Politics Archives

Monday

7 Oct 2024

Is Morgan McSweeney the answer to Keir Starmer’s troubles?

It might be best described as the war for Keir Starmer’s ear in Downing Street, a battle to the bitter end between two of the Prime Minister’s most senior advisers. There was, in reality, only going to be one winner, and so it has come to pass. Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief adviser and architect of Labour’s massive general election victory this summer, has been anointed as the PM’s new all-powerful chief of staff. Out goes Sue Gray, his embattled predecessor. Gray decided the game was up, saying she ‘risked becoming a distraction’. How will he go about ensuring that Whitehall bends to his master’s will? This is Whitehall-speak for

Brendan O’Neill

Shame on the pro-Palestinian mob for hijacking 7 October

It is one year since the Jews suffered the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Nazi era, and what is the British left doing? Raging against the Jewish state. Hitting the streets in their thousands to fume against the nation that was the victim of that carnival of racist killing. They’re protesting not against the pogromists of Hamas who unleashed such horrors on 7 October 2023, but against the country and the people they did it to. It’s a new low It’s a new low. As Jews in Britain and around the world ready themselves for the painful commemoration of the slaughter of more than a thousand of their

Francis Pike

The long-forgotten history of the Chagos Islands

Now that Sir Keir Starmer has unilaterally decided to give up British ownership of the Chagos Islands, the last vestige of our imperial inheritance in the Indian Ocean, it seems an appropriate moment to look back at the long-forgotten history of this remote possession. Mauritius will be the happy recipient of the Chagos Archipelago, which consist of some 60 islands, mainly low-lying atolls and their lagoons. The Chagos Islands were ruled under Mauritius’s mantle until 1968. Today Mauritius is largely known as a destination for the British middle class who cannot bear the thought of a winter without a week or two’s break on an island on which they can

Limor Simhony Philpott

Why did some people refuse to mourn with the Jews after 7 October?

A year has passed since the terrible events of 7 October 2023, but for Jews the pain of that day – when 1,200 were killed and 250 hostages snatched across Israel’s border into Gaza – remains vivid. Every call and every text on that dreadful Saturday morning brought awful news. Many of those murdered were friends and relatives. My cousin, who was at the Nova music festival, survived the massacre, but she was injured and remains traumatised by what she saw; she will never forget the rapes and shootings for as long as she lives. Another cousin’s son was murdered by Hamas. Sons, daughters and grandchildren were lost. Jews were

Sunday

6 Oct 2024

Sam Leith

Sue Gray, Keir Starmer and the centre-left’s self-righteousness problem

‘Could you write a piece,’ my colleague wondered aloud, ‘saying come back Jeremy Corbyn: all is forgiven?’ Ha ha ha, said I. No. We most certainly are not there yet. And it is hard to conceive of any sequence of events, up to and including an asteroid strike on SW1 or a Day of the Triffids style mass blinding, which would leave us thinking that a return of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership would be a step in the right direction. And yet and yet. Keir Starmer has been squandering at quite startling speed the goodwill of those of us (I know that will not be all Spectator readers)

Steerpike

Pundits left red-faced over ‘serious politics’ claims

Another one bites the dust. Now Sue Gray has resigned from her top job as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, taking on an ‘advisory’ position while Labour campaign guru Morgan McSweeney moves into her role. The move follows weeks of bad briefings about Gray – from claims the Starmer staffer had ‘subverted’ Cabinet over Casement Park, refused to get paid less than the PM and was not seeing eye to eye with McSweeney himself. The drama never quite seemed to end. So much for serious government, eh? Certainly those commentators who gloated about Sir Keir’s Labour welcoming in a new age of mature politics must be feeling red-faced now.

