Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
23 min listen
On this week’s podcast, Freddy Gray explains how Trump could still pull his greatest trick yet (00:45) Emma Byrne considers whether she will be bankrupted by the next housing scandal (12:30) Lara Prendergast argues that wearing floral masks isn’t worth the hassle. (19:11)
If you want a measure of how in control of things the government currently feels, look no further than today’s briefing on encouraging workers back into offices. A nationwide campaign to reassure people that employers have made their workplaces ‘Covid-secure’ will launch next week, as ministers worry about the impact on city centres of workers continuing to stay at home. But a row has raged today over whether the government is less interested in reassuring employees and more interested in threatening them. Labour has accused ministers of the latter after a briefing appeared in this morning’s Telegraph suggesting that workers will be encouraged to think of the cost of not
The law on gender is a mess and could either be about to get much clearer or messier still. The Scottish government is being taken to court by feminist campaigners over its plans to increase women’s representation on public boards. That’s not the sort of thing feminist campaigners typically take governments to court over so you might have already guessed what’s coming next. For Women Scotland (FWS) believes the SNP is using the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act 2018 (GRPBA) to change the law on gender recognition by stealth. That’s already too many acronyms, which is always a sure sign that a given law is a bad idea. The
Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Shinzō Abe, has announced that he will step down, as soon as his replacement is selected. This is the second time that Abe has resigned the premiership (the first being in 2007) and ill health has again been cited as the reason. Abe has visited hospital several times in recent weeks and has looked tired on his rare public appearances as his chronic bowel disease has recurred. The news has sparked two debates – the first, urgent one, is over Abe’s successor. The front-runner is probably Shigeru Ishiba, the 63-year-old former defence minister and Abe critic. The hawkish Ishiba is relatively liked by voters, but is
17 min listen
The government will launch a new publicity campaign to coax people back into the office, it was announced today. This morning’s headlines took a hardline approach, telling readers that they could lose their jobs unless they returned to work. Is this really the government’s approach, and why are offices important? John Connolly speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.
It has been clear from the start of the Covid-19 crisis – from Wuhan’s experience, before cases were confirmed in Britain – that it was a disease with relatively little impact on children. A broad study led by Liverpool University and published in the British Medical Journal today confirms that – and sheds a lot more light on how Covid-19 affects children. The study looks at data from 260 hospitals in England, Scotland and Wales, to which 69,516 patients were admitted with Covid symptoms between 17 January and 3 July. Of these, 651 were aged under 19 and 225 were aged under 12 months. Serious underlying medical conditions were present
35 min listen
With protests in American cities continuing and the Democrat and Republican conventions drawing to a close – are there signs that Donald Trump could win again? (00:45) Plus, could planning reforms be the next Tory battle? (13:05) And finally, can daily commutes really be enjoyable? (25:45) With editor of the Spectator’s US edition Freddy Gray; the Spectator’s economics correspondent Kate Andrews; the Spectator’s political editor James Forsyth; economist and author Liam Halligan; the Spectator’s features editor; and author Sara Yirrell. Presented by Cindy Yu. Produced by Cindy Yu and Max Jeffery.
12 min listen
The government has announced that self-isolating Britons will be paid £13 a day to stay at home. Will this help improve the beleaguered test and trace system? Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Kate Andrews.
