Politics

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

Sunday

Debbie Hayton

The Cabinet Office’s transgender toilet muddle

Transgender people need to be treated with dignity and respect at work. But our rights should not be allowed to ride roughshod over the rights of others. Yet it’s an unfortunate reality that, in the quest for inclusion, some workplace policies do just that – even in the heart of Whitehall. The Cabinet Office’s ‘Toolkit‘ to support transitioning at work is astonishingly forthright when it addresses the issue of staff toilets: ‘It is assumed that the transitioning employee knows which facilities are the best match for their gender identity. Therefore, the employee should use the facilities closest aligned to their affirmed gender from their first day presenting in it.’ Everyone else, it seems,

John Ferry John Ferry

The book that shatters the SNP’s economic myths

There aren’t many whose name becomes part of the mythology of a nation while they are still alive. Gavin McCrone, author of After Brexit: The Economics of Scottish Independence, has inadvertently achieved this status. McCrone is an academic and a former chief economist to the Scottish Office. In 1974, he wrote an internal briefing paper for Scottish ministers outlining the economic potential of North Sea oil. McCrone thought ministers were underestimating the value of the resource and the positive impact it could have on the economy if extraction were managed successfully. His paper was designed to remedy that ignorance and was framed from a Scottish perspective and in the context

Saturday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris announces a new look No. 10 team

Boris Johnson has this evening unveiled the second stage of his Downing Street shake-up. After the Prime Minister rushed forward the departure of his chief of staff Dan Rosenfield and director of communications Jack Doyle when his policy chief Munira Mirza quit on Thursday, replacements have been announced. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Steve Barclay is Johnson’s new chief of staff – and will be in charge of integrating the new Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office. Meanwhile, Guto Harri has been appointed director of communications – he served as Johnson’s spokesman during his first term as London mayor. Further appointments are expected in the

Steerpike Steerpike

Five times Boris’s new press chief attacked him

After the night of the long hangovers, what next for Boris Johnson’s No. 10 team? Following the departure of five top advisers on Thursday, the PM has tonight announced two replacements to try and rescue his sinking premiership. Cabinet minister Steve Barclay has taken up the reins as Johnson’s chief of staff while Guto Harri joins as director of communications. Barclay’s appointment will certainly raise eyebrows, given that he is already an elected MP serving as a constituency and will now be expected to work 16-18 hour days in Downing Street. But Mr S is more intrigued by the hire of Harri, who previously worked as Johnson’s director of external affairs

Steerpike Steerpike

Steve Baker plots his next move

When Steve Baker is on maneouvers, you know No. 10 is in trouble. The lockdown-skeptic and ‘Brexit hardman’ has had a hand in defenestrating two successive Tory premiers and could soon make it a hat-trick. For Baker, whose criticisms of the Johnson government have reached a crescendo in recent months, has recently taken over the running of Conservative Way Forward, the Thatcherite pressure group which acts as standard bearers for the Iron Lady’s legacy.  And it seems the Wycombe MP has wasted no time in his efforts to turn the CWF into a campaigning powerhouse, according to a recently released update to the register of members’ interests. For Baker is using Ed Barker

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Make capitalism real again

The emergence of Covid provoked a worldwide economic crash. That lasted a mere four weeks. By the time western countries were locking down, a bull market had begun afresh. Through months of lockdowns, soaring case rates and death rates, shares were not just rebounding but marking new highs – firstly involving tech shares and online retailers which had done well from social distancing, but then pretty much anything. The arrival of the first vaccine phase 3 trial results in November 2020 sent shares spinning upwards, yet the emergence of the Alpha and Delta strains didn’t seem to do any harm. And now that economies seem finally to be putting Covid

Peter Apps

London also needs ‘levelling up’

‘The further a person is from one of our great capitals—whether it is London, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast – the tougher life can be,’ Michael Gove told the House of Commons on Wednesday. It is his mission, as the first holder of the ludicrous title of secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, to fix this situation. But is it true? It may come as some surprise to the people of Barking and Dagenham in east London, where 48 per cent of children live in households considered to be experiencing poverty, that they are among the most privileged in the UK. It may also be surprising to the

Sam Holmes

James Heale, Leah McLaren, Nicholas Farrell

22 min listen

On this week’s episode, we’ll hear from James Heale on the Zac Goldsmiths’ secret shadow cabinet. (00:49) Next, Leah McLaren on Covid in Canada. (07:20) And finally, Nicholas Farrell on the march of the Italian Wolves. (13:58) Produced and presented by Sam Holmes Subscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher:www.spectator.co.uk/voucher

Nigel Jones

Are Tory MPs too ‘frit’ to bin Boris?

Boris Johnson is in the midst of the bleakest period of his premiership, but he can at least nibble on a crumb of comfort from history. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Tory party is not at all ruthless in dispatching their prime ministers when they have fallen out of favour with voters, or appear to have passed their sell by dates. If Boris is on his way out, he might still be able to look forward to one of the very long goodbyes experienced by his Conservative predecessors in No. 10, thanks to the marked reluctance of Tory MPs to wield the fatal knife. Let’s start with Johnson’s hero, biographical subject, and the

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Another letter goes in — how close is Boris to 54?

