Welcome back to the Weekly Digest politics blog, where I do my weekly roundup of, and give my wry tuppence-worth on, what’s been happening in the world of politics in N Ireland, UK and USA . I try my best to cover as much as possible but I am limited by time and format, so it’s mostly what captures my attention, rather than a complete synopsis of events. Apologies in advance, therefore, for any glaring omissions. Apologies also for another later than usual publication this week. I made the schoolboy error of waiting on the big announcement by the NI Executive scheduled for today, Monday, whereby the roadmap for our exit from Covid restrictions would be revealed. I should’ve known they wouldn’t agree on anything, as this seems to be their standard modus operandi! I do know it’s no way to run a government, that’s for sure! At least Donald Trump didn’t disappoint, making his first public appearance and speech since leaving the White House. Details later! Regardless of the chronically dysfunctional NI Executive’s no show, it has still been another eventful week! So, here I will begin, as per usual.
The leaders of unionism have united this week to pledge “unified & unalterable” opposition to the Irish Sea border, thereby making it difficult for any of them to renege on their implacable opposition to even a scaled-down version of the border. In a letter to Boris Johnson, they demanded “immediate action”. I suspect this will fall on profoundly deaf ears in Westminster or Brussels. The show of unity will, perhaps give the DUP some political cover, as the predicament unionism finds itself in regarding the NI Protocol and subsequent Irish Sea border is almost entirely of their own making, having enthusiastically endorsed the type of hard Brexit that has made it necessary. The sort of political leverage and clout wielded so smugly by the DUP in the name of Unionism during Teresa May’s tenure, when they rejected her softer Brexit and helped shove her out the door of No.10, has evaporated. As has any sense of goodwill or loyalty from large sections of the Tory Party and wider body politic, not to mention English voters. Long runs the fox, as they say, and the once bushy tailed and nonchalant DUP is now running out of options. As mentioned here last week, there is also a legal challenge being mounted, but the DUP were late to that Jim Allister inspired initiative, too! Wee Jim has played a blinder in outmanoeuvring his beleaguered unionist electoral rivals. Will he be able to sustain it and capitalise on it come the next election, though? That remains to be seen, as he’s seen as a bit of a one man band and it’s doubtful he has the requisite resources or personnel to mount a serious challenge for the unionist crown without some high profile DUP defections!
One source of support in Westminster came from Jacob Rees-Mogg, who said that if unionist MLAs join forces they can get rid of the NI Protocol. Although, they will have to wait until the next Assembly elections and urged them not to bring down Stormont before then. Rees-Mogg, who is Leader of the House of Commons, said: “The unionists, if they unite on this, are able to get rid of the protocol… It has to command a majority in the Assembly in 2024?” This could simply be a clever ruse by the Moog to head off a unionist revolt for now. kicking this particularly toxic can down the road until the next Assembly election, by which time the issues around the NI Protocol may have dissipated somewhat. Will Unionist anger have dissipated by then, though? 🤔
Speaking of solo runs, it looks like the DUP’s recently appointed Agriculture Minister, Gordon Lyons, has embarked upon a significant one! On Friday he halted construction of permanent inspection facilities for post-Brexit checks on agri-food goods arriving from Great Britain. He has also stopped further recruitment of inspection staff for the port facilities and said charges would not be levied at the ports on traders bringing goods from GB into Northern Ireland. Ongoing Irish Sea trade checks, which are taking place at existing repurposed port buildings and other temporary facilities, will continue. His decision relates to ongoing work on new purpose-built inspection facilities at ports like Belfast and Larne. Ironically, this was a move contemplated by his predecessor, Edwin Poots, only for him to back down due to the legal implications. Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill branded the move a “stunt”. Whereas a clearly angry SDLP Minister, Nichola Mallon, called for an urgent meeting of the Executive to discuss the matter. It will be interesting to see if Mr Lyons’ roar is worse than his bite, or will he be reeled back in by the Executive?
