Politics

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

Thursday

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The Tory leadership contest turns nasty

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. A week after Britain backed Brexit, politics shows no sign of slowing down. David Cameron has resigned, Michael Gove has pulled out of Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign before launching his own. And Boris has decided not to run in the contest. We now have a final slate of five candidates vying for the top job. In his Spectator cover piece this week, James Forsyth says the Tory party is in a ‘deeply emotional state’. But he also points out that the leadership candidates who

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The pollster who called it wrong. Again

A few hours after voting started in the European Union referendum, Populus released its final opinion poll showing a ten-point lead for Remain. This carried weight because the founder of Populus, Andrew Cooper, was also pollster for the official Remain campaign. His findings had been passed to 10 Downing Street earlier, leading David Cameron and his team to become very confident. There were reports that the Prime Minister was not even going to stay up for the result: he intended to go to sleep early and wake up to victory. The vote for Brexit, by 52 per cent to 48 per cent, confounded the financial markets and wrongfooted most opinion

James Forsyth James Forsyth

So will it be Boris?

The Tory party is in a deeply emotional state. Remain-supporting MPs cry tears of rage when they discuss the referendum. Bitter emails and text messages have been exchanged. Leave-supporting MPs have been accused of unleashing dark forces that they cannot control, of putting immigrants in Britain at risk. Yet the leadership candidates who have so far emerged seem strangely united in their vision for post-Brexit Britain. All want to heal the divide between rich and poor that the referendum has exposed. It is tempting to concentrate only on the division in the party, the fear that David Cameron’s resignation has injected even more poison into the Tory system than either

Iain Martin

Sturgeon’s bluff

It ought not to be a surprise that Alex Salmond, Scotland’s former First Minister, has declared that the vote to leave the European Union is the trigger for a second referendum on Scottish independence. Salmond thinks everything is an excuse for another go. If a new Bay City Rollers album suffered poor reviews south of the border, or an English football pundit failed to declare Archie Gemmill’s wonder goal for Scotland against Holland in the 1978 world cup the best ever, Salmond would be right there on the UK’s television screens, chortling at the brilliance of his own wit, before intoning gravely that this insult is surely the final straw

The Spectator

Reasons to be cheerful | 30 June 2016

Noel Malcolm It may sound both Pollyannaish and paradoxical to say this, but leaving the EU will enable us to have stable, friendly, cooperative relations with all our EU neighbours. Being cooped up in a dysfunctional system, where so much depends on backroom arm-twisting and competing for favours in a zero-sum game, doesn’t produce stable friendships. For those of us who feel (as I do) like real Europeans, it will be so much better to be the friendly next-door neighbour than the unwanted in-law in the quarrelling family home. Noel Malcolm is a Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Tony Abbott I was one of those overseas worthies

Nicholas Farrell

La bomba Britannica

In Italy, media coverage of the triumph of Brexit has been wall-to-wall as Italians worry about the collateral damage and wonder if they too dare… So far La bomba Britannica has hit the Milan stock market much harder than the London one. On Friday, Milan fell by 12 per cent against the FTSE-100’s 3.5 per cent. Italy’s banks — too numerous, too small, undercapitalised and saddled with alarming levels of toxic debt — took the biggest hit. New eurozone rules that ban government bailouts for big depositors have turned them into sitting ducks. Shares in Monte Paschi di Siena (bailed out once already in 2013 by Italy’s central bank) fell

Ariane Sherine

Left bereft

Dear Jeremy, Please don’t go. I know you’re even more unpopular than the England football team right now — your shadow cabinet is currently emptier than the promise of a weekly £350 million for the NHS. Every few seconds a disloyal minister sends you an insincere letter full of veiled enmity which might as well say: ‘Dear Jeremy, since nobody likes you I’ve decided I don’t like you either, so I’m taking my ball back! Find someone else to play with — if you can.’ So I thought I’d write you a letter of my own, to let you know that someone still thinks you’re wonderful and wants to be

