Politics

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

Tuesday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is Macron losing France’s war on drugs?

The story that dominated much of the French media last week was the vicious assault of a shopkeeper in Amiens. A gang kicked and punched Jean-Baptiste Trogneux outside his chocolate shop in a savage attack that left him bruised and nursing a couple of broken ribs. It was, alas, an all too common incident in a country where violent crime has been rising steadily for a number of years.  What made this assault newsworthy was the fact that Trogneux is the great-niece of Brigitte Macron; she and her presidential husband condemned the attack, as did figures from across the political spectrum, many of whom tried to exploit the poor man’s injuries

Daniel Miller

Elon Musk, George Soros and the blurring of life and art

Was Elon Musk antisemitic when he compared George Soros to Magneto, the apparently Jewish, Marvel Comics supervillain? Whatever one’s view on this question, Musk’s comments may be taken as a pointed marker of a time in which life and art are increasingly indistinguishable. Musk claimed in a tweet to his 140 million followers that Soros is akin to the X-Men anti-hero Magneto, of comic book and movie fame. Like Magneto, Musk said, Soros ‘hates humanity’ and ‘wants to erode the very fabric of civilisation.’ Not flattering, but the claim that it’s antisemitic, because the atheist billionaire Soros, aged 90, is ethnically Jewish, bears interrogation. The comparison of Soros to Magneto

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What Suella Braverman needs to do to keep her job

As luck would have it, the Home Secretary was down to answer departmental questions in the chamber this afternoon, and a lot of those questions were on her speeding ticket. ‘I hope this isn’t going to be a repetitive session,’ said Suella Braverman in the Commons, before offering exactly that for an hour.  Braverman had not come with a different answer to every question, regardless of the details each MP was asking for. Instead, she said the exact same thing, in the exact same tone, over and over again. She had been speeding in the summer. She regretted that. She paid the fine and took the penalty. ‘Mr Speaker, last

Steerpike Steerpike

Gary Lineker honoured for his activism by Amnesty

They say genius is never appreciated in its own time. So we can only be grateful that Gary Lineker’s activism is now getting the attention and recognition it deserves. The millionaire motormouth will be awarded a gong on Wednesday from – no joke – Amnesty International, the self-proclaimed ‘world’s leading human rights organisation.’ Ironic, given that UK taxpayers are forced to pay Lineker’s salary via the licence fee, on pain of imprisonment for non-payment of fines… Like the good eco-warrior that he is, Lineker will jet into Rome to collect a ‘sport and human rights award’ by the organisation, which described him as a ‘staunch advocate for the rights of

Yiannis Baboulias

New Democracy’s election success is a turning point for Greece

With early results showing a resounding victory for the centre-right New Democracy (ND) in the first round of elections in Greece, its beaming leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis addressed a cheering crowd outside the party’s headquarters with the words ‘All of Greece has turned blue! Thank you!’. He has every reason to be satisfied. ND not only managed to hold on to its share of the vote from 2019 but to expand it by around 150,000 votes, bringing them to a comfortable 41 per cent. They won every district across the country but one. While just shy of a majority, due to the changes in electoral law introduced by Syriza while in

Lucy Dunn

Will junior doctors accept the Scottish government’s pay deal?

Junior doctors in Scotland have been offered a 6.5 per cent pay rise for this coming year after voting in favour of industrial action over a fortnight ago. Scotland’s health secretary Michael Matheson says he is ‘delighted’ to have reached an agreement with BMA Scotland, but doctors across the country are less enthusiastic.  In Scotland, 97 per cent of the junior doctors who voted in the BMA’s ballot did so in favour of strike action, with a high turnout of 71 per cent. They are looking for full pay restoration, which amounts to a 23.5 per cent pay increase above inflation, or an uplift of just under 35 per cent

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Sunak can’t afford to lose Braverman

Back in the early days of the Blair governments, Alastair Campbell was reputed to have a rule for resignations: once a scandal had been in the news for ten consecutive days, a minister had to go. It was a stupid rule because it merely encouraged parliamentary lobby journalists to keep a story going until the limit was up in the expectation of claiming another ministerial scalp. Since then Alastair has claimed, possibly truthfully, that he cannot remember imposing this rule and had probably come up with it when the Tories were still in power as a means of further stoking up the atmosphere of crisis around John Major. This story

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Has Ukraine launched a ‘special military operation’ in Russia?

While the world is waiting for Ukraine’s spring offensive, something very different happened this morning: an incursion into Russian territory. The soldiers involved are not from the Ukrainian army, but two legions of exiled Russians (including soldiers who defected from Russian forces) allied with Ukraine but are not part of Kyiv’s official military command. While Ukraine is not claiming responsibility, it’s hardly condemning the raid The ‘Russian Volunteer Corps’ and the ‘Free Russia Legion’, both expat legions based in Ukraine, are moving towards Russian towns in the Belgorod region (north of Kharkiv) and have so far claimed to have ‘liberated’ the village of Kozinka and captured the town hall in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer’s plans for NHS reform are easier said than done

For the past few months, Keir Starmer has looked a little like Russel Crowe’s John Nash in the film A Beautiful Mind, wandering around looking everywhere for an original idea. He has baffled the public with promises to make the next Labour government ‘clause IV on steroids’ (there are people who’ve had the vote for a decade who had only just been born when Tony Blair changed the original clause IV, which called for public ownership of industry, and many voters who are still older than that who are a bit hazy on the details too). Today, the Labour leader is offering his best approximation of an original idea that

Nicholas Farrell

Who is really to blame for Italy’s devastating floods?

