Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
11 min listen
Rishi Sunak’s personal poll ratings are on the up, by why don’t the public love Keir Starmer? We talk through the latest polling. And Mark Spencer, now the farming minister, has been cleared by an investigation into whether he made Islamophobic investigations to fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani. Is the row over? Max Jeffery is joined by James Heale and James Johnson, the co-founder of polling firm JL Partners. Produced by Max Jeffery.
40 min listen
On the podcast this week: In his cover piece for the magazine, journalist Dan Hitchens examines whether Archbishop Justin Welby and Pope Francis can heal the divisions threatening to tear apart the Church of England and the Catholic Church. He is joined by Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley to ask whether these two men – once heralded as great unifiers by their respective Churches – can keep their flocks in order. (01:05) Also this week: In his column, The Spectator’s associate editor Douglas Murray questions whether the English countryside can be considered exclusionary, after the news that the green and pleasant land will be studied by ‘hate crime’ experts. He is joined by the explorer
Sir Laurie Magnus, Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser, has delivered his long-awaited report into Mark Spencer’s alleged Islamophobic comments. Spencer, the farming minister, faced claims from fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani that he had told her that her dismissal as a minister in 2020 was partly due to concerns about her ‘Muslimness’. But Sir Laurie has concluded that it is not possible to determine what the then-chief whip said, and criticised ‘shortcomings’ in Spencer’s response. Sir Laurie said: Despite a review of considerable evidence, it has not been possible to draw a clear picture of what was discussed between Mr Spencer and Ms Ghani during two meetings which both agree took
Tradition dictates married couples receive gifts made of leather on the third anniversary of their union. Labour leader Keir Starmer – whose party enjoys a sustained 15-20 per cent poll lead over the Conservatives – has marked his third anniversary in office this week by receiving an old-fashioned leathering in the press. ‘His party remains a mystery to voters’, according to the Guardian, which chose his anniversary to issue one of its regular ex-cathedras criticising Starmer for his dullness, lack of ambition and the absence of the ‘vision thing’. The paper was not alone: the Times revealed that nearly half of voters were not sure what Starmer stood for, while
It was a bright blue-skied July day in 1861, so the Washington elite decided to have a picnic and take in a battle. They brought sandwiches and opera glasses to admire the scene of Union recruits, who had signed up for 90-day enlistments, march by in their unblemished uniforms to put the rebels down. But the Confederates at Bull Run had other ideas. They brought reinforcements – and by the afternoon, a rout was on. Union soldiers threw down their weapons and fled, as picnicking senators tried ineffectively to block the road and threatened to shoot deserters. They came out expecting a lark, and instead saw the nation torn asunder. This
Elon Musk, the Twitter owner, is in his own words a ‘free speech absolutist’. He promised to combat censorship and allow a broader range of voices on the social media platform as part of his pitch for acquiring the company last October. It is, then, hard to square his free speech bombast with recent events in India where the social media giant is playing corporate lackey to a government hooked on using censorship as a way of silencing political dissent and debate. Twitter is facing a growing backlash after bowing to the latest official demands by prime minister Narendra Modi’s government to block the accounts of government critics, including more than
What should be done about Ukraine’s grain exports? Ongoing controversy in Poland over the country’s imports into the EU, which currently face zero tariffs, gives a flavour of the fights to come if Ukraine becomes a fully-fledged member of the bloc. It also presents an opportunity to start a much-overdue conversation about the EU’s worst, most damaging policy programme: the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In a striking move, Poland’s agriculture minister Henryk Kowalczyk announced his resignation yesterday – the day of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s official visit to Warsaw on his third trip outside Ukraine since Russia’s invasion last year. The reason for Kowalcyk’s departure was his failure, together with several
With police surrounding the home of Nicola Sturgeon, and the arrest of her husband yesterday, the people of Scotland need answers – and fast. For once, Humza Yousaf was only telling it like it is. ‘This has been a difficult day for the party,’ he said, after the former Chief Executive of the SNP, Peter Murrell, the husband of the former SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, was arrested by police in Glasgow. He was released without charge almost 12 hours later pending further investigations. As for the Scottish National party, as it staggers from crisis to crisis, long suffering members must wonder if things will ever be the same again. It’s
It’s a nasty moment when you receive a letter informing you that a fortnight ago, at a specific number of minutes past an hour, your car was photographed turning into a side road which, at the time, you had no idea you weren’t allowed to turn into. You vaguely recall the junction. There was no ‘No entry’ sign: just a torrent of words (‘except’, ‘through’, ‘motor vehicles’, ‘access’) that you didn’t have time to read. That outing will now be forever sullied in your memory by the £65 fine. Protesting ‘but the sat-nav told me to do it!’ is as ineffectual, legally speaking, as Adam bleating to God that ‘the
16 min listen
Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, has been arrested today in connection with an investigation into the SNP’s finances. James Heale talks to Fraser Nelson and Conservative Home editor Paul Goodman on the episode. They also discuss Trump’s arrest and ask whether Suella Braverman might need a new seat. Produced by Cindy Yu.
