Politics

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

Monday

Juliet Nicolson

Why I queued to see the Queen

I went there with Rachel my best friend from childhood. We both wore black. Even our trainers were black. We took the train together from our homes in Sussex and joined the queue in London at 7 p.m., when day light was still strong, in the knowledge we might be part of this slow-moving mass of humanity for twelve hours or much more. Our backpacks were filled with sweaters, extra socks, bananas, energy bars, phone chargers and handkerchiefs. The journey, or what increasingly felt like a pilgrimage, was buzzing with chat, with introductions that followed a very Queen-like sort of conversation.  ‘Have you come far?’ ‘What do you do?’ as

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Ukrainian nuclear power plant shelled by Russia

If Putin is losing the ground war in Ukraine and running out of troops, what other options does he have? The obvious fear is that he’d use nuclear weapons or attack Ukraine’s nuclear power stations. Last night, the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in Mykolaiv oblast, 300 km (200 miles) south from Kyiv, was struck, with more than 100 windows destroyed by the blast. Such plants are designed to withstand explosions although not missile attacks. The reactor was not hit and there (as yet) are no reports of any radioactive leakage.   For nuclear plants to be shelled at all shows a dangerous turn of events. Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear company, has

The Spectator

The complete guide to the Queen’s funeral

Today, the world says farewell to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. World leaders, including US president Joe Biden, French president Emmanuel Macron, and royals from across the globe have gathered in London for the country’s first state funeral in decades. Here is how the day will unfold: 10.35 a.m. The coffin bearers from the Queen’s Company, the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, will lift the coffin from the catafalque in Westminster Hall.  10.44 a.m. The Queen’s coffin will be taken via Parliament Square to Westminster Abbey. The coffin will be carried on the state gun carriage, drawn by 142 Royal Navy sailors. Detachments of the King’s Body Guards of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms,

Nigel Jones

What the Queen’s funeral tells us about Britain

State funerals say a lot about the country in which they take place – and one of the things in which Britain still indisputably leads the world are the magnificent final farewells that we arrange for our leaders. How very different are some of the send offs seen in less fortunate lands. When Stalin died in 1953, hundreds, possibly thousands, were added to the toll of his victims when they were fatally crushed queuing in Moscow to view the dead Soviet dictator. In 1989, after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in revolutionary Iran, the chaotic funeral culminated in the dead Supreme Leader’s body actually falling out of its coffin, while

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The midlife crisis spread: why are the affluent so depressed?

‘You are here’, as those signs in windswept carparks unhelpfully point out. Yup. No mistaking it, you will tend to think glumly as you look at them. I had the same feeling when I looked at a new report from no less an institution than America’s National Bureau of Economic Research. The report is called The Midlife Crisis. It tells us that in the western world, one’s forties and early fifties are associated with problems with sleep, clinical depression and suicidal thoughts, disabling headaches and dependence on alcohol, alongside a decline in basic measures of life satisfaction. Well, fancy. I don’t know about clinical depression and suicidal thoughts, I should

Sunday

John Connolly John Connolly

Why is violence breaking out in Leicester?

Just what is going on in Leicester? Last night violence broke out in the city after hundreds of young men in Covid masks and balaclavas took to the streets as part of an ‘unplanned protest’. The police attempted to contain the protestors but soon lost control of the situation. Videos posted online show officers struggling to contain the crowds while bottles fly and smash on the pavement around them. In another unverified video a group of men flip a car. According to the police, two arrests have been made and they are investigating several other incidents of violence and disorder. For the past few weeks Leicester has become a kind

Winston Marshall

The music industry is out-of-step on trans ideology

If you want a glimpse of progressive authoritarianism, look no further than the music industry. Two musicians, in successive weeks, have spoken out against the excesses of trans ideology. First of all Christian Henson, co-founder of Spitfire Audio, Britain’s leading sound library studio and software audio creator. Henson had the audacity to voice his concerns of what damage the trans ideology is doing to children. He tweeted: ‘As a parent I can no longer keep my mouth shut about this. I’m in full support of [Graham Linehan] and [J.K. Rowling]. Please look into this. If you have young children its in the post if you have autistic children its probably

Steerpike Steerpike

Truss’s chief of staff quizzed by FBI

It’s been an eventful few weeks for Liz Truss. Our new Prime Minister has faced a baptism of fire not seen since by an incoming premier since Churchill and the fall of France in 1940. War, inflation, a-cost-of-living crisis and the death of the Queen: so much for a honeymoon. Still, Her Majesty’s passing has meant a brief hiatus from normal politics, which is expected to resume with gusto on Tuesday. And one issue which we can expect Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to probe with relish is Truss’s newly appointed Chief of Staff, Mark Fullbrook. And we thought Boris’s departure would mean a return to normalcy in politics… For

David Petraeus

Ukraine will win the war

The below is an edited transcript of David Petraeus’s interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto. On the war’s momentum: It has fundamentally shifted, and I’m normally fairly guarded and cautious about this, but the tide clearly has turned because the success of this offensive, as important as it is itself on the ground, is that it reflects a hugely important development: Ukraine has been incomparably better than Russia in recruiting, training, equipping, organising and employing additional forces. Russia has been struggling to do just that, literally running out of soldiers, ammunition tanks, fighting vehicles and so forth. Ukraine is supported superbly by the US and Nato, whereas Russia, even if it