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni cut short her presence at the G7 summit in Hiroshima this weekend to visit the flood devastated Romagna in north east Italy. In Rome, at about the same time, climate change activists poured black vegetable dye into the Trevi Fountain in protest against government support for fossil fuels, which they say are ‘the cause’ of the floods. One thing is certain: Italy will not stop the destruction wrought by such floods with electric cars, wind farms and heat pumps. Nor, in the short to medium term – and possibly never – will such things on their own prevent climate change either. What Italy needs is

Sunday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Sunak holds Braverman’s fate in his hands

Suella Braverman is in the firing line, following reports the Home Secretary asked civil servants for advice on arranging a private one-to-one driving awareness course to help her avoid a speeding fine and points on her licence. Braverman is accused of breaking the ministerial code by directing civil servants to assist with her personal affairs. In a sign that Braverman could face an investigation into the matter, the Prime Minister is to have a conversation with his independent ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, tomorrow when he returns from the G7 summit. So how much trouble is Braverman really in? Both her critics and supporters have been out in full force

Lucy Dunn

What is the point of the SNP’s independence convention?

Ash Regan came third place in the SNP’s leadership contest, but the party’s ‘rebel’ candidate is still fighting hard for her policies – and yesterday she saw a glimmer of success. The SNP has announced that on 24 June it will hold an ‘independence convention’ to take the place of a de facto referendum conference planned by former first minister Nicola Sturgeon. Though she only received 11 per cent of the first preference membership vote, Regan has not sat still since her defeat in March. Last week, she questioned the new (and controversially appointed) minister for independence, Jamie Hepburn, on this in Holyrood: ‘I think that a cohesive, vibrant, creative

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: What should Sunak do about Braverman?

Rishi Sunak has a difficult decision on his hands: what to do about his Home Secretary? Suella Braverman is reported to have asked civil servants to organise special treatment for her after she was caught speeding. She has since paid the fine. But the PM – who is in Japan at the G7 summit – has declined to express his full confidence in Braverman. Laura Kuenssberg asked Conservative MP Jake Berry if there should be an official investigation into whether she might have broken the ministerial code: Thérèse Coffey ‘fed up’ with the water companies English water companies apologised this week, after Environment Agency figures showed there were more than

Angus Colwell

Martin Amis 1949-2023: How The Spectator covered his life

Martin Amis died in Florida on Friday, of oesophageal cancer at the age of 73. Some of The Spectator’s best writers praised, reviled, laughed at and scorned Amis throughout his career. Here’s some extracts from our archive: The Rachel Papers ‘The narrative is often very funny indeed, but I suspect that Martin Amis is getting the last laugh. Charles Highway is so much the archetypal youth, of a certain time and a certain class, that he is necessarily a comic creation. Sex is nowadays the vox populi, and almost vox dei if certain clergymen have anything to do with it, but for Highway it is a road paved with bad intentions. Although his

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

When will the Tories face up to Britain’s benefits scandal?

When researching The Spectator cover story last week, we came across a figure so shocking that I felt it had to be wrong: that Manchester, a city where 40,000 job vacancies are currently being offered, has an unemployment rate of 18 per cent. That is to say: almost one in five of the working-age population in the city (excluding children and pensioners) is on some kind of out-of-work benefits, including incapacity benefits. Not salary-tops, not supplementary welfare but benefits given to those who are not in work. In the middle of a worker shortage crisis, it’s quite the scandal. But one you will not have heard of because the figure

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Will Starmer let Sunak off the hook again over immigration?

Despite the Conservatives having broken all their promises to bring down immigration volumes for 13 years in a row, conventional wisdom has it that migration is Labour’s Achilles’ heel. However high the Tories have allowed immigration to go, the public has generally suspected that Labour would push it still higher. Brits have long memories about the party ‘sending out the search parties’ for immigrants under Tony Blair – nor have they forgotten Gordon Brown’s dumbfounded reaction to the migration scepticism of the redoubtable Gillian Duffy on the campaign trail in 2010. This week is likely to see the collapse of that popular prejudice – not because of anything active that Labour

Mary Dejevsky

Rishi Sunak is a hit on the world stage

Voters will have learned several things about Rishi Sunak in recent days: that he thinks he can win the next election; that he and his wife have fallen 50-plus places on the annual Sunday Times Rich List, and that he can emerge from a punishing flight schedule – London to Hiroshima via Reykjavik and Tokyo – with little overt trace of jet-lag.  But there is something else, which may in time prove to be more significant: the UK’s youngest Prime Minister of modern times is increasingly being treated as an equal and congenial colleague by his counterparts abroad. This weekend marked his first appearance at what is still thought of

Jeff Fynn-Paul

The myth of New World genocide

Shortly before the coronation of Charles III, a group of indigenous leaders from around the commonwealth released a statement. They called on the King ‘to acknowledge the horrific impacts on and legacy of genocide and colonisation of the indigenous and enslaved peoples,’ including ‘the oppression of our peoples, plundering of our resources, (and) denigration of our culture.’ Charles was told to ‘redistribute the wealth that underpins the crown back to the peoples from whom it was stolen.’ Yet the argument that Britain should pony up for its historical sins is based on a number of rickety assumptions. One of these is that a substantial portion of the wealth of the UK,

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Russia’s fake news machine has a fresh target

There is a certain perverse cachet in one’s words being wilfully distorted by someone who thinks it gives their argument weight. Increasingly, the Russians are adopting this as a tactic. But the target of their disinformation appears not to be foreign audiences, but Russians themselves. I’ve never really subscribed to the view that being banned from Russia on the charge that I was ‘involved in the deliberate dissemination of false and one-sided information about Russia and events in Ukraine,’ and ‘contributing to fueling Russophobia in British society’ was a badge of honour. It would be tempting to run with it and market myself as ‘the man Putin fears’ or some