Politics

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

Friday

17 Dec 2021

Steerpike

Boris snapped maskless on train

Oh no! Is this another highly unfortunate snap of the Prime Minister caught in flagrante — this time sat maskless on a South Eastern train yesterday? It certainly looks that way. But closer inspection reveals that Boris Johnson is in fact wearing a mask under his chins, the sort of sloppy face-not-covering that could have us common citizens fined or even arrested if we dared to do the same. The more beady eyed of Steerpike’s readers might have spotted (another) great Prime Ministerial excuse, however. There appears to be a Greggs bag in the foreground of the image and Boris might be holding a sandwich. Munching on a bit of

Alex Massie

The joy of Boris’s bungled by-election

By any reasonable standard the result in the North Shropshire by-election must be reckoned the funniest in years. Perhaps even decades. All governments need checking from time to time and desserts are always served justly. So this is a welcome result and not just because it is, viewed objectively, hilarious. Nevertheless, it is quite an achievement to lose a seat held by the Conservatives, in one shape of another, for 120 years. To do so just two years after winning more than 60 per cent of the vote and a majority of almost 23,000 votes is quite something. To do so to the Liberal Democrats, who took just ten per

Steerpike

Bookies turn on Boris

Betting markets are famously more reliable than pundit prognostications or political polls. Steerpike was intrigued, therefore, to note this morning that bookmakers are now saying that Boris will not be party leader by Tory conference next autumn. On the Betfair exchange overnight, the price has moved towards Boris Johnson being gone by autumn as the favourite outcome. At the same time, 2022 is now evens to be the year in which Boris is replaced in No. 10. The more interesting market, though, is who will replace Johnson as Conservative leader. On Betfair’s Sportsbook, the favourite is Chancellor Rishi Sunak at 2/1. He’s followed by Liz Truss at 7/2 and then the perennially ambitious

Fraser Nelson

Boris Johnson is now in political purgatory

We have just witnessed one of the most dramatic defeats in the history of British by-elections. A 38 per cent swing against the governing party has happened only a handful of times in postwar politics and tends to be a sign of bad things to come. The last time the Tories lost a safe seat to the Lib Dems was Christchurch 1993, presaging the great Conservative collapse of 1997. So losing North Shropshire is devastating for the Conservatives: they haven’t just lost a stronghold but have seen the all-but-dead Liberal Democrats take it with a huge majority. This happened because so many of voters there — one of the most pro-Brexit, pro-Tory parts

James Forsyth

If the Tories can lose in Shropshire, they can lose anywhere

The Tory defeat in North Shropshire is a far worse result for the party and Boris Johnson than their loss in Chesham and Amersham. Chesham and Amersham could be put down to local anger about HS2 and disquiet over planning reform. It was also a seat ripe for tactical voting given it had voted Remain and the Lib Dems were a clear second. North Shropshire, by contrast, is a heavily voting Leave seat where the Liberal Democrats were in third place. There was also no single policy driving voters away from the Tories in the way that planning reform did in Chesham and Amersham. If the Tories can lose this

Nick Tyrone

It’s time to take the Lib Dems seriously again

As far as seismic by-election results go, North Shropshire is one for the ages. The Tories had held onto the seat for 200 years before they lost to the Liberal Democrats last night. And their majority at the last general election was over 22,000. The Lib Dems managed to increase their share of the vote from 10 to 47 per cent, leapfrogging Labour in the process. But is North Shropshire the beginning of a Lib Dems resurgence? And, more importantly, how worried should the Conservative party be about the party’s rise? For starters, this is an even worse result for the Tories than their Chesham and Amersham by-election loss to

Isabel Hardman

How did the Tories lose North Shropshire?

