Politics

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

Thursday

James Heale James Heale

At-risk Tories are looking to board the green gravy train

Tory MPs are already war-gaming what follows the election. Defeat seems certain, but then what? There will be an almighty tussle in which up to 200 colleagues scramble for a handful of the same sort of jobs: consultancies, directorships and advisory gigs. In these Tory Hunger Games, the clever thing to do is to start taking the best jobs now. Chris Skidmore, for example, is not hanging about. His 14 years in parliament involved a three-month stint as interim energy minister, after which he wrote a book about net zero. The green job offers came thick and fast. He was made a professor of practice in net zero policy at

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why Trump can’t be stopped

Donald Trump has dominated Republican politics for so long that it can be hard to remember the time when he did not. It’s easy to forget that at the beginning of 2016 he started the Republican primary process by losing the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz, his more conservative rival. ‘He stole it,’ Trump tweeted afterwards, graceful as ever in defeat. ‘The State of Iowa should disqualify Ted Cruz from the most recent election on the basis that he cheated – a total fraud!’ Trump went on to stun the world, of course, by winning the Republican nomination, then the White House. American politics would never be the same again.

Amber Duke

Meet the women vying to be Trump’s running mate

‘Ibelieve President Trump will have a female vice-president,’ said Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon in a recent interview. He was echoing the thoughts of many of those close to the probable 2024 Republican nominee. Mr Trump himself has said that he likes ‘the concept’ of choosing a female VP. Happily for him, there is no shortage of Republican women auditioning for the role of best supporting actress. The second season of The Golden Bachelor is coming sooner than anticipated. Kari Lake, the former TV newscaster turned politician, won the Conservative Political Action Committee’s (CPAC) straw poll for the VP slot last spring. Lake demurred at the time, as she

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Rishi Sunak has nothing to lose anymore

Both leaders seemed pretty chipper at PMQs. With an election likely this year, Rishi Sunak has nothing to lose and Sir Keir Starmer has everything to gain. He opened with a dig at Sunak’s plan to ‘stop the boats’ which, he alleged, the PM had never truly believed in. Sir Keir lamented that ‘the Rwanda gimmick’ has already swallowed £400 million without a single migrant being removed.  Sunak responded with some interesting footwork. He reduced the problem to ‘Albania’ and said that the number of Albanian applicants had fallen by 93 per cent. Then, with a deft shimmy, he added that Australia had used this method to prevent migrants arriving

Catherine Ellis

Ecuador is trapped in the hell of constant violence

A new year and a new chapter has begun in Ecuador, one that those living there perhaps rather wish hadn’t. The escape of a notorious drug lord on Sunday from one of the country’s prisons, and the storming of a live TV broadcast by armed men, reads like a cliched plotline for a narco drama.  ‘Don’t shoot. Please, don’t shoot’, a woman can be heard pleading, while she and her colleagues are held hostage.  The dramatic incident is part of an eruption of violence that has besieged the South American country in the last few days. When President Daniel Noboa – who’s not even hit two months in the job

Oscar Edmondson

Post Office scandal: government to exonerate victims

15 min listen

At PMQs today Rishi Sunak took the opportunity to announce that the government will be introducing legislation to ‘swiftly’ exonerate the victims of the Post Office scandal. Keir Starmer chose not to probe, instead grilling Rishi on his commitment to curbing migration. With the Safety of Rwanda Bill returning to the Commons next week, will the prime minister be able to juggle demands from the left and the right of his party and avoid a rebellion? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Oscar Edmondson. The Spectator is hiring! We are looking for a new producer to join our broadcast team working across our suite of

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Sir Ed Davey hand back his knighthood?

