Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Michel Barnier’s government has fallen

France was plunged into another political crisis on Wednesday evening when the government of Michel Barnier lost a vote of no confidence. 332 MPs voted for the motion and 288 against, an inevitable result once Marine Le Pen’s National Rally let it be known that they would support the left-wing New Front Popular in their censure. It is only the second time in the 66-year history of the Fifth Republic that a government has lost of vote of no confidence; that previous occasion was in 1962 when Georges Pompidou’s premiership was terminated in similar fashion. It is not the opposition who have plunged France into chaos Throughout a tense afternoon

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Devolution is shortchanging England

The English taxpayer is not the primary audience for the Scottish government’s annual Budget, but one wonders what they might make of today’s announcements from SNP finance minister Shona Robison. An extra £2 billion for health and social care, bumping the overall cost of that portfolio to just under £22 billion. An additional £800 million for social security benefits and £768 million for affordable housing, taking the total spend on social justice to £8.2 billion. Plus, £1 billion for roads, raising the transport budget to £4 billion; £355 million for two new prisons as part of the £4.2 billion justice and home affairs budget; and a boost of £158 million

Oscar Edmondson

Spectator Awards: Nigel Farage promises a ‘political revolution’

12 min listen

Last night was The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year Awards. Politicians of every stripe were in attendance, with Wes Streeting, Robert Jenrick and Stephen Flynn among those present. There were a number of notable speeches – including a fiery opening monologue from the Health Secretary – but none caused as much of a stir as Nigel Farage’s acceptance speech for Newcomer of the Year. He warned of a ‘political revolution the likes of which we’ve not seen since Labour after the First World War’. How did that go down in the room? Also on the podcast, at PMQs today Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer seemed to have settled into a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The triumph of England’s maths lessons

Hold your hats, but Britain is doing rather well in something – or at least England is. Our children are achieving more at maths than in any country outside South or East Asia. According to the latest Trends in International Maths and Science Study, conducted by the Dutch-based International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), English 13 to 14-year-olds come out with an average score of 525, sixth behind Singapore (605), Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) (602), Korea (596), Japan (595) and Hong Kong (575). To put that into context, a score of 550 indicates that students ‘can apply their conceptual understanding in a variety of relatively complex situations’, while

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Why won’t the jokes about Rachel Reeves’s CV go away?

Why do jokes about Rachel Reeves’s CV persist? One explanation is simple: it’s funny. The Chancellor’s public persona is strait-laced and orderly; the idea of her doing something slightly naughty and gilding her CV is good material for comedy. But is that all? Reeves’s tweaks to her LinkedIn profile are, bluntly, trivial. They’re also minor compared to the airbrushing some politicians carry out on their personal histories. You might have forgotten a man called Rishi Sunak, but when he became Chancellor then PM, how much fuss was made of the fact that he had deleted whole jobs from his CV? Sunak vanished several years at Goldman Sachs and the TCI hedge

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Named and shamed: the PMQs time wasters

You’re an ambitious backbench Labour MP with a weighty constituency caseload, legislation that you’re interested in improving, and a few personal campaigns to right various wrongs and make the world a better place. You get a spot on the order paper for this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions. What could you possibly ask your party leader about? One of the above? For some of the Labour MPs in today’s session, the very best questions they could come up with were ones merely asking Keir Starmer if he agreed he was doing a good job. The utterly pointless question was a regular feature at Prime Minister’s Questions when the Tories were in

Edward Howell

South Korea’s political chaos is far from over

Had you have taken a direct flight from London to Seoul yesterday afternoon, by the time you would have landed you might have been none the wiser that anything had happened at all. At near midnight South Korean time, President Yoon Suk Yeol imposed martial law across the so-called ‘land of the morning calm’. Only six hours later it was subsequently, and pointedly, revoked. As South Korean citizens continue with their daily lives, the political establishment has once again entered a period of precarity. Yoon has scored a significant own goal; its implications do not end there. It is no understatement to say that the decision by President Yoon to impose

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Kemi let Starmer off the hook again

Labour thinks it can win on immigration. Their new strategy was road-tested today at PMQs as backbencher Olivia Bailey opened the session saluting Keir Starmer’s gang-busting policies. ‘Internationalist co-operation, shared intelligence and joint law enforcement,’ said Bailey, ‘are the best way to end the vile people-smuggling trade.’   Starmer rose to agree with his stooge. ‘The broken immigration system’ of the Tories is being fixed, he said, and 9,400 people ‘who have no right to be here’ are being rounded up and sent packing. ‘We got the flights off the ground,’ he boasted. This blew Kemi Badenoch off course. She wanted to talk about Louise Haigh, the ex-transport minister.  ‘He

Steerpike Steerpike

BBC presenter under fire over failure to declare extra work

Another day, another drama at the BBC. Now it transpires that one of the corporation’s top newsreaders Clive Myrie failed to declare up to a quarter of a million pounds worth of ‘external events’ that he was involved in outside of his BBC job. Dear oh dear… As well as undertaking his newsreader role, the Beeb staffer has also been paid for a number of speaking and hosting work – but when it came to logging the additional work on the broadcaster’s external events register, Myrie fell short. It took the press getting in touch with the BBC over the issue for the star presenter to register 29 late entries

