Politics

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

Tuesday

4 Jun 2024

What Farage gets about politics and entertainment

Towards the end of last year, Nigel Farage set tongues wagging as he entered the jungle for I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Yesterday he announced his return to electoral politics – and the national conversation about him now is curiously similar to what it was then. Will the masses actually vote for him? Will people find his rhetoric refreshing – or racist? And is this good or bad for GB News? We’re used to talking in a slightly superior English way about Donald Trump, the former host of The Apprentice, as the reality TV president across the pond. But Britain is not so different. Our politics is not just downstream from

Iain Macwhirter

The Scottish leaders debate won’t have changed voters’ minds

When Alex Salmond was leader of the SNP he used to complain bitterly to the broadcasters that it was unfair to stage TV debates with three unionist party leaders – Labour, Conservatives and the Lib Dems – against the one nationalist. In last night’s Scottish leaders debate though, the unionist imbalance hardly figured. That is because independence hardly figured. Anas Sarwar arguably won by sheer persistence, though his robotic delivery might have alienated some voters. The Tory leader, Douglas Ross got in his customary line about the SNP’s ‘obsession’ with separatism and the SNP leader, John Swinney, agreed that independence remained ‘line one, page one’ of the SNP manifesto, but

Fraser Nelson

Are the Tories telling the truth? A look at the data

A quirk of the UK system is that the requirement to tell the truth in adverts does not apply to politicians. This is, in effect, a license to lie – or, at least, to stretch the truth until the elastic snaps. The Conservatives have given some examples in their first campaign video an indication. It shows the Union Flag flying upside down, often taken as a sign of distress. The gist is that Rishi Sunak ‘is making progress’ with his plan, but when it lists that progress it says much that is – how to say? – at variance with the actualité. All can be checked on The Spectator’s data hub,

Gareth Roberts

Even Nigel Farage will struggle to make this election exciting

Unlike Brenda from Bristol, I usually love elections – but not this one. Theresa May’s self-destruction in 2017 was one of the most fascinating events I’ve ever seen. The high-stakes tension of Boris vs. Corbyn in 2019 had me gripped to the TV. Even as a child, I couldn’t get enough of the high drama of politics: on Friday June 10 1983, I threw a sickie from school just so I could sit at home and read all the newspapers about Thatcher’s triumph: it was my pitiful idea of fun at fifteen years old. Yet Sunak vs. Starmer feels like even more of a foregone conclusion than 1997, when Tony

Monday

3 Jun 2024

Isabel Hardman

Labour comes out of Scottish debate on top

There is a truism in British politics that things would be much more civil if there were more women in the room. Tonight’s all-male Scottish leaders’ debate undermined that: the exchanges were far less vehement and aggressive than they had been when Nicola Sturgeon was SNP leader and when she was facing other female leaders. The real reason for this had nothing to do with the gender of the leaders standing in the STV studio, or indeed much to do with a new era of kinder, more civil politics and everything to do with the fact the wind has gone out of the SNP’s sails. John Swinney reminded the audience

James Heale

Could Farage crush the Tories?

13 min listen

This afternoon a wildcard was thrown into the election – the return of Nigel Farage. He will be standing for the Reform party at Clacton, the one parliamentary seat that Ukip had held. What will this mean for the Conservatives? James Heale talks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.

Patrick O’Flynn

Nigel Farage knows the Tories are there for the taking

The one thing that had gone right for Rishi Sunak in the election campaign to date has now gone wrong. Nigel Farage has been so energised by the first ten days of the election that he has taken back the leadership of the Reform party and decided to stand for parliament in Clacton after all. Tory staffers who had expected to be running a ‘Stop Farage’ operation but were then stood down will now have to be stood back up again. Farage has discerned that this time round, the Tories are truly there for the taking. They have drifted so far from their base on immigration, taxation, crime and net

