Politics

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

Friday

9 Feb 2024

Steerpike

Piers Morgan pulls show from TalkTV

Another twist in the ongoing TV wars. After nearly two years of competing with GB News, TalkTV’s biggest star last night dropped a bombshell: Piers Morgan is taking his daily Uncensored show off the terrestrial network to focus on its YouTube channel. The former Mirror editor says that television schedules had become an ‘unnecessary straitjacket’ and that moving online will allow him to conduct longer, more in-depth interviews. Though hopefully in a format more riveting than last night’s Tucker/Putin snoozefest… Speaking to the Times, Morgan said that greater numbers of people were watching his show on YouTube and that ‘you can’t defy audiences or tell them how they should be consuming’.

Steerpike

Biden branded ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’

Special Counsel Robert K. Hur submitted his report on the confidential documents found in President Biden’s Delaware garage — and Mr S can confirm, it’s a doozy. The report is brutal in its characterisation of Biden’s acuity. It says that Biden ‘did not remember when he was vice president’ Hur found that Biden wilfully concealed the fact that he held confidential documents, citing a recorded interview with his ghostwriter from 2017 where he claimed to have ‘stumbled upon classified documents.’ Amazingly, in 2023, Biden claimed not to have any recollection of this. In what CNN calls a ‘searing report’, Hur said, ‘We have also considered that, at trial, Mr Biden would likely

Freddy Gray

Nobody can stop Vladimir Putin… from talking

The trouble with ageing authoritarians is not necessarily that nobody dares tell them they are wrong. It’s that nobody ever tells them they are being tiresome. A less polite man might have aggressively interrupted his interviewee, but would that have stopped Vlad, the intellectual impaler? Yes, as Tucker Carlson’s big interview in Moscow finally dropped online tonight, the world learned that Vladimir Putin is, among other things, an almighty history bore. He just cannot be stopped. Following all the controversy and intrigue about what might be said, Putin managed to smother the excitement of the interview under an iron curtain of his own autodidactism. It was impressive, in a mind-numbing way. Carlson

Julie Burchill

Prince William should say no to a Royal reconciliation with Prince Harry

Might the King’s cancer diagnosis lead the Royals to put aside the squabbles that have torn the family apart and come together, having seen the bigger picture of life and death? It is quite touching that the prodigal son, Prince Harry, rocked up, however briefly, in London to visit his dad, though it’s hoped he’s not ‘wired for sound’ and that the heartfelt expressions from the King on how much he’s missed his ‘darling boy’ don’t turn up on any future Netflix documentaries. After all, Harry has ‘previous’ when it comes to spilling the beans; his hiss-and-tell memoir includes details of a supremely solemn event, the funeral of Prince Philip:

Thursday

8 Feb 2024

William Atkinson

Rory Stewart is the wrong man to revive Oxford’s fortunes

Rory Stewart is a successful podcast host, but would he make a good Oxford University chancellor? The former Tory MP is in the running to replace Chris Patten, who is retiring. Stewart is the bookies’ front runner in the race: ‘This is a very interesting idea and an amazing role,’ he said, ‘but I would naturally have to think hard about whether I am the right candidate’. Stewart shouldn’t have to spend too long thinking: he’s the wrong man for the job. In his brief Tory leadership campaign in 2019, Stewart’s limitations became clear. His support amongst Tory MPs soon fizzled out as he failed to make a significant impression in

Isabel Hardman

Who’s to blame for Labour’s green U-turn?

Who to blame for the demise of Labour’s £28 billion annual green investment pledge? According to Keir Starmer, it’s the Conservatives. He said this afternoon: ‘What would be really irresponsible is to know the damage done to the economy by this failed government and ignore that and pretend it didn’t happen.’ The party briefing is that because the Conservatives have crashed the economy and Jeremy Hunt plans to ‘max out’ the country’s credit card, the £28 billion is now unaffordable. A quick way to set fire to voters’ trust in you is to drop your fiscal rules as soon as they don’t feel very fun. Within the party, there is