11 min listen

The Conservative majority of 23,000 was wiped out overnight in North Shropshire, with Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan winning the by-election by nearly 6,000 votes. Tory MPs are already making their frustrations known, with Roger Gale saying Boris Johnson has ‘one more strike and he’s out’, and John Redwood saying it’s ‘Time to listen to Conservatives.’ Is Boris Johnson’s leadership in danger? Isabel Hardman speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. On the podcast, Isabel asks: ‘You can change your staff, you can change your policies, but if the common denominator in all of these crises is Boris Johnson, what are you going to do?’

Katy Balls

The Tzipi Hotovely Edition

30 min listen

Tzipi Hotovely is the current Israeli Ambassador to the UK. She was formerly a politician in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, having climbed the ranks to become deputy foreign minister. On the episode, she talks to Katy about her 2,500 strong wedding reception, campaigning for mother’s rights in Israel and what modern-day anti-Semitism look like. They also discuss the time when she had to be escorted out of the LSE for her own safety, in the face of an aggressive student protest. She reflects: ‘Think about it. Does it make sense? I’m the only foreign ambassador that needs to have such heavy protection when I go on campus. Aren’t campuses all about freedom

Katy Balls

Tory defeat in North Shropshire as Lib Dems take former safe seat

Ministers are waking up this morning to a big Tory upset in North Shropshire. In the by-election sparked by the Owen Paterson sleaze row, the Liberal Democrats have won the seat from the Conservatives overturning a majority of 22,949. In what has long been regarded as a safe seat for the Tories (they have come out on top in the area for almost 200 years), the Liberal Democrats won 17,957 votes with the Conservatives managing just 12,032 votes. This gives the Lib Dems a majority of 5,925. Labour came third with 3,686 votes. This result clearly will be tied to Boris Johnson’s leadership and the difficult time the Prime Minister

Thursday

16 Dec 2021

William Moore

Christmas Special

90 min listen

Welcome to the special Christmas episode of The Edition! In this episode, we look at five major topics that dominated the news this year and the pages of The Spectator. First up a review of the year in politics with our resident Coffee House Shots’ team James Forsyth, Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. We discuss how Boris seemed to make such a strong start to the year through the vaccine rollout, but squandered this goodwill with several own goals. We also touch on some of the big political moments of the year: Partygate, the Owen Paterson affair and of course Matt Hancock. (00:39) Next, we go global and look at

Steerpike

John Cleese’s cancel culture hypocrisy

‘Always look on the bright side of life’ sang Monty Python. But it seems that for at least one of the legendary sextet, such sentiments are now a thing of the past. For the octogenarian John Cleese has today announced he will complain to the BBC over an interview conducted with one of their reporters. What heinous crime did the journalist in question commit? Which unfortunate anchor is to blame? How much trouble is the Corporation in this time? Well, judging from the footage in question, the answer to Mr S seems, er, not a lot. Cleese was riled earlier by an interview with BBC World News presenter Karishma Vaswani who chose to ask him about his

Cindy Yu

Is this lockdown by stealth?

12 min listen

Today saw record numbers of Covid cases with infections higher than the January 2021 lockdown. In reaction to soaring cases, Boris Johnson held a press conference yesterday. Although nothing new was announced, he pushed further on the booster program and encouraged the public to rethink their socialising ahead of Christmas.Many people believe the PM is encouraging a lockdown by stealth, with hospitality venues struggling to cope under staff shortages coupled with vast cancellations. But should financial support be put in place for them throughout this tricky time?Also today, the Bank of England has increased interest rates to 0.25% in reaction to inflationary pressures.‘We have to consider, does changing interest rates

James Forsyth

Ben Wallace takes aim at the misuse of the military

On this week’s Spectator TV, Andrew Neil interviews the Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. The pair discuss Ukraine, Taiwan, Iran and the fallout from the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But, perhaps, the most striking part of the interview came when Wallace talked about his concern that politicians are turning to the military as a first resort not a last resort. He said that once the Covid crisis has passed, the Ministry of Defence will need to ‘reassert that we are the last resort, not the first’. Wallace was critical of both Whitehall and the devolved administrations for the speed with which they have turned to the military to help in recent times.

