Politics

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

Tuesday

10 Oct 2023

If not the Tories, why Labour?

14 min listen

Keir Starmer’s leadership speech today in Liverpool didn’t get off to the best start after a protestor ran onto the stage and dumped glitter all over him. But after dusting himself down and rolling up his sleeves, the leader of the opposition set about addressing the question that many prospective voters have wanted answering: If not them, why us? He made big promises on the NHS and pledged to ‘bulldoze through’ the obstacles to growth caused by the planning system, including with a new generation of new towns. It was one of his best speeches yet, but can they deliver? Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman discuss.

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer looks ready for an election

The stage invasion at the start of Keir Starmer’s speech was a total failure for the protestor who carried it out, and a huge success for the Labour leader. It wasn’t clear what he was shouting about as he dumped a load of glitter over Starmer and was then carried out of the hall. Starmer, though, had the chance to react calmly, make the point about his party being about power not protest, and roll up his sleeves as though he was ready to get going with rebuilding Britain. He joked to the conference that if the protestor thought that would bother him, ‘he doesn’t know me’. Aside from a

Jake Wallis Simons

For too long, the UN has been gripped by Israelophobia

It is something of an understatement to say that there has been no shortage of shocking posts on social media in recent days. Up there has been the footage of the mobs chanting ‘gas the Jews’ outside Sydney Opera House and those flying the Hamas flag in London. But one above all stood out. Step forward the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Yesterday, as scenes of medieval anti-Semitic savagery were playing out across southern Israel, it put out this message: ‘On Monday afternoon, [we] observed a moment of silence for the loss of innocent lives in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere.’ The only thing more conspicuously absent from

Steerpike

Watch: protestor throws glitter on Starmer during speech

Oh dear, Keir Starmer’s speech didn’t get off to the best start at Labour conference. As he began to open his speech, a heckler, in a massive lapse of security, was able to get on stage and throw glitter over the Labour leader. The protestor – who was shouting platitudes like ‘true democracy is citizen led’ and ‘we demand a people’s house’ – was then dragged off stage by his suit jacket. Mr S isn’t really convinced it was the most effective protest… Still, Starmer managed to recover from the incident well. After removing his glitter-covered jacket and rolling his shirt sleeves up, he remarked that: ‘If he thinks that bothers me,

Brendan O’Neill

Why aren’t ‘anti-fascists’ condemning the tide of anti-Semitism?

I have a question about the events of the past few days: where is Antifa? Where are those self-styled anti-fascists who love to rage against anything that is even vaguely reminiscent of the 1930s? Jews in Israel have been rounded up and murdered. Disgusting anti-Semites are on the streets of Sydney screaming, ‘Gas the Jews! Fuck the Jews!’ Mobs in London have taunted Israel, essentially laughing over its dead Jews. Britain’s Jewish schoolkids are taking off their blazers lest anyone recognise them as Jews and attack them. Across Europe security is being beefed up at Jewish establishments — schools, synagogues, museums — out of fear that Hamas-supporting mobs will invade

Gavin Mortimer

Qatar, Hamas and the West’s shameful silence

The political class in France have rounded on Jean-Luc Mélenchon for his failure to condemn Hamas’s attack against Israel. The far-left firebrand, a Gallic Jeremy Corbyn, reacted to Saturday’s massacre of Israeli civilians by Islamist terrorists with a tweet: ‘All the violence unleashed against Israel and Gaza proves only one thing: violence only produces and reproduces itself. We are horrified and our thoughts and compassion go out to all the distraught victims of all this. There must be a ceasefire.’ Mélenchon and the majority of his party, La France Insoumise (LFI), have since doubled down on their remarks, drawing condemnation from political opponents, Jewish groups and media commentators. Prime minister