William Moore

Inside the plot to take down Rishi Sunak

42 min listen

Welcome to a slightly new format for the Edition podcast! Each week will be talking about the magazine – as per usual – but trying to give a little more insight into the process behind putting The Spectator to bed each week. On the podcast: The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls writes our cover story this week about ‘the plot’ to oust Rishi Sunak. When former culture secretary Nadine Dorries made the claim in her book that a secret cabal of advisors were responsible for taking down prime ministers, she was laughed at. But with shadowy backroom fixers assembling to try and take down the prime minister, did she have a point? Katy joins

Svitlana Morenets

Zelensky has sacked a Ukrainian hero

If you have to ask Ukrainians to name the biggest hero of the past two years, most would probably say Valery Zaluzhny, who has just been fired as the head of the military. Under his command, Kyiv was defended and Ukraine reclaimed more than half of the territory that Russia occupied since February 2022. It was Zaluzhny, as much as president Zelensky, who inspired Ukrainians. But now he has been sacked. One of his former deputies, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky has taken his place. Zelensky broke the news in a video address to the nation. ‘I am grateful for every victory we achieved together and thanks to all Ukrainian soldiers who are heroically

Steerpike

British Library left counting the cost of cyber-attack

In most countries, it would be a major scandal if foreign hackers successfully mounted a major cyber-attack on the national library. Unfortunately, the UK does not seem to be one of them. On 28 October, the British Library suffered a major incident which has brought the venerable body to its knees. Yet you would scarcely know that one of the largest such institutions had been crippled, judging by the rather-muted response in parliament and beyond. Still, Mr S has done his part to shine a light on this unedifying episode, firing off Freedom of Information (FOI) requests at every turn. Initially staff told Steerpike that ‘we will not be in

Jawad Iqbal

America might regret its Baghdad drone strike

The latest American drone strike in Iraq, which killed the commander of a powerful Iranian-backed militia group, is one more dangerous escalation in the increasingly unpredictable Middle East conflict. The US strike in the Iraqi capital Baghdad targeted Wisam ‘Abu Baqer’ al-Saadi – a senior leader of Kataib Hezbollah, which the Pentagon blames for the attack that led to the deaths of three American soldiers in Jordan last month. The rationale for the American retaliation is clear enough. It sends a powerful message that Washington will punish attacks on US forces in the region, using every means to hunt down those responsible. Everyone and everything – from military leaders to

James Heale

Is Starmer right to ditch his £28 billion green pledge?

15 min listen

Later today Keir Starmer is expected to officially kill off Labour’s £28 billion green investment pledge. With the centrepiece of their public policy now scrapped, what will Labour’s promise be at the next election? James Heale speaks to Kate Andrews and John McTernan, former No. 10 political secretary. Produced by Cindy Yu and Oscar Edmondson.

Brendan O’Neill

Brianna Ghey’s murder is being weaponised – but not by Sunak

We really have seen the worst of politics over the past 24 hours. I’m not referring to Rishi Sunak’s dig at Keir Starmer for not knowing what a woman is – a swipe made while Esther Ghey, mother of the murdered trans teenager Brianna, was in Parliament. I’m referring to the cynical milking of this Commons spat by those who are desperate to get one over on the Prime Minister. They’re calling Sunak ‘crass’, but that insult suits them far better. It isn’t the PM who has lost his moral bearings – it’s his noisy, fuming critics. All Sunak did during Prime Minister’s Questions was mock his opposite number for

Steerpike

Ed Miliband loses, again

Oh dear. It seems that the iron law of British politics has held true once again: everything Ed Miliband touches, he breaks. Whether it is the botched Falkirk reforms or gaffes as shadow business secretary, the infamous ‘Edstone’ or even eating a bacon sandwich, the hapless wonk can never seem to do anything right. And a perfect example of that has been Labour’s rows over the £28 billion for a much-trumpeted ‘green new deal’. For after 18 months of flip-flopping, Sir Keir Starmer has today decided to ditch his flagship policy, in an apparent victory for Rachel Reeves and the Shadow Treasury team. This is despite furious opposition from Miliband,

