Politics Archives

Sunday

7 Jul 2024

How Marine Le Pen rebranded herself

Marine Le Pen was called a ‘bitch’ this week and threatened with sexual violence. It’s what passes for rap music these days in France. The threats won’t unduly concern Le Pen. She’s experienced worse. When she was eight, far-left extremists tried to kill her and her family with five kilos of dynamite. The Le Pens survived, but their Paris apartment didn’t. Say what you like about the leader of the National Rally, and many do, but Marine Le Pen is a tough cookie. She was assaulted on the campaign trail during the 2017 presidential election, a minor setback compared to her subsequent disastrous performance in the television debate with Emmanuel

Tom Slater

The troubling truth about Keir Starmer

‘A politics that treads more lightly on all our lives.’ That’s what Keir Starmer – remarkably, our new Prime Minister – promised a weary nation as he was vying for their vote. Perhaps fittingly, he ended up with a victory that is incredibly light on voters – a huge majority on a lower vote share than any victorious party in the postwar era. Clearly, while Brits had grown tired of the Tory soap opera, they’re switching off from Starmer already. Keir Starmer is an empty vessel – a man for whom principles are fine until they interfere with getting elected Like so much Starmer says, that quote – and his insistence on

Sean Thomas

My day in Le Pen land

At first glance, for the visitor driving by, Guingamp in northwest Brittany looks idyllic. It is a typically lovely stone-built French small town, it has a sweet river running through the middle, it has pretty ramparts and a ducal chateau and riverbank gardens, with agreeable new fountains in the centre. It even has a decent-sized supermarket open on Sunday. In Guingamp, on a dead Sunday afternoon, I somehow felt more uneasy than I did in war-torn Ukraine At least it did last Sunday, the first French election day, when I paid a visit. The difference for me is that – unlike most trippers – I didn’t breeze on after a

Jonathan Miller

Après Macron, le déluge

France is voting after three weeks of campaigning, backstabbing, attacks on more than 50 politicians so far, some light rioting, promises by the left to reverse the laws of fiscal gravity, worried bond-traders, ranting Trots, green-religionist raving – and, coming up tonight, the decimation of president Macron’s Ensemble group in the National Assembly, and with it his hopes of using the final three years of his presidency to implement his unfulfilled vision of France. The disorder of France has been exclusively provoked by Macron through his dissolution of the National Assembly on 9 June, after the president’s repudiation in the European Parliament elections. French voters joined Germans, Italians, Dutch and others

Saturday

6 Jul 2024

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer is leaning on experienced ministerial hands

Keir Starmer waited for the football to finish before announcing his latest tranche of ministerial appointments. A few of them are confirmations of the roles held by shadow ministers in opposition: Matthew Pennycook is housing minister, Jim McMahon is in the same department as local government minister, and Dan Jarvis remains in the Home Office brief. Other announcements involve moves: Ellie Reeves has gone from justice to the Cabinet Office. Then there’s a new/old face: Douglas Alexander, back as an MP and tipped during the campaign to take over as foreign secretary from David Lammy. That didn’t happen and Alexander is instead a minister of state in the Business and

John Keiger

Labour should be wary of Macron’s cooing

French president Emmanuel Macron has phoned Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his appointment as prime minister. Macron’s Twitter account records that he was ‘pleased with our first discussion’, adding: ‘We will continue the work begun with the UK for our bilateral cooperation, for peace and security in Europe, for the climate and for AI.’ But the British Prime Minister should beware Macron bearing gifts. As is the custom, the British prime minister will have received similar calls from a host of foreign heads of state and government. But Emmanuel Macron is different. The European and French general elections have taken a serious toll of his reputation domestically and

Katy Balls

What ‘tough decisions’ does Starmer have in mind?

