can now sit back and watch the orange mist vaporise ideological insanity across the West. A study released today by the University of York shows just how crazy this sort of complacency is. Academics analysed GP records and discovered what looks like a 50-fold increase in diagnoses of gender dysphoria in children between 2011 and 2021. They estimate that there were 10,000 diagnoses made in 2021, up from just 200 in 2011. It’s horrifying, especially when you consider all the countless others who currently self-identify as trans and

Steerpike

Reform tops poll for first time

As the new Labour government continues to struggle with voters, support for Reform UK only seems to be growing. New survey results released today by pollsters Find Out Now sees Nigel Farage’s party top the charts – beating both its Tory and Labour rivals. Talk about moving into pole position, eh? The new data – taken from a sample of 2,380 adults quizzed on Wednesday – shows 26 per cent of Brits back Reform UK, an increase of one percentage point since the 15 January. Coming second to the Farage-founded group is the Conservative party, with Kemi Badenoch’s boys in blue on 23 per cent. Meanwhile, in yet another set

Damian Thompson

Could Trump 2.0. herald a new era of religious liberty in America?

36 min listen

Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, director of the US-based Conscience Project and a friend of Holy Smoke, joins Damian to talk about what the incoming second Trump administration could mean for religious freedoms in America. Andrea argues that the Biden administration waged an unprecedented assault on such freedoms during his term. What could happen over the next four years on issues like gender, abortion, adoption and religious discrimination? And what are the nuances between federal and state laws? (2:06) Also on the podcast, Damian speaks to The Spectator’s Will Moore, Lara Prendergast and Freddy Gray about the nomination of Cardinal Robert McElroy to be the new Archbishop of Washington. Far from being a routine

Isabel Hardman

Do Reform want to bring back the death penalty?

10 min listen

Reform MP Rupert Lowe has called for the death penalty to be re-established in the wake of the sentencing of the Southport killer Axel Rudakubana. With the Assisted Dying Bill still making its way through Parliament, it has been decades since the topic of death has been so hotly debated by MPs. Katy Balls speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman about the political reaction to Rudakubana’s sentencing. How popular is the death penalty with both MPs and the public? Should we even be debating the issue? And could Reform officially back its return soon? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.

Steerpike

Bishop compares disgraced Welby to God

The Church of England has received a rather lot of bad press, to put it mildly, after the Archbishop of Canterbury was forced to resign over the handling of a child abuse scandal. Now, rather than let salvation take its course, the Bishop of Dover has decided to wade into the conversation with some rather irreverent comments of her own. The right reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin appeared on Thursday’s episode of the Times’ Off Air podcast with hosts Jane and Fi. But rather than settling into a saintly chinwag with the pod’s presenters, the Bishop of Dover became rather irate over the issue of Welby’s departure. Mr S would remind readers

Leon Mangasarian

Germany is running out of time to reform

Germany’s government after the election on 23 February will likely be led by pro-business Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz. His coalition partner, probably the Social Democrats of failed Chancellor Olaf Scholz, or else the Greens of economy minister Robert Habeck, will torpedo any serious economic reforms. Equally worrying: Merz’s own reform blueprint is far too timid. A new wild card in the vote – up to now dominated by the economy – is spiralling migrant violence and failures of German authorities to lock up people known to pose acute threats. A horrifying knife attack on a nursery school group in a park in Aschaffenburg, in Bavaria, on Wednesday, allegedly by an Afghan

Steerpike

Labour MP: is hair colour a ‘protected characteristic’?

As Donald Trump starts clamping down on diversity, equality and inclusion practices, it’s a shame that the same can’t be said on our side of the pond. In the same week that the new president ordered all of the US government’s DEI staff to go on paid leave ‘immediately’, Mr S has spotted a rather, er, odd question submitted by Caerphilly’s Labour MP Chris Evans on the Equality Act. Indeed, it might have left No.10’s spinners pulling their hair out… It appears Evans seemed to think it was a good use of his time and status to table a parliamentary question about the introduction of yet more protected characteristics to the legislation. The matter that

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Tanya Gold, Rose George, Toby Young and Rory Sutherland

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Freddy Gray reads his letter from Washington D.C., and reveals what Liz Truss, Eric Zemmour and Steve Bannon made of Trump’s inauguration (1:22); Tanya Gold writes about the sad truth behind the gypsies facing eviction in Cornwall (7:15); Rose George reviews The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell, by Jonas Olofsson, and explains the surprising link between odour disgust and political attitudes (13:07); Toby Young provides his favourite anecdotes about President Trump, having crossed paths with him in New York City in the 1990s (18:39); and, Rory Sutherland proposes a unique way to solve Britain’s building crisis: ‘Areas of Outstanding Natural Ugliness’ (23:40). Produced

James Heale

John Healey hails Rolls-Royce’s £9bn nuclear submarine deal

A £9 billion deal for nuclear submarine reactors was announced this morning between the Ministry of Defence and Rolls-Royce, the biggest-ever agreement between the two. The eight-year contract, called Unity, is to design, make and provide support services to nuclear reactors that power the Royal Navy’s fleet of submarines. John Healey, the Defence Secretary, says the deal will make British reactors both greener and more efficient. A difficult battle looms between John Healey and Chancellor Rachel Reeves ‘It’s a boost to British jobs, British business. It’s a boost to our nuclear deterrent,’ he told Sky on a visit to the Rolls-Royce plant in Derby. ‘It really shows the way that

Kate Andrews

Trump gives the establishment some respite at Davos

We’ve heard more from the 47th President of the United States this week than we heard from his predecessor over many months. But Donald Trump has always loved the spotlight: especially when he gets to rile up all his favourite people. This was on full display this week when, rather than winding down from his inauguration speech, the President ramped up his message in a video call to Davos. The establishment was on high alert all week, well aware that the annual Swiss gathering of politicians and CEOs kicked off on the same day Trump was sworn in for a second time. They were right to be worried. Trump did

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