Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
9 min listen
The nurses’ strike is well underway and there seems to be no sign of an agreement over pay any time soon. The government seems to be receiving fiercer criticism from within the Conservative party than from across the aisle, as former Conservative party chairman (and Truss and Johnson ally) Jake Berry turns into the rebel-in-chief. What’s he up to? James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Cindy Yu.
December is usually a busy month for Vladimir Putin, but not this year. In the run-up to Christmas, Russia’s president typically holds his annual press conference. But this time the event has been cancelled. Putin’s annual presidential address to the Russian federal assembly – that was pushed back from the summer – has also been canned. And Putin will also be absent from the traditional New Year’s Eve ice hockey game on Red Square. Putin’s yearly telethon, where ordinary Russians can phone in and have a chat with the president (indefinitely postponed from earlier in the year), too has been axed. Such events in the Kremlin calendar are annual touchstones
Oh dear. Labour have had a pretty good run of late, castigating the Tory government at every turn. But given the chance to set out her alternative vision on Sky News this morning, Labour chair Anneliese Dodds could only squirm when pressed as to how her party would be handling the strikes. Under repeated questioning from Anna Jones, Dodds – a former Shadow Chancellor to boot – desperately claimed that she was not ‘going to on live television pluck a figure out of the air.’ Presumably she thought Sky had asked her on to discuss political ephemera? Her answer was simply the bland insistence that ‘we would negotiate’ but not,
30 min listen
Many are already feeling the pinch of the cost-of-living crisis. Choices between ‘heating and eating’ have become routine for some households, as bills and food costs rise. With money at the forefront of everyone’s minds, feelings of stress, shame, and embarrassment are causing a decline in mental health. Research has shown that the cost-of-living crisis is having a significant impact on people’s mental health, disproportionately affecting women and those from low-income households. Combatting mental health can come from peer support, professional help and public policy, but is the issue ever taken seriously enough? What can be done to address the shame and guilt linked to money worries? For this episode, Katy
Feathers are flying and divisions are widening among Russia’s hawks as the degree to which the invasion of Ukraine was a mistake becomes more evident. It is a powerful reminder that the main threat to Vladimir Putin these days comes not from liberals – largely imprisoned or forced into exile – but from increasingly disgruntled nationalists. Some of these nationalists opposed the war from the beginning, but most welcomed what they saw as a necessary counter to Nato expansion and Ukraine’s ‘betrayal’ in turning away from Moscow. However, many of them became quickly appalled and angered by what they regarded, with good reason, as the amateurishness, incompetence and corruption which
65 min listen
Welcome to the special Christmas episode of The Edition! Up first: What a year in politics it has been. 2022 has seen five education secretaries, four chancellors, three prime ministers and two monarchs. But there is only one political team that can make sense of it all. The Spectator’s editor Fraser Nelson, deputy political editor Katy Balls and assistant editor Isabel Hardman discuss what has surely been one of the most dramatic years in British political history (01:13). Then: Christmas is a time to spare a thought for our neighbours. While in the UK we have our own hardships, families in Ukraine are facing a Christmas under siege. The Spectator’s Svitlana Morenets joins the
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Nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are on strike today in search of a 19 per cent pay rise. Chief Nursing Officer Dame Ruth May appeared outside St Thomas’s hospital to show her solidarity with those striking. What is the significance of this? Also on the podcast, after a further three episodes of Harry and Meghan’s new Netflix documentary were released, can either side end up the winner in the war of the Windsors? Max Jeffery speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Heale. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
For Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, there is only one lesson to be learned from the compromise reached with the EU this week: blackmail works. With the deal, Hungary has managed to partly unblock EU pay-outs in exchange for lifting its veto on an EU aid package to Ukraine and a minimum global corporate tax rate. After the EU threatened to suspend €7.5 billion in funds for Hungary, Budapest vetoed the €18 billion aid package that the EU had prepared for Ukraine to keep its economy afloat during the war. Now, thanks to the compromise, the suspended amount of Hungary’s funds will be lower – only € 6.3 billion, or
Just as Brexit began with a few harmless-looking chips at what looked like an impregnable concrete wall, something similar may be happening with Britain’s attachment to the European Convention on Human Rights. The latest episode was yesterday’s ten-minute rule bill from the Tory MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, Jonathan Gullis. His Asylum Seekers (Removal to Safe Countries) Bill was nothing if not direct. Put bluntly, his plan would seek to avoid a repeat of the Rwanda debacle earlier this year by allowing asylum seekers to be flown to Africa, despite any orders from Strasbourg to the contrary. Like nearly all other ten-minute rule bills, everyone accepted this one was entirely quixotic.