Liam Halligan

Project Hope

Boris Johnson famously said that Winston Churchill would have voted for Brexit. The wartime leader’s grandson — staunch Remainer and Tory grandee Nicholas Soames — dismissed such claims as ‘appalling’ and ‘totally wrong’. This bad-tempered referendum rift between two traditionalist, Old Etonian Conservatives symbolises, somewhat incongruously perhaps, the broader state of the nation. Deep and traumatic divisions have been drawn between friends and families everywhere — and, of course, within political parties. David Cameron’s dignified resignation speech has quickly given way to a grim determination to ‘Stop Boris’ from taking the Conservative crown and the Premiership. Labour, meanwhile, is in self-destruct mode, the parliamentary party in full rebellion against Jeremy

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

We are where we are, clinging to the life raft of cliché

My column calling Brexit campaigners ‘hooligans’ and ending ‘Reader, I voted Remain’, caused quite a stir — coinciding as it did with The Spectator’s eloquent call for Leave. ‘Pathetic,’ spat a famous columnist encountered in the street. ‘Your words and Farage’s poster resonated so much that I (reluctantly) voted Remain,’ emailed a broadcaster who had previously given me a talking-to on the virtues of freedom. ‘I quite like being a hooligan,’ declared a Leaver on Facebook, alongside a selfie with the Boris-bus emblazoned ‘We send the EU £50 million a day.’ ‘Did someone else write your last paragraph?’ growled a veteran politico a day before the poll. ‘We thought you

Peter Oborne

Pakistan’s great leader

There have been three great captains of Pakistan. The first was A.H. Kardar, the country’s first Test captain. Born in Lahore, and talent-spotted by the senior Nawab of Pataudi, Kardar played for India before Partition. He led Pakistan to victory over India in its second-ever Test match in Lucknow in 1952, and even more famously over England at the Oval Test in August 1954. Uniquely, Kardar won at least one Test match in Pakistan’s inaugural series against each other country. Pakistan’s next great captain was Imran Khan, the all-rounder who inspired his country to a famous World Cup victory in 1992, and now has honourable aspirations to become Pakistan’s prime

Emily Hill Emily Hill

Why I lie about voting Leave

There are lies, damned lies and pretending to back Remain. I lie because I am a coward. I hug friends who burst into tears, petrified by life without the European Union. I sympathise with strangers, who act like Lady Di just died and there’s nowhere to lay flowers. I obfuscate, I mutter, I am evasive. And I am not alone. There are hordes of us who’ll not admit we voted Leave to our best friends, our next of kin. We learned to keep schtum a long time ago — thanks to social media — since they’d defriend us if said we’d vote to leave. Now they are outraged, deeply confused

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Not thick or racist: just poor

The most striking thing about Britain’s break with the EU is this: it’s the poor wot done it. Council-estate dwellers, Sun readers, people who didn’t get good GCSE results (which is primarily an indicator of class, not stupidity): they rose up, they tramped to the polling station, and they said no to the EU. It was like a second peasants’ revolt, though no pitchforks this time. The statistics are extraordinary. The well-to-do voted Remain, the down-at-heel demanded to Leave. The Brexiteer/Remainer divide splits almost perfectly, and beautifully, along class lines. Of local authorities that have a high number of manufacturing jobs, a whopping 86 per cent voted Leave. Of those

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Our antidote to Trump

Is Donald Trump an idiot or a genius or a mad idiot genius? He seems driven by some demented force that even he doesn’t understand. What else made him come to Scotland on Friday last week? The ostensible reason, and probably the motive in Trump’s head, was that he wanted to reopen one of his golf courses. That’s weird enough in itself, given that he is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, and in a few months could be leader of the free world. What’s he doing still jetting about promoting his businesses? What’s even weirder is that The Donald landed on Brexit day, of all days. June 24, 2016 —

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Sarah Vine sends Tory leadership email to a member of the public