Jörg Luyken

The AfD’s unlikely conversion to Merkelism

It is hard to keep count of the German orthodoxies that have died a long overdue death on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Annäherung durch Handel, the claim that government lobbying for German industry in Moscow and Beijing would moderate those capitals by tying them to our trade interests. That didn’t work. Building a gas pipeline from St Petersburg based on a mission to make up for historic war crimes, even after the Russian army had annexed 10,000 square miles of a neighbouring country? It turns out that pacifist gestures are only taken seriously at one end of the pipeline. Refusing to send weapons to a war zone over fears

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

What republicans understand about monarchy

What ridiculous figures we republicans must seem on the eve of Elizabeth II’s funeral. We sound like desiccated rationalists who cannot understand that emotion, not reason, makes people identify with their country. Instead of joining in shared celebrations and mourning, we ask carping questions about the transparency of royal finances or the basic failure of our head of state and her advisers to stop Boris Johnson’s unlawful proroguing of parliament. We think we know our history and sociology. We say we understand that nations are ‘imagined communities’, which unite strangers with common symbols and emotions. Yet when faced with the power of monarchy to hold the United Kingdom together, we

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Jacinda Ardern predicts a republican NZ

Tony Radakin – Putin’s war is a ‘strategic failure’ With the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II taking place tomorrow, it is no surprise that warm words and condolences have taken up so much of the airwaves since her death was announced ten days ago. However, amid the tributes, the world has continued to march on, and few have marched more relentlessly than the Ukrainian army. With their recent counter-offensive against Russian occupation proving so successful, Laura Kuenssberg sat down with Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the Defence Staff, to discuss their progress: Jacinda Ardern – New Zealand will be a republic ‘in my lifetime’ A great many world

Mark Nayler

The Queen’s funeral and the row over Spain’s exiled former king

Juan Carlos, Spain’s exiled former king, will be present at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in London on Monday – and the Spanish government is furious. Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez has reportedly tried to stop the ex-monarch from attending and a spokesperson for Podemos, the coalition’s junior partner, has described him as a ‘criminal on the run’. But the 84 year-old emeritus king, who abdicated in 2014 and fled Spain in 2020 under suspicion of fraud, is attending anyway, along with his wife, former Queen Sofia. He is right to do so. Juan Carlos’s attendance at Monday’s state funeral isn’t just a personal affair, separate from the controversy surrounding his

Frank Young

We need more royals

King Charles has been respectfully silent on any plans he might have to shake up the monarchy. Courtiers have spent years reminding anyone who asks that the topic is painful to him, signalling the passing of his ‘beloved’ mother. The only concrete proposed ‘reform’ that has leaked out over the years is the suggestion that as King, Charles intends to slim down the Royal Family. These plans badly misunderstand the public appetite for royalty: our new King should instead seek to increase the number of working royals. Don’t listen to sneering liberals, the Great British Public love a royal turning up to town. The Great British Public love a royal

Saturday

Jack Watling

Why didn’t Ukraine fall?

A week before Russia invaded Ukraine, expectations varied considerably. The US government was certain the Russians would strike at Kyiv and seize the Ukrainian capital in 72 hours. The Russian presidential administration concurred. In Paris and Berlin, officials were briefing that Anglo-American hysteria was leading the world to another Iraq WMD moment and that the Russians were just posturing. Views varied in Kyiv, but the government’s assessment was that a period of political destabilisation would be followed by a limited Russian offensive against the Donbas. I thought Russia would invade only to find itself in a gruelling unconventional battle in Ukraine’s cities; the roads west of Kyiv would be severed,

Owen Matthews

Owen Matthews, Cindy Yu and Alicia Healey

19 min listen

This week on Spectator Out Loud, Owen Matthews evaluates Russia’s ultra-nationalist threat (00:55), Cindy Yu reviews Perhat Tarsun’s The Backstreets (12:36) and ex-royal ladies maid Alicia Healey tells us why a handbag was the Queen’s secret weapon (15:22). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Robin Ashenden

When the Ceausescus came to tea

Anyone still in any doubt about the lengths to which Queen Elizabeth II was prepared to go in the line of duty might consider the hideous company the role at times foisted on her. In 1991, she had to clink glasses with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, and 20 years earlier had dined with Ugandan despot Idi Amin (though she later privately vowed to hit Amin with a sword if he dared to gatecrash her Silver Jubilee). But perhaps none of these grisly encounters was as gruelling as having to host Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceaușescu and wife Elena on a three-day state-visit, complete with Palace quarters, in 1978. Though a domestic

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Mark Field muses on Liz Truss’s fortunes

Since becoming the Tory leadership favourite early last month, Liz Truss is used to all sorts of people coming out of the woodwork. Old friends, former allies and even the odd foe have been very keen to share their opinions on Truss, the onetime Lib Dem radical turned Brexit-backing cabinet mainstay. But one person who we haven’t heard much from is Mark Field, her fellow former Conservative MP, with whom Truss had a headline-grabbing affair in the mid-2000s. But now the Camden New Journal have set tongues wagging with a cheeky little piece in this week’s edition about what Field has been up to since leaving parliament in late 2019.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is a weak pound bad for Britain?

Should we despair that the pound has slumped again today, falling below $1.14 for the first time since 1985? Or should we rejoice? It was, after all, a collapse in the pound following Black Wednesday in 1992 – along with dramatically lowered interest rates — which precipitated a lasting economic recovery. It is all too easy to see the value of the pound as a national virility symbol, and think that the stronger it is, the better. In reality, a weak pound – or let’s say a pound set at a realistic level, which properly reflects the costs of wages, goods and services in Britain – can help stimulate the