Politics

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

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Tories call for watchdog inquiry into Labour cronyism row

Back to Whitehall, where the row over civil service appointments continues to gather pace. It transpires that the Conservatives have called for a watchdog inquiry into recent perks awarded to Labour donors – after one was offered a civil service job and another received a pass to No. 10. It certainly doesn’t seem like this cronyism row is going anywhere soon for Sir Keir… Now shadow Commons leader Chris Philp has informed MPs that he is requesting the civil service commissioner and the adviser on ministerial interests to examine the rather curious cases of Sir Ian Corfield and Lord Alli. Philp slammed Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot for ‘improper appointments’,

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Miliband’s net zero madness & meet Reform UK’s new poster boy

39 min listen

This week: Miliband’s empty energy promises. Ed Miliband has written a public letter confirming that Labour plans to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030. The problem with this, though, is that he doesn’t have the first idea about how to do it. The grid doesn’t have the capacity to transmit the required energy, Ross Clark writes, and Miliband’s claim that wind is ‘nine times cheaper’ than fossil fuels is based upon false assumptions. What is more, disclosed plans about ‘GB Energy’ reveal that Miliband’s pet project isn’t really a company at all – but an investment scheme. This empty vessel will funnel taxpayer money into the hands of private companies

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Michel Barnier is France’s new PM. It’s hard to think of a worse job

Michel Barnier is the new prime minister of France. Best known in Britain as the EU’s chief negotiator during the Brexit negotiations, the 73-year-old is the oldest premier in the history of the Fifth Republic and he was unveiled sixty days after the parliamentary elections that threw the Republic into chaos. Le Pen appears satisfied with the choice of Barnier In a statement issued from the Élysée, president Emmanuel Macron said he believed he had found the person to lead a government that ‘meets the conditions to be as stable as possible and give themselves the chances to gather the widest possible support’. The appointment brings to an end a shambolic summer

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Labour blasted over ‘shoddy’ Lords reforms

To the Lords, where this afternoon an urgent question was granted on the subject of hereditary peers. It follows today’s news that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government will remove the remaining 92 seats in the second chamber reserved for the hereditary position in 18 months, meaning these peers will be unable to both sit and vote in the House. But not everyone, it transpires, is particularly thrilled by the prospect… This afternoon, Lord Strathclyde grilled the Leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Smith of Basildon, on why the government had been courteous enough keep peers informed of its reform timeline before the latest development made its way to the

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Labour’s early prison release scheme can’t afford to fail

Are you ready for SDS40? You might need to be if you’re unlucky enough to live in a high crime area. This is the anodyne descriptor for the government’s emergency release of an estimated 5,000 offenders this month and next, having served only 40 per cent of their sentence in prison custody. This is the result of a hospital pass from the outgoing Conservative government who passed laws to lock more people up for longer without any coherent thought about where they would be banged up. The statutory instrument to allow this release in two tranches comes into effect on 10 September. About 2,000 prisoners are set to be released

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP faces budget fears as cross-party relations break down

All is not well in Holyrood. The SNP announced its programme for government on Wednesday – but it hasn’t left many impressed. And now it transpires that the governing party is set to face further problems in passing its budget, as it continues to fail to work with its political opponents. Not like the Nats to rub people up the wrong way, eh? Once in a co-operation agreement with the SNP, it seems the Scottish Greens are still rather upset with the nationalists. Patrick Harvie’s barmy army has thrown its toys out the pram after Swinney’s speech revealed that policies the parties had formerly worked on together were to be

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why France blames Britain for the Channel migrant crisis

Only hours after twelve migrants drowned attempting to reach England from France another group set out. This time they were intercepted by police before their small boat could be launched close to Dunkirk. Two alleged smugglers were arrested and three policemen were injured as they came under attack from a mob of around 100 angry migrants. ‘England is a country where you can work very easily without having a residence permit’ Tuesday’s tragedy has evidently had no effect on the thousands of migrants strung out along the northern French coast; they remain as determined as ever to reach England. Why this resolve to cross the Channel? That is a question

Monica Porter

Will Angela Rayner really water down the right-to-buy scheme?

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner is said to be planning on watering down the right-to-buy scheme which enables council tenants to purchase their homes from local authorities at a significantly reduced price. The policy, famously introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1980, has helped many thousands of families become home-owners, giving them greater security and a stake in their local communities. But councils are keen to cut the cost of Thatcher’s flagship policy. As a result, Rayner – who once blasted her opponents as Tory ‘scum’ – is considering axing the scheme for newly built council houses and cutting the discount offered to existing tenants. While Downing Street has insisted the policy won’t

Douglas Murray

The joy of our deluded politicians

There are a number of joys in life that do not get enough attention. One is the sheer, unadulterated pleasure that can be gained from watching a politician speak about something they know nothing about. This season Kamala Harris is giving especially abundant material for connoisseurs. Recognising that there is plenty she doesn’t know about, her campaign team are hoping that, Starmer-like, she can glide into office without having to say anything about what she might do once there. On the rare occasions when she does sit down and get asked questions, she is a master in her peculiar field. For instance, if Harris is asked about how her administration

James Heale James Heale

The ‘British Muslim patriot’ on a mission to get Farage into No. 10

Few people had heard of Zia Yusuf before he spoke at Reform’s final campaign rally in Birmingham. But after a stirring speech to 4,000 supporters, he became one of the election’s overnight stars. ‘This boy’s got real talent,’ admitted Nigel Farage afterwards. He is now emerging as one of the more intriguing figures in the landscape of the right: a self-described ‘British Muslim patriot’, a 37-year-old multimillionaire, who says his mission in politics is to take Farage to No. 10. Farage is clearly Yusuf’s political lodestar: his name features dozens of times in our hour-long exchange When we meet at The Spectator office (his £100,000 Range Rover parked outside), Yusuf