Euan McColm

Michael Matheson’s iPad scandal has tarnished the SNP

When the Scottish health secretary’s inevitable resignation came, there was no apology, no recognition that he had done anything wrong. Michael Matheson quit with all the arrogance we’ve come to expect from SNP politicians, jumping ship on Thursday morning before the findings of an investigation into his expenses claims were published. After it emerged last November that Matheson had claimed around £11,000 for roaming data charges run up during a family holiday in Morocco, the MSP insisted his expenses were entirely legitimate and had come about while he carried out essential constituency work. When that line refused to shut down questions about how he could have incurred such massive costs,

Steerpike

Michael Matheson quits as Scottish health minister

So. Farewell then Michael Matheson. The embattled SNP MSP threw in the towel today after three months battling in vain to save his job as health minister following the row over his £11,000 data bill. The announcement came just hours before he was set to give a major announcement to the Scottish Parliament on minimum unit pricing. Sub-optimal to say the least… The minister has been awaiting a report on the huge iPad roaming bill he ran up during a family holiday. Labour and the Scottish Tories have accused Matheson of lying over whether he knew how the large data usage had occurred, with the Glaswegian eventually admitting to MSPs

Mark Galeotti

How long will Nadezhdin dare to defy Putin?

Despite a little eleventh-hour drama, Boris Nadezhdin’s bid to become the only genuine opposition candidate in March’s Russian elections has been blocked. What’s interesting is not that he was barred, but what this whole process says about the evolution of ‘late Putinism.’ Once, after all, it was marked both by a – limited but real – degree of genuine pluralism, especially at a local level, and also dramaturgiya, a theatrical facsimile of genuine democratic politics. The elections were stage-managed, of course, and the so-called ‘systemic opposition’ knew that their job was to put on a show rather than actually challenge the regime. Nonetheless, the showrunners appreciated the importance of spectacle, both

Andrew Tettenborn

Why the EU detests Hungary

To misquote von Clausewitz, the European Union sees lawfare as the continuation of politics by other means. Brussels’s latest sally against the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, which it viscerally detests (and which seriously rattled Eurocrats last week with its calculated brinkmanship over the Ukrainian aid programme) is a nice example. The new casus belli is a piece of domestic Hungarian legislation from last year, the Act on the Defence of National Sovereignty. (For a fairly rough English translation of the law, see here.) The measure is essentially aimed at making it harder for transnational NGOs and foreign-funded organisations like the Soros Foundation (called the ‘dollar left’ and the ‘Soros Empire’ in Hungary) to

Kate Andrews

Why Starmer had to ditch his £28 billion green pledge

What will Labour’s flagship promise be going into the next election? There’s a policy vacancy, now that the party plans to ditch its pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green investment. This is not your average U-turn. This has been Labour’s big offering for more than two years. Yet today, Keir Starmer will ditch the headline figure for good – though his party still plans to usher in other parts of their proposed ‘Green Prosperity Plan’. By abandoning the £28 billion promise, Stamer is putting to rest what had become a contentious topic within his own party. The spending promise – which shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves first committed to

Debbie Hayton

Starmer should listen to Sunak on gender

The transgender row isn’t going away. Prime Minister’s Questions this week was dominated by a jibe Rishi Sunak made about Keir Starmer’s stance on gender. The Labour leader then lashed out at Sunak for criticising him on the topic while the mother of murdered trans teenager Brianna Ghey was in the Commons. It’s clear that both sides in this debate are doubling down: Sir Keir has previously said ‘99.9 per cent of women haven’t got a penis’; while Sunak has said that ‘a man is a man and a woman is a woman’ – that’s just common sense’. As well as a Spectator writer, I am a science teacher. The

Freddy Gray

Éric Zemmour: ‘I am not intending to conquer Europe’

Two years ago, Éric Zemmour was the most talked-about man in France and a serious contender to be the ninth president of the Fifth Republic. A controversial journalist turned incendiary politician, he vied with Marine Le Pen for second place behind Emmanuel Macron in the polls. Crucially, he seemed to have something she lacked – an ability still to appeal to the Catholic bourgeoisie while tapping into widespread anger at mass immigration. But then Russia attacked Ukraine, the mood of Europe changed, and Zemmour’s political fortunes sank as quickly as they had risen. He finished a distant fourth in the first round of the presidential election, with 7 per cent