Politics

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

Friday

29 Nov 2024

Steerpike

Tories take poll lead over Starmer’s Labour

Kemi Badenoch’s Tories have overtaken Labour for the first time in three years on The Spectator Data Hub’s poll tracker. This morning’s update gives the Conservatives a one-point lead over Keir Starmer’s Labour after a steady upward trend since July’s election. Steerpike wonders how much is down to Rishi Sunak’s surprisingly successful stint as leader of the opposition, Badenoch’s first few weeks in the job or Starmer’s ever sinking satisfaction ratings. The leftie leader now finds himself with more than half the country seeing him ‘unfavourably’ and with a net satisfaction rating of -29. Meanwhile, Mr S’s gambling friends note that both Badenoch and Starmer only have 50/50 odds at

Lucy Dunn

Will Ireland’s fed-up voters punish the Taoiseach in the snap election?

Will the elections taking place across Ireland today result in a whole new government? Not really, is the conclusion most Irish citizens seem to be coming to. ‘It’ll be the same two main parties in government – nothing will change,’ one hospitality manager notes reluctantly, nodding to the current three-party coalition in the Dáil of the centre-right Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil with the left-wing Greens. ‘Ireland likes a moderate government,’ another voter added. ‘Anything that’s not radical.’ Fine Gael has suffered an exodus of longstanding politicians The current Taoiseach, Fine Gael’s Simon Harris, saw his popularity soar by 17 points to 55 per cent just months after he replaced

Kate Andrews

Kate Andrews, Mark Galeotti, Adrian Pascu-Tulbure, Michael Hann and Olivia Potts

31 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Kate Andrews examines the appointment of Scott Bessent as US Treasury Secretary (1:20); Mark Galeotti highlights Putin’s shadow campaign across Europe (7:10); Adrian Pascu-Tulbure reports on the surprising rise of Romania’s Calin Georgescu (15:45); Michael Hann reviews Irish bands Kneecap and Fontaines D.C. (22:54); and Olivia Potts provides her notes on London’s Smithfield Market, following the news it may close (27:28). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Katy Balls

Louise Haigh’s resignation raises questions for Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer is one cabinet minister down. This morning Louise Haigh resigned as Transport Secretary following the revelation that she had pleaded guilty to a criminal offence in 2014. Haigh admitted fraud by false representation at a magistrates’ court after she incorrectly told the police that a work mobile had been stolen in 2013. She was then convicted and received a conditional discharge. The incident occurred six months before she became an MP. Starmer knew about the conviction prior to the press reports on Thursday Announcing her resignation this morning in a letter to the Prime Minister, Haigh said she remained ‘totally committed to our political project’ but had concluded

Brendan O’Neill

There’s nothing radical about flying the Palestine flag

I have a confession to make: when those Maccabi Tel Aviv fans tore down a Palestine flag in Amsterdam a few weeks back, I let out a little cheer. Yes, I know the boisterous lads did other things in the Dutch capital that were definitely bad. The left never tires of telling us what thugs and brutes these young Israelis allegedly are. But that one act, that tiny revolt against the omnipresence of the Palestine colours in the cities of Europe – that I welcomed. If you want to be radical, wave the Israel flag For two reasons. First, because it made perfect sense to me that Israelis might feel

Gavin Mortimer

France is still fighting the tyranny of Islamophobia

It is almost ten years since I and two million Parisians walked through the French capital on a cold Sunday in January 2015. On our minds were the staff of Charlie Hebdo, murdered four days earlier by two Islamic extremists; in our hands were pens, crayons and pencils, brandished to demonstrate our faith in free speech. World leaders attended and the global unity was uplifting; but it turned out to be largely ephemeral, nowhere more than in Britain. Has Britain’s heart ever really been in the fight for free speech in the past decade? As Allison Pearson of the Daily Telegraph recently discovered, Essex Police no longer uphold the spirit