All this talk of unionist unity is in stark contrast to the ongoing disunity within the NI Executive, and the entente cordial between the DUP and UUP on the NI Protocol does not stretch to other political matters, it would seem. After seemingly reaching agreement previously on the cautious, phased return of pupils to schools in NI, the DUP Education Minister, Peter Weir, appeared to do a u-turn upon hearing that all school pupils in England would return to classrooms en masse on the 8th March. He was backed by his party leader, Arlene Foster. This appeared to go against not just the opinion of the rest of the NI Executive parties, but also the scientific and medical advice which favours a much more cautious approach. After a subsequent Executive meeting, where the DUP where evidently out voted on the issue, some senior party figures went public with their criticism, some of it quite personal, in yet another example of the complete lack of any semblance of collective responsibility within our mandatory coalition government.
DUP MP, Sammy Wilson, for example, launched a very personal attack on both the Health Minister, Robin Swann and the Chief Medical Officer, Michael McBride over the decision. Easily winning my Twitter Twit of the Week Award, Mr Wilson accused Mr Swann of acting like a “poodle for the unaccountable Chief Medical Officer”.
The disrespectful and derogatory tone of Wilson’s tweet prompted an angry backlash from politicians across the political spectrum. Even the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, while falling short of outright condemnation, sought to distance herself from the comments. Speaking at a press conference in Dungannon, Mrs Foster said she had “full confidence” in Dr McBride, saying he has “worked tirelessly to bring us impartial advice”. “Michael retains and will have my full confidence and that of my party,”. Mrs Foster added that there was a genuine desire to have a debate about the need to get young people back to school, but said Mr Wilson’s tweet was certainly not language she would have used.
Also speaking in a press conference after a meeting of the Executive, deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill described Mr Wilson’s comments as “disgraceful”. “I would totally disassociate myself in any way from that,” she said. “I think that needs to be called out, certainly at political leadership level for being wrong. Perhaps the best response, however, came from the maligned Health Minister, Robin Swann, when he tweeted the perfect riposte to being described as a poodle.
And so to our Scottish cousins, where there hasn’t been much cheer around Holyrood this week! At the time of writing, ex-SNP leader, Alex Salmond, has just given evidence to the Holyrood inquiry investigating the Scottish Government’s handling of the sexual harassment allegations made against him. Salmond alleges key figures in the Scottish political establishment plotted to remove him from public life and that his protege, successor and one time friend, Nicola Sturgeon, misled the Scottish Parliament about her role in the affair. If true, this could well necessitate her resignation as First Minister. This would be a seismic blow to the SNP and maybe even to Scottish hopes for a second independence referendum. Sturgeon claims there is no evidence to back up these claims. She will also be questioned by the inquiry on Wednesday. All this is taking place just a couple of months before the Scottish Parliamentary elections.
The fallout is being watched closely in Westminster with some commentators claiming Sturgeon’s Scotland has been irreparably tainted. With the very future of the Union at stake, Boris Johnson will be desperately hoping for the SNP to implode. Labour too, who elected a new leader, Anas Sanwar, in Scotland this week, is looking at the events in the hope that any decline in Nationalist support could pave the way for its resurgence north of the border and with it the chance to regain control in Westminster. This may be wishful thinking, however, and both could be sorely disappointed! The latest Ipsos Mori poll for STV put the SNP on 52%, the Tories on 23%, Labour 15% and the Lib Dems 5%. It looks like Mr Sanwar has his work cut out!
It promises to be a big week in Westminster, with Rishi Sunak’s much anticipated budget reveal on Wednesday. I’ll steer clear of too much speculation in favour of post-match analysis in next week’s blog, but suffice to say, the Chancellor has big decisions to make on whether or not to raise tax revenue to start paying off the Covid debt. There is huge pressure on him to hold off, both from the Tory back benches but also from Labour, interestingly.