‘Let’s all get behind Les Bleus for victory!’ tweeted Emmanuel Macron shortly before France and Morocco met last night in Qatar in the semi-final of the World Cup. ‘Without ever forgetting that sport brings us together above all in the respect and friendship between our two nations.’ A worthy sentiment from the president but not everyone listened: certainly not some of the Moroccan fans in the Al Bayt Stadium, who greeted the playing of the La Marseillaise with a cacophony of whistling. As for the match itself, the French did to Morocco what they had done to England in the quarter-final, punishing the profligacy of their opponents with two clinical
When Russia was preparing to annex Crimea in the late winter of 2014, the newly-appointed head of the Russian agency that published our newspaper, the Moscow News, laid down some new rules. The age of disinterested, objective reporting was over. Our job, this Kremlin-picked patriotic zealot told staff, was to love the Motherland. We all resigned. As a journalist, striving for disinterested objectivity was literally my job description – the values instilled in me when I trained in New York. Praising your Motherland for money can be called all sorts of things, just not love. Instead, I went on to report on the start of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine for Western
What’s causing the nurses’ strike? At PMQs we found out. First, came a tale of anguish. Sir Keir raised the distressing case of 11-year-old Alex who needs a gallbladder operation. Surgical dates have been cancelled. Vital weeks at school have been missed. ‘Alex’s mum is worried sick,’ said Sir Keir, his voice trembling with outrage. ‘She wants [the PM] to explain what he is going to do to resolve the nursing strike.’ Then he upped the stakes. ‘Alex’s mum is listening,’ he said. ‘She’s tuned in now.’ This sounded ominous. Was she being detained in a panelled office near parliament, surrounded by Labour strongmen cracking their knuckles? ‘It’s not just
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Keir Starmer put in a weak performance in today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Isabel Hardman says on today’s podcast. Is Labour’s fence sitting and vagueness on the strikes starting to hurt them? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu.
Keir Starmer had an unusually weak Prime Minister’s Questions today. He chose to attack Rishi Sunak on the nurses’ strikes, insisting that the Prime Minister could avert the walkouts, which begin tomorrow, by having a meeting with the nurses. ‘All the Prime Minister needs to do to stop that is to open the door and discuss pay with them,’ he claimed. He also described the first nationwide strike by nursing staff as a ‘badge of shame’ for the government. Sunak looked comfortable throughout Not only was Sunak able to deflect this by pointing out that Labour wasn’t prepared to give in to the Royal College of Nursing’s demand for a 19
If an election were held tomorrow, not only would Labour win, they would bury the Tories with a landslide majority of 314 seats, leaving the Conservatives with a forlorn rump of just 69. That’s the verdict of an opinion poll from Savanta. Even for an embattled Tory party, the verdict is notably grim. According to the poll, not only would former prime minister Boris Johnson lose his Uxbridge seat – there would be no Tory MPs left in London at all. Rishi Sunak would also get the boot from his hitherto rock solid safe rural seat of Richmond in Yorkshire. Every single one of the famous Red Wall of former
49 min listen
Winston speaks Sohrab Ahmari, author of The New Philistines, From Fire By Water and The Unbroken Thread, a co-founder of Compact magazine and former editor at the New York Post. Sohrab was an editor at the Post when they dropped the Hunter Biden laptop story and explains its significance and what the Twitter files reveal. They also discuss the future of free speech in America.
The Scottish Government has courted controversy with its social policy agenda: sweeping hate crime legislation, and gender recognition changes that undermine women’s rights. But what’s coming down the tracks at Holyrood looks even more troubling. In fact, the next item on the agenda could be one of the most controversial seen since devolution. Following activists’ demands, politicians’ promises and the rowing back on parallel plans by the UK government, the Scottish government is moving towards a ban on so-called ‘conversion practices’. Some readers might take umbrage with this suggestion. Most of us agree that trying to forcibly change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity – perhaps through pseudo-scientific quack ‘treatments’ – is
15 min listen
Rishi Sunak today revealed a plan he says will tackle illegal immigration. ‘Enough is enough’, he said. The asylum backlog of 150,000 will be cleared by the end of next year, and the government will do a deal with Albania to return people from the country. Will it work? Max Jeffery speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.
Trains, hospitals and schools – there are few aspects of British life left untouched by the winter of discontent. And now Steerpike hears rumblings of industrial discontent at the heart of British democracy itself: in the Houses of Parliament itself. Long-suffering staffers have had to endure months of vermin-infested kitchens, crumbling masonry and asbestos aplenty. Now power cuts over the past two days in the One Parliament Street building have pushed some of those working on the parliamentary estate to the brink. The GMB branch for Members’ staff is now gathering signatures for a letter to the Serjeant at Arms, outlining their urgent concerns. ‘One Parliament Street’, they write ‘is
The corruption scandal embroiling the European parliament and the European Union’s institutions at the highest level is shaping up to be its biggest to date. Belgian police have arrested Eva Kaili, a vice-president of the parliament, and three others in an investigation into alleged bribes involving spectacular sums in cash, allegedly from Qatar, to influence EU officials and parliamentary voting. ‘The shockwave of ‘Qatargate’ is Le Monde’s take on a story it says threatens to ‘destabilise Europe’s institutions’. This isn’t an exaggeration: the probe ripples out to the whole progressive ecosystem surrounding the parliament. Among the suspects, according to the BBC, is former MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, who now manages the