Oh dear. This morning Sarah Vine surprised Daily Mail readers after she declared in her column that both she and her husband Michael Gove had been ‘charged with implementing the instructions of 17 million people’ following the Leave vote. While Vine’s central role in the Brexit negotiations prompted laughter in some quarters, it now transpires that she has been taking on a very hands-on role indeed. Sky News have been passed an email from Vine setting out the Justice Secretary’s leadership plotting after she accidentally cc’ed in a member of public. The email — sent yesterday — raises some awkward questions for the pair. While a Gove/Boris joint ticket is on the cards,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

It’s time for George Osborne to go – and go now

This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes in the new issue of The Spectator, out tomorrow. George Osborne says he can stay in the government in some capacity (‘a decision for the next prime minister’). Monday’s Financial Times reported ‘Friends say a move to the Foreign Office would be the only other job that would appeal.’ No doubt they are right, but have Mr Osborne and his friends not noticed that what ‘appeals’ to him has nothing whatever to do with what the country needs? Unlike David Cameron, who said immediately and firmly that he will go, the Chancellor does not seem to understand that he has got it

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQ’s sketch: two plank-walkers at the helm of the ship

Rare to see a plank-walker at the helm of the ship. Today there were two. Cameron has accepted the inevitable and his demeanour at the despatch box was relaxed, amused, peaceable. Buoyant at times. Even foes like Bernard Jenkin exchanged warm words with him. And he handled Corbyn with extreme mildness until a rush of blood seized him at the end. ‘For heaven’s sake, man, go!’ he lashed out. But go where? Jezza’s impersonation of Rasputin is his best performance yet. He’s indestructible. Last weekend he was hacked to pieces by a flash-mob of tooled-up colleagues. He then suffered a thundering defeat in a no-confidence vote which merely boosted his confidence

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Three questions Stephen Crabb will have to address in his leadership campaign

Stephen Crabb is the first Tory leadership contender to formally declare his candidacy for the job, with a rousing speech about his working class Conservative values this morning. The Work and Pensions Secretary pitched himself as the candidate who not only understands the people who ‘are really struggling, who look at us all in Westminster and […] see nothing to believe’, but who also understands how to hold the Union together – both of which are rather big claims. He used his now-famous (in Westminster, anyway) backstory as someone born in Scotland and brought up in Wales in a working class household to argue that he was uniquely placed to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

MPs gave a pantomime response to Ukip at today’s PMQs

PMQs was always going to be an odd event today. David Cameron is going as Prime Minister and Jeremy Corbyn is trying to survive wave after wave of resignations from his front bench. When Corbyn rose to his feet, there was almost complete silence from the Labour benches—there was the odd chuckle from the Tory one. The first few exchanges were relatively flat. But then Cameron was clearly riled by Corbyn suggesting that the referendum had been lost because voters didn’t think the status quo was working for them. Cameron swiped back that if the EU referendum was Corbyn putting his back into something, as the Labour leader had claimed,

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: David Cameron tells Jeremy Corbyn to resign – ‘for heaven’s sake man, go!’

As Jeremy Corbyn faces even more Shadow Cabinet resignations today, it’s becoming difficult to locate a Labour MP who thinks he should stay in the post. Now the Prime Minister has added his voice to the cause. David Cameron — who is stepping down in the autumn — used today’s PMQs to call on Corbyn to resign: ‘It might be in my party’s interest for him to sit there, it’s not in the national interest and I would say for heaven’s sake man, go!’ Mr S suspects that this will only heighten the Corbynistas’ desire for Jezza to stay put.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Corbyn hit by further resignations

In the past week, David Cameron has had to resign after losing the referendum on Britain’s European Union membership, and yet is still heading into Prime Minister’s Questions in a stronger position than his opposite number, who has not resigned. Jeremy Corbyn is now a Labour leader whose MPs have overwhelmingly stated that they have no confidence in him. His Shadow Education Secretary Pat Glass, who was only appointed at the start of this week, has just resigned saying that the ‘situation is untenable’. Emma Lewell-Buck has also stood down as a shadow minister, saying she is ‘heartbroken at state of party and recent events’. That Labour is so unstable