Politics

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

Monday

4 Oct 2021

The Tories have a new-found love for devolution

One of the big draws of this conference is Ben Houchen, the Tory Mayor of Tees Valley. His presence ensures a big audience at any fringe event. Michael Gove heaped praise on him in his speech. He argued that Teesside was where you could see what the Tories mean by levelling up in action. Interestingly, Gove’s praise for Houchen seems to presage a greater Tory shift towards devolution. Gove said that levelling up meant four things, the first of which was strengthening local leadership to deliver ‘real change’. This aspect of the agenda is one of the reasons for the Andy Burnham–Michael Gove bromance. Burnham, who is about to speak

Cindy Yu

George Eustice hits back at farmers’ labour shortage claims

Pig farmers are protesting, joining the ranks of climate activists and Remainiac Steve Bray outside Conservative Party Conference. The Prime Minister’s seeming dismissal of the imminent cull of 120,000 pigs as ‘just what happens’, has riled up farmers across the country who say that the cull is a result of the same sort of labour shortages we’ve seen in petrol delivery and hospitality. But today, the Secretary of State for Defra seemed to disagree with that analysis, blaming, instead, butchers who are importing cheaper pork from the continent. On a fringe panel on levelling up the rural economy, hosted by the think tank Onward, George Eustice suggested that processing plants were

Gus Carter

Richard Tice is a rebel without a cause

The vaccines make you magnetic, didn’t you know? And Covid is a form of biological warfare, released by the Chinese to weaken the West. New 5G technology is melting people’s brains and the Bank of England is owned by the Rothschilds. I am listening to three delegates from Reform UK’s first party conference, held in parallel to the Tories’ much larger jamboree just down the road. They are outside chaining cigarettes and they’re fired up. At last, they feel they can talk about this stuff without being shut down. I nod along. I’m not a scientist, I explain, and I don’t really know how central banks work. But why, I ask,

Steerpike

Iain Duncan Smith assaulted at Tory conference

It’s day two of the Conservative party conference and there have been several ugly scenes already. Yesterday saw a banner quoting the IRA’s words in the aftermath of the Brighton bomb hung by a nearby bridge close to the conference arena. Today Jacob Rees-Mogg was pursued by hecklers chanting that he was ‘scum.’ And now Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative party, has been assaulted by a group of men on his route to an event at the Mercure hotel. Duncan Smith arrived at a Brexit panel with Cabinet office minister Lord Frost, only to disappear midway through to discuss the incident with a police officer who

Fraser Nelson

LIVE at Conservative Party Conference

54 min listen

Katy Balls, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and Fraser Nelson are joined by special guest, the American pollster Frank Luntz, in this episode of Coffee House Shots, recorded in front of a live audience at Conservative Party Conference. They discuss what it means to be a Conservative these days, whether ‘levelling up’ means anything and who should be the next Tory party leader.

Freddy Gray

Why did Trump’s CIA want Assange killed?

26 min listen

On the 15th anniversary of Wikileaks, Freddy Gray speaks to its Editor in Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson about the recent Yahoo article that exposed the fact that the Trump Administration along with the CIA was working on plans to either kidnap or kill Julian Assange while he was still in hiding at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Tom Goodenough

How do the Tories solve a problem like net zero?

‘There’s a huge prize there if we get it right,’ says Tory MP Lee Rowley of the move to net zero. But there’s a big question mark hanging over this mission: how to get there without alienating voters and damaging the economy? Andrew Griffith, Boris Johnson’s ex-chief business advisor and the government’s net zero champion, warns that the path to switching away from carbon-based energy won’t be easy. ‘We’re going to unplumb the world economy,’ he says, pointing out that throughout the history of human progress burning fossil fuels has, until now, powered the engines of growth. If the last industrial revolution was disruptive, there’s no reason to think this

Steerpike

Watch: Jacob Rees-Mogg called ‘scum’ by protesters

Greeted by a throng of angry protesters outside Tory conference, some of the party’s MPs are taking the easy option – and choosing to walk a different way. But not Jacob Rees-Mogg. After leaving the conference centre, Mogg – dressed immaculately, as usual, in his buttoned-up suit – walked straight into the thick of it. He might have regretted his decision. Mogg was booed loudly and heckled by demonstrators, with one calling him ‘scum’. Here’s the video: Having headed through the crowd of demonstrators, Mogg then turned back and ran the gauntlet again – only this time to be confronted by an angry protester who blamed the Tories for not being

John Connolly

Red Wall Tories hit out at cost of net zero

One of the government’s flagship priorities this parliament has been its pledge for Britain to reach ‘net zero’ carbon emissions by 2050, with the commitment taking on increasing importance ahead of the COP26 climate summit later this month. But while the policy has wide support across the party, a far more controversial question is how much the change will cost – and if the bill will end up particularly hurting communities in the north. So far ‘Red Wall’ Tory MPs have been supportive of the government’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions, seeing it as a way to create new green jobs in parts of the country which were hit hard

Kate Andrews

Rishi takes inspiration from Thatcher – with one key difference

There are two Tory conferences simultaneously taking place in Manchester, within the same conference hall and inside the same fringe events. One is attended by elated activists, who are revelling in the December 2019 victory they never got to celebrate at party conference last year. The other is attended by increasingly agitated grass root faithfuls, who are up in arms about their party hiking taxes: especially the National Insurance rise on workers and employers, set to kick in next year. Unsurprisingly, most ministers are tapping into the mood of the first group. They hail the success of the party on fringe panels and at drinks receptions. Yesterday evening, Michael Gove

Isabel Hardman

Gove starts to define ‘levelling up’