Reluctant to raise money through hiking fuel duty the Chancellor has reportedly set his sights on lifting corporation tax from 19% to 25%. This has created the strange parallel universe where Keir Starmer finds himself siding with the Tory right in wanting to prevent tax rises for big business. The Labour leader has said now is not the right time to raise taxes for families and businesses. This has angered some Labour MPs but won Starmer new friends on the right. Tax rises are inevitable but the general feeling is that the economy will need more stimulus first in order to aid a full recovery. The financial hangover can wait! What we do know is that Sunak is expected to extend the furlough and support schemes in line with Boris’ roadmap and even offer to extend the £20 Universal Credit top up for a further 6 months. It remains to be seen if the man of the moment can pull any other cash rabbits out of his little red briefcase.
In very good news just in, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there was “exciting new data” suggesting that coronavirus vaccines can reduce hospitalisations by more than 80%. Speaking at the Downing Street press conference, he said that one shot of either the Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines works against severe infection among over-70s and significantly reduces hospitalisations. The study, published by Public Health England (PHE) on Monday, also shows that three to four weeks after a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine, deaths in the over-80s are reduced by 83%. This is very welcome news for the government’s roadmap recovery plans, new variants notwithstanding! I covered the details of Boris’ Covid recovery roadmap in last week’s blog!
Sticking with Covid related news, the allegations of Tory cronyism in relation to how contracts were awarded simply refuses to go away, much to the government’s frustration. Just this week, it was revealed that outsourcing giant Serco unveiled a £400million boost from Covid contracts and handed its shareholders a £17m proposed reward. Labour said the news will “outrage taxpayers” after the Test and Trace giant celebrated a 75% boost in operating profit last year. Test and Trace – run mostly by Serco and Sitel – was plagued by controversy and heavily criticised for months after failing to reach hundreds of thousands of contacts of people with Covid-19.
Meanwhile, Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, hinted that School days may be lengthened and holidays shortened to let pupils catch up. The Education Secretary confirmed he is looking at “the whole expanse” of options to help left-behind children, as he announced a short-term, £300m ‘recovery premium’ for catch-up schemes – worth about £6,000 for primaries and £22,000 for secondaries on average. When questioned by Sky News, he refused to rule out either lengthening the school day or shortening the summer break in response to largely media driven moral panic which, while popular with some voters, would prove to be very controversial for many. A government source indicated the two options would be considered by Sir Kevan Collins, the Government’s new catch up tsar, as part of a new review. My immediate observations on this are; firstly, this would be a possible breach of teacher contracts. Teachers, who have been working tirelessly throughout the pandemic, have more than earned their summer holiday. Secondly, extending the school day or shortening summer holidays may prove unpopular with many pupils and their families, anyway. Who wants to sit sweltering in school at the height of the summer? The educational benefits of such a move are highly debatable, also. A study carried out in New Zealand after months of school closures following a major earthquake a few years ago, showed that the vast majority of pupils had caught up academically after 3 months of returning to normal schooling. This was despite the fact that there was no remote learning provision while they’d been off for months! It wouldn’t be like Gavin Williamson to be out of touch, have any ulterior ideological motives, or have a propensity to engage in eye catching, populist policy gimmicks, now, would it? 🤔
And so to America, where it’s also been another eventful week, and one which saw the reemergence of Donald Trump back on to the political stage after his brief sojourn at his Mara Lago retreat in Florida! Is the tangerine ex-POTUS shaping up for another tilt at the White House? Worryingly, he definitely didn’t rule it out! 😳
Donald Trump was fulfilling his first high profile public engagement since leaving the White House after his election defeat to Joe Biden. He was a keynote speaker at the annual CPAC Conference, the Conservative Political Action Conference, which is a political conference attended by conservative activists and elected officials from across the United States and beyond. CPAC is hosted by the American Conservative Union. I think it’s fair to say he was among loyal friends and devotees. For about 90 minutes, the ex-president continued his airing of the usual grievances that had become synonymous with his campaign rallies before the election, and his attempts to challenge the results even after the US election result was officially declared and ratified. Trump teased the rapturous and somewhat socially distanced crowd with the possibility of a 2024 presidential run, was still maintaining that he won the 2020 election, and listed the GOP rivals he wanted out of the party for criticizing him. He was very keen to take credit for the vaccine roll out in the US, too, even though his pandemic response, with over 500,000 deaths currently, will go down as one of his biggest failings. He also claimed that Joe Biden has made the worst start to a presidency in US history. It was the usual theatrical Trump performance and the crowd loved it! He may well not run in 2024, given that he will be 78 by then, but the MAGA movement and Trumpism he represents is not going away anytime soon. He remains hugely popular with his loyal base, who turned out in big numbers both inside the venue and outside, where they gathered in the usual blaze of colour and cacophonous noise, waving flags and banners! There is a battle taking place to wrestle control of the Republican Party back from Trump. It looks like the GOP establishment may have their work cut out!
