Politics

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

Thursday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

How Russia is surrendering Kherson

The Russian evacuation of Kherson is now well underway, leaving an expected trail of destruction in its wake. Russian soldiers are publishing bitter videos as they retreat, with one saying that ‘defending the city with these supplies would be complete madness’ and another adding ‘I hope we will return’. Local reports say fleeing Russians are destroying infrastructure in the area – the region’s energy supplier and TV centre were reportedly blown up today. Russian troops are also placing mines on roads and settlements, in preparation for the Ukrainian army. Meanwhile the Ukrainian advance continues, with dozens of settlements west and north of Kherson liberated today. The Ukrainian flag has been raised

Steerpike Steerpike

Foreign Office rocked by Brussels art theft

Relations between London and Brussels haven’t always been cordial in recent years. But red-faced staff in Whitehall’s Foreign Office will be grateful for local police in the Belgian capital after they recovered a collection of stolen historic paintings that were stolen from the British Ambassador to Nato’s official residence. Four pieces of art that belong to the state collection went missing earlier this year, prompting the intervention of local law enforcement to solve the theft. The paintings in question were produced by a quartet of twentieth century British artists: Henry Marvell Carr’s San Vittore, Derek Clarke’s Runner Beans, Frederick Gore’s Puig Mayor from Fornalutx and Claude Maurice Rogers’ Harvest Cornfield.

Natasha Feroze

Nurses on strike: how can the NHS cope?

18 min listen

For the first time in history, nurses have voted to go on strike. As the NHS grapples with record wait lists and excess deaths, how will it cope this winter? Also on the podcast, James and Isabel discuss the ongoing situation in Northern Ireland. And how will Matt Hancock fare in the jungle? Natasha Feroze is joined by Isabel Hardman and James Forysth. Produced by Natasha Feroze

William Moore William Moore

Midterm madness

37 min listen

On the podcast: In his cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray says the only clear winner from the US midterms is paranoia. He is joined by The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews to discuss whether the American political system is broken (00:52). Also this week: Isabel Hardman writes that Ed Miliband is the power behind Kier Starmer’s Labour. She is joined by former Labour advisor Lord Stewart Wood of Anfield, to consider whether Starmer is wise to lend his ear to the former Leader of the Opposition (12:48). And finally: King Charles III is known for his love of classical music, and Damian Thompson writes in this week’s arts

Steerpike Steerpike

Matt Hancock starts his jungle jamboree

‘Mr Hancock, I presume?’ was the reaction our former Health Secretary presumably hoped to elicit upon entering the jungle last night. Unfortunately, it was a wall of hysterical laughter which met him instead as comedian Seann Walsh as the comedian doubled up in hysterics at the sight of Hancock tottering his way across the rope bridge and down the steps to meet him. Early polling shows most of the public are eagerly awaiting Hancock’s elimination – and it seems the stars of I’m a Celebrity share in that contempt. Charlene White of Loose Women spoke for many when she asked ‘Why are you here?’ with Hancock’s mumbled excuse that ‘there

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

The eradication of the victims of Enniskillen

In Northern Ireland, the dead are being eradicated. This week marks the 35th anniversary of the IRA bombing of a remembrance service in my hometown Enniskillen. In an attack so barbarous it was condemned at the time by the Kremlin, a bomb planted the night before slaughtered 12 of my neighbours standing around the town’s cenotaph. No warning had been given. The chemist, the teacher, the nurses, the retired police officer, the housewives, the house painter, all standing around a war memorial with the names of Catholic and Protestant locals on it who fought and died in the trenches, were cut to pieces. My father, one of the first responders, discovered his colleague

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Trumpism is dead, long live populism!

Donald Trump is done for. Trumpism too. That’s the main takeaway of the Midterms. Many of the candidates Trump backed performed badly and Trump’s own incessant meddling in the Republican campaign seems to have turned voters off. That curious, manic, sometimes amusing little epoch in modern Western politics – the Trump era – is over. But anyone who thinks this means populism is over is kidding themselves. Those folk of a more technocratic bent who are currently clinking their glasses of champagne at the prospect that populism is heading for the graveyard of bad ideas are in for a rude awakening. For there’s another takeaway from these Midterms – Trumpism

Steerpike Steerpike

Ben Wallace, minister for paperclips

As the dust settles after the recent reshuffle, those lucky politicians who survived the Sunak cull will be engaged in self-congratulation and reconciling themselves with the new regime. For some, there is high office, with all its fruits and delights: for others there is disappointment, dismay and the consolation prize of a sinecure. How, for instance, will the government cope now it has lost Gavin Williamson, the minister of state without portfolio in the Cabinet Office, whose weighty responsibilities included such duties as the Geospatial Commission and the Government Property Agency? Had he survived, Williamson might have earned himself the infamous moniker of ‘Minister for Paperclips’. That honour instead might

Steerpike Steerpike

Sir Keir Starmer’s war on bullying

It seems these days that the blessed Starmer can do no wrong. Cruising in the polls, fêted by his party, the Labour leader has become the toast of the media with election victory now seeming assured. But is Sir Keir all that he appears? The Labour leader opted to lead on the allegations against Gavin Williamson at PMQs yesterday, calling him a ‘sad middle manager’ and a ‘cartoon bully.’ It came hours after Shadow Culture Secretary Lucy Powell told BBC Breakfast: I think the issue here is how you deal with it as a leader. Whenever there’s even an allegation in the Labour party, that MP in question loses the