Thursday

28 Nov 2024

James Heale

Transport Secretary admits to fraud conviction

In recent years, Labour has made great political hay out of allegations of rule-breaking. The party was never slow to criticise Boris Johnson’s government for breaches of lockdown, with Sir Keir keen to depict himself as ‘Mr Rules.’ So it is sub-optimal, to say the least, that a senior minister has tonight admitted pleading guilty to an offence connected with misleading the police while she was a parliamentary candidate. Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary, appeared at Camberwell Green Magistrates’ Court six months before the 2015 general election, after making a false report to officers that her mobile phone had been stolen. Haigh claimed that she was ‘mugged while on a

Oscar Edmondson

Starmer attacks ‘open border’ Tories, plus Andrea Jenkyns defects

15 min listen

It’s been a day of press conferences in Westminster. First to Reform UK, where Nigel Farage unveiled their newest defection: Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who had served as a Conservative MP from 2015-24. Could there be more defections on the horizon? Next to Keir Starmer who reacted to the newly published migration figures from the ONS. Net migration for the 12 months to June 2024 stands at 728,000. But the real story was the revised 2023 figures, which showed net migration exceeding 900,000. The politics from the press conference were solid – but what about policy announcements? Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale and Michael Simmons, and they also look ahead

Rod Liddle

Can you win the Booker Prize without being able to write?

I mentioned a couple of days ago being underwhelmed by Orbital, Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize-winning novel. But I am a glutton for punishment, and continuing to ignore my long-held practice of never reading Booker winners, I bought last year’s victor – Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch. As I mentioned, this is about a nasty right-wing government taking over in Ireland and being horrid to union officials. It didn’t sound quite up my street, but I thought I’d give it a go. And then I read the second sentence in the book: How the dark gathers without sound the cherry trees. I mean, hello? You’re trying too hard, mate. I know

James Heale

Starmer attacks ‘open border’ Tories

Anyone else want to do a Westminster press conference? Keir Starmer made it a hat-trick this afternoon when he gave his reply to the new immigration figures, following Kemi Badenoch’s comments yesterday and Nigel Farage’s response this morning. The Prime Minister’s team gave it the full No. 10 treatment: the flags, the lectern, Starmer looking statesmanlike as he used the trappings of office for all they were worth. From the bully pulpit of Downing Street, he intoned gravely about the revised 2023 figures that showed net migration exceeding 900,000. The Tories, he said, were guilty of running an ‘open borders experiment’ by ‘design, not accident’. Policies were reformed ‘deliberately’ to

Michael Taube

Trump has put Trudeau in a very difficult position

President-elect Donald Trump confirmed this week that he’s going to fulfil his campaign pledges on tariffs. There will be a 10 per cent tariff on China for failing to stop the flow of the illegal drug Fentanyl into America. And, he’ll put in place 25 per cent tariffs on Mexico and Canada because of their inability to stop illegal drugs and migrants crossing the US border. This puts Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a difficult spot. Trudeau isn’t a strong political leader like Trump. He’s weak, ineffective and a political lightweight ‘As everyone is aware, thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never

William Moore

SAS betrayal, the battle for Odesa & in defence of film flops

48 min listen

This week: SAS SOS The enemy that most concerns Britain’s elite military unit isn’t the IRA, the Taliban or Isis, but a phalanx of lawyers armed with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), writes Paul Wood in The Spectator. Many SAS soldiers now believe that if they kill a terrorist during an operation, they’ll spend decades being hounded through the courts. Paul speaks to former SAS soldiers who say that stories of men being ‘dragged back to be screamed at in interview rooms’ are ‘flying around the canteens now’. Soldiers feel like ‘the good guys have become the bad guys – and the bad guys are now the good guys’.

