Politics Archives

Friday

14 Jul 2023

Have we seen the last of the Wagner Group?

Three weeks after marching on Moscow, the Wagner Group has seemingly been withdrawn from the battlefield in Ukraine, according to the Pentagon. Pentagon press secretary Patrick Ryder said there was evidence to suggest that the 25,000-strong mercenary group was not ‘participating in any significant capacity in support of combat operations in Ukraine’. The Pentagon’s statement follows weeks of rumours and speculation about how successfully Vladimir Putin is dealing with the fallout of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion. Many Kremlin-watchers expected the President to crack down hard on the Wagner leader – and were subsequently puzzled when Prigozhin was allowed to nominally retreat into self-imposed exile in Belarus. The Kremlin’s reaction to Prigozhin’s mutiny

Gavin Mortimer

Where did it all go so wrong for Emmanuel Macron?

It is Bastille day in France but few people are in the mood for festivities. The riots of a fortnight ago have left physical and psychological scars that won’t heal anytime soon. It is Emmanuel Macron’s seventh Bastille day as president, and his special guest this year is Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, chosen to mark the 25th anniversary of the strategic partnership agreed by the two countries. France is more divided, more angry and above all more frightened than it has been in decades The day’s celebrations will end in the traditional way, with a grand display of fireworks, although the cynic might wonder if the

Katy Balls

The Cleo Watson Edition

Cleo Watson is a former No.10 advisor to Boris Johnson and now author or the recently published book Whips, a novel set in SW1 filled with sex, politics and scandals. On the podcast, Cleo talks about her life growing up in a big family; her career into politics which began in America on Obama’s campaign and led to her advising the likes of Theresa May and Boris Johnson; and her recent departure from politics which gave her the chance to finish the book.

Mark Galeotti

Moscow’s pyrrhic Nato victory

Despite the inevitable and performative expressions of anger, regret and dismay following this week’s Nato summit, Moscow feels it has reason to be moderately content with its outcome. It has seen Ukraine frustrated in its failure to secure Nato membership – and fractures emerge between Kyiv and the West. Moscow’s contentment, however, may well be misplaced. In fact, the summit’s inconclusiveness when it comes to Ukrainian membership has ensured a range of other initiatives which are rather less comfortable for the Kremlin. The notion ahead of the summit that Ukraine would be invited to join the alliance before peace had been concluded – essentially forcing the rest of Nato into

Thursday

13 Jul 2023

Ross Clark

Would road pricing be fair?

Sometimes there is a problem so glaring that you wonder why no one is addressing it. Sooner or later, the government is going to have to deal with the black hole that will appear in the public finances as a result of the switch to electric cars. True, Jeremy Hunt has announced that electric cars registered from April 2025 onwards will have to pay road tax: £10 in their first year followed by £165 a year from then onwards. But that still leaves disappearing fuel duty. By 2030, according to Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) calculations out today, that will deprive the Treasury of £13 billion a year in lost

William Moore

Barbie’s world: the normalisation of cosmetic surgery

39 min listen

This week: Ahead of the release of the Barbie movie, Louise Perry writes in her cover piece about how social media is fuelling the cosmetic surgery industry. She argues that life in plastic is not, in fact, fantastic. She joins the podcast alongside the Times’s Sarah Ditum, author of the upcoming book: Toxic: Women, Fame and the Noughties, to discuss the normalisation of plastic surgery. (01:11) Also this week: In anticipation of the BBC Proms Philip Hensher writes in The Spectator that classical music has gone from being a supreme cultural statement, to just another curious musical genre. He is joined by Sir Nicholas Kenyon, former controller of BBC Radio 3 and director of the Proms

