Politics Archives

Tuesday

11 Jul 2023

Steerpike

Watch: Tory MP defends Harriet Harman

Boris Johnson might have shuffled off the parliamentary stage but there was still one last drama to play out last night. The House of Commons met to debate the ‘special report’ prepared by the Privileges Committee into the MPs who criticised their integrity when they probed the former Prime Minister. Amid the usual partisan taking points, Mr S was struck by a speech by one of the more thoughtful members of the 2019 intake, Laura Farris. With tears forming in her eyes, the Newbury MP spoke out in defence of the committee’s chairman Harriet Harman who was unanimously elected to the post in June 2022: To contextualise the appointment of

Matthew Scott

The police haven’t learned from the Carl Beech fiasco

It has been announced that ‘Opertion Soteria’ is to be extended from five pilot areas to every police force in the country. Operation Soteria is the name given to a supposedly new method of investigating rape and other serious sexual allegations. A report into the results of the Soteria pilots, written by the academics who were largely responsible for devising Operation Soteria in the first place, concluded, perhaps unsurprisingly, that they had been a great success. The Soteria approach may indeed increase the rape conviction rate, but it will do so by convicting more innocent people In Hellenistic religions, a soteria was a ‘sacrifice or series of sacrifices performed in expectation of… deliverance from a crisis.’ The crisis from which Operation Soteria is supposed to deliver us is an epidemic of rape. Whether

Isabel Hardman

Boris’s allies defend their attacks on the Privileges Committee

The House of Commons often rises early these days, with little in the way of legislation to keep MPs busy. Ministers spend more of their time answering repetitive urgent questions than they do piloting bills through the Commons. So it was an odd sensation to see MPs debating something at length, with detailed speeches and an extensive debate. Ah, of course – they were talking about themselves: what else? Yesterday afternoon’s debate was on the Privileges Committee special report on the ‘campaign’ against that Committee by supporters of Boris Johnson. The debate had a motion laid by Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt which said ‘where the House has agreed

David Shipley

The hopeless cycle of addiction – and drug running – behind bars

It’s my seventh night in HMP Wandsworth at the start of my 45-month sentence for fraud. I live on A Wing now, with a new cellmate, John, a heroin addict. He’s an older guy, short, very slight, sores all over his face, neck and hands. Prison is full of men like John: addicts who get sentenced to a few weeks, or months, in prison. Some are regulars, welcomed back by guards and prisoners. One man completes three sentences while I am imprisoned there. What good does it do banging men like this up? John is 52 and the best part of his life – which he has spent mostly in

Monday

10 Jul 2023

Ross Clark

Is Jeremy Hunt following in Gordon Brown’s footsteps?

Anyone fancy having a flutter with 5 per cent of their pension fund on unlisted start-ups? It is not necessarily a bad idea – it is only 5 per cent, after all. As part of a portfolio which is balanced by more bread and butter investments it need not be reckless. At best, you might just pick a future Microsoft or Google – and at worst, well, the other 95 per cent of your investments could smother your losses. But it seems that we are not really going to have the choice – at least not those of us who have defined contribution pension funds. The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, used

Steerpike

Claims about BBC presenter ‘rubbish’ says young person’s lawyer

Allegations about a BBC presenter paying £35,000 for sexually explicit photos are ‘rubbish’ according to the lawyer of the young person involved. In a legal statement released tonight they claim that the child’s mother has made inaccurate statements to the Sun newspaper about the nature of the relationship between the unknown Corporation star and their client. The statement says that the young person sent a denial to the Sun on Friday evening saying there was ‘no truth to it’. However, the ‘inappropriate article’ was still published, the lawyer says. In their letter, they write that: ‘For the avoidance of doubt, nothing inappropriate or unlawful has taken place between our client

James Heale

Are Biden and Sunak really ‘rock solid’?

10 min listen

Joe Biden was in London today to meet with Rishi Sunak. The pair had discussions in No. 10, and Biden described US-UK relations as ‘rock solid’. But the pair have recently had disagreements about who the next Nato secretary general should be, and about whether the West should send cluster munitions to Ukraine – so is the relationship really so rosy? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Freddy Gray. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Stephen Daisley

Who’s to blame for Scottish drug deaths?

