Uk politics

Is Boris’s honours list a lesson in cronyism?

11 min listen

Boris Johnson has published his resignation honours list, proposing a number of supporters, long time loyalists and even young staffers to be given peerages and honours. But is this an abuse of a system which should, instead, be about rewarding people for their public service? Cindy Yu talks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. Produced by Cindy Yu.

How far can the Green Party go without Caroline Lucas?

12 min listen

The Green Party’s first and only MP, Caroline Lucas, has announced today that she’ll be stepping down at the next election. On the episode, Katy Balls talks with Isabel Hardman and Fraser Nelson about Lucas’s achievements and what it’s like to be the sole MP of your party in a parliamentary system like ours. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Margaret Ferrier’s Commons ban could complicate partygate for Boris

Margaret Ferrier has received a 30-day suspension from the Commons for breaching the Code of Conduct for MPs when she broke Covid rules. As the suspension is for longer than ten days, she is now at the mercy of a recall petition and by-election: it’s almost certain that the constituents of Rutherglen and Hamilton West will soon have a new MP. Unusually, 40 MPs voted against the suspension (185 voted in favour), and a high number of abstentions were recorded. Ferrier was sentenced to 270 hours of unpaid work in September last year after she pleaded guilty in a Scottish court to culpable and reckless conduct. Having discovered she was

Cindy Yu

Can Sunak and Biden crack AI regulation?

12 min listen

The Prime Minister will be flying stateside tonight to visit Joe Biden. Top of the agenda will be AI regulation and Britain’s role in it (they may also talk about Ben Wallace’s bid to become the next Secretary General of Nato). It’s a tricky issue and famously fast moving, so can the two leaders crack it? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and James Heale. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Katy Balls

Rishi’s US charm offensive

As Rishi Sunak faces concern at home that his five priorities are slipping out of reach, he is flying to Washington tonight for another foray on the world stage. The Prime Minister will spend two days in the USA where he will meet President Joe Biden for his first bilateral in America (and the fifth since he entered No. 10). While Boris Johnson made his dislike of the phrase ‘special relationship’ well known, Sunak has no such qualms – though one government aide suggests that it still may not appear in his lexicon: the Prime Minister prefers instead to refer to America as the UK’s greatest ally. While the Windsor

Is the government heading for a court defeat?

14 min listen

The Cabinet Office has officially triggered a judicial review against the Covid Inquiry – but is this a misstep, if eventually they will lose their legal case against it? On the episode, James Heale talks to Katy Balls and the Institute for Government’s Catherine Haddon. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Red Rishi

39 min listen

On this week’s episode: Price caps are back in the news as the government is reportedly considering implementing one on basic food items. What happened to the Rishi Sunak who admired Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson? In her cover article this week, our economics editor Kate Andrews argues that the prime minister and his party have lost their ideological bearings. She joins the podcast, together with Spectator columnist Matthew Parris, who remembers the last time price caps were implemented and writes about it in his column. We also take a look at the experience of being addicted to meth. What is it like, and is it possible to turn your

‘Protect the NHS’: The nanny state is waging war on life’s pleasures

British political discourse has barely progressed since David Cameron told voters in 2010 that he represented the ‘party of’ our revered healthcare service.  Over the past few weeks we’ve heard pledges – all clearly with an election in mind – ranging from the inconsequential to the ridiculous. Tired promises about community-led treatment. Receptionists-turned-‘care navigators’. School leavers working as doctors. But more often than not, they have been laced with the same pernicious message: that it is the behaviour of the British public that must change, rather than our healthcare model. That people must be regulated, even though failure is in the NHS’s DNA. This is nothing new, of course. For years,

Sunak can’t afford to lose Braverman

Back in the early days of the Blair governments, Alastair Campbell was reputed to have a rule for resignations: once a scandal had been in the news for ten consecutive days, a minister had to go. It was a stupid rule because it merely encouraged parliamentary lobby journalists to keep a story going until the limit was up in the expectation of claiming another ministerial scalp. Since then Alastair has claimed, possibly truthfully, that he cannot remember imposing this rule and had probably come up with it when the Tories were still in power as a means of further stoking up the atmosphere of crisis around John Major. This story

The Tories would be lost in opposition

It is widely observed that many Conservatives are preparing to lose power at the next general election.  The Conservative Democratic Organisation and National Conservatism meetings last week are generally regarded as preparation for the leadership battle that would likely follow Rishi Sunak’s departure from No. 10. Most (though not all) Tories appear to assume that Sunak could not remain leader after that exit, nor want to. Privately too, even the most optimistic Tories will concede that leaving government after 14 years – they’ve just beaten the New Labour tenure – has to be considered a real possibility. What would the Conservatives do in opposition? This is not a trivial question.

