Politics

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

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Spotify exec: Harry and Meghan are ‘grifters’

It seems the Americans are belatedly waking up to the reality of the Sussexes. Bill Simmons, Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetisation, has finally cottoned on to the fact that Harry and Meghan aren’t exactly model Stakhanovite grafters. He has this week come out and attacked them as ‘fucking grifters’, after their £15.6m Archetypes podcast deal with Spotify was unceremoniously canned. The Wall Street Journal reports that the couple may not have met the productivity requirements to get the full payout. How will they cope? Now it’s all over: not a moment too soon You can see why Simmons is angry: the pair really embraced ‘quiet quitting’. The Duke and Duchess of the Sussex signed

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Keir Starmer has let slip the truth about his plan to abolish the Lords

Can a political leader keep getting exposed for conveying obvious untruths and yet be judged a fit person to occupy 10 Downing Street or even just a seat in the House of Commons? That’s been the theme of a week at Westminster which has seen Boris Johnson excoriated as someone not fit even to hold a pass giving him access to the Parliamentary Estate as a former MP. So it is odd then that almost nobody has commented on Keir Starmer’s exposure for the commission of a new political fraud – even though it came in the high-profile setting of PMQs. While lambasting Rishi Sunak for permitting Boris Johnson’s resignation

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

What’s behind Germany’s far-right surge?

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Germany’s far-right populist party, is enjoying a surge in support. A poll by broadcaster ARD this month revealed that 18 per cent of voters backed the AfD – its highest rating since the party was founded in 2013. This level of support – which puts the AfD on level pegging with the SPD – is ringing alarm bells in Berlin. Since the end of the second world war, Germany’s post-war identity has been moulded around coming to terms with its history. Germans even have a word for it: ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’. The national mantra for eight decades has been ‘never again’. But is something sinister afoot in German

James Heale James Heale

James Heale, Paul Wood and Hermione Eyre

21 min listen

This week: James Heale takes us through the runners and riders for the conservative nomination for mayor of London (1:00), Paul Wood discusses how Saudi Arabia is trying to buy the world (06:02), and Hermione Eyre reads her arts lead on the woman who pioneered colour photography (12:51).  Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson. 

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Will Ulez be the undoing of Sadiq Khan?

15 min listen

In his politics column for The Spectator this week James Heale profiles the three candidates that the Tories have shortlisted for London mayor. With the seventh London mayoral election coming up, can the Tories capitalise on Sadiq Khan’s declining popularity recently, and offer some answers in the ongoing Ulez debate? Cindy Yu speaks to James Heale and Dave Hill the former Guardian London commentator who now runs the website On London.  Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson.

John Keiger and Guibourg Delamotte

Emmanuel Macron must get over his Aukus sulk – before it’s too late

When the Aukus trilateral security pact was signed between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom in September 2021, Emmanuel Macron was furious. France’s president took Australia’s decision to terminate France’s ‘contract of the century’ to supply diesel-powered submarines to Canberra personally. The French have since declared the incident officially closed, although Macron – as he is wont to do – still bears a grudge. But as Aukus’ importance increases – and the alliance morphs into something that could shape the West’s coordinated response to regional strategic threats – it’s time for Macron to bury the hatchet. For now, Macron’s reluctance to forgive and forget is proving problematic. Any association,

Lottie Moore

When will the Department for Education get a grip on its transgender guidance?

Who’s running the show on trans and gender? Elected ministers? Or an activist civil service? A publication put out by the Department for Education (DfE) – Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) – suggests it may be the latter. Schools and colleges rely on this document to keep children safe. But, while the 2023 version contains a few updates, there are none regarding the safeguarding issue everyone has been talking about: children who want to change their gender. So why has the department chosen to turn a blind eye to the concerned parents, teachers and schools desperate for guidance?  Education Secretary Gillian Keegan must answer some difficult questions. Why did she sign

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why Boris’s critics might regret celebrating his downfall

Imagine a Tory prime minister who gave the liberal left almost everything that it wanted. Higher migration? Sure, let’s treble it. End austerity with more tax and spending? Sure, let’s pay the wages of 9 million people from the state’s purse, hand the NHS another £34 billion – and let’s jack up corporation tax to pay for it. Climate change? Let’s close down every gas-fired power station by 2035, ban fracking and lumber oil and gas companies with a windfall tax. Culture wars? Let’s make gay conversion therapy a crime.     You might think that the liberal left would at least bring itself to show some gratitude, but apparently not. We

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris’s big column backfires

Boris! Boris! Boris! For a week now, the cry has been incessant among our national media. Liberated from his parliamentary cage, what will the albino gorilla do next? And last night we got our answer: a new column with the Daily Mail, that organ of Middle England sensibility. Eagerly, the whole of Fleet Street awaited Johnson’s first column, published at 5 p.m today. What would he write about, they speculated furiously? State secrets, perhaps? A denunciation of Sunak, Gove and all the sinister forces that they embody? Or some great revelation about his future plans? The answer, it turns out, is, er, no. Rather anti-climactically, Boris published his first Mail

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Is this Wickes’s Gerald Ratner moment?

Big businesses are increasingly torn between activist leadership and a customer base that just wants to stump up its cash and be on its way. Customers’ patience is wearing thin. The latest company seemingly eager to pick a fight with its clientele is DIY chain Wickes. A video dug up by campaigner James Esses shows the shop’s chief operating officer Fraser Longden taking part in a panel at PinkNews’s Trans+ Summit. The discussion, which took place last month, was entitled ‘The Role of Senior Leaders in Trans+ Inclusion’. So far, so corporate. At least it was until Longden was asked whether Wickes had received any backlash for its stance. He told the panel:  ‘I

Kristina Murkett

Humza Yousaf should think again before scrapping end-of-year exams

One of the most wonderful things about walking around Oxford at this time of year is seeing hordes of young people celebrating the end of exams: finals, A-levels. GCSEs. Hundreds of miles north in Scotland, younger students may soon have another reason to celebrate altogether: the end of National 5 qualifications. An imminent review of secondary Scottish assessment is widely anticipated to recommend ditching exams for 15 and 16 year olds, and replacing National 5 qualifications (the Scottish equivalent to GCSEs) with a new system. Under the new proposals, students would be judged on coursework alongside a Scottish ‘diploma’ which recognises extra-curricular activities, sport and volunteering. The review was announced

John Keiger John Keiger

Did France invent cricket?