Ross Clark

Starmer’s house-building plan could prove a hit with young voters

The biggest hinderance for the Conservatives is that they have nothing to offer young voters. The Labour party, however, just might. It seems that Keir Starmer will announce in his conference speech a plan to return to the idea of post-war new town corporations, which were able to compulsory-purchase land at agricultural value. It could – just possibly – mean a sharp fall in the price of new housing, massively expanding the number of first time buyers. The great shame is that the Conservatives couldn’t bring themselves to introduce a similar policy You don’t have to be a socialist to feel aggrieved at your inability to afford a home, something that you

Stephen Daisley

What Britain should do about Hamas

London is, at last, beaming Israeli flags onto its most recognisable buildings. This is an improvement on how some of the city’s residents have been marking the mass murder of Jews but beyond that it’s empty symbolism, as these flag projections always are. They’ve become the most visible – and often the most substantive – western response to terrorism in the past decade or so. Perhaps it’s comforting, as you bleed out in a bullet-riddled Paris theatre or under the wheels of a truck in a Berlin Christmas market, to know that your country’s national standard will soon adorn the White House and the Palace of Westminster, but I doubt

Kate Andrews

Is the IMF right to be this pessimistic about the UK economy?

The International Monetary fund has published its biannual World Economic Outlook report – and it’s more bad news for the UK. While the IMF’s predictions for 2023 fall broadly in line with other forecasts – which show Germany having the most economic trouble this year – the IMF predicts that the UK will be an outlier come 2024. It expects the UK to grow by 0.6 per cent next year: the weakest growth among G7 nations and a downgrade of 0.4 per cent from its previous predictions. But there are reasons to be optimistic. Revisions to UK GDP of late has been more positive. Just last month the Office for National Statistics

Lloyd Evans

London’s ‘Free Palestine’ protest descended into farce

Central London succumbed last night to a mob of protestors celebrating the outrages perpetrated by Hamas on Saturday. That was the verdict of many news outlets. ‘Night of Fury’ ran the Daily Mail’s headline. ‘Police separate warring groups’ said the Daily Express. The protest outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington lasted more than two hours and although it was boisterous it never, as far as I could see, turned ugly. About three thousand people blocked High Street Kensington and blew whistles, waved flags and handed out ‘Boycott Israeli Apartheid’ stickers. Pranksters attached them to the backs of policemen, for fun. The embassy itself, tucked away in a private avenue, was

Julie Burchill

The many, many faces of Keir Starmer

Is nomenclature destiny? If Keir Starmer had not been named for Keir Hardie, the founding father of the Labour party, but rather had his middle name ‘Rodney’ as his first, would he have still gone for the job as Labour leader? Might he have continued rather in the highly remunerative law career which made him Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013? Instead he became an MP in 2015, leader of the Labour party in 2020 and – if he doesn’t start killing kittens while tittering on TikTok in the interim – next prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2024. But there’s just something which doesn’t yell ‘Venceremos!’

Adi Koby

‘I just want to live’: A survivor’s account of the desert rave massacre

When I arrived at the all-night rave near the border with Gaza the party was in full swing. It was 5am and thousands of revellers had gathered in the desert. A few hours later, hundreds would be dead or injured, women raped, dozens of people missing – some snatched across the border. The first sign of trouble came at 6am. We heard the gunshots before we saw the terrorists. We ran to our car to escape. Bullets flew past our heads. Already there were many wounded and dead. But our road out of hell was blocked: hundreds of cars were all trying to leave, and off-road desert paths were impossible

Sam Leith

How Elon Musk killed Twitter/ X

Twitter was a newswire. That, at least at first, was the point of it. Something that came with all the glamour of digital innovation was, as it turned out, immediately recognisable as a version of something that has sat on every newspaper news desk for decades: a regularly refreshed ‘feed’ of short updates, ceaselessly scrolling, with the latest at the top. It was a newswire everybody got, and everybody could contribute to. There was value in that alone. It turned into much more. It became a raucous sort of community. It did, as everybody complained, make it easier for angry inadequates to shout at strangers, but that was just part of it. It