Lee Anderson kicked off today’s session of PMQs with a jibe at the Lib Dems’ leader’s expense. The Red Wall rottweiler rose from his seat to suggest that, in light of his failure to act on the Post Office scandal, the under-fire Ed Davey take his own advice on resignations from public office and ‘Clear his desk, clear his diary and clear off.’ Today’s Times carries a similar call from the usually-sympathetic columnist Danny Finkelstein. Davey’s absence from parliament for family reasons meant he was not tasked with responding to the subsequent Urgent Question on the Post Office. Shortly after Kevin Hollinrake had spoken at the despatch box, an email

Limor Simhony Philpott

America’s support for Israel has strings attached

On his fourth visit to Israel this week since its war with Hamas started, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a message of strong support for the country, but also some criticism. He arrived in Israel yesterday having already been to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, UAE, Turkey and Greece. Next on his agenda are visits to the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. Blinken’s Middle Eastern tour aims to create a more peaceful and stable region to enhance Israeli security – a particularly monumental task. The Biden administration wants to prevent the war between Israel and Hamas from expanding onto new fronts. They have been anxiously following developments on the border

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer chooses not to probe Sunak on Post Office

Keir Starmer clearly judged that while the Post Office scandal is the hot topic today, voters will be thinking about other things come election time. And so he used the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the year to attack Rishi Sunak on the Rwanda policy, just as the Tory row over that kicks off again. The Labour leader opened with a reasonably jocular question about ‘one ambitious Tory MP’ who had reservations about the scheme when Boris Johnson first proposed it. ‘He agreed with Labour that it wouldn’t work, that it was a waste of money, it was the latest in a long line of gimmicks. Does the Prime Minister

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why isn’t the Sun backing Starmer?

The Sun’s reporting on Sir Keir Starmer’s legal activities is strident and therefore curious. The paper reports, in thunderous terms, on a number of convicted murderers in Commonwealth countries whom Starmer saved from the noose. It notes that, as these cases took place abroad, the former barrister was not bound by the cab rank rule to take on any case for which he was competent and available, without reference to the client or crime. The implication is that Starmer was a do-good lefty lawyer so keen to keep sadistic killers from their appointment with the gallows that he flew all over to do so.  The paper’s angle is all the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sunak to ‘swiftly’ exonerate Post Office scandal victims

Rishi Sunak used the start of Prime Minister’s Questions today to announce that the government will be introducing legislation to exonerate the victims of the Post Office scandal. A planted question from Tory party deputy chair Lee Anderson enabled the Prime Minister to say: The victims must get justice and compensation… today I can announce that we will introduce new primary legislation to make sure that those affected as a result of the Horizon scandal are swiftly exonerated and compensated. Only yesterday, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk was saying the government wanted to exhaust all options before taking ‘radical’ action like introducing legislation for a mass exoneration. There have been concerns

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is suffering from Brexit derangement syndrome 

The French media has been busy marking the third anniversary of Britain’s official departure from the EU by gleefully reporting the sorry state of perfidious Albion. ‘The shipwreck of Brexit’ was the headline in Le Figaro, while France’s business paper, Les Echos, declared that the majority of Britons believe leaving the EU has been a ‘failure’. A radio station broadcast a segment on ‘Bregret’, hearing from disenchanted Britons about how wretched life was without Brussels. ‘With Brexit, the country was supposed to slow down immigration, which is now at record levels,’ the broadcaster stated. ‘Public health services are short of money and manpower, despite being promised unprecedented resources.’  The other

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Do Trump’s Republican rivals have any hope?

23 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by pollster James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners. They speak about the upcoming Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary, and whether Trump’s opponents have any chance of beating him. They also discuss the impact of Trump’s trials, and JL Partners’ viral word cloud which both Biden and Trump have been attempting to use to their advantage. (Photo credit: JL Partners) The Spectator is hiring! We are looking for a new producer to join our broadcast team working across our suite of podcasts – including this one – as well as our YouTube channel Spectator TV. Follow the link to read the full job listing: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/wanted-a-broadcast-producer-for-the-spectator-2/

Matthew Lynn

The EU is paying a high price for its Brexit pettiness

It has formidable negotiating skills, at least according to its cheerleaders. It has huge economic clout. And it can impose its will on companies and rival governments. Given that we have heard so much over the last few years about the immense influence of the European Union you might have thought that a small matter like renting out an office block in London would be simple. But hold on. It turns out the EU will be stuck with a bill for hundreds of millions of euros for the buildings it abandoned in the UK – and its own pettiness is entirely to blame. It is a lot of money and is

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Has Putin really revived Stalin’s infamous spy-catching unit?

