Politics

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

Wednesday

8 Dec 2021

No, the Downing Street party probably didn’t break the law

Was the law broken at the Downing Street Christmas party last year? A video has now been leaked showing a No. 10 advisor joking about the festivities. Yet this incident, which is currently dominating the news, almost certainly did not break the law – which is why the story is so perplexing. During the course of the pandemic, the Covid laws have changed regularly. Yet one thing has stayed largely consistent: the rules have always treated people and places differently. Despite what some might claim, there’s nothing sinister in this. And it’s for this reason that the ‘cheese and wine’ gathering – which the PM has said did not take place –

Alex Massie

Boris Johnson is eating reality

It is neither fair nor correct to say it was obvious from the moment Boris Johnson became Prime Minister that he was not fit for the job for this was a truth obvious long before Johnson entered Downing Street. Nothing in his career suggested a man capable of making a success of one of the country’s most demanding jobs. What was foreseeable was in fact foreseen. Voters may be excused for accepting Johnson’s promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’ and for preferring him to the grisly prospect of Prime Minister Corbyn — but those Tory MPs who put that choice in front of them have no such excuse. They knew the

Kate Andrews

Will the public take Plan B seriously?

After holding strong for two weeks, fears over the Omicron variant look set to change the government’s course on Covid restrictions. Reports this morning suggest that Plan B could be implemented as early as tomorrow, including advice to work from home and — more controversially — the introduction of vaccine passports. The timing is interesting: rumours about the possible decision landed hours after a video clip — showing the Prime Minister’s former press secretary joking about last year’s alleged Downing Street Christmas party with No. 10 aides — was leaked. Downing Street still adamantly denies the party took place. Many are wondering if this is a ‘dead cat’ strategy: one that

Isabel Hardman

Boris throws his staff under the bus

What possible lines of defence could the Prime Minister come up with after the leaking of footage showing his Downing Street aides joking about a party he has spent the past week insisting didn’t happen? From the moment ITV broadcast the clip, the No. 10 Christmas party was a dead cert as the sole topic at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. Almost as much of a certainty was that Boris Johnson would respond by getting other people to take responsibility for him. This is precisely what he did, using a question prior to his exchanges with Sir Keir Starmer to try to get out in front of the matter. He told

Sam Leith

Kevin Birmingham: The Sinner and The Saint

39 min listen

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Kevin Birmingham, whose new book The Sinner and The Saint: Dostoevsky, A Crime and its Punishment, tells the extraordinary story of how Dostoevsky came to write Crime and Punishment – and the underexplored story of the real-life murderer whose case inspired it. Physical agony, Siberian exile, vicious state censorship, old-school nihilists – and the astonishing personal resilience of one of Russia’s greatest writers… it’s all here.

The Spectator

The decay at the heart of the civil service

That Britain no longer has the capability to maintain peace in Afghanistan other than as an appendage of the United States has been clear for decades. When President Biden made his decision to hurriedly withdraw from the country, then, Britain never had an option to do anything other than to join a messy evacuation. But at the very least we owed it to those Afghans who helped us during two decades of occupation to save as many as we could from the murderous clutches of the advancing Taliban. The testimony of a 25-year-old former junior officer in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) shows just how far short we

Freddy Gray

The phoney war on Allegra Stratton

There’s something telling about the alacrity with which the SW1 hive mind has seized on the leaked clip of Allegra Stratton. For our slightly depraved opinion-forming class, the sight of the Prime Minister’s press spokesperson sniggering about a party that apparently happened in No. 10 at a time when the government had ordered us all not socialise was just too delicious. Journalists, who tend to regard themselves as extraordinary people, decided en masse that here at last was a story that ordinary people — the commoners — can be excited by and angry about. The blue-checks of Twitter quickly pronounced that this bit of news had ‘cut through’ — that

