Politics

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

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sunak set to scrap HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester

Rishi Sunak will tomorrow confirm he is scrapping the HS2 link between Manchester and Birmingham, Coffee House understands. The prime minister will make the announcement in his conference speech as part of an argument about responsible government. He will, though, try to soften the political blow by detailing alternative rail projects in the north of England using the money.  The row about HS2 has dominated the Conservative party conference, with Sunak insisting only today that he wouldn’t be rushed into making a ‘premature’ decision about the future of the line. It seems he has now made that decision – or he has managed to stick to his own media grid which

Steerpike Steerpike

Lee Anderson unleashed at Tory conference

Dogs bark, cows moo and Lee Anderson shoots his mouth off. The firecracker that is the Tory deputy party chairman took to the ConservativeHome stage on the Tory conference fringe this afternoon, and he certainly didn’t hold back. Speaking to Anand Menon, director of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe, the plain-talking Anderson fired off his thoughts on a number of topics, ranging from how he went from Labour to Tory and from hating to loving Margaret Thatcher, to his famous moniker ‘30p Lee’. Asked whether he would ever consider rejoining the Labour party, Anderson branded it a ‘ridiculous question’. He didn’t stop there though: ‘The working classes

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Andrew Boff removed from Tory conference for heckling Suella Braverman

So much for a blue-on-blue ceasefire. The Conservative party conference is inching towards its close but not without some penultimate day drama. The Tory London Assembly chair was this afternoon dramatically escorted out of Suella Braverman’s speech today after heckling her comments on gender. After quietly remarking that the Home Secretary was talking ‘trash’ about ‘gender ideology’, Andrew Boff was forcibly dragged out of the hall in Manchester. Speaking to reporters as he was led away, Boff said: ‘It is making our Conservative party look transphobic and homophobic. Our party has a proud record of standing up for LGBT+ rights and she is destroying it.’ He said he had been a member of the party for over 50

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Jeremy Hunt: we underestimated the impact of money-printing

Speaking at the Centre for Policy Studies fringe event at Conservative party conference this afternoon, Jeremy Hunt reiterated once again that there would be no big tax cuts this year. ‘Debt interest payments have gone up so much in the past six months’, he told CPS director Robert Colvile, taking estimates for debt servicing payments over the £100 billion mark this fiscal year. The Autumn Statement, the Chancellor said, will lay bare just how dire the situation is: ‘It’s likely that our debt interest payments… are going to go up by more than £20bn pounds a year in the Autumn Budget compared to what was predicted in the spring.’ In other

Lucy Dunn

Steve Barclay turns to AI to save the NHS

The NHS is struggling to cope with an ageing population. Disputes over pay have created a stand off between doctors and the government, while the crumbling social care system has seen bed-blocking reach record levels. So far, the suggested fixes have usually been calls for more money. But what about tech? That’s Health Secretary Steve Barclay’s big idea.  Speaking to a large audience at The Spectator’s event ‘Can AI and innovation save the NHS?’ this afternoon, Barclay outlined why introducing AI into the health service is right. Chaired by The Spectator’s assistant editor Isabel Hardman, Barclay was joined on the stage by Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP, shadow Scottish cabinet secretary

Andrew Tettenborn

Suella Braverman’s sex offender crackdown won’t work

It’s easy to see the thinking behind Suella Braverman’s plan announced in Manchester today to prevent sex offenders changing their name. In a country without ID cards or universal means of identification, it is fairly easy discreetly to disappear if you are at the margins of society, and possibly even to find a way of claiming at least some form of social security. This obviously defeats much of the object of having a sex offenders’ register, since it can in too many cases reduce the official record to something more like Gogol’s rentroll of dead souls. True, it is already technically a crime for anyone on the register not to tell the

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Jacob Rees-Mogg: Put Nigel Farage in the House of Lords

Nigel Farage has been enjoying himself at Tory conference. The former Brexit party leader was filmed last night singing karaoke with Priti Patel and today he’s been propping up the bar in the Midland hotel in Manchester. Farage certainly looks comfortable rubbing shoulders with Tory delegates, but would he ever be welcomed back into the Conservative fold? Jacob Rees-Mogg says that the party should welcome Farage – whom he jokingly described as ‘a bit left wing’ – with open arms. Mogg also went further – suggesting Farage should be put in the House of Lords. He told a Spectator conference fringe event that his fellow Brexiteer’s ‘contribution to public life’

Iain Macwhirter

Humza Yousaf is talking nonsense about Scotland’s oil

For nearly half a century, the Scottish National Party based its independence project on ‘Scotland’s Oil’ which it claimed had been stolen by England. Now the SNP seems to be saying it wasn’t Scotland’s oil at all and wasn’t even the UK’s to steal. The SNP and their Green coalition partners have discovered that North Sea oil is owned by foreign capitalists and is anyway unusable in the UK. ‘Most of this oil will be shipped abroad,’ insisted the SNP First Minister, Humza Yousaf, last week ‘and then sold back to us at whatever price makes the oil and gas industry most profit’. New fields like Rosebank off Shetland, he says, won’t therefore help reduce

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The great Tory dilemma: try to win or prepare for defeat?

