Politics

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

Saturday

William Cook

Why the Baltics fear Russia

In the historic heart of Riga, Latvia’s lively capital, there is a building that reveals why the Baltic States remain so wary of the Russian Bear. From the street, it doesn’t look like much – just another apartment block on a busy boulevard full of shops and cafes. Only the discreet sign outside gives the game away: ‘During the Soviet occupation the KGB imprisoned, tortured, killed and morally humiliated its victims in this building.’ Most passers-by barely give it a second glance. They know this story all too well. The KGB vacated this apartment block in 1991 when Latvia regained her independence, but over 30 years later the memories remain

Friday

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Can Boris get off the hook from partygate?

16 min listen

Boris Johnson has released legal advice that he received from Lord Pannick about the Commons investigation into partygate, where the lawyer said the investigation in its current form would be ‘unlawful’ if it were taking place in the courts. Can Boris really get off the hook? Max Jeffery speaks to James Forsyth and James Heale. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Tom Slater Tom Slater

The truth about Extinction Rebellion

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse – Extinction Rebellion are back! Well, if you thought an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis, fuelled by a global scramble for gas, would have led the eco-irritants to sit things out for a bit, you don’t know XR. For them, the ‘climate emergency’ trumps all. Plus, reading a room has never really been their strong suit – as we saw when they tried to win the hearts and minds of commuters by climbing on top of Tube trains, or when an animal-rights XR offshoot went after that most universally disliked of figures in Britain, the Queen. This time their target is the Houses

Steerpike Steerpike

Did Sadiq Khan force Cressida Dick out?

Crime is on the rise in London but spare a thought for the real victim in all of this: Cressida Dick. The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner quit her post in February after a string of scandals on her watch. But an independent report has today claimed that she ‘felt intimidated’ into resigning after an ultimatum from London mayor Sadiq Khan. The report, written by the former chief inspector of constabulary Sir Tom Winsor, says: In my view, in this case, the commissioner faced political pressure from the mayor to resign, that pressure being of a character and intensity which was effectively his calling on her to leave office, outside the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is the Boris partygate probe ‘flawed’?

The new prime minister has not been announced yet, but Lord Marland – an ally of Boris Johnson – has already been on Newsnight to talk about the ‘distinct possibility’ of him having another run at the top job – after taking some time to ‘put hay in the loft’, in other words to build up his bank balance. The Johnson factor will be an irritant to whoever succeeds him. It won’t take much to get his partisans talking about a return for the Tory king over the water, and Johnson himself will play along with this: just look at the various ways he refused to rule out a comeback

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris’s resignation honours list: runners and riders

There’s very much an end of days feel in SW1 right now. With parliament in recess and a Truss coronation imminent, many of Boris Johnson’s ancien régime are making the most of their final week in office, attending endless leaving drinks and working out which consultancy they want to jump to next. But in the watering holes of Westminster the current topic of discussion among apparatchiks and bag-carriers is which of their number will be rewarded in Johnson’s forthcoming resignation honours list? Such expectations though are tinged somewhat by the knowledge of the controversy that such a list will inevitably provoke when made public. ‘It’s going to make the Lavender list

Siam Goorwich

France can’t keep its Jews safe

France is home to roughly half-a-million Jews. The country’s Jewish community is the largest in Europe, and the third largest in the world behind Israel and the United States. You might assume then that Jewish life in France is flourishing. But you’d be wrong. Over the weekend, news broke of the murder of Eyal Haddad, a Tunisian Jew living on the outskirts of Paris. What happened is still shrouded in mystery: the family’s lawyer denied earlier reports that the victim’s body had been burned and that the perpetrator had confessed to killing Haddad over a 100 euro debt, and because he was Jewish. But what we do know is this: Haddad was killed with

Steerpike Steerpike

Westminster grapples with TikTok craze

Whoever wins the Tory leadership on Monday will face a mountain of problems from day one. War, inflation, spiralling costs and a mutinous party: the in-tray will be veritably groaning. One issue that won’t perhaps be at the top of the list will be the future of the Prime Ministerial TikTok account: 10downingstreet. Officials have spent the past 11 months running the account, uploading videos of Boris goofing around to the page’s 292,000 followers. His presumptive successor though takes a rather more dim view of TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance has been criticised for its ties to Beijing. During the course of one leadership debate, Liz Truss said with regards

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Will Marine Le Pen betray her voters the way Boris did?

How do you solve a problem like Jean-Marie? That is dilemma facing Marine Le Pen as her National Rally party prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of its creation next month. The party has evolved a great deal in that time, especially in the decade since Le Pen succeeded her father, Jean-Marie, as leader of a party that for most of its existence has been known as the National Front. The rebrand to the National Rally occurred in 2018, the most significant action taken by Marine Le Pen in her bid to leave behind the malodorous legacy of her father. The former paratrooper launched the National Front on 5 October

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

What the defenestration of Ravil Maganov says about Russia

In my travels when I was still persona grata in Russia, I never got the sense that their windows were unduly flimsy or inviting. Nonetheless, the tally of Russians and Russian-connected individuals who have met their end by jumping or falling out of windows is such that it has become a rather tacky and tasteless meme. Most recently, Ravil Maganov, chair of the Lukoil conglomerate died after falling out of a window in Moscow on Thursday. This follows on the heels of the death in Washington DC of Dan Rapoport, an American businessman who used to be active in Russia before leaving and becoming a critic of the regime. He

Thursday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

US lockdowns wipe out decades of maths and reading progress

In Britain, the damage of lockdown was easily covered up by grade inflation: with 45 per cent of A Level students being given A or A*. In the United States, there are large-scale independent studies published today. It’s pretty devastating. Educational performance scores for nine-year-olds have fallen to levels last seen in 1999: so two decades of progress wiped out. It’s the first time on record that performance in maths has fallen at all, and reading ability fell further than it has at any point in the last 30 years.  The National Assessment of Educational Progress, released today, measures the long term ability of 14,800 nine-year-olds in the US in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who will fill the Boris void?

