Politics

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

Wednesday

2 Oct 2024

The demise of the Tory party has been greatly exaggerated

Something happened at the Conservative party conference today which suggested it is too soon to write off the democratic world’s most successful party: there were three brilliant speeches in a row. Given that this political era is not known for its great orators, this was a most unusual and very welcome occurrence. It is too soon to write off the democratic world’s most successful party Of the four Conservative leadership contenders, only Tom Tugendhat – perhaps hampered by being first on and having to warm-up the audience – failed to truly connect beyond his enthusiastic gaggle of camp followers. His workmanlike address was perfectly competent but lacked a transcendent moment. James

James Heale

Robert Jenrick promises a ‘new Conservative party’

The Tory front runner was third up in Birmingham. Throughout this race, Robert Jenrick has sought to position himself as someone with the polish of David Cameron and the politics of Nigel Farage. His speech today was very much in that vein: a staunchly right-wing message centred around delivering a ‘new Conservative party’. Like Cameron in 2005, he talks of change: but change, he would argue, of a very different nature to hug-a-hoodie modernisation. Jenrick’s pitch was much more critical about the state of modern Britain Jenrick’s speech began with a neat bridging exercise: talking of his father’s work in a metal foundry as a way of referencing the Iron

Isabel Hardman

Badenoch pitches herself as the great disruptor

Kemi Badenoch’s opening video before her speech had a series of politicians and normal people talking at odd angles into their phones about the need for a new politician. She was pictured smiling, charming people in person, and vowing ‘let’s renew’, before she walked onto the stage for another no-notes speech. It was, as you would expect, a speech that embraced the idea of tearing everything up and starting again, with Badenoch as the disruptor. She promised to ‘Rewire, reboot and reprogramme’, adding that: ‘Nothing is more exciting to me. I am an engineer, and engineers don’t hide from the truth.’ Her overhaul would involve the Conservatives rewriting ‘the rules

Steerpike

Labour under scrutiny over gambling gifts

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot have had a tough time of it lately with the freebie fiasco – and it’s only getting worse. Now it transpires that Labour figures received gifts from the gambling sector worth, er, over £1 million. Talk about a bad bet, eh? Starmer’s army accepted a range of items from the industry – including tickets to musicals and football matches – with key Cabinet figures implicated. It has emerged that his winter fuel payment-cutting Chancellor Rachel Reeves took three tickets for a show in 2023 from the Betting Gaming Council, alongside £20,000 of donations from gambling organisations for her private office prior to the election. Business

Isabel Hardman

James Cleverly thinks the Tories need to be more ‘normal’

James Cleverly’s speech did a much better job than Tom Tugendhat’s of explaining what sort of person he is, and what he wants to do with the party. It was very characteristic of Cleverly: there were lots of mentions of ‘optimism’, which is probably his guiding philosophy in life, and some well-delivered jokes, including one about his time in the Reserves when he got a call telling him he had been mobilised. ‘I thought I was going to Basra, or Baghdad. And I was sent… to Luton,’ he told the hall, to genuine laughter. But he also focused heavily on his experience in government, trying to differentiate himself from Tugendhat

James Heale

Tom Tugendhat fails to rouse the Tories

It is the final day of Tory conference and the event for which we have all been waiting: the four leadership candidates are each delivering their 20-minute speeches, setting out their vision for the country. Tom Tugendhat had the mixed blessing of going first. The benefit of this was that it allowed him to deliver a series of gags about Labour donor Lord Alli which still sounded somewhat fresh. But it meant too that his speech was something of a warm-up act, delivering feel-good lines to an audience that was still filtering in throughout the first few minutes. The first half of Tugendhat’s speech was pedestrian The first half of

Jonathan Spyer

Israel is likely to hit back hard against Iran

Iran’s decision to launch 181 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday night followed a similar pattern to the attacks of 14 April. Israeli and allied air defences appear to have performed extremely effectively. The damage to the military and civilian sites targeted is minor to non-existent. One Palestinian Arab man was killed in a village near Jericho, not from the Iranian missiles, it appears, but from interceptor debris. I live in a Jerusalem neighbourhood on what’s called the ‘Seam Line’ between the Jewish and Arab populations. We generally have cordial relations with our Arabic-speaking neighbours, and as I stood outside my front door last night trying to get some pictures of the missiles flying over

Steerpike

Why hasn’t Trump congratulated J.D. Vance?