Scotland is the drug deaths capital of Europe and changing that is going to take something radical. The Scottish government thinks it’s found that something: the decriminalisation of all drugs for personal use. Humza Yousaf’s administration has issued a call for ‘a caring, compassionate and human rights informed drugs policy, with public health and the reduction of harm as its underlying principles’. Between 2000 and 2021, 14,426 Scots died a drug-related death. For perspective, that is more than four times the death toll in the Troubles from 1969 to 2001 Yousaf proposes decriminalisation with a wider review of drug laws, calls on the UK government to legislate this and other changes or devolve the

Dalibor Rohac

Nato would be wrong to reject Ukraine’s membership plea

US president Joe Biden has been busy curbing expectations about Nato’s looming decision over Ukraine’s future membership. Starting the accession process at the summit in Lithuania this week would be ‘premature’, Biden said. Ukraine still needs to meet other qualifications for membership, ‘including democratisation’, the president added. Biden’s hesitation is misplaced. The Vilnius summit offers an opportunity for Nato to redress the historic mistake of the 2008 meeting in Bucharest. Back then, Nato failed to offer membership action plans to Ukraine and Georgia and thus invited Russian aggression – including the current war. The wise, prudent choice for Nato is to bring Ukraine to the fold, not give it the cold shoulder This latest summit is an opportunity to bring the

Ross Clark

Is Joe Biden really a close friend of Britain?

According to Joe Biden on the steps of Downing Street, by travelling to the UK he ‘couldn’t be meeting with a closer friend and greater ally. Our relationship is rock solid’. Really? In that case, will Biden be using his time in London to start talks for a US-UK trade deal? Will he be changing his mind and back Ben Wallace, rather than Ursula von der Leyen – who was an embarrassing failure as German defence minister – as the next secretary-general of Nato? Will he be taking notice of Britain’s objections to sending cluster bombs to Ukraine? The answer to the above questions, of course, is ‘no’, ‘no’ and

Steerpike

GB News investigated… again

Another day, another investigation into GB News. This time though it’s not Ofcom probing the self-proclaimed ‘people’s channel’, but rather the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Daniel Greenberg KC today opened a probe into one of its hosts, Lee Anderson, over claims that he has breached the MPs’ code of conduct. It comes after the Conservative party deputy chairman filmed a promotional video for his television show on the roof terrace in parliament. According to House of Commons rules, ‘members must ensure that the use of facilities and services provided to them by Parliament, including an office, is in support of their parliamentary activities.’ Whoops! This is just the latest in

Iain Gibson

Why it’s not over yet for Humza Yousaf

There’s a moment in Bob Woodward’s gripping book Peril, the account of the buildup to and aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election, when Democrat fixer Anita Dunn tells Joe Biden, languishing in his party’s primary race, where his strength as a campaigner lies. Most candidates, Dunn mused, struggle with their message. Biden’s route to power, ultimately successful, lay in the fact that he was the message. As Humza Yousaf passes the 100-day mark as first minister of Scotland, and new polling out today reveals that half of Scots believe he is doing a bad job, we can reasonably reflect that not only is he not the message, but that he is

Mark Galeotti

Putin is struggling to solve his Prigozhin problem

It’s satisfying when a jigsaw piece slots into place. Today we heard that Wagner leader Evgeny Prigozhin met Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin just a few days after his abortive mutiny of 23-24 June. That detail helps clear up some of the confusion of this past week. How come Prigozhin has been at liberty in Russia? We were told he would be going directly into exile in Belarus. Why is the Federal Security Service (FSB) apparently no longer seeking to arrest him? Is his Wagner mercenary army being disbanded or not? Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has now acknowledged that, on 29 June, Prigozhin was among 35 people invited to a three-hour meeting in Moscow held to discuss

Brendan O’Neill

How did Trans Pride allow itself to become a front for misogyny?

