Politics

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

Sunday

Alexander Larman

The Royal Family must be careful with Kate

If this year’s Remembrance Sunday was unusually affecting, it was in large part due to the presence of both the King and the Princess of Wales at the service. After one of the hardest years for the monarchy in living memory, surpassing even the so-called ‘annus horribilis’ of 1992, there is hope that, as 2024 draws to a close, business as usual has been resumed – as far as it can be. The King has been dutifully pursuing his obligations for some time now – including a high-profile recent visit to Australia – but it was Catherine’s appearance that most people have been eagerly anticipating. Catherine may be the Firm’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Could Streeting’s smoking ban breach Brexit terms?

Labour ministers are very keen to be good Europeans. But could the cause of closer continental ties come at the price of Wes Streeting’s smoking ban? Tobacco firms are perplexed as to how proposals to ban tobacco products for younger Brits will work in Northern Ireland. Under the terms of the UK’s revised Withdrawal Agreement, EU law continues to apply in certain respects here. Among the provisions of EU law is the snappily-named TPD2 – the EU’s second Tobacco Products Directive. This was implemented in the UK in 2016 and continues to apply now to Northern Ireland. Under the UK’s post-Brexit deal, Article 4 obliges the government to give the

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Will Trump and Musk fall out over China?

Xi Jinping was quick with his congratulations, urging Donald Trump to ‘forge the right path for China and the United States to get along in the new era’. After the previous election in 2020, the Chinese president was one of the last world leaders to message Joe Biden on his victory. His speed this time is perhaps testament to the fragility of the Chinese economy and an awareness in Beijing of the potential consequences of further sanctions. UBS has calculated that Trump’s threatened 60 per cent tariffs on all Chinese exports to the United States would more than halve China’s already faltering growth rate. Beijing was careful to appear neutral

David Christopher Kaufman

Trump’s plan to make America safe again

Donald Trump’s critics like to paint his supporters as hardcore right-wingers. The truth is rather plainer: many of those who voted for Trump are refugees from the conservative establishment desperate for a leader unafraid to speak their truth.  We Americans are scared. Literally  Shamed by the elites, mocked for their beliefs – sidelined by rising ‘wokeness’ and DEI-culture for being white or straight or male – they saw in Trump a man-of-action sympathetic to their back-to-basics worldview. Tired of being told what to say and how to feel, Trump’s supporters were ready to reclaim their voices in the safest space possible: the ballot box. The anti-elitist populism that swept Trump

Matthew Lynn

Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump is a masterstroke

Elon Musk contributed huge sums of money. He campaigned relentlessly. And his social media network X provided a platform for the candidate. Of all the architects of Donald Trump’s return to the White House this week, arguably none was more influential than Musk, and certainly none were playing for such high stakes. If he had lost, the X owner would have faced a furious regulatory backlash. As it happens, however, the election has been a triumph for Musk – and will make him more powerful than ever. Even from this side of the pond, it was hard to escape Musk’s presence during the US election. The entrepreneur behind Tesla and

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Are the super rich really abandoning Britain?

With an urgency not always noted in plumbers, Charlie Mullins announced earlier this year that he was leaving the country, before even waiting for the Budget fallout. He put his £12 million penthouse on the market and is busy buying up properties in Spain and Dubai, between which he will now spend his time. Inheritance tax, he said, was his main bugbear. He has already cashed out of his business, Pimlico Plumbers, which he sold for £145 million three years ago. Wealth managers are enjoying boom times like never before He didn’t even wait for the budget, but now it has been delivered has the real exodus begun? To judge

Saturday

Jenny Lindsay

Inside the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre scandal

Roz Adams is not a public figure. She is not on social media. Yet this hardworking rape crisis support worker has found herself at the centre of the Scottish gender wars over the last few months, due to her employment tribunal against the beleaguered Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC). It all makes for a rather harrowing tale. Adams was constructively dismissed from her former position at ERCC in 2023, after a lengthy period of discrimination and harassment from colleagues. She takes the view that when a woman approaches a rape crisis service requesting a female counsellor, she should be assured that this is what she will receive. This was not

Sam Meadows

How Javier Milei found $18 billion

When Domingo Cavallo implemented at the start of December 2001 a restriction on cash withdrawals, he unwittingly unleashed a month of rioting and looting across Argentina that would leave 39 people dead. Police brutally cracked down on protests that quickly spread as the country’s economy fell to pieces. The basket of laws enforced by the then-finance minister became known as the Corralito and were a desperate response to a devastating – and worsening – economic crisis. A series of setbacks had caused both individual Argentines and companies to convert their pesos into dollars and get them out of the banks. Some 25 per cent of the country’s cash had been spirited away

William Cook

Two forgotten men brought down the Berlin Wall

Here in Berlin, 35 years ago today, at a dull press conference in a dreary conference room a short walk from my hotel, an East German politician made a rookie error which brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Half a lifetime later, it’s easy to forget that this seismic shift was the result of a bizarre accident – the unlikely collision of two snap decisions by two men whose names are now almost forgotten. As Berlin throws a party to celebrate the 35th anniversary of what Germans call the ‘Friedliche Revolution’, how many of these revellers are aware that their ‘Peaceful Revolution’ was shaped (or even caused) by the impulsive actions

Oscar Edmondson

Can Labour work with Trump?