It’s been a week of mixed fortunes for Joe Biden. He has faced some criticism of late from within the more progressive left of the Democratic Party for not living up to some of his more liberal election promises, and coming after Democrats had been thwarted by a Senate rule from inserting a raise to the federal minimum wage in Biden’s massive Covid-19 rescue bill. Joe has been attempting to rebuff some of that criticism this week, however. On election eve, Biden promised to be the “most pro-Union President you’ve ever seen!” On Sunday night, then, he took the unusual step of issuing a presidential video backing the right to unionise the workers at an Amazon plant in Alabama, and implicitly warned the online retail giant not to interfere. “Let me be clear: It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union,” Biden said. “But let me be even more clear: It’s not up to an employer to decide that, either.” That’s fairly unequivocal from Joe, there, I’d say! Quite right, too! Everyone has the right to unionise and seek Union representation in the event of exploitation, bullying or malpractice by an employer, especially one as wealthy and powerful as Amazon. I think it’s fair to say that this isn’t the first time this particular company has faced criticism for the way it treats it’s workforce!
In foreign policy matters it was also a difficult week for Joe Biden, depending on your perspective. He was on the defensive following Friday’s release of a US intelligence report finding Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman culpable of the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Now, Biden has already sanctioned 76 Saudis involved in harassing activists and journalists, and plans to recalibrate the US relationship with the kingdom. He’s ending US complicity in the war in Yemen and put a massive Saudi arms sale on hold. He’s also willing to talk to Saudi Arabia’s regional rival Iran. And merely releasing the report in itself reverses the Trump administration’s previous absolution of the Crown Prince. Biden has named and shamed the Saudis and it’s highly unlikely we will see Saudi royalty visiting the the White House for a while. But don’t be fooled by the seemingly tough stance! President Biden is also facing criticism that he backed down from a vow to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over human rights abuses. New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff said that by not personally sanctioning the crown prince, Biden had “choked” and let a “murderer walk!”
Biden’s predicament is clear. Leaving the moral arguments to one side, his approach recognises the power of a crown prince regarded as impetuous, unpredictable and ruthless by the intelligence services in Washington, but who could soon be the king of a major US ally in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is a vital anti-terror partner and remains key to stabilizing oil markets that could scuttle US economic prosperity. Ditching it would make America’s longtime enemy, Iran, more powerful in that region.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has called for an independent investigation led by the Attorney General into allegations of sexual misconduct by New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo. Over the weekend, after another woman emerged with sexual misconduct claims against the politician. It is the third sexual harassment allegation made against Mr Cuomo in recent weeks, who was also accused of inappropriate conduct by two former aides. Other Democrat politicians were also calling for the first time for Mr Cuomo’s resignation, including the Representative for New York’s 4th congressional district Ms Rice, who wrote on Twitter: “The time has come. The Governor must resign.” This can only be regarded as a major embarrassment for the Democrats, coming as it does, after Cuomo had been widely praised for his pro-active stance on dealing with the pandemic in New York State. Some were even tipping him for a tilt at the presidency in the future! 🤦🏻♂️
And on that unsavoury note, I think that’s your lot for this week, folks! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading. Please feel free to share as you please and by all means come back again for next week’s instalment. Until then, stay tuned in, stay informed and stay safe out there! See you all next week! 👋🏻
The Weekly Politics Digest! 