Politics

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

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Ash Regan Edition

33 min listen

Ash Regan is the MSP for East Edinburgh who has served as minister for community safety. Since Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, she has put herself forward to be the next First Minister for Scotland. Born in Biggar, Ash moved to England as a child and grew up in Devon. She surprised her family during the referendum for Scottish Independence, deciding she would vote to leave.  Ash began her foray into politics as a campaigner before running for elected office. She was little known outside of the Holyrood bubble until she quit as community safety minister over plans to allow people to self-identify their gender. On the podcast, Ash talks about life

Robin Ashenden

Is Putin’s security service under attack?

Few people in Rostov-on-Don will weep over the news that a local FSB building in the city caught fire yesterday. Just the mention of the acronym for the Security Services (formerly KGB) was, when I lived there, enough to still and silence a room. When a girl in one of my classes announced rather proudly that her boyfriend worked for the service, there was a ripple of discomfort in the room and, subsequently, fellow students once expansive got notably more guarded. At a local pipe club I attended, one of the members worked for them too, a well-built man with brushed back hair, a Stalin moustache, and a set –

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris gets a boost as local Tories reselect him

It’s a big week for Boris Johnson as he prepares to give evidence before the Privileges Committee next Wednesday. So it will have been to some relief tonight that he easily won re-adoption as the candidate for the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat which he currently represents in parliament. The association have now released the following statement: Tonight the Uxbridge & South Ruislip selection committee re-adopted Boris Johnson as our parliamentary candidate. We look forward to continuing to work alongside him to deliver for the residents and communities within the constituency, where he has strong connections and involvement. His commitment to deliver a new Hillingdon Hospital for Uxbridge & South

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

No new cash for NHS pay deal

The money for the NHS pay agreement isn’t new cash, I’m told. This is going to cause a real ruckus with the trade unions, who came away from today’s talks believing that the £2.5 billion deal was extra money from the Treasury. But talking to my sources in government, I now understand that while there won’t be cuts to frontline services, the money could come from efficiencies elsewhere in the NHS, or possible underspend in Department of Health and Social Care budgets.   I’’ve also been pointed to the fact that there was no new money for pay announced in yesterday’s Budget, even though there might be some forthcoming in

John Ferry John Ferry

Will the new first minister finally solve Scotland’s ferries fiasco?

Rising NHS waiting lists, a widening attainment gap in education and falling support for independence: Scotland’s next first minister will have a bulging in-tray when he or she assumes office in coming weeks. However one issue in particular seems set to be an early thorn in the side of Scotland’s new leader: the increasingly scandalous debacle of the ferries fiasco. The latest development is today’s Scottish Government announcement of yet another delay in completing the vessels. The first of the boats, Hull 801, otherwise known as the Glen Sannox, is now expected to be ready sometime this autumn instead of May. The other boat, Hull 802, is now expected to be ready

Natasha Feroze

Are NHS strikes about to end?

11 min listen

The day after Jeremy Hunt’s Spring Budget has been fairly muted compared to recent Budget hangovers. What has been the overall reaction? On the global markets, Kate Andrews looks at the international response after Credit Suisse shares fell by more than 30 per cent yesterday. And what’s behind today’s breakthrough in negotiations between NHS Unions and ministers? Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. 

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Crash test: the new era of economic uncertainty

40 min listen

On the podcast: The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews looks back on a week of economic turbulence and asks whether we should be worried, for her cover piece in the magazine. She is joined by the economist – and former ‘Trussketeer’ – Julian Jessop, to discuss whether we are entering a new era of economic uncertainty (01:06). Also this week: In the magazine, The Spectator’s deputy features editor Gus Carter says that the culture of toxic masculinity has gone too far, and that young men are being marginalised in schools and online as they are repeatedly told that they are a danger to women. He is joined by the Times columnist Hugo Rifkind, to explore

