Politics

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

Sunday

Steerpike Steerpike

Reform candidate ditches party over ‘racism and sexism’

Another day, another election campaign drama. Now it’s Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in the limelight with more candidate controversy. Only this time it’s not the party defending contentious comments. Instead, one of the party’s candidates has turned on Reform. Oo er. Liam Booth-Isherwood, formerly a Reform candidate for Erewash, has today disowned the party over allegations of racism. The former Farage man has instead decided to endorse the Conservative party, backing the Tory contender – Maggie Throup – in the election. ‘Over the past few weeks, I have been increasingly disillusioned with the behaviour and conduct of Reform,’ Booth-Isherwood claimed in a statement, adding: Whilst I have campaigned alongside

Lucy Dunn

Sunday shows round-up: Farage insists racism row canvasser an ‘actor’

Nigel Farage: racism row canvasser is an ‘actor’ It’s been a tricky few days for Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage after one of his party’s canvassers was caught using a racial slur against the Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak hit back at the Reform man’s words, saying it ‘hurts and it makes me angry’. Yet today, Farage insisted that he was not linked to controversial members, saying to Sky’s Trevor Phillips that in this case he ‘knows it is’ a set up, calling the member in question an ‘actor’. He went on: If you want to support us, why not come as the person you really are. Why come using your

Jonathan Spyer

Will Hezbollah declare war on Israel?

In Israel currently, people are waiting for a possible escalation in the north. The United States, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Russia and the Netherlands have called on their citizens in Lebanon to leave the country. Western embassies in Lebanon are exploring the coastal area to locate possible points from where an evacuation by sea could be carried out. The German foreign ministry, in a message on its website, drily notes: ‘A further escalation could also lead to a complete suspension of air traffic from Rafiq Hariri Airport. Leaving Lebanon by air would then no longer be possible.’   The USS Wasp amphibious assault ship has arrived via the Strait of Gibraltar to the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why is Sunak proud of his defensive campaign?

Rishi Sunak isn’t lacking in energy as he goes into his final few days of election campaigning. He is, though, using that energy in some quite futile ways. He spent much of his interview with Laura Kuenssberg this morning arguing with the way she phrased questions and getting irritated that he wasn’t being given enough time to explain himself on key policy areas. That tetchy impatience – something Sunak never recognises in himself – has long been one of his visible flaws.  It isn’t necessarily the kind of visible flaw that puts voters off a prime minister. The problem for Sunak was not whether he had eaten enough breakfast and

Michael Taube

Trudeau must uncover the truth about what happened in Kabul

Barely a week has gone by before Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is back in the news again – and for all the wrong reasons. Trudeau and his Liberal government have been involved in a litany of mistakes, missteps and messes since they took power in 2015. These include previous allegations of the PM wearing blackface, ethics breaches, questionable spending history – and more. And now a new incident this week can be added to the list. This controversy, more than most, seems particularly egregious. The Globe and Mail’s blistering story alleged that then-National Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan instructed Canada’s Armed Forces to focus on rescuing about 225 Sikhs in Afghanistan during the 2021

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Coffee House Shots live: election special

58 min listen

Join Fraser Nelson, Katy Balls and Kate Andrews for this special edition of Coffee House Shots, recorded live ahead of the general election. As election day draws closer, Fraser talks through some myth-busting statistics and the team answer questions from the audience. Could this election increase support for proportional representation? What policy does the panel think has been the most interesting? And was there ever a probable path to victory for Rishi Sunak? Produced by Natasha Feroze and Patrick Gibbons. Check out The Spectator’s data hub for more graphs and statistics, updated daily. 

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Will Marine Le Pen finish what her father started?

