Politics

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

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The EU is in denial about stopping the boats

The Global Alliance to Counter Migrant Smuggling is the latest EU initiative to address the continent’s migrant crisis. Unveiled in Brussels on Tuesday, the aim of the alliance is, in the words of the EU, ‘to close the loopholes in national legislation and international systems and prevent this criminal trade in human lives.’  Europe should brace itself for a fresh migrant surge in 2024 The EU president, Ursula von der Leyen, used social media to boast that the Global Alliance will, among other things, ‘Intensify cooperation with partner countries to tackle this issue globally’ and ‘strengthen the role of Europol’, the EU’s agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.  Forgive the cynicism but haven’t

Sean Rayment

Does a political solution to the Israel-Gaza conflict exist?

Is there a political solution to the Gaza conflict? Earlier this morning, the seven-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas broke down, with the IDF reporting that it had intercepted rocket fire from the Gaza strip. Israel then resumed hostilities, with air strikes in northern and southern Gaza against Hamas. Almost from the moment of its inception, 73-years ago, Israel has been in a state of perpetual war. This is not something of Israel’s own choosing. No other country in the modern era has fought so many wars of national survival against adversaries whose sole ambition was the complete annihilation of  a people. If there was an opportunity for a prolonged

Thursday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Alistair Darling only saved the country

Alistair Darling was one of the most consequential politicians of the past half-century but he had the misfortune to be a quiet, self-effacing man and so the scale of his contributions has never been recognised. He was not by nature a Westminster man, not someone who lived for briefings and gossip and the soap opera stuff. He courted journalists who had to be courted, met with City figures who had to be met, but it was never about the game for him, and not even the players, but about the results.  There was an austerity about his demeanour – to certain London commentators he was just another dour Scot –

William Moore William Moore

Carbon capture: how China cornered the green market

30 min listen

On the podcast: In her cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator’s assistant editor Cindy Yu – writing ahead of the COP28 summit this weekend – describes how China has cornered the renewables market. She joins the podcast alongside Akshat Rathi, senior climate reporter for Bloomberg and author of Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions, to investigate China’s green agenda. (01:22) Also this week: Margaret Mitchell writes in The Spectator about the uncertainty she is facing around her graduate visa. This is after last week’s statistics from the ONS showed that net migration remains unsustainably high, leaving the government under pressure to curb legal migration. Margaret joins the podcast with Michael Simmons, The Spectator’s data editor. (13:07)

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Alistair Darling was a great man

The death of Alistair Darling is a grievous loss. British politics has lost a man of decency, character, integrity and humour. He was a good man, in a world where good men are scarce. Darling’s most prominent role in politics was as chancellor to prime minister Gordon Brown from 2007 until 2010, a turbulent period defined by a global financial crisis and the related economic slump. Not everyone who seeks or wins elected office, or supports the people who do, is nasty, cynical and underhand Others will offer wider appraisals of Darling’s career, but I think that spell in Brown’s cabinet deserves close attention, not just because of what it

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Newsnight doomed itself

Whither Newsnight? Or do I mean wither, Newsnight – shortly to be reduced to a 30-minute debate show shorn of more than half its staff. As a teenage news and politics junkie, I grew up on this programme, watching it from its 1979 inception and through its 1980s heyday when that broadcasting giant Sir John Tusa was the main anchorman. Just three years after Tusa departed in 1986, Jeremy Paxman became a presenter and Newsnight’s indispensability was thus preserved. So it is hard not to be saddened by the latest swingeing cuts imposed on the programme by BBC high-ups. And yet, that is a feat I have found myself achieving;

Charles Lipson

The remarkable life of Henry Kissinger

The next few weeks will be filled with remembrances, fulsome appreciations, and harsh criticism of Henry Alfred Kissinger, who died on Wednesday at 100. His prominence is well deserved. The only modern secretaries of state who rank with him are George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson, who constructed the architecture of Cold War containment in the late 1940s. Kissinger’s central achievement was updating that architecture to include China, less as an American ally than as a Russian adversary. Until the late 1960s, Washington and Beijing had seen each other as bitter foes, not only because they had fought each other in the Korean War but because they represented the era’s two

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year 2023, in pictures

Looking back, 2023 didn’t have all of the fireworks that the previous 12 months brought. As December fast approaches, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer remain in post – a change from 2022 and the year of four Chancellors, three premiers and two monarchs as well. But at this year’s Spectator Parliamentarian Awards, the gossip was in full flow this evening as the great and the good descended on London’s Rosewood Hotel to mix and mingle. Among those in attendance were Home Secretary James Cleverly and his recently-axed predecessor Suella Braverman, with Jon Ashworth, Peter Kyle and Grant Shapps among those spotted by Mr S. ‘All political careers end in

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Has Robert Jenrick gone rogue?

12 min listen

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, long thought of as one of Rishi Sunak’s closest allies in Parliament, hinted yesterday at a row with the Prime Minister. He had a plan to reduce immigration ready ‘last Christmas’, he said. Why didn’t Sunak take it anywhere? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and Paul Goodman.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Get used to Labour being the party of low taxes

It takes some to get used to Labour posing as the party of low taxes, but it is something that we are going to have to deal with as the election approaches. Today Jeremy Hunt appeared before the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, and we had a taste of what is to come. In a fairly docile but highly partisan session, Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh asked the Chancellor if he takes the British public for fools, asking if he thinks they will not notice that the 2p cut in employees’ National Insurance will put rather less back into their pockets than fiscal drag is taking out – Hunt is

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Did Starmer let slip Labour’s secret plan to win back the Red Wall?

