Politics

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

Friday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The UK’s GDP is proving Remainers wrong

You can almost sense the agonising among hardcore remainers, the howls of anguish. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revised the UK’s economic growth figures since Covid upwards. Instead of still struggling to reach its pre-pandemic high it seems that the UK economy in fact surpassed 2019 levels two years ago.  Previously, the ONS had estimated the economy in the last quarter of 2021 to be 1.2 per cent smaller than pre-pandemic. It now calculates that in fact it was 0.6 per cent larger. The ONS says its initial forecasts were compromised by the difficulties of calculating GDP during the pandemic. Is there a bias which has led to

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Slow economic growth won’t help the Tories reduce the tax burden

The Office for National Statistics has released the UK’s quarterly national accounts this morning, which show growth in the second quarter of the year remains unrevised at 0.2 per cent. Meanwhile growth in the first quarter has been revised slightly upwards, from 0.1 per cent to 0.3 per cent. This means the economy is now 1.8 per cent larger than it was before the pandemic hit. This is another upward revision of growth figures, though much smaller compared to the update at the start of the month, which revealed the economy was not in fact still below its pre-pandemic levels, but had actually recovered by the time the Omicron variant hit in 2021. This

Coffee House

The Spectator at Tory conference 2023: events programme

The Conservative party conference in Manchester is something of a political version of the Edinburgh festival: you go for the fringes, not the main events, and there’s no end of variety. The Spectator is hosting a packed and entertaining schedule of fringe events – and a famously un-crashable party. All our events are free but require access to the secure zone. G&T will be served at every event, even the morning ones. Be sure to arrive early to get a seat! Our full programme and details are available below: Tuesday 3 October Will the public ever get on board with net zero? 2pm – 3pm Why did Rishi Sunak U-turn on

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The war against the French police is just getting started

Last Saturday in Paris a police officer leapt from his car and levelled his handgun at a baying mob. The thugs backed off long enough for the policeman and his colleagues to make good their escape.   The chief of the Paris police, Laurent Nunez, praised the officer’s ‘sang-froid’ in successfully extracting his team from a dangerous situation. The Green MP Sandrine Rousseau took a different view, describing the policeman’s behaviour as ‘unacceptable’.  The ambition of the progressive Left is to defund the police and give the streets over to anarchists, extremists and Islamists She made no reference to the moments leading up to the confrontation, when masked men with

James Hanson

Young people are right to hate the Tories

According to the latest YouGov polling, just 1 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds plan to vote Conservative at the next election. That’s right – 1 per cent. There are now more caravans in the UK than young Tories. Among 24- to 49-year-olds, the figures aren’t much better; Rishi Sunak’s party trails Labour by 45 points. It wasn’t always this way. In 1983, Margaret Thatcher won 42 per cent of the youth vote, nine points ahead of Michael Foot. In 2010, David Cameron won 30 per cent. Even in the Labour landslide of 1997, John Major still won 27 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds. It is a fallacy to

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Rishi roasts Truss, Hancock and the lobby

To the Parlimentary Press Gallery dinner, held in the splendour of the National Liberal Club. This event hasn’t been held for four years, with Press Gallery chair Sam Lister joking that ‘Boris Johnson locked the country down’ to avoid attending while Liz Truss resigned the day her invitation to this shindig arrived. Lister gave the opening speech, turning her wit on a series of politicians including Tom Tugendhat whom she quipped had gone from a ‘security minister to a security risk’ in record time. But the highlight of the night was undoubtedly the speech by the Prime Minister. And Rishi Sunak took to the stage with aplomb, contrasting Lister’s rise

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Fergus Ewing now defect?

The SNP civil war has returned to the offices of Holyrood and nationalist infighting is only getting more toxic. Veteran politician Fergus Ewing was last night disciplined after months of vocally criticising his party’s policies — and voting against the government during junior minister Lorna Slater’s confidence motion.  Although his punishment has been dished up, the drama isn’t over yet for the Inverness and Nairn MSP. Today he informed reporters that he is still considering whether he will rejoin the SNP after his suspension ends… Could Ewing stand as an independent? Would he defect to Alba, the pro-independence party lead by former first minister Alex Salmond? Ewing has refused to

James Heale James Heale

What’s behind Labour’s private school U-turn?

14 min listen

Another day, another U-turn. But this time it’s Labour, who have changed tack on their plans to end charitable status for private schools. Labour leader Keir Starmer previously declared that the charitable status for private schools could not be justified, so what’s behind the move?  James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and John McTernan, former political secretary to Tony Blair. 

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Judgment call: the case for leaving the ECHR

42 min listen

On the podcast this week: Lord Sumption makes the case for leaving the ECHR in The Spectator’s cover piece. He says that the UK has strong courts and can pass judgement on human rights by itself and joins the podcast alongside Dr Joelle Grogan – legal academic and head of research at UK in a Changing Europe – to discuss whether the Strasbourg has lost its appeal. (01:22). Also this week:  Rory Sutherland takes a look at the rise of dynamic pricing in the magazine, a new trend where prices can surge at peak times and a phenomenon which has now made its way into pubs. He says that it’s not necessarily

Matthew Lynn

The eurozone isn’t looking healthy

Bond yields are soaring. The cost of debt, and very soon mortgages, is rising. And the government is getting nervous about how it is going to borrow the next ten or twenty billion. This might sound like the opening of a one-year-on post-mortem of Liz Truss’s ill-fated mini-Budget (we have all been treated to those recently). But in fact, it is a description of what is happening right now across Europe. The eurozone is facing its Liz Truss moment, and the results are likely to be every bit as catastrophic.  Across Europe the bond markets are starting to look jittery. Over the last couple of days, the yield on ten-year

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

We should all care about the dire state of our prisons

Charlie Taylor is not so much the canary in the coal mine of prison conditions as the British Gas engineer nailing a ‘condemned’ sign to the entrance while ministers skip gaily into the fumes. Taylor, just reappointed to a second three-year term as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, has been raising the alarm about our crumbling prisons estate since taking up the role in 2020. He also writes on prisons every now and then for The Spectator, so you know he’s a good egg.  The response from ministers has amounted to little more than boilerplate but Taylor’s latest intervention ought to jolt them out of their complacency. He tells the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How close is Britain to leaving the ECHR?

