Politics Archives

Saturday

2 Aug 2025

Online Safety Act: are Labour or the Tories worse on free speech?

27 min listen

Is the Online Safety Act protecting children – or threatening free speech? Michael Simmons hosts John Power, who writes the Spectator’s cover piece this week on how the Act has inadvertently created online censorship. Implemented and defended by the current Labour government, it is actually the result of legislation passed by the Conservatives in 2023 – which Labour did not support at the time, arguing it didn’t go far enough. Michael and John joined by former Conservative MP Miriam Cates who defends the core aims and principles at the heart of the Act. They debate the principles of Big Tech, the risks of government overreach and whether freedom of expression

Jonny Ford

Confessions of a juror

When the jury service summons landed on my doormat, I cursed my luck. The nag of civic responsibility was just strong enough to stop me trying to wriggle out. Down to the Crown Court I trudged, praying that I wouldn’t be lumbered with – and impoverished by – a six-month trial. Mercifully, the case was done in seven days. But it should have been over long before. In court, the lunch hour lives up to its name – and then some Why did it take as much time as it did? It turns out that a day in court is no such thing. Sometimes it’s not even half a day.

Kevin Hurley

The horror of ‘cutting season’

Yesterday as I went through boarding at Gatwick Airport I smiled as I watched all the excited children going off on their holidays with their families. Everyone had on their new holiday clothes, and despite the crowded check-ins, people were in a good mood. I boarded my flight to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Addis is a busy hub with connections across Africa. As we began to cruise, I noticed that many of the women on my flight were wearing full black abayas with hijabs, as were the girls they were with, who were aged between eight and 12. I soon realised that these groups consisted only of women: little girls

Rupert Gill

Was Eat Out to Help Out really such a bad idea?

Eat Out to Help Out, the government scheme aimed at encouraging people to return to restaurants during the pandemic, launched five years ago this week. From the outset, it came in for plenty of criticism. It was costly, controversial and possibly premature, its critics say. Bereaved families claim people died because of the scheme. These criticisms might be valid, but they’ve also obscured something else: the fact that, for many – especially young people – this policy didn’t just bring food onto tables. It marked a return to normal life after weeks of lockdown. It was one of the few bright spots in 2020, a year defined by fear, isolation

Friday

1 Aug 2025

Michael Simmons

Why can’t we agree on data?

12 min listen

John O’Neill and Sam McPhail, the Spectator’s research and data team, join economics editor Michael Simmons to re-introduce listeners to the Spectator’s data hub. They take us through the process between the data hub and how their work feeds into the weekly magazine. From crime to migration, which statistics are the most controversial? Why can’t we agree on data? Plus – whose data is presented better, the Americans or the French? For more from the Spectator’s data hub – which may, or may not look like the thumbnail photo – go to: data.spectator.co.uk Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy.

Freddy Gray

Why Trump wins and why Reform can win

28 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by author Ann Coulter in London, to discuss why she backs the rise of Reform UK, how immigration main issue voters care about this election and why she’s supports Trump in his second term. Ann Coulter’s Substack can be found at: anncoulter.substack.com

Lucy Dunn

Green party leadership contest heats up as ballot opens

Today, Green party members can begin voting for their next party leader – or leaders – as ballots in the leadership contest have now opened. Voting will take place across the month before ballots close on 30 August with the result to be announced on 2 September, just a month before the party heads to Bournemouth for a three-day conference. The choice is between current co-leader Adrian Ramsay who is running on a joint ticket with North Herefordshire MP Ellie Chowns (after Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer announced she wouldn’t be running again) and the party’s current deputy leader Zack Polanski. Yet despite the competitors having worked closely together for

Michael Simmons

Michael Simmons, Kapil Komireddi, Margaret Mitchell, David Abulafia and Melissa Kite

27 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Michael Simmons argues that Trump is winning the tariff war with China; Kapil Komireddi reviews Robert Ivermee’s Glorious Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India; Margaret Mitchell watches a Channel 4 documentary on Bonnie Blue and provides a warning to parents; David Abulafia provides his notes on wax seals; and, Melissa Kite says that her B&B is the opposite of organic. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Steerpike

Why the Valuation Office Agency isn’t value for money

Another day, another dispiriting quangocracy revelation. This time the spotlight is on the Valuation Office Agency, whose performance has been rapidly declining year on year – while complaints about the organisation have skyrocketed. Freedom of Information data received by the TaxPayers’ Alliance shows that call wait times have more than doubled over the last three years, targets have been increasingly missed and complaints about the organisation have shot up by 200 per cent. Dear oh dear… Over the last three years, targets have been increasingly missed and complaints have shot up by 200 per cent In the 2024/25 financial year, average call wait times for the VOA – which works

Sophia Falkner

Why Starmer is courting TikTok influencers

Some of my oldest and dearest school friends absolutely hate reading the news. One called me up nearly a week after Rishi Sunak called last year’s election to ask if I fancied a weekend in the countryside. ‘That sounds great,’ I said ‘but you know I’m working on the election?’ ‘Oh my gosh, there’s an election?! Totally missed that!’ she squealed. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss. Her bliss, however, has been somewhat disrupted by TikTok. I nearly fell off my chair when she asked if I’d seen Keir Starmer’s Labour party conference speech last year. Starmer’s demand for the release of the sausages (instead of hostages), had understandably, gone viral,