Steerpike

Watch: Shapps hangs up after being told he will lose his seat

Oh dear. It’s been another bad day for the Tories. Shortly after Nigel Farage announced his return as leader of Reform, the first YouGov MRP poll of 50,000 voters dropped, showing Sunak’s party down to just 140 seats. But for one Conservative, things were about to get even worse. As Sky’s Sam Coates discussed the MRP poll on air, his phone rang and his Apple Watch lit up. On it was emblazoned the name of Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary. At Sophy Ridge’s insistence, Coates took the call, as the camera kept on rolling. ‘Hello Grant Shapps’, he said. ‘You’re live on Sky News.’ Amid background muttering and laughing from

Katy Balls

Rishi’s nightmare: YouGov MRP predicts Labour super majority

It never rains but it pours for Rishi Sunak. Less than an hour after Nigel Farage performed a shock U-turn, announcing he will not only stand for election but take over the leadership of the Reform party, YouGov has released its first MRP poll of the election campaign. It does not make pretty reading for the Tories. The MRP poll says that were an election held today, Labour would win back a whopping majority of 194 seats – a bigger landslide than 1997. YouGov estimate that in, an election held now, Labour would win 422 seats in total and the Tories would be left with just 140 seats. Ed Davey’s

Limor Simhony Philpott

Joe Biden’s ceasefire proposal could sink Benjamin Netanyahu

Joe Biden’s introduction of the three-stage deal to end the war in Gaza was a clever rout to bypass Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden has lost confidence in Netanyahu’s readiness to present things to the Israeli public, and to his own cabinet, in an honest and truthful way. By presenting the terms of the deal clearly and independently from Netanyahu’s spins, Biden was in full control of the message, in the hope that the Israeli public will back the deal and make it impossible for Netanyahu to back out of it. Netanyahu’s already unstable coalition is on even shakier ground now Netanyahu has spent the past eight months manoeuvring between the demands

James Heale

Why Farage is back as Reform leader

He’s back. After all the teasing and all the rhetoric, Nigel Farage has finally announced his return as Reform leader. Having initially pledged that he would not stand at this election, he told a 100-strong room in Westminster: ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ He will now stand as Reform’s candidate in Clacton – the only seat Ukip ever won in a general election, back in 2015. ‘I cannot turn my back on the people’s army’ he said to the room. ‘I cannot turn my back on all those people who voted for us… I can’t let those people down, I won’t let those people down.’ If this is to be a change

Ross Clark

Nigel Farage’s election U-turn could be deadly for the Tories

No wonder that Nigel Farage has decided that he would rather be leader of Reform UK than merely honorary president, and that he would like another shot at standing as an MP in Clacton. He looks as if he is the only politician – with the possible exception of Ed Davey – who is actually enjoying this campaign. Indeed, he seems to have engaged what used to be Boris Johnson’s secret political weapon: optimism. That could prove to be deadly for the Conservatives. Farage’s thin skin seems to have thickened markedly Farage hasn’t always been all smiles on the campaign trail. On the contrary, in 2015 Ukip’s then economics spokesman,

Isabel Hardman

George Galloway: Labour is the ‘number one enemy’

George Galloway would be happy if his Workers’ Party of Britain denied Labour the chance of an outright majority at the election because it would mean that whoever was in power would have to listen to the smaller parties. That was his message today when interviewed by Andrew Neil on Times Radio: the former Labour MP does not see a Labour government as being at all worthwhile over and above a Conservative one. He is standing in Rochdale, which he won in a by-election earlier this year after Labour messed up with its own candidate. ‘We are a threat to Labour in at least 100 places. We can either beat

Steerpike

Watch: Lib Dems photobomb Sunak event

Can anything go right on Rishi Sunak’s magical mystery tour? Nothing seems to be going right for the Prime Minister as he campaigns around the country, seeking to overturn Labour’s 20-point lead in the polls. Whether it’s attendees rolling their eyes on camera or an ill-advised trip to Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, the PM often seems to attract headlines for all the wrong reasons. So Mr S was not surprised to see the local Lib Dems making the most out of a visit by the PM to Leander rowing club in Henley-upon-Thames. As Sunak chatted away to locals, a Lib Dem vessel came motoring past behind him, with attendees on board