What is levelling up? One of the problems with this nebulous term is that anyone in government who has understood what it means has decided to keep this a glorious secret, rather than sharing it with others. Now that there is an entire department for Levelling Up, it’s a bit harder to take this approach. Michael Gove is the new Secretary of State for the policy and spoke last night at a ConservativeHome fringe event at the Conservative party conference. He was keen not just to offer a picture of what levelling up will look like, but also to respond to critics within his own party who think this is

Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s selective defence of free speech

In the early years of his presidency, Emmanuel Macron became known as Monsieur ‘En Meme Temps’. The president of France was in the habit of setting out one vision but, ‘at the same time’, presenting an alternative point of view. He acquired the reputation of a man who was ideologically elusive. What does he stand for? Neither left, neither right, was his campaign slogan in 2017, and four years on he continues to flummox the French. Nowhere is this equivocation more apparent that in Macron’s attitude to free speech. Twelve months ago, the French teacher Samuel Paty was brutally slain outside his school because he had shown a caricature of

Steerpike

Tom Tugendhat’s leadership pitch

It’s been a tough few years for Conservative Remainers. First the shock Brexit result and then the premiership of Boris Johnson with all that entails. But last night the long-suffering bearers of the torch of Tory moderation gathered together for a rally of the One Nation caucus of Conservative MPs and their supporters within the Tory Reform Group (TRG). Theresa May’s former deputy Damian Green welcomed attendees by quipping that ‘the TRG is essentially full of young and beautiful people – if you see people here who are not young and beautiful they may well be members of the One Nation caucus.’ Green, a mainstay of various causes on the left-ish wing of

Steerpike

Rishi charms at the 1922

It’s day two at the Conservative party conference and many attendees will be waking up with sore heads today. The fringes were packed last night as Tory ministers did the rounds. Liz Truss, the darling of the free market think tanks, appeared at the Think Tent equipped with a magnificent blow dry and an applause-winning speech which castigated cancel culture as ‘fundamentally wrong.’ That and other jibes at identity politics in her conference address lead the Daily Mail this morning to ask whether she is in fact the new Mrs Thatcher. Elsewhere Michael Gove was on manoeuvres at the CPS while Stuart Andrew did the late night rounds, telling Conservatives in Communications that when he

Sam Leith

Political arguments are now over words, not things

There is a picture book, by the excellent David McKee, of which my youngest child was very fond. It’s called Two Monsters, and its protagonists are, as promised, two monsters. The blue one lives on the west side of a mountain, and the red one lives on the east side of the mountain. They communicate verbally but never see each other. It all kicks off when one evening the blue monster calls: ‘Can you see how beautiful it is? Day is departing.’ The red monster shouts back: ‘Day departing? You mean night arriving, you twit!’ Cantankerous words are exchanged before bedtime and both sleep badly. The following morning the blue

The Spectator

What’s on today at Tory conference: The Spectator guide

It’s day two of the Conservative party conference here in Manchester and sore heads are collecting their thoughts as to which events they will be seeing today. Highlights of today include Rishi Sunak making his first in-person conference speech as Chancellor and Michael Gove telling the Tory faithful what ‘Levelling Up’ actually means. Elsewhere, there’s a range of interesting evening receptions and The Spectator hosts its first four conference events.Main agenda: 09:10 – Speech by Cabinet Office minister, Lord Frost 09:20 – In conversation with the Cabinet Office minister, Steve Barclay MP 10:20 – In conversation with the Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng MP 11:50 – Speech by the Chancellor of the

Sunday

3 Oct 2021

Katy Balls

What Liz Truss didn’t say

As the big winner of the reshuffle, Liz Truss’s appointment as Foreign Secretary set the cat among the pigeons. Truss is the first Conservative woman to take on the brief and cuts a rather different figure to her predecessor Dominic Raab who was, by comparison, publicity shy. Since her promotion, there has been a non-stop stream of Twitter and Instagram posts documenting her meetings in New York, Mexico and Westminster. Today in Manchester, Truss gave her first speech to a domestic audience on what she wants to achieve. Truss is the first conservative woman to take on the brief and cuts a rather different figure to her predecessor Dominic Raab The former

Katy Balls

What’s the mood at Tory conference?

11 min listen

The Conservative party conference is underway, and Boris Johnson appeared on The Marr Show this morning to talk about the petrol crisis, the shortage of HGV drivers, and Wayne Couzens. James Forsyth and Katy Balls discuss the weekend’s events.

Steerpike

Watch: Richard Burgon flared at his own protest

Oh dear. With the Tories in town, the Labour left were hoping to make a strong impression in Manchester when they organised a protest outside the venue this afternoon. A large crowd, led by the Corbynite stalwarts Richard Burgon and Barry Gardiner, slowly made its way down Oxford Road toward the conference venue, with the usual gaggle of trade union delegates, activists and Communist party members making up the numbers. Things didn’t exactly go to plan though, with the protest pelted with rain giving the whole escapade a rather bedraggled look. Things went even less well for Richard Burgon, who even appeared to be struggling at protesting. As one of

Steerpike

Dehenna Davison pricks Rayner’s ego

It’s day one of Tory conference and the panels are well under way. As despairing hacks waited in line for their passes – and bemoaned Lord Frost’s dodgy queue jumping behaviour – elsewhere Douglas Ross was earnestly telling the Scottish Tories how he’d smash the ‘yellow wall,’ following the wake of the destruction of the ‘red wall’ two years ago. It was of course on day one just a week ago that Angela Rayner ranted to a Labour fringe about ‘Tory scum.’ Now Dehenna Davison – whose triumph in 2019 was the embodiment of that ‘red wall’ being smashed – has come up with an elegant rejoinder to the rhetoric of the Labour