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Humza Yousaf’s latest gaffe

Cometh the hour, cometh the Humza. Once again the hapless health minister has struck again, this time on a visit to a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh. After a photo call, Yousaf turned to the group of women and asked loudly ‘Where are all the men?’ There was polite and awkward laughter before the women explained that, er, many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war. Awkward. So much for the land of the enlightenment, eh? Interviewed shortly afterwards, Humza Yousaf claimed to the BBC that a number of Ukrainian men were in fact elsewhere in the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain building

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ministers agree pay deal with healthcare unions

The nursing and ambulance strikes may soon be over. Ministers have this afternoon agreed a pay deal with trade unions representing nurses and ambulance workers that consists of a one-off payment covering 2022/23, and a pay deal for the 2023/24 year.  Members of these unions will get 2 per cent of their salary for 2022/23, on top of the 4 per cent raise for this year, along with a one-off ‘NHS backlog bonus’ worth at least £1,250 per worker. Then for 2023/24, there will be a 5 per cent consolidated increase in pay.  A statement from the government said: ‘Both sides believe it represents a fair and reasonable settlement that

Lucy Dunn

SNP membership figures fall by almost a third in two years

After pressure applied by Ash Regan and Kate Forbes, and belatedly Humza Yousaf, the Scottish National party’s national executive committee has been told that the party’s membership has decreased by a third: from 103,884 members in 2021 to 72,186 members now. Kate Forbes’s campaign team says that these ‘plummeting membership figures shows continuity won’t cut it’, while Ash Regan’s team has heralded the announcement as a triumph and noted ‘there has been a significant reduction in membership numbers since October 2022 following the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) fiasco’.  This follows allegations of election rigging after Ash Regan, with the support of Kate Forbes’s campaign, looked to be declaring all out

James Heale James Heale

Five things we learnt from the IFS Budget briefing

It’s the day after Jeremy Hunt’s first Budget and so far the Chancellor has managed to avoid disaster. Reaction has been muted, with the Daily Mail asking the question on the mind of many Tories: ‘Is it enough to turn the tide?’ The Guardian and Mirror have, predictably, focused on criticism of Hunt’s proposal to abolish the Lifetime Allowance but thus far the Chancellor is yet to see his Budget ‘unravel’ in the manner of George Osborne’s 2012 statement or Kwasi Kwarteng’s ‘fiscal event.’ However, this morning’s Budget briefing from the Institute of Fiscal Studies offered some grim analysis. Paul Johnson and his number-crunching team ran through the figures in

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Mordaunt mauls the SNP (again)

It’s Thursday so you know what that means: another chance to watch Penny Mordaunt demolishing the SNP from the despatch box. Today’s Business Questions to the Leader of the House saw Mordaunt face off across sometime soap star and full-time grievance-monger Deidre Brock. The Scottish nationalist gave a rather tedious speech lambasting Jeremy Hunt’s Budget, prompting the Commons leader to issue a magisterial response. Mordaunt proceeded to list Hunt’s measures for Scotland before turning the tables and opening fire on the SNP’s record in government and the ongoing shambles of its leadership contest. She lambasted the party’s ‘three stooges’, joking that if ‘the candidates were called Moe, Larry and Curly

Iain Macwhirter

Is the SNP’s leadership election rigged?

You thought this SNP leadership election couldn’t get any more bizarre. It just did. Two of the candidates have effectively accused the leadership of their party of suspected ballot-rigging. Kate Forbes and Ash Regan have called for an independent auditor to be brought in to ensure the conduct of the ballot is ‘transparent, fair and equitable’. They clearly do not trust the party’s chief executive, Peter Murrell, husband of Nicola Sturgeon, to conduct this election honestly. Ash Regan said straight out that having Murrell in charge of the election is like ‘Carrie counting the votes for Boris’s successor’. I’ve covered countless SNP internal elections over the last 30 years but

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Hunt’s Budget social reforms backfire?