Stephen Daisley

The taxman has failed Britain’s poor

Today we are witnessing a significant failure of the UK state. This morning, the personal finance campaigner Martin Lewis reported that around 30 per cent of families had not received their latest child benefit payment. HMRC, which administers the payments, said it was ‘working to resolve the issue’ and advising claimants to ‘continue to check your bank account throughout the day’. This evening, HMRC said that 500,000 claimants had been affected. Child Benefit is worth £24 per week for the eldest child and £15.90 for every child thereafter. These sums will seem trivial to those with means but to poor and low-paid families they are a financial lifeline. The Daily

James Heale

What is Nigel Farage planning?

Nigel Farage continues to tease Westminster with his endless ‘will he, won’t he?’ dance. The former Ukip leader is hosting an ‘emergency press conference’ at 4pm amid speculation that he will announce he is standing as a candidate for Reform. It’s been a rollercoaster fortnight for Farage. His initial response to the election was to rule himself out from running, preferring instead to focus on the United States. In the days that followed, Farage expressed his ‘huge regrets’ about that decision. His commitments stateside seem less extensive than many first thought, with Farage expecting to only do one event for Donald Trump in Detroit. His two speeches for Reform last week, meanwhile,

Eliot Wilson

Starmer’s ‘national security’ pitch looks insecure

Still haunted by the memory of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Keir Starmer has devoted today to reassuring the electorate that he is committed to maintaining nuclear weapons. The Labour leader is determined not to be seen as unreliable on defence and national security, so has announced that HIS government will introduce a ‘triple lock’ on the nuclear deterrent. A ‘triple lock’ is a tedious phrase, beloved by politicians who have been so careless with promises that they have to engage in a linguistic arms race. If they say they will do something, voters simply don’t believe them, so instead they must create the impression of an inviolable pledge, a measure that will be permanent and

Steerpike

David Lammy’s nuclear-level U-turn

Labour is out this morning insisting they can be trusted with national security – honest! Keir Starmer’s latest wheeze is a ‘nuclear deterrent triple lock’ aimed at giving a ‘total commitment to securing the UK’s future nuclear deterrent.’ Such a ground-breaking policy includes such prior commitments as, er, upgrading the current fleet, maintaining a continuous at-sea deterrent and the construction of four new nuclear submarines at Barrow-in-Furness. Indeed, the only thing that seems new about Labour’s big nuclear announcement is its sheer chutzpah. For at least a dozen members of Starmer’s own hand-picked shadow cabinet have previously voted against renewing Trident – including his chosen man to be Foreign Secretary,

Steerpike

SNP leader’s bizarre funding plea

The SNP will soon have more election campaign launch events than predicted Westminster seats if it continues at the rate it is going. The party’s latest launch — the third this year — was held in the luxury Radisson Blu hotel in Glasgow on Sunday afternoon, where party activists and political candidates gathered to hear a series of speeches ahead of the looming general election. Marketing itself as the party of ‘change’ (Mr S doesn’t have to look far to know where that’s been stolen from), the Nats slammed ‘continuity Keir’ as the ‘most right-wing Conservative Labour leader’ to date. But while the SNP is pledging to ‘eradicate’ child poverty

Isabel Hardman

Kemi Badenoch isn’t alone in dodging the issue of social care

Elections aren’t just fights between the parties over policy. They also include conspiracies of silence where neither side will benefit from talking that much about an issue. Social care is one of those toxic problems: it is a key driver of inefficiency in the NHS, and should have been reformed three decades ago. It is also expensive, complicated and little-understood by voters, who resent any iteration of reform because all involve someone shelling out money when many people think it is free currently (it is not), or that it somehow should be. When Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer launched their big NHS plans last week, they failed to mention social