As the First Ashes Test begins at Edgbaston it is fitting to recall England’s oldest cricket adversary: France. The Marylebone Cricket Club’s (MCC) first ever international tour was scheduled for France in the summer of 1789. Owing to local difficulties the tour did not go ahead. The match was eventually rescheduled for the bicentennial of the French Revolution with France beating the MCC by seven wickets. In the space of a fortnight, we have witnessed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meeting with president Biden in Washington to announce ambitiously that Britain would lead on setting up international norms on Artificial Intelligence (AI). This was followed a few days later by president

James Heale James Heale

How will MPs vote on the Partygate report?

11 min listen

The release of The Privileges Committee’s report into whether Boris Johnson knowingly misled parliament has caused a war of words in the press. Several MPs have announced that they will vote against the report when it comes to House of Commons on Monday. What’s the latest?  Also on the podcast, Boris Johnson is expected to be announced as the Mail’s ‘erudite’ new columnist in tomorrow’s edition. Does Johnson need a political office in order to cause trouble?  James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson.  Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson. 

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Will nuclear power heal the climate?

52 min listen

This week, Freddy is joined by a great American filmmaker, Oliver Stone, and a great Argentinian filmmaker, Fernando Sulichin. Their new documentary Nuclear Now proposes nuclear energy as the solution to the climate crisis. On the podcast, they address global concerns about adding nuclear to the energy mix, compare the nuclear policy of Presidents Biden and Trump and discuss the opinion that Oliver formed of Vladimir Putin while filming The Putin Interviews. 

Mark Solomons

Readers of Ulysses have a right to be smug

Happy Bloomsday everybody. Today, 16 June, is the day on which the events of James Joyce’s epic novel, Ulysses, is set and the anniversary is celebrated every year by fans, scholars and people who simply want to look clever. Millions of people either cite the tome as the greatest piece of literature ever written, or as the biggest load of pretentious drivel: so complicated that you can’t get past page 46 before giving up. Hardcore devotees to the 1922 work based on Homer’s Odyssey, will even follow the route taken by its central character, Leopold Bloom, through Dublin from a Martello Tower on the coast via a funeral and a selection

Iain Macwhirter

The SNP is sleepwalking into extinction

The Scottish National party has been through difficult times in the past, but can anything compare with this week? Nicola Sturgeon arrested ‘as a suspect’ by Police Scotland in the investigation into party finances. The ignominious collapse of the deposit return scheme; the deepening scandal of the Ferguson Marine ferries. This must be the nadir, surely, of SNP fortunes. Or is it?  As the week progressed, SNP figures became visibly more relaxed and even started sounding rather bullish. Nothing to see here…Nicola hasn’t been charged with anything…voters are focussed on Boris’s crimes. The SNP MSP, James Dornan, even accused the police and the media of ‘collusion’ and complained that officers had raided

Matthew Lynn

Is France finally changing its tune on Brexit?

The waiters can sometimes be a little surly. That holiday villa you booked in the Loire may not always be as desirable as it looked in the pictures. And you can never be entirely sure which side they will be on in a major war. Still, despite occasional inconsistencies, there is one thing you could always rely on the French for. They will insist forever that leaving the EU has been a catastrophe for the British economy, and by far the stupidest decision any major country has ever made. But hold on. What’s this? In a note this morning BNP Paribas, a bank right at the heart of the French

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris Johnson gets a Mail column

It’s bad news for Rishi Sunak on the front page of the Daily Mail. No, not the splash about a revolt on Monday’s Privileges Committee vote but rather the teasing trailer for the paper’s latest recruit. A mystery ‘erudite new columnist’ is trailed on the front of today’s edition, with the Mail promising that their writing will be ‘required reading in Westminster – and across the world!’ The paper offers only a blacked out silhouette of their new hire but it’s clear who it is: Boris Johnson. The new Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds is on what Politico call a ‘very high six-figure sum’ to pen a weekly column. There was much

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Isabel Oakeshott Edition

46 min listen

Isabel Oakeshott is a journalist and author of numerous political biographies, formerly the political editor for the Sunday Times. She’s known for a number of scoops over the years, including Chris Huhne’s speeding ticket and revealing Matt Hancock’s lockdown WhatsApps. On the episode, she talks to Katy about why toughness was a quality her parents particularly emphasised in her upbringing; what it was like to break into the lobby as a female journalist; and why she decided to break her confidentiality agreement to expose the cache of messages that Matt Hancock had given her. Produced by Natasha Feroze, Saby Reyes-Kulkarni and Oscar Edmondson.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Get Rishi: the plot against the PM

35 min listen

This week: For her cover piece, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls writes that Boris Johnson could be attempting to spearhead an insurgency against the prime minister. She joins the podcast alongside historian and author Sir Anthony Seldon, to discuss whether – in light of the Privileges Committee’s findings – Boris is going to seriously up the ante when it comes to seeking revenge against his former chancellor. (01:02) Also this week: In The Spectator journalist Paul Wood writes about how Saudi Arabia is buying the world, after the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund negotiated a controlling interest in the main US golf tournament, the PGA. This took many people by surprise. He is