Nigel Jones

Biden vs Trump is a contest in which we all lose

Overnight President Biden announced that he intends to run again for the White House in 2024 and beat Donald Trump in a rematch of their 2020 contest. This would be funny if it wasn’t a tragedy for both the US and the wider world. We thus have the prospect of a man who will be 82 in two years’ time, and is already, in the words of historian Niall Ferguson ‘manifestly senile’, facing off against a 78-year-old Trump if, as widely expected, the orange man announces another presidential run next week. The absurd spectacle of two vain old men fighting for a future neither will live to see is enough

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

The remarkable transformation of Keir Starmer

Amid all the frenetic changes of leadership in the Conservative party, something important has been overlooked about the Labour party: it also has a new leader. Outwardly nothing has changed. Keir Starmer – he of the slicked-back hair and strangulated vowels – still stands at the despatch box at PMQs each week. But he has been given an electoral personality transplant. It is not that Starmer has become intrinsically more fluent or exciting (though one cannot fail to notice he has grown somewhat in confidence lately). Rather, it is his entire political persona that has been changed. Where once he projected the world view of a leftist lawyer from chichi

Wednesday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Russia will be sweating over its withdrawal from Kherson

Almost everyone has known that the city of Kherson, stranded on the right bank of the Dnipro River, was all but indefensible. Now it looks as if the one man who, like Canute was setting himself against the tide, has finally acknowledged that: Vladimir Putin has let his generals withdraw. This could conceivably be some cunning ruse, but the odds on this are lengthening. Putin, though always willing to let his henchmen hurl themselves on grenades in his name, was happy not to be visibly connected with the decision. Instead, in a piece of awkward uniformed theatre, overall field commander General Sergei Surovikin, recommended ‘to assume defence along the left

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Why Russia pulled out of Kherson

In one of the biggest developments of the Ukraine war, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has just announced the evacuation of his troops from Kherson. The city, located on the western bank of the Dnipro river, is the capital of one of the ‘oblasts’ (or regions) that Vladimir Putin recently declared to be part of Russia. Kherson is also the only major Ukrainian city that Russian forces have captured intact. Ukraine’s troops have been closing in for months on the city, making sustained Russian occupation impossible. The city has now been surrendered without a fight – assuming, that is, the retreat is not a bluff. The question is whether Russia intends to

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Who will be next week’s ministerial exit?

For the past fortnight, it was Suella Braverman. Now it’s Sir Gavin Williamson. The media aims to destroy two careers a month, on average, and the present quest to topple Sir Gavin has already produced a result. He’s gone. But that’s not enough. It never is. The new clamour is for the nasty knight to be stripped of his title and reduced to plain old Mr Williamson. At PMQs, the resignation was problematic for Sir Keir because he had to argue over a dead parrot. He quoted Sir Gavin’s unhelpful suggestion to a colleague that he should ‘slit his own throat.’ It might have served Sir Keir better to conceal

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

How much has the Williamson row damaged Rishi Sunak?

11 min listen

Though Gavin Williamson has now resigned, Rishi Sunak still had to fend off a number of questions on the disgraced minister at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. How much damage has the row done to the Prime Minister? Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Christopher Caldwell

Trump’s bumpy road back to the White House

Washington, D.C My local polling station is a Christian Brothers high school set amid football fields and parking lots. On Tuesday a woman who lives on our street was arriving to vote just as I was. She had come from a mandatory ‘active-shooter training session’ at her office. Of course, all shooters are ‘active’. Active shooter is what the TV stations call an armed psychopath during the brief period between the moment he starts gunning people down – say, in a cinema, church, school or office – and the moment he dies in a blaze of police- or self-inflicted gunfire. These episodes don’t happen often, of course, but they make quite

James Kirkup James Kirkup

What the Gavin Williamson saga says about British politics

I wonder if the fall of Gavin Williamson is the latest evidence that British political parties are becoming harder to govern. It seems quite possible that his resignation is part of a story that will see Rishi Sunak struggle to command Conservative MPs to accept difficult choices on tax and spending. Any upset could even bother the bond market. Additionally, this story carries a warning for Keir Starmer.  Contrary to some of the media narratives visible today, the end of Williamson is more complicated than ‘Bad man who did bad things quits – Hoorah’. Sam Coates of Sky News has written a very good piece about the resignation of Sir

The Spectator

The new era of austerity

It’s the Chancellor who will deliver next week’s Autumn Statement, but every-one knows it will have been ghost-written by Rishi Sunak. When Jeremy Hunt ran for party leader, his own proposal was to take corporation tax from 19 per cent to 15 per cent. Now, he wishes to raise it to 25 per cent. When Hunt speaks next week, we should imagine Sunak’s voice. Liz Truss spooked the markets by combining unexpected tax cuts with a spending splurge bigger than Sunak’s furlough scheme: a £10 billion-a-month subsidy on energy prices, going even to the richest. This was a shock, sprung on markets at a time when interest rates were rising

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Midterm madness: the only clear winner is paranoia

Election night, folks – America decides! Except, it doesn’t. On 8 November 2022, as on 3 November 2020, the polls closed, the votes came in and, er, nobody appeared to have won. Everybody now looks nervously again to the state of Georgia, which is probably too close to call and will be decided in a run-off in four weeks’ time.  The people have spoken but once again nobody knows quite what they’ve said. Americans have spent decades arguing that Washington doesn’t work and their political system is broken. Well, they’re right. America is indeed polarised and terribly divided, as this week’s results show. It’s not just the politics, though: it’s the