Patrick O’Flynn

‘Partygate’ is Boris’s biggest crisis yet

In politics some rows gain potency from blowing up at a bad time. Some because of their symbolic power. Some because of a single memorable televised gaffe that can be constantly replayed. And some because they involve very serious lapses. It is rare for a single story to encompass all of these damaging dimensions but that is the case with the furore over the Christmas Party at Downing Street last year. Veteran Tory Sir Roger Gale was probably not trying to be helpful when he told the BBC this morning that the matter had the ‘potential to become another Barnard Castle’. Yet if that is all it becomes then people around

Steerpike

Watch: Rod Liddle speaks his truth on Durham

Much has written about the Rod-gate Durham drama since Friday night. Whether it’s ‘literally shaking’ students compiling Twitter threads about their shock or breathless write-ups in our paper of record, it appears that a five minute speech from The Spectator’s Rod Liddle is all that’s necessary to trigger a full-blown free speech row. Angry undergraduates are set to hold a campus protest at Durham later today, with others now demanding content warnings for all after-dinner speakers. But now, after maintaining a (relative) silence these past five days, the man at the centre of the controversy has decided – in the immortal words of Oprah Winfrey – to speak his truth. The Sunday Times columnist

Steerpike

Animal Sentience Bill gets mauled (again)

It hasn’t been a great 24 hours for Downing Street. Under fire for its lockdown-busting Christmas party, facing fury over the Afghanistan debacle, surely solace could be found from the fray in the rarefied atmosphere of the House of Lords? Sadly not, for yesterday their noble lordships turned their aristocratic fire on the government’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill. The flagship legislation, which Mr S has covered extensively, is designed to protect helpless creatures and recognise they can feel pain by creating a new super-committee to judge the effects of government policies. Lobsters and octopi are to now be included; ministers forced to do morning media rounds are sadly not. And

Steerpike

Lord Frost’s free-market foray

Away from the shenanigans of Downing Street’s Christmas parties, another festive bash was being held last night just down the road in Westminster. Mr S was among those at One Birdcage Walk enjoying the hospitality of the Adam Smith Institute’s annual shindig, where Lord Frost enlivened the evening with a stalwart defence of free-market principles against the tide of interventionism. Britain’s Brexit supremo raised some eyebrows in No. 10 last week with his comments at the Thatcher Conference on the need to diverge quicker from the ‘European social model’ adding ‘I agree with the Chancellor – our goal must be to lower taxes.’ And it was that same message Frost returned to in his speech, as he told

Katy Balls

No. 10 in crisis over leaked Christmas party video

Downing Street is in crisis mode this morning following the publication of a leaked video showing senior No. 10 staff joking about a Christmas party. The clip was recorded just four days after they are alleged to have held one in breach of Covid restrictions in place at the time. In the video of a practice press briefing filmed last Christmas, a special adviser asks the then No. 10 spokeswoman Allegra Stratton about reports ‘on Twitter that there was a Downing Street Christmas party on Friday night’. In response aides in the room appear to joke about how they would explain the event – asking whether ‘cheese and wine’ is allowed

Tuesday

7 Dec 2021

Steerpike

Watch: No. 10 staff joking about Downing Street Christmas party

Downing Street have spent the week trying to play down reports of a secret No. 10 party last Christmas when the rest of the country was under restrictions. They have tried a few tactics: at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, Boris Johnson didn’t deny the event had taken place but insisted all Covid guidance had been followed. When that failed, the Prime Minister’s spokesman went on the record saying there had been no party. Then today the blame shifted to civil servants: with briefings that it was an event mainly made up of officials rather than political appointees. Those responses are unlikely to hold much weight going forward. This evening, ITV has released footage of senior

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The Foreign Office isn’t fit for purpose

Now that the dust from the choppers has settled, we are left with two abiding images of the West’s adventure in Afghanistan. The first is an American Chinook hovering over its embassy, rescuing staff in a botched evacuation. This debacle unfolded just weeks after president Biden promised the world there would be no parallel with the fall of Saigon, and ‘no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy’. The second is a plane taking off from Kabul laden with 150 pets. The general success of the war in Afghanistan never came down to British policy. It’s for Washington’s post-mortem to confront the difficult truths about