Steerpike

Revealed: Durham students’ chilling demands over ‘Rod gate’

The spirit of the Stepford students is back with a vengeance at our top universities, judging by the hysteria which greeted Rod Liddle’s remarks at Durham. Having organised both a walk out and a protest in response to Rod’s after-dinner speech, angry undergraduates have now organised an open letter, which Mr S has just received. As Professor Tim Luckhurst, the college principal who invited Rod, fights for his job amidst a furious backlash, the militant mob smell blood and are now using the incident to demand further concessions from the university. Co-signed by the university’s junior common presidents – the student satraps of each Durham college – it claims that

Ross Clark

Why Omicron may not lead to a surge in hospitalisations

There were two takeaways from last night’s press conference: firstly, the hard data showing that the number of recorded cases of Covid had surged by 19,000 – or 28 per cent – in a single day. Second was the assertion that, as a result, the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed. What was lacking was the hard data on hospitalisations and the number of people in hospital. Although you would never have guessed from the tone of the conference, these both fell. The number of people admitted to hospital – a figure which runs a few days in arrears owing to a delay in the four constituent nations of

Matthew Lynn

The Bank of England is right to hike interest rates

The Omicron variant of Covid-19 is rampant. Bars and restaurants are in crisis as thousands of bookings are cancelled. And travel restrictions are back in place, with a full lockdown looming. To make matters worse, so far there is little sign of the Chancellor Rishi Sunak stepping in with any support. Most businesses probably imagined that the very last thing they would have to cope with right now was a rise in interest rates. As a result, there will be plenty of business owners complaining that the Bank of England’s decision to up rates to 0.25 per cent will be the final blow that will push the economy back into recession. But hold on.

Harry Mount

How the National Trust’s new leader can restore trust

The National Trust has, thank God, appointed a new chairman. What can he do to restore trust in an organisation that has so catastrophically dumbed down and become so woefully political in recent years? Rene Olivieri is an American-born former publishing executive. He has been interim chairman of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the RSPCA and the Wildlife Trusts and is a board member of the government’s Culture Recovery Fund. His statement on being appointed had a few subtle, encouraging signs that he might stop the dumbing-down, politicising rot. Olivieri said: ‘As a charity and national institution with a 126-year history, it’s uniquely placed to recognise the debt to the

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson is in a bind on Covid

This morning, it’s the Tory party versus the scientists, with a number of Conservative MPs seeing red following Wednesday’s downbeat press conference on the Omicron variant. As the number of Covid cases soars, Boris Johnson has been accused of a lockdown by stealth – after he appeared alongside Chris Whitty in a press conference urging caution over Christmas. The Chief Medical Officer suggested people ought to prioritise the social events they most care about. This morning Whitty is giving evidence to MPs where he has suggested it is too early to say whether further restrictions will be needed. In all of this, no one is quite sure where the Prime

Kate Andrews

Has Boris made you better off?

Despite the political misery for Boris Johnson as he ends the year, he has a big hope: that salaries will boom in 2022. At Conservative party conference in October, he told fellow Tories what to expect. Yes, the country has gone through a phase of economic chaos — and as a result some supermarket shelves have been empty and truck drivers have been hard to find — but this was actually good news, he claimed, because it marked the start of a new, high-pay economic model. ‘We are not going back to the same old broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity,’ he boasted. Change

Lloyd Evans

What happens to Afghan migrants when they reach the UK?

Migrants continue to cross the Channel and to reach Britain by other means. But what happens once they arrive? The answer for many is a new life of boredom and endless waiting. Dotted around the south coast are hotels where these people are housed, hidden out of sight. I went to meet some of them. A dozen Afghan families have ended up at a hotel three miles from Canterbury. The new arrivals numbered about 35 in all, including children, and the hotel seemed delighted to welcome them. ‘We are proud,’ said a poster in the lobby, ‘to be part of the programme to resettle the Afghan community in the UK.’