Politics

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

Friday

31 May 2024

Labour’s parachute regiment bolsters the Starmtroopers

If you put the Diane Abbott row to one side, it has been a very successful week for the clique who control Labour’s candidate selections. Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an election eight days ago means that the National Executive Committee can now impose who they want on constituencies across the country. More than 100 have since been slotted into seats, ahead of the party’s self-imposed deadline of all candidates being chosen by next Tuesday – an impressive exercise in party management. It is certainly a marked contrast with the 150-odd vacancies which their Tory equivalents need to fill. The candidates selected over the past week are very much Starmer’s

Katy Balls

Why is Starmer now saying that Diane Abbott can stand as an MP?

They say a week is a long time in politics but in the Labour party just three days is enough. On Tuesday evening, the Times reported Labour sources saying Diane Abbott would be blocked from standing as a Labour MP at the election. An outcry followed from Abbott who was backed by the Labour left, some centrist Labour MPs and various celebrities and public figures. Now Keir Starmer has used a campaign visit to say that Abbott is ‘free to go forward’ as a candidate at the election. Speaking to reporters today, he said: She’s free to go forward as a Labour candidate. The whip is back with her. It’s

Svitlana Morenets

Biden partially lifts ban on strikes within Russia

David Cameron publicly said it was up to Ukraine to decide whether to use British weapons to strike targets on Russian territory earlier this month. But nothing has happened since then: no Storm Shadow missiles have flown over the Ukraine-Russia border. Last night, Volodymyr Zelensky explained why: the UK had not given ‘100 per cent permission’ to do so. ‘We raised this issue twice. We did not get confirmation from him [Cameron].’ In reality, Downing Street is waiting on the Americans, he said. The calls for the US and other allies to allow Ukraine to strike Russian territory with western arms have grown louder after Russia launched a second offensive

James Heale

I’ll still work with Trump, says Starmer

Keir Starmer really is a lucky general. The news that Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies helped ensure that the Labour leader faced questions this morning about the former president, rather than the Diane Abbott selection storm. On his visit to Scotland, Starmer told the BBC that a Labour government would be willing to work with ‘whoever’ was elected in November’s presidential contest. If elected, Starmer will be in Washington DC for the Nato summit on the day that Trump is sentenced ‘Obviously we respect the decision of the court, the independent court – there’s a bit of process to go with sentencing and appeal,’ he said. ‘But

Lionel Shriver and Freddy Gray

Trump found guilty

23 min listen

Donald Trump has been found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records. The Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver joins Freddy Gray to respond to the news. Was it a fair trial? What could it mean for the 2024 presidential election? And what are the wider implications for American democracy? Produced by Megan McElroy, Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.

Coffee House

Full list: the MPs quitting their seat at the next election

Labour have selected the bulk of their candidates for the next election but the Tories are still a while way away from that yet. Below is a list of all the MPs from the two main parties who have said they will quit their current seat at the next election. Conservative MPs (78): Labour MPs (30) SNP MPs (9): Independent MPs (8): Sinn Féin MPs (3): Green MPs (1): Plaid Cymru MPs (1):

Jawad Iqbal

Ed Davey’s election stunts are going to backfire

The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, has come up with a novel way of ensuring his party gets greater coverage during the long weeks of the election campaign. His wheeze is to ensure that, each and every day, he is pictured doing something silly. It doesn’t help that the party’s leader appears to think that the election campaign is best treated as one big joke On Tuesday, he was pictured repeatedly falling from a paddleboard on Windermere in Cumbria – a stunt to highlight the issue of sewage dumping, apparently. On Wednesday, he was on a bike, peddling down a steep hill, ostensibly en route to the party’s Welsh campaign launch.

Steerpike

Sir Keir’s private jet hypocrisy

Oh dear. In yet another campaign blunder for Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader has been forced to fess up to using a private jet — just hours after taunting Rishi Sunak’s helicopter use. Rules for thee but not for me… The lefty Labour leader flew to Scotland on a private plane to make an announcement about his ambitions to set up a publicly-owned ‘GB Energy’ company — but was curiously reluctant about revealing his mode of transport, with a Labour spokesperson eventually admitting: Yes, we did use a private jet because we needed to get very quickly to Scotland from Wales yesterday. We have to use the most efficient

Jim Lawley

Pedro Sanchez may come to regret passing Spain’s amnesty law

When has any nation’s government amnestied hundreds of people facing criminal charges in return for the votes that allow it to stay in office? That’s what Spain’s government has just done. After last July’s general election, Pedro Sánchez, the incumbent left-wing prime minister, discovered that he needed the 14 votes of two Catalan separatist parties in order to cling onto power. The price of those 14 votes? A general amnesty for several hundred people accused of criminal activities during Catalonia’s secession push, including 2017’s illegal declaration of independence. The amnesty bill, fast-tracked through parliament, was passed yesterday after a spectacularly acrimonious debate: 177 votes in favour and 172 against. The

Steerpike

Listen: Peter Kyle’s GB Energy blunder

Uh oh. It’s the first day of Labour’s official GB Energy launch and things haven’t quite got off to a flying start. Sir Keir Starmer is in Scotland this morning to announce plans (including an all-new the website and logo) for his brand new publicly-owned Great British energy company. It’s the third of Labour’s ‘first steps’ to turning the country around — but it seems as though the proposal isn’t quite catchy enough for some of his own party members to memorise… Speaking on LBC this morning, now former Labour MP for Hove Peter Kyle floundered over the website name when quizzed by Nick Ferrari. Kyle claimed that the £8