16 min listen

It’s happened. The scenario Labour politicians hoped would not come to pass is now a reality: Donald Trump is heading back to the White House. The official line from Labour is that everything is fine – they will work with whoever holds the office of president. However, privately there have long been nerves and concerns as to what a Trump comeback would mean for the Starmer government. Where are the fault lines likely to appear? And what does a second Trump term mean for foreign secretary David Lammy, considering his previous comments about the Donald? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and John McTernan. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Sean Thomas, Imogen Yates, Books of the Year II, and Alan Steadman

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Paul Wood analyses what a Trump victory could mean for the Middle East (1:16); Sean Thomas gets a glimpse of a childless future while travelling in South Korea (8:39); in search of herself, Imogen Yates takes part in ‘ecstatic dance’ (15:11); a second selection of our books of the year from Peter Parker, Daniel Swift, Andrea Wulf, Claire Lowdon, and Sara Wheeler (20:30); and notes on the speaking clock from the voice himself, Alan Steadman (25:26).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

William Hague, Donald Trump and the lesson of Eric Morecambe

Never has there been a politician to have fallen so foul of the Eric Morecambe mistake of playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order, as William Hague. The former Conservative leader spent the first years of this century as a hardline EU-sceptic and telling voters that lax immigration policies were turning swathes of the country into ‘a foreign land’. The electorate at the time proved largely impervious to these arguments, perhaps because Tony Blair and Gordon Brown seemed to be delivering better living standards and most of the country had not yet experienced the community-shredding delights of hyper-migration. But following a terrible beating by Blair

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The triumph of Mr and Mrs Badenoch

When we used to think of Tory marriages, we mostly thought of when they went horribly wrong – when the Honourable Member was caught with his trousers down, as when, in 1992, David Mellor was found ‘in flagrante’ with a resting ‘actress’ who saw fit to sell her story to a tabloid newspaper. The ghastly Mellor made not just his poor wife and children, but his poor wife’s poor parents all line up grinning like chimps by a five-bar gate to prove how solid his marriage was. (‘A five-bar-gate moment’ is still press slang for displays of fake domestic bliss by shameless politicians, while the ceaseless self-serving confessions of the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Trump’s victory makes Miliband’s climate plans look even sillier

If you think Donald Trump’s victory is hard enough on Kamala Harris’s campaign staff, spare a thought for the world’s climate activists and their assorted luvvie hangers-on. Just Stop Oil lost no time in spraying the US embassy in Battersea, claiming that democracy has been ‘hijacked by corporate interests and billionaires’. Billy Porter, an actor presenting the Prince of Wales’s Earthshot Prize, said he had been ‘crying all day’ over the result. The activists and lobbyists heading for the Conference of the Parties (COP29) in Baku over the next few days shouldn’t worry too much – contrary to popular imagination, US carbon emissions per capita continued to fall over the

Friday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Amsterdam shows the limits of liberalism

Whenever Jews are killed or beaten, on 7 October or last night in Amsterdam, well-meaning sorts solemnly intone that this latest outrage must be a ‘wake-up call’ about the threat of anti-Semitism. Ah, the Wake-Up Call. Much vaunted, long awaited, never heard. There have been no shortage of wake-up calls. Off the top of my head, there has been 7 October, Neve Yaakov, Monsey, the 2019 New York attacks, Poway, Jersey City, Pittsburgh, the stabbing intifada, Hypercache, Kehilat Yaakov, Merkaz HaRav, and the second intifada. That list isn’t remotely comprehensive and doesn’t stretch back further than 2000. Amsterdam will be condemned – though by no means universally – but it

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will Trump make good on his election promises?

32 min listen

Kate Andrews, standing in for Freddy Gray is joined by Nick Gillespie, host of The Reason Interview and Freddy Gray himself. They discuss whether Trump 2.0 could be different in his final time in office. Will he ‘drain the swamp’? And will the Democrats learn the lessons from their election loss?

Lara Brown

Labour must learn from Kamala Harris’s transgender muddle

Donald Trump’s remarkable election victory has been rightly attributed to the long shadow of inflation combined with mass illegal immigration across the southern border. While these factors dominated the national swing, an under-discussed element of the Republican campaign was the relentless targeting of voters in swing states with paid advertising linking Kamala Harris to radical trans ideology. Why was this – and what lessons should be drawn for Labour in the UK? The ads were simple. Their tagline: ‘Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’ The ads were simple. Their tagline: ‘Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’ They showed clips of her, from

Simon Cook Simon Cook

Why do so many private school students get extra time in exams?

Are independent schools gaming the system to give a disproportionate advantage to their pupils in exams? That’s one possible inference from a new data release from Ofqual (the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) on access arrangements for school exams. The release sheds light on adjustments designed so that students with disabilities aren’t disadvantaged in assessments. This might include, for example, papers in braille for a blind student or allowing a student with dyslexia to use a word processor. Giving a pupil 25 per cent extra time to complete an exam is the most common adjustment schools can provide. The reasons commonly provided for the adjustment included English being a second language, physical disabilities that

Stewart McDonald

Scotland must push for higher defence spending

And so it seems that Scotland’s most prolific hotelier will return to the White House. Donald Trump has staged a political comeback that has torn up the normal rules of politics and sent shockwaves around the world. There are a great many reasons to be aghast at Trump’s return, but as he prepares to take up the Oval Office in just a few weeks, there is precious little time to get emotional. This is a time for hard-headedness. Understanding the importance of the Scotland-US relationship, Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney has written to the president-elect and offered his congratulations. Bristle at this though some might, it was the right thing

Patrick West

What Iain Duncan Smith gets right about freedom

One of Kemi Badenoch’s much-touted strengths is that she cares about British culture, society and our country’s values. She is renowned for her war on woke ideology, speaking out against multiculturalist dogma and identity politics. And in her appraisal of community cohesion and society at large, she shares an outlook with a predecessor as Conservative party leader, Iain Duncan Smith. Iain Duncan Smith was on Radio 4 this morning, speaking about the perils of our liberal laws on gambling, and the relationship they have had with the dramatic increase in gambling addiction ever since Labour relaxed laws on gambling advertising in 2005. His radio appearance comes a day after the