What are the Conservatives putting the most effort into: winning the next election, or life after defeat? While Rishi Sunak and some of his top team, including the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, still sincerely believe that there is a good chance that they could win the election, other Conservatives have switched their focus to what happens afterwards. That’s why Liz Truss has been on the fringe, why senior cabinet ministers have been making comments that they know will be viewed as a tilt at a future leadership contest, and why this does not feel like a pre-election party conference. Kemi Badenoch’s speech to the hall yesterday received the first sincerely warm

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sunak stays quiet on HS2

Rishi Sunak is still refusing to offer any detail on what he plans to do with HS2, suggesting in a round of broadcast interviews this lunchtime that he hasn’t yet made the final decision. He told Sky that: ‘I think it’s right that I’m not going to get forced into making premature decisions. Not on something that’s so important that costs this country tens of billions of pounds.’ Instead, he told the BBC, he would ‘approach this the same way I approach everything: thoughtfully, carefully, across the detail and making what I believe is the right decision in the long term for our country.’ Sunak’s camp have long believed that

Debbie Hayton

We need trans-only wards

The Health Secretary Steve Barclay is expected to announce plans to ban transwomen like me from female hospital wards today. Let’s be clear, the privacy, dignity and safety of women in hospital have been overlooked for too long – but Barclay will also need to offer separate wards or rooms for transgender people. Yes, women should not be expected to budge up and make room for men who identify as transgender, but nor should the Health Secretary make the lives of those who transitioned – perhaps many years ago – more difficult than needs be.  There are solutions that don’t involve penalising those who’ve transitioned The goal for transsexuals (a term I prefer to ‘transgender’

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Jacob Rees-Mogg’s defence of the British Empire

Jacob Rees-Mogg was in stirring form this morning, at a Tory party conference event on ‘Restoring prosperity, restoring Conservatism’ hosted by the Legatum Institute. The former minister for Brexit opportunities began his speech – where else? – at 1215 with Magna Carta before embarking on a potted history of English liberties, at one point digressing on the Anglo-Saxon root of the word ‘woman’, and why England is more successful than France (‘If you are an English peasant and you improve your land, who makes the money? You do.’) But Mr S struck most of all by JRM’s defence of our past. He remarked that: ‘we should rejoice in our history and not

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What’s going on with HS2?

14 min listen

It’s day three at Tory conference and the story that won’t go away is HS2. Rishi Sunak insisted in his media round this morning that a decision has not been made, meanwhile Downing Street sources are reporting that a decision has been made. Standing outside the Midland hotel, Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street urged the prime minister not to abandon HS2. Can we expect an announcement in Rishi’s speech tomorrow?  Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Heale. 

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Lee Anderson reminisces about Thatcher bashing

Lee Anderson isn’t one to shy away from controversy and his speech on Monday evening at a fringe event at Tory conference certainly did not disappoint. The party’s deputy chairman addressed a packed out room at a Manchester club. While recounting  his life story, Anderson couldn’t resist taking a pop at Guardian journalists, Diane Abbott and, er, Margaret Thatcher. A rather brave move in a room full of Tories… Anderson said being voted ‘the worst man in Britain’ by the Mirror was the ‘greatest honour’ of his life. ‘Funnily enough, that year was a very close competition. I’d just beat Prince Andrew to it. Did you get that, Guardian?’ ‘I was brought up on a strict

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Ben Houchen tells Tory rebels: ‘shut up and get out of the way’

It looks like the sniping has already begun here at Tory party conference. On Tuesday, Liz Truss decided to use the event as a vehicle to launch her ‘Great British Growth Rally’ – an attempt to push the party to reduce the size of the state. That has not gone down well though with some of her colleagues, who’ve seen it as an attempt to undermine Rishi Sunak. Chief critic has been Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen, who said ahead of the rally that he wished Truss had ‘more awareness’ and stayed away. Yesterday, Houchen went further at a panel hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies and CapX. At the

Steerpike Steerpike

Health Secretary heckled for skimping on the detail

Who pays up to £242 for a member ticket to the Conservative party conference only to disrupt its events? You’d have to ask the young man who heckled the health secretary during his Q&A at Monday’s Health and Care reception… Barclay spent 15 minutes hinting at what the latest Tory plan to save the NHS might be – something Mr S understands he will discuss in more depth in his main speech on Tuesday. His focus was on technological innovation, getting patients seen faster and utilising other types of healthcare workers. Indeed, Barclay was particularly keen to emphasise a service that relied less on doctors, in a perhaps covert response

Coffee House

Day three at Conservative conference 2023: The Spectator guide

And just like that it’s day three of the Conservative party conference in Manchester! With one full day left, there’s plenty to get stuck into. Today’s highlights include speeches by Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove and Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Over on the fringe circuit there’s a range of interesting events and The Spectator hosts its last six conference events. See the line-up below: Main agenda: Morning session 11:00 – Speech by Health Secretary, Steve Barclay MP 11:15 – Speech by Science and Technology Secretary, Michelle Donelan MP 11:30 – Speech by Levelling Up Secretary, Michael Gove MP Afternoon session 15:00 – Speech by Justice Secretary Alex Chalk MP 15:15 –

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Is Keir Starmer going to blow it?

When Boris Johnson won his eighty-seat majority, Labour looked to be destined to spend a decade or so in the political wilderness. But ‘Partygate’, the eventual defenestration of Boris plus the psychodrama of Truss and the fraught first year of Sunak meant that the tables turned. All of a sudden, dreary Keir Starmer – with his cardboard hair and his voice like the recently recreated Aztec death whistle, said to be ‘somewhere between a spooky gust of whistling wind and the scream of a thousand corpses’ – was not the lame duck Kinnockesque caretaker. Labour’s leader became the shoo-in next PM. Now the numbers seem to be shifting again. A

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Does Germany want to bring down Giorgia Meloni?

Is there a plot afoot to oust Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister and replace her with someone more to the progressive left’s taste?  There have been rumours in the European media that Meloni’s government is teetering and that it ‘could fall and make way for a technocrat government.’ The audacity of Germany is breathtaking In 2011 Mario Monti formed such a government after the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi and he filled his cabinet with unelected technocrats, prompting Berlusconi to accuse him of ‘adopting the rules of austerity proposed by Germany.’ The former European Commissioner lasted just over a year in office before he resigned. A decade after Monti was parachuted

Monday