Nick Gibb has become the latest Tory MP to declare that he has submitted a letter of no confidence in the Prime Minister to Graham Brady. The former schools minister writes in the Telegraph that ‘to restore trust, we need to change the Prime Minister’. Gibb’s letter will worry the Johnson operation because he is not a usual suspect. Yes, he left government in last September’s reshuffle. But he has hardly been a serial critic since then. If parliamentarians like him are coming out publicly, No. 10 will worry about how many more are submitting letters behind the scenes. The whole question of how many letters are actually in, as

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is Facebook in a ‘death spiral’?

12 min listen

Freddy Gray talks to Guy Clapperton, the tech journalist and host of the Near-Futurist podcast about the recent collapse in Facebook’s share price, and the social media giant’s prospects long-term.

Steerpike Steerpike

Cressida Dick: I consider quitting ‘every few weeks’

It’s been a pretty awful year for the Metropolitan Police. Having been forced to apologise for Wayne Couzens’ murder of Sarah Everard in July, forced to apologise for their officers taking pictures of two murdered sisters in October and forced to apologise for failing Stephen Port’s victims in November, this week the Met was forced to apologise for officers sending ‘disgraceful’ abusive messages at Charing Cross police station. And let’s not forget the Met’s cack-handed last-minute intervention into Sue Gray’s inquiry which will now drag the partygate affair for weeks to come. In such circumstances it’s perhaps unsurprising that the scandal-ridden Met commissioner Cressida Dick sometimes thinks it’s time to pack it in. For Mr

Steerpike Steerpike

Minister’s unfortunate Carrie slip

It’s a quiet day in the Commons today as MPs mostly return to their constituencies for their weekly surgeries. But not all backbenchers have chosen to do so: Matt Vickers, the MP for Stockton South, is among those today debating plans to introduce fixed penalty notices for animal cruelty.  New boy Vickers used the occasion to raise some eyebrows in the House, telling members to titters that ‘one of my best friends is a sassy little bitch called Karen.’ He quickly added that: ‘she’s a pomeranian chihuahua or pommy-huahua, a very small dog with a very big personality.’ Cue laughs all round. Unfortunately in responding to the debate, Defra minister Victoria Prentis slipped

John Ferry John Ferry

Ian Blackford has exposed the SNP’s pensions muddle

Amidst the Downing Street psychodrama, have we missed the moment the reality of Scottish fiscal autonomy finally dawned on the SNP?  This week saw an extraordinary turn of events in London and at Holyrood. First there was an interview the SNP’s Commons leader Ian Blackford gave in which he stated the government of the remaining UK will be responsible for paying the Scottish state pension after a Scottish exit. The next day, Nicola Sturgeon was asked at First Minister’s Questions if the SNP’s position now really was that pensions in an independent Scotland would be paid by English taxpayers. Amazingly, she took the same brazen stance as Blackford. The Scots are going

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Who will fill the vacuum in No. 10?

14 min listen

Five members of Boris Johnson’s team have now resigned from No. 10. This led Downing Street to bring forward changes to Johnson’s top team – announcing the resignations of chief of staff Dan Rosenfield, director of communications Jack Doyle and Martin Reynolds, his principal private secretary (who sent the now notorious BYOB email). How will the PM fill the vacuum they leave in No. 10? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Steerpike Steerpike

Commons chiefs buy half-a-million masks

Labour has been making much hay out of the government’s £8.7 billion spend on personal protective equipment (PPE), much of it bought at the height of the Covid pandemic. The shadow Treasury minister Pat McFadden claimed the figure would be ‘galling to hard-working households’ while his colleagues have made much of the government’s VIP lane to secure kit that was in desperately short supply throughout much of 2020 and 2021.  Mr S abhors waste as much as the next man. But it’s worth asking as to what Labour’s own alternatives would have been if they were running the country when millions of items were suddenly required for frontline NHS staff.

Andrew McQuillan

The DUP’s dangerous game in Northern Ireland

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s leadership of the DUP has been characterised as something of a phoney war against the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) – until now. After months of threatening to pull down the Northern Ireland executive should he and his party not be satisfied with progress on removing the protocol (which creates checks on goods between Britain and Northern Ireland) Donaldson has made his move. Paul Givan, something of a lame duck in his role as First Minister, has resigned and left his post at midnight. Because of the intricacies of Stormont, the deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein will also depart but junior ministers will remain in

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who would join Boris’s No. 10?

Munira Mirza’s resignation over Boris Johnson’s refusal to withdraw his Savile barb at Keir Starmer led to Downing Street bringing forward the departure of various senior staff. Johnson’s shadow whipping operation were keen to emphasise that these were the very changes to his operation that he had promised Tory MPs on Monday night. Leaving aside the fact that these departures looked rather chaotic, the real challenge will come with whether Johnson can persuade anyone to come into Downing Street. As I say in the Times today, the failure to get Lynton Crosby to take on a formal role shows how difficult it will be to get the kind of big hitters

Steerpike Steerpike

Loyalists parrot the party line

Mass resignations. Backbenchers demanding blood. Frontbenchers distancing themselves. It’s all gone a bit JG Ballard over at No. 10 as Boris Johnson seeks to prevent his premiership being scuppered by partygate. Fortunately though, the much-maligned Whips’ Office has come up with a cunning plan: a co-ordinated MP Twitter storm, eulogising the surprise resignation of five No. 10 aides as part of a long-term Johnsonian plan. Brilliant! For while the resignations of Jack Doyle, Martin Reynolds and Dan Rosenfield were long-expected, those of Munira Mirza and Elena Narozanski were not and can hardly be construed as such. Mirza in particular had been by Johnson’s side for 14 years and submitted a damning resignation letter which