James Heale

Reform hits 100,000 members

There was a business-like manner in Nigel Farage’s response to the news that net migration was more than 900,000 in 2023. Speaking this morning at a Mayfair press conference, Farage was almost flat in his reply on the ‘horrendous’ figures. He insisted that the Tories would ‘never be forgiven’ for presiding over a nine-fold increase in the ‘tens of thousands’ target promised by David Cameron in 2010. As for Labour, he was similarly withering about the government’s decision to hike the asylum budget by 36 per cent to £5.8 billion. But after the business, came the pleasure. Farage took great delight in revealing that – after months of growing grassroots

Michael Simmons

Labour should be cautious about celebrating the fall in net migration

How can you miss over 300,000 migrants? This morning the Office for National Statistics revised up its previous record high net migration figure to 906,000 meaning that since 2021, 307,000 more migrants are in the country than the ONS previously knew about. So, has Britain turned the corner on migration? There has been a 20 per cent fall in net migration in the year to June compared to the 12 months before, according to figures published this morning by the ONS. Some 1.2 million people migrated to the UK compared with 1.3 million the year before. Meanwhile, 479,000 left the UK, up from 414,000 the previous year. Net migration is

Matthew Lynn

Is France heading for a Greek-style crisis?

For the first time ever, France’s borrowing costs have risen above those of Greece. As of today, the bond markets have decided that French debt is a riskier bet than Greece, the country that 15 years ago almost crashed the entire euro-zone with its fiscal extravagance and irresponsibility. True, to some degree that reflects an improvement in Greece’s position, as well as the decline of France’s. Yet the harsh reality is this: France is in a sorry state and president Emmanuel Macron will struggle to patch things up. The bond markets have decided that French debt is a riskier bet than Greece This moment of crisis was bound to happen

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson on Covid failures, the Nanny State & his advice for ‘Snoozefest’ Starmer

36 min listen

Former prime minister Boris Johnson joins The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls to divulge the contents of his new book, Unleashed. He reflects on his premiership as PM during the pandemic, describing the time as a ‘nightmare’ for him. He also details how he managed to suppress the force of Nigel Farage, and gives advice to Keir Starmer on how to build a relationship with Donald Trump. Watch the full interview on SpectatorTV: https://youtu.be/wg-Oxh0X-zM

James Heale

David Cameron u-turns on assisted dying

David Cameron has today become the first former prime minister to come out in support of assisted dying, having previously signalled his opposition to it in 2015. In a piece for the Times, he says that: ‘My main concern and reason for not supporting proposals before now has always been the worry that vulnerable people could be pressured into hastening their own deaths.’ However, Cameron says he has now been reassured by those arguing in favour of Kim Leadbeater’s Bill. Cameron argues: When we know that there’s no cure, when we know death is imminent, when patients enter a final and acute period of agony, then surely, if they can

Stephen Daisley

Britain has a blasphemy law in all but name

Anyone outraged by Labour MP Tahir Ali calling on the government to introduce blasphemy laws has clearly not been paying attention, for there are already blasphemy laws in this country. All Ali wants to do is make them official. When he urges Sir Keir Starmer to prohibit the desecration of the Qur’an and other Abrahamic religious texts, as he did at Prime Minister’s Questions, he will be aware that people are already punished for desecrating the Muslim holy book, including children. The Prime Minister is too progressive to allow himself to disagree with a religious reactionary In March 2023, a 14-year-old boy was suspended from school in Wakefield after a

Melanie McDonagh

The Taoiseach will get more than he bargained for in Ireland’s snap election

The Irish general election happens on Friday. In times past, observers would be marking the rise of Sinn Fein; now the interest has shifted to the parties that are challenging the political consensus. Irish politics can seem weirdly homogenous – with the main parties, in terms of culture, roughly equivalent to the Lib Dems and the wetter end of the Tory party, though in some respects (when it comes to wokery) similarities with the SNP spring to mind. Sinn Fein is on the progressive end of the spectrum on social issues The two big legacy parties from the Civil War, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’, manifestly have more in common

Arieh Kovler

The leak that’s haunting Netanyahu’s government

Early September, days after the gruesome discovery of six murdered Israeli hostages in a tunnel in Gaza, a dramatic scoop appeared in Bild. The German newspaper had obtained a secret internal Hamas document, supposedly obtained from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s personal computer, that revealed Hamas’s hostage negotiation strategy. The document claimed that Hamas was deliberately exploiting the divisions in Israeli society, manipulating the families of the hostages to help blame Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for not making a deal. A day earlier, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle had posted another story based on sensational Israeli intelligence: a claim that Sinwar was planning to smuggle himself and some hostages out of Gaza into Egypt via tunnels