France votes today. If the opinion polls are correct Marine Le Pen’s National Rally will be the big winner in the first round of the parliamentary elections. A poll on Friday had the NR on 36.5 per cent – seven and a half per cent ahead of the left-wing Popular Front coalition, with Emmanuel Macron’s centrist union third on 20.5 per cent of the vote share. The polls were spot on at the start of the month, predicting a landslide victory for the NR in the European elections that duly transpired – so it seems probable that once again one in three voters will cast their ballot for a party

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Inside the Lib Dems’ campaign to tear down the Blue Wall

‘We would not put in this effort if we weren’t the challengers, and we clearly are.’ Liberal Democrat candidate Paul Kohler is sitting on a park bench on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Wimbledon, South West London. In 2019, this was the tightest Tory-Lib Dem marginal seat in the country: Kohler lost out to the Conservative incumbent Stephen Hammond by a mere 628 votes.  Last time may have been painfully close (‘You’re telling me!’) but now Kohler fancies his chances – and the polls suggest he’s right to be confident. With just four days to go until polling day, the latest surveys suggest that he could win the seat with

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Paul Johnson: Tory and Labour attacks are ‘broadly fictional’

We’re five weeks into the election campaign – and just days away from polling day – and voters have plenty of parties, and numbers, to consider. Labour will raise everyone’s tax bill by £2,000, claim the Conservatives. Mortgages will rise by £4,800 under another Tory government, insist Labour. Is any of it true? ‘I would suggest that voters entirely ignore all of those sorts of numbers and calculations’, says Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, in The Spectator’s office. ‘I think they’re broadly fictional.’ They are impossible claims to make, partly because ‘we don’t know what would happen under these different governments, because they really haven’t told

Robin Ashenden

The Tories have much to learn from their 1997 wipeout

If polls are anything to go by, Labour’s historic 1997 election win – 418 seats to the Tories’ 165 – is about to be dwarfed by this week’s vote. An exclusive survey for the Daily Telegraph recently predicted Labour would win 516 seats to the Tories’ 53. A political wipeout, in other words, seems to await Rishi Sunak and his government – their worst result ever. Hanging on to 165 seats in parliament, however woeful it seemed three decades ago, would put smiles of relief on most Conservative faces. Hanging on to 165 seats, however woeful it seemed three decades ago, would put smiles of relief on most Conservative faces

Saturday

Jawad Iqbal

Why is Starmer starting rows before the election?

The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has insisted he didn’t mean to cause ‘concern or offence’ when he called for more Bangladeshi asylum seekers to be deported. His comments – singling out Bangladesh as a place where more people could be returned to from the UK – have sparked uproar in the British-Bangladeshi community (traditionally Labour-supporting), as well as strong criticism from some of Starmer’s own MPs, councillors and activists. What exactly did the Labour leader say that has landed him in such hot water? Speaking specifically about people who come to the UK illegally, Starmer told the Sun newspaper: ‘I’ll make sure we get planes going off… back to the countries

Margaret Mitchell

Biden’s social media needs a refresh

Joe Biden has a cold. That was the desperate message sent out by sources close to the president halfway through Thursday night’s painful debate. Biden’s sick-note recalls the first televised debate in 1960, when the incumbent vice president and Republican nominee Richard Nixon, recently hospitalised and still recovering from a staph infection, appeared pale and sickly beside the tanned, waspy Democrat John F. Kennedy who had the advantage of makeup on his side. Trump and Biden campaigns have been courting ‘content creators’ Six-and-a-half decades on, the presidential debates remain little more than a beauty pageant, this time apparently with morticians staffing the makeup team. The televised format changed the presidency forever,

Peter Wood

Newsom is better than Biden

I have on the desk two yo-yos. One is from the brand Duncan – the ‘Imperial’ model. The other is from the brand Yomega – the ‘Fireball’. Which is better?  The Imperial is the top-of-the-line Duncan model, a classic, that gave warrant to company’s 1960s slogan: ‘If it isn’t a Duncan, it isn’t a yo-yo’. The Imperial is the vintage Rolls Royce of yo-yos. It’s elegant but not for the racecourse. The Fireball, introduced in the 1990s, was part of the new generation of ‘transaxle’ yoyos, which allow for sustained spin and complex tricks. It is a sports car – though since superseded by much higher performance models. While you weigh that choice, let’s