Steerpike

Iain Dale pulls out as a Tory candidate

Oh dear. Less than 48 hours after he quit LBC to stand for Tunbridge Wells, Iain Dale has now ruled himself out. In an interview with his former employer this morning, Dale revealed that he had asked for his name to not be included on the candidates’ shortlist after a clip of him disparaging his home town went viral on Twitter. The comments, recorded in 2022, were made on the For the Many podcast which he co-hosts with former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. In the clip Dale said that he ‘did not like living in Tunbridge Wells and would quite happily live somewhere else.’ Naturally this was seized upon by

Lee Cohen

Trump’s conviction is a disaster for American democracy

Donald Trump’s trial and his conviction on 34 felony counts is disgraceful. As the legal expert and former Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz, has argued, ‘the judge essentially instructed the jury to convict Trump.’ Biden’s America has shamefully crossed the Rubicon. The rule of law has been supplanted by the whims of elites and the machinery of power. The verdict of the jury in New York City, finding Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a hush-money trial, calls into urgent question the integrity of the American legal system and the sanctity of democratic norms. The perception of selective justice is only going to undermine

Katy Balls

The Claudia Mendoza Edition

29 min listen

Claudia Mendoza is one of the most high profile spokespeople for the Jewish community in Britain. She has studied the Middle East, and worked at various think tanks with a focus on Iran and the transitioning Arab states. But she now serves as CEO of the Jewish Leadership Council. On the podcast she tells Katy whether Keir’s Labour really is a changed party and about the rise in anti-semitism in the UK since the October 7th attacks.

James Johnson

The statistic that should terrify Tory HQ

The tightening looks on. On Tuesday, my polling firm JL Partners published its first campaign poll showing a 12-point Labour lead, down from 15 points at the start of May and 18 points in April. Our data scientist, Callum Hunter, has written for The Spectator on why we are confident our methodology is the right one. We will need to see in our next poll whether the trend continues or stalls. But there are reasons in the data to believe the Tories have more support to pick up. Reform is still on 12 per cent, and around four in ten (37 per cent) say they would consider voting for the

Charles Lipson

What will Americans make of Trump’s guilty verdict?

The indictment and trial on a thin charge, the gagging of a presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign, and the judge’s consistently biased rulings amount to deliberate judicial interference in the 2024 election. The process was led by a Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who ran on the campaign platform of going after Donald Trump. Not going after a crime. Going after a person. That fundamentally contradicts the basic principles of Anglo-American law and justice. No one else in New York City would have been indicted, as Donald Trump was, on what amounted to two expired misdemeanours, turned into a felony. One alleged felonious act became 34 counts.

Ross Clark

Labour’s energy plan doesn’t add up

So, we have a little more flesh on the bones of Labour’s energy policy, with the party giving more details of Great British Energy, the state-owned company it wants to set up to invest in wind and solar energy. But there are still gaping holes in Labour’s promise to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 – and save consumers money in the process. First to note is that Labour seems drastically to have toned down the claims as to how much its energy policies will supposedly save consumers. Until today it was claiming that it would save us ‘up to £1,400’ a year. Given that under Ofgem’s price cap the

James Heale

Can Keir Starmer control the Labour left?

18 min listen

Keir Starmer has began a purge of pre-existing candidates and MPs who risk frustrating their election campaign. There is an ongoing row about whether Diane Abbott, the former shadow home secretary, will be barred from standing. Angela Rayner has now weighed in saying she ‘sees no reason why Diane Abbott can’t stand for Labour’. Could this become a problem for Keir Starmer? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Paul Goodman. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson.

Annabel Denham

The problem with Labour’s free breakfast clubs plan

Labour has been deliberately opaque when it comes to their plans for government, but on one issue Sir Keir Starmer has been uncharacteristically lucid. The leader of the opposition will be slapping VAT on private schools on ‘day one’ in Downing Street, a promise which has already prompted some parents to cancel places for September. Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson has made clear that this punitive, green-eyed levy on independent school fees will fund her broad-ranging education plans, from ‘higher standards’ (though the number of schools judged by Ofsted to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ increased from 68 per cent in 2010 to 90 per cent in 2023) to ‘higher paid

Thursday

30 May 2024

Freddy Gray

Trump is a convict, but will it matter?

This is an extremely strange moment for American democracy. Polls suggest that independent voters – the people who decide American elections – will not vote for a man who is a convicted felon. But now Donald Trump, currently the favourite to win re-election in November, has been found guilty, on 34 counts, of falsifying business records – and nobody knows if that verdict will make him more popular or less. On the one hand, a court has decided that, yes, he deliberately altered his financial accounts, possibly for election campaign reasons back in 2016. He is now a convict. Trump has a murky past, and his dodgy history now appears

Amber Duke & Matt McDonald

Donald Trump found guilty

Ajury delivered a guilty verdict Thursday on all thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records in former president Donald Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial. The jury deliberated for just a couple of days before returning its verdict, although they did go back to the judge several times asking for a re-read of the instructions and testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker. Trump was in the courtroom when the verdict was returned, as was Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the charges. According to the New York Times’s Jesse McKinley, reporting from the scene, ‘He is largely expressionless, a glum look on his face, as ‘guilty’ has just been heard