Disinformation is on the rise, and Britain’s spies are on the back foot. Our intelligence leaders warn about election meddling, and our enemies are trying to undermine public trust in our national institutions. The United Kingdom needs to use covert means to disrupt anti-British activities at their source. That’s what Harold Macmillan said in the 1950s, shortly before becoming prime minister. Over half a century later, in 2017, the Chief of MI6 made the same point: adversaries should be ‘playing in their half of the pitch not ours.’ And half a decade on from that, here we are again. This week’s intriguing peek into the secretive work of the National
2024 scheme is now live, click here The Spectator’s no-CV internship scheme is now open. We don’t care how old you are, where (or even if) you went to university, whether you’re a refugee or a baronet. All that matters in journalism is whether you can do it: do you have good, original ideas, and care about good writing? We have doubled our circulation in a market that has fallen by two-thirds because we believe that nothing matters more than the quality of the people we hire. We’re mindful that good people come in all shapes, sizes and locations, which is why we put a lot of effort into finding
Slowly but surely striking public sector workers have agreed to sit down at the negotiating table with the government and hammer out pay deals for themselves. But there is one sector that might prove more of a headache than others for Rishi Sunak to deal with: teachers. In September, the National Education Union (NEU) will have a new leader. New term, new start and all that. But it seems that this general secretary-to-be, Daniel Kebede, has some pretty strong thoughts on the state of British schools. So far this year, the NEU has shut down schools with four days of teacher strikes, and has announced five more to come before
Two thousand among the great and the good from around the world will soon receive a letter from King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The invitation to the coronation on 6 May, which has been unveiled today, is not what people might have expected. Elizabeth II’s coronation invitation was formal, and, even by the standards of 1953, old-fashioned: it looked like the sort of thing that Victoria would have issued for her eventful, near-disastrous ceremony over a century before. The implication was clear, namely that her reign would be a formal, decorous one, firmly in keeping with the high ideals of her predecessors, and it proved an apt portent for
Whenever Brexit is discussed these days, you will nearly always find a splenetic or exultant Remainer asking, often in a weirdly high pitched voicetone: where are the Brexit Benefits then? Can you name any? Mm? Just one? Where is the £350 million for the NHS? And to be fair to these people, since the Brexit vote, obvious, tangible, yay-look-at-this Brexit Benefits have been pretty thin on the ground. Or, in fact, utterly non existent. The first Actual Brexit Benefit is the ability to go and work in lovely sunny parts of the EU and pay way less tax For those who voted Leave on the basis of sovereignty, this does not matter much. For these people, Brexit is itself the benefit. We brought democracy (however flawed) back to the
It’s a bad time for soporific narcissists in office. Just weeks after the self-indulgent grandstanding of Nicola Sturgeon’s farewell press conference, Jacinda Ardern has today followed suit. The New Zealand premier treated her long-suffering public to one last display of egotistical over-excitement. Swathed, bizarrely, in a traditional Maori cloak and fighting back tears, the world leader whose pronouns are me/me/me gave her final speech as Prime Minister in parliament. She told legislators in Wellington’s House of Representatives that: I do hope that I’ve demonstrated something else entirely. That you can be anxious, sensitive, kind, and wear your heart on your sleeve. You can be a mother or not. You can
Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP and the husband of Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, has today been arrested in connection with an investigation into the SNP’s finances. It is the latest development in Police Scotland’s 21-month-long probe into claims that Scotland’s governing party mismanaged funds. Below is a timeline of the events up to today… March 2021 – Policy Scotland receives a complaint from Sean Clerkin about £666,000 raised to fund a second independence campaign. It is alleged that the ‘ring-fenced’ money has vanished from the party’s accounts. Three members of the party’s finance and audit committee resign. May 2021 – Douglas Chapman resigns as SNP National Treasurer, saying he ‘had not received
Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP and the husband of Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, was arrested at 7.45am this morning in connection with an investigation into the SNP’s finances. Murrell was later released from police custody at 6.57pm without charge, pending further investigation. Police raided the SNP’s head office this morning. They cordoned off an area outside Sturgeon and Murrell’s home before Murrell was taken into police custody for questioning by detectives. Searches of the property are understood to be taking place as part of an investigation into a ‘missing’ £600,000. The police search is understood to have expanded outdoors, and detectives have been seen
Kemi Badenoch is considering a change to the Equality Act 2010 that would restore the meaning of sex to what everybody once understood. I am a science teacher, so I know this. There are two sexes: male and female. Females produces large gametes called eggs while males produce small motile gametes called sperm. Science doesn’t care whether it happens in frogs, monkeys or people – sexual reproduction is a robust process that has been around for millions of years. Maybe – even as recently as 2010 – this was so obvious that it did not need to be stated when legislation was drafted. The Equality Act defines the protected characteristic
When I joined the House of Lords in 2013 I soon realised that, despite its poor reputation, the place contained plenty of wise, quick-witted and courageous minds. None more so than Nigel Lawson who died this week. An intellectual titan who had once almost become a philosophy professor, he was not content to rest on his considerable laurels as a politician and seemed unafraid to challenge any conventional wisdom to check if it deserved that status. But it was a lunch in 2017 with Lord Lawson and two ninety-somethings who are also now dead that remains probably the most sparkling memory of my nine years as a member of the