Politics

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

Saturday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Will James Timpson be a radical prisons minister?

The most interesting and unexpected appointment in Keir Starmer’s government is that of James Timpson, the CEO of Timpson, who is now becoming prisons minister. He’s respected across the political spectrum for his work not just in his family-owned key-cutting chain but for his work finding jobs for ex-prisoners. He started off hiring them after visiting a prison, says he ‘got carried away’ to the extent where one in nine of Timpson’s staff are ex-offenders. He has worked hard to encourage other employers to do more. His work in the field led him to believe that many people are being wrongfully imprisoned. He has been appointed as the UK has

Steerpike Steerpike

Failed SNP candidates slam party for election loss

Oh dear. The SNP faced a gruelling general election result this week, losing 38 seats to end up on just nine as voters north of the border overwhelmingly backed Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot. A number of parliamentarians lost their seats in nationalist exodus and some of the party’s failed candidates aren’t taking things well. In Falkirk, SNP hopeful Toni Giugliano – who recorded a rather, um, bizarre song for his election campaign – lost to Labour’s Euan Stainbank in a constituency that hasn’t voted red since 2010. Taking to Facebook to blast the outcome, Giugliano hit out at his party’s poor result and, er, the nationalist MSP for his

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The surprises in Starmer’s cabinet

15 min listen

In his first 24 hours as Prime Minister, Keir Starmer has appointed his cabinet and held a cabinet meeting. Most of his frontbench have carried over their shadow briefs, but there were a few surprise appointments too. Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Times columnist Patrick Maguire. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour should ignore the Lib Dems on social care

Politics is a goldfish bowl, and not in the sense that it’s small and everyone is watching you intensely. It’s more that the inhabitants of the bowl have a three-second memory. That’s the only explanation for the Liberal Democrats saying they will use their 71 MPs to push Labour for cross-party talks on social care.  Care and the health service was one of the key themes of Ed Davey’s campaign, so it’s not a surprise that his party is briefing that social care will be an early focus. And there is a crisis in social care that we’ve known about for 20 years and that is seriously hampering the ability

Steerpike Steerpike

Keir Starmer appoints lawyer who represented Gerry Adams

Since becoming leader of the Labour party, Keir Starmer has faced plenty of scrutiny about his career as a human rights lawyer – and in particular the more unpleasant individuals he represented during his time at the bar. Starmer has, for example, represented in court the preacher Abu Qatada in his battle to avoid being deported to Jordan. For his part, Starmer has always defended himself by pointing out that he was simply doing the job of a lawyer – which is often representing people you don’t agree with. Still, you’d think the new PM would be keen to keep this particular row out of the spotlight. Starmer’s decision to

Eliot Wilson

What will David Lammy’s ‘gear shift’ mean?

Next summer, David Lammy will celebrate 25 years as a Member of Parliament. At 51, he has just been appointed Foreign Secretary after three years shadowing the role. Despite rare and valuable ministerial experience, he is an unlikely candidate for Britain’s chief diplomat. His first pronouncements as foreign secretary stress change: ‘a reset on Europe, a reset on our relationships with the global south, and a reset on climate’. We will have not only resets but ‘gear shifts’, whatever that might mean: ‘gear shifts on European security and on global security, given all the problems that we’re seeing in the Middle East’. It is very Starmerist to treat change as

Jacob Heilbrunn

Joe Biden’s ABC interview won’t help his doomed campaign

Like a father confessor, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos tried everything to jolt President Joe Biden out of his complacency. He pleaded with him. He queried him. He exhorted him. Nothing worked. Throughout the interview, if that’s what it was, Biden rebuffed his entreaties as though they couldn’t be more outlandish.   Down in the polls? Not a bit of it. Democratic lawmakers preparing to ask him to step down? Never happening. And so on. He clearly couldn’t grasp that his presidency isn’t in trouble; it’s cratering.  Even the Almighty that Biden regularly invoked wouldn’t be able to resurrect his shambles of a presidency Whether Biden is suffering from cognitive issues may

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Angus Colwell, Matthew Parris, Flora Watkins and Rory Sutherland

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: after President Biden’s debate disaster, Freddy Gray profiles the one woman who could persuade him to step down, his wife Jill (1:05); Angus Colwell reports from Israel, where escalation of war seems a very real possibility (9:02); Matthew Parris attempts to reappraise the past 14 years of Conservative government (14:16); Flora Watkins reveals the reasons why canned gin and tonics are so popular (21:24); and, Rory Sutherland asks who could possibly make a better Bond villain than Elon Musk? (25:00).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.  

John Oxley

What did the Tories do with power?

Fourteen years of Tory-led government is over. The second-longest period of dominance by one party since the war is done. For the left, that means relief and joy. For many on the right, there is a sense of frustration, a sense of waste: power has been squandered and little about the country feels more conservative, or even more successful than it did a decade ago. Much of it, bluntly, feels worse. Much of their legacy will be swept away by the stroke of a statutory instrument or a line in the next budget In some ways, this analysis is unfair. There have been some successes in the last 14 years of

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Ed Miliband will be a liability as energy secretary

I know it has only just begun, but it is not too early to start wondering: what will it be that causes the Starmer government its first serious problem? A likely surge in arrivals of illegal migrants seems one possibility, given that some of those encamped in northern France appear to be well aware of British politics and have been reported to be waiting for the moment when Starmer fulfils his policy of ending the Rwanda scheme ‘on day one’. But the confirmation of Ed Miliband as Energy and Climate Secretary raises another source of trouble: Labour’s hugely ambitious plan to decarbonise the national grid by 2030. It should be

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s France has much to learn from Britain’s peaceful election

The left-wing French newspaper Le Monde last month sent its London correspondent across Great Britain to gauge the mood before the general election. He reported that Britain was ‘a broken nation’, and its people ‘glum and divided’. Britain is not in the best of shape, a point on which the people and its politicians are agreed. So the Tories have been booted out and it’s Keir Starmer’s responsibility to try and reinvigorate the country. The transition was achieved calmly, peacefully, democratically, with the only dramatic incident of note the day a silly young woman desperate for attention threw a milkshake at Nigel Farage. If Britain is ‘broken’, then what is

Matthew Lynn

Would Rishi Sunak really be welcome in Silicon Valley?

