Politics

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

Saturday

Thierry Baudet

Will Dutch politicians choose to serve Brussels or their citizens?

The Netherlands was one of the six original founders of the European Union. We, the Dutch, have always been internationally orientated, progressive, tolerant and open, and as a nation and a people, we still are. But our attitude towards the centralistic, expansionist, and undemocratic EU has become increasingly sceptical. For us, the EU no longer represents a dynamic view of the future but – on the contrary – many feel that it has fallen victim to precisely the kind of static, special interests politics that it was meant to transcend. It has turned out to be a 1970s solution for a 1950s problem. It was hardly surprising, then, that two thirds

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Number 10 might be more confident than ever of EU referendum victory, but they’re still trying to load the debate dice

Downing Street is more confident than it has ever been that the EU referendum will be won. It is not just Barack Obama’s full-throated warning against Brexit that is responsible for this, but—as I say in my Sun column this morning—the sense that they have got the argument back onto their home turf of the economy. Indeed, it was striking how much Obama talked yesterday about the economic benefits to Britain of EU membership and the single market. The fact that this was his main message, rather than Western unity against Putin and Islamic State, shows which argument Number 10 thinks is working. The truth is that however spurious George

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Obama’s Brexit overreach

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Is Barack Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate a welcome one or should he keep his nose out of our business? Tim Montgomerie says in his Spectator cover piece that such overreach is typical of the US President’s arrogance. But Anne Applebaum disagrees and says that Obama speaks on behalf of many Americans when he calls on Britain to stay engaged in European politics. So should we listen to Obama? Joining Isabel Hardman to discuss is Spectator deputy editor Freddy Gray and the

Friday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Will Barack Obama’s ‘back of the queue’ threat backfire?

Barack Obama’s decision to visit Britain during an election campaign was controversial enough. His writing an article against Brexit in the Daily Telegraph was more controversial still. But to stand in Downing Street and threaten his host country with being dumped ‘at the back of the queue’ for trade talks should it choose to leave the EU is, I think, too much. It’s precisely the comment that could backfire, and spark indignation. And make people ask: who on earth is Obama to come to Britain and speak to us in this way? I’ve just recorded a podcast about this with James Forsyth. Here it is:- It wasn’t what Obama said, as such. Even the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Obama’s threat: vote for Brexit and the USA will put you at the ‘back of the queue’

David Cameron and Barack Obama arrived at the Foreign Office for their press conference today with two clear aims. The first was to impress upon everyone how well they get on, and in a rather cringeworthy manner. Cameron in particular was desperate to mention in almost every sentence the jolly good friendship that he had with his friend Barack. His friend who he is so close to that he doesn’t even need to mention his last name. But still needs to set out all the examples of how they are good friends, just in case anyone is in any doubt. That friend Barack spent a lot of time talking, not

Toby Young Toby Young

There’s nothing ‘racist’ about Boris Johnson’s Obama comments

Nick Cohen is predictably over-the-top in his response to Boris Johnson’s piece about President Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate in today’s Sun. He begins by claiming he’s approaching this subject ‘with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey’. He then goes on to reprimand Boris for suggesting Obama has an ‘ancestral dislike of the British empire’ on account of his ‘part-Kenyan’ heritage and links this to his support for the Remain campaign. We’ll come to that comment in a minute, but Cohen goes on to conflate these remarks with the worst excesses of the birther movement: I’m not someone who throws accusations of racism around

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A vote for Brexit is a vote against Toryism

It’s the rage I struggle to comprehend. There is, I am sure, an entirely reasonable case to be made for leaving the European Union, it’s just that, for the most part, we’ve not heard it. Instead, the dominant feature of the Out campaign has been its anger. Many of these people really do seem to think this is some kind of struggle for national liberation. If they didn’t they wouldn’t talk about Britain regaining its ‘independence’. Nor would they suggest that being a member of the EU is somehow incompatible with being a ‘free’ country. This, I am prepared to venture, will be news to the Poles, the Lithuanians, the