Winter looms, and at PMQs the Scottish nationalists were swift to exploit the darkness and the chill.  ‘Dread,’ intoned Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s freakishly macabre leader in Westminster. ‘Their hearts fill with dread,’ he said. Flynn was describing the inner lives of parents in Aberdeen as they contemplate the first snows of November. Their ‘dread’ arises from the knowledge that ‘they simply can’t afford to pay their energy bills,’ he explained. If Flynn played an executioner at the London Dungeon he wouldn’t need a face-mask. His natural expression does the job. He moved on to the children of Aberdeen who, he conceded, ‘were filled with delight’ at the prospect of

Steerpike Steerpike

Matheson should resign over £11k iPad bill, Scots say

More trouble for Humza Yousaf’s beleaguered Health Secretary Michael Matheson. A new poll for STV News shows 61 per cent of Scots think he should resign over the £11,000 bill in data charges racked up on his parliamentary iPad during a family holiday to Morocco.  The bill was covered by the taxpayer out of a combination of Matheson’s office expenses and the Scottish parliament’s coffers. He originally professed ignorance as to how the charges were incurred but says his teenage sons later admitted to using the taxpayer-funded data to watch football matches. The minister subsequently agreed to reimburse the parliament in full.  Yousaf’s leadership has already been overshadowed by rows (gender reform,

Seth J. Frantzman

Has Israel learned the lessons of Ukraine’s war with Russia?

Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas – which has allowed for the release of dozens of hostages – looks set to continue. But make no mistake: this war is far from over. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas, a mission that he will not back down from any time soon. The fight against an estimated 30,000 Hamas soldiers will be a long and difficult one. While Israel’s firepower vastly outmatches that of Hamas, defeating an insurgent army will prove a difficult endeavour for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Israel could find itself in a situation comparable to Ukraine – another country with state-of-the-art weaponry that struggles to deliver

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Is Scotland waking up to the dire state of its NHS?

If the NHS is the closest thing we have to a religion, as Nigel Lawson reckoned, then Paul Gray is not just a blasphemer but an apostate. Professor Gray has called the NHS in Scotland ‘unsustainable’ and urged a public conversation about reform, including the use of the private sector. His intervention is significant because professor Gray was between 2013 and 2019 the chief executive of NHS Scotland. He is, to be clear, not proposing privatisation, merely urging a debate about delivery and funding. But even that is scandalous to a political establishment that prides itself on having less private sector involvement than there is south of the border. Professor

The Spectator

Press freedom isn’t ‘sentimental’ – it’s vital

‘We can be quite sentimental about some of our so-called treasured assets,’ said Lord Johnson, one of Kemi Badenoch’s business ministers, earlier this week. ‘The reality is that media and information has moved on. Clearly, most of us today don’t buy a physical newspaper or necessarily go to a traditional news source.’ His implication was that it doesn’t really matter what happens to The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph, both of which are currently up for sale, and that it is old-fashioned to be concerned about the state of press freedom in general. We beg to differ. John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia, put it well when he

Margaret Mitchell

Can I stay in Britain?

Brexit Britain, for all its flaws, has been welcoming to me. When the UK was a member of the European Union, the only way to control immigration was to crack down on non-EU visas. Ten years ago, Americans like me who studied in Britain and wanted to stay needed to earn £35,000 a year (which would be £47,000 now). That was unrealistic for a recent graduate. After Brexit, Boris Johnson brought back the old post-study visa, giving us two years to find work and requiring a more achievable minimum salary of £26,000. Finally, international students who won places at British universities could meet their EU equals as, well, equals. We

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What the Elgin Marbles row is really about 

‘The Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunshine and the landscape of Achilles.’ This view – articulated by Boris Johnson in 1986 when he was studying classics at Oxford – is not shared by Rishi Sunak. On Monday, the Prime Minister caused a diplomatic spat after he called off a meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, his Greek counterpart, hours before it was scheduled to take place. The reason? Mitsotakis gave an interview to the BBC in which he said the Elgin Marbles must be returned to Greece. The current situation, he added, of having some artefacts in London

Phoebe Hennell

Why Argentina is turning its back on Brics

‘Today, the rebuilding of Argentina begins’, Javier Milei declared in his first speech as the new president-elect. The anarcho-capitalist is wasting no time in his mission.  Milei has already pulled the plug on what was set to be current president Fernandez’s career-defining achievement: Argentina’s historic admittance to Brics (a loose alliance of economies led by Brazil, Russia, India and China). Argentina’s new leader intends instead to swivel westwards, prioritising trade and relations with ‘the liberal democracies of the world’, while casting a backwards glance at China. Is Milei right to reorient Argentina, or is he biting the hand that feeds him? Beijing has declared it a ‘grave error’ if Argentina

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

How Labour could lose

Occasionally I wake up in the morning with the rain pelting on the windows and the sky the colour of a gravestone and I think to myself that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if we had a Labour government. Partly this is simply a sense of resignation and inevitability, because we are going to have a Labour government, given that the current administration is loathed by a wearied public and shows every inclination of breathing oxygen onto that loathing so that it develops into a fully fledged visceral inferno of hatred. Partly it is because the likes of Starmer, Reeves and Streeting do not seem, to me, noticeably