How long will Keir Starmer’s honeymoon last? The Prime Minister is basking in election glory after leading his party to a landslide victory. This morning, he chaired his first cabinet – after appointing his team on Friday afternoon. Starmer used the first meeting to tell his new ministers what he expected from them, making clear that he expects high standards in terms of delivery and behaviour. He also repeated past comments that his will be a mission-led government – with mission delivery boards that he will personally chair. Starmer’s team are keen to keep up a sense of momentum so the Prime Minister will use the next few days to

Fraser Nelson

Will James Timpson be a radical prisons minister?

The most interesting and unexpected appointment in Keir Starmer’s government is that of James Timpson, the CEO of Timpson, who is now becoming prisons minister. He’s respected across the political spectrum for his work not just in his family-owned key-cutting chain but for his work finding jobs for ex-prisoners. He started off hiring them after visiting a prison, says he ‘got carried away’ to the extent where one in nine of Timpson’s staff are ex-offenders. He has worked hard to encourage other employers to do more. His work in the field led him to believe that many people are being wrongfully imprisoned. He has been appointed as the UK has

Steerpike

Failed SNP candidates slam party for election loss

Oh dear. The SNP faced a gruelling general election result this week, losing 38 seats to end up on just nine as voters north of the border overwhelmingly backed Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot. A number of parliamentarians lost their seats in nationalist exodus and some of the party’s failed candidates aren’t taking things well. In Falkirk, SNP hopeful Toni Giugliano – who recorded a rather, um, bizarre song for his election campaign – lost to Labour’s Euan Stainbank in a constituency that hasn’t voted red since 2010. Taking to Facebook to blast the outcome, Giugliano hit out at his party’s poor result and, er, the nationalist MSP for his

Cindy Yu

The surprises in Starmer’s cabinet

15 min listen

In his first 24 hours as Prime Minister, Keir Starmer has appointed his cabinet and held a cabinet meeting. Most of his frontbench have carried over their shadow briefs, but there were a few surprise appointments too. Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Times columnist Patrick Maguire. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Isabel Hardman

Labour should ignore the Lib Dems on social care

Politics is a goldfish bowl, and not in the sense that it’s small and everyone is watching you intensely. It’s more that the inhabitants of the bowl have a three-second memory. That’s the only explanation for the Liberal Democrats saying they will use their 71 MPs to push Labour for cross-party talks on social care. Care and the health service was one of the key themes of Ed Davey’s campaign, so it’s not a surprise that his party is briefing that social care will be an early focus. And there is a crisis in social care that we’ve known about for 20 years and that is seriously hampering the ability

Steerpike

Keir Starmer appoints lawyer who represented Gerry Adams

Since becoming leader of the Labour party, Keir Starmer has faced plenty of scrutiny about his career as a human rights lawyer – and in particular the more unpleasant individuals he represented during his time at the bar. Starmer has, for example, represented in court the preacher Abu Qatada in his battle to avoid being deported to Jordan. For his part, Starmer has always defended himself by pointing out that he was simply doing the job of a lawyer – which is often representing people you don’t agree with. Still, you’d think the new PM would be keen to keep this particular row out of the spotlight. Starmer’s decision to

Eliot Wilson

What will David Lammy’s ‘gear shift’ mean?

Next summer, David Lammy will celebrate 25 years as a Member of Parliament. At 51, he has just been appointed Foreign Secretary after three years shadowing the role. Despite rare and valuable ministerial experience, he is an unlikely candidate for Britain’s chief diplomat. His first pronouncements as foreign secretary stress change: ‘a reset on Europe, a reset on our relationships with the global south, and a reset on climate’. We will have not only resets but ‘gear shifts’, whatever that might mean: ‘gear shifts on European security and on global security, given all the problems that we’re seeing in the Middle East’. It is very Starmerist to treat change as