Katy Balls

Sue Gray out, Morgan McSweeney in

11 min listen

Keir Starmer has not yet reached the 100 day mark but already he has lost his Chief of Staff. This afternoon, Downing Street has confirmed that Sue Gray is leaving her No. 10 role. Instead, she will be taking on an ‘advisory’ role as the Prime Minister’s envoy for nations and regions. In a statement announcing her departure, Gray referenced the media attention she had received as one of the reasons behind her decision to quit. Morgan McSweeney will take over from Gray in a move will be popular with parts of the Labour party and brings to a close the Gray vs McSweeney psychodrama. Will this steady the Labour

Steerpike

SNP police probe investigating fake company claim

Back to Scotland, where the police probe into the SNP’s funds and finances continues to rumble on. Now it transpires that prosecutors are looking into findings that suggests a non-existent company was paid for refurbishment work carried out at SNP HQ. More than £100,000 was coughed up for work on a ‘media suite’ in the party’s Edinburgh office – yet officers are probing evidence that suggests the company paid wasn’t, um, real. The SNP’s 2020 accounts detail the party paid £615,000 to refurb the party’s offices, with the money going on upgraded furniture and tech. One source told the Sunday Mail that: One of the biggest items being looked at

Joe Bedell-Brill

Tzipi Hotovely: Israel will dismantle Iranian threat

Israel won’t rule out strikes against Iranian nuclear capabilities Iran launched missiles against Israel this week, and the world is waiting anxiously to see how Israel will respond. On the BBC this morning, Laura Kuenssberg asked Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely if Israel would rule out a strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities, which President Biden opposes. Hotovely said Israel had no interest in being attacked by Iranian missiles, and they would ‘dismantle the threat’. Hotovely implied that Israel were considering going against the US president’s wishes, telling Kuenssberg that the world needed to prevent ‘this regime of terror’ in Iran from having nuclear abilities. Masoumeh Ebtekar: Israel is ‘undermining every single

Katy Balls

What Sue Gray’s departure means for Starmer

Keir Starmer has not yet reached the 100 day mark but already he has lost his Chief of Staff. This afternoon, Downing Street has confirmed that Sue Gray is leaving her No. 10 role. Instead, she will be taking on an ‘advisory’ role as the Prime Minister’s envoy for nations and regions. In a statement announcing her departure, Gray referenced the media attention she had received as one of the reasons behind her decision to quit: It has been an honour to take on the role of Chief of Staff, and to play my part in the delivery of a Labour government. Throughout my career my first interest has always

Michael Simmons

Keir Starmer’s polling calamity

Politicians’ popularity only tends to go in one direction: down. John Major entered office in 1990 with a net satisfaction rating of +15 and left it having lost 42 points. Tony Blair moved into Downing Street in 1997 with an approval rating of +60 points. When he handed over to Gordon Brown in 2007, he’d fallen to -27. Where you start can make all the difference. If things are only going to go one way, you want as handsome a starting margin as possible. Bad news for Keir Starmer then, who has seen his popularity drop at the fastest rate of any Prime Minister other than Liz Truss. The Ipsos

Ralph Outhwaite

Why you should worry about gallium

You will be forgiven for not having heard of, let alone given much thought to, a raw material called gallium. So, to explain: it’s a by-product of the bauxite-to-aluminium smelting process, it’s used in semiconductors and it is vital for the latest missile defence and radar technologies. Israel’s Iron Dome and the US Patriot Missile system rely on materials such as gallium to guard the skies against Iranian drones and Russian cruise missiles. The only problem is that 98 per cent of the world’s gallium comes from China. ‘Mineral diplomacy’ can now be added to the long list of ‘diplomacies’ governing relations between China and the West. (See ‘vaccine diplomacy’,

Steerpike

Kemi Badenoch wins a surprise endorsement

It’s just four days to go until the next round of voting for Tory leader. So, with the various candidates pulling out all the stops from now until Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch has today decided to unveil her latest star supporter. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has thrown his support behind the shadow housing secretary, just days after ex-Australian premier Tony Abbott did the same. Looks like Kemi’s time at Trade was well-spent… In a video released this morning, the onetime Republican candidate for President says that he is ‘pleased to endorse’ Badenoch for leader because of the pair’s work together on a ‘great trade agreement between Florida and the United Kingdom’.