It seems as though Layla Moran’s offer to make the Lib Dems ‘more radical than Labour’ has been decisively rejected. Her rival Ed Davey won over 60 per cent of the votes cast and is the party’s new leader after an interminable and dire leadership contest. After the result was announced, Davey got up and gave a short, remarkably good speech. It was humble and to the point. The Lib Dems have lost touch with most voters, he said, and he was going to make it his mission to try and win back as many as he could by getting in touch with their true concerns. His words immediately reminded me of
For many Lib Dems, this leadership election felt like an existential choice. The party is now on its fourth leader in almost as many years, while Brexit has left the party a polarising – and increasingly irrelevant – force in British politics. Sir Ed Davey made clear that he knows his party is facing serious problems during his livestreamed acceptance speech. The MP for Surbiton explained: ‘Our party has lost touch with too many voters.’ Davey has been acting leader since Jo Swinson lost her seat at the 2019 general election – and he was widely seen as the favourite during the contest. In the event, he won twice as many votes as
Should we be spraying surfaces, and ourselves, with an off-the-shelf mosquito repellent to tackle the spread of Covid-19? The Ministry of Defence has revealed that it has been issuing soldiers with Mosi-guard natural, a spray derived from eucalyptus oil and manufactured by a small company called Citrefine, in Leeds, from the beginning of the Covid crisis. The spray has been tested by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and found to have a rapid effect on reducing levels of the virus when sprayed onto surfaces. It did not, however, succeed in eliminating the virus altogether. In one test, the product was sprayed onto latex synthetic skin an hour before being
The government always knew it would have to expend political capital to get its planning reforms through. Making it easier to build houses was never going to be popular with Tories in leafy areas. The benefit of an 80-seat majority was meant to be the ability to push through difficult but important changes. The problem is, as I say in the magazine this week, that the government has been expending political capital on rather a lot of other things recently. Tory MPs are in a fractious mood, irritated by the number of U-turns, and opposition to planning reform is beginning to build up. One normally mild-mannered former cabinet minister tells
A takeover battle for BT would bring much-needed excitement to the City — as well as a major political row. The privatised telecoms giant that rarely pleases its customers and regulators has seen its shares fall by four-fifths since late 2015. While many other tech-related stocks have rebounded, BT’s price is still down where it was when the market plunged in February — lockdown having interfered with BT Openreach’s broadband installation programme, slashed new orders from business customers and even knocked out the fixtures that might have been shown on BT Sport’s television channels. On top of all that, there’s a gaping hole in the pension fund. No wonder BT’s
The government will pass the test it has set itself: schools in England will return next week. Pupils may well have to wear masks at times, but they will be back in the classroom. Yet ministers privately acknowledge this isn’t the real challenge. The bigger question is what effect the return of schools has on the prevalence of the virus and what happens to education in the case of further local outbreaks. The exams grading debacle and the various other summer U-turns have been damaging. As one minister concedes: ‘There’s only a limited amount of time before the “incompetence” label sticks. It hasn’t yet — but we can’t afford many
13 min listen
The government reversed its position on masks in schools late yesterday evening, announcing that secondary school pupils in local lockdown areas would be mandated to wear face coverings in communal areas. Could masks in offices be next? John Connolly speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about why the government keeps changing its mind.
Within the next year or two, I could go bankrupt. My mistake: to join a government-backed affordable housing scheme and purchase a one-bedroom flat in east London. For the past four years, it has been my pride and joy — not to mention my savings, my pension and my financial future. I was grateful for the government’s help in getting a foothold in the city. But now another government policy is hurtling towards me, against which I have no defence. Nor do potentially tens of thousands of first-time buyers and the owners of affordable housing in my position. It might be the next big scandal to hit the government. It’s
One of the reasons the Red Wall fell so decisively in favour of the Tories was that Labour failed to understand Brexit voters. That at least is a common theory put forward as to why Boris decisively trounced Corbyn last December. And it certainly seems to tally up with what some current Labour MPs make of Britain’s decision to vote to leave the EU – and why, as a result, Brexiteers turned their backs on Corbyn’s party. In a now-deleted tweet sent late last night, Labour’s Neil Coyle took to Twitter to brand Brexit voters like his parliamentary colleague Jacob Rees-Mogg ‘absolute s**tbag racist w***ers’. Coyle, the MP for Bermondsey, added: ‘I
Has anyone who is recommending the use of masks in schools ever spent any significant amount of time working with young people? It seems unlikely. Children simply will not wear their masks correctly, if at all. Girls will constantly be adjusting them; boys will be flicking them across the room and pulling each others’ elastic bands. They’ll all be pulling them down to their necks at break time, resulting in pieces of food and drink being spilt inside. That, and the fact that they’ll be wearing them around their necks, mirroring the behaviour of adults they see on public transport, further trapping bacteria. If anything, face masks will be detrimental
There’s a new trend emerging when it comes to Covid-19 policy: where Scotland leads, England follows. In recent weeks, decisions taken by Nicola Sturgeon have – eventually – been adopted by the UK government for England: first, the U-turn on how A-level and GCSE results would be attributed, and today another U-turn on face masks in schools. When Scotland announced face masks would be made mandatory for pupils earlier in the week, the government remained adamant that this would not be required in English schools. But within days, the advice quite substantially changed, now requiring secondary school students in local lockdown areas to wear them in the corridors and communal areas. The
Throughout the Covid crisis, the international response to the disease has rested on a simple assumption: that none of us have any resistance to it, being caused by a novel virus. Therefore, if allowed to let rip through the population, the virus would exponentially spread until around 60 – 70 per cent of us had been infected and herd immunity was reached. This was the assumption behind Neil Ferguson’s paper in March, claiming that Covid-19 would kill 500,000 Britons if nothing was done and 250,000 of us if the government carried on with the limited mitigation polices it was then following. Yet real world data has challenged this assumption. First