Jacob Heilbrunn

Joe Biden’s ABC interview won’t help his doomed campaign

Like a father confessor, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos tried everything to jolt President Joe Biden out of his complacency. He pleaded with him. He queried him. He exhorted him. Nothing worked. Throughout the interview, if that’s what it was, Biden rebuffed his entreaties as though they couldn’t be more outlandish. Down in the polls? Not a bit of it. Democratic lawmakers preparing to ask him to step down? Never happening. And so on. He clearly couldn’t grasp that his presidency isn’t in trouble; it’s cratering. Even the Almighty that Biden regularly invoked wouldn’t be able to resurrect his shambles of a presidency Whether Biden is suffering from cognitive issues may

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Angus Colwell, Matthew Parris, Flora Watkins and Rory Sutherland

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: after President Biden’s debate disaster, Freddy Gray profiles the one woman who could persuade him to step down, his wife Jill (1:05); Angus Colwell reports from Israel, where escalation of war seems a very real possibility (9:02); Matthew Parris attempts to reappraise the past 14 years of Conservative government (14:16); Flora Watkins reveals the reasons why canned gin and tonics are so popular (21:24); and, Rory Sutherland asks who could possibly make a better Bond villain than Elon Musk? (25:00). Presented by Patrick Gibbons.

John Oxley

What did the Tories do with power?

Fourteen years of Tory-led government is over. The second-longest period of dominance by one party since the war is done. For the left, that means relief and joy. For many on the right, there is a sense of frustration, a sense of waste: power has been squandered and little about the country feels more conservative, or even more successful than it did a decade ago. Much of it, bluntly, feels worse. Much of their legacy will be swept away by the stroke of a statutory instrument or a line in the next budget In some ways, this analysis is unfair. There have been some successes in the last 14 years of

Ross Clark

Ed Miliband will be a liability as energy secretary

I know it has only just begun, but it is not too early to start wondering: what will it be that causes the Starmer government its first serious problem? A likely surge in arrivals of illegal migrants seems one possibility, given that some of those encamped in northern France appear to be well aware of British politics and have been reported to be waiting for the moment when Starmer fulfils his policy of ending the Rwanda scheme ‘on day one’. But the confirmation of Ed Miliband as Energy and Climate Secretary raises another source of trouble: Labour’s hugely ambitious plan to decarbonise the national grid by 2030. It should be

Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s France has much to learn from Britain’s peaceful election

The left-wing French newspaper Le Monde last month sent its London correspondent across Great Britain to gauge the mood before the general election. He reported that Britain was ‘a broken nation’, and its people ‘glum and divided’. Britain is not in the best of shape, a point on which the people and its politicians are agreed. So the Tories have been booted out and it’s Keir Starmer’s responsibility to try and reinvigorate the country. The transition was achieved calmly, peacefully, democratically, with the only dramatic incident of note the day a silly young woman desperate for attention threw a milkshake at Nigel Farage. If Britain is ‘broken’, then what is

Matthew Lynn

Would Rishi Sunak really be welcome in Silicon Valley?

Rishi Sunak’s bags are probably packed. The plane tickets are booked. And no doubt he has found somewhere for the family to stay while they look for a permanent home. It is widely assumed that, having lost the election, Sunak will soon disappear to Silicon Valley as quickly as possible to restart his career. But hold on. Sure, it is easy to understand why Sunak would want to get as far away as possible from the car crash he has presided over. Yet after running one of the most spectacularly inept election campaigns in history, will the tech giants still want him? Sunak has just fought what will surely go

Friday

5 Jul 2024

Isabel Hardman

Streeting declares: ‘the NHS is broken’

Wes Streeting has just given a striking statement on arrival at the Department of Health and Social Care in which he announced that ‘from today, the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken’. Parties make campaign threats that there are ‘24 hours to save the NHS’, but this description of Labour’s sacred cow as ‘broken’ goes far beyond that. It recognises the seriousness of the situation for the health service and is a declaration of Streeting’s intent to reform. Streeting has become health secretary during an existential crisis. Voters are still committed to the principles of free healthcare but increasingly losing satisfaction with the way the NHS