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

PMQs has become painfully predictable

Kemi Badenoch had an odd line of attack at Prime Minister’s Questions: she chose to pursue Keir Starmer over what he knew about Louise Haigh’s fraud conviction. It is not a story that has any impact on people outside Westminster, but it did still highlight how much Starmer has become like the politicians he used to ridicule: he did not answer the questions at all and often ended up making points about the Tories being just as bad as Labour. The Conservative leader initially mocked Starmer for using a planted question from an overly loyal Labour backbencher about immigration to celebrate what he was doing to control Britain’s borders. Badenoch

Christopher Booth

A true popular uprising is taking place in Georgia

Georgia’s government recently decided to spend money on fresh black ‘Robocop’ uniforms for their riot police, with shiny new helmets to match. After parliamentary elections in October, they might have been forgiven for thinking the kit would go back on the precinct shelves with barely a scuff – a little shopsoiled at worst.  Protests immediately after the vote were predicted, but turned out to be sporadic and rudderless. The lacklustre opposition figures were hopelessly divided, little known and incapable of inspiring a following. And while there were credible allegations of vote-rigging, enough voters were fearful of losing their meagre state incomes – or fearful of rattling observers in the Kremlin,

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Sue Gray get a peerage?

Sue Gray may no longer be Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still making headlines. Now it transpires that the Prime Minister is planning to award a peerage to the former civil servant, despite the rather negative press attention Gray managed to garner while in the top job. How very interesting… According to the Financial Times, Starmer has grand plans to award the former mandarin with a seat in the House of Lords – while a number of other ex-MPs who allowed fresh candidates to stand in the July election are also expected to make Sir Keir’s ‘political’ list of peerages. Gray had a

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is politics killing art?

45 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by journalist Dean Kissick, a writer and author, to discuss the contemporary art sector and how it has come to be overrun by superficial forms of political gesturing. 

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The OECD has changed its tune on Britain

Is the OECD doing Labour’s PR for it? I ask only because of its bullish prediction for UK economic growth in its latest economic outlook, published this morning, and the contrast with what it has been saying about Britain over the past few years. An economy that was supposed to be hammered by Brexit has suddenly been transformed into one of which Rachel Reeves is able to say: ‘The OECD upgrade will mean the UK is the fastest growing European economy in the G7 over the next few years.’ The OECD has pencilled in growth of 0.9 per cent in 2024, followed by 1.7 per cent in 2025 and 1.3

Matthew Lynn

A failing steel company is the last thing the state should buy

It could be backing the hottest start-ups in Artificial Intelligence. It could be nurturing space businesses, or flying taxis, or at least something with a functioning website. If the British government wants to put money into industry, there are lots of different options it could choose. But no. It turns out that it will back steel manufacturing with taxpayer’s millions. The trouble is, it will just be throwing money away – and a failing British Steel is the last thing it should be buying. If nationalisation was the answer, then British Steel would be one of the biggest companies in the world If nationalisation was the answer, then British Steel

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

South Korea’s President Yoon will be lucky to escape jail

Six hours. That was the duration of the profoundly disturbing and simultaneously farcical version of martial law invoked by South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday night – the country’s first experience of military rule for 40 years. It was so brief in duration that if you weren’t plugged in to social media or watching TV you may not have been aware it had even occurred. What this brief but extraordinary episode amounted to was a deployment of troops to the parliament building to bar the entrance of lawmakers. That operation failed utterly, as protesters were quickly on the scene to take on the military, in some cases with fire

Steerpike Steerpike

Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year 2024, in pictures

In 2024, no incumbent has been safe. Whether it was the Democrats in America or the Tories in Britain, there has been plenty of drama in every corner of the globe. Here in Westminster, Keir Starmer swept to power – only to discover that governing well is quite a bit harder than some seemed to believe. Rishi Sunak meanwhile has left the political stage, to be replaced by Kemi Badenoch after a mammoth four-month contest. So in a year of shocks, the only safe seat could be found tonight at The Spectator’s Parliamentarian Awards. The great and the not-so-good of British politics crammed themselves into the opulent splendour of the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Blame the EU for what’s happening to France

Michel Barnier’s government is likely to be toast by teatime when a vote of no confidence is tabled in France’s National Assembly. Votes will be cast this afternoon in a motion brought by the left-wing New Popular Front coalition, but Marine Le Pen’s National Rally have vowed to endorse it and so put an end to Barnier’s three months in office. Instead of addressing the reasons why the No vote won, the elite – Barnier included – not only ignored their anxiety but subverted democracy The budget for 2025 has brought to the head the simmering discontent felt by Le Pen for Barnier’s centrist government. In a series of posts

Cristina Odone

Can Starmer help get children ‘school ready’?

It takes a lot of effort for ‘Johnny’ to take off his coat every morning when he joins his reception class. That’s because his teacher or a teaching assistant have to help the five year old pull his arms out from the sleeves of his duffel coat. Johnny is not disabled in any way; he simply was never taught how to dress himself. ‘School readiness’ is a catch-all term for some alarming failures. Children who are not toilet trained, who don’t know how to hold a spoon, who can’t sit still. Some can’t articulate properly because at home they are not talked to enough. Others come to school smelling so

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Poll: public back NFU over Reeves

When you’re in a hole, stop digging. These words of wisdom are yet to be heeded by the bright young things in Downing Street, who appear to be ploughing on manfully with plans to slap inheritance tax on family farms. Yet despite all the state-sponsored spinning, the public seems to be increasingly turning against Labour on this issue. According to a poll conducted by Freshwater Strategy for The Spectator, a majority – 53 per cent – of voters oppose Labour’s change to inheritance tax, with barely a quarter (27 per cent) backing the move. One in three Brits (36 per cent) say the announcement makes them more likely to vote