Boris Johnson’s last set piece speech today was typical him. There were references to Ladybird books, attempts to blame the last Labour government, not much detail but lots of optimism about how things are about to get better. Johnson has so dominated British politics these past few years that it is hard to imagine it without him. (Of course, he won’t disappear – which will cause its own problems for his successor – but he’ll no longer be PM). As I say in the magazine this week, his absence will reshape the political landscape because his presence defined it. Keir Starmer has relished attacking Johnson, but he must now pivot. In normal circumstances

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Drama queens: the return of Harry and Meghan

36 min listen

In this week’s episode: We look ahead to Harry and Meghan’s UK tour next week, how will they be received? Freddy Gray and Tanya Gold join the Edition podcast to discuss (01:01). Also this week: In the Spectator magazine, our Economics Editor Kate Andrews sat down with the three economists, or ‘Trussketeers’, that are informing the would-be PM’s economic plan. She joins us along with Julian Jessop, one such economist that has been advising Liz Truss (13:51). And finally: can successful writers be friends with less successful ones? Cosmo Landesman asks this question in the magazine this week and is joined by the author Ian Rankin (27:07). Hosted by Lara

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Can Boris leave a nuclear legacy?

16 min listen

Despite a relatively quiet summer from the government, Boris Johnson has waded finally waded into the energy crisis, announcing £700 million of funding for Sizewell C, the nuclear plant. On the podcast, Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman about what’s behind this development (and whether it could be anything to do with Johnson trying to establish some kind of legacy, in the last days of his premiership). Isabel sums up his energy contribution as: ‘To a certain extent it’s him saying: if you look backwards or forwards, it’s not my fault’. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Steerpike Steerpike

Truss’s Oxford Europhilia revealed

Throughout the leadership contest, Liz Truss has been all too keen to paint herself as a Brexit queen, keen to slay the dragons of Brussels. Yet Mr S has been doing some digging into the Foreign Secretary’s past and it transpires she was rather more of a Europhile than previously revealed. Truss even headed up a pro-EU group that backed the Maastricht Treaty while a student at Oxford University doing PPE. Despite being a late convert to the Brexit cause, the PM-in-waiting was once an active Liberal Democrat and pro-European. As a blue stocking girl in the mid-1990s she was a key player in the federalist Oxford Reform Club, even

Steerpike Steerpike

Poll: voters don’t want Boris in Truss’s cabinet

The Tory leadership race is almost over and at last a new PM will be announced. Most expect that next Tuesday it will be Liz Truss, the Insta-loving, Beyonce-quoting, cheese-bashing Foreign Secretary, who will be stutting her way up Downing Street to the famous door of No. 10. Her first order of business – after kissing hands with the Queen and giving her nuclear instructions – will be the appointment of a new cabinet: a chance to reward friends and purge rivals. Steerpike thought it only fair therefore to see what the public makes of the prospect of several well-known Westminster faces making a return under Truss. A poll for The

Steerpike Steerpike

The V&A’s Tory troubles

All political lives, famously, end in failure: but not so for Tristram Hunt, the former Labour education spokesman now recast as Director of the V&A. Back in 2017, Hunt managed to leverage his academic credentials to trade in life on the backbenches under Jeremy Corbyn to run one of the world’s largest art museums instead. He now gets a cushty £200,000 in salary, bonus and pension benefits. Not a bad swap! But is Tristram overcompensating somewhat in a bid to break with his Labour past? For in recent months, the intellectual athenaeum has been lambasted in, unusually, the Guardian of all places, with the liberal organ bemoaning the V&A’s current

Norman Baker

The truth about Xi Jinping’s ‘One China’ policy

As the representative of Her Majesty’s Government in Beijing entered the room through the tall and heavy doors, he was met with a sight of Imperial splendour. At the far end of the glorious room were two comfortable chairs facing down the room, separated by a marble table on which sat a huge vase of flowers. The Chinese government representative sat impassively in one chair, while to his left, a harsh wooden bench stretched down the side of the room, occupied in strict hierarchy by various government functionaries numbering about 15. The British minister took his seat in the other seat, his view of his counterpart blocked by the flowers,

Katy Balls Katy Balls

‘Those Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me’: Dominic Raab on Truss, Sunak and his own future

If Liz Truss is named prime minister next week, her administration will look rather different to the government of the past few years. Rishi Sunak has suggested he won’t accept any job offer. Michael Gove, a Sunak supporter, has pre-emptively ruled himself out. Other prominent backers are expected to join the pair on the backbenches – such as the Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab. Truss’s allies say he deserves what’s coming his way for having likened her economic plans of immediate tax cuts to an ‘electoral suicide note’. Yet for a man on political death row, Raab is remarkably cheery when we meet at The Spectator’s offices.