Oliver Dowden’s textbook turn at PMQs

Oliver Dowden had 20 years and four Tory leaders to prepare him for his understudy moment at PMQs. He’s helped a series of leaders work out their attack lines, their defences and their jokes – so it’s unsurprising that his chance at the despatch box sparring with Angela Rayner was so textbook that he should probably offer it in a seminar on a Skills in Politics Course for aspiring Tory leaders. It was anatomically perfect: there was the opening joke about the opposition (‘I was, though, expecting to face the Labour leader’s choice for deputy prime minister if they win the election, so I’m surprised that the Lib Dem leader isn’t taking

Rishi’s ECHR battle at the Council of Europe

11 min listen

The Prime Minister has gone to Iceland today to see the Council of Europe, where he has been talking about immigration and the ECHR with other European leaders. On the episode, Katy Balls explains his mission to get other leaders on board with the UK’s hardline approach to immigration. Cindy Yu also talks to James Heale about the second day of the National Conservatism Conference and Michael Gove’s recommendation for conservatives. Produced by Cindy Yu.

A Lib-Lab coalition would be hilarious

Talk of a new Labour-Lib Dem coalition is in the air. This is piquantly nostalgic to those of us whose earliest political memories were forged in the fire of the red-hot excitement of David Steel and Jim Callaghan’s short-lived Lib-Lab pact of 1977-78. My initial reaction, along with many others I’m sure, was a guttural ‘oh God no’. But a moment later a different aspect of it occurred to me, in a fine example of what the young people call ‘cope’. My banter senses started to tingle. Because, yes, it would drag out and exacerbate the country’s current despairing decline. But it would also be hilarious. PR might very well

Britain is stuck in a fertility trap

Pope Francis wants you to have sex. Or at least he wants Italians to have more sex. The country, he says, is facing a ‘Titanic struggle’ against demographic doom. Last year, the population dropped by 179,000 people – and Italy is projected to lose another five million by 2050.  What’s happening in Italy is, to a greater or lesser extent, being repeated across the western world. In the UK in 2020, there were four workers per retiree. By 2041, the ONS projects there will be just three. We’re getting older, there are fewer of us and, all other things being equal, we’ll poorer for it. Either we tax the declining population more to

Kate Andrews

What if Rishi fails to deliver all five pledges?

When Rishi Sunak delivered his five key pledges at the start of January, the latest data we had for the inflation rate was for last November. It was up 10.7 per cent on the year, having fallen from a peak of 11.1 per cent the month before. Everyone thought this was the start of a fast and spectacular fall, with virtually all forecasts showing a welcome decline in the rate of inflation. Off the back of those forecasts, the Prime Minister oozed confidence when he promised to ‘halve inflation’ by the end of this year. Speaking to an audience in Stratford, Sunak promised that an ‘ease’ to the cost-of-living crisis and greater

The UN is wrong about Britain’s treatment of trans people

Is Britain a hostile environment for trans people? The United Nations’ independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity has delivered his verdict – and it isn’t good. Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a lawyer from Costa Rica, said following a ten-day visit to the country: ‘I am deeply concerned about increased bias-motivated incidents of harassment, threats, and violence against LGBT people, including a rampant surge in hate crimes in the UK.’ But his statement was stronger on rhetoric than evidence. An unnamed ‘elected officer’ in Belfast told him that ‘I have never seen so much unadulterated hatred as currently directed toward the trans community’. He also claimed in his report, which is to be presented to the

James Heale

Where next for Richard Tice and Reform?

The local elections last week proved to be a disappointing night for Reform UK. Prior to polling day, its leader Richard Tice had talked up the ‘huge appetite’ among voters for Reform but the party averaged a mere six per cent of the vote in the wards where it stood. It won just half a dozen seats on on Derby City Council out of 471 hand-picked seats. Ukip, its effective forerunner, lost all its remaining councillors, going from almost 500 in 2016 to zero. Tice’s response was to argue that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and to focus instead on the next electoral test: the London mayoralty. Petrolhead Howard

What the local election results really mean

The last twelve months have been traumatic for the Conservative Party. It has elected and deposed two party leaders. It has found itself caught in a financial crisis of its own making. And most recently it has faced a still largely unresolved ‘winter of discontent’ from a public sector workforce that, like much of those who are reliant on them, is unhappy about the state of public services.  The opinion polls have long since registered their estimate of the damage this sequence of dramas has inflicted on the party’s popularity. But the local elections last week provided us with the first firm evidence from across the country of actual choices

Did the Tories ‘kill the dream of homeownership’?

11 min listen

In today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Keir Starmer accused the Prime Minister and his party of having ‘killed the dream of homeownership’. With news this week that Rishi Sunak is considering reintroducing ‘Help to Buy’ while Michael Gove is sued for blocking a new housing development in Kent, does Starmer actually have a point? Katy Balls talks to Kate Andrews and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Could Sue Gray-gate backfire on Keir Starmer?

17 min listen

The Cabinet Office has published its written statement into the resignation of Sue Gray, stating that it has given a ‘confidential assessment’ to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) about whether she broke civil service rules in taking up a job from Keir Starmer while still a senior civil servant. On the episode, Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and the UK In A Changing Europe’s Jill Rutter, who is also a former civil servant, about the implications for the civil service if Gray is found to have broken the rules. Produced by Cindy Yu.