Politics

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

Freddy Gray

Emma Raducanu’s victory is being spoiled by the usual suspects

How do you take the pleasure out of something so marvellous and joyful as Emma Raducanu’s US open victory last night? Easy — turn on Twitter, which spoils everything including sport. Raducanu’s victory is truly a great triumph; the most breathtaking sporting feat by a female British athlete in our lifetimes. Emma is 18 and beautiful, just did her A-levels and got A* marks, had been 400/1 to win the tournament, never dropped a set — all these facts make her achievement even more delightful. I’ll stop the adulation there, because an entire industry of sports commentators already exists to make these points over and over. We don’t all need

Rosie Duffield’s treatment brings shame on the Labour party

News that Rosie Duffield will be missing the Labour Party conference over threats to her personal security brings to a head an appalling situation where a female Labour MP cannot stand up for the rights of women without triggering opprobrium. Keir Starmer cannot and must not sit on the fence any longer. Maybe he is trying to sit tight and hope that this goes away? This seems unlikely: Duffield’s opponents are motivated by an evangelistic zeal to silence those who dare to disagree with them. Thankfully, Duffield isn’t taking the hint On Friday, she spoke more sense into the debate: Duffield might be the lightning rod, but the problem is

Steerpike

Rosie Duffield to miss Labour conference due to security concerns

Labour conferences have been fractious affairs in recent years. Tensions between various factions have often spilled over onto the conference floor, with the Corbyn era being particularly notable for the divides between Labour’s membership and parliamentary party. A particular low point was Luciana Berger being required to have a police bodyguard at the 2018 conference after threats were made against her. New leader Keir Starmer is keen to show such acrimony is a thing of the past. This year’s Brighton jamboree is set to begin in a fortnight’s time and is being billed as the Labour leader’s first big in-person test to an audience of the faithful. Elected in April

Katy Balls

Twenty years on, what is the lingering impact of 9/11?

18 min listen

It’s been 20 years since the 11 September attacks and their effect has had a lasting impact on the world. Katy Balls talks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about their memories of that day, the mistakes made in its aftermath and if the new Taliban takeover of Afghanistan leaves us more vulnerable to similar attacks.

You can’t keep an American exceptionalist down

Like millions of other Americans I was riveted by the images of chaos and despair at the Kabul airport as US forces finally left Afghanistan, yet another sad result of a forever foreign policy driven by ignorance, overreach and hubris. But as distressed as I was by the sight of desperate Afghans clinging to the exterior of a moving US Air Force cargo jet, what truly horrified me was the flood of belligerent anti-withdrawal nonsense uttered in print and on TV by an American political and media establishment that has apparently learned nothing since the Korean War, when General Douglas MacArthur provoked China’s invasion of North Korea by pushing too close

John Ferry

Does Nicola Sturgeon care more about oil revenue or climate change?

‘Now, as I’ve hopefully made clear throughout all of my remarks, the North Sea will continue to produce oil for decades to come. It still contains up to 20 billion barrels of recoverable reserves. Our primary aim – and I want to underline and emphasis this – our primary aim is to maximise economic recovery of those reserves.’ The words are from a speech made in June 2017, a few months after the Paris Agreement that aimed to limit climate change came into effect. A speech by a pro-oil Conservative, or perhaps the head of an industry group working on behalf of the oil sector? No. They are, in fact,

The rise of Taliban Twitter

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was swift, but this victory wasn’t won overnight. For years, the Taliban has been waging a softer fight: one on social media. Since it was removed from power, the Taliban has dedicated enormous resources to developing its presence online.  As it successfully recaptured Afghanistan, the propaganda opportunities which it put to use on Twitter as the eyes of the world watched suggested these efforts have paid off. Images and videos of Taliban forces easily gaining ground and advancing into Afghanistan’s cities – picking up military hardware left by the Americans along the way – spread like wildfire online. Islamists around the world were delighted.  In the years since it

Freddy Gray

Has the Biden presidency already failed?

11 min listen

Joe Biden’s approval rating has dropped to 39 per cent, as he suffers from the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, an ongoing crisis at the border with Mexico, and rising Covid cases. Is it a short term dip, could Biden’s pandemic response wipe out the Democrats in the midterms, and will the 78-year-old still be president in 2028? Freddy Gray speaks to Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest.

Katy Balls

Should the Tories be concerned by their drop in the polls?

12 min listen

Labour are ahead of the Conservatives in a poll for the first time since January. It comes just days after Boris Johnson announced his government’s plan to fix social care: a rise in National Insurance. Should the Tories worry? Katy Balls is joined by James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson.