Rishi Sunak’s bags are probably packed. The plane tickets are booked. And no doubt he has found somewhere for the family to stay while they look for a permanent home. It is widely assumed that, having lost the election, Sunak will soon disappear to Silicon Valley as quickly as possible to restart his career. But hold on. Sure, it is easy to understand why Sunak would want to get as far away as possible from the car crash he has presided over. Yet after running one of the most spectacularly inept election campaigns in history, will the tech giants still want him?  Sunak has just fought what will surely go

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Streeting declares: ‘the NHS is broken’

Wes Streeting has just given a striking statement on arrival at the Department of Health and Social Care in which he announced that ‘from today, the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken’. Parties make campaign threats that there are ‘24 hours to save the NHS’, but this description of Labour’s sacred cow as ‘broken’ goes far beyond that. It recognises the seriousness of the situation for the health service and is a declaration of Streeting’s intent to reform. Streeting has become health secretary during an existential crisis. Voters are still committed to the principles of free healthcare but increasingly losing satisfaction with the way the NHS

Debbie Hayton

How Keir Starmer can make it up to Rosie Duffield

Congratulations to Rosie Duffield, who has won re-election for a third time as Labour MP for Canterbury. For many women – and men, indeed – Duffield’s courageous stance on sex and gender has been a beacon of sense, and a reason to vote Labour. She increased her majority from 1,800 to almost 9,000, an astonishing success in a county where she had previously been the sole Labour MP. It started with LGBT+ Labour’s demand for ‘an apology and reparations’ Duffield’s success owes little to Keir Starmer who couldn’t even be bothered to invite her to his election campaign launch just up the road in Gillingham. Perhaps he is still smarting

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Keir Starmer channeled Obama in his first Downing Street speech

In his first speech from the Downing Street lectern, Sir Keir Starmer was setting out to reaffirm those qualities that won him the election. That was a relatively low bar to clear – he just had to give the impression that he was neither a crook nor a maniac – and he cleared it with ease. Here was a solid, sensible, ostentatiously humble speech delivered with persuasive but unshowy emotion.  Starmer was punctilious about showing grace in victory. Just a few days ago, he was deriding Rishi Sunak as a selfish chancer who had enriched himself ‘betting against Britain’ in his financial career; today, he was keen to ‘pay tribute’

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Meet Labour’s elite Scottish MPs

Scottish Labour has won 37 of the 57 seats north of the border, an increase of 36 on the 2019 result. This is the party’s best showing in Scotland since 2010 and comes nine years after losing all but one of their seats to the SNP. Labour will be sending its most impressive crop of Scottish MPs to Westminster in a generation. Leading the pack is Douglas Alexander, the new MP for Lothian East. A protege of Gordon Brown, he was MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South from 1997 to 2015, serving as transport and later Scottish secretary under Tony Blair and international development secretary under Brown. After 14 years

Eliot Wilson

The election has left Irish unionism in crisis

The voters of Northern Ireland are used to being an impenetrable afterthought to most mainstream commentators in Britain. The general election has, however, delivered a series of enormous shocks, many of which are in danger of being overlooked. One of those is that Sinn Féin has seven Members of Parliament and is, for the first time in Northern Ireland’s history, the largest party at Westminster. But that is at best nuanced, and at worst misleading. The deeper story is the crisis facing unionism. Sinn Féin, founded in 1905 when A.J. Balfour was still prime minister, and for many years the political wing of the Provisional IRA, held the seven seats

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What Keir Starmer’s first Downing Street speech reveals

Keir Starmer has given his first speech as prime minister. Labour’s seventh leader to make it to 10 Downing Street walked up the pavement to his new home to cheers from supporters and campaigners gathered on the street. He and his wife Victoria made an effort to stop, thank and hug their friends and family on the way up. Given Starmer has won a majority close to Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide, he could be forgiven for striking a slightly triumphalist tone. Instead, Starmer treaded carefully. He said: ‘With respect and humility I invite you all to join this government of service… our work is urgent and we begin it today.’

Keir Starmer

Full text: I’ll govern ‘unburdened by doctrine’

I have just returned from Buckingham Palace, where I accepted an invitation from His Majesty the King to form the next government of this great nation. I want to thank the outgoing prime minister, Rishi Sunak. His achievement as the first British-Asian prime minister of our country – the extra effort that that will have required should not be underestimated by anyone, and we pay tribute to that today. And we also recognise the dedication and hard work he brought to his leadership. But now our country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal and a return of politics to public service. When the gap between the sacrifices made

Robert Tombs

How the Tories changed Britain

The late Roger Scruton (whose wrongful sacking as a housing adviser by a Tory minister in 2019 was a sign that things were badly wrong) defined the fundamental issue: ‘There can be no democracy without a demos, a “we” united by a shared sense of belonging.’ How has the demos changed over 14 years of Conservative government? The ‘we’ is weaker than when David Cameron and Nick Clegg were promoting a Big Society. We are in a pessimistic mood in which saying that ‘nothing works’ has become a catchphrase. Politicians are despised. The party that has governed for so long cannot avoid responsibility.  The government seemed scared to defend their only truly historic