Politics

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

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP spins its school stats (again)

When it comes to spinning exam results, the Scottish Government gets straight As and a gold star for effort. Pupils in Scotland are receiving their school qualifications today following May’s diet, the first after two pandemic years in which examinations were cancelled and replaced by teacher assessments. Naturally, allowing teachers to mark their own homework resulted in a spike in the pass rate — up from 75 per cent to 89 per cent in 2020 — and the latest results are supposed to signal a return to normality and something approximating rigour. At least that’s the Scottish Government’s line. The SNP administration is boasting of ‘near record pass rates’ in

Steerpike Steerpike

Where will Boris write his column?

With just four weeks left in No. 10, rumours are swirling about Boris Johnson’s future plans. Will he quit the Commons or face down his critics on the Privileges Committee? Make a mint on the speaking circuit or champion Kyiv’s cause? With debts, costs and childcare bills, one thing’s for sure: Boris’s next job will probably pay far better than the extra £79,000 he gets to be PM on top of his MPs’ salary. So it’s no surprise then that there is plenty of talk in Fleet Street right now about the Old Etonian resuming his columnist duties. Johnson received £250,000 a year when he was London Mayor to write

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why cost of living talks will have to wait

The Tory leadership candidates will not be joining Boris Johnson in emergency talks about support for people struggling with the rising cost of living. That’s despite calls for them to do so from Gordon Brown, Nicola Sturgeon and the CBI’s Tony Danker, all of whom think the government needs to do something now rather than waiting for September when a new prime minister is in place. Brown’s argument is that Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak need to put aside their differences and agree on something to help families. Downing Street has been very cool indeed on the idea of convening such talks, with Boris Johnson’s spokesman yesterday saying it wasn’t appropriate

Matthew Lynn

Team Rishi is losing the plot on taxes

It would be an ‘electoral suicide note’. It would condemn the party to ‘the impotent oblivion of opposition’. And it would push petrol prices up to eight quid a litre, and mean the electricity grid would have to be turned off at eight every evening to preserve power. Okay, okay, I made the last two up. But to be honest Dominic Raab might as well have thrown them into today’s attack on Liz Truss’s fairly modest plans for cancelling some of Rishi Sunak’s planned tax increases – along with a few more dire predictions as well. In truth, Team Rishi is increasingly losing the plot on taxes – and the hysterical

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Best for Britain the worst of Remain?

Oh dear. It seems that the Hiroo Onodas of Remainia have done it again. Best for Britain, the former Stop Brexit crusade now recast as a self-styled ‘civil style campaign’, is up to their old tricks on Twitter. In their haste to score points off anyone remotely associated with the Leave campaign, BfB has seized on a viral tweet sneering at Andrew Pierce, the longtime Daily Mail columnist. The original tweet, amplified to the group’s 150,000 followers, was from an account which claimed to ‘Detest Tories, Brexit and inequality. Love Lefty Lawyers.’ It claimed that ‘I’ve been blocked by Tory Boy Pierce for letting slip his real name is Patrick

Andrew Tettenborn

The problem with Justin Welby’s environmentalism

There is an excellent religious case to be made for environmentalism. Roger Scruton ten years ago made the point that a ‘natural piety’ is inherent in most of us. Scruton argued this was a call to be responsible for the environment and urged us to love the earth and not to exploit it. This argument sweetly slips into theological terms. The earth is not there to satisfy as many of our crass secular desires as possible ,it is there to give us – and very importantly our descendants – the opportunity to be closer to God, be this moral, aesthetic or otherwise. Justin Welby, nominal head of the Anglican communion,

Amber Athey

The Mar-a-Lago raid reeks of political intimidation

Donald Trump announced Monday night that the FBI had raided his home in Mar-a-Lago. One would assume the bar should be exceedingly high for the Department of Justice to execute a search warrant on a man who was previously the leader of the free world. That would not appear to be the case here. Nor, sadly, is it surprising, given the seemingly endless fishing expedition that Biden and the Democrats have subjected Trump to over the past year and a half. According to a report from the New York Times, agents supposedly went into Trump’s home in Florida to check whether he had retained or hidden any classified documents from his time

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Did my generation break Britain?

When I was 11, I was a pompous little git, but was I also a playground prophet? It first dawned on me that I was one lunchtime in the late 1970s as I looked around at my peers. There they were shouting, swearing and hitting each other. Were we, I wondered, the clueless inheritors of a system we wouldn’t be able to take the reins of successfully? A system that we hadn’t been raised with the discipline to appreciate, or even to understand? Were we doomed to decline? The years since – and the current state of Britain – suggest I was right. Looking back, it seems clear I was picking up on the doomy declinism of

Monday

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It’s time for feminists to say #MenToo

Let me be clear: I am a committed feminist and a passionate supporter of the Enlightenment and its ideals. Indeed, I have been the beneficiary of those ideals in ways unimaginable to most people in the western world. I travelled from a genuinely patriarchal society poisoned by Islamism to a free, secular society where women, whatever issues we might still have, were equal to men under the law and able to pursue opportunities I could scarcely have dreamed of growing up. As I have written before, however imperfect western civilisation might be, we haven’t seen anything like it anywhere else in human history. The progress we have made is dizzying.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Rationing and blackouts are a possibility this winter

The debate about energy in the UK has largely concentrated on just how high prices will go. This is understandable given how seismic the October and January increases in the energy price cap are likely to be. But today’s announcement from Norway that it will prioritise refilling domestic reservoirs over exporting hydropower to countries like the UK is a reminder that supply may soon become an issue too. In a crisis, borders reassert themselves as Covid showed. What happened with PPE and medical supplies during the pandemic may well happen with energy this winter. This is a concern for the UK given that it imports large quantities of energy during the