John Keiger

There is not much for Macron to celebrate on this Bastille Day

In January this year, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak outlined his five priorities for Britain against a hazy timetable. Meanwhile in France, after months of parliamentary opposition, strikes and demonstrations against his pension reforms, President Macron’s legislation gained assent by a constitutional sleight of hand. To appease the country’s heightened state of tension in May, Macron pledged to return France to stability and order within ‘one hundred days’. ‘We have before us 100 days of pacification, of unity, of ambition and action in the service of France’. That period expires on 14 July. An audit of either leader’s achievements to date has its challenges, especially given the recent most violent and widespread

Iain Macwhirter

How to save BBC Scotland

The sad thing about the BBC’s dedicated Scottish channel, which has suffered another collapse in viewing figures, is that it’s actually rather good. Their flagship news programme The Nine, broadcast from BBC Scotland’s cavernous HQ at Pacific Quay on the Clyde, is very professional. It is presented by the excellent Martin Geissler, whose name you won’t find on the Daily Mail’s plutocratic presenter list of shame. They don’t pay that kind of money up here — and what they do get paid, they have to work twice as hard for. When I was asked to come north from Westminster to present the Holyrood Live programmes many years ago, I found the staffing was

Ian Williams

Britain’s China policy has been completely demolished

China is engaged in a ‘whole of state’ assault on the UK and the government’s approach has been ‘completely inadequate’. That is the devastating verdict of today’s long-awaited report on China by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. The committee accepts that Chinese influence and interference activities may be difficult to detect, but questions whether the government has even been looking in the first place. ‘China’s size, ambition and capability have enabled it to successfully penetrate every sector of the UK’s economy,’ it states. The committee notes that there is still no comprehensive list of areas of sensitive UK research which need protecting The nine-member committee, under the chairmanship of Sir

Isabel Hardman

Will public sector pay rises stop the strikes?

That Rishi Sunak chose to announce his decision to give public sector workers a 5 to 7 per cent pay rise with a press conference tells you everything you need to know. There is no requirement for him to be anywhere near a pay announcement: indeed, it was chief secretary to the Treasury John Glen who made the statement in the Commons. But Sunak clearly thinks there is a big political win here for him in dealing with the ongoing strikes. Sunak confirmed in his opening statement that ‘we are accepting the headline recommendations of the Pay Review bodies in full but we will not fund them by borrowing more,

Oscar Edmondson

Is the public sector pay offer all it seems?

13 min listen

It looks like the summer could be about to get a whole lot easier after the government announced that millions of public sector workers will get a pay rise between 5 and 7 per cent. In a press conference this afternoon, Rishi said this was the governments ‘final offer’ and the result of consultation independent pay review bodies. So far, the four teachers unions have announced that they will put the offer to their members, but will the junior doctors follow suit? How are the government planning to pay for this? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Lucy Dunn

NHS waiting list reaches record high — again

On the same day that junior doctors in England are staging their longest strike yet, new NHS statistics show that the service continues to struggle with patient demand. The number of waits for treatment – including elective operations and procedures – has now reached a record 7.5 million, according to figures published this morning. Over 385,000 of these appointments have been on the waiting list for more than a year, an increase on figures at the end of April. Meanwhile, more than 11,000 were delayed for 78 weeks or more, even though waits of this length were meant to be abolished by April. Waiting times for the majority of non-emergency

Andrew McQuillan

The Orange order risks damaging the cause for Irish unionism

Another year and another July has come round where viewers in the UK have been treated to the sight of some of their compatriots in Northern Ireland marking William of Orange’s triumph over his father-in-law James II, the Catholic Stuart King, on the ‘green grassy slopes of the Boyne’ – as the Orange song goes – in 1690. Mention Ulster unionism and, to the casual mainland observer, it will conjure up images of stern bowler hatted men in orange collarettes and sashes, the skirl of pipes and flute bands, parading disputes and monumental bonfires of pallets and tyres on loyalist housing estates. Even weeks after the event, the acrid smell of