How big a deal are the social reforms announced in yesterday’s Budget? They are designed to remove the reasons people have for leaving the workplace and not returning. The two biggest policies are the extension of childcare subsidies and the disability benefit reforms. Both are potent, though not necessarily in the way ministers suggest. Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has been making a fanfare this lunchtime about the ‘back to work’ measures, which include a white paper on disability benefit reform and £2 billion for supporting disabled people and those with long-term health problems. That white paper has been very long in gestation. It was originally written in 2021

James Heale James Heale

Will MPs back the Stormont brake?

The House of Commons will next week debate a motion on the Stormont brake, a month after it was unveiled by Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen. The measure was the centrepiece of Sunak’s ‘Windsor Framework’ and is intended to resolve long-running issues in Northern Ireland by alleviating the worst aspects of the Protocol and aiding the return of power-sharing at Stormont. Penny Mordaunt, the Leader of the House, today confirmed that the detail of the legislation will be published on Monday and that there will be a subsequent debate on it on Wednesday. On the Tuesday, EU ministers will likely signed off on the whole agreement with little

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Jeremy Hunt’s war on Scotch whisky is bad politics

The Chancellor’s decision to slap a ten per cent duty hike on Scotch whisky is bad economics. Exports broke the £6 billion mark last year and the industry employs 11,000 people in Scotland while supporting 42,000 jobs across the UK. But whisky is a luxury item in a competitive global market where increases in retail price impact consumer behaviour. Five of the top ten export destinations by value (United States, France, Germany, Japan and Spain) are economies experiencing sharp declines in household income.  Driving up the industry’s costs also hampers one of the biggest export challenges facing Scotch whisky today: breaking India. Per bottle sales rose 60 per cent last year but Scotch still only accounts

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Rishi Sunak really Enoch Powell in disguise?

It may seem like a bizarre question but it’s the one that is obsessing much of the left: is Rishi Sunak simply Enoch Powell in a better suit? Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, made the comparison in parliament last week when he asked the Prime Minister ‘from whom are his Government taking inspiration, Nigel Farage or Enoch Powell?’ And today, the New European, the embodiment of full-fat Remaniac orthodoxy, has produced a front page of the former Wolverhampton MP behind Sunak’s No. 10 lectern adorned with the slogan ‘stop the boats.’ ‘Vile and illegal’ ran the caption underneath in an article by Paul Mason which accused the government of

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour flip-flops on lifetime allowance abolition

Labour has greeted the Budget with its now-familiar trick of accepting 90 per cent of its changes and then railing against one high-profile measure to attack those beastly Tories. This time, it’s Jeremy Hunt’s abolition of the £1.07 million lifetime tax allowance on pensions from April to prevent doctors going into early retirement. The party’s attack dogs have been frothing about how deeply unfair all this is, with Rachel Reeves labelling it a ‘tax cut for the richest one per cent.’ She thundered on ITV that it was the Chancellor’s 45p tax rate moment and declared that Labour will force a vote on it next week. All good and laudable but

Portia Berry-Kilby

Is Jeremy Hunt’s childcare revolution something to celebrate?

Jeremy Hunt has announced plans to extend the 30 hours a week of ‘free’ childcare for three and four year olds to include babies as young as nine-months old. This expansion of childcare provision has been hailed by the Chancellor as a measure to allow mothers to return to employment if they want to; it will also, according to Hunt, help boost the economy. But has anyone paused to think about the impact on the children themselves – and families? The truth is that Hunt’s proposed changes aren’t a win for mothers, children, and families as a whole. Why? Because the childcare plans suggest that a mother’s worth comes from

James Snell

Is Taiwan’s support really ebbing away?

Taiwan has lost another friend. Or at least it soon will, according to the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro. She says her country will formally withdraw its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, in favour of recognising China. If this happens, it will leave only 13 countries (and the Holy See) who recognise Taiwan as independent and sovereign.  Support for Taiwan appears to be dwindling – just as the Chinese Communist Party would wish. But there is a slight wrinkle here. This toing and froing about diplomatic recognition emerges not from ordinary diplomacy, but instead one of the absurder aspects of international politics. Recognising either China or Taiwan is an old problem, one springing from the ‘one China