Is Moscow reviving a notorious 1940s security agency? Or is the suggestion that the infamous SMERSH counterintelligence unit has been revived in Russia simply a way to troll the West? Worse yet, could it be that the country is facing the threat of a neo-Stalinist revival? A recent video circulated on Russian social media shows a young man from the Belgorod region making a public apology for having filmed and posted footage of Russian air defences online. In front of him, with only their backs shown, are two uniformed men. On their vests are patches with the infamous name ‘SMERSH’, a contraction of ‘Smert’ Shpionam‘ or ‘Death to Spies’ on

Juan P. Villasmil

Ecuador’s gangs could trigger civil war

Ecuador’s most-wanted prisoner escaped from a maximum-security detention center in the port city of Guayaquil on Sunday. Chaos has reigned in the South American country since then, with President Daniel Noboa – who was inaugurated fewer than 50 days ago – declaring a nationwide state of emergency for 60 days on Monday. The Ecuadorian government appears ready to deploy its full forces after years of escalating discord with the gangs The prisoner, José ‘Fito’ Macías Villamar, is the leader of Los Choneros, one of Ecuador’s fiercest gangs. The group has humble beginnings, acting as the military wing of Colombian narcos in the 1990s, but has since has evolved into an expansive and internally divided

Dalibor Rohac

The EU is incapable of defending itself

For years, European leaders have recognised that ‘in a world of carnivores, vegetarians have a very tough time of it,’ as Germany’s former Foreign Minister Siegmar Gabriel put it in 2018. Six years later, as a handful of well-armed Houthi pirates all but shut down maritime trade on the Red Sea, Europe is finding itself to be a vulnerable vegetarian once again.   To prevent the Houthis blocking trade through the Suez canal, ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’ was launched in December. Although it is ostensibly a multinational coalition, in reality it is an American project, led by a US carrier strike group. The UK has sent one ship, as have Denmark and Greece.

Debbie Hayton

The SNP’s conversion therapy plan is deeply sinister

The Scottish government is once again champing at the bit to satisfy the LGBTQI+ lobby. Holyrood’s grandiose plans for sex self-ID might finally have hit the buffers, but the voters need to keep a close eye on what is coming in its wake. Yesterday, Emma Roddick – the Minister for Equalities, Migration and Refugees – announced a public consultation on ‘detailed proposals for legislation to end conversion practices in Scotland’. The way Roddick sells it, it sounds uncontroversial: Our approach, set out in this consultation, aims to bridge this gap while ensuring that fundamental rights already enjoyed by people in Scotland, such as freedom of religion and the right to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Battle lines are being drawn over the returning Rwanda Bill

The Rwanda battle is returning to parliament. On Tuesday, Penny Mordaunt confirmed that the ‘Safety of Rwanda’ Bill will go to committee stage in the House of Commons next week. This means MPs will have two days to add and debate amendments to it. Given Rishi Sunak had to fight to even pass it at second reading (the last time the government lost a Bill at this stage was 1986 on Sunday trading), this will be a difficult process. Effectively Sunak is facing competing demands from the left and right of his party. On the one side are the One Nation MPs who feel that, if anything, the current Bill

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Can Scholz convince the EU to continue supporting Ukraine?

New Year’s resolutions are notoriously difficult to keep. But when it comes to Ukraine, Europe hasn’t made any. There is no clear plan for 2024 on how to stop Russia from winning its war of aggression. With the future of American politics uncertain, it will fall to Europe to make a stand. Initially lambasted for its reluctance to send weapons to Ukraine, Germany has since stepped up to the task and become its second largest contributor of military aid. Now, chancellor Olaf Scholz is leading the call for others to do more, too. ‘Europe must show that it stands by Ukraine, by freedom, by international law and by European values,’