John Mills

The Government is running an unfair referendum – and I’ve seen it all before

The Government spent over £9m on a pro-EU leaflet to be distributed to every household before the official campaign began, backed up by a major social media campaign. This is deeply unfair. But it’s no surprise to me. I’ve seen it all before, running up to the 1975 referendum, when I was the National Agent for the campaign for leaving what was then the Common Market. In 1975 there were three leaflets delivered to all households. One was from the National Referendum Campaign, who wanted the UK to come out. One was from Britain in Europe, who wanted us to stay in. The third was from the government, backing up the

The Spectator

The future belongs to entrepreneurs

‘Who thinks the UK is the best place in Europe to start a business?’ asked Spectator editor Fraser Nelson. Almost everyone at the table raised a hand. ‘So that’s a pretty good start…’ In the dining room of Drummonds Bank  — a fine example of 18th Century entrepreneurship — The Spectator and NatWest brought together an eclectic group of entrepreneurs, investors and Labour’s shadow business secretary Angela Eagle MP, to discuss opportunities and obstacles for start-ups and scale-ups. The question for the table was what government and banks can do better to help turn great ideas into growing businesses? Alison Rose, NatWest’s Chief Executive of Commercial & Private Banking, set

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Coffee House Podcast: Barack Obama’s Brexit intervention

Barack Obama has waded into the Brexit debate but should he be lecturing us about the EU referendum? On this special edition of the Coffee House podcast, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson is joined by Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth to discuss whether the President’s intervention is a welcome one and whether it will actually work. On the podcast, Isabel Hardman says: ‘I think the out campaign is certainly hoping that Barack Obama will be seen to be patronising British voters and patronising Britain suggesting that it is a sort of weak nation. And I think also the idea of foreign governments lecturing voters on what they should do in their

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Obama tells Britain: EU membership makes you stand taller on the world stage

In agreeing to visit the UK midway through an election campaign, Barack Obama guaranteed controversy. As Tim Montgomerie makes clear in his Spectator cover piece this week, many Eurosceptics are angry at the thought of listening to a President with a clear track record of foreign policy failures. Boris Johnson, writing in The Sun this morning, was brimming with the zeal of a convert to the Brexit cause and borrowing from Obama’s trademark. He wrote: ‘Can we take back control of our borders and our money and our system of Government? Yes we can.’ But now Obama has arrived, what is his actual argument for urging Brits to remain in the EU?

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why is the Foreign Office getting involved in America’s gay rights debate?

If there was one piece of advice the Foreign Office was going to give to British citizens travelling to the USA you might think it would be to wary of lunatics armed to the hilt with semi-automatics.   But no, our civil servants do not regard the possibility of having your ass shot off as you innocently backpack around the backwoods of North Carolina to be worthy of a warning. There is one piece of advice the Foreign Office has put on its website, though.  It states:  ‘LGBT travellers may be affected by legislation passed recently in the states of North Carolina and Mississippi.’  The laws to which it refers are

Steerpike Steerpike

Julian Fellowes on ‘class hatred’ and Corbyn’s Labour

Although Julian Fellowes recently promised to take a backseat in the EU debate after growing tired of celebrities telling people what to do, he is still able to grace us with his thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. In an interview with BA High Life, the Conservative peer — and Downton Abbey writer — discusses the current state of the Labour party. The Conservative peer says he is upset by the ‘real seething jealousy’ at the heart of politics today: ‘It strikes me that as long as people are reasonably responsible in trying to do their best in terms of their own lives, there’s no reason for this permanent encouragement to class hatred.’