Matthew Lynn

Rachel Reeves has crushed confidence in Britain

It doesn’t look like the Chancellor will hit her target for turning the UK into the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Nor has ‘stability’ unlocked a wave of foreign investment. Instead, it has plunged. As for Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules, they have been missed almost every month since they were announced. Now there is more bad news for the Chancellor. Business confidence has collapsed to an all-time low. It is not hard to work out why the mood is so bad Leaving the EU’s single market was tough for Britain; so was the financial crash of 2008 and 2009. The pandemic, too, was never going to make business owners feel

Steerpike

Labour accused of ‘social engineering’ over working class internships

Well, well, well. It transpires that in plans to make Whitehall more working class, civil service internships will only be offered to, er, students from low income families. The Cabinet Office has said that only those from ‘lower socio-economic backgrounds’ will be able to apply to Whitehall’s internship scheme – with eligibility based on, um, what jobs their parents did when they were 14. Good heavens… Currently the summer scheme is up to two months long, and open to undergraduate students in the last two years of their degree, allowing them to shadow civil servants, write briefings and take part in policy research. Those deemed successful will then be put

David Shipley

Can AI prevent prison violence?

The government desperately needs to save the justice system, and it believes that technology might be part of the solution. The Ministry of Justice has announced that it will be using AI to ‘stop prison violence before it happens’. The need is urgent. There were over 30,000 assaults in prisons during the 12 months to the end of March 2025, a 9 per cent increase on the previous year. The reality is that this will all rely on the data provided by prison staff, which is often of very low quality This is now Labour’s problem. As Andrew Neilson, Director of Campaigns at the Howard League said yesterday, ‘these statistics

Ross Clark

Trump hasn’t won the trade war

Maybe Trump doesn’t always chicken out after all. Rapid trade deals with the UK, Japan, the EU and others in recent weeks may have given the impression that the trade war was essentially over. Today, though, comes Trump’s Ardennes offensive, with immediate tariffs of 35 per cent announced for Canada. Other countries have been given a week to prepare for steep increases: India will be subject to 25 per cent tariffs, Taiwan 20 per cent and Switzerland – far from neutral in this particular conflict – 39 per cent. Those who insist Trump has a very clever strategy and is winning tend also to be people who, in any other

Thursday

31 Jul 2025

Stephen Daisley

There is no escaping politics with Palestine

Foreign relations are among the most political functions of a government. Ministers favour or disfavour other states based on calculations about which relationships might better serve the national interest. Human rights violations are condemned here, while a blind eye is turned there. Dictators are treated as democrats and democrats as dictators depending on the diplomatic needs of the day. It’s a dishonest, venal, hypocritical business conducted by people with almost no morally redeeming characteristics. Like I said, it’s politics. Too many state actions are compelled – or claimed to be compelled – by law or judicial interpretation of the law. This bodes ill for parliamentary sovereignty, even if it is parliament that keeps passing

Svitlana Morenets

Zelensky’s anti-corruption overhaul will not be forgotten quickly

Last week, the Ukrainian parliament voted to destroy two key anti-corruption institutions. Outrage followed, and now lawmakers have been forced to cut short their summer holidays and return to Kyiv to reverse the law. More than a thousand demonstrators shouted ‘Shame!’ as the MPs drove past them to the Verkhovna Rada. In two rapid back-to-back readings, 331 lawmakers voted to restore the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency, Nabu, and the office of the anti-corruption prosecutor, Sapo. Zelensky signed it immediately. The reputational damage, though, was irreversible. The circus that followed the vote only deepened public disgust toward the politicians they no longer want to represent them. For the first time

Ross Clark

It’s no surprise that nurses want to strike

Wes Streeting was recently revealed to have said in private that junior doctors (or resident doctors, as they now like to be called) must be made to ‘feel pain’ for going on strike – for fear of encouraging other public sector workers to copy their example. Today comes a reminder of why he said it: the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has just voted to reject the 3.6 per cent pay deal offered by the government, with 91 per cent voting to dismiss it – although the turnout was only 56 per cent. Is it any surprise that nurses are not content with the offer? Two years ago, after a

Freddy Gray

How progressivism killed American Protestantism

Freddy Gray speaks to Christopher Mondics who is a legal affairs writer about how the left-wing orthodoxy has destroyed Protestantism in America. They discuss the mainline denominations in America, how ‘wokeness’ infiltrated the churches and why, despite some drop off, religion is still so present in America.

Natasha Feroze

Will the junior doctors regret picking a fight with Wes?

13 min listen

The dispute between the British Medical Association (BMA) – a trade union for doctors – and the government continues, following the five-day strike by junior doctors. Doctors argue that pay is still far below relative levels from almost two decades ago, combined with the cost of study, the cost of living and housing crises, as well as challenging conditions within the NHS. Nevertheless, with an average pay rise of 5.4% for resident doctors this year, support for the strikes appears to be falling – both with the public at large, and within the BMA. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has hit back at the BMA and said they ‘will not win

Steerpike

No babies called ‘Keir’ after Starmer took office

There are a number of ways to measure the public’s dissatisfaction with their politicians: party polling figures, favourability ratings and, of course, the result at the ballot box. But a less obvious indicator is baby’s names – and 2024’s most popular list is a damning indictment of Britain’s Prime Minister. It transpires that a grand total of, er, zero children were called ‘Keir’ last year. According to data released today by the Office for National Statistics, the PM’s first name was nowhere to be found on the list of most popular names for boys and girls in England and Wales. While the name had fast been losing favour for a