Lucy Dunn

Labour’s plan to save the NHS – on a budget

Wes Streeting interprets his job as shadow health secretary as being a ‘public service role and an economic role’. ‘There is a direct relationship between the health of the nation and the health of the economy,’ he told a Policy Exchange event at the Labour party conference on Monday. Echoing the sentiment of his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, Streeting makes clear that while a Labour government would work to preserve the health service, it would approach NHS funding with iron discipline. And it doesn’t really seem like Labour would have much other choice. As one Tory MP remarked during the Conservative party conference: ‘What can Labour offer? They can’t offer

Monday

9 Oct 2023

Angus Colwell

Netanyahu: ‘What we will do to our enemies will echo for generations’

Just a week ago, Benjamin Netanyahu was urging Israelis to take a break. He said citizens should ‘go for a walk in our beautiful country’ during the Sukkot holiday. He posed for photographs with his wife Sara in the Golan Heights, the two of them smiling as the sun set. Tonight, he prepared citizens for an immense retaliation campaign against Israel’s foes. He said that the air strikes seen so far against Gaza are ‘just the beginning’, and that ‘what we will do to our enemies in the next few days will echo for generations.’ Earlier today, his defence minister ordered a ‘complete siege’ of the Gaza strip, cutting two

Kate Andrews

What is driving the fraud explosion?

61 min listen

Fraud, by some margin, is the biggest crime in Britain. How did it spin out of control? Who is responsible? And who do we call to tackle and prevent the biggest menace in the digital era? The Spectator’s economics editor, Kate Andrews is joined by an esteemed panel for this discussion, kindly sponsored by TSB and hosted at Conservative Party Conference. Also on the panel: Tom Tugendhat MP, Minister of State – Minister for Security, Victoria Atkins MP, Finance Secretary, Bob Wigley, Chair – UK Finance, Richard Hyde, Senior Researcher and Lead on Fraud – Social Market Foundation and Paul Davis, Fraud Director – TSB.

Katy Balls

Rachel Reeves goes for growth

12 min listen

It was Rachel Reeves’s moment on day two of Labour party conference. Addressing the hall she detailed her ambitious plans for growth and vowed to stick to ‘iron-clad fiscal rules’ if in power. She also received a surprise endorsement from former governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney. Once branded ‘boring snoring’ by a BBC editor, Reeves doesn’t look boring anymore. Will she be the first female chancellor of the exchequer? Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman.

Isabel Hardman

Rachel Reeves is no longer ‘boring’

Rachel Reeves was once branded ‘boring snoring’ by a BBC editor. Today, she was more of a Scary Mary in her speech to conference, repeatedly casting herself as an Iron Lady whose iron discipline would make it difficult for any of her colleagues to get any money for their pet spending projects. In the decade since she was dissed as being dull, Reeves has grown in confidence and stature, and the speech she gave today was really very good: energetic and forceful to the extent that many of those shadow cabinet colleagues watching on the conference floor looking a little scared of her. In the decade since she was dissed

Matthew Lynn

Mark Carney is wrong to endorse Rachel Reeves

The timing could hardly have been better. Other Labour leaders and shadow chancellors have had to make do with endorsements from the drummer in a 90s Britpop band, or a runner up for the Booker Prize. Rachel Reeves, however, rounded off her speech to the Labour party conference today with no one other than the former Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney singing her praises. But hold on. Isn’t Carney starting to abuse his position – and possibly the Bank’s independence as well? By taking sides so openly Carney is turning the Bank into a political body At least we know who Carney would be voting for if

Kate Andrews

Labour’s grand plan? More borrowing

Rachel Reeves’s speech at Labour party conference was an attempt to show how the party’s economic strategy differs from the Tories. Oddly, the shadow chancellor decided to do this by cherry-picking the showstoppers from both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s highlight reels. Reeves’s accusations were numerous, though predominantly levelled at Truss and her disastrous 49-day premiership. ‘When you pay fast and loose with the public finances’, she said, ‘it’s working families that pay that price’ – a sentiment that no doubt resonates with the many households that were acutely affected by the surge in mortgage costs last autumn. The shadow chancellor repeated one of Labour’s favourite, if not misleading, claims