Steerpike

The utter uselessness of Sir Philip Barton

Steerpike has seen many abject appearances before select committees. There was the time Sir Philip Green told Richard Fuller to ‘stop staring’ at him after BHS went belly-up. There was Russell Brand’s cowboy-hatted testimony on drug abuse. There was even the infamous occasion when Rupert Murdoch was attacked by a pie. But few civil servants have given such a pathetic performance as Sir Philip Barton managed today before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the loss of Afghanistan. The Foreign Office Permanent Secretary was up before a panel of seething MPs to respond to this morning’s revelations about the department’s dire response to the collapse of Kabul. To say that his

Katy Balls

How damning is the whistleblower’s Afghanistan report?

12 min listen

A new 40-page document written by Raphael Marshall, a former desk officer at the Foreign Office, depicts a disorganised mess in the handling of this year’s Afghanistan withdrawal. ‘I think the picture that is painted of chaos… it raises a whole slew of questions.’ – James Forsyth Katy Balls and James Forsyth dissect some of the key accusations in this report and give us an update on tensions between the US and Russia over Ukraine and the spread of the Omicron variant. Subscribe to The Spectator‘s Evening Blend email, from Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls, for analysis of the day’s political news and a summary of the best pieces from

Henry Hill

Parliament, not judges, should decide our laws

The British commentariat has not covered itself in glory in its reaction to Dominic Raab’s proposed reforms to judicial review. The Times reported yesterday that the government is planning to introduce a novel legislative tactic, the ‘Interpretation Bill’, to try to shift the balance of power back towards parliament. To be clear: there is no prospect of ministers being given the power to strike down court judgments they dislike. In fact, the core of the proposal is perfectly orthodox. The proper way for parliament to change the law is through legislation, and an Interpretation Bill is legislation. It would need to be passed in the normal way, and MPs would

James Kirkup

Gender is contentious. The BBC is pretending it isn’t

The BBC has produced its annual 100 Women list, a showcase for women who have done interesting, important things. There’s a lot to like about this year’s list: half the women on it come from Afghanistan; some of them, tellingly, can’t be pictured for their own safety. Perhaps if fewer British resources had been deployed getting Pen Farthing’s dogs out of Kabul in the summer, some of those women wouldn’t live in fear for their lives. But that’s another debate. There’s something else interesting about the BBC’s 100 Women, which says something about the Corporation’s ongoing struggle for impartiality. At least two of the people on the 100 Women list

Steerpike

Durham University to probe Rod Liddle speech

The masters of Durham University have reacted with Olympian swiftness to the hysteria which greeted Rod Liddle’s dinner speech at South College on Friday night. Students professed themselves to be ‘literally shaking’ at The Spectator columnist’s comments on sex and gender issues — poor darlings. The adults in and around campus, meanwhile, were equally eager to vent their sense of horror. The local Labour society insisted that ‘Our university doesn’t owe hate a platform’ and the Students’ Union demanding the resignation of the College Principal Tim Luckhurst. And the Durham dons are at pains to show such concerns are taken seriously, issuing thumping public statements disassociating the university from such dreadful

Matthew Scott

Raab’s law reforms are ridiculous

What should we make of the Times story yesterday, which appeared under the headline ‘Boris Johnson Plans To Let Ministers Throw Out Legal Rulings’? The impression given is that ministers will somehow be handed powers by the Prime Minister simply to ignore court rulings that they do not like. That would lead to an extraordinary constitutional crisis, involving either the arrest and imprisonment of ministers for contempt of court, or the arrest and imprisonment of judges with the government exercising Erdogan-style despotism. Nobody can seriously believe that this is what is intended, and the rest of the Times story makes clear that it is not. Instead, the idea which is