On Saturday, in Trafalgar Square, a man called for violence against women. Specifically, it seems, intellectually curious women, those unruly harridans who refuse to bow down to certain beliefs. Punch them ‘in the fucking face’, he bellowed into a mic. The heaving mob around him cheered. An electric current of hate seemed to flow through their ranks. Some punched the air, others laughed, taking delight in their leader’s invitation to hit ‘bad’ women. It had the vibe of a witch-hunt. This is what medieval mob gatherings must have felt like, when pious, pitchfork-wielding men headed out to apprehend ‘demonic’ women. Only this 2023 mob were not wearing witchfinders’ hats or

Patrick O’Flynn

Sunak needs a plan B for illegal migration

When Rishi Sunak made ‘stop the boats’ one of his key pledges at the start of the year he mentioned the importance of being seen to ‘strain every sinew’ in pursuit of that goal. This led some of us to suppose he had a fall-back position should he prove unable to stop all illegal immigration via dinghies across the Channel: that if he was seen to try everything but ended up being blocked by the liberal establishment then he might still be given credit by voters who would rally to his side in any general election fought on the issue. The first string to his bow has already snapped. He

Matthew Lynn

Jeremy Hunt’s City reforms are far too timid

There will be some tweaks to the way that pension funds are allowed to invest their money. There will be some modest rewriting of EU rules on the way investment banks can provide analysis of company performance. And there will be some reduction in the big bundles of paper a company needs to issue before it can sell new shares. And, er, that seems to be about it. The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt may be trying to sell his latest round of City reforms as a significant reduction in red tape that will allow the financial sector to grow again. But, in keeping with his tepid, managerial style, they lack any

Hannah Tomes

Teenage boy arrested after teacher stabbed

A teenage boy is being questioned on suspicion of attempted murder after a male teacher was stabbed at a Gloucestershire secondary school this morning. The teacher was attacked in a corridor and suffered a single wound, Gloucestershire Police assistant chief constable Richard Ocone said at a press conference this afternoon. The teacher is in a stable condition. The suspect was arrested at around 11 a.m. – two hours after the attack – by firearms officers in Stoke Orchard, around five miles from the school. Ocone added that the motivation is unclear – but it is not thought to be terror-related. The parent of an eight-year-old at Tewkesbury Academy told the BBC

Richard Ekins

In memory of Lord Brown

The death of Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood means that Britain has lost a great jurist – but also, unusually in this era, a formidable parliamentarian as well. He was a modest, unassuming man (few non-lawyers will know his name), yet he made a remarkable contribution to the law and government of this country, embodying the best of the common law constitutional tradition, which requires judges to be independent, not only from the executive, but also from one another. Simon Brown was appointed to the High Court in 1984, becoming a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1992 and then a Law Lord in 2004. He was one of the last of the old

Sunday

9 Jul 2023

Steerpike

BBC suspend presenter over explicit photo allegations

For the BBC, it never rains but it pours. Having only just emerged from the row over Richard Sharp’s appointment, the Corporation has now been plunged into fresh controversy over an unnamed star who has reportedly paid a teenager £35,000 for sexually explicit photos. On Saturday, the Sun splashed the story across its front page but chose to not name the presenter. This afternoon though the BBC decided to suspend the star, amid much online speculation as to his identity, and are now in contact with the police. In a statement, the Corporation said that: ‘The BBC first became aware of a complaint in May. New allegations were put to

Steerpike

Is Mhairi Black Westminster’s laziest MP?

The dust is settling after the SNP Westminster group’s deputy leader announced she would be standing down at the next election — but has Mhairi Black’s record in parliament been scrutinised quite enough? Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon says she is ‘gutted’ about Black’s departure, while FM Humza Yousaf called Black a ‘trailblazer’. But Mr S isn’t so sure they should be all that sad to see the back of her… It appears the Westminster group’s deputy leader has more bark than bite. Of all the SNP’s 2015 intake who remain in parliament, Black has made the fewest spoken contributions — and by a rather large margin. SNP MP Alison

Unlock full access to The Spectator

Tuesday

Monday

Sunday