Ross Clark

Private schools should be cheaper

Independent schools are an asset to the education system and they have been singled out by Labour for a tax rise which has as much to do with pressing the right buttons for the party faithful as it does with raising revenue. But really, those schools could do with better PR. Whoever thought it a good idea to suggest to the i newspaper that private schools will be putting plans for new swimming pools, astroturf pitches on hold, and doing away with frills like personalised ring binders, in reaction to the imposition of VAT on their fees? They have succeeded only in feeding education secretary Bridget Phillipson with an attack

Leon Aron

Putin’s cannon fodder: an anthem for Russia’s doomed youth

Many were killed. Others hid in the fields, forests and basements, sometimes for days, before surrendering to the Ukrainian forces. Frightened, ill-equipped and with very little – if any – training, hundreds of Russian conscripts (prizyvniki) have been captured in the two months since Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region began. Yet another of the innumerable tragedies of Putin’s criminal war, the plight of conscripts is a window into Russia’s ability to conduct a ‘long war’. When neither the army’s relentless press-ganging nor its exorbitant sign-up bonuses and soldiers’ salaries appear to attract enough men to make up for the staggering casualties on the front, it is these boys who

Robin Ashenden

The 1990s were Britain’s sunset years

A myth seems to be developing about the 1990s. In a recent programme on Disney Plus called In Vogue: The 90s, a series of talking heads rhapsodise about the decade. ‘God, the 90s just changed everything,’ oozes Hamish Bowles, a fashion journalist. ‘It was a great time to be alive, it really felt like a revolution was underway,’ says model and actor Tyler Beckford. ‘Wow – what does the 90s mean to me?’ asks Naomi Campbell, suggesting it’s almost too vast a question to answer. Outside the programme, others seem to agree. ‘The 90s were the best decade ever – a time of real fun, freedom and abandon,’ says a

Saturday

5 Oct 2024

James Heale

Where is the Brexit dividend? Live at Conservative conference

37 min listen

In this special Saturday shots we hear from a panel discussion on Brexit, originally recorded at Conservative Party conference. Four years on there are successes to point to, namely eliminating the cost of membership, new trade deals and the speed of the vaccine rollout. Yet the prevailing sense is that the full potential of Brexit has not been realised. Where do we go from here? The Spectator’s James Heale speaks to former MEP Lord Hannan, Telegraph columnist Sherelle Jacobs, Iain Duncan Smith MP and Tom Lubbock, co-founder of JL Partners.

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson, Cindy Yu, Mary Wakefield, Anthony Sattin, and Toby Young

31 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Fraser Nelson signs off for the last time (1:30); Cindy Yu explores growing hostility in China to the Japanese (7:44); Mary Wakefield examines the dark truth behind the Pelicot case in France (13:32); Anthony Sattin reviews Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Cultures (19:54); and Toby Young reveals the truth behind a coincidental dinner with Fraser Nelson and new Spectator editor Michael Gove (25:40). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Mark Nayler

Can David Lammy solve the Gibraltar dispute?

The British government is preparing to lodge a formal complaint with Spain over Gibraltar. Spanish military aircraft have twice flown over the Rock in the past ten days: once on 27 September, reportedly while a commercial British Airways flight was taxiing on the local airport’s runway, and then again on 30 September. These flyovers (thought to have been by Spanish Air Force cargo aircraft) might seem harmless – but the British government disagrees. The timing of the flyovers couldn’t be worse. They come shortly after the latest round of talks in Brussels between Spain, Gibraltar, the UK and EU about the Rock’s post-Brexit status. Of central importance to these negotiations

Patrick O’Flynn

The case for – and against – James Cleverly

When is the best time to hit the front of a Tory leadership contest? In the final chain of the final furlong after coming up unseen on the rails, obviously. As charismatic front-runners from Michael Heseltine to Michael Portillo have found out, Conservative leadership battles are brutal for the established heir apparent. There is something about the Tory tribe, or perhaps the Tory disposition, which creates a mania for dragging them down. It’s far safer to do a John Major and be christened as the best ‘Stop X’ or least-unpalatable-option candidate at the last by the party establishment. So congratulations to James Cleverly for gaining momentum so deep into the current