Iain Macwhirter

SNP attempts to legislate against inequality failed. Labour’s will too

The road to hell, as we all know, is paved with good intentions. It is also lined with reams of paper policies which inhibit action, increase bureaucracy and achieve contradictory results. The ones who generally benefit are the high priests of the bureaucratic order: lawyers, consultants, academics and NGOs. So no prizes for guessing who will mainly benefit from Labour’s promise to achieve the dream of every far-left activist since Proudhon: make economic inequality illegal.  The Labour manifesto commits Keir Starmer to implement the ‘socio-economic duty’ (SED) of the 2010 Equality Act, which potentially criminalises ‘inequalities that result from differences in occupation, education, place of residence or social class’. This extraordinary law

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour’s women problem

14 min listen

The gender debate has become increasingly difficult for the Labour Party as the election campaign has rumbled on. JK Rowling has now agreed to meet with Labour to discuss gender transition policy, after writing in The Times that she’d struggle to vote for the party after feeling dismissed by them. After the election, will gender become an increasingly difficult issue for Keir Starmer? Megan McElroy speaks to Katy Balls and Sonia Sodha, chief leader writer and columnist at the Observer 

Steerpike Steerpike

Kemi Badenoch blasts Nigel Farage

With a week to go until polling day, the Tories are stepping up their attacks on Reform. Following Channel 4’s programme on Thursday, the Security Minister Tom Tugendhat has taken to the airwaves. Speaking to Times Radio today he warned that ‘there is a real pattern of racist and misogynistic views’ in Nigel Farage’s pattern and that the conduct of some of their activists is ‘horrific’. And Tugendhat – a Tory Remainer seen as being on the left of the party – is not alone. For Kemi Badenoch, the centre-right favourite to be the next Conservative leader, has today stepped up her attacks on Farage. The Business Secretary has previously

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Katy Balls, Gavin Mortimer, Sean Thomas, Robert Colvile and Melissa Kite

31 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Katy Balls reflects on the UK general election campaign and wonders how bad things could get for the Tories (1:02); Gavin Mortimer argues that France’s own election is between the ‘somewheres’ and the ‘anywheres’ (7:00); Sean Thomas searches for authentic travel in Colombia (13:16); after reviewing the books Great Britain? by Torsten Bell and Left Behind by Paul Collier, Robert Colvile ponders whether Britain’s problems will ever get solved (20:43); and, Melissa Kite questions if America’s ye olde Ireland really exists (25:44).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.  

Lucy Dunn

How Scottish Starmerites are wooing urban voters

Will Scotland’s central belt turn red? The last eighteen months of SNP chaos, from police probes to iPad scandals, coupled with an intense distrust of the Westminster government post-pandemic have left many Scottish voters politically homeless. Sir Keir Starmer is predicted a historic win and Labour is hoping Scotland will help the party achieve it. Yet this general election lacks exciting, eye-catching leaders. And it’s certainly not Starmer’s personality that is compelling Scotland’s voters to switch sides. Spend a day out in Glasgow and the criticism of the party’s leader comes across. From his flip flopping over Gaza to his staid election debate performances, the Labour leader does not cut

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Sunak’s campaign has been a disaster from start to finish

Dry wit is a much under-appreciated quality in this age of high-impact sledgehammer communication. In an election full of sub-standard soundbites and slogans signifying almost nothing, there is an especially strong case to be grateful for the occasional appearance of wit. There was the moment when Nigel Farage mocked the Plaid Cymru chap who was opposing a crackdown on foreign students bringing in dependents by telling him that if you had got a place as an overseas student at a British university it didn’t mean that you should be able to bring your mum. But the gold medal for LOLs must go to the retiring Conservative ex-minister Tim Loughton, who was

John Keiger John Keiger

Macron’s power in Europe is draining

In Brussels over the last two days EU heads of state and government have been carving up the ‘top jobs’. France is represented by President Emmanuel Macron, whose party took a lashing in the European elections, diminishing further his international standing. By contrast, Marine Le Pen’s victorious Rassemblement National, now on track to win the 7 July general elections, was not present. When RN forms a government it will have to live with the consequences of the President’s decisions for at least five years. It is no coincidence, therefore, that on Wednesday night Marine Le Pen gave an interview opening the way to a constitutional struggle with the head of state