Even the most ardent Trump-loathers are admitting that, last night, the Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance easily won his debate against his opposite number, Tim Walz. ‘Vance is going home with Walz’s wallet,’ said the veteran Never Trumper David Frum. It’s curious, then, that – at time of writing at least – Donald Trump still hasn’t congratulated his running mate over his resounding victory, at least not publicly. Last night, on his Truth Social media account, Trump posted a rude meme about how stupid Tim Walz is, but no applause for JD. Even more mysteriously, as the debate finished, Trump posted on Twitter/X a tribute not to Vance but to ‘one

Fabian Hoffmann

What we know so far about Iran’s massive missile attack

Last night, Iran launched a large-scale missile strike against Israel, dubbed ‘Operation True Promise II’. According to the latest reports, the attack involved approximately 180 ballistic missiles, making it one of the largest missile assaults in history. Iranian officials stated that the attack was in retaliation for the assassination of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran in late July, the killing of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon last week, and Israel’s broader conduct in the region in recent months. Details about the attack, including its targets and the damage caused, remain murky at this time. But it seems that Iran targeted Nevatim airbase, Tel Nof airbase, and the headquarters

Freddy Gray

J.D. Vance dominated the VP debate

To manage expectations in the run-up to last night’s debate, Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, let it be known through anonymous sources that he was nervous. He didn’t want to let Kamala Harris down. Well, he was tense and it showed. The first question was, inevitably, about the big story of the moment, the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Walz, speaking first, fumbled. He said ‘Iran’ when he meant ‘Israel’, twice, which hardly suggested a mastery of international affairs. He then rambled through various points about the ‘fickleness’ of Donald Trump in foreign affairs. The Republican came over as straightforwardly intelligent and perceptive – the Democrat, less

Jason M. Brodsky

Iran must pay for this attack on Israel

At age 85, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been risk-averse for much of his time in office. He has preferred to operate through proxies and partners like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis rather than directly engaging in combat with Israel and the United States. This is how he has survived. Since becoming supreme leader in 1989, Khamenei has pursued a gradual approach to eradicating the state of Israel by encircling it in a ring of fire to bleed it slowly. His risk calculus has now changed, as shown by last night’s missile attack on Israel. According to Israeli officials, Iran launched around 200 missiles towards Israel, most of

Charles Lipson

Vance vs Walz was what a debate should look like

The most important takeaway from the vice-presidential debate between Senator J.D. Vance and Governor Tim Walz is that this is what a serious debate for high office should look like. It was calm but impassioned, thoughtful, and truly helpful to any voter who wants to understand the policy differences between the two tickets. The candidates actually listened to each other, acknowledged some agreements and identified genuine areas of difference. Equally important, each managed to put forward a coherent case for his own ticket, stressing the key issues in their respective campaigns. Both the tone and substance of the debate was far superior to the two presidential debates. The Trump-Biden debate

Jacob Heilbrunn

J.D. Vance made the case for Trump better than Trump

Tim Walz versus J.D. Vance was the anti-Trump debate. There were no references to the animal kingdom in this Vice-Presidential debate. There were no sharp attacks about abortion. There were no vituperative comments about a lack of character. There weren’t even any assessments of golf handicaps à la Joe Biden and Donald Trump during their first debate. Vance subtly detached himself from Trump’s bluff and bombast by coming across as MAGA with a human face Instead, on CBS News on Tuesday evening, two Midwesterners, one from Ohio, the other Minnesota, maintained a genial tone, vying with each other to express their fervour for bipartisanship and conviction that each wants nothing but the