Kate Andrews

Rishi’s pledge to grow the economy isn’t going well

The economy contracted by 0.1 per cent in May – down by 0.4 per cent compared to May 2022. But this dip is largely being attributed to the extra bank holiday for the King’s Coronation. This morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics shows some changes in behaviour due to this one-off occasion, including a fall in production of 0.6 per cent (the biggest contributor to the overall dip in GDP) but a 1.8 rise in arts, entertainment and recreation. Other events can be spotted in the data. Health and social work activities saw the biggest bounce back from April – a rise of 1.1 per cent – as

Wednesday

12 Jul 2023

James Heale

Huw Edwards named by wife as BBC presenter at centre of scandal

After five days of speculation, Huw Edwards has today been named as the BBC star at the centre of allegations about his private life. His wife, the TV producer, Vicky Flind, has released a statement in which she says her husband is ‘suffering from serious mental health issues’ and is now ‘receiving in-patient hospital care where he will stay for the foreseeable future’. Last year, her husband spoke about how he had been bedridden with depression. His wife says his condition has significantly deteriorated. She says: In light of the recent reporting regarding the ‘BBC Presenter’ I am making this statement on behalf of my husband Huw Edwards, after what

Max Jeffery

Should Ukraine show more ‘gratitude’?

Ben Wallace thinks Ukraine needs to be careful. The West has used a whole load of political energy this week to try and bring Ukraine closer to Nato, and its government’s response has been a bit unthankful. ‘There is a slight word of caution here,’ Wallace told a gaggle of reporters this morning, on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Vilnius, ‘which is that whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude.’ His comments come after Volodymyr Zelensky fumed on Tuesday that it was ‘absurd’ of Nato to not set a timeframe for when his country would become a member of the alliance. ‘Uncertainty is weakness’,

James Heale

Illegal Migration Bill survives mammoth voting session

12 min listen

Tory whips will be smiling today after a mammoth three and a half hour voting session on amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill last night. All the amendments put down by the House of Lords were defeated by the government across 18 divisions. Are Rishi’s hopes of stopping the boats still alive? Where do Labour stand on the bill? James Heale speaks to Stephen Bush and Katy Balls. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson.

Svitlana Morenets

This week’s Nato summit will embolden Putin

The Nato summit in Vilnius has not helped Ukraine. Rather than facilitating the country’s swift accession into Nato, the alliance introduced conditions for membership called the ‘Annual National Programme’: a fudge, in other words. Nato leaders said they would continually ‘regularly assess progress… on [Ukraine’s] path towards future membership’. Ukraine would be invited to join the alliance only once ‘conditions are met’, the document stated. Those conditions are Ukraine’s progress on democratic and security sector reforms. Volodymyr Zelensky, who nearly lost his temper, said that Ukrainians would like the allies to be more specific. Kyiv had prepared for the likelihood of not receiving an immediate invitation to Nato membership, as

Lloyd Evans

It was a bad day for Oliver Dowden at PMQs

Blindness, ignorance and folly were on fully display at PMQs. Rishi Sunak was absent in Vilnius where he’s busy discussing with his Nato chums how to prolong or escalate the war in Ukraine. His deputy, Oliver Dowden, tried to fend off some excellent, probing questions from Labour’s Angela Rayner. She berated the Tories for overseeing a rise of 75 per cent in the number of ‘homeless children.’ Dowden replied with a feeble scripted gag. ‘Her leader says he hates tree-huggers but they’ve been very keen on hugging that magic money tree.’ Labour members howled with derision at that daft quip. Bad day for Dowden. The Alba party’s Kenny MacAskill complained

Charles Lipson

Why Nato shouldn’t let Ukraine in just yet

Deciding whether Ukraine should eventually join Nato is hotly debated. There are good reasons to favour its inclusion, but not now, while the war is ongoing. It would transform the war into a conflict between nuclear-tipped Great Powers and vastly increase the danger. Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, is not happy with the uncertainty over his country’s membership. Actually, that’s an understatement. He is furious, according to reports. But that’s the decision taken by the allies meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Joe Biden led the side urging delay. In a tweet Tuesday morning, Zelensky said, ‘It’s unprecedented and absurd when [a] time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for

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