Andrew Watts

Inside an MP’s inbox

There is nothing so ex as an ex-MP, Tam Dalyell used to say. Now that parliament has returned from recess, and the newly elected MPs are no longer described as ‘newly elected MPs’, it may seem that the old contrarian had a point. But the truth is that being an ex-MP’s staffer is as ex as it gets. I worked for Derek Thomas, the Tory MP for St Ives from 2015 until this year. The day after the election – our man lost to the Liberal Democrat, to make it even more humiliating; like being dumped for a librarian – the emails and the phone calls stopped. Even the woman

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Starmer’s double standards

Sir Keir Starmer’s readiness to do ‘whatever it takes’ to support Ukraine seems to be qualified by his fear of offending the Biden administration. He wants to let Ukraine use British Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia but dares not, for fear of the White House. Surely if the special relationship were really strong, its junior partner would be confident enough to diverge occasionally. Think of Mrs Thatcher saying to George Bush senior, at the time of the first Gulf war, ‘This is no time to go wobbly’. In fact, however, Sir Keir is not even consistent: he is prepared to annoy the United States by making the worthless gesture of

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Miliband’s empty energy promise

Though not quite up there with history’s great political texts, Ed Miliband’s letter this week to the director of the ESO, which runs Britain’s national grid, is a rather important document. It reveals – or confirms – that Labour has committed itself to decarbonising Britain’s electricity system by 2030 without really having any idea of how that can be done. Miliband described this letter as a ‘formal commission… to provide practical advice on achieving clean power’. That is all very well, except shouldn’t Miliband have sought this advice months ago, before pledging to achieve net zero on domestic energy by 2030? This week was supposed to be the big reveal: we

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: UK cancels Israel exports, Grenfell fire report released and AfD victory in Germany

Home The government cancelled 30 out of 350 export licences for arms to Israel on items that it said could be used by Israel for ‘offensive purposes’ in Gaza. Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, said: ‘A step like the one taken by the UK now sends a very problematic message to the Hamas terrorist organisation and its backers in Iran.’ Nine offshore wind farm contracts were awarded by the government; last year there were no bidders. The previous government had increased the maximum guaranteed price from £44 to £73 per MWh. The headquarters of GB Energy, a new UK government-backed energy company, will be in Aberdeen. Shona Robison, Scotland’s

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The rise of the Gaza Five

What should the Tories do about Nigel Farage? The leadership candidates have made many speeches and written many columns explaining how they would answer this question. Yet at Kemi Badenoch’s campaign launch on Monday, she dismissed it. Instead, there was another contingent of new MPs she was more concerned with: the pro-Gaza independents. ‘When everyone was worried about the election of Reform MPs, I was far far more worried about the five new MPs elected on the back of sectarian Islamist politics, alien ideas that have no place here,’ she said. ‘[That is] the sort of politics we need to defeat – and defeat quickly.’ This represents the introduction of

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Kamala Harris and the audacity of desperation

Barack Obama wrote The Audacity of Hope. The Kamala Harris story of 2024 could be called The Audacity of Desperation. Her brief candidacy has been an awesome display of chutzpah. With just weeks to go before the election, a panicked Democratic party pushed aside their failing Commander-in-Chief and replaced him with Harris, the distinctly unpopular vice-president. She was then shamelessly presented to America and the world as an agent of change, even though she has no clear vision or agenda of her own. Twelve days have passed since Kamala Harris accepted the nomination and still her campaign website offers no clues as to what she might do as president. She has made

Wednesday

Oscar Edmondson

Tory leadership race latest: Priti out

14 min listen

The first round of the Conservative leadership race has seen Dame Priti Patel eliminated with the fewest votes. Robert Jenrick came out on top but, with a second vote taking place on Tuesday, where could Patel’s supporters go? Who could get eliminated next? Will ‘Melmentum’ build? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Risk-takers, US election & the power of luck in politics – with Nate Silver

34 min listen

Labor Day is a critical mile-marker on the road to the general election. Now just two months away, pollsters are busy processing data and making predictions, but nobody really knows whether it will be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in the White House. Nate Silver is one of America’s most well-respected pollsters. The former poker player set up FiveThirtyEight, a polling company and now writes The Silver Bullet Substack. Nate Silver’s latest book On the Edge: the Art of Risking Everything takes a look at two mindsets: the River and the Village.  Nate joins Freddy Gray on the Americano show to discuss probability in sport and politics, how luck is

Euan McColm

No one wants to help the SNP

Humiliation really does concentrate the political mind, doesn’t it? Over the years when the SNP dominated the Scottish parliamentary chamber, ministers spent little time reaching across party lines. Indeed, by the time Nicola Sturgeon was first minister in 2014, for every SNP MSP missing the point in Holyrood, there was another pointing and jeering at anyone who disagreed with them. In July, the SNP lost 39 of its 48 Westminster seats. Suddenly, cooperation and collaboration became the order of the day. Opposition politicians smell SNP blood First Minister John Swinney was the very model of the reasonable man as he announced the SNP’s ‘Programme for Government’ on Wednesday afternoon. To

Laurie Wastell

The real reason Keir Starmer keeps forgetting he’s prime minister

When Sir Keir Starmer faced off against Rishi Sunak at the despatch box today, in the first Prime Minister’s Questions after the parliamentary recess, he seemed to be rather unsure what his role was. Over the course of their exchanges, the ostensible leader of the country referred to his opposite number not once, not twice, but five times as ‘the prime minister’. It was bad enough when Starmer made this mistake back in July, though after four years in opposition and just weeks into the new role, we might perhaps understand it having become a habit. But to do it again? After he’s been in office for two months, attended a Nato Summit,