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 21 April 2016

European bogeymen Michael Gove said ‘remain’ campaigners were spreading tales of bogeymen. But what is a bogeyman? Appropriately enough, the concept of an imagined monster is a pan-European concept which has exercised the right to free movement for centuries. — The boggel-mann has been terrifying children in Germanic cultures since the Middle Ages, as has the bussemand in Scandinavian countries. In Dutch, he became the boeman. — Middle English had its bugge-man and Scotland its boggarts — the latter suggesting a possible connection with marshy ground. But possibly the earliest bogeyman was bugibu, a monster in a French poem written in the 1140s. Reversed forecasts A Treasury report claimed that

Peter Jones

The Treasury’s prophecies

The Treasury has announced that an EU exit ‘could leave households £4,300 a year worse off’. Since that only ‘could’ be the case, it could also not be the case, and given the accuracy of the Treasury’s prophecies for one year ahead, let alone 14, one wonders what odds the Treasury would offer on that outcome. The ancients had far better prophets. One was the augur: he took the auspices to determine whether a course of action was wise or not (auis ‘bird’ + spicio ‘I observe’). Marking out an area of the sky, he watched for birds that flew into it. Those flying left to right were propitious, right to

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 21 April 2016

The ‘remain’ campaign is having some success with the line that the ‘leave’ camp cannot say what Britain outside the EU would look like. (Nor can the ‘remain’ campaign, of course, though it doesn’t stop it trying.) But it is crucial to the ‘leave’ cause that it resist the temptation to set out a plan. ‘Remain’ wants it to fall into the SNP trap in the Scottish referendum of proposing something which can then be picked apart. There is a cast-iron reason why ‘leave’ cannot do this. Even if we vote to leave, the ‘leave’ campaign, unlike the SNP in the Scottish vote, will not form a government. It is

The Spectator

Cut the claptrap

So far the campaign for the EU referendum has resembled a contest as to which side can spin the most lurid and least plausible horror stories. On the one hand, the ‘in’ campaign claims that we’ll be £4,300 worse off if we leave; that budget airlines will stop serving Britain and that we will become more prone to terror attacks. Not to be outdone, the ‘out’ side warns that we will be crushed by a fresh avalanche of regulation and immigration, and more prone to terror attacks. The tone of the debate was summed up by Michael Gove this week when he accused the ‘in’ campaign of treating the public

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why Tory MPs are so worked up about forced academisation

Tory MPs remain confident that they will force the government into a U-turn over forced academisation. Though departmental sources are pushing back against reports in today’s Financial Times that ministers are putting the brakes on the reforms, they cannot answer the question of how the changes would actually get through the House of Commons. And though David Cameron put up a spirited defence of the policy at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Tory MPs have been saying that they have yet to see the evidence base for forcing schools that may be perfectly successful and stable into changing the way they are run. The reasons for the rebellion are partly down

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn suggests the Queen is a secret Gooner

Although Jeremy Corbyn’s aides refused to confirm whether he would give a tribute to the Queen on her 90th birthday, the Labour leader did manage to put his republican tendencies to one side today in order to mark the happy occasion. After wishing Her Majesty a happy birthday, he went on to give his football team Arsenal a plug. Corbyn said that many locals believe that Her Majesty is actually a secret Gooner — pointing to the fact that the Queen’s coronation drive went through Islington, key Arsenal territory ‘Now we know the Queen is absolutely above politics. She may be above football too. But many locals harbour this quiet secret view

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Swedes tell Britain: if you leave the EU, we’ll follow

If Britain were to leave the European Union, would it survive? Britain is one of the least enthusiastic members of the EU, but other more globally-minded countries are tiring of the protectionism and insularity in Brussels. Reformers in Sweden are aghast at the prospect of Brexit, seeing Britain as their main ally in trying to fight off protectionism (a recent study found an 89pc alignment of our interests, 88pc with the Dutch and Danes). But as many in Britain come to conclude that this fight is lost, and we’re better off out, many Swedes are coming to the same conclusion. According to a poll by TNS Sifo, the largest polling firm in Sweden, 36 per cent