Will the UK government pledge to leave the European Convention on Human Rights? It’s a cause that Tory MPs on the right of the party have been championing for years, and their cries have grown louder as the Rwanda scheme has struggled to get off the ground. So far the Prime Minister has refused to rule out leaving the ECHR – but those close to him say he needs to be convinced that it is necessary for controlling the UK’s borders and cracking down on small boats. That means exhausting all other avenues first. However, in a sign of which way the wind is blowing, the Times reports that Suella

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Why is a Tory MP calling for GB News to be ‘taken off air’?

Well, that didn’t take long. We’re not even 48 hours into the latest Twitterstorm about upstart anti-woke news channel GB News – this time sparked by presenter Laurence Fox’s sexist, on-air comments about journalist Ava Evans – and it’s already become abundantly clear that all the outrage and fury isn’t really about those comments at all.  On the BBC’s Newsnight programme last night, veteran journalist and broadcaster Adam Boulton had this to say: ‘I think there is a delicate and important broadcast ecology in this country. I think GB News is trying to bust that ecology, and frankly what Ofcom should do is shut it down’.  Tory MP Caroline Nokes, who

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What’s behind Labour’s private school U-turn?

Another day, another policy shift from the Labour party. As the i paper first reported, Keir Starmer has U-turned on plans to end the charitable status for private schools. The Labour leader previously declared that the charitable status for private schools could not be justified. However, the new position is that the party can remove ‘unfair tax breaks’ while maintaining the special status for fee-paying schools. This means the party still plans to press on with its pledge to add 20 per cent VAT to private school fees. Confirming the policy pivot a Labour spokesman said: ‘Our policy remains. We will remove the unfair tax breaks that private schools benefit

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Has the true cost of net zero finally been revealed?

When the Commons nodded through Britain’s legally-binding net zero target in 2019 all MPs had to go on was the Climate Change Committee’s estimate that the whole process would cost £1 trillion. MPs failed to probe this figure and the government didn’t even try to calculate one. Indeed, when the Treasury attempted to come up with its own figure in 2021 it gave up, saying it couldn’t be done because there are too many unknowables. Net zero will require technologies, such as hydrogen production via electrolysis of water, which are still in an early stage of development and have not yet been scaled up. Now the think tank Civitas has weighed

Steerpike Steerpike

Rishi’s media round derailed by HS2

Ah the regional BBC round: the chance for any aspiring local reporter to make a name for themselves. Every year, in the run-up to Tory conference, the party leader must subject themselves to this ritual piñata, in which they face a barrage of quick-fire questions from journalists across the country. Last year it was Liz Truss’s turn to face eight such grillings in under an hour, in which she was asked if she was ‘ashamed’ of her mini-Budget and accused of being a ‘reverse Robin Hood’. This time Rishi Sunak didn’t endure such a battering, though the PM would no doubt squirm if he listened back to his cross-examination on

Charles Lipson

The second GOP debate did nothing to trouble Trump

The worst job in America on Wednesday was trying to moderate the second Republican debate. With seven candidates on stage struggling for air time, the moderators, Dana Perino, Stuart Varney and Ilia Calderón, did a creditable job under impossible conditions. They asked the right questions but couldn’t stop the candidates from talking over each other or returning to previous questions which was they wanted to answer but hadn’t been asked. The moderators’ job was like being the referee with seven boxers in the ring. None of the fighters won, and none failed. They all put forward their best arguments in the sliver of time they had for each question. Unfortunately

Jochen Buchsteiner

Germany is going to have to get used to the AfD

This week, the right-wing Alternative for Deutschland party suffered one of its first setbacks of the year, after it failed to win the mayoral election of Nordhausen, a small town in the region of Thuringia. Normally, Germany wouldn’t have much interest in the likes of Nordhausen, population 40,000. But this election has gained outsize significance for Germans worried about the seemingly unstoppable rise of the AfD. The party is currently on 22 per cent in the polls nationally and is set to become the largest party in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg in regional elections next year.  The AfD has been underestimated in Germany for some time. When it first came to prominence in the

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

The knives sharpen for GB News

The GB News row rumbles on, with its enemies seeing the perfect chance to call for its closure. A genuinely indefensible blunder from two of the channel’s regulars, Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton, has seen both suspended. But questions are now being asked about the overall culture – and even whether it should be banned entirely. Adam Boulton, former political editor of Sky News, was on Newsnight last night saying that it’s time for GB News to be taken off air, even going so far as to compare the station to Russian state media: I have to say I think the complaints have piled up against GB News. I think

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP suspend rebel backbencher Fergus Ewing

Is open debate now too painful for the SNP? Fergus Ewing, one of the party’s longest serving (and most outspoken) politicians has tonight been suspended for a week after criticising his own government’s ministers and policies. The disciplinary action comes after a series of statements Ewing made in recent months attacking the direction of the SNP — which in some cases resulted in his voting against government itself. Heresy in Humza Yousaf’s ultra-conformist regime… It was thought Ewing would lose the whip in June after he voted with the opposition in the no confidence vote against junior minister Lorna Slater — a decision deemed ‘very, very serious’ by Yousaf —