Druin Burch

Badenoch is right: not all cultures are equally valid

Kemi Badenoch kicked up an almighty stink when she argued at the weekend that not all cultures are ‘equally valid’ when it comes to immigration. The Tory leadership contender was forced to clarify her comments, made in the Sunday Telegraph. ‘I actually think it extraordinary to think that’s an unusual or controversial thing to say,’ she told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. The truth is, Badenoch is right – and to pretend otherwise is a mistake. There can be no better reminder that the different qualities of culture matter very much indeed I’m a doctor and the idea that all cultures are equal, at least in the way they practice medicine,

Jonathan Miller

Michel Barnier’s government in name only

A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. Of course, France now owes even more than that. To be precise, a colossal €3,228,000,000,000. Up by one trillion euros since the election in 2017 of President Emmanuel Macron, the ‘Mozart of finance’. A ‘sword of Damocles’, admitted the new French prime minister Michel Barnier on Tuesday in his speech to the National Assembly setting out the programme of his minority government. A government in name only, it can be said, since it depends on its survival on the consent of Marine Le Pen. As the left opposition hissed and Le Pen beamed like

Tuesday

1 Oct 2024

Steerpike

Watch: Tugendhat jibes at Jenrick over special forces

Uh oh. There’s trouble in Tory paradise after leadership candidate Robert Jenrick made some rather questionable remarks about the armed forces. At the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the wannabe leader claimed that: ‘Special forces are killing rather than capturing terrorists’ because of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Tory frontrunner added that ‘those who do not understand military operations or the law of armed conflict should not be commenting on it’. Good heavens… And, as might be expected, Jenrick’s rival Tom Tugendhat — a former army officer — has taken umbrage at his competitors comments. Speaking to the BBC, Tugendhat fumed: ‘I’ve spoken to former directors of special

Steerpike

Dorries: Kemi should be ‘disqualified’ from leadership race

This year’s Tory conference has seen a number of old faces as well as new – and the appearance of Boris Johnson’s former culture secretary at a More in Common event this evening has caused quite the stir. Nadine Dorries told delegates that her brief speech at a venue outside of the conference centre would be her only appearance at the 2024 Tory bash, labelling herself as an ‘old bird in politics’ and adding in classic Dorries style that she initially wanted to ‘turn down’ the invite. Charming… On the leadership candidates, Dorries was pulling no punches either – especially with one contender in particular. When pressed on who she

Steerpike

Tugendhat: My Roger Scruton row comments were ‘twisted’

It’s the final night of Tory party conference and tempers are fraying. Three of the four leadership candidates have ended up weighing in on the 2019 sacking of the late Roger Scruton from his role as an unpaid adviser to the Department for Housing, after an interview he gave to the New Statesman (which was covered by The Spectator’s Douglas Murray at the time). Kemi Badenoch said at a Spectator panel earlier today that ‘if you’re not prepared to fight for conservatives, to fight for your people, you have no business being involved in politics’. She explicitly mentioned the Roger Scruton case. Some might interpret that as a dig at

James Heale

Kemi Badenoch comes out fighting

It has been a busy Conservative conference for Kemi Badenoch, whose comments on Sunday about maternity pay have dominated the last few days. Each of the other candidates in the Tory leadership race is wary of saying anything that might remotely damage their chances next week. But Badenoch remains undaunted by criticism, as she showed in a trenchant performance at an ‘In Conversation’ event with The Spectator this evening in Birmingham. Speaking to Fraser Nelson, Badenoch told the audience that: ‘Sometimes you have to walk through the fire… a lot of MPs are just afraid of not being liked, being scared of the mob. If we as Conservatives buckle every time we get

Limor Simhony Philpott

Will Israel fire back on Iran?

Israel has come under widespread missile attack from Iran. Some 200 ground-to-ground missiles were launched from Iran, according to Israeli media. Israelis have been ordered to stay in bomb shelters while the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) intercept missiles overhead. The sound of interceptions over Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, are constant and deafening. So far, there don’t appear to be any casualties or direct hits. Among Iran’s targets were military bases, including airforce and intelligence facilities. It’s not known whether the attack has now finished, or if another wave of missiles is making its way to Israel. Elsewhere, a terror attack this evening in Jaffa has resulted in the death