The 9/11 anniversary marks a painful moment for squaddies

The sweet salvation of the summer recess over, we returned to Sandhurst for our final term of officer training. It was 11 September, 2001 – a day that started with a hike in the sunshine and which came to define my time in the British Army. The events of 9/11 would lead to my own deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the loss of dear friends and comrades. Of course, on that September morning none of us knew how events 3,000 miles away – and the political decisions taken in the aftermath of those terrible attacks – would have such a momentous impact on our lives. After the buses dropped us off, the hike

Katy Balls

New poll puts Labour in front following Boris’s tax gamble

Boris Johnson’s health and social care levy may have won the support of his MPs but that doesn’t mean it’s a hit with the public. Overnight a new YouGov poll for the Times has been released which suggests that Tory support has fallen to its lowest level since the election. The poll puts Labour ahead of the Tories at 35 per cent, with the Conservatives on 33 per cent. Six in ten voters said they do not think Johnson cares about keeping taxes low As for Johnson’s plan to make the Conservatives the party of the NHS, there is some work to do before this becomes a reality. According to the poll, less

The snobbery of Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown’s critics

In a few hours’ time, comedy fans in Sheffield will take to the streets in protest. Their cause? Not Brexit, or climate change, but the decision to ban Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown from performing a gig in the city. Chubby, who is not to everyone’s taste, is best described as the North’s answer to Bernard Manning or Jim Davidson. An earthy stand-up comic from Middlesbrough, he is perfectly prepared to talk, joke and trade raillery about race, religion and sexuality in a way few other performers are. This week, after 30 years of performing in Sheffield, he was told he is no longer welcome. Sheffield City Trust, which runs various leisure sites on the local

Ian Williams

Are China’s climate promises just a load of hot air?

Few cities in China represent the country’s addiction to coal more than Tianjin, where Alok Sharma travelled this week to talk about cooperation on climate issues. It sits on the coast of one of China’s most polluted regions, and its port is a key hub for trading 100 million tons a year of the stuff – that’s roughly 12 times Britain’s annual coal burn. Chinese coal consumption is on track to increase this year by around ten per cent. To meet that demand, vast new open cast pits are being rushed into service in Inner Mongolia, China’s biggest coal production region, from where supplies are brought down the coast to

Steerpike

Euthanasia family drama for Tory MP

From Covid to COP, tax hikes to triple locks, Boris Johnson’s problems are piling up. But now it seems the noble lordships in the Upper House could be about to give him another headache too: a looming crunch clash on the issue of assisted suicide. The House of Lords – where the average age of membership is 70 – will shortly be debating a private members’ bill by Baroness Meacher, the president of the Dignity in Dying campaign. Meacher’s bill would allow terminally ill patients in their last six months of life to end their own lives with the permission of two doctors and a judge. The legislation had its first reading back in

Lara Prendergast

Assetocracy: the inversion of the welfare state

33 min listen

On this week’s episode: why is the Prime Minister so desperate to support the assetocracy? In The Spectator’s cover story this week, after Boris Johnson revealed his plan to pay for social care with a National Insurance increase, Fraser Nelson says there has been an inversion of the welfare state. Is it right to ask the working poor to pay more taxes to help cover the social care of people who could easily fund it themselves? Kate Andrews, The Spectator’s economics editor, joins Fraser to discuss. (00:47) Plus, why is our knowledge of Soviet atrocities so poor? Attempting to fix this, James Bartholomew has been interviewing and recording the stories

Steerpike

Michel Barnier’s Brexity manifesto

It seems Michel Barnier has undergone something of a transformation in recent months. Gone is the starry-eyed Eurocrat who decried the ‘cherry picking’ of Perfidious Albion and insisted that ‘the single market and its four freedoms are indivisible’. In his place stands the defender of national sovereignty, a patriotic champion of French self-interest against Big Brussels. This new-found Euroscepticism is of course due to Barnier’s decision to run for the French presidency. The former Brexit negotiator clearly thinks he can succeed where David Cameron failed, judging by his pronouncements today on the need for France to renegotiate its relationship with the EU. Barnier told members of his Republican party today that: We must regain our legal

Theo Hobson

Justin Welby is missing a trick on climate change

Justin Welby urges us, echoing Deuteronomy, to ‘choose life’, so that our children may live. It is an apt use of scripture, in the face of the climate emergency. But his performance on Radio 4 this morning was far from impressive. The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke of the need for ‘meaningful sacrifices’, but when asked which ones he was making he sounded a bit muddled, as if he was not ready for such an obvious question. His first answer was ‘recycling and all that’, a locution with an air of irritation, like a man too often nagged to take the bins out.  Can’t Lambeth Palace afford daily sausages? Asked about