Mateusz Morawiecki

War in Ukraine has exposed the truth about Europe

The war in Ukraine has exposed the truth about Russia. Many refused to see that Vladimir Putin’s state still has imperialist tendencies. Now they have to face the fact that, in Russia, the demons of the 19th and 20th centuries have been revived: nationalism, colonialism, and totalitarianism. But the war in Ukraine has also exposed the truth about Europe. European leaders allowed themselves to be lured by Vladimir Putin. In the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine, they are in shock. Yet the return of Russian imperialism should come as no surprise. Russia had been rebuilding its position slowly for almost two decades, right under the nose of the West. Instead of maintaining

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Ukrainians aren’t surprised by Amnesty’s victim-blaming

Is Amnesty International victim-blaming? The Ukrainian military has been endangering civilians, it said, by establishing military bases and putting weapons systems in residential areas. Agnès Callamard, the organisation’s secretary-general, remarked that ‘being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law’. It was a bizarre statement. Russian forces are attacking villages and large cities with dense populations. The Ukrainian armed forces can’t sit in a field, or put their weapons on a boat and sail away from coastal cities. As well as the morality of shifting the blame on to the aggressor, Amnesty’s statement doesn’t recognise the realities of the war situation. It is

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Can the new PM hit the ground running?

14 min listen

As the leadership contest refocuses on the economy, Katy and James discuss each camp’s plan to deal with the cost of living crisis. Are both candidates being pushed towards the centre ground? Also, looking ahead to winter, does the UK have enough energy in storage to keep the lights on, and what is being done to prepare the NHS? Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Steerpike Steerpike

Who cares about Trump’s toilet?

It’s the scoop they were all after. Finally, at last, the much-lambasted Washington press pack has obtained the media equivalent of the holy grail: images of Donald J Trump’s toilet. For months, such shenanigans have exercised the finest minds in American political journalism. Now, Maggie Haberman, the darling of the DC class, has pipped them all with pictures for her forthcoming hatchet-job on Trump, according to a breathless report by the admiring hacks over at Axios. Why the focus on Trump’s toilet you ask? Well, Haberman reports that during Trump’s tenure, White House residence staff periodically found wads of paper clogging a toilet — and believed the former president, a

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Taiwan tells China: we’re not scared

China has launched a new round of military drills near Taiwan, having previously announced they were ending on Sunday. The People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command said it was ‘continuing joint training under real war conditions, focused on organising joint anti-submarine warfare and naval strikes’. A social media account of the nationalist tabloid Global Times said exercises around Taiwan might continue, since the summer is a popular drill season for the PLA. Taiwan said it was closely monitoring the exercises, but that so far Monday no Chinese ships or aircraft had entered its territorial waters. Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, said in an interview with the American broadcaster CNN that

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Is British farming fit for the future?

27 min listen

It’s estimated that the average age of a British farmer is 59. This raises questions about the future of British farming. Are young people just not interested? On this episode, The Spectator’s economics editor, Kate Andrews takes a look at the next few decades for British farming. Young farmers are part of the picture, but we’ll also be discussing the role played by immigration especially post Brexit. The agricultural pressures and questions around self-sufficiency given the war in Ukraine. And how to balance all of this with greater concern for climate change. Kate Andrews is joined by George Eustice, the Secretary of State for DEFRA, Tom Bradshaw, deputy president of

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris Johnson’s warning from history

After a long period in office, it’s natural for any political party to lose their zeal for governing. As problems mount up, loyalties fray as the stench of sleaze begins to reek. In hushed whispers, MPs begin to talk of a ‘spell in the wilderness’ as opposition looks increasingly attractive compared to the burdens of statesmanship. Some Tories in Westminster appear to be flirting with such sentiments now, judging from the lackluster enthusiasm which the current contest seems to inspire. After a dozen years in office, the thinking goes, could now be the time for a ‘reset’? A brief respite on the other side of the Commons, time for a

Steerpike Steerpike

Yet another Scottish Unionist politician assaulted

Among the many superstitions of the SNP is that the reorienting of Scottish politics around the constitution has been a ‘joyous’ and ‘civic’ affair. Far from pumping bitter political and national sectarianism into the public square, dividing the population into nationalists and Unionists has facilitated a great intellectual contest in the very best spirit of democracy. Kevin Lang might have to disagree with that. Lang is the leader of the Liberal Democrats on Edinburgh City Council. Yesterday, he was delivering his newsletters in South Queensferry when he was assaulted by someone described as a ‘nationalist’. He posted on social media: I’ve been doing politics a long time so I’m used

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Truss and Sunak go to battle on economic ‘handouts’

The dire economic warnings from the Bank of England of a 15-month recession with inflation hitting more than 13 per cent look set to dominate the Tory leadership contest. With four weeks left of the campaign (but with ballots already out), the focus has returned to the differences between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss’s approaches to the economy. It’s the territory that Sunak feels the most confident on and where his campaign hope to make up lost ground. A lack of grip in Downing Street combined with a month of two campaigns trading blows risks a vacuum in government The Sunak camp have been quick to go on the attack

Christopher Booth

Do ‘ordinary Russians’ support the war?

There was a whiteboard in the BBC Baghdad bureau for noting down phrases we hoped to ban from the airwaves. It had nothing to do with political correctness or self-censorship. This was all about self-improvement. The list of words was titled ‘Not Martha Gellhorn’, in honour of the veteran war reporter who wrote so well – especially when compared with us. We were perfectly aware of our shortcomings, though, and strove to do better, with the whiteboard serving as an aide memoire. It helped keep the prose fresh when deadlines were hectic, and when the temptation was to reach for the cliché closest to hand. We were keen not to put