Politics

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

Sunday

Gerry Hassan

Why has Scottish politics forgotten about religion?

During the SNP leadership contest, something unusual happened: religion became a talking point in Scotland. Comments made by leadership hopeful Kate Forbes, a member of the Free Church of Scotland, on issues like gay marriage, abortion and having children out of wedlock, dominated the newspapers. But it became clear, after the dust settled – and Humza Yousaf defeated Forbes – just how unusual this discussion was. Even people of faith find it hard to talk about religion. This summer, when reflecting back on the leadership contest, Forbes said ‘there is a fear which characterises right now any discussions about faith’. But a Scotland which does not reflect upon the role religion has

Saturday

David Shipley

The toxic prison attitude that can cost inmates their lives

David Morgan, a 35 year-old man, told staff he’d taken an overdose. A nurse decided the man seemed drunk and needed to ‘sober up’. No proper medical assessment was conducted, and staff locked him in a holding cell. Over the next two and a half hours David became ‘increasingly distressed and unwell’, ‘incapable of coherent speech’ and ‘was unable to prevent himself from repeatedly falling on the floor’. Meanwhile the nurse, and prison staff looked on. As a result of these multiple falls, David broke his nose, fractured both legs and sustained significant bruising to his head and face. Eventually he lost consciousness, was taken to hospital and died eight

Harry Mount

Why some men are obsessed with the Roman Empire

Why do men think about the Roman Empire so much? That’s the subject of a new social media trend, where women ask their partners how often they think about ancient Rome.  Some men do it every day; one admitted to doing it three times a day. But why is it men who love the Empire so obsessively? ‘There’s so much to think about,’ one man said to his fiancée on TikTok. Another admitted he loved ‘their aqueducts and the fact that they had concrete that could harden’. He’s right. The Pantheon in Rome was built out of a special Roman concrete that has held up its extremely delicate dome since 126

Francis Pike

How an American racing driver and war in Mongolia helped to defeat Hitler

Of all the ‘practice’ wars that preceded the main events of the second world war, including the Spanish civil war and the winter war between Finland and the Soviet Union, the least well known is the four-month war on the Mongolia-Manchurian border between the Soviet Union and Japan that ended in September 1939.  This is not surprising, perhaps, because British attention was (and still is) more focused on Hitler’s invasion of Poland that took place two weeks earlier. Even the participants downplay the importance of a war that took place in a remote corner of Mongolia. Japan refers to it as the Nomonhan Incident while Russia calls it the Battle of Khalkin Gol after the river that runs through the region. Britain is not famed for its geopolitical

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

How America’s 2024 election will affect Britain’s

13 min listen

For the first time since 1992 the US and the UK will have elections in the same year, and – for the first time since 1964 – there is a real chance that those campaigns could overlap. How will they impact each other?  Kate Andrews speaks to Katy Balls and Freddy Gray. 

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Cindy Yu, Charlie Taylor and Petroc Trelawney

17 min listen

Cindy Yu tells the story of how she got to know Westminster’s alleged Chinese agent and the astonishment of seeing herself pictured alongside him when the story broke (01.12), Charlie Taylor, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, talks breakouts, bureaucracy and stabbings, and wonders – where have all the inspirational leaders gone (06.45), and Petroc Trelawney shares his classical notebook and describes a feeling of sadness as the BBC Proms wraps up for another year (11.54). Produced and presented by Linden Kemkaran.

Jawad Iqbal

Why Iran’s opposition failed

Today marks the anniversary of the brutal slaying of 22-year old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s so-called morality police – a death that fuelled mass protests on a scale not seen since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Yet 12 months on from what briefly looked like an unprecedented threat to four decades of theocratic rule under the mullahs, the unpalatable truth is that the protesters have failed in their attempt to bring meaningful change to Iran. If anything, the ruling mullahs look more secure than ever. Iran’s opposition forces must buck up their ideas if they are to retain any hope of toppling the regime.  It is all a far cry

Steerpike Steerpike

Seven of the worst people in politics, according to Rory Stewart

If only more politicians were like Rory Stewart. That is pretty much the gist of his book Politics on the Edge. While Stewart is the man called into politics to serve the people, the same isn’t true of his colleagues. Stewart’s memoir has a short list of ‘goodies’; namely, himself. But there is a long list of ‘baddies’ who, by Stewart’s account, have brought British politics into disrepute. Mr S has read Stewart’s book so you don’t have to – and here are seven of the worst people on Rory’s naughty list: George Osborne: There’s no love lost between Stewart and Osborne. The former chancellor, who is now doing his

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

The EU needs a coherent strategy on Russian sanctions

This week, the European Union opted to extend sanctions on some 1,800 Russian companies and individuals for another six months, but it also lifted sanctions on three wealthy individuals. Alongside this, a recodification of the rights of member states which means that, in the name of preventing ‘exports’, individual Russian travellers’ cars, phones and even toiletries can be seized on entry. These decisions have raised a predictable storm. The three lucky Russians whose sanctions were lifted are the billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov and businessmen Grigory Berezkin and Alexander Shulgin, all of whom had been put under restrictions for their links to the Kremlin. (A fourth man, Colonel Georgi Shuvaev, was also

Joanna Williams

How museums lost their way

What’s the point of museums? According to researchers at the University of Leicester, museums should help children explore their gender identity. Academics have issued 44-pages of detailed guidance on how museum directors can tackle ‘growing uncertainty and anxiety surrounding trans-inclusive practice’ while stimulating ‘positive explorations of gender’ for children. The University of Leicester has got this all wrong. Whether it is school sex education classes, TikTok videos, libraries hosting drag queen story hours, picture books about grandad attending Pride, or television programmes about boys who want to become girls, children are bombarded with opportunities to explore their gender identity. Yet despite almost every area of life having already been colonised

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Was Liz Truss wrong – or wronged?

A year ago, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng had just announced that they would hold a mini-Budget. It turned out to be the tax-cutting Budget that people like me had long been arguing for. So why wasn’t I more supportive at time, and since? I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column and it takes us to a debate we have quite often at The Spectator’s offices: where Truss got it right and where she didn’t. During the Tory leadership campaign my sympathies were more with Truss and her tax-cutting growth message. James Forsyth was leaning a bit more towards Sunak and Kate Andrews was asking why Truss’s numbers didn’t add up. Kate and I

Friday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

How the SNP botched Scotland’s census

Scotland’s first census results have finally been released: just 444 days after England managed to publish theirs. The once-a-decade count of the population was disastrous at worst and botched at best. As the first deadline for returning the census loomed last April, some 700,000 households – a quarter of the country – were threatened with £1,000 fines for not completing it. It had taken over a month to reach a 74 per cent response rate. Eleven years ago it took just ten days. Now that the results are in, the final response rate was 89 per cent: well short of the official target of 94 and the 97 per cent

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Are the Republicans wrong to impeach Biden?

7 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to author and lawyer Alan Dershowitz who wrote Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law. On the podcast Freddy speaks to Alan about the Republican’s formal impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, claiming they have unearthed a ‘culture of corruption’ surrounding the president. 

Steerpike Steerpike

David Lammy slams Tories’ ‘little England’ Brexit vision

The Labour party is on a charm offensive – not with Brits, but with our European cousins over the water. Keir Starmer has unveiled plans to drop the Rwanda deportation programme and cosy back up to Brussels in the hope of striking a new asylum deal. But it seems Labour’s plans to present themselves as the party who will kiss and make up with the EU following Brexit might be much grander still. Taking to the airwaves, Labour shadow foreign secretary David Lammy lined up to take a pop at the Tories and woo the EU all in one fell swoop. ‘There are two visions of Britain’, he said, speaking to Nish Kumar and Coco

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The dangerous dog crackdown shouldn’t stop with banning Bully XLs

There isn’t much you can do in modern Britain without encountering some licensing scheme, but one area of life which really does need regulating remains free of any kind of bureaucratic control. You can, for now, go out and buy an American Bully XL puppy with no need for any kind of training – for you or the dog – before letting it loose on the High Street where it might take a fancy to shins of a passer-by and, quite possibly go onto kill them. Should that happen, you may well find yourself in the magistrates’ court, but why not some kind of pre-emptive system to keep violent dogs off the

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Osborne, Balls and a glimpse of Westminster’s rotten culture

Podcast mania continues at Westminster. Discarded grandees from all parties have noticed the success of The Rest is Politics, the hit podcast by Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell, which has now become a lucrative roadshow. The two gasbags sold out the Albert Hall in a matter of minutes, and their popularity has drawn new players into the marketplace. Yesterday, George Osborne and Ed Balls showcased their contribution to the hot-air industry with Political Currency. The old prize-fighters buried their differences and treated listeners to 50 minutes of rambling chitchat about their half-forgotten careers. Ostensibly the ageing chatterboxes focused the discussion on financial matters but they kept shifting aimlessly from topic

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Britain is heading for an autumn of discontent

Train drivers will strike for two days in the coming weeks, on 30 September and 4 October. These dates are no coincidence: they directly overlap with when MPs and attendees will be travelling to and from the Conservative party conference in Manchester. This move from Aslef and the RMT is far from subtle: the unions may be locked in a pay battle with train companies, but it’s the government’s attention they are hoping to get. The train strikes add to a growing list of other walkouts planned over the next few weeks. Consultants and junior doctors will also be walking out separately this month. But then in an unprecedented move,

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is it right to cut back HS2?

12 min listen

The government is reportedly looking into whether it should cut the second phase of HS2. But with so much money having already been pumped into the project, should they just see it through to the end? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews.

Mary Dejevsky

20mph isn’t plenty: the war on motorists has gone too far

‘Absolutely insane’ is the verdict of Penny Mordaunt MP on the Welsh government’s introduction of a 20mph speed limit on residential roads. Having driven along not a few residential roads in Welsh towns and cities earlier this year, I can only agree, with one caveat. There are quite a few places in Wales, and not just in Wales, where the combination of narrow roads, parking and other traffic makes any thought of reaching even 20mph optimistic. Urban areas, in particular, are quite adept at imposing their own speed limits, in the form of traffic conditions. This is a reality that probably influences someone’s decision about what form of transport, if

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

In praise of Justin Welby’s ‘less bossy’ Church of England

Justin Welby is not my sort of Anglican. Or maybe he is, in a way. I’m not really sure who he is. And I don’t mean that entirely negatively. When he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, the Church seemed to be opting for cheesy banality after the intellectual roller-coaster of his predecessor, Rowan Williams. It was a slightly dangerous roller-coaster, to be sure, with some alarming rusty bits, and stomach-plunging drops, but always interesting.  Welby looked like a beta male from the Alpha course, the slick evangelical outfit led by public school officer-class types. I